MYTHCOMICS: BEFORE THE INCAL (1988-95)

 

In my review of THE INCAL, the successful album-series written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and drawn by Moebius, I wrote this of main character John DiFool:

Clearly Jodorowsky wanted DiFool to represent the unrefined nature of humankind-- though he's certainly far from the only inhabitant of his far-future world who's moved only by egotism and concupiscence.

Immediately after concluding THE INCAL with Moebius, Jodorowsky commenced work on this prequel with another artist. Zoran Janjetov was a Serbian artist with a strong Moebius influence, though he showed little of Moebius' investment in vaulting metaphysical imagery. Further, Jodorowsky's own priorities for the prequel seem to have changed, primarily in terms of DiFool's characterization. While some sections of BEFORE are dedicated to simply clarifying events that set up the action of THE INCAL, Jodorowsky appears to have radically changed his mind on his main character. It's not impossible that even in the years of THE INCAL's composition, the author always meant to concoct such a heel-turn. But since Wiki mentions that author and artist composed INCAL via an assortment of conversations, rather than with a formal script, I deem my interpretation of INCAL's main character as valid. In contrast, BEFORE shows Jodorowsky rewriting John DiFool to endow him with greater heroism and causing him to be flensed of his righteousness in order to deprive him of his "better angels."

 INCAL implies that Di Fool is a reprobate in response to having been raised among the lower, impoverished levels of his future-city, where a privileged class called "aristos," who sport artificial halos, keep their boots on the necks of the hoi polloi. It's true that when we see DiFool as an adolescent, he still suffers from having been raised in squalor, with a petty thief for a father and a drug-addicted prostitute for a mother. Yet this DiFool still shows empathy for others, unlike the one we know from THE INCAL. After he beholds his mother commit suicide in one of the city's acid lakes to end her suffering, DiFool considers following her example, accompanied by Deepo, his "concrete seagull." He's saved by his mother's old colleague, the mutant Snailhead. Then the snail-man reveals that he's part of a secret cabal, seeking to use a special flower, amorine, in the hopes of chemically transforming the aristos' corruption into selflessness and love.

However, in the world of Young DiFool, the forces of the corrupt hierarchy-- represented by the Prezident, who frequently changes into new bodies-- are arguably far more efficient than they are in THE INCAL. The Prezident's hunchback enforcers devastate Snailhead's congregation, and DiFool is saved only because one of them is none other than-- his father Oliver DiFool, captured during his last scheme and transformed into an enforcer via surgery and brainwashing. However, the encounter with Snailhead instills in the hero a desire to take positive action against the hierarchy.

   

  DiFool and some friends attack the government with terrorist actions, but to the hero's fortune, he finds a new father-figure in Kolbo-5. a defunct cybo-cop with human emotions. Kolbo contrives things so that DiFool gets a job of an aspiring detective, the better to give him a secure position in society. In this new job the hero meets an aristo woman, Luz, who lusts for a taste of the low life, but DiFool can't become a detective unless he solves a governmentally approved case. Drawing on his own experiences as a prostitute's son, DiFool theorizes that, since he never saw kids of other female prostitutes, there may be some hidden conspiracy there-- which ironically means that he must plunge further into the very corruption that revolted him so deeply. The police department approves him to investigate the case. However, the Super-Divinoid, a computer intelligence that runs the city, plots to make certain that the young detective's quest ends in death.

              

The evil computer's first gambit is just another "honey trap" variation: since DiFool already has a huge thing for the beautiful aristo Luz, she lures him into a position where he will be legally transformed into her slave. Kolbo frees the detective, whose sense of betrayal increases his passion to solve the case. He masquerades as a pregnant hooker (with Deepo pretending to be his "baby bump") and mingles with other working girls, so that he gets taken to the secret installation where the fetuses are harvested for nefarious purposes. DiFool is even more heroic than before as he ferrets out the scheme and continues to try to expose the scandal to the populace.

DiFool also decides not only to forgive Luz de Garra her trespasses, he also brings her into his project. Though she's too debased to experience the love he feels for her, she's angry at the government for demoting her and her father after the failure of the honey-trap. DiFool and Luz infiltrate the aristo maternity ward, where the prostitutes' children are passed off as the spawn of (presumably infertile) aristo mothers. DiFool and Luz are captured and taken to an interrogator. But he seems to be an ally, revealing himself as DiFool's old ally Snailhead-- until another trap is sprung, and the young lovers are betrayed by Snailhead, who's undergone brainwashing. The Super-Divinoid attempts to make the lovers betray one another, and when they do not, his pawns arrange things to degrade the heroes in the eyes of the populace, so that nothing they say is credited. Luz is wed to a government minion and after she's packed off to deep space, DiFool has his altruistic nature erased, thus becoming the selfish prick that readers knew from THE INCAL.

  

   By Book Six, the state of affairs has become much like the ending of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, with the corrupt hierarchy in total control, just as it was at the outset. Jodorowsky provides flashbacks that clarify many of the helter-skelter plot-developments of THE INCAL, as with the relationship of the priestess-sisters Animah and Tanatah. But the main story essentially concludes with Luz escaping captivity, only to see that the only man she can love has entirely forgotten her. FINAL INCAL-- which I don't plan to read for a while-- will then reveal whether Jodorowsky chose to give his hero any break from this state of affairs. However, my sense of the author's overall pessimism does not make me anticipate any happy endings, or even a Tolkienian eucatastrophe.    

MYTHCOMICS: THE INCAL (1980-88)

 

“What piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” -- HAMLET, Act 2, Scene 2.

"So much beauty in the center of a world full of garbage."-- Deepo, THE INCAL, Book 3.

THE INCAL, written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and rendered by Jean "Moebius" Giraud, was serialized from 1980 to 1988 in METAL HURLANT magazine, and to date it remains both a popular and critically-celebrated franchise. Yet, for all the phantasmagorical content put forth by Jodorowsky and Moebius, the six volumes present a knotty problem. The rambling storyline is replete with all sorts of symbolism involving the Tarot, the four elements, and a dichotomous object that seems to be the son of the creator-god. Yet Jodorowsky seems inordinately preoccupied with the narrative role occupied by viewpoint character John DiFool, who's as far as one can get from god or angel, but seems to fit the status of "quintessence of dust" pretty well. Thus, with apologies to Milton, I boil down the master trope of THE INCAL to Jodorowsky "justifying the ways of dust to gods and angels."

  Jodorowsky introduced John DiFool, resident of your basic space-opera Earth, the way many PIs are introduced in 20th-century detective fiction. The hero starts out pursuing some mundane or even sordid job and rapidly gets mixed up in matters far beyond his usual experience. A crucial difference, though, is that though a Philip Marlowe usually proves equal to any task that challenges him, John DiFool mostly survives by dumb luck. And where Marlowe possesses a charm for the fair sex, DiFool is purposely given a homely face, so that any women who cross his path are drawn less to his looks than to things like money or power.

  As DiFool narrates to an attentive prostitute, he acquired a strange glowing triangle-- later dubbed "The Luminous Incal"-- from an alien, and no sooner does he return to his apartment than other ferocious beings come looking for his prize. (His pet bird Deepo is probably a callback to the white winged mount who appeared in Moebius' ARZACH stories.) DiFool conceals the Incal by swallowing it, though in the beginning he's motivated only the possibility of profit. 

  

Soon DiFool learns he's out of his league when he's taken prisoner by Earth's utterly corrupt Prezident, but the power of the Incal saves him, as well as conferring the power of speech upon Deepo. On the downside, The Incal starts talking as well, and it drafts the unwilling detective into a quest to find its other half, The Black Incal, in the forbidden realm of Technocity. There it just so happens that the Techno Priest cult has tapped the negative energies of the Black Incal to create a universe-ending threat, "Shadow Eggs," which will unleash a "Great Darkness" that Jodorowsky never explains.

Meanwhile, a professional assassin, the Metabaron, is forced to track down DiFool and his metaphysical companion by Tanatah, who kidnaps the Metabaron's adopted son Solune (Sol + Lune) in order to force the assassin to do her will. It's no coincidence that the tough-as-nails Metabaron fits the standard hero-archetype far more than does John DiFool.

DiFool does acquire the Black Incal, but he gives it away to a beautiful woman riding a giant rat after she kills a Technopriest menacing the detective. Calling herself Animah, she leaves DiFool behind, so that he and Deepo are taken prisoner by the Metabaron. The assassin tries to get back his son from Tanatah, but she takes the Luminous Incal from DiFool and prepares to kill all her prisoners. However, the forces of the Prezident attack Tanatah's stronghold. She makes common cause with her enemies and they hightail it.

Tanatah reveals that she and Animah are both sisters and former guardians of the two Incals, but Tanatah gave the Black Incal to the Technopriests for some vague reason. Since Animah has the Luminous Incal now, Tanatah decides they must all joorney to the center of the planet, an immense garbage dump where Animah and her giant rats live. (Incidentally, Animah is Solune's mother but hls father's identity will be revealed later.) One of the Prezident's murder-machines follows the fugitives to the garbage-world but DiFool and Animah unite the power of the two Incals and destroy the craft.

  

The seven companions journey to the plane of some metaphysical guardians called "Arhats" (a Buddhist term for a seeker who has achieved nirvana). The Arhats in turn convey the travelers to "the heart of the interior sun," where all seven are transfigured, and Solune in particular assumes a half-light, half-dark ritual. It's during this ritual, designed to unite the two Incals, that Animah drops a bomb: that she masqueraded as a prostitute to gather DiFool's seed. because his genetic material was the only one that could birth a unique child such as Solune-- who, BTW, becomes a disembodied intelligence. However, now that the Incals have merged, DiFool becomes peevish at having been used as everyone's pawn.

Now, at this point a lot of space-opera writers would concentrate on the surviving menace of the Shadow Eggs and the Great Darkness they represent. Suffice to say that Jodorowsky and Moebius go off on a lot of tangents not germane to the main plot (particularly various "bread and circuses" satires that become tiresome after a while). The next *consequential* subplot involves DiFool having to spread his unique genetic material into an alien queen, Barbariah. who makes herself look like Animah. The upshot of this subplot is that the detective sires a planet of people who look like him.

Skipping over lots of beautifully rendered filler material, Solune finally confronts the Darkness, whatever it is, and destroys its medium, though not its power. Solune determines that the Darkness can be banished if all humans in the universe participate in a shared "theta dream," which among other things forces DiFool to seek out the world of humanoids he sired on Barbariah. Once all the humans are dreaming in concert, the seven companions must channel the theta energy against the Darkness-- and their efforts cause all but DiFool to sacrifice their lives.      

      

After all these wonder-working tropes, almost the only thing Jodorowsky didn't do was to have his reluctant hero meet God-- so he does. Creator-god Orh informs DiFool that he uses his only begotten son, The Incal, to bring forth "the seed of the new creation." As for DiFool, he's not yet elevated enough to join any new orders, so back he goes to the point where his story began-- taking a big fall that may lead to death, or to enlightenment.

But even if one could not read of DiFool's fate in the sequel FINAL INCAL, most readers would find it unlikely that the recalcitrant reprobate would ever sing any cosmic kumbayas. Clearly Jodorowsky wanted DiFool to represent the unrefined nature of humankind-- though he's certainly far from the only inhabitant of his far-future world who's moved only by egotism and concupiscence. Yet Jodorowsky also imbues the detective with some strange genetic vigor, making him, the arrant fool, the only person who can give birth to Solune, who's something of a humanized Incal, making the Fool the father of the Savior. Despite the suggestions of the hero's special destiny, overall there's a strain of Hamlet-esque pessimism in THE INCAL. Jodorowsky may have meant to suggest that for all the metaphysical beauties human beings can conjure forth, they remain composed of dust, and all their infinite faculties will not keep them from returning to dust.          

  

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.