Tempted Hero
The last page of the Le Monde diplomatique Germany newspaper has featured incredible comic art since its inception in 2005. I was honored to be a part of the long list of illustrators who have decorated this monthly publication.
Around the time when I set out to make this comic, I was interested in medieval stories and the legends of King Arthur. So I wanted to draw an allegorical story, narrated by an evil entity, with a hero going on a quest. On this quest they are tempted by evil as a metaphor for the moral dilemma of whether the easiest path is necessarily the right one, which is something that can be relevant in our day-to-day lives.
Using hand-drawn contours, I created a series of images that are as varied as possible while still maintaining a narrative thread. As I only had one page, most of the panels would feature the hero, and I wanted the panels to be relatively large, ergo fewer in number on a single page, I focused on using changes in viewpoint to change the atmosphere and allow for different scenery despite most of the action taking place in the same forest. Also, subtle color changes suggest that the action takes place from day to night, with the final panel being during early morning the following day.
I also wanted to link the very idea of sequentiality with the medieval period, so I used stonework reminiscent, casellated borders to add to the sensation of a folk tale of yore. Additionally, the costume of the hero is medieval-inspired, but the presence of a backpack as well as the sequence of slain monsters with big graphic “X”s on them (one of which is a gangster skeleton with slides wielding a flintlock pistol and brass knuckles), gives the story an atemporality. One that I think plays with the understood notion of a knightly quest in an unexpected way.
The villain-narrator is a floating eye engulfed in flame, being carried by an evil furnace knight. This knight is a twisted amalgamation of elements that show both the destructive nature of evil as well as the dangers it presents. Burning the forest to prolong its undeath, clothes from when they were a noble warrior are burned by the modifications that give it strength. And a lifeless smile burns through the cutouts in the chimney where their head once was.
These pink flames are visible on all the monsters in the story, showing us that the evil eye entity is the one who created or tempted the creatures that stand in our hero’s path. And is now using them to add another being to their side. Confronting people who have given in to temptation is something one must do, which is we could see ourselves in the hero’s plight and the toll these conflicts take on him.
This comic was included in the Neurotitan Gallery in Berlin as part of a retrospective in 2023. 50 comics were selected to be shown at the gallery and then included in a book published by Reprodukt.
