THE INCAL and MADWOMAN OF THE SACRED HEART - Serio Comics 10
THE INCAL and MADWOMAN OF THE SACRED HEART, written by Alejandro Jodorowsky & drawn by Mœbius, published by Humanoids
Alejandro Jodorowsky has been a patron saint to me over the past few years ever since I wrote THIS BOOK IS THE LONGEST SENTENCE EVER WRITTEN AND THEN PUBLISHED, which helped me come to terms with the fact that my ambitions to make a film out of an imaginative and controversial story might never come to pass
Even with his breakthrough films of the early 70s El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky struggled to finance and then distribute these from Mexico, until apocryphally late-night screenings when theaters had availability found a supporter in John Lennon
Most infamously, as depicted in the documentary by Frank Pavich, was Jodorowsky’s failed adaptation of the science-fiction novel by Frank Herbert, Dune, where he set up a pre-production unit in Paris of artists Jean Giraud, Chris Foss, and H. R. Giger
They drew storyboards, fashioned costumes, and created artwork so imaginative they forever influenced science fiction films such as Star Wars, Alien, and The Fifth Element but controversially it was so too much that it became ‘the best movie never produced’
Jodorowsky pivoted after that experience though to employ an art form from the same family as storyboarding, i.e. comics and graphic novels, to adapt his own imaginative and controversial stories with a collaborator from Dune, Jean Giraud a.k.a. Mœbius
THE INCAL, originally published in installments between 1981 and 1988 in French for Les Humanoïdes Associés as Une Aventure De John DiFool, has been called ‘a space opera of fantastical intergalactic voyages that blends science, technology, political intrigues, conspiracy, messianism, mysticism, poetry, debauchery, love stories, and satire that is a contender for the best comic book in the medium's history.’
THE INCAL became so successful that it spawned a ‘Jodoverse’ of comic book prequels, after works, and side stories
When I attended The Los Angeles Times Book Festival at USC in April I surprised the Humanoids table
When I mentioned that I had only read MADWOMAN OF THE SACRED HEART
This was a later collaboration with Mœbius from 1993 outside of THE INCAL characters & world, and could perhaps be described best by the old French word obscur
And while Seriocomics is a forum for enthusiasm
Not criticism
I can’t help but compare and contrast a bit
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