Bizarre 70's psychedelic space opera. High on concept, low on plot. ( )

3,5
http://www.planocritico.com/category/quadrinhos/ ( )

Some classic Heavy Metal-era comics.

These are short, simple, and largely incoherent stories from the drug-addled early 70s. Each is a dozen pages or less, appearing as (or intended for) installments in a monthly magazine. Consequently, the stories move pretty fast, with no time for backstory or in-depth explanation. This gives the comics a making-it-up-as-we-go-along feel, though there are often hints that there is more to the story than available space allowed.

Druillet's art, which tends to add superfluous lines to provide the illusion of intricacy or detail, works pretty well here. This is because the subjects are, for the most part, ornately-costumed characters or hallucinatory mind-states. Druillet is clearly one of those artists who has gobbled up every available resource depicting religious or tribal artifacts, but has never cracked a technical manual, architectural blueprints, or an engineering text. This sort of thing is usually defended as "the technology is so alien that it would look nothing like what we have now", but really it's ignorance - and it makes even more insulting the use of historical Asian designs as "alien".

Anyways, as it goes with Druillet, despite all the obvious flaws these are pretty fun little comics. ( )

Baroque, bizarre, trippy. Feels reminiscent of Moorcock. If this were a movie, Monster Magnet should be providing the soundtrack. Heavy visuals, feather plot. ( )