Enki Bilal

I would like to know more about this as well. I had the guy at my comic book shop put it aside for me since they only had one copy and I like post-apocalypticism, but I haven't bought it yet.

Where's that Bookslut article, btw? I can't find it on the site.

It was posted to the blog here. Links to some articles, too...

Fantastic artist. Works in oils I believe but his art still has the warmth of color pencils. He's (surprisingly (to me)) a pretty good writer as well (either that or he gets great translators (or both)). I've only read the Dormant Beast and The Town that Didn't Exist (which I didn't like quite so much -- economics? BEH sez the foolish Américain), though. The Nikipol Trilogy has been on my to-get list for a while, as are the new installments of the Beast -- lot of weird/surreal sci-fi, quite imaginative (though my scifi frame of reference is Star Trek so take that for what it's worth).

I wanna an user name like that!

Have been slowly working my way through Townscapes, the Humanoids/DC bk that brings together the earliest three 'graphic novels' by Bilal, in collaboration w/ Pierre Christin, a prolific French comic strip writer and author of some of Bilal's best stuff (esp The Hunting Party, a chilly communist reunion/revenge yarn, available as another vol in this series)

Bilal is still working thru his Moebius influence, here - chiefly in the early pen/rendering style he adopts - but he's already showing all his strengths - attention to detail, mastery of atmosphere, location, space, time, human expression/posture/form, blahblah - I particularly like the way that he and Christin aren't ever afraid to be silly and gross in the middle of some of these quasi-marxist protests against the pigs, the man, the military-industrial gomplex etc

The volume is reasonably well-translated - that is, it reads smoothly and clearly - but I cldn't help feeling i was missing out on a whole heap o' topical illusions, french cultural commentatings and whatnot - some more context wlda been cool - as it is, thirty years later, these comics can't help feel didactic and obscure some of the time - but there's v. little else like 'em, that I know of, this odd mixture of political satire, hallucinatory outness and underground hipster humour - the colour, esp. on the third and best story 'The Town that Didn't Exist', is gorgeous

These Bilal editions are great value for money and make a nice change of pace from both confessional-autobiog comix and superhero sadface - here's the real infinite crisis of late capitalism for less than 12 quid, cmon