Before The Incal

“If you’re curious about John’s life before the events of ‘The Incal, or if you’re a fan of Jodorowsky’s mad storytelling style, ‘Before the Incal’ is for you.”” - beguilingbooksandart.com

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (born February 17, 1929) is a Chilean and French avant-garde filmmaker. He is best known for his films El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973), and Santa Sangre (1989). Jodorowsky has been “venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts” for his work, which is filled with violently surreal images and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation.

Born to Jewish-Ukrainian parents in Chile, Jodorowsky experienced an unhappy and alienated childhood, leading him to immerse himself in reading and writing poetry. After dropping out of college, he became involved in theater, particularly mime, working as a clown before founding his own theater troupe, the Teatro Mimico, in 1947. Moving to Paris in the early 1950s, Jodorowsky studied traditional mime under Étienne Decroux. He utilized his miming skills in the silent film Les têtes interverties (1957), co-directed with Saul Gilbert and Ruth Michelly. From 1960 onwards, he divided his time between Mexico City and Paris, where he co-founded the Panic Movement, a surrealist performance art collective known for its shocking theatrical events. In 1966, he created his first comic strip, Anibal 5, and in 1967, he directed his first feature film, the surrealist Fando y Lis, which caused a scandal in Mexico and was eventually banned.

His next film, the acid western El Topo (1970), became a hit on the midnight movie circuit in the United States, considered the first-ever midnight cult film. It garnered praise from John Lennon, who convinced Allen Klein to finance Jodorowsky’s next film, The Holy Mountain (1973), a surrealist exploration of western esotericism. Disagreements with Klein led to both films failing to gain widespread distribution, though they became underground classics. After a canceled attempt to film Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, Jodorowsky produced five more films: Tusk (1980), Santa Sangre (1989), The Rainbow Thief (1990), and the autobiographical films The Dance of Reality (2013) and Endless Poetry (2016).

Jodorowsky is also a comic book writer, most notably for the science fiction series The Incal throughout the 1980s, described by some as “the best comic book” ever written. Other comic books he has written include The Technopriests and Metabarons. Jodorowsky has extensively written and lectured about his spiritual system, “psychomagic” and “psychoshamanism,” which draws from alchemy, tarot, Zen Buddhism, and shamanism. His son Cristóbal has followed his teachings, documented in the feature film Quantum Men.

Zoran Janjetov is a prominent comics creator from former Yugoslavia, with worldwide publications. He is best known as the illustrator of “Before The Incal,” written by Alejandro Jodorowsky.

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