4 out of 5

It would’ve been interesting to see Jodorowsky’s Sons of El Topo as its originally intended cinematic version. I’m troubled to contemplate some of its brutality, but I imagine the story to be more concise and impactful – assuming it would’ve been a single movie and not two or three – than this comic version, which really only comes together in its concluding book. Thematically and structurally, all of the volumes make sense, completing the story’s (perhaps inevitable) cycle, but each of them have their indulgences, and breaking them up into approximately same-length collections may have given some of those indulgences more emphasis than would’ve been applied in a single telling. Volume 1, for example, coming decades after the movie, perhaps encouraged Jodo to sort of summarize El Topo’s premise too overtly, giving the narrative a kind of second-hand vibe. And volume 2, in order to keep this final volume’s conclusions relegated within its pages, dawdles in some really regressive Jodorowsky tendencies. With the cycle completed, those regressions make “sense” (in as much as they ever do), but still, the balance in the storytelling is off.

Volume 3 commits a similar kind of sin by brutalizing its female lead, Lillith, and I would say… it’s too much. Thankfully, by page count, it’s a fairly slim part of the book, and Ladrönn does the job of taking any possible titillation out of the scene (at least, er, for those of us hopefully not into brutalizing women), making its over-the-top squeamishness perhaps something of the point, especially in “response” to the second book. That said, I think it’s clear from the overall direction of the tale (and perhaps knowing how Alejandro loves symmetry) that we’re going to wind up where we do in “Cain & Abel,” but the journey of getting there must necessarily be burdensome for the characters, and that’s where that previous scene also has its place. Completing the brothers’ readjustment of values, and fulfilling prophesies, takes up the bulk of volume 3, with a sort of coda again very much mirroring El Topo, but with a further cosmic layer that seems interestingly intertwined with Jodo reflecting on his own life, and aging. As with much of the creator’s symbolism, this gets a bit heavy-handed, but it’s no less powerful because of how willing Jodo is to be guided by the symbols and not feel weighted to any particular reality, and with Ladrönn at the visual helm… it makes for absolutely stunning (or grotesque) pages, hammering home all of the color and imagery lore the series has built up.

Best read as a set, I’d say, but either way, I’m glad Jodoroswky saved the best volume of the series for last, leaving us on notes that merit rereading from the start.