All throughout April and May, we’re crowdsourcing a coronavirus quarantine comics reading list. Each weekday for a month, we’ll post a new recommendation from someone in the comics industry to help folks get through the isolation. This includes writers, artists, letterers, editors, comics journalists, publicists, and more…all paired with a local shop that’s currently selling the books via mail order.

Today’s pick comes from artist Meghan Hetrick…enjoy!

SO. First and foremost, I really, really love this idea. As an artist, I don’t really get as much time as I should to read, well, much of anything anymore, so I’m constantly looking for recommendations for The Good Stuff. Even better if it comes from some well-respected folks.

Secondly – I’m an artist. The stuff I love has more to do with the art and storytelling than the script (fun fact: artists are writers too, we just use pictures, haha). Storytelling is the most important thing to me – I need to be able to read the book just by looking at the pictures. Everything else after that is just bonus.

And that leads us to my pick:

The Incal, by Jodorowski and Moebius.

If you don’t know those names, you should. And if you think you don’t know them, as soon as you pick up anything done by either of them, you’ll recognize the influence it’s had on, oh…. Everything. If you like sci-fi in even the slightest you owe yourself this read. Keep in mind that it’s an older book at this point, from the late 80s, so there might be more than a few culturally insensitive moments in it, but they are a sign of their time.

To talk about it too much is to give it away, and it’s a seminal work IMO. It’s directly influenced by Dune, and The Incal in turn has directly influenced more than its fair share of properties, the least of which is The Fifth Element. It is French sci-fi of the highest caliber, and it is gloriously weird and beautiful. I wish I had the ability to experience it the first time again. Instead, it’s been my bedside book for the better part of a decade now, and whenever I’m feeling uninspired, all I have to do is flip through this, and it gets the creative juices flowing again. The storytelling is incredible, and Moebius is just … he’s a goddamned master for a reason, folks.

Seriously, just go get this. And if you’re unfamiliar with European books, it’s a fantastic entry point into an incredible, inspiring realm of weird. -Meghan Hetrick

Meghan Hetrick is an artist who has worked on comics such as Vampirella, Red Thorn, and more. You can find her work here.

The Incal
Writer: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Artist: Moebius
Publisher: Humanoids
This coveted, revolutionary science fiction masterpiece from M bius and Jodorowsky traces the misadventures of John Difool, a Class "R" detective in a degenerate dystopian world, as he searches for a mystical artifact known as “The Incal.”

Get it from a local comic shop with this directory from the Comics Industry Collective of stores open and doing mail order!

Click here for the full coronavirus reading list!