Published by Glénat, Amen opens the doors to a disturbing world…A troop of mercenaries and clerics arrives on a cursed planet to impose their faith and find gold, but the deeper the group goes into the jungle, the more the mysteries thicken.
Attack!
A troop is sent by Sir Raleigh to the new planet Arcadia. These mercenaries, pilgrims and brother preachers succeed on this forbidden planet two first expeditions mysteriously disappeared. They must find them. Initially happy to be in a breathable atmosphere and in a lush planet, this planet holds many dangers and mysteries. Invisible threats jostle the soldiers. We discover the surprising fauna and flora – flying stones are mollusks – but always deadly. Supernatural events occur. No machines work on this planet except weapons. The base camp of the previous expedition is totally abandoned even though it is perfectly functional. The number of colonists is doubled with clones but each thinks they are the original.
It's all wrong
The mystery begins in Amen from the cryptic title: Ishoa or the precession of the equinoxes. Ishoa, the narrator of the series, is the main collaborator of the promoter of the expedition Sir Raleigh. He is also a former freed slave. The precession of the equinoxes is a term of astrology, a movement between the houses of the zodiac that threatens the survival of humanity. We see the influence of Georges Bess's collaboration with Jodorowsky. The first pages show the first bloody contacts of settlers with the savage people before the sequel reveals in flashback how these men got there. Amen is indeed composed of nesting stories in flashbacks that allow the reader to go back the course of the story. Throughout the pages, he first discovers the goals of the expedition and then the past of the narrator and the social organization by castes of the team. According to astrologers, the world is entering the age of fire and Sir Raleigh fears the apocalypse. He makes believe that the exploration mission "Eldorado" on the Arcadia comes to take news of previous expeditions but it is a decoy because Raleigh's goal is to find the leader of the previous expedition, Kurtz who would simply be the key to save the world.
In the Heart of Darkness
If this summary evokes something to you it is not a coincidence, because Amen is the new adaptation of the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad which has already inspired in the cinema Apocalypse Now and Aguirre, the wrath of God. Georges Bess made the radical choice to change the context. The world of Amen is surrounded by violence. In the future, Terra has colonized the galaxy and human beings import their religious conflicts wherever they go. Indeed, the settlers of the "Eldorado" are fanatics who have come to convert an indigenous people living in harmony with their environment. The dialogues are faithful to the genre of science fiction by multiplying lexical inventions. He is less comfortable transcribing a Germanic or Spanish accent. His very vivid and quite round drawing manages to make this world believable. Science fiction costumes from the 50s coexist with modern outfits. In the same way, the members of the Inquisition have rebirth outfits. 
Even if we feel an author in total freedom, Bess still takes up the idea of a predatory mission denouncing colonization and an apocalyptic road movie. The Padre finds the slightest excuse to massacre the natives while the totally idiotic mercenaries fire their big lasers at everything that moves. The mercenaries have accepted this mission to avoid prison and obtain the right to plunder the planet. One can think of some conquistadors. Their religion on the light seems to mix earthly religions: they pray to the one god Luz and Diwanouka is a festival. However, charity does not seem to concern them because they kill at the slightest mistake and are carried by Sherpas-mutants who are also their slaves. Amen certainly plunges the reader into a future of space opera but it is above all a sharp criticism of religion that makes human beings idiots but also of colonization that ravages pure lands and kills very happy natives before the arrival of so-called progress. If this title intrigued you, we also advise you to read the chronicle of the Valhalla Hotel in the same collection or Invisible Kingdom which also denounces religion in the middle of spaceships.
