Category: Mature Reading

By Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-143-3

All science fiction is social commentary and, no matter when, where or how set, holds up a mirror to the concerns of the time of its creation. Many stories – in whatever medium – can go on to reshape the culture that spawned them.

There’s a reason why the Soviets proscribed many types of popular writing but actively encouraged (certain flavours of) science fiction. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Metropolis, 1984, Solaris, Star Trek, Alien and so many others escaped the ghetto of mere genre to change the cognitive landscape of the world, and hundreds more such groundbreaking and worthy efforts would do the same if we could get enough people to read or see them.

And most importantly, when done well and with honesty, such stories are also incredibly entertaining.

All over the world comics have always looked to the stars and voyaged to the future. Europe especially has long been producing spectacularly gripping and enthralling “Worlds of If…” and Franco-Belgian graphic storytelling in particular abounds with undiscovered treasures.

For every Blake & Mortimer or Barbarella, Valérian & Laureline, Airtight Garage, Chimpanzee Complex or Gods in Chaos there is an impossible hidden wealth of others, all perched tantalisingly out of reach for everybody unable or unwilling to read nothing but English.

To coincide with the release of spectacular summer blockbuster movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics have released an economical paperback edition of another long-overlooked masterpiece. The book – a stunning example of bleak Cold War paranoid fantasy – is also electronically accessible to iPhone, iPad, Web, Android and Kindle consumers.

The original mesmerising monochrome adventure, written by Jacques Lob (Ténébrax, Submerman, Superdupont) and rendered by painter/illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Le Dépoteur de Chrysanthèmes, Les Aventures Psychotiques de Napoléon et Bonaparte), was first serialised in 1982 in À Suivre and collected two years later as Le Transperceneige, and like most landmark yarns has a driving central conceit which is simple, brilliant and awesome.

In the future life is harsh, oppressive and ferociously claustrophobic. When eternal winter descended upon the Earth, fugitive remnants of humanity boarded a vast vacation super-train and began an eternal circumambulation of the iceball planet on railway tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise.

Thanks to lax security, as the locomotive started its unceasing circuit of the globe, gangs of destitutes boarded the vehicle, but were forced by the military contingent into the last of the 1001 cars pulled by the modern miracle of engineering.

Now decades later, the self-contained and self-sustaining Engine hurtles through unending polar gloom in a perpetual loop, carrying within a raw, fragmented and declining microcosm of the society that was lost to the new ice age…

All contact with the Tail-enders of the “Third Class” has been suspended ever since they tried to break through to the better conditions of the middle and front carriages. Their “Wild Rush” was repelled by armed guards and the survivors – who recall the terrifying event as “the Massacre” – were kicked back to their rolling slums and sealed in to die…

The story proper begins as Lieutenant Zayim is called to an incident in a toilet. Somehow an individual has survived the -30 degree chill and monstrous acceleration, climbing along the outside of the train to smash his way into a centre carriage.

Normally the importunate refugee would be killed and ejected but the stunned officer receives instruction from his Colonel that the indigent – named Proloff – is to be interviewed by the leaders up in First Class.

Before that, however, the invader must be quarantined as the carriage doctor has no idea what contagions must proliferate in the squalor of the rear. But whilst Proloff is isolated, idealistic young activist Adeline Belleau forces her way into the carriage.

She is with a humanitarian Aid Group agitating to integrate the abandoned Tail-enders with the rest of the train, but is unceremoniously confined with the intruder and suffers the same appalling indignities as her unfortunate client…

After a “night” in custody Proloff and Adeline are escorted by Sergeant Briscard and his squad through the strange and terrifying semi-autonomous carriages: each a disparate region of the ever-rolling city, contributing something to the survival of all.

Travelling through each car during their slow walk, Proloff observes how humanity has uniquely adapted on the journey to nowhere, but that each tiny kingdom is filled with people scared, damaged and increasingly dangerous.

In one car they are even attacked by bandits…

The invader also begins to glean certain facts: a religion has grown that worships the unlimited life-bestowing power of Saint Loco, rumours that the train is inexorably slowing down, reports that a plague has begun in the carriage he broke into. Even Adeline has picked up a cold from somewhere…

As they slowly approach the front, Proloff and Adeline grow closer, uniting against the antipathy of the incrementally better off passengers who all want the Powers-That-Be to jettison the dragging, superfluous end carriages packed with filthy Tail-enders…

When they at last reach the luxurious “Golden Cars” the outcasts are interviewed by military Top Brass and the President himself.

He confirms that the train is indeed losing speed and that the furthest carriages will be ditched, but asks Proloff to act as an emissary, facilitating the dispersal of the human dregs throughout the rest of the train.

Billeted with Al, the timidly innocuous Train Archivist, Historian and Librarian, Proloff quickly confirms his suspicion that he is being played. Whilst deftly avoiding the grilling regarding conditions at the train’s tail, he swaps some theories about how the ice age really began and just how coincidentally lucky it was that this prototype vacation super-train was set up, ready and waiting to save the rich and powerful… and only accidentally and unwillingly a selection of the rest of humanity…

Stoically taking in the decadent debauchery of the First Class cars, Proloff is ready to die before going back, and when word of plague and revolution provokes an attack by the paranoid autocrats, he and Adeline decide to move even further forward, to see the mighty Engine before they die.

What they find there changes everything for everyone, forever…

This incisive exploration of a delicately balanced ostensibly stable society in crisis is a sparkling allegory and punishing metaphor, playing Hell and poverty at the bottom against wealth in Heaven at the top, all seen through the eyes of a rebel who rejects both options in favour of a personal destiny, and is long overdue for the kind of recognition bestowed on that hallowed list of SF greats cited above.

Dark, brooding, manic and compulsive, Snowpiercer is a must-see masterpiece no fantasy fan can afford to miss.

Transperceneige/Snowpiercer and all contents are ™ and © 2013 Casterman.