Career Timeline: 2000 - Après l’Incal: Le Nouveau Rêve

Après l’Incal: Le Nouveau Rêve(After the Incal: The New Dream), is the first in a trilogy of albums that bring Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Incal story to a close. Moebius illustrated it, and passed it on to José Ladrönn, who followed it up with the gorgeous Après l’Incal: Final Incal in 2011, and is currently working on the third and final volume.

Above are the first 9 pages, published by Les Humanoïdes Associés in November 2000. The book is colored by Studio Beltran, which has been a touchy subject for some, and looks similar to the notorious recoloring of the original Incal.

[note: previously, I incorrectly credited the first page of this book as being drawn by Zoran Janjetov]

Two photos of one of Moebius’ unused original Incal pages, from someone’s private collection. So great to see how much white-out he uses, and how he redid the last panel before scrapping the whole thing entirely and drawing the one that was printed.

1: Moebius

2: Zoran Janjetov

3: José Ladrönn

Covers for the Spanish editions of the Incal series, published in the late 80s. Love that lightning bolt border pattern.

(Source: 1ojodemelkart.blogspot.com)

Today is apparently Colorist Appreciation Day, according the comics internet. In case there were any questions about creative legitimacy concerning the role of the colorist in comics, look at this comparison above. The first image is from the original release of Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The Incal, colored by Isabelle Beaumenay-Joannet. The second is from the atrocious recoloring for a 2003 re-release, which was also released in the states under a partnership with DC Comics.

Beaumenay-Joannet’s colors are simple and elegant, allowing the fullness of Moebius’ line to come through, and the space and loneliness to be felt. The recolored page, with all of its gaudy textures and gradients, destroy all of that. My eyes are way too busy processing all that muck to notice the line and composition of the page, and it all falls apart on me. You can see more examples in this post by Joe McCulloch, where he breaks down a bit the coloring history for The Incal(I had no idea that Yves Chaland only colored the first chapter of until I first read this).

The value of colorists: sort of a no-brainer.

Brandon Graham pointed this out to me this morning: a page from Alan Moore’s Wildstorm Spotlight: Majestic paying homage to The Incal. I like this comic and never made the connection before.

Career Timeline: 1989

Alejandro Jodorowsky writes a short Metabaron comic for Moebius to draw, that he would parlay into a longer series drawn by Juan Jiménez. This short saw publication in America in the anthology series A1, issue 4.

Career Timeline: 1988 - The Incal: The Fifth Essence, Book 2

The Incal: The Fifth Essence concludes, along with the Incal series proper. Alejandro Jodorowsky would continue expanding this universe with multiple series like The Metabarons with artist Juan Giménez, and The Technopriests with artist Zoran Janjetov. He would also return to The Incal with a prequel called Before the Incal, again with Janjetov as artist, and a sequel called Final Incal, with artist José Ladrönn.

Career Timeline: 1988 - The Incal: The Fifth Essence, Book 1

Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky release the 5th book in the Incal series. Called The Fifth Essence, it grew to be longer than originally planned and was split into books 5 and 6. Part 2 is released later in the year, and published together as Incal, Book 3 in America through Marvel/Epic.