While, in our present, countries are setting out to conquer Mars, the Arca comic goes further by reaching the limits of the universe. Yet this victory for humanity seems to be a dead end for the passengers of these ships…
Arca or the tube trap
Planet Earth has become unlivable. Ships are sent to find a new planet: Lion's Claw is this distant promised land. While waiting to arrive at their destination, passengers are placed to sleep. However, Eric Rives is awakened because the automatic system of the Arca spacecraft is blocked. Quickly, he realizes that the station is stuck in a gigantic tube and that the robots can no longer find the exit. Worse, the journey lasted much longer than the planned two hundred years. Ancient science provides no answers. The first pages of Arca set up a heavy atmosphere by alternating between optimistic images of the past about the project and the disturbing present where nothing went as planned. Eric must lead the investigation by exploring the unknown. He is accompanied by zoologist Jia. They discover that they are locked in a giant labyrinth defying all the laws of physics.
To implement this story, the drawing of Joan Urgell is very material. She has a photorealistic style but, on the faces, the pencil strokes remain visible. At the end of the volume, sketches and pages before inking show the cartoonist's research. The colorization gives a matte effect and avoids clichés. Initially, the ship is not gray but pink, like a protective human body.
A story of colonization
Romain Benassaya adapts in Arca his novel Pyramides , published in 2018, by metamorphosing into a screenwriter. The book starts as a typical space opera of science fiction of the 1960s and 70s. Humanity colonizes space in ships where there is hope for a better life and egalitarianism. We follow Ariane and her brother Eric. He is second in command of a ship and she is commander of another ark. Arian wants to break down hierarchy and invent a new world. You leave your family to find a new life. We can find that in so few pages, the waltz of love adventures becomes less credible.
However, unlike the motionless Arca, the narrative often changes course. We then follow different passengers and each brings a point of view on the Arca. You never get tired. Arca is fully in thetwenty-first century. Political utopia did not happen. Paradise does not correspond to what was promised. We must forget all of the above. Time is at the center of these changes. It facilitates changes of couple because the distance creates a break.
This modernity of tone is also seen by the modern vision of nature. Arca leaves an Earth whose resources humanity has exhausted. We no longer lived in the open air. On the ship, the relationship with nature becomes intimate and divides the couples. While Johanna wants to stay in the ship and live in symbiosis with the garden, Eric wants to explore the dark area where they landed. In addition, nature does not respect the plan planned by humanity. The garden that is supposed to provide oxygen to humans is invaded by insects, gardeners. But it has created a clean and self-sustaining ecosystem. Indeed, these animals observe humans and adapt much faster to changes. These insects will have a key role in the evolution of the narrative.
If Arca presents a well-known image of the soap opera, the complete story published by Les Humanoïdes Associés quickly takes an unexpected turn. The reader reflects on the passage of time and follows an ideal ecological narrative for the 2020s. Finally, the resolution is a tour de force that calls into question the importance of the previous expedition.
Find other chronicles of this collection with The Blood of the Immortals and Gurvan.
