Last Days of An Immortal Makes Waves

January 1st, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

Happy New Year! Surfacing from holiday silence and post-food sloth with good tidings: Archaia’s Last Days of an Immortal has started to pick up momentum following its late fall release with a starred review from Publishers Weekly and thoughtful, effusive commentary elsewhere on the interwebs.

Subtle, mature, and inventive, French team De Bonneval and Vehlmann deliver deliberate science fiction that evokes the classic books of the 1950s and 1960s, with a particular kinship to Michael Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time series.

De Bonneval’s art cleverly recalls Artzybasheff and other “googley” ’50s SF masters, while the story mirrors that era’s sly social satire, which investigated how technology affected our psychology and relationships and, in turn, where that brought culture. Vehlmann’s story expands on this heritage with a smart new twist.

Jason Wilkins of Broken Frontier says

The product of French collaborators Fabien Vehlmann and Gwen De Bonneval, Last Days of an Immortal is another beautifully realized European import brought to North American readers by Archaia Comics and further proof we’re still a little behind our neighbours across the Atlantic when it comes to diverse and eclectic funny book content. A thought-provoking fusion of high science fiction and pop philosophy, Last Days of an Immortal explores such weighty themes as extra-terrestrial multiculturalism, cloning, immortality, and the convoluted legalities that arise from these ideas.

One part philosophical treatise, one part high-concept sci-fi police procedural, Last Days of an Immortal is a quiet, reflective exploration of what it means to remain human when the world around us is in a state of constant flux and we ourselves refuse to change. A poignant and pointed metaphor for the fast-paced digital age we currently wade through, Last Days of an Immortal is a refreshing break from the mainstream current obsession with universe-spanning events and reboots. Highly recommended for the pop philosopher in all of us.

and Scott Marshall at Publish or Perish adds

Last Days of an Immortal is an ingenious piece of writing wrapped in an imaginative art style that creates a vision of the future that is both contemporary and quaintly old-fashioned, as if a graphic novel had arrived from the era of Aldous Huxley. Long may it survive.

London comix blog The Gosh! has linked to my two-part discussion of genre and Last Days at Weird Fiction Review.

Congrats to creators Fabien Vehlmann and Gwen De Bonneval!

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