Nikopol Trilogy by Enki Bilal

            Enki Bilal’s Nikopol Trilogy is a series you definitely have to be in the right mindset to enjoy; I’ve picked it up numerous times over the years, but never got very far for one reason or another until now (sometimes it was the content, others it was due to lack of sufficient time).  As the word “trilogy” would imply, the Nikopol Trilogy is divided into three parts, all eventually twining around the twists and turns in the life of Alcide Nikopol, a man out of time due to being cryogenically frozen for several decades as punishment for avoiding the draft.  Thanks to the power of some [ancient Egyptian] divine intervention, Nikopol eventually finds himself usurping the head of the Fascist government of Paris.  Things only get more complicated from there.

Bilal creates his dystopian world through gorgeous art and an interesting [albeit sometimes confusing] story, but meanwhile I found most of his characters relatively unlikeable, Jill in particular; her need to continuously run away from her problems - often of her own creation (namely the slew of murders of men she’s slept with) – made it hard to sympathize with her and the different problems that befall her in the two stories she’s involved in.  Even Nikopol, one of the more relatable characters, starts taking a darker turn as events unfold and the story starts winding down.  Characters like Horus, as well as the other Egyptian gods, might be excused if only because their thought process and code of conduct may be a little different from the humans they rule over (and even so, I feel that’s grasping at straws).  Bilal’s choice to leave some questions unanswered did nothing to resolve some of the issues the characters were dealing with, which was frustrating to me as a reader.

Something that may shock readers unfamiliar with European comics is the lack of censorship when it comes to nudity, which is refreshing in comparison to their American counterparts.  A body is a body.  “Does the story call for it being naked?  Fine, it’s naked.  No big deal.”  The fact that the writer/artist believes the reader mature enough to get over the fact a character is naked, as well as not feel the need to sexualize it, is something I wish would carry over into American comics more.