Week Nine: A Wide World of Comics

In class we discussed Eurocomics and some important people who created early comics in Europe. Rodolphe Topper, was one of the most influential people in european comics, making albums and pass them around. Marie Duval was one of the first french cartoonist and contributed to a journal her husband was apart of. Caran d'Ache was a Russian who also made caricatures in the early 19th century and these were the beginnings of comics and the creations. We talked about the multiple influencers who were also in our reading for this week.

Nikopol Trilogy seems to be in a dystopian France taking place in 2023 that faced a lot of nuclear wars and also has alien inhabitants. It begins talking about a particular governor who is wants to trade all of his oil in return of immortality. He ends up not being successful. While this is going on we meet a character that falls from the sky and his name is Nikopol. He loses a leg in this process, and ends up waking up in a metro station bleeding to death. This is when we meet Horus who ends up building him another leg, and subsequently possessing him. They seem to agree on a common goal, Nikopol's goal being political and humanitarian and Horus' personal revenge of a divine by seizing control of the oil. Some personal thoughts is I like the fact they have press clippings talking about the politics and even can include some author's notes. This is kind to show the progressing of what they are doing and how it's effecting Paris. Afterwords we follow a character named Jill. The story from there progresses strangely, and she becomes almost like another main character. It's interesting that we see this theme of nuclear war and dystopian Paris living alongside aliens, this makes for a very interesting set illustrations. I think it keeps this theme of french sci-fi with Egyptian gods and the political power between them because it's so strange.