The Nikopol Trilogy

Enki Bilal

There is no denying that the Nikopol trilogy is eye-catching. Artist and film director Bilal has created something of striking beauty in the three comics that come together to comprise The Nikopol Trilogy. And there's certainly the sort of weirdness one has come to expect from the plot of a graphic novel-- Egyptian gods who travel the heavens in a pyramid, a frozen astronaut, a paranoid mechanical soldier who gets roped into a gubernatorial race, a city on the equator where it never stops snowing... it's all here, pretty much.

Set against all that is the fact that the characters in this story are cardboard cutouts there solely to advance the plot. There are a few moves towards giving the characters a bit more shading (especially the character of Jill Bioskop, who in the film based on the book takes center stage-- hmm, wonder why?), but none is entirely successful; these are characters straight out of a fifties dime novel, with no more depth than the page they're printed on.

A decent read, but not something that will keep me coming back over and over again.