After the Incal

After the Incal is a one issue graphic novel, which is part of The Incal saga. It was published by Les Humanoïdes Associés in 2000. It was written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius (Jean Giraud), who hadn't worked together since Le Coeur couronné in 1992. It was colored by Fred Beltran (who had already worked on Megalex with Jodorowsky).

The story of After the Incal was meant to be continued in other issues, but Moebius left the project after the first one was completed. The basic plot of After the Incal was eventually rebooted for Final Incal. Les Humanoïdes Associés would later repurpose the three issues of Final Incal to "complete" the story of After the Incal.

Overview
After the Incal is an unfinished sequel to ''The Incal. ''It was meant to have more than one issue, but only the first one was completed. The New Dream begins exactly were The Incal had left off, with John DiFool falling down Suicide Alley. However, it's quickly revealed that all the events of The Incal had been a dream. Moebius wasn't interested in continuing illustrating After the Incal, so the project was left on hold. Eventually, Jodorowsky decided to "retell" the story of The New Dream in the first 50 pages of the first issue of Final Incal.
 * 1) The New Dream (2000)

Repurposed sequels
With the aim of "completing" the unfinished series, eleven years after the release of The New Dream, the publisher Les Humanoïdes Associés repurposed several pages from The Four John DiFools (2008) as well as the second and third issues -Luz De Garra (2011) and Gorgo the Foul (2014)- to release After the Incal as a trilogy of three tomes, which works as an alternative take on the same basic plot. Currently this repurposed edition has only been published in french.

Main Characters

 * John DiFool
 * Deepo
 * Elohim
 * Benthacodon
 * Techno-pope
 * The Prezident

Differences between The New Dream and The Four John DiFools
In After the Incal the events of The Incal seem to have taken place inside one of John’s dream, essentially rendering them nonexistent. When After the Incal was eventually abandoned Jodorowsky realized that he wasn't content with the dream concept, so he scrapped it. Thus, in Final Incal the basic plot points of The New Dream remain, but instead of considering the events of The Incal a dream Final Incal takes place in a different reality, the one Orh projected John into at the end of The Fifth Essence: Planet DiFool. Either way, both continuations seem to negate the loop-like structure of The Incal.

Although After the Incal and Final Incal seem to contradict each other, the publisher Les Humanoïdes Associés has said that both works "coexist as two variants". Either way, it could be argued that the events of After the Incal are simply taking place in a parallel universe (The New Dream hints at the existence of multiple realities and The Four John DiFools actually shows DiFools from different dimensions), or that everything that happens in After the Incal is itself a dream (the title The New Dream might suggest this, and DiFool also wonders if he's dreaming).

In any case, these are the main differences between The New Dream and The Four John DiFools:
 * In After the Incal metallic spiders appear in the corpses of the infected people, while in Final Incal only a small piece of coal remains. Final Incal seems to rework the idea of robotic spiders with the Goungas.


 * In After the Incal Elohim takes the form of a blonde little girl, a shape-shifting robot and Kolbo-5, which doesn’t happen in Final Incal.


 * In After the Incal the Meca-prezident gives Deepo the ability to talk, which doesn’t happen in Final Incal.


 * In Final Incal the war is more clearly divided into metallic robots against bio-creatures, while in After the Incal the metallic robots are fighting scarabs that are Bio-techno.


 * In After the Incal Elohim is a female being, while in Final Incal is male.
 * In Final Incal the aristos seem to be less willing to be cloned into metal bodies.


 * Everything that happens after John is launched into space doesn’t appear in After the Incal, unless it is read as part of the trilogy released by Les Humanoïdes Associés (See: repurposed sequels)