~Nikopol Trilogy~ Week 9

For this week we were asked to read an European comic and I ended up reading the Nikopol Trilogy by Enki Bilal.

A short summary:

It’s the year 2023 and Alcide Nikopol has been revived from

a state of suspended animation after 30 years orbiting Earth. In the meantime, the planet has suffered two nuclear wars, and France is ruled by the ruthless dictator J.F. Choublanc. The immortal gods of Egyptian antiquity have also reawakened to revive their rule over humanity, and they now hover above the crumbling technopolis of Paris in a massive stone pyramid/airship. Horus, the renegade falcon god, takes possession of Nikopol’s body, rendering him immortal, and concocts a conspiracy to overthrow the Choublanc regime.

This comic is really different from what other comics I have read. It’s confusing in some cases because you don’t know what the basic storyline is. I think there’s about three different storylines going on. The first part of the story is about Alcide Nikopol and gets possessed by Horus. The second part is about a girl name Jill, who is a reporter who is sending stories of the present to the past. Her path crosses with Nikopol’s and they fall in lust.  The last part is about takes place in Equator City, a metropolis in permanent subzero, involves Nikopol’s son and a boxing match. As you can see it’s really confusing and can be difficult to understand what is going on if you don’t pay attention to small things.

 

The artwork is really interesting and very different from what I’ve seen before. The drawings and the art is really gritty and muddy and has a lot of things going on. Even though the art is really rough and muddy the character design that the artists used is pretty amazing and interesting. There is a wide range and use of different characters. For an example the artist has normal people but then there are some that have crazy abnormality to their face or they have crazy makeup on. There are other characters that have even more odd-looking features. For an example some have human bodies and have animal heads. Another example is a green and white striped cat that looks like it was crossed with a bear

Even though there’s a lot of randomness going on in the storyline and artwork. It is really fun to sit down and look at all the details that the artist added in.