Metabarons
Encyclopedia
The Metabarons or The Saga of The Meta-Barons is a science fantasy
comic
series relating the history of a dynasty
of perfect warriors known as the Metabarons. The Metabarons series was written by creator Alejandro Jodorowsky
and illustrated by Argentinian
artist Juan Gimenez
. The series, published by Humanoïdes Associés, is complete, the last volume having been released at the end of 2003.
The first appearance of a Metabaron (chronologically the last of the Metabarons) was May 1981 in the Incal
comic book series as a supporting character. This was followed by a series of prequels that concerned this character's origin, presented as the narration of the droid Tonto
to the droid Lothar
, of his masters' achievements. The series takes place over the course of several generations, and chronicles the life of each of the five Metabarons. The stories are characterized by science fantasy on an epic scale, a background against which a space opera
reminiscent of Greek tragedy plays out. The stories are also heavily influenced by Frank Herbert's Dune
novels.
. The rite of succession is equally as cruel and uncompromising. In each generation, the son and heir must eventually face his father in a battle to the death. These battles have taken many forms, from hand-to-hand combat to dogfighting space duels. The rite of succession is only achieved once the cursed son succeeds in killing his father.
followed by the Metabarons, profoundly influenced by the Japanese bushido
. It demands that the practitioner dedicate themselves to victory in all things at any cost. Compromise is never an option, and the only alternative to victory is death. Bushitaka demands that the practitioner stifle all emotion, even to the point of sacrificing their own family members in the pursuit of total victory.
abilities.
The story of the Metabarons begins on an isolated world, Marmola, a world full of marble
. A small tribe, ruled by Berard of Castaka, lives there. Their main export are huge blocks of marble
, which they cut with manual hyperlasers. Other than marble
, the planet possesses a material far more valuable: It's a blue, jelly-like substance, called epiphyte
, whose properties defy the laws of gravity. The existence of the substance has been a sacred secret of the Castaka's for many generations. Until an accident happens and the secret must be sacrificed to save the life of Othon von Salza, the son-in-law of Baron Berard of Castaka. Shortly after being saved, Othon expressed his dismay as the secret was sacrificed to save his life. With this, Berard knew Othon was worthy to inherit the spirit living in every Castakan. Not long after the news got spread about the epiphyte
, the planet's orbit becomes a battlefield with the treacherous Imperial Black Endoguard as the victors. Eager to seize the epiphyte for themselves, they drop their ground troops. The tribesmen are outnumbered, yet they fight rather than surrender. Othon breaks his son Bari's legs so he won't get himself killed in the fight. When the battle comes to its end, Othon is the only one still standing and, together with Bari, the only survivor of the Castaka tribe. The Imperial couple, rulers of the known galaxy, are astonished by the achievement of Othon and rewards him. Othon shows them where the epiphyte was hidden in exchange for a reasonable percentage of the new market for anti-G Technology, a new planet to which their palace would be transferred to stone by stone and most importantly a gift for his son intended to restore the joy his broken legs took away. The emperor gives him a horse
, an extinct species brought back with genetic manipulation
. The gift did not go unnoticed. On their new planet, pirates invade and steal the horse
. Othon goes after them and kills them one by one. But due to the fog, he accidentally kills his son. In his grief and carelesness, he is shot from behind, which leaves him castrated. Now Othon is without an heir and apparently shall remain so forever.
Othon, devastated, turns his back on pure martial arts
and invests a large part of his fortune in the development of the first metabaronic weapons. He also began the tradition of cybernetic
implants, by incorporating a multi-protonic pelvis
. Othon becomes a mercenary of extraordinary skill and power. By destroying 100,000 pirate vessels by himself he and all of his descendants are rewarded with the title of Metabaron, the greatest warrior in the galaxy. The Imperial couple vow that they will search throughout the galaxy to find a gift that will make him feel like a man again. Later, a woman named Honorata arrives at his palace, giving herself to Othon. Honorata says she can bear him a child if places a drop of his blood in her uterus
. Two of Othon's servants get jealous and try to commit suicide, taking the pregnant Honorata with them. They jump off a tower but Othon is quick enough to inject a potion of epiphyte
into Honorata with a dart gun, letting her hover away. The potion hit her in her belly, infecting the baby, Aghnar von Salza. Othon is disgusted as he thinks his son will never be a good warrior, being weightless. He exiled him and lets Honorata train him by herself. When Aghnar is seven years old, he comes back to his father to show he has what it takes to be a true warrior. Othon made him a machine to fight with. When Aghnar defeats it Othon accepts him and continues his training. Honorata then confesses she was meant to give birth to a hermaphrodite
instead of a son. She was sent to this planet by the priestesses of Shabda-Oud, as it was propheted
that she would bear a perfect being. Because she didn't comply, the Shabda-Oud triggered the micro-H bombs implanted in her heart, destroying the whole planet with her. She warned Othon and Aghnar soon enough for them to escape. Othon was dying from a lung infection. For him to be sure his son was strong and worthy enough to avenge his mother, he forced Aghnar to fight him to death. Hereby Aghnar seized the title of Metabaron for himself. Unbeknownst to him, Honorata had saved herself using her psychic abilities.
The sole human in a hostile world, Aghnar rescues and befriends a single ape creature, and becomes its tribe's messiah. He then proceeds to take over a passing Shabda-Oud cetacyborg battleship with which to carry out his vengeance. However, he is sidetracked by the Cetacyborg's crew's original objective: to capture Princess Oda, in order to use her for the sisterhood's breeding experiments. Awed by a single hologram of the royal heir, as well as seeing an opportunity to better infiltrate their stronghold, the young metabaron successfully set out to conquer her heart. After a spectacular psychic confrontation with the sisterhood, Oda suffered debilitating injuries. Honorata revealed herself to her son then, and offered to use her psychic abilities to heal Oda. Oda, apparently healed, conceived with Aghnar a son. However, it was eventually discovered that Oda's soul was destroyed, and Honorata had transferred her consciousness into Oda's body. Disgusted with his act of incest, Aghnar shot his child in the head.
Oda/Honorata could not bear to see her son/grandson slain. She fashioned a cybernetic head for the child, who would then be known as Steelhead. Like Aghnar, she trained Steelhead to become a perfect warrior. Steelhead was cruel and merciless, and returned to confront and kill his father Aghnar, in the process murdering his mother. When he attended the imperial court to claim the title of Metabaron, Steelhead was confronted by the Princess Doña Vicenta, who claimed that a soulless machine who did not know love would never be able to conceive children worthy of the title of Metabaron. Angry, Steelhead took on this insult as a challenge, and set out to discover the meaning of love. His quest took him to the disembodied head of Zaran Krleza, the last poet in the galaxy. United in body and head (but somehow maintaining individual personas), Steelhead and Zaran become Melmoth. This new being declares Doña Vicenta as the object of his affections, and promptly resurrects her father along with a rare, titanic tree (both of which had been destroyed by steelhead himself in a contract). Dona was wooed, but the clone of her father, mad and taken over with a furious, incestuous desire for Vicenta, attempted to violate her. Melmoth interceded, but then was confronted with the whole army at the behest of the clone-king. Vicenta, in a self-sacrificing symbolic gesture, tore out her eyes and handed them over to her father-replica. Reminded of who he is, he backs down and calls off his troops, and Melmoth and Doña Vicenta marry. On their wedding night, Melmoth discovers that Tonto, his robotic servant, repaired her eyesight by vulgarily implanting her with horrid cybernetic sensors. Disgusted, Melmoth shunned her, and Steelhead reasserted himself, taunting and accusing Zaran of being little else than a horny old goat. Frustrated, Zaran took a plasma pistol to his head, and thus Melmoth was no more. Steelhead, however, was fine, and nevertheless took care of his bride. She was pregnant with twins, but they were deformed in the womb and would both die unless Steelhead intervened. Even then, he could only save one. Vicenta was adamant about allowing the girl to live, believing that she would be the host to Melmoth's spirit, but was only too aware of steelhead's need for a male heir. Out of love and duty, Steelhead compromised: He removed the male twin's brain and implanted it in the female child's skull, and both parents would have the heirs they desired.
The androgynous Aghora would be trained as a warrior by Steelhead, and eventually faced his/her father in single combat. After taking his/her place as Metabaron, Aghora became a mercenary warrior, as his/her fathers had been. Aghora eventually wished for an heir, but was unwilling to mate with another man. Instead, he/she extracted the male cells from his/her own brain and implanted them in his/her womb, thereby creating a male clone
, in a procedure that Tonto described as 'autoincest'. It was this child who would eventually become the Nameless Metabaron who continues to reign in the "present" issues of Incal.
In the last chapter of the saga Sans-Nom, le dernier Méta-Baron, Lothor, the faithful droid to whom Tonto is relating the Metabaronic lore in the frame narration is revealed as Steelhead himself: due to his purely mechanic nature, he had replaced every single organ in his body with syntethic equivalents, becoming able to survive in the open space when Aghora jettisoned him. Recovering his personality, but not his full memories, after a brief confrontation in which he gives Nameless the iconic scarring in his eyebrow, he allies himself with a vampiric creature to enact his vengeance over his nameless descendant.
Ultimately, he repents, sacrificing his life for the Universe's sake: however, his machinations are enough to drop Nameless into a deep state of depression. Realizing how his whole ancestry was trapped into a spiral of hatred and death, he has himself sterilized, unwilling to raise a son to follow in his cursed footsteps, and wallows in self-pity until the Spirit of the Castaka family, embodied by the mark on his chest, appears to him in a vision, prompting Nameless to become a force for good, protecting life whenever he can.
With this new mission the Metabaron, now the last of his kind, becomes the unstoppable mercenary featured in the Incal.
A special volume, containing interviews with Jodorowsky and Gimenez as well as sketches, unseen art, and a short story concerning one of the Metabaron's ancestors, called La Maison des Ancêtres (The House of the Ancestors) was released in 2000.
is too busy with other projects.
Another spin-off by Travis Charest and Zoran Janjetov.
Humanoids Publishing released 17 issues, published in 2000-2001. All were collected into censored trade paperbacks, with a fifth volume containing 4 short stories.
Science fantasy
Science fantasy is a mixed genre within speculative fiction drawing elements from both science fiction and fantasy. Although in some terms of its portrayal in recent media products it can be defined as instead of being a mixed genre of science fiction and fantasy it is instead a mixing of the...
comic
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
series relating the history of a dynasty
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers considered members of the same family. Historians traditionally consider many sovereign states' history within a framework of successive dynasties, e.g., China, Ancient Egypt and the Persian Empire...
of perfect warriors known as the Metabarons. The Metabarons series was written by creator Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky, known as Alejandro Jodorowsky, is a Chilean filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comic book writer and spiritual guru...
and illustrated by Argentinian
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
artist Juan Gimenez
Juan Gimenez
Juan Antonio Giménez López is an Argentine comic book artist.-Biography:Giménez López was born in Mendoza, Argentina...
. The series, published by Humanoïdes Associés, is complete, the last volume having been released at the end of 2003.
The first appearance of a Metabaron (chronologically the last of the Metabarons) was May 1981 in the Incal
The Incal
The Incal is a set of science fiction comic book series written in French by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius and others. The Incal takes place in, and introduced Jodorowsky's "Jodoverse", a fictional universe in which his science fiction comics take place.-List of main characters:*...
comic book series as a supporting character. This was followed by a series of prequels that concerned this character's origin, presented as the narration of the droid Tonto
Tonto (Metabarons)
Tonto is the fictional robot servant of the Castaka family since the time of Aghnar, and the narrator of their tale in the Metabarons comic book...
to the droid Lothar
Lothar (Metabarons)
Lothar is a fictional robot in the Metabarons universe. He is presented firstly being in service of the Metabaron , who asks Tonto to narrate to him of his master's history...
, of his masters' achievements. The series takes place over the course of several generations, and chronicles the life of each of the five Metabarons. The stories are characterized by science fantasy on an epic scale, a background against which a space opera
Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. The term has no relation to music and it is analogous to "soap...
reminiscent of Greek tragedy plays out. The stories are also heavily influenced by Frank Herbert's Dune
Dune universe
Dune is a science fiction franchise which originated with the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert. Considered by many to be the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Dune is frequently cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in history...
novels.
Rituals
Every Metabaron is in his youth mutilated by his father so that his endurance to pain is tested, and that he receives a powerful mechanical body part as a replacement for the destroyed limb - making every Metabaron a cyborgCyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
. The rite of succession is equally as cruel and uncompromising. In each generation, the son and heir must eventually face his father in a battle to the death. These battles have taken many forms, from hand-to-hand combat to dogfighting space duels. The rite of succession is only achieved once the cursed son succeeds in killing his father.
Patricide
Patricide is the act of killing one's father, or a person who kills his or her father. The word patricide derives from the Latin word pater and the Latin suffix -cida...
Bushitaka
The Bushitaka is the strict code of honorHonor code
An honour code or honour system is a set of rules or principles governing a community based on a set of rules or ideals that define what constitutes honorable behavior within that community. The use of an honor code depends on the idea that people can be trusted to act honorably...
followed by the Metabarons, profoundly influenced by the Japanese bushido
Bushido
, meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquely Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and...
. It demands that the practitioner dedicate themselves to victory in all things at any cost. Compromise is never an option, and the only alternative to victory is death. Bushitaka demands that the practitioner stifle all emotion, even to the point of sacrificing their own family members in the pursuit of total victory.
Metabaronic Weaponry
Each Metabaron draws upon an array of advanced weaponry. These include cybernetically-implanted lasers, nanotech nuclear warheads implanted in the body, swords which can disintegrate in bursts of flame, and advanced spaceships. Many of the Metabarons also exhibit powerful psychicPsychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
abilities.
The Dynasty
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
. A small tribe, ruled by Berard of Castaka, lives there. Their main export are huge blocks of marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
, which they cut with manual hyperlasers. Other than marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
, the planet possesses a material far more valuable: It's a blue, jelly-like substance, called epiphyte
Epiphyte
An epiphyte is a plant that grows upon another plant non-parasitically or sometimes upon some other object , derives its moisture and nutrients from the air and rain and sometimes from debris accumulating around it, and is found in the temperate zone and in the...
, whose properties defy the laws of gravity. The existence of the substance has been a sacred secret of the Castaka's for many generations. Until an accident happens and the secret must be sacrificed to save the life of Othon von Salza, the son-in-law of Baron Berard of Castaka. Shortly after being saved, Othon expressed his dismay as the secret was sacrificed to save his life. With this, Berard knew Othon was worthy to inherit the spirit living in every Castakan. Not long after the news got spread about the epiphyte
Epiphyte
An epiphyte is a plant that grows upon another plant non-parasitically or sometimes upon some other object , derives its moisture and nutrients from the air and rain and sometimes from debris accumulating around it, and is found in the temperate zone and in the...
, the planet's orbit becomes a battlefield with the treacherous Imperial Black Endoguard as the victors. Eager to seize the epiphyte for themselves, they drop their ground troops. The tribesmen are outnumbered, yet they fight rather than surrender. Othon breaks his son Bari's legs so he won't get himself killed in the fight. When the battle comes to its end, Othon is the only one still standing and, together with Bari, the only survivor of the Castaka tribe. The Imperial couple, rulers of the known galaxy, are astonished by the achievement of Othon and rewards him. Othon shows them where the epiphyte was hidden in exchange for a reasonable percentage of the new market for anti-G Technology, a new planet to which their palace would be transferred to stone by stone and most importantly a gift for his son intended to restore the joy his broken legs took away. The emperor gives him a horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
, an extinct species brought back with genetic manipulation
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...
. The gift did not go unnoticed. On their new planet, pirates invade and steal the horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
. Othon goes after them and kills them one by one. But due to the fog, he accidentally kills his son. In his grief and carelesness, he is shot from behind, which leaves him castrated. Now Othon is without an heir and apparently shall remain so forever.
Othon, devastated, turns his back on pure martial arts
Martial arts
Martial arts are extensive systems of codified practices and traditions of combat, practiced for a variety of reasons, including self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, as well as mental and spiritual development....
and invests a large part of his fortune in the development of the first metabaronic weapons. He also began the tradition of cybernetic
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
implants, by incorporating a multi-protonic pelvis
Pelvis
In human anatomy, the pelvis is the lower part of the trunk, between the abdomen and the lower limbs .The pelvis includes several structures:...
. Othon becomes a mercenary of extraordinary skill and power. By destroying 100,000 pirate vessels by himself he and all of his descendants are rewarded with the title of Metabaron, the greatest warrior in the galaxy. The Imperial couple vow that they will search throughout the galaxy to find a gift that will make him feel like a man again. Later, a woman named Honorata arrives at his palace, giving herself to Othon. Honorata says she can bear him a child if places a drop of his blood in her uterus
Uterus
The uterus or womb is a major female hormone-responsive reproductive sex organ of most mammals including humans. One end, the cervix, opens into the vagina, while the other is connected to one or both fallopian tubes, depending on the species...
. Two of Othon's servants get jealous and try to commit suicide, taking the pregnant Honorata with them. They jump off a tower but Othon is quick enough to inject a potion of epiphyte
Epiphyte
An epiphyte is a plant that grows upon another plant non-parasitically or sometimes upon some other object , derives its moisture and nutrients from the air and rain and sometimes from debris accumulating around it, and is found in the temperate zone and in the...
into Honorata with a dart gun, letting her hover away. The potion hit her in her belly, infecting the baby, Aghnar von Salza. Othon is disgusted as he thinks his son will never be a good warrior, being weightless. He exiled him and lets Honorata train him by herself. When Aghnar is seven years old, he comes back to his father to show he has what it takes to be a true warrior. Othon made him a machine to fight with. When Aghnar defeats it Othon accepts him and continues his training. Honorata then confesses she was meant to give birth to a hermaphrodite
Hermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...
instead of a son. She was sent to this planet by the priestesses of Shabda-Oud, as it was propheted
Prophecy
Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...
that she would bear a perfect being. Because she didn't comply, the Shabda-Oud triggered the micro-H bombs implanted in her heart, destroying the whole planet with her. She warned Othon and Aghnar soon enough for them to escape. Othon was dying from a lung infection. For him to be sure his son was strong and worthy enough to avenge his mother, he forced Aghnar to fight him to death. Hereby Aghnar seized the title of Metabaron for himself. Unbeknownst to him, Honorata had saved herself using her psychic abilities.
The sole human in a hostile world, Aghnar rescues and befriends a single ape creature, and becomes its tribe's messiah. He then proceeds to take over a passing Shabda-Oud cetacyborg battleship with which to carry out his vengeance. However, he is sidetracked by the Cetacyborg's crew's original objective: to capture Princess Oda, in order to use her for the sisterhood's breeding experiments. Awed by a single hologram of the royal heir, as well as seeing an opportunity to better infiltrate their stronghold, the young metabaron successfully set out to conquer her heart. After a spectacular psychic confrontation with the sisterhood, Oda suffered debilitating injuries. Honorata revealed herself to her son then, and offered to use her psychic abilities to heal Oda. Oda, apparently healed, conceived with Aghnar a son. However, it was eventually discovered that Oda's soul was destroyed, and Honorata had transferred her consciousness into Oda's body. Disgusted with his act of incest, Aghnar shot his child in the head.
Oda/Honorata could not bear to see her son/grandson slain. She fashioned a cybernetic head for the child, who would then be known as Steelhead. Like Aghnar, she trained Steelhead to become a perfect warrior. Steelhead was cruel and merciless, and returned to confront and kill his father Aghnar, in the process murdering his mother. When he attended the imperial court to claim the title of Metabaron, Steelhead was confronted by the Princess Doña Vicenta, who claimed that a soulless machine who did not know love would never be able to conceive children worthy of the title of Metabaron. Angry, Steelhead took on this insult as a challenge, and set out to discover the meaning of love. His quest took him to the disembodied head of Zaran Krleza, the last poet in the galaxy. United in body and head (but somehow maintaining individual personas), Steelhead and Zaran become Melmoth. This new being declares Doña Vicenta as the object of his affections, and promptly resurrects her father along with a rare, titanic tree (both of which had been destroyed by steelhead himself in a contract). Dona was wooed, but the clone of her father, mad and taken over with a furious, incestuous desire for Vicenta, attempted to violate her. Melmoth interceded, but then was confronted with the whole army at the behest of the clone-king. Vicenta, in a self-sacrificing symbolic gesture, tore out her eyes and handed them over to her father-replica. Reminded of who he is, he backs down and calls off his troops, and Melmoth and Doña Vicenta marry. On their wedding night, Melmoth discovers that Tonto, his robotic servant, repaired her eyesight by vulgarily implanting her with horrid cybernetic sensors. Disgusted, Melmoth shunned her, and Steelhead reasserted himself, taunting and accusing Zaran of being little else than a horny old goat. Frustrated, Zaran took a plasma pistol to his head, and thus Melmoth was no more. Steelhead, however, was fine, and nevertheless took care of his bride. She was pregnant with twins, but they were deformed in the womb and would both die unless Steelhead intervened. Even then, he could only save one. Vicenta was adamant about allowing the girl to live, believing that she would be the host to Melmoth's spirit, but was only too aware of steelhead's need for a male heir. Out of love and duty, Steelhead compromised: He removed the male twin's brain and implanted it in the female child's skull, and both parents would have the heirs they desired.
The androgynous Aghora would be trained as a warrior by Steelhead, and eventually faced his/her father in single combat. After taking his/her place as Metabaron, Aghora became a mercenary warrior, as his/her fathers had been. Aghora eventually wished for an heir, but was unwilling to mate with another man. Instead, he/she extracted the male cells from his/her own brain and implanted them in his/her womb, thereby creating a male clone
Cloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
, in a procedure that Tonto described as 'autoincest'. It was this child who would eventually become the Nameless Metabaron who continues to reign in the "present" issues of Incal.
In the last chapter of the saga Sans-Nom, le dernier Méta-Baron, Lothor, the faithful droid to whom Tonto is relating the Metabaronic lore in the frame narration is revealed as Steelhead himself: due to his purely mechanic nature, he had replaced every single organ in his body with syntethic equivalents, becoming able to survive in the open space when Aghora jettisoned him. Recovering his personality, but not his full memories, after a brief confrontation in which he gives Nameless the iconic scarring in his eyebrow, he allies himself with a vampiric creature to enact his vengeance over his nameless descendant.
Ultimately, he repents, sacrificing his life for the Universe's sake: however, his machinations are enough to drop Nameless into a deep state of depression. Realizing how his whole ancestry was trapped into a spiral of hatred and death, he has himself sterilized, unwilling to raise a son to follow in his cursed footsteps, and wallows in self-pity until the Spirit of the Castaka family, embodied by the mark on his chest, appears to him in a vision, prompting Nameless to become a force for good, protecting life whenever he can.
With this new mission the Metabaron, now the last of his kind, becomes the unstoppable mercenary featured in the Incal.
La Caste des Méta-Barons
- Othon le Trisaïeul - (Othon the Great-Great-Grandfather) (1992)
- Honorata la Trisaïeule - (Honorata the Great-Great-Grandmother) (1993)
- Aghnar le Bisaïeul - (Aghnar the Great-Grandfather) (1995)
- Oda la Bisaïeule - (Oda the Great-Grandmother) (1997)
- Tête-D'Acier l'Aîeul - (Steelhead the Grandfather) (1998)
- Doña Vicenta Gabriela de Rokha l'Aïeule - (Doña Vicenta Gabriela de Rokha the Grandmother) (1999)
- Aghora le Père-Mère - (Aghora the Father-Mother) (2002)
- Sans Nom, le Dernier des Métabarons - (Nameless, the Last of the Metabarons) (2003)
A special volume, containing interviews with Jodorowsky and Gimenez as well as sketches, unseen art, and a short story concerning one of the Metabaron's ancestors, called La Maison des Ancêtres (The House of the Ancestors) was released in 2000.
Castaka
This is a spin-off of the original series, it will consist of three albums. The artwork is by Das Pastoras because Juan GiménezJuan Gimenez
Juan Antonio Giménez López is an Argentine comic book artist.-Biography:Giménez López was born in Mendoza, Argentina...
is too busy with other projects.
- Dayal, le Premier Ancêtre - (Dayal, the First Ancestor) (2007)
Les Armes du Meta-Baron
- Les Armes du Meta-Baron - (The weapons of the Metabarons)
Another spin-off by Travis Charest and Zoran Janjetov.
English
All the main French albums were reprinted in English in their original version by Humanoids. These include:- Othon & Honorata (136 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-401203-62-0)
- Aghnar & Oda (136 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-401203-81-7)
- Steelhead & Doña Vicenta (136 pages, 2005, ISBN 1-401206-42-5)
- Aghora & The Last Metabaron (128 pages, 2010, ISBN 1-594650-01-2)
Humanoids Publishing released 17 issues, published in 2000-2001. All were collected into censored trade paperbacks, with a fifth volume containing 4 short stories.
- Path of the Warrior (collects #1-5, 152 pages, 2001, ISBN 1-930652-47-X)
- Blood and Steel (collects #6-10, 136 pages, 2003, ISBN 1-930652-24-0)
- Poet and Killer (collects #11-14, 112 pages, 2002, ISBN 1-930652-23-2)
- Immaculate Conception (collects #15-17, 80 pages, 2003, ISBN 1-930652-93-3)
- Alpha/Omega (One-shot; collects The Crest of Castaka, The Last Metabaron, Incal: The Lost Pages, and a reworked version of Incal: The Lost Pages)]], 48 pages, 2002, ISBN 1-930652-41-0)