MYTHCOMICS: DELIRIUS (1972)

Phillippe Druillet's best known character, "Lone Sloane," debuted in 1972 and soon became one of French comics' leading misanthropic protagonists. I've not read the character's very first adventure but recently read the half-dozen stories collected in "Les Six Voyages de Lone Sloane." That title may have been meant to invoke the Seven Voyages of Sinbad, and in fact the last story in this series briefly references the forthcoming events of DELIRIUS, so in that context one could view the longer story as Sloane's seventh voyage.

The six stories are erratically plotted, usually dropping the hero into this or that dire situation, which is usually resolved in some elliptical fashion. Sloane is established as some sort of "rebel" opposed to his own people, the descendants of Earthmen who have colonized the usual endless galaxies. The hero is entirely self-interested, ruthless about dealing with anyone who gives him crap, and looks like an ordinary man, except for having red eyes. The stories are largely just excuses for Druillet to exercise his fabulous design sense, filling pages with titanic spaceships and robots, towering buildings with weird baroque architecture, and a variety of grotesque aliens. I assume that Druillet wrote all the short tales himself, but for the longer DELIRIUS, he teamed up with one Jacques Lob, which gave the resulting story more of a conventional plot.

Sloane and the crew of his ship, the "O Sidharta," have long been in the disfavor of the reigning Galactic Emperor Shaan, but lately they've also been dogged by other ships. Sloane and his second-in-command, a Martian named Yearl, figure out that the newcomers belong to a priesthood named the Red Redemption that dwells on Delirius, the pleasure planet. Delirius began as a barren world that was useless for colonization. (The above panorama shows a large replica of an astronaut's suit on display, and any high ideals that it might have signified have been undercut by the bird poop covering the helmet.) Shaan therefore structured Delirius into a casino-world, whose only purpose is to separate jaded citizens from their money, thus swelling the emperor's coffers. 

The Red Priests confer with Sloane. They want him to help them steal the treasure-trove of Delirius from the clutches of Governor Kadenborg. The priests claim that they want to overthrow both Kadenborg and Sloane's enemy Shaan, but Sloane has heard that they work a protection racket on the businesses of Delirius, so their word isn't worth much. Nevertheless, the payoff tempts Sloane, and he agrees. He and Yearl begin a reconnaissance on the pleasure planet, but they're almost immediately betrayed by the priests and imprisoned.

Almost as quickly, the two thieves are also liberated by an unknown benefactor.  They escape prison in a ship and take refuge in "The Gluon," a dry ocean-bed where Delirius deposits all of its garbage. (I assume the name is an ironic reference to a quantum physics term, coined in 1962, for a type of subatomic particle.) This visit is a brief one, probably just an excuse for Druillet to draw a big trash-heap. Agents of the mysterious benefactor show up to give the duo clothes, but no information on their boss's motives. 

Sloane and Yearl wander around rather aimlessly, which gives Druillet the chance to draw more exotic stuff, like various combatants in arena-games and "mystical masochists," though neither has anything to do with the main story. Another of their peregrinations takes them into a building designed to homage M.C. Escher, where they meet a prostitute named Saarah. 

But this meeting is not coincidental; Saarah works for the Red Redemption. The reader finally gets an explanation for the reason the priests betrayed Sloane and Yearl to the cops: that they knew the duo would be tagged by "the intuitives" (whoever they are) and so the priests stage-managed both the capture and liberation of their partner-pawns. By having the Earthman and the Martian become fugitives, the priests made it possible for them to penetrate Delirius.

Sloane, however, figures out that the Red Priests want to use him and his crew as fall guys, so that they can topple Kadenborg and take his place under the Emperor's aegis, rather than seeking to end the corruption of Delirius. Sloane therefore cooperates with them on heisting the treasure, but chooses his own game plan, bearding the governor in his den. (Kadenborg, incidentally, is drawn to look like a sort of "blob-man," making him a E.T. version of a "fat cat.") 

In the end, though Sloane secures for himself and his crew a large portion of the haul, he also contributes to the downfall of a world devoted only to filthy lucre: by allowing some of the "credos" to fall to the planet's surface, everyone on Delirius starts to fight over "literal free money." (Writer Lob might have mentioned that this is the implicit promise of all of the world's gambling-dens, but maybe he considered it implicit.) As Sloane and his crew escape with the Emperor's money, Sloane distances his pecuniary mission from that of the priests' alleged desire for revolution.

This pseudo-revolution is no benefit to anyone, except those who want to take advantage of the chaos and snatch a bigger piece of the pie.

Lob and Druillet may have patterned DELIRIUS after the still popular spaghetti westerns of the period. In most of these movies, the hero is a badass who similarly resorts to stealing huge sums of money from corrupt regimes, often with the help of cohorts who plan to betray him, thus justifying his cutting them out of the bounty. If he helps the downtrodden, it's usually by dumb luck, since the spaghetti-hero is out for himself alone. Many of these flicks might be deemed "indirect revolutionary propaganda," since they justify striking back at entrenched interests, even if the protagonist's motive is making money. Sloane's final lines suggest that he's more of a disillusioned idealist, since he gained his fame for having rebelled against the emperor, though I doubt he ever caught the idealism-bug in earlier or later adventures.

As a minor point of literary history, it might not be coincidence that the name of Sloane's Martian buddy "Yearl" resembles that of "Yarol," the Venusian accomplice of C.L. Moore's "space western" hero Northwest Smith. The Moore stories were written in the 1930s but reprinted in the early 1950s. Thus it's not impossible that Lob or Druillet read some or all of the Smith stories and, consciously or not, paid homage to an earlier space-badass. 

   

MYTHCOMICS: NOSFERATU (1989)

Phillippe Druillet's NOSFERATU, given that it's a hymn to irony and solipsism, is in some ways the Frenchiest of French comics. In this it diverges from the works that popularized the word "Nosferatu" for modern audiences-- both Bram Stoker's DRACULA and F.W. Murnau's arty knockoff-adaptation NOSFERATU-- for both of these are melodramas in which an evil undead preys upon the living, only to be defeated and destroyed by the righteous actions of good people.

Druillet's narrative takes place in an unexplained post-apocalyptic world, implicitly Earth, though the word "Nosferatu"-- applied to the main character by persons unknown-- is one of the few touchstones with Earth's real-world history. This Nosferatu was apparently an ordinary human at some time, but the catastrophe mutated him into a science-fiction vampire, with the ability to fly and to feed off the living (although Druillet shows him eating flesh as often as drinking blood). From what the reader sees in the story, all other humans have also been mutated into weird non-human creatures.

For several pages, Nosferatu-- who has only a nodding resemblance to the vampire in Murnau's film-- wanders his wreck-of-a-world, looking for prey. He makes brief reference to how he and others escaped the brunt of the catastrophe by hiding underground, but the reader never sees any of Nosferatu's companions. At first he's also hunting for a female companion named Imma, making plans to carry food back to her, since she's immobilized by gangrene. But since he seems to forget her rather quickly, it's possible that she's either dead from the start of the narrative, or that she exists only in his imagination. Indeed, no explicitly female humanoids are seen in the story.

Nosferatu does find a little prey among a tribe of mutants he calls "the Cripples." These characters look like hairy dwarves, but the only thing "crippled" about them is that some of them have spikes in place of hands, while the others have just one spike and one human-looking hand. The Cripples are as eager to devour Nosferatu as he is to prey on them, but he manages to chomp off one dwarf's human-looking hand, which sustains him for the next few pages.

Nosferatu continues to roam the world, moaning about his solitary status as "the last vampire." He muses that "the important thing in life" for an individual  is to conform to the image that one's society has of said individual, but that even this doleful conformity is beyond Nosferatu, because "I'm both individual and society." He then stumbles across what he mistakes for a living female, but which turns out to be a metal dummy used for some advertising display. Despite this, he carried the dummy around with him for a while, talking to it, naming it "Lilit" (after Lilith, the reputed first wife of Adam), and wondering, "What were you selling, Lilit? Toothpaste? Shoes? Food?" He conceives the notion that, given his status as the sole intelligent life on the planet, he ought to become a poet, so he spontaneously spouts assorted free-verse from the works of Baudelaire (whose translators are duly credited in the comic). He comes across another tribe of mutated humanoids, but they show no intelligence, and one of them displays its lack of social skills by biting off the dummy's head, ending Nosferatu's amour fou.

Deprived of even this pitiable companionship, Nosferatu remarks that he's "tired of life." He "aspires to purity, with no hunger, no thirst, no breathing." However, after a little more soliloquizing, he does stumble across something that tests his alleged desire for fellowship. He falls in with a tribe of carrion-eaters that he conceives to be his kindred, and though most of them look more like werewolves than vampires, at least some of them can speak. However, the werewolves have their own problems, like a big serpent-creature that perpetually preys on them. (In an odd choice of real-world references, the creature is named for the San Andreas Fault, apparently just because the beast comes out of the ground.) Nosferatu devises a weapon to kill the beast. However, the stratagem fails and Nosferatu runs away from the conflict, so that he becomes an object of scorn to the werewolves.

Disgusted with his lot, Nosferatu decides to build a space-ark and depart the corrupt world for the stars,. He does so within the sight of the werewolves, which has the effect of making them his audience, even if they're cast in the role of "Noah's scoffers." During the construction of the ark, Nosferatu's single-mindedness has a salutary effect on his biology: he mutates further, becoming a being who derives nourishment from the air. However, when he finds he can't power his ship, all of the werewolves laugh at him. This puts the nail in the coffin, so to speak, of the last vampire's desire for society. He transforms into a mutant with mental powers, destroys both the werewolves and his own ship, and then flies off to the stars under his own power, though he continues to make ironic remarks to the readers like "Closing credits. Fade to black"-- which I suppose serve the same purpose as Baudelaire's famous address to his "hypocrite lecteurs."

NOSFERATU shares with other Druillet works its creator's imaginative prolificity, but this one-shot work is much better organized (and hence hyperconcrescent!) than most other Druillet works I've encountered. And, unlike a lot of French comedic works, it's actually funny. I think it was Durgnat who said that watching French comedy films was like watching a bear trained to dance: the pleasure of the spectacle is not that the bear dances well, it's that he can do it at all.

NEAR-MYTHS: TONGUE*LASH (1996)

On the basis of this cover alone, I wanted TONGUE*LASH to qualify as a mythcomic--

--simply because it's a clever inversion of this famous movie poster.

Unfortunately, though TONGUE*LASH has a lot of clever concepts, none of them cohere into the form of a myth.

Writers Randy and Jean-Marc L'Officer and artist Dan Taylor concocted a world that looks rather like the ancient world of the Mayans somehow survived into a technological far-future era, one where men all wear modern-day suits, women wear hooker-outfits, and some obscure sect, "the Begetters," can produce animal-human hybrids.

Taylor's art is a lovely tribute to the work of Moebius, and, as if to anticipate any possible criticisms, each of the two Dark Horse issues states on the inside cover that the comic is "inspired by" the French comics-creator. But the L'Officer brothers failed to bring all of the elements of their unique world into perspective.

TONGUE*LASH-- named for its two heroes, female "Tongue" and male "Lash"-- function as futuristic detectives. They take a case involving a low-level scandal-- that of a prostitute becoming engaged to a high-level lord-- and find themselves embroiled in a high-stakes game. The heroes don't call themselves "detectives," but "diviners." And once or twice, they're shown consulting implements that are supposed to reveal future knowledge. However, most of the time Tongue and Lash ferret out info using the same tactics as mundane sleuths: asking inappropriate questions, roughing up lowlifes. So I can't help but wonder-- why call them "diviners" at all?

The L'Officiers spend a lot of time coming up with Mayan-sounding (or Mayan-derived) terms for professions, cultural practices, and so on. However, though one character mentions making a blood sacrifice to the "twin gods," there's no consistent sense of what role religion plays in this world. The plotters known as "the Begetters" are on the outs with the current government, apparently because the rulers think it's OK to have hybridized citizens (slaves?)  who have animal-heads, but the rulers don't like the fact that the Begetters can create animal-human hybrids who look human. Oh, and there are also some never-specified rules about who can or cannot use a special process called "Metatime," that allows one to enter another temporal plane-- but the authors choose to remain mum on what if any metaphysical significance this process has.

I suppose the L'Officiers were within their rights to keep the relationship of Tongue and Lash ambiguous, a la Steed and Mrs. Peel. However, the two detectives aren't exactly sources of sparkling wit, so they're not any more interesting than their under-described environment (though Tongue, rather like Mrs. Peel, gets the best fight-scenes).

I've heard it said that there's at least one more Tongue*Lash adventure out there, but I have not encountered it. And if there's any special significance to the masks worn by many male characters-- Lash's looks like the famed "gimp mask" in particular-- I couldn't find said significance in the story.

MYTHCOMICS: AMBASSADOR OF THE SHADOWS (1975)

I’ve not yet read the majority of the “Valerian” graphic novels by Christin and Mezeries. Of the three that I have read, though, I see a number of repeated tropes, which have their best effect in the 1975 GN considered here, “Ambassador of the Shadows.”

More than any other French science-fiction comic of the period—if not of all time—the Valerian series evokes what enthusiasts of science fiction came to call “the sense of wonder.” “Shadows” begins with a prologue in which the reader sees dozens of nonhuman and quasi-human races developing on their own worlds, venturing into space, and making contact with one another. All of these assorted interactions, which writer Christin treats more as legend than as history, lead to the creation of a titanic space-satellite, “Central Point.” This grand confluence of races is a trope common to many science fiction subgenres, but is perhaps best known for its association with the  space opera subgenre. At its best, the trope conveys to readers a sense of “the extraordinary diversity of the universe,” as the 1981 English translation of "Shadows" phrases it.

That said, American space opera is often though not always dominated by tropes associated with imperialism, in which human beings are seen as the natural leaders of the universe’s nonhuman sentients. At least in the novels I’ve read, Christin and Mezeries consistently reject this world-view, often satirizing the tendency of Earthmen to assume their innate superiority. In a related trope, even though the series is named for a male “time-space agent” in the service of the Earth-rulers, Valerian’s female partner Laureline is often the center of the action, and“Shadows” is certainly one instance of this tendency. Finally, whereas most American space-operas follow very linear plots associated with finding treasures or terminating threats, the stories of Christin and Mezeries tend to be picaresque, with characters lurching from one fantastic situation to another. This quality may have hurt the recent Valerian adaptation, CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS, with American audiences. (The film borrows some story-tropes from "Shadows" but is not a straight adaptation.)

Following the prologue, the story’s main action begins with Valerian and Laureline piloting their ship to Central Point. At the opening the two agents only know that they’ve been assigned to deliver Earth’s ambassador to Central Point. The ambassador is never given a name in the English translation: for my own convenience, I choose to call him “A” from now on. Just as the ship is about to dock, A—who continually treats the agents as his flunkies—reveals a secret mission. Central Point is apparently administered by a rotating leadership, rather like an interstellar United Nations, but A and his superiors plan to pull off a coup. Just as Earth assumes the rotating leadership, A will put forth a proposal to bring the various planets into a rigid federation, with the Earth-people as the “keystone.”

The agents’ reactions are telling. Valerian consistently plays the “good boy,” stressing their need to obey their superiors and making excuses for A’s snooty behavior. Laureline is the knowing rebel, who calls “bullshit” on A’s supposed beneficence. However, because of their previous experience with alien life, A chooses to entrust the agents to care for A’s ace-in-the-hole: a tiny armadillo-like alien called a “grumpy converter.” Though the precise nature of A’s coup is never disclosed, A strongly implies that he’s going to use the “grumpy”—a creature able to reproduce great quantities of monetary tokens—to bribe some of the extraterrestrials into voting for the new federation.

The coup, however, never has the chance to get started. Valerian and Laureline escort A to the Earth-segment of Central Point without incident. But just as A begins to address his fellow Earthmen in some minor rallying speech, a contingent of unfamiliar aliens breach the hull, knock down all opposition with “cocoon guns,” and abduct A. Valerian, still the dutiful son, pursues the intruders’ ship, but his heroic attempt fails and he’s simply taken prisoner alongside A, and for most of the rest of the story, the plot-action centers on Laureline. Only at this point does it become clear to a first-time reader that Laureline and Valerian are lovers. Thus the heroine is motivated to find the kidnappers not because of the Very Important Personage they’ve abducted—a personage whom Laureline doesn’t like, or approve of—but by personal affection. At least in this story, the space-opera’s celebration of “the call to duty” is minimized by Christin and Mezeries.

Most of Laureline’s potential allies have been rendered immobile by the cocoon-guns, though she picks up a “comedy relief” sidekick, Colonel Diol, who despite his rank is merely a minor functionary. However, Laureline also has the grumpy converter. She has only to feed it any monetary token, and the grumpy can reproduce the token in great quantities, sort of like Rumplestiltskin spinning straw into gold. Further, just at a time when Laureline has no clue as to who the kidnappers were or where they’ve taken their prisoners, a trio of aliens, the “Shingouz,” show up and offer information in exchange for several pearls of great price. This becomes the leitmotif for Laureline’s picaresque journey. Centaur-men, blob-people, experts in dream-manipulation—all of them are happy to help Laureline on her way, as long as she pays them well. (Mezeries gets more than a little tragicomic effect from showing the little creature continually exhausted by the demands of the aliens, who are at least the equals of human beings in terms of sheer greed.) Only one race, the humanoid Zools, don’t seem interested in gain: having lost their own world, they serve to maintain the interstices connecting the various habitats of Central Point.

Laureline finally sees, through a dream-image, that Valerian and his ambassadorial companion have been taken to “the World of Shadows.” The unnamed inhabitants of this world knew what A and his Earth-allies planned to do, and they engaged the kidnappers to bring A into their midst. Further, they reveal to A and Valerian that they’re aware of Earth’s intentions: to back up their coup with a show of military force. The Shadow-people assert that they’re capable of destroying the Earth-forces with their “extrasensory powers,” but to make things simpler, they subject A and Valerian to brainwashing in order to bring about some kinder, gentler scheme. 

It’s never quite clear what the Shadows's design is. Laureline finally reaches the Shadow-World and manages to secure the release of the two hostages without any violence. However, it seems that the authors wanted to show that one didn’t need super-powerful aliens to effect revolution. A gets back to Ccntral Point with his two bodyguards. Yet before he can even give the speech given him by the Shadow-people, the Zools decide to institute a new, more moral regime in Central Point, and the whole Earth-contingent gets kicked off the satellite.

It's interesting that "Shadows," in contrast to the film it inspired, has very little violence. Of course, there's some real-world validity in the idea that an agent seeking information may have to spend more time reaching for his wallet than for his Walther PPK. Laureline, thanks to her access to the almost magical talents of the grumpy, fortunately has no limit on her ability to spend, and the non-violent tone of her adventures might take a different turn if her authors had denied her access to the money-making beastie. The anti-imperialist idea of foiling the Earth-people's coup carries a strong appeal, but it seems muddled by the authors' desire to provide two endings: one in which the Shadow-people monkey with the ambassador, and one in which the Zools come out of left field to further embarrass the Earth-regime. The romantic arc of Valerian and Laureline is underdeveloped given the story's insistence on their strong feelings, and the authors undercut the arc further by having Valerian fail to appreciate Laureline's efforts on his behalf. But on the whole, though the two heroes have their functions within the overall tale, they are less mythic personages than most of the aliens they encounter, or even Central Point-- which is a phenomenon I've written about in more depth in INDIVIDUAL VS. COLLECTIVE AMPLITUDE.

MYTHCOMICS: THE MAGICIAN'S WIFE (1986)

"Nothing ever happens without Dolores."-- offhand dialogue from minor character.

Since the name Dolores means "sorrows" or "sadness," writer Jerome Charyn may have meant to convey that sadness was an inevitable aspect of the human condition or some such. It's a reasonable assumption, but I have to admit that one can't make that good a case for such a theme in the American author's collaboration with French artist Francois Boucq. THE MAGICIAN'S WIFE won the Fauve d'Or prize at Angouleme in 1986, and the stand-alone album, after being out of print for many years, has recently resurfaced from Dover Publications, though I'm reviewing here the 1987 edition published by Catalan.

Though Boucq's highly detailed art is beyond reproach, Charyn's script is never as clever as he seems to think it is. I've not read any of Charyn's fiction, but in his introduction to the Catalan edition, the author makes clear that he idolizes the French approach to "bandes desinees." This may be a reason why, although WIFE does qualify as a genuine mythcomic, the writer shows, like many French comics-practitioners, a cavalier attitude toward the little details that add to a strong symbolic discourse.

Still, WIFE shows an admirable psychological structure. Within the first few pages of the album, the reader is introduced to a group of characters living in a house in 1956 Saratoga. Rita, a girl of perhaps ten, is being raised by her mother, a widow following the death of her husband in Korea. The unnamed mother works as a maid in the house of a reasonably well-to-do family. However, all the reader knows about the lady of the house is that she gardens all the time, while the lady's husband never seems to come down off the roof he's repairing. The couple's one child, an adult named Edmund, plans to become a professional magician, and the action remains at the house only long enough to establish the relationship between the chimerical Edmund, little Rita, and Rita's mother.

Modern politically correct readers would no doubt be disturbed by Edmund's teasing of Rita, claiming that he plans to marry her someday. It's obvious, though, that Edmund is not a follower of Humbert Humbert, for he never makes any inappropriate approaches to Rita when she's a child. Rita doesn't fully trust Edmund or his predictions of their future relationship, but she's even less than pleased when she happens to spy on Edmund making love to Rita's mother.

Edmund gets his way: not only does he become a successful magician, he talks Rita's mother into coming along, whereupon both mother and daughter become part of the act. In contrast to real stage magic, Edmund does seem to possess some sort of supernatural pipeline, but only when working with Rita, who becomes the star of his show. Predictably, as Rita comes into the bloom of adolescence, her mother's looks wither and eventually Edmund wants to send the older woman away. Rita alternates between being captivated by Edmund's charms and remaining loyal to her mother, but as Edmund predicted in her childhood, the sense of erotic interest wins to some extent. However, not long after Edmund marries Rita, Rita's mother passes away. Rita, racked by guilt, flees Edmund and his magic act, taking a job as a waitress in a New York coffeehouse.

Nevertheless, Rita is unable to forget her "demon lover," and begins imagining him in place of other men she encounters. Complicating things further is that during one of the magical performances, Edmund apparently unleashed a "werewolf spirit" in Rita-- and now, far from his control, mysterious bloody murders begin transpiring in New York. Though there is a relatively mundane solution to the murder-mystery- a solution provided by a French detective who seems to know more than he should about Rita's history with Edmund-- Rita finally decides that she has to find out what's happened to her husband. Oddly, amid all the suggestions of violence and perversity, the two are reunited in a relatively upbeat conclusion, though nevertheless I tend to view MAGICIAN'S WIFE as belonging to the Fryean mythos of the irony.

The fact that the name "Dolores" is sprinkled throughout the story indicates that Charyn wanted it to signify something, though it may have been no more than a private in-joke. It's first used as the name of a Saratoga jockey's horse, but it seems to have some special meaning to Little Rita. Charyn also attributes the name to an unseen maid who finds the body of Rita's deceased mother, and to a strange sorceress who holds Edmund in thrall. Still, this motif is undeveloped, as is Charyn and Boucq's view of magic. Since they remain non-committal on the subject of whether Edmund and Rita's magic is real or illusion, WIFE doesn't sustain any metaphysical myths. However, the psychological relationship between Rita and Edmund does achieve a mythic status, and so MAGICIAN'S WIFE succeeds in that department.