By PHILIPPE CAZA (Humanoids; 2025)
The magnum opus of France’s Philippe Caza, a 528 page SF oriented graphic novel whose inception spanned the years 1989 to 2008 (and the comic book industry’s transition from analogue to digital printing). It’s not quite THE INCAL (which exists in a category of its own), but ARKADI AND THE LOST TITAN is unquestionably a landmark in its field.
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Prior to writing and illustrating this epic, Caza was a prolific SF book cover illustrator and frequent contributor to HEAVY METAL magazine. The style of that periodical is well represented in this volume, in which nudity both male and (especially) female is prevalent, as is a straight-faced presentation of wordage like “After the accidental incineration of the clone of the chosen one named U-Ri-D-C, Or-Phe went back on a mission to the great exterior” and masterly artwork that’s amazingly bold and detailed, reveling in densely drafted panels worthy of masters of the form like Moebius and Philippe Druillet.
What renders ARKADI AND THE LOST TITAN unusual in the Euro-comics pantheon is its narrative drive, which is reasonably coherent (showcasing Caza’s reverence for the plot-oriented American comic model), and its range of subject matter. About a young warrior coming of age on a future Earth that has stopped spinning, the story encompasses apocalyptic grunge, Jodorowskian strangeness, heroic fantasy and cyberpunk, and comes complete with clones, androids, physical mutation and prophetic dreams.
Arkadi is a man whose father Arkas scandalized his fellows by venturing away from his home, located on the twilight side of this stationary planet, to the Earth’s night side. Situated in that region are the beast-like Nocturnals and the city of Dis, a massive underground enclosure staffed by cyborg Titans and ruled by a supercomputer known as Hel. Arkadi follows in his father’s footsteps, and his journey intersects with that of Pan-Dra, a Hel created musclebound clone in search of Or-Phe, a Titan who like his mythological forebear has vacated his place in Dis to embark on a quest through the outlands—a rather pressing problem given that it was Or-Phe who was responsible for dreaming the dreams of Dis’s citizens, with their lack causing those citizens to die out.
Arkadi and Pan-Dra’s joint odyssey entails a lot of excess sex and violence, as well as confinement in the belly of a land whale known as Noone, in which they meet a mysterious mutant named Jonah. They also breach the massive “Antarc” castle in what was formerly Antarctica, cavort on the orbiting fragments of the broken-up moon, and eventually learn the origin of the city of Dis, and precisely why it was that the Earth stopped spinning. Hint: that explanation involves the dangers of nuclear power, thus allowing Caza to include a real world political grievance amid all the mythological shout-outs.