COMIC BOOKS | FANTASY
Les Ogres Dieux (The Ogre Gods) Is Dark Fantasy At Its Best
This French graphic novel promises to be a Grimdark lover’s favourite nightmare
Homo homini lupos. Man is wolf to man. An old Roman proverb, later immortalised by Thomas Hobbes in his philosophical treatise Leviathan. It’s the one line I think best sums up what The Ogre Gods is about.
Hubert Boulard and Bertrand Gatignol’s graphic novel weaves a fantastically macabre tale set in a decadent world of giants on the brink of destruction. Taking place in a gothic castle/cathedral looming over a sheer cliff (there are some Gormenghast vibes here!), the story is told by Petit, the only small sized child of King Gabaal, head of a clan of giants. Destined to die by the hands of his father, he is saved by his mother in the hope that Petit will save their incestuous clan from slow degeneration by mating with a human woman, rejuvenating it from the inside out.
The Ogre Gods is a canvas of horridly beautiful imagery. Especially memorable are the feast tables laden with large bowls of torn human limbs that look like so much popcorn in the hands of the giants. (One horrifyingly mundane scene has Petit and his mother eat their share of this ‘meal’ in a singular attempt at bonding!)
Petit is no moral paragon. He has to be held back from eating human flesh and though he saves a woman — who he later falls in love with — from being raped, he nearly commits the same crime. He hurts where he wants to love and kills where he cannot hope to be loved, failing and failing yet again. It’s an emotionally resonant image of both giant-like depravity and human fallibility, proving that both races may be more alike than one might initially guess.
But for all the darkness, there is also light. This light takes the form of passages interspersed between the black and white panels telling Petit’s story. These are biographical accounts with titles like The Explorer or The Giantess. They are dark fairy tales, able to stand alone but in conjunction with Petit’s account prove a fascinating study of the rise and fall of a singular race.
Crafted here is a portrait that tells anyone willing to learn how absolute power is attained and how it, invariably, corrupts absolutely. From the lone giant who befriended humans and was ostracised and imprisoned by the clan for refusing to eat human flesh, to the founder of their dynasty, whose love for his wife grew monstrous once he realised she could be turned into his personal brood mare, there are some truly fascinating life histories to unpack.
Hubert and Gatignol strip away any and all delusions one may have about family and cruelty, fathers and sons, right and wrong, until — in Petit’s own words — you’re left with the essence of humanity in a dog-eats-dog world.
