20 cool psychedelic comics to read after seeing Thor: Ragnarok

The Incal (Cover image via Epic Comics/Marvel)

12. The Incal

The Incal is a French series originally illustrated by Jean Giraud and written by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Some of you may already know of the Chilean-French Jodorowsky for his writing and directing work, filled to the brim with wild and sometimes violent surrealism. In 2013, the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune was released, walking through his strange and ultimately failed film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel, Dune.

At least The Incal was presumably a little easier to produce than a full-blown movie. Like many other psychedelic comics on this list, it deals in mysticism, science, satire, politics, debauchery, and pretty much everything else under the sun.

It’s all set in a backwater planet’s dystopian city, where a man named John DiFool is tossed from an alley towards a huge lake of acid. He’s saved by the police, who are wondering if DiFool has the “Light Incal,” a stupidly powerful crystal. This Incal is understandably precious and desired by many different factions, from humans, to churches, to guerrilla groups, to flightless bird-like aliens known as the Berg.

Almost inevitably, DiFool is caught up with a group seeking to vanquish the Dark Incal, which is worshipped by the Church of Industrial Saints (also known as the Technopriests). As if that weren’t confusing enough, the Technopriests are dead-set on ending the universe. At one point, they create and launch into space a “Dark Egg” that can eat suns.

Along the way, the protagonists encounter cosmic god-like beings. In a later volume, Final Incal, DiFool also deals with a metallic virus that can clone people. He also splits into at least four different personalities and realities, who all must work together to save the universe.