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Megalex : The Complete Story Hardcover – August 13, 2014

by Alejandro Jodorowsky (Author), Fred Beltran (Illustrator)

4.5 42 ratings

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On Megalex, the city-planet, the laws of nature are prohibited. The tyrannical order reigns over a renewed population controlled by genetic manipulation. Due to the repeated attacks of the neighboring forest, primitive and impenetrable, the urbanized system in command allowed an 'anomaly,' a clone policeman nearly 10 ft tall, to escape. Guided by Adama, one of the rebels fighting for their freedom, the gentle giant manages to join the camp of the 'objectors' and help them go up against the evil powers of Megalex.

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About the Author

Alejandro Jodorowsky (also known as Alexandro Jodorowsky) is a Chilean film and theatre director, screenwriter, playwright, actor, comic book writer, author, poet, mime, musician, and spiritual guru. He is best known for his avant-garde, cult films, such as "El Topo," a midnight movie favorite.

Fred Beltran is active in several creative fields. He works as a comics artist, but also as a prolific musician. Beltran saw his first comic album published in 1988. In the early 1990s, he contributed to the collective album “Eros Gone Wild” at Humanoids and pursued a subsequent career in architecture, illustration and theatre stage design. Since 1994, Beltran has mostly used the computer on all his comics work, including the coloring of the series “The Technopriests.” Also in 1994, the first album of his new band Les Snails is released. Beltran cooperated with the Japanese publishing house Kodansha between 1995 and 1997, producing the series “Nina.”

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1594650918
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Humanoids, Inc. (August 13, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 164 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781594650918
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594650918
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 16 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.64 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.9 x 0.6 x 10.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,186,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9,811 in Science Fiction Graphic Novels (Books)
- #106,500 in Science Fiction (Books)

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4.5 42 ratings

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Alan

The artwork is excellent for the most part

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2016

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Jodorowsky is one of the most influential writers in the world of sci-fi today. The artwork is excellent for the most part, with a slight decrease in quality towards the end. But don't let that dissuade you: any fan of graphic novels, science fiction, or Jodorowsky should own this collection.

One person found this helpful

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james brown

Megalex complete story

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2021

I,liked this item.

Starts well, ends poorly

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2012

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This is the story of a rebellion against a regime that is turning its planet into a technological world-city a la Isaac Asimov's Trantor. It starts off well as the clone machine produces an anomaly, a worker who is not identical to the rest, a giant in fact. The story follows his indoctrination into the rebellion. As with so many Jodorowsky stories, the further it goes, the more ridiculous it gets. For example, near the end a male twin puts his hand into the female twin's chest and rips out her mechanical heart. He then takes her organic heart which has somehow been preserved for decades, jams it into her chest and she is just fine. Does Jodorowsky really believe that blood vessels hook themselves up automatically? After this, the two of them fuse into one being. Really! Based on the story, I'd have to give this 2 stars, but only because the first half was more sensible than the second half.

The artwork is this volume's saving grace, worthy of 4.5 stars, but it too has some problems. The final third of the book was completed 6 years after the first 2 parts. In the interim, Fred Beltran abandoned CGI and went back to traditional art. The difference is jarring. Based on its own merits the artwork throughout is great but it doesn't sync. In my opinion the computer art is better suited to the sterile, technological world Jodorowsky created. I especially like Beltran's use of color and his dynamic characters.

Warning: This volume contains full frontal nudity, both male and female.

7 people found this helpful

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TwistedGeniusMedia

FANTASTIC BOOK

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2013

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Great story, great art work, sex, violence, and more clones than you can shake a diode at. If you're in the mood for an incredibly imaginative science fiction story/philosophical inquiry/spiritual exploration, pick up a copy of Megalex ASAP :)

4 people found this helpful

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Octo7

Megalex

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2012

The term 'wild imagination' is really an understatement when it comes to Jodorowsky; anyone who's seen his amazing films or read any of his comics will testify to this. So it comes as no surprise that Megalex is loaded with incredible, albeit sometimes baffling ideas that meld together to create a complex and satisfying whole. Those not used to his style may find the super-fast pace and really out-there ideas a bit alarming at first, but with the help of Beltran's beautiful art, it shouldn't take long for you to get accustomed to the wild energy, sexuality and extreme violence contained within the narrative. As usual for Jodorowsky, there is plenty of social commentary in this story, although none of it too heavy-handed or preachy; there's also plenty of spiritual and religious symbolism.

Fred Beltran's artwork is incredible. The book is divided into three chapters, the first two contain Beltran's signature digital artwork, which still looks organic and beautifully detailed, despite not being hand-drawn in the traditional sense. The final chapter is done in a more traditional pen and ink comic style, but it somehow remains consistent with chapter one and two and is too pretty to complain about. Beltran's talent and unique style as an artist is indisputable.

As usual, being a Humanoids book, this hardcover is beautifully bound and printed, and looks great on my shelf. I think Humanoids are probably the best comics publisher around when it comes to pure quality in their physical product, luckily the content nearly always lives up to the classy presentation.

I highly recommend this book to fans of Jodorowsky and comics in general, but not to younger readers as it does contain some extreme violence and plenty of nudity. Some of the violent scenes are genuinely disturbing, which I find rare in a Jodorowsky comic because he usually depicts violence in an almost celebratory comic-book style. If you like good art, dystopian sci-fi, and really unique characters; then buy this book. Fans of the Incal are in for a real treat, it's the closest thing he's done to that style in years, even more-so than the canonical 'The Metabarons or The Techno Priests' series .

8 people found this helpful

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Andrew

A collector's purchase

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2014

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I ordered this book after having read The Incal, Before the Incal, and The Metabarons, while having Technopriests waiting to be read. The art, while a bit grotesque, is very well done. There are a multitude of interesting concepts to explore while reading this book. There is no shortage of perceived inspiration on Jodorowsky's part, however the translated dialogue is choppy at best and at worst laughably unbelievable. No really, the things and ways these characters say what they say do a much better job of continually reminding the reader that this is a fake world than do all of the fantasy and science fiction elements of the story. Aside from that constant annoyance, I really did enjoy the book, until the ending, which really wasn't much of an ending at all. If there's a part two, I'll buy it. A collector of Jodorowsky's work should purchase MEGALEX. The casual fan could probably skip this one.

5 people found this helpful

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trrg

The alchemist failed to turn feces to gold here...

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2012

I've read most of Jodorowsky's works, and I'm a big fan. I dont think it can get worse than this. It's a complete failure. The story, the characters, the twists in the plot, everything is totally lacking any quality whatsoever. What makes me seriously embarrassed is how the women in book are portrayed with boobs that will only cause back problems and fantasies for fourteen year old boys, but since the rest of the book pathetic it's not really an issue anyway. As a parallel, it was incredibly annoying that the Technopriests books had boob-women on the cover that were chosen only to attract a certain kind of readers and weren't actually a major part of the story, Technopriest had anyway a certain potential (but I'd say one of the weakest of Jodorowsky's).

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Top reviews from other countries

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Virgilio Francsico Sotillos Conesa

Esto sí que es una sorpresa

Reviewed in Spain on January 23, 2022

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Obra de Jodorowski que no conocía, me ha sorprendido.

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Vladimir Turcan

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2018

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great novel

EisNinE

The Digital Painting of Beltran and the Mad Imagination of Jodorowsky -- Add Another Planet to the Jodoverse

Reviewed in Canada on July 24, 2014

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Megalex takes Jodorowsky fans to a new corner of the Jodoverse, adding territory to the star-chart that includes 'The Incal', 'Before the Incal' and 'Final Incal', 'The Metabarons', 'Weapons of the Metabarons', and 'Metabarons Genesis: Castaka', and 'The Technopriests' - which represented Jodorowsky's first collaboration with the artist Beltran, who worked with the line art of Zoran Janjetov, transforming it into an almost three-dimensional, fully-painted work.

This time Beltran is solo, creating the computer-generated paintings he's famous for. As one of the artists who pioneered digital comic art, alongside others like Japanese illustrator Katsuya Terada and British 2000 A.D.-alum-turned-DC-Cover-Artist Brian Bolland, his restless, experimental nature is evident here, as the smoothly rendered art of the opening chapters abruptly shifts to more traditional line art and hatching. In a way, the artistic metamorphosis mirrors the story.

'Megalex' introduces a sterile world whose surface has been almost entirely covered in the rigidly engineered, technologically advanced, and viciously authoritarian global-city-state for which the book is named. With organic procreation banned, the genetically engineered population is divided into classes, the upper class allowed 400 years of life, while the lowest classes are only given 400 days. When an attack on Megalex distracts the drug addicted officials tasked with ensuring quality control among the clones, weeding out even the slightest genetic anomalies, one of the 400-day police clones emerges as an eight-foot tall giant. He manages to escape with the help of Adama, a buxom clone who is a part of the organic resistance movement, based in the last refuge of the natural world, Chem Forest. The resistance has used altered and manipulated tree roots to tunnel their way beneath the gleaming metallic street-grids, and they are aided by the various animal species they have managed to rescue from extinction. The Megalex, controlled by the still-living brain of an otherwise mummified corpse named King Yod and his evil wife and daughter, must be destroyed if the rebels wish to save Chem Forest from certain annihilation.

While Megalex doesn't have the epic scale of The Incal, The Metabarons, or The Technopriests, it features the explosion of mad, brilliant concepts that Jodo is known for, as well as the brutal violence and sexuality typical to his bande dessinee creations. While Beltran's digitally-painted art doesn't equal the brilliant work done by Moebius, Ladronn, Das Pastoras, or Juan Gimenez, he can hardly be faulted for falling short of what are four of the greatest masterpieces in European comic art. He is still very much a worthy addition to the incredible array of talents that make up Jodorowsky's collaborators. I would like to see him return some time to the world of pencil, ink and paint in which he began (with stunning results), but Megalex is an extraordinary effort on the part of both Beltran and Jodorowsky.

2 people found this helpful

Lars Th. Bentzen

humanoids

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2016

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good one

Perry de Havilland

Art is amazing, story is... not so amazing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2018

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