I finished my first read of FINAL INCAL yesterday, and am happy to be wrong re: the prediction I made in my review of BEFORE THE INCAL:
...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.
It may be that Jodorowsky had been writing his character John DiFool for so long, he might've thought he owed his readers a little eucatastrophe. That said, even though there are various discontinuities within the grand scheme of the three INCAL books, there's nothing that expressly contradicts a "happy ending" and a rejuvenation of the mechanistic forces that sent the universe spinning downward.
I think I did, however, correctly predict a major theme of the entire opus in my review of THE INCAL when I wrote: "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." It was hard to see that trope in BEFORE THE INCAL, wherein Jodorowsky revealed that (a) the reprobate seen in INCAL was in some ways a creation of the corrupt future-regime in which DiFool lived, and (b) that the original DiFool was capable of both nobility and selfless love, the latter being a primary trope for FINAL.
With the publication of the first of FINAL's three volumes, Jodorwosky resolves one of the longest-deferred cliffhangers in literature: the scene at the end of INCAL, where DiFool is plunging to his death in one of the acid lakes in his pestilential city. A group of Cybo-Cops, acting on the orders of the city's ruler the "brain-in-a-jar" the Super-Divinoid, rescues DiFool, though only to interrogate him about his universe-spanning experience with the White and Black Incals. DiFool has forgotten all of his cosmic experiences, but one thing has come back to him despite his earlier brainwashing: his deep abiding love for Luz de Garra. The Divinoid orders the detective executed, but DiFool is rescued by a robotic insect. The hero is reunited with his concrete seagull Deepo and then witnesses the outbreak of a new virus, the Biophage, as it starts reducing the infected to sludge.
The insect-robot shows DiFool that the entity that has created the virus, the Benthacodon, has infiltrated the palace of the corrupt Prez, who for countless years has remained in power by transferring his consciousness into new bodies. The reader (but not DiFool) then witnesses how the Benthacodon usurps a robot body into which the Prez was supposed to be downloaded. The Prez dies of the Biophage and the robot, addressed as "Meca Supreme One," becomes the administrator of the Benthacodon's will, killing the Super-Divinoid and the pope of the Techno-Priests. Meca One then initiates a grand scheme: getting most of the populace of this future-Earth to voluntarily submit to becoming robots to avoid viral death. Meca One also orders his forces to find and kill John DiFool.
DiFool's insectoid rescuer takes the detective to a giant computer, which claims to be Elohim, a mutant form of cybernetic life, and the opposite to Benthacodon. (The two of them are more or less analogues of the White and Black Incals from the first volume, but Jodorowsky needed two new opposed forces since the two Incals were united in INCAL.) Elohim informs the hero that he alone can counter Benthacodon's plan to turn all life into robotic life-forms, and DiFool can only do so if he reunites with his true love Luz. One big problem: when the brainwashed DiFool last encountered Luz, he rejected her, breaking her heart, so that she left Earth in the company of another man, Kaimann, captain of the Tortuga space pirates.
Elohim sends DiFool to the planet Tortuga, along with the united Incal (who I think is loosely allied with Elohim). However, the trip sends the detective through a space warp. Somehow he picks up three other versions of himself, all the spawn of other universes-- a more traditionally handsome DiFool, a "guru DiFool" who talks like a Hare Krishna, and a DiFool with angel-wings, who claims to be a "seraphim." All four of them want to become reunited with Luz, and though Original DiFool's Deepo apparently died back on Earth, an alternate world Deepo also goes on the ride to Tortuga. There the five questers find a city in runs, and they're molested by surviving pirates, who have devolved to cannibals. One less debauched pirate, Olaf, guides the DiFools to a holo-machine, where they get a guided tour of how the planet was devastated by yet another form of quasi-organic robotoid life, this time three "spatial spiders" called "the three Gounas." (Hindu religion includes three metaphysical principles called "gunas," but the writer doesn't draw any explicit parallels.) The upshot of the Gounas' invasion is that Luz's lover Kaimann is turned into a beast-thing while Luz is taken to the Gounas' world, where they've mistaken her for a goddess of some sort.
Luz drags DiFool along to the surviving Techno-Priests, offering her services in exchange for their healing Kaimann. The priests inform the two that some unconverted humans remain in the subterranean trash pit ruled by Gorgo the Foul (last seen in INCAL), and forging an alliance with the Earth-rebels is the priests' price for Kaimann's cure, The duo's trip is then made quicker by one of Elohim's agents, a "white archangel," who takes them to Earth, though DiFool is not that enthusiastic about risking his life for a romantic rival. (This scene shows that the detective has his own inner pettiness, not imposed upon him by the Prez's brainwashing.) Once more, Luz displays some aristocratic power to make others regard her as a goddess, and she successfully leads the degraded hordes of Gorgo against the forces of Meca-One. However, the rebels learn that Meca-One has already launched a doomsday machine that will disperse a "robotizing virus" all over Earth, so that all become subservient to the Benthacodon's will. Kaimann, his bestiality cured, appears and says he can destroy the installation so as to prevent the virus' dispersal, but he needs one person to help. Over Luz's protests, DiFool volunteers and heroically sacrifices his life to save Earth.
Luz belatedly realizes the depth of her love for the deceased DiFool, but the Incal, apparently helping Elohim renovate the world, intervenes. Through the usual hocus-pocus, DiFool comes back to life and reunites with his beloved. To be sure, the Incal doesn't do this purely out of beneficence. The sexual congress of the *hieros gamos* between the lovers activates something called "vita-pollen," whcih then spreads throughout Earth, reversing all effects of the metallic plague. However, a coda establishes that the plague still exists in other parts of the universe. This may be why, after Luz and DiFool reconstitute life on Earth, Elohim absorbs both humans into its being, possibly to continue counteracting the influence of Benthacodon. The lovers' last words as humans are their proclamations of their mutual love for one another.
FINAL was originally going to be a reunion of Jodorowsky with his INCAL collaborator Moebius. Before being pulled away by othe considerations, Moebius completed one chapter, which has had separate release as AFTER INCAL (and which I did not read). I'm assuming that Moebius had some input with this incomplete collaboration that Jodorowsky used some of his ideas in FINAL, since Moebius is mentioned on the inner title page.
Of the three volumes, each has its particular strengths. The artwork in INCAL is much more visually stunning than that of the other two artists, though part of the INCAL-art's appeal stems from Moebius' unapologetic rendering of assorted New Age symbols. His epic sweep is more assertive than the renderings of the other two artists, though they've quite good on their own terms. However, because DiFool is so unlikable, he's less easy to invest emotion in. BEFORE mostly fills in narrative holes in INCAL's structure, though the solution of the "mystery" of DiFool's repulsiveness proves quite engaging, since he's no longer a helpless product of his environment, as he seemed to be at first. FINAL provides a synthesis of the "two DiFools," so that here he has a mix of human strengths and weaknesses. I also like Jodorowsky lampooning any readerly desires for "nobler DiFools" with the three alt-world versions, and I found "Guru DFool" a welcome bit of comedy. However, I'm not crazy about Jodorowsky's new incarnations of "Light" and "Darkness," in that the author jettisoned most of the mystical symbolism and relied instead on the more SF-mainstream concept of "mutated computers," whatever those might be. Still, the INCAL books stand as some of the best visionary works in the whole of French comics, whose content far outstrips the less ambitious products of Christin and Mezeries.
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