Friday, October 09, 2009

 

Metabarons

What better place than Quebec to read the last bit of The Metabarons in English that I had yet to read? Well, France I guess, but I more than likely wouldn't have been able to find it in English there. And I read this on the bus between Kingston and Montreal, so maybe I read it in Ontario.

Regardless! We most carry on.

The Metabarons: Alpha/Omega
By Charest, Joworowsky, Gimenez & Moebius (what an interesting order for the cover)

So while I really liked the Metabarons comic that Humanoids was putting out back in the day (2000-2002!) I never picked this up, because it was like $15, for 48 pages. Aieee! That was practically the price of the oversized hardcovers Humanoids was putting out. However, when I recently found it for $3, I decided to pick it up.

And hell, I am super glad I didn't spend $15 on this thing. It's three short stories, and an except from the book Charest was doing with Jodorowsky at the time.

(Which he didn't even finish! After completing only 30 pages in seven years, Humanoids got some other guy, with a completely different style, to finish drawing it. I looked through a copy of it in a book store in Montreal, and Charest's stuff is beautiful, but I can't believe how slow it was to produce that work.)

But three of those things are basically the same story with different artists! First Moebius draws it (from his work on the Incal, and terribly recoloured), then Gimenez draws it (and damn, does he ever draw better robots) in an early Metabarons piece that apparently isn't in continuity anymore. Then Charest draws it! Admittedly, Charest's preview does feature a bunch of other stuff, and his version of the scene is gorgeous, but still!

The first story (also drawn by Gimenez) is unrelated to the others (!!!) and acts as a prequel of sorts to the whole Metabarons story. It's filled with the ridiculous things that most Jodorowsky comics have, but didn't really do much for me. Dunno.

The original Metabarons series never finished coming out in English. After Humanoids stopped publishing the issues/collections, DC republished the collections, but didn't finish it either.

Devil's Due currently have the license to publish the Metabarons in English, but I think it's been almost a year since they started publishing Humanoids stuff, and they haven't got very much of it out. To be honest, it's been so long since I read the series, I'm not sure if I'd even read the end. This volume made me wonder why I liked the series so much in the first place, and since I don't have my old issues anymore, maybe I will never find out.

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