Le Grand Pouvoir du Chninkel by Jean Van Hamme

That also serves as nice criticism of religion - people will believe everything, always find reasoning to serve their intentions and ideas and will be always looking for somebody to blindly follow (at least significant part of them). J'on's biggest power is, that fortune and coincidence always helps him to get out of troubles and to find the right way. I don't have problem with eroticism in books or comics in general, but in Chninkel it felt kind of forced. But he would rather enjoyed simple physical pleasures, with which he is almost obsessed. J'on is horny little creature appointed with uneasy task to bring peace to the world suffering from ever repeating conflict. I have read it many times and will undoubtably read it again, so it deserves four stars under my rules, but with a grimace or two. On rereading this story, which I first discovered some three decades ago at university, these irritations make the familiar story a little ho-hum from an older reader’s perspective, but it remains a formidably beautiful graphic novel with endless visual imagination. This is a Franco-Belgian graphic novel from the 80s after all. Besides her, there is a large amount of female nudity and a number of sexual situations throughout the story (not all consensual, which is a concern) to keep the protagonist fixated on his desire and his lack of luck in that particular regard. His companion is a pure hearted caricature whose main function is to shed her clothes, but nevertheless remain virginal. The protagonist, a “chosen one”, is a little irritating, being mainly driven by a desire to get laid, which is constantly frustrated, and being endlessly self-pitying, but nevertheless he does eventually grapple with his destiny even when he realises his inevitable doom. This atheist theme is relevant towards today’s extreme religions. The story attacks the cruelty inherent in eschatological religions, concerned with all-powerful deities that plan the fall, punishment, and destruction of their creations. This is a rather virulent anti-religion fantasy, which seems strange at first sight considering the catholic backgrounds of a Belgian writer and a Polish cartoonist, and then perhaps precisely not.

Le Grand Pouvoir du Chninkel by Jean Van Hamme