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.