S.K. Collection - Lot 7

S.K. Collection MOEBIUS L'INCAL, AN ADVENTURE BY JOHN DIFOOL Les Mystères de l'Incal, Les Humanoïdes Associés 1989 Original plate #2 from the story Une aventure de John Difool. Signed. India ink and white gouache on paper 32.4 × 42.8 cm (12.76 × 16.85 in.) This episode is in the purest tradition of superhero "origins". The genius of the Moebius-Jodorowsky tandem lies above all in the unique fusion of two complementary imaginations: that of Jodo, mystical scriptwriter and demiurge, son of an atheist Communist father and a devout Jewish mother, steeped in psychoanalysis, tarot and Gnostic philosophy; and that of Moebius, visionary cartoonist capable of translating these concepts into a graphic world of hallucinatory purity. Together, they invented a modern myth. This plate, drawn by Moebius, extends the universe imagined by Alejandro Jodorowsky. It lies at the crossroads between the founding story of L'Incal and that of La Caste des Méta-Barons, illustrating an essential moment: the initiation rite of the Meta-Barons, the ultimate warriors born of a long tradition of violence and perfection. In this stripped-down sequence, everything is contained in the tension of the gesture. An impassive father subjects his son to an ordeal of absolute pain. In a sacrificial act, he tears off part of his son's ear and brain lobe. This is not a punishment, but a rite of passage, a legacy of suffering that has been passed down "since the dawn of time". The father asks, "Aren't you crying?" - and the stoic son replies that he hasn't shed a tear, any more than his father did during his own initiation. The scene is then commented on by two robots, Tonto and Lothar, archivists of this warrior memory, who reveal its meaning: every Meta-Baron has been mutilated by his father, according to an ancestral tradition supposed to strengthen the being, by depriving him of a part of his humanity. This repetition of trauma forms the basis of the tragic mythology of the Meta-Baron, at once hero, victim and guardian of an inordinate code of honor. Graphically, Moebius opted for purity of line and rigor of cut: clean lines, absence of superfluous scenery, dramatic intensity contained in posture and silence. Everything hinges on the symbolic clarity of the drawing, on the tension between serenity and cruelty. This plate belongs to the Mysteries of the Incal, but above all relates the initiation rite of the Meta-Baron, the founding episode of the warrior dynasty imagined by Jodorowsky and developed by Gimenez.