The Eyes of the Cat by Alexandro Jodorowsky and Moebius

I don't have the highest opinion of the work of Alexandro Jodorowsky, to put it mildly. (See my post on the Moebius/Jodorowsky product Madwoman of the Sacred Heart for a fuller rant.) I tend to think Moebius had massive tendencies towards self-indulgence at best, and that Jodorowsky fed into those, adding a soupy Euro mystic vagueness on top, like a light fog that makes everything unclear.

But I like books that I react strongly to - even if that reaction is not actually positive. The point of art is to make people feel, and revulsion and disdain is a feeling, he said somewhat puckishly. So I keep giving Jodorowsky chances, in large part because other readers - people who I otherwise respect - said consistently for decades that there really was a there there.

Thus The Eyes of the Cat, their 1978 collaboration - I think the first time they worked together, a couple of years before The Incal began. It's published as a comics album these days, but it's more experimental than that, and a slimmer, smaller thing - it was originally a giveaway in France, which is oddly appropriate. 

It's about fifty pages long, alternating full-page illustrations and pages with a single tall minimalist panel - that panel seems not to change for most of the length of the book - and a few words. It's more like a picture book than a comic: not quite words on one side and image on the other, but almost that.

The words are all in one voice, and we realize eventually it is the boy we see in the tall panels speaking. The boy is speaking to a bird of prey, Meduz, as it stalks - well, you can guess from the title and see from the cover. And the title will tell you what Meduz is looking to take from its prey.

This is a book of mood and atmosphere, one that implies things rather than saying them, creating a tone of horror and creepiness rather than telling a fuller story or describing a world. The boy is deeply creepy: that's the point. But it takes a little while for the reader to realize it: that is also the point.

The Moebius art is from his prime period, detailed and precise, from the vertiginous ruined cityscape to the intricate crosshatching on Meduz's feathers. And Jodorowsky's words are few enough and allusive enough that they work perfectly well - for me at least.

And, before I forget and end this post, the edition I read was the 2013 Humanoids English-language edition, which was translated by Quinn & Katia Donoghue.