The Metabarons

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (born 17 February 1929) is a Chilean and French avant-garde filmmaker. 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. Dropping out of college, he became involved in theater, particularly mime. He worked as a clown before founding his own theater troupe, 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), 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 that staged violent and 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 high praise from John Lennon, who convinced former Beatles manager Allen Klein to finance Jodorowsky’s next film with $1 million. The result was The Holy Mountain (1973), a surrealist exploration of western esotericism. Disagreements with Klein, however, led to both The Holy Mountain and El Topo failing to gain widespread distribution, although both became classics on the underground film circuit. After a cancelled attempt at filming Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel Dune, Jodorowsky produced five more films: the family film Tusk (1980); the surrealist horror Santa Sangre (1989); the failed blockbuster The Rainbow Thief (1990); and the first two films in a planned five-film autobiographical series, The Dance of Reality (2013) and Endless Poetry (2016).

Jodorowsky is also a comic book writer, most notably penning the science fiction series The Incal throughout the 1980s, which has been described as having a claim to be “the best comic book” ever written. Other comic books he has written include The Technopriests and Metabarons. Jodorowsky has also extensively written and lectured about his own spiritual system, which he calls “psychomagic” and “psychoshamanism,” borrowing from alchemy, the tarot, Zen Buddhism, and shamanism. His son Cristóbal has followed his teachings on psychoshamanism; this work is captured in the feature documentary Quantum Men, directed by Carlos Serrano Azcona.

Born November 26th, 1943, in Mendoza, Argentina.

Gimenez finished his high school education as an industrial design major and advanced his artistic education by attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain, where he studied drawing. For the next few years, he dedicated himself to drawing comic books, both in his native Argentina with publishers such as Colomba and Record, and in Spain, contributing to magazines like Zona 84 and Comix International. By this point, Gimenez had gained recognition for his extremely detailed renditions of machinery, chiefly in the war and science fiction genres. His art led to international collaborations, and in 1979, he was first published in France with a series of titles including “Leo Roa,” which he also wrote. The following year, he participated as a creative designer on a segment of the film Heavy Metal. For the next decade, he continued his work in comic book magazines, notably the French comics anthology Metal Hurlant and the Italian L’Eternauta.

The 1990s saw him strengthen his fanbase as he was repeatedly voted best artist by European audiences. This recognition was mirrored in festivals and critical circles, with awards such as the Gaudi award at the Feria Internacional del Comics de Barcelone in 1990. In 1992, he met Alejandro Jodorowsky for the first time, and the two began work on “The Metabarons,” a sci-fi saga of epic proportions in both art and story. It is to this day regarded as one of the true graphic novel classics of the genre and continues to achieve successful sales worldwide.

Gimenez currently maintains a consistent yet varied workload, lending his talents as an illustrator to covers for CD albums and novels, as well as serving as a concept artist on video games and motion pictures. He also remains in high demand as a graphic novel artist, collaborating with some of Europe’s most acclaimed authors such as Carlos Trillo, Emilio Balcarce, and Roberto Dal Prà, when he is not writing his own stories, as he successfully continues to do, with the “The Fourth Power” collection.

On April 2nd, 2020, he passed away in his home province of Mendoza, Argentina, from COVID-19 complications.

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