Alexander Nikopol

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Alexander Nikopol ( Alcide Nikopol in the French original) is the main character of the comic trilogy of the same name by Enki Bilal and at the same time his most famous comic figure. This science fiction series, which deals with the clash of Egyptian gods with a post-apocalyptic society, is also called the Nikopol trilogy in secondary literature after its main character and consists of the volumes The Business of the Immortals ( French : La Foire aux immortels ) , The woman in the future (fr. La Femme piège ) and equatorial cold (fr. Froid équateur ). The first publication of the individual comics took place between 1980 and 1992. The Nikopol trilogy is the debut of Bilal, who has only appeared as a draftsman to date, as a comic author and meant for him inclusion in the ranks of well-known authors.

action

The business of immortals (La Foire aux immortels, 1980)

The action begins in Paris in March 2023. After two nuclear wars , Paris has become a fascist city-state under the leadership of President Hans-Ferdinand Weisskohl , consisting of two districts: one district is reserved for the privileged class, while in the other, where the mutants live, lawlessness and chaos reign. Women represent a minority of the population and serve as birthing machines. In this situation, a pyramid-shaped spaceship with Egyptian gods appears over Paris , which cannot continue due to a lack of fuel. At the same time, a space capsule in which Alexander Nikopol (fr. Alcide Nikopol), who has been sentenced to twenty years of cold sleep for desertion and then forgotten due to the wars, has been shot down as an unidentifiable object in flight over Paris.

When the Egyptian gods demand the release of large quantities of fuel, white cabbage suggests a trade. For the required fuel he demands immortality. Horus , one of the gods, is pursuing his own plans. He merges with the person of Nikopol, uses telepathy to force white cabbage, who wanted to use Nikopol for his own purposes, to resign and lets him propose Nikopol as his successor. The other gods try to stop Horus by looking for a suitable candidate for the presidency. This is killed by putschists from around Weisskohl and Nikopol is the only candidate left, although his psyche is increasingly suffering from the regular possession of Horus. So Nikopol will be replaced by his own son, who has come into the world during the cold sleep of his father Alexander Nikopol Junior, and ends up in a mental institution, where he The Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire recited. The replacement of Nikopol senior by his son is not noticed by the public, as both, due to the father's cold sleep, have the same biological age and are exactly the same. Horus is brought to justice by the other gods and locked in a stone sarcophagus .

The woman in the future (La Femme piège, 1986)

Almost two years later, Alexander Nikopol is still in a psychiatric institution. At the same time in London, the reporter Jill Bioskop was trying to transmit her report with a device for the wireless transfer of files, a script walker, when she was called by her former lover John, who asked her about a series of articles from 1993 in the French Liberation newspaper wants to draw attention. Before Jill can learn the details, however, he is allegedly killed by a bomb explosion. Jill flees to Berlin and kills two reporters who demand erotic services in return for helping Jill. In Berlin she gets to know a man whose body Horus, who has escaped from captivity, has chosen himself as an interim host and who is thereby killed. Nikopol senior, who has meanwhile been released from psychiatry and who, through his temporary merging with Horus, feels where he is, also travels to Berlin and suggests a deal to Horus that allows him to use Nikopol's body again in exchange for a more intensive life. Both witness how John, bandaged beyond recognition, hands Jill drugs that allow her to forget the traumatic experiences of the past few days. Jill, Horus and Nikopol Senior flee together to Cairo, as the pyramid is now over Berlin.

Equatorial Cold (Froid Equateur, 1992)

A good nine years later, Nikopol Senior and Jill Bioskop split up. Nikopol Junior, who has given up his political career and is looking for clues to his father, meets the mysterious Jelena Prokosh-Tootobi, who becomes his lover, on the train ride from Cairo to Equator City. On the train they meet the chess boxer John-Elvis Johnelvisson, who wants to fight for the world championship in Equator City. When they reach their destination, Nikopol Junior and Jelena have to separate because he has to go to a quarantine station . Nikopol Senior fights under a pseudonym against John-Elvis Johnelvisson for the world championship in chess boxing, while his son, as a potential virus carrier, suffers the same fate as his father: he is banished into space. Before Horus, who helped Nikopol to victory with his divine abilities, returns to the world of the gods with Anubis , he erases the memory of Nikopol senior, who takes on the role of his son at the side of Jelena, who does not notice the difference. When Nikopol senior and Jill Bioskop meet, neither of them can remember their shared past. The child Jill Bioskop had after she separated from Nikopol senior bears a strong resemblance to Horus. The rocket that Nikopol Junior has on board touches the pyramid when it is launched and causes it to crash on Equator City, so that the gods have to return to Cairo on foot.

Publications

La foire aux immortels was first published by Dargaud in July 1980. Further publications by Les Humanoïdes Associés and Casterman followed in 1990 and 2005. In April 1986 La femme piège was also published by Dargaud, while the first publication of Froid equateur took place in September 1992 by Les Humanoïdes Associés. Froid equateur started with a circulation of 230,000 copies and was on the bestseller lists for weeks.

In German-speaking countries, The Immortals' Shops first appeared as a sequel in Schwermetall , before Volksverlag released it in album form in 1984. However, he had to withdraw the volumes from the market shortly after they were published, as he did have a license to print in sections in a comic magazine, but not for the publication of an album. About 3,000 copies that were still in the camps at Volksverlag were confiscated and destroyed. The Carlsen publishing house brought under the title of The Nikopol Trilogy in the 21st century in 1988, the first two volumes of the trilogy out, although the appearance of the first volume was already announced for the fall 1986th The Ehapa brought out in 1993, first to third band before he started a complete edition in the same year. In 2018, Carlsen Verlag published the complete trilogy as a complete edition under the title Alexander Nikopol ( ISBN 978-3-551-73878-3 ).

Humanoids Publishing published the individual volumes, translated into English, under the titles Carnival of Immortals , Woman Trap and Cold Equator . The trilogy was released as an album in 1999 under the name The Nikopol Trilogy . Other translations are also available in Dutch, Swedish and Spanish.

Adaptations

The film Immortal - New York 2095: The Return of the Gods ( Immortel (ad vitam) ), directed by Bilal and released in 2004, is based on the first two volumes of the trilogy. In contrast to the comic strip, the plot is set in New York City , Alexander Nikopol is played by Thomas Kretschmann . The computer game Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals , released in 2008 by the French game developer White Birds Productions, is based on the comic book La Foire aux immortels . The so-called point-and-click adventure was designed for Microsoft Windows .

background

style

The business of the immortals is Bilal's debut as a comic author. Previously, he had drawn scenarios by other comic authors, especially Pierre Christin . As in his previous work, Bilal used the technique of direct coloring (fr. Couleur directe ), in which the colored original is created directly by the draftsman. He also incorporated alienated or retouched images into the comic. Bilal is one of the few comic artists who work with acrylic paint . The large-scale use of dirty, cold colors highlights splashes of color such as white cabbage make-up.

The design of The Woman in the Future differs significantly from the other two albums. In large panels that resemble still images without movement lines (speedlines) , speech bubbles are largely replaced by subtitles that represent the actors' inner monologue . In this album, the character of Alexander Nikopol in favor of Jill Bioskop is only on the edge of the action. Overall, the gender of the protagonists has a significant influence on the graphic design by Bilal: furrowed men's faces stand opposite smooth-skinned women.

The insert in The Woman in the Future is a fictional edition of Liberation from 1993. It is the edition of the newspaper that John draws the attention of his former lover Jill Bioskop to before he is allegedly killed by a bomb explosion.

Motifs

A frequently recurring motif in the trilogy is the repeated quoting of Baudelaire's poem Le Revenant , which Nikopol uses to find his identity again. There is also a reference in the comic to the film The American Friend, made by Wim Wenders : A film poster in a panel in the background advertises this film. Andreas C. Knigge sees it as “ one of the few comforting prospects in Bilal's vision of the future ”. Nikopol now bears a resemblance to Bruno Ganz , leading actor in The American Friend and Knife in the Head . The resemblance of Nicopol, named by Bilal after the Ukrainian city ​​of Nikopol , with Ganz is replaced by a resemblance to Bilal in the course of the trilogy.

reception

According to Marcel Feige , the stories about Alexander Nikopol, who, according to Andreas Platthaus, is Bilal's best-known figure, confirmed Bilal, who was “already well-known for his graphic design”, “as the most interesting author of the [19] 80s”. Franco Fossati also attests to Bilal in The Great Illustrated Ehapa Comic Lexicon that La Foire aux immortels “[confirmed] him as the most interesting author of the eighties”. For Andreas C. Knigge , who has dedicated a separate chapter to the stories of Alexander Nikopol in his book 50 Classic Comics , the Nikopol trilogy is a “gloomy future vision of a late capitalist society in which the loss of political ideals is reflected in a cold neon look of the 1980s “. Knigge also sees the Nikopol trilogy as a departure from the argumentative culture of the 1970s to what the art historian Otto Karl Werckmeister calls the term citadel culture, i.e. a culture whose artistic work deals with nothing but crises.

The inventor of chess boxing and at the same time the first world champion in this discipline, the Dutch-born action artist Iepe Rubingh, cites the reading of Froid équateur during his youth as the trigger for his vision.

Froid equateur was named best book of 1992 by the French book magazine Lire across all genres . No comic had achieved this before.

literature

  • Enki Bilal: Alexander Nikopol - Complete Edition . Ehapa Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7704-0871-3
  • Andreas C. Knigge: 50 classic comics. From Lyonel Feininger to Art Spiegelman . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2004, ISBN 3-8067-2556-X , pp. 220-225
  • Natascha Ueckmann: Hybrid creatures in modern French comics: Enki Bilal (PDF; 4.4 MB) . In: Cerstin Bauer-Funke / Gisela Febel (ed.): The automated body - literary visions of artificial humans from the Middle Ages to the 21st century . Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89693-261-6 , pp. 301–328

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b La foire aux immortels on bedetheque.com (French) , accessed on September 2, 2009
  2. ↑ La femme piège on bedetheque.com (French) , accessed on September 2, 2009
  3. ↑ a b Andreas C. Knigge: 50 classic comics. From Lyonel Feininger to Art Spiegelman . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2004, ISBN 3-8067-2556-X , p. 224
  4. ^ The business of the immortals in Volksverlag on comicguide.de , accessed on September 2, 2009
  5. ^ A b Raul O'Hara: Volksverlag prints without licenses . In: Andreas C. Knigge (Ed.): Comic Jahrbuch 1986 . Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt am Main; Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-548-36520-5 , p. 194
  6. ↑ Alexander Nikopol in the 21st Century in Carlsen Verlag on comicguide.de , accessed on September 2, 2009
  7. ↑ Alexander Nikopol in Ehapa Verlag on comicguide.de , accessed on September 2, 2009
  8. ↑ Kermis der onsterfelijken on zilverendolfijn.nl (Dutch) , accessed on September 2, 2009
  9. ↑ Gudarnas marknad on molndal.se (Swedish) , accessed September 2, 2009
  10. ^ Report on Enki Bilal at elmundo.es (Spanish) , accessed on September 2, 2009
  11. ↑ a b Marcel Feige: The little comic dictionary . Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89602-544-9 , p. 89
  12. ↑ Natascha Ueckmann: Hybrid creatures in modern French comics: Enki Bilal . In: Cerstin Bauer-Funke / Gisela Febel (ed.): The automated body - literary visions of artificial humans from the Middle Ages to the 21st century . Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89693-261-6 , p. 308
  13. ↑ Enki Bilal's biography at egmont-comic-collection.de , accessed on May 19, 2016
  14. ↑ a b Andreas C. Knigge: Comics. From mass paper to multimedia adventure . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , pp. 269-270
  15. ↑ a b Natascha Ueckmann: Hybrid creatures in modern French comics: Enki Bilal . In: Cerstin Bauer-Funke / Gisela Febel (ed.): The automated body - literary visions of artificial humans from the Middle Ages to the 21st century . Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89693-261-6 , p. 312
  16. ↑ a b Natascha Ueckmann: Hybrid creatures in modern French comics: Enki Bilal . In: Cerstin Bauer-Funke / Gisela Febel (ed.): The automated body - literary visions of artificial humans from the Middle Ages to the 21st century . Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89693-261-6 , p. 319
  17. ^ Andreas Platthaus: Cold dreams . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 65, March 17, 2007, ISSN  0174-4909 , p. 45
  18. ^ Franco Fossati: The large illustrated Ehapa comic lexicon . Ehapa Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7704-0865-9 , p. 32
  19. ↑ Andreas C. Knigge: 50 Classic Comics. From Lyonel Feininger to Art Spiegelman . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2004, ISBN 3-8067-2556-X , p. 225
  20. ↑ artmagazine.cc , accessed on November 28, 2009
  21. ↑ Justus Bender: Supreme discipline . In: The time . No. 39, September 22, 2005, ISSN  0044-2070
  22. ^ Enki Bilal - biography , accessed September 22, 2009