444 NIKOPOL TRILOGY, THE
NIKOPOL TRILOGY, THE. Th e Nikopol Trilogy is a 170-page science-fi ction comic by
the Belgrade born Parisian artist Enki Bilal (1951–). It consists of three comics (created
originally in French): La Foire aux Immortels (literally “Th e Carnival of Immortals” but
published in English as Gods in Chaos ) of 1980, La Femme piège ( Th e Woman Trap )
of 1986 and fi nally Froid Équateur ( Equator Cold ) of 1992. Th e French title Tr i l o g i e
Nikopol dates from 1995 when the French publisher Les Humanoïdes Associés collected
the three stories in one volume, which was not Bilal’s intention because he wanted every
part to be quite diff erent. Consequently there are three more or less separate stories but
with various links among them: for instance, some characters as Nikopol, his son Niko,
and the rebelling Egyptian god Horus reappear. Th e action moves from Paris in the fi rst
part, to London and Berlin in the second part, and fi nally to Africa in the last story.
Th e fi rst part, La Foire aux Immortels , originally serialized in the French comics
monthly Pilote , was a major step in Bilal’s development as an artist, because it was the
fi rst time he drew and wrote a long story by himself and it was the fi rst completely
done in what has been called direct coloring. From then on Bilal would continue to
use this technique of fully-painted-artwork in his comics and illustration work—except
for his most recent album Animal’z (2009). In fact, this style would make him widely
respected. In general Bilal’s color scheme has a rather monochromatic feeling, as it is
built around greys, but on the other hand a few prominent colored patches (foremost in
yellow or red) show up now and then. Together with this somber palette of grey tones
his baroque, decadent fi ctional worlds would become his trademark, not only in his
comics but also in his other artistic work (illustrations, paintings, set design, fi lms). At
the time of the fi rst publication, Europe was still in a rather gloomy atmosphere: the
Cold War had been heated up by the installations of new nuclear arms, while the oil
crisis of the 1970s provoked an economic recession with old industries closing down,
causing skyrocketing unemployment. Th e idea of a pessimistic future was not solely
shared by punks but also by artists in larger circles of Western European culture. For
instance European comics saw a remarkable boom of post-cataclysmic stories (e.g.,
Howard’s & Ezquerra’s Judge Dredd , Auclair’s Simon de la Fleuve , Hermann’s Jeremiah ).
In the fi rst part of the Nikopol Trilogy , readers learn that two nuclear wars were fought
between 1990 and 2023, and that a fascist regime had been installed in Paris. Except
for the male elite that is allowed to live in the center, the 2023 Paris is a rather disas-
trous place, in spite of some technological progress (new fl ying devices) it is clearly a
world in decay. Th ough it all looks extremely grim and dark, Bilal injects some humor-
ous elements, such as the Egyptian gods playing the famous board game Monopoly, or
the unrelentingly procreating greyish fl ying “angels.” Sources of inspiration for Bilal are
multiple: from Baudelaire’s poetry (which is often quoted by Nikopol) to the Egyptian
gods of Roger Zelazny’s science fi ction novel Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969).
Th e comic struck a chord among adult readers and was an immediate critical and
commercial success in France. When the second part was published, six years after
the fi rst, Bilal was already an acclaimed and well-known artist; La Femme piège was
