Author: S.T. Lore
Client: Discipline Magazine
Designer: Ziga Testen
Pages: 240 — 244
Format: 244 pages, 230 × 300 mm, Softcover, Full Colour, Edition of 1000
Year: 2013, ISSN 1839-082X
*Including the first full-colour reprint of Jean Giraud — Moebius — seminal 1977 comic strip 'Absoluten Calfeutrail' approved by the Moebius Foundation France. Originally appeared in the Number 16 issue of magazine Metal Hurlant
Excerpt 2. LINES IN THE SAND
"A man descends toward an atomic symbol painted on the desert sand, yet on impact, the earth rips open like a banner of paper to reveal another cavernous room. Standing in the centre of the room is a congregation of robed priests. Undisturbed by his entrance, they stand as silent witnesses ... as though ... he was expected. As the man enters the circle and plummets past them, he reaches inside his jacket and retrieves a note. With a furrowed look he reads ...
What do we read when we are in terror, when we are in fear, and we are about to be destroyed? Something personal? Something poetic? A love letter? A confession? A manifesto? Calmly discarding the note paper into the air, we never see the message, and all the while, the man continues to fall. The most important part of 'Absoluten Calfeutrail' is this note of the falling man. It is a message only for his eyes. We never learn what the message is and neither do the priests. If we could view that message what would it contain? If text, would it be religious or personal? There is no quote from a prominent author, no critical theological review, no scientific explanation that could bring reason to this surreal and accidental fall. Yet, we cannot rule out a photograph: an image of a face, the smile of a loved one. It may also be a map, a diagram of this unknown territory. In true horror fashion, it may be a copy of the comic itself, and with this in his possession, the falling man would be viewing his own fall endlessly, locked in an eternal loop — self-reflection upon self-reflection — absolutely sealed. The paper seal his fate and the action of discarding the note is his acceptance. It is only then that we observe the man fall with his head pointed downward. He chooses to aim directly into the rushing air, toward the very ground; and we watch as he rushes toward his fate ...
'... 2012 was a year predicted to be the end: for me, for you, for all of us. It was a year for the dooms-dayers and the calendar chasers. Yet the day passed, and we burst through the atomic floor and into another era. It was a year in which I was delivered into other climates: from Port Moresby to Seoul and onto Istanbul. It was year I found myself in the remote jungle and ended up in the centre of destruction. By year's end I had visited three of the most bombed cities in the world: Hiroshima, Warsaw and Berlin. These cities not only survived, but had thrived. The strangest aspect is they felt the most spacious, the most friendly of all the cities I visited that year — all re-designed with wider streets and with open boulevards — with ample space. Warsaw no doubt has an all-pervading greyness. There is an erasure of monuments and the local people still feel it is not quite as beautiful as Krakow. One night I watched a lightning storm crack across this city. It was amid the soccer World Cup and the city felt alive and full of potential. Standing on the fourteenth floor of a revamped apartment block a beautiful girl danced absent-mindedly to a nostalgic form of techno. Young and happy she wished to be an aerobics instructor. I could not at that time envision the horrors that had occurred in the past. That was, until I met a man named Miroslav. His head was round and balding and his eyes were angled slightly closed like the soft folds of a dumpling. He was older and filled with sadness, as though he contained the entire soul of Poland inside of him: a soul stuck in the past. We sat silently and watched the girl dance. Her young body occupying the present moment. It was a vivid vision of beauty in a time of peace: a moment with no past and with no future. I later learnt Miroslav means 'peace' and 'glory', but the prefix 'Mir' can also mean 'World'. The title of Tolstoy's famous novel, War and Peace, can then be read in the Russian, as 'War and World' - the two, it appears, are inseparable ...'
