What is The Incal?
I’ve read and adored this story a bunch of times now and frankly – like its protagonist, John diFool – sometimes I’m still not sure. As far as I can figure, The Incal is a godlike entity with the power to unite the population of the universe against the invading forces of the Great Darkness. Sometimes it takes the form of a pyramid-like object small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but sometimes it’s a spaceship. Sometimes it speaks as a character in the story; sometimes it remains silent, but its very presence can change people’s behaviour, lives and appearance in ways that they (and the reader) could never have imagined or expected.
What I’m certain about is that The Incal is also over three hundred pages of inspired Sci-Fi lunacy: a wildly imaginative and occasionally saucy ride touching on themes of spirituality, meditation and tarot symbolism while also being packed with adventure, action, explosions, monsters and gleeful madness.
In the rest of Europe The Incal is rightly considered a comics classic. In the UK, inexplicably, it’s been out of print for years: I was only able to read it before due to luckily picking up an incomplete selection of volumes from the series secondhand, long ago. But now – thanks to publisher Self Made Hero – the whole story is available in English again, in a single and very handsome volume, with all the colours of Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud’s extraordinary artwork painstakingly restored to their original eye-sizzling glory.
Writer/creator Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Incal is a rare, raw jolt of imaginative genius. If you’re up for something unusual I heartily, heartily recommend you check it out.
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