DEMONIAK

 

Gal Yacinthe Galbet? (Frémok)

 

Pedro Moura

 

One way or the other, Fantômas has been a household name that people from all stations of art-making have used in order to delve into evil and anarchy, even if it’s just to give them a flirty look (and no, I am not equating evil and anarchy). We could argue that Fantômas is one of the first (if not the very first) names to make the history of the so-called “pulp fiction” tradition (although we know we’re being anachronistic about the usage of this term here). This tradition began with Fantômas’ original literary authors, of course (or perhaps before, with strands from Moriarty, Lupin, The Scarlet Pimpernel?), but it would expand and gain new qualifications throughout its use and transfiguration by people such as Feuillade, Magritte, Julio Cortázar and the namesake band put together by Mike Patton. Closer to comics, the most important inflection is to be found in 1960s’ Italy, home to the imaginary gialli, with the emergence of the fumetti neri typology, that is to say, a very violent and visually flamboyant type of crime comics in that country, which would produce many variations from the Fantômas mould (crossing the implacable thief with Lee Falk’s The Phantom), a veritable troupe of characters whose names, attires and modus operandi made them a family: Diabolik, Fantax, Fantasm, Kriminal, Satanik, Demoniak, Sadik, and other slightly different word games, such as Zakimort or Jnfernal…

 

The subtitle of the present book (which gathers previously published smaller publications, or episodes) is “protohistoire pour adultes” (“proto-stories for adults”), a play on “photohistoires” (“photonovels”, photo-illustrated stories), reminding us of bundles of black-and-white publications from the 1960’s to the 80’s, truly cheap, in every sense of the word (at the graphical, the printing, the writing, the narrative complexity levels, and dare we even say at the artistic level?), which we could find at every kiosk or newspaper stall. Train station fiction. More often than not, these books were filled with eroticism and violence. Filth. The fumetti we referred above were also part of this mass of little books (actually, the French Wampyr and Satanik were precisely subtitled “photo-histoires pour adultes”). These were undoubtedly, whether in relationship to their methods or their results, a pocket-sized anarchy pill. They provided a portable rebellion, satisfactory enough for the brief moment of its reading, of the experiencing of its power fantasy, its crime fantasy, in the incurrence of the anti-social behaviours one could only dream about – and even so only awaken, momentarily, and restrainedly – but never act out. We could also add that these books provided a politically incorrect, or even horrifying, super-sexist fantasy, for even when the main characters were women, such as Satanika or Zakimort (although the latter was a “heroine”), they still played out a “man’s fantasy”. At the same time, however, there’s a sort of psychological anxiety that is alleviated with these stories, as if they were escape valves (or escapism valves?): fantasies of violence and hate played out towards everything that can wind us up, from the most socially and politically relevant aggravations to the pettiest pet peeves. 

 

It should be obvious that this promise of a pop anarchism paradigm that is brought about by Fantômas and his offspring turns into a different kind of language-use in the hands and minds of the likes of Magritte, Cortázar, Mike Patton, among others. Above all, it’s a parlour game of appropriation and crossbreeding of both lowbrow and highbrow culture (this distinction still holds and you know it), something that can only be fully appreciated by those who participate willingly, knowledgably and delightfully in both, at one time understanding what makes them apart and realizing how illusionary that division is. 

 

This small book belongs to a new series of publications by Frémok, a collection called Flore, and it seems to be part of a project that will continue “in new episodes”. You can even find a specially-dedicated blog at http://demoniak.wordpress.com/. Now, you won’t find any name associated with this book. The publishers themselves seem to imply that this is a collective project. But we believe that behind the machinations of this Démoniak we’ll probably find Yvan Alagbé. Or rather, Gal Yacinthe Galbet (an anagram that turns out an entire cluster of ironic associations with transvestism, disguise, camouflage, dissimulation, a staple in Fantômas & Ca., anarchism and train station fiction).

 

Besides the editorial and physical aspects of this publication – that seems to bring together a certain strand of the “comics avant-garde” and a typically low, commercial imaginary, perhaps even with a certain nostalgia factor -, it is quite important for us to understand how the narrative and visual dimension of Mort à Babylone (the title of this particular Démoniak episode, as we can surmise) employs appropriation. The main elements are reportage, contemporary issues, breaking news, collage, transfer, and puns. The text is in French (narrative captions and a few speech balloons) and English (a few speech balloons), but there’s also some random Finnish (a few lines of speech, especially by Démoniak him/herself – the gender is indeterminate). Although we’re able to read this (these) text(s) and, up to a certain point, recreate a linear sense, which follows a clear goal (especially if we don’t miss “the next episodes”), it seems to me that the author(s) aim for the emergence of a rather fantasmatic meaning. The faces of some of the characters are related to real people, but people who inhabit the unreality of mass media: Hollywood movies and CNN/FOX news: John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Ingrid Betancourt, Sarkozy, Bernard Kouchner, Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein, princess Diana… It’s as if both worlds – the fiction world and the words of news – collapsed one on top of the other or coalesced. We could also add “finally”, for isn’t that the objective of each one of them, in their own relative terms? What is the difference between today’s pervasive infotainment, as those brief news that are news just because there’s a video of it, or celebrity-related happenings, or the personal life of political figures treated as a soap opera (Berlusconi and Sarkozy are huge in this), and those fake newscasts on innumerable TV shows? And aren’t the many movies “based on true facts” trying to force feed us a perspective of truth?  As for the book’s puns – Dirty Diana, Tom Cruz, John Paul Trovalto, Rhumsteak, Soddom Hossein – they’re deployed to emphasize that jumbled perspective. 

 

But there is yet another level of the language of Démoniak to which we have to be attentive: “As in a dream, Flower of the Senses admonishes Damned Soul/and, in the core of her thoughts,/Obscure Matter weeps the loss of her Shékinah”; “Amidst the foolish madness, the Celestial Temptress was gagged and tied up”… [in French in the original, my translation]. Despite the fact that we can interpret some of these sentences in a very literal sense, as following the actions depicted by the images, of the typical police-porn kind, some other are opened to even more obscene readings (as when the image of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs ready to lick a penis has this as its caption: “to drink up the news as if it was mother’s milk…”). But in a deeper sense, if we pay special attention to the names of the characters, sometimes several for one character only, as if what was being stressed was the multiplicity of functions, or faces, or potentialities (Mother-Hostage, The Shadow of the Ages, The Princess of Fevers), we can turn the whole language and the plot into a sort of alchemical, esoteric allegory in which what’s being played is in a cosmic level. Which, in any case, is precisely what conspiracy theories followers tend to think about as the true meaning of whatever event. 

 

In sum, Démoniak can be seen as a form of critical political positioning, albeit after an abstrusely operatic, obscene and hyperbolic fashion. Oppositionist, radical even, but not direct: quite the contrary, it seems to attain its peculiar efficiency through its swerving strategy, and at the same time amassing a certain degree of humour and of pertinence that would not achieve if it had followed a more “appropriate”, “ruled” form of criticism (which we can find within the territory of comics in distinct authors such as Phillipe Squarzoni and Ted Rall). It’s a way to show us, with that humour, that the Babylon they mention is really all around us. 

 

 

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