The Nikopol Trilogy

by Enki Bilal

Overview

A LEGENDARY COMIC BOOK, FINALLY AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH!

For thirty years, Alcide Nikopol has floated alone in space, sentenced to cryopreservation. When he finally returns to Earth, the year is 2023, and the world has been ravaged by two nuclear wars!

But the strongest change in the world floats above Paris - a giant pyramid, home to the recently returned Egyptian Gods, who would like to reclaim humanity as theirs, if only they could all agree...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782763536
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	9.40(w) x 12.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Enki Bilal was born in the former Yugoslavia in 1951, and moved to France aged 10. At age 14, he met Rene Goscinny, and began to focus his attention on a serious career in comics, starting with strips in Pilote magazine. The Nikopol Trilogy took over a decade to finally complete, and has been released as both a videogame, called Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals and a film, directed by Bilal, called Immortal, starring Charlotte Rampling.

Editorial Reviews

The Nikopol Trilogy brings together three previously published volumes Carnival of Mortals, Woman Trap and Cold Equator all impressive works of imagination meticulously written, drawn and colored by European comics artist Bilal. It's the year 2023 and Alcide Nikopol has been revived from a state of suspended animation after 30 years orbiting Earth. In the meantime, the planet has suffered two nuclear wars, and France is ruled by the ruthless dictator J.F. Choublanc. The immortal gods of Egyptian antiquity have also reawakened to revive their rule over humanity, and they now hover above the crumbling technopolis of Paris in a massive stone pyramid/airship. Horus, the renegade falcon god, takes possession of Nikopol's body, rendering him immortal, and concocts a conspiracy to overthrow the Choublanc regime. When Nikopol cracks under the pressure of Horus's possession, he is reduced to muttering the poetry of Baudelaire while he wanders the halls of a mental hospital. "Woman Trap" picks up two years later in a war-torn London. Blue-haired news correspondent Jill Bioskop dispatches stories 30 years into the past using a device called a scriptwriter, while she takes pills to eradicate the bloody memories of men she has murdered. In "Cold Equator" the story is further complicated as Nikopol's son boards a train bound for Equator City, an African metropolis afflicted with a freezing micro-climate of minus-six degrees, but surrounded by desert and surrealistically populated by sub-Saharan wildlife. Intricate plot twists and stunning color artwork mark this work as both an extraordinary comics literary achievement and a crackling good story. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

It's 2023 in France and the Egyptian deities rule from their home in the sky. Alcide Nikopol, hero of this graphic novel trilogy, awakens after a 30-year sleep and forms a strange pact with renegade god Horus. This pact allows Horus to seek revenge on his fellow deities in the Egyptian pantheon while punishing humanity and merging with Nikopol. A parallel plot line is formed by Nikopol's search for his son, who was not yet born at the time that his long sleep began. Unable to believe that this man in his thirties is his father, Nikopol's son thinks he has found a long lost twin. The graphics contain the requisite dose of violence, nudity, and sex, some of it central to the story. While there is an attempt to create a sense of urgency in the narrative, the gods remain undeveloped figures. The characters of Nikopol, the woman with blue hair, and Nikopol's son essentially remain unchanged by the story's resolution. Stephen Weiner, Maynard P.L., MA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal