Farewell, Father

Farewell, Father is the first issue of Before the Incal. It's divided in three chapters. This issue introduces John's parents: his mother and Oliver DiFool. It also shows how John first met Deepo and Kolbo-5.

It was published in 1988 by Les Humanoïdes Associés. It was written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Zoran Janjetov.

Suicide Alley
The young John DiFool and his gang of friends (Skeya, Horlando, Lolocruz and Ubedah) spend their time in the lower levels of the City Shaft trying to get money from groups of rich aristos visiting the city's clubs. DiFool's mother, works at one of them: the Daredevil Club. She's a prostitute addicted to the drug amorine, which the dealer Snailhead,a mutant, supplies to her. One day she informs his son that John's father, Oliver DiFool, is gointg to be released from cybo-prison.

Later that night, John and his friends go to a homeo-brothel, where DiFool is reluctant to select a homeo-whore. As a prank, his friends choose the most ugly looking one for him, but John ends up losing his virgintiy to her to prove his masculinity.

After getting out of the brothel repulsed by his actions he encounters a concrete seagull mother protecting his child from some pestering kids. The mother, badly beaten, gives his seagull kid to John, which he adopts and names Deepo. As morning settles he encounters his dad, who is now out of prison and immediately convinces his son to help him with a criminal scheme. They plan to use neurolograms to make counterfeit haloes, so that they can blend into the great aristo ball that night, and snatch their jewels with a vacuum hose while disguised. Meanwhile, John’s mother becomes concerned when Snailhead informs her that the mutants' secret amorine lab was recently torched, so there’ll be a shortage of amorine for the rest of the year. In the face of the drug scarcity she decides to commit suicide. The aristos are having the party at level one, and the Prezident is attending in his latest clonage, a blue hermit. Suddenly, a wave of suicide starts in Suicide Alley; the aristos rejoice and start shooting the jumpers and peeing on them. One of the jumpers who’s killed is John’s mother, which shocks John. Suddenly the neuro-batteries start to fail and he and his father are discovered. John manages to escape, but his father doesn't make it and is arrested. After basically losing both of his parents in the same day, he gives the stolen jewels to some kids and contemplates running away.

Farewell, Father
The teflo-metal building housing the genetic farmer’s market explodes. The fire-fighting cybo-cops arrive on the scene and the Psycho-anarchist group Antar Mauna is blamed for it. John and his gang of friends use the commotion to break into a drug and SPV shop, where they get high. John learns through the holovid news that as a result of his father arrest, Oliver will have to choose between the morgue-wall or being “remodeled” into a hunchback as a punishment. Distressed by all the event going on in his life, John decides to go to Suicide Alley and jump (with Deepo taped to his chest). Just when he's about to commit suicide a mob appears and tells him that the Prezident’s last clonage has trapped him in the rotting body of an Andromedan dwarf, and that the hunchbacks and Techno-technos are about to slaughter each other. The mob wants to storm the upper levels, and they swarm across the docking platform demanding the surrender of the Prezidential Floating Palace. As a result, a delegation of negotiation is set up between aristos and Techno-technos ministers, the Metabaron and a group of Psycho-anarchist leaders, each one bidding for the talents of the Metabaron. Meanwhile, the Techno-technos scientists buy time by preparing a new Prezidential cloning.

Indifferent to everything that's going on, DiFool jumps down Suicide Alley with Deepo, but Snailhead saves him by catching with his long sticky tongue. Snailhead explains to him that her mother’s condition was actually incurable because she had the meropa virus, and that amorine was the only thing keeping her alive. Since Snailhead promised to take care of John he takes him to the Mutant GTO, where he also has a holovid message from her. Meanwhile, the Metabaron (payed off by the aristos) clears the docking platform of protestors.

Snailhead has acquired a tourist pass for John so that he can enter the Mutant GTO. Once inside, Snailhead explains to John that he actually works as a priest there, preaching the teaching of the holy white flower at the Neuro-emotional Church, which will be DiFool’s new home. Snailhead shows him the message her mother recorded before commiting suicide, where she asks John to remember her as a woman who found inner godliness through meditation and that she hopes to be her guide in her next incarnation, and that he needs to discover the secret of the amorose.Snailhead also explains the workings of the Neuro-emotional cult to John: Following the teachings of the Minotaur-prophet, the amorine is extracted from flowers, by implanting the seeds in the heart of people who are in prolonged state of near death. Thus, the flower grows by feeding on the bodies of faithful volunteers for a whole year, creating the amorine, a drug the will help human rediscover love. One of the volunteers for this undertaking is Bandtiih, a mutant girl John falls in love with.

In the meantime, under the supervision of the Techno-pope and the Metabaron the Techno-techno scientists successfully clone the prezident into a new body, The Techno-technos blame the Prezident’s virus on a mutant (despite the fact that the mutant claims he only injected the Prezident with amorine). After the mutant is executed, the Prezident declares open season in the mutant sector for the hunchback army.

Bantiih is kissing John when the hunchbacks appear. The hunchbacks massacre the mutants and rape Bantiih to death, although the press covers up everything by saying that the mutants were planning to poison the population. The army sets their eyes on raping John, and one of the hunchbacks captures him. However, the hunchback reveals himself to actually be Oliver, who has been remodeled into a hunchback. Oliver, aware that his last memories will be wiped away shortly, saves John by allowing him to escape.

Professor Kolbo-5, cybo-cop
John and his friends hide out in the Genetic Factory waste dump, where there's only Robo-cleaners and concrete seagulls in sight. John has a plan to get back The Prezident: He hides one of his father’s inventions (an explosive) in a fish, which then gives to Deepo. Moments later, Deepo drops the explosive in the middle of one of the Prezident’s campaigns promoting the war effort against Mega-mex. The attack on the Prezident reveals that the Prezident had actually sent a robot in his place, which enrages the crowd, ensuing another massacre. John tries to save a seemingly injured woman from the crowd, but the woman is actually part of a lesbian criminal gang, who kidnaps him. Right when he’s about to be castrated Koblo-5 appears, a deteriorated cybo-cop, who's pretending to be a real on-duty cybo-cop, they quickly become friends.

Other issues

 * 1) Farewell, Father (1988)
 * 2) Class "R" Detective (1990)
 * 3) Croot (1991)
 * 4) Psycho Anarchist (1992)
 * 5) Vhisky, SPV and Homeo-Whores (1993)
 * 6) Suicide Alley (1995)