Human (2019) is a 138-page French graphic novel written by Diego Agrimbau and illustrated by Lucas Varela. Both authors were born in Argentina. Agrimbau is a multi-awarded scriptwriter who has been creating comics since the 1990s in an array of genres, collaborating with several artists. Varela started working fulltime on comics in 2006; in 2012 he participated in a residence in Angoulême and made his entry into the Franco-Belgian market. Before reviewing this graphic novel I find it pertinent to share the synopsis made available on the book back cover and on the Europe Comics website:
“Planet Earth: 500,000 years in the future. Humans have been extinct for millennia. Two scientists, Robert and June, have been orbiting the Earth, waiting for the planet to become habitable once more. With the help of a team of robots, they plan to start over from scratch: a new Adam and Eve who won’t make the same mistakes as their ancestors. But first Robert has to find June, who seems to have landed somewhere else in this vast jungle—their Eden—full of grotesque creatures and strange primates…”
This science-fiction narrative takes place half a million years in the future. To better understand it, and because the sci-fi genre embraces so many subgenres and themes, one should first categorize the story according to an appropriate subgenre. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida said that “[e]very text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text; there is always a genre and genres, yet such participation never amounts to belonging.” It’s also important to understand that the genre system is an intellectual tool and that it evolves; new genres are created often to better accommodate the stories being told.
When a story takes place long after a cataclysm when things have gone back to ‘normal’, the subgenre post-apocalyptic is not the appropriate term. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction website the appropriate expression is ruined earth. I find it inadequate and more so when applied to the graphic novel Human. When the character Robert crash-lands in the forest, it’s not a ruined earth scenario we see but a new “Eden”, a healthy planet devoid of technological humans and their destructive ideals (the Anthropocene Era as we know it is over). The best subgenre by which we can categorize this book is the post-post-apocalyptic because the narrative doesn’t dwell on the aftermath of a big catastrophe when a few survivors fight to stay alive, the plot takes place in a distant future, long after the Homo sapiens ‘extinction’, when the planet has found its balance (there are still a few remnants of the technological past on Earth, a reminder of the destructive power and hubris of Man).
It’s time to enter spoilers territory. If you haven’t read the book stop here and come back after you do, hopefully in a not so distant future. If spoilers don’t affect you continue reading. I hope you enjoy this review and decide to read the book.
Our planet Earth was once a place where different species of humans coexisted. In this book, several hominids once again live side by side. Man hasn’t gone extinct it has evolved and adapted. Before the arrival of Robert, his wife June catalogues a few new species: Homo aereous, Homo hydronensis, Homo terribilus, Homo cavernalis, Homo arborens, and Homo minimus. June has crash-landed early due to a technical malfunction, 104 years before Robert, but she soon realizes that their plan to reintroduce Homo sapiens is not the right thing to do and she tries to prevent Robert’s awakening from his cryosleep. Knowing he will eventually arrive she leaves him data (notes and videos) about what she discovered. These post-human beings have evolved into a more animalistic state, better suited to a more natural correlation with the ecosystems they inhabit.
Another poorly known sci-fi subgenre comes to mind: the speculative evolution category. This subgenre is better known for the illustrated books of Dougal Dixon but the first known example is The Time Machine (1895), by H. G. Wells, where a scientist travels into the future and discovers that mankind has split into two different species. The graphic novel Human can be viewed through the lens of this subgenre as well but, as Derrida said, “such participation never amounts to belonging.”
In the monograph Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America (2017), the authors Edward King and Joanna Page address two of Diego Agrimbau’s graphic novels as antihumanist fables with “dystopian visions of the consequences of environmental exploitation or enslavement to modernizing progress.” The two mentioned books are La Burbuja de Bertold (2007) and Planet Extra (2009). In Human, it’s obvious that when the character Robert loses his goal to reintroduce the Homo sapiens species on planet Earth his first actions are those of an environmental exploiter, a despot king cutting down trees to build a palisade (renouncing nature) and implementing cruel biopolitics rules of enslaving the ‘wombs’ of other hominids to create a new species he suggestively baptizes as Robert sapiens. His god-complex leads him into trying to create a future not so different from his past where power and hubris led to the extinction of his race. This is the opposite of his first moral and good intentions towards the future but the death of his wife and his inability to cope with his new reality lead him into perdition.
To enforce his will, Robert orders the robot called One to animate through technology the cadavers of a few Homo cavernalis. This Frankensteinian trope or zombification of the posthuman bodies of the Homo cavernalis is appalling and a signal of how far from his original plan Robert has gone. For the psychologist John Vervaeke, the zombie is the XXI century monster zeitgeist and represents all the lacking qualities that make us human. It’s the perfect metaphor for contemporary alienation, anxiety, consumerism, and disenfranchisement in Western nations. No wonder Agrimbau decided to include an army of the dead controlled by a king out of his time, paralleling George R. R. Martin’s Night King and his magically undead army who invade the realms of Man. The mostrification or zombification of the cadavers and the creation of a killing machine for Robert’s gladiator games shows us his “enslavement to modernizing progress.” His scientific mind is interfering with his ability to live a simpler life and have a healthier relationship with ‘nature’. The German philosopher Walter Benjamin, in his small text To the Planetarium (1928), said that technology should not be the subjugation of nature by Man, but the control of the relationship between humankind and nature. Robert opted for the first.
Fortunately, the three ape-like women Robert impregnates will be his downfall. The victims have their revenge after being aided by Alpha. They kill him by sending him down a waterfall, thus ending his chaotic and savage reign. Alpha, then, initiates a voyage with the three posthuman women accompanied by the subservient robot One (an enabler who seeks only to serve). Alpha now knows what to do and her first decision is to get out of the jungle and find a good place to raise Robert’s babies. The last panel (splash page) shows another capsule of the mother ship on orbit falling from the sky, indicating that another person (Homo sapiens) is arriving. This story is most definitely not over and the worldbuilding deserves at least one more instalment.
This graphic novel was made for a ‘younger’ audience despite the violent and complex themes it works with and, sometimes, the dialogues and some plot devices suffer from that option. This doesn’t take away the merit of the story that treats complex thematic subjects with skill. The art is very interesting and the colour palette sparsely uses blue and green hues resulting in a kind of alien planet Earth. The lack of green trees and blue skies show the jungle as a space of otherness. The drawings are reminiscent of Hergé’s ligne claire style mixed with Mike Mignola’s more graphic approach. Overall this is a book worth reading, especially for sci-fi fans that enjoy speculative stories about the future of Mankind and posthuman fiction.