List Item: Read half of the 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die
Progress: 106/501Title: Delirius
Creator(s): Philippe Druillet and Jacques Lob
Year: 1972
Country: France
I did not need to see the year and country of origin to know that Delirius was a French comic from France. The art style is somewhere between Fantastic Planet and The Incal with a pitstop in underground comics and Escher. This makes for a comic that is really interesting to look at with a setting that is pretty insane – however the story does not live up to the incredible setting.
Let’s walk it back a bit. Delirius is story in a longer running series featuring the character Lone Sloane. I didn’t know this until I tried way too long to find a suitable picture for the top of this blog post. He is meant to be some sort of powerful space mercenary, but you wouldn’t exactly know it from this story. Instead he is just a red-eyed man who has been charged to rob the Governor of Space Vegas on crystal meth.
As I said, the story of Delirius is a pretty paint-by-numbers affair, the interesting part of this coming from the visuals and the world building done for this planet of ultimate sin. It throws in so many ideas that are, in some cases, so twisted that it would never be adaptable into a moving format. Like, can you imagine an animation featuring people being blinded by technology and fighting to the death? Let alone doing it live action.
Thing is, as the story was a bit generic even the weird world and visuals just life it enough to make it good-to-okay. I think there is another Lone Sloane comic on the list, so I guess I’ll see if the other story is any different and actually goes into the backstory which, at least according to Wikipedia, looks pretty interesting.