BILAL - Lot 102

BILAL ENKI BILAL Exterminateur 17, Les Humanoïdes Associés 1979 Original plate no. 13, prepublished in Métal Hurlant no. 11, November 1976. Signed. India ink and graphite on paper 33.5 × 44 cm (13.19 × 17.32 in.) For Métal Hurlant in 1977, Bilal's arrival was a real coup! At the time he drew Exterminateur 17, he was a rising star on the French comics scene. He had just completed La Ville qui n'existait pas in Pilote, and was about to draw Les Phalanges de l'ordre noir, based on a script by Christin. His drawing has reached maturity, and Métal has an irrepressible attraction for him: Tardi and Mézières have already joined the skiff. And it was the magazine's own helmsman, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, who proposed the script. Bilal's drawing reaches its full potential, matching the dexterity of Moebius's drawing-writing, to which he adds, in this silent panel, an audacious sense of composition and inking that perfectly transcribes the materials, from organic to mineral. In a battle in which androids are ruthlessly sacrificed by a creator blinded by his own power, the android-warrior prototype Exterminator 17 emerges, black-eyed. A sequence that marked Katsuhiro Otomo - notably for Akira - as well as Ridley Scott and Michael Mann. A piece of history.