After watching the Documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, and reading the novel Dune, I knew the next port of call down the rabbit hole was reading The Incal.
Jean Giraud aka Moebius is an artist who I’ve long admired, and yet I had never read any of his work. I think possibly the availability of translations from the French was a hurdle.
My main exposure to his art was indirectly through the Heavy Metal movie. The series of shorts in the film are mostly taken from comic series in the magazine of the same name (Metal Hurlant in French).
Harry Canyon, the story of a New York taxi driver, was based on the Moebius’s comic, The Long Tomorrow. And Taarna was based on Arzach.
That movie had a huge impact on me. There are some cool short stories in it. But mainly the visuals were something totally new to me at the time.
I suspect I heard the name Moebius in the DVD special features. There was a making of documentary, before the days of the Internet this was a source of valuable insights. There was a period of time where I consumed making of’s and audio commentaries hungry for information. Now I guess it is podcasts!
At the end of Jodorowsky’s Dune they mention that all of the pre-production work for the abandoned Dune movie, they eventually re-purposed and put into the comic book The Incal.
The book is written by Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius. It is a Sci-Fi tour de force with so many interesting ideas crammed into its pages. Both philosophical conceptual ideas from Jodo as well as incredible genre defining visual ideas from Moebius.
After reading, I felt like it was one of the greatest graphic novels I had ever read. The last time I felt so overwhelmed by a comic book was probably after reading Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
