Napoleon, inside the pyramid of Cheops in some vignettes from 'The Immortal Pyramid'.
It's not every day you see Napoleon encased in the sarcophagus in the King's chamber at the heart of the Great Pyramid.
It is an image that the many readers of
The Immortal Pyramid
, the popular novel by Javier Sierra that recreates from fiction the general's historic overnight stay during the conquest of Egypt, have had to mentally represent, but that now materializes in the spectacular section central to the graphic novel created with the same title by the screenwriter Salva Rubio and the cartoonist Cesc Dalmases (with the color of Roger Surroca), and published by Norma Editorial.
It is the first time that a Sierra novel has been turned into a comic.
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Alone inside the Great Pyramid
The writer and the authors of the album presented the work on Tuesday in Barcelona, in an act that had its pertinently esoteric moment when Sierra spoke of the occasion in which he himself spent a night as an intruder in the Great Pyramid, in 1997, and a an unexpected gust of air has opened a window and fluttered paper like ibises or mummy bandages.
It seemed like the prelude to an entry by Arnold Vosloo's Imhotep in
The Mummy.
“Signs”, Sierra has mused.
The comic, which begins with Bonaparte (an unusually bearded Bonaparte) inside Khufu's sarcophagus and wondering how he got to be trapped alone, "in the belly of the oldest building on earth", follows the story quite faithfully. novel, adapting, yes, to the language of vignettes.
a
flash back
Bonaparte takes us back to a night of love with Josephine and to a visit to a mathematician-astrologer who tells him about rebirth and immortality and puts him on the trail of the Count of Saint-Germain.
The story continues with the brilliant career of the young soldier, the Egyptian campaign and strange conspiracies, showing in parallel the official story and a secret story that involves Bonaparte's wise men, the local forces, the Templars, the Copts, the Freemasons, the gods of Ancient Egypt, and a dancer who in some vignettes, wrapped in transparencies, suggests the sculptural promiscuity of Patricia Velásquez's Anck-su-namun, that myth.
In the itinerary we will not only see the Corsican in the pyramid, but bathing naked in a pool (with the dancer) and metamorphosed into Horus facing Seth.
“I really enjoyed drawing”, explained Dalmases, who with Carlos Santamaría adapted
Victus,
by Albert Sanchez Pinol.
“Making historical characters and turning them into comic book heroes is always very interesting, you have to use documentation but at the same time ensure that the comic has its own style”.
One of the challenges, he has pointed out, has been to draw some monuments —the Sphinx, the pyramids of Giza or the Luxor temple— that were not there during Napoleon's visit as they can be seen today.
Dalmases has considered that the result is "magical" and allows the reader to obtain new knowledge: "That's why I like adapting historical novels so much".
The fact of putting Napoleon with "great hair" and a beard in part of the story, the cartoonist has said that it was a way of "heroing" him as the protagonist of an adventure story like Indiana Jones.
Of the hair he has pointed out that it is that of the young Bonaparte, triumphant on the Arcole bridge and painted by Gros,
Vignettes from 'The Immortal Pyramid'.
Sierra has highlighted a "lysergic" page of the album, after Napoleon took a potion to prepare his initiation, and the use of unusual colors to show narrative inflections.
Also, the combat of the gods, resolved in a spectacular melee between the falcon and the jackal, and the appearance of cameos such as that of the father of Alexander Dumas, the mulatto "black general" who commanded Bonaparte's cavalry in Egypt.
But, above all, he has praised the central dropdown, “like a
pop-up
of our childhood, impossible to transpose to the digital world”, which extends the incident within the corridors and galleries of the Great Pyramid and manages to convey the physical sensation of awe and overwhelm that causes being in the bowels of the monument.
He has emphasized that the comic respects the geography of the pyramid, although his enthusiasm has led Dalmases to paint a door that does not really exist.
The project, explained Sierra, was born from a dinner with the cartoonist Rubén González and the writer Nacho Ares in which they considered why not adapt some of their novels to comics.
González contacted Norma and it turned out that the general director of the publishing house, Óscar Valiente, was the brother of Javier Sierra's fellow student at Vinaroz's high school in Vinaroz, Ángel Valiente, with whom the novelist had drawn comics as a child (during math class, you specified).
After searching for an artist and screenwriter and deciding that
The Immortal Pyramid
was "the funniest" of all his novels, the project has required three years to come to fruition.
Regarding his relationship with comics, Sierra, who has confessed that his first book, at the age of 14, was a hundred pages of vignettes with a UFO story, has declared himself a fan of Asterix, the vizier Iznoguz, Spirou and especially Blake and Mortimer, by Jacobs, who precisely have the famous adventure
The Mystery of the Great Pyramid.
She has also indicated as an influence the comics of Martin Mystère, the detective of the impossible, by Alfredo Castelli.
Sierra thinks that other novels of hers could be translated well into comics, such as
The Lost Angel
and
The Secret Dinner
.
He also doesn't rule out directly writing a story for the genre.
Spectacular vignette of 'The immortal pyramid' comic version of Javier Sierra's novel.
From his own experience inside the Great Pyramid and if it has helped the adaptation to the comic, he has recalled that it was an "illegal" adventure, since overnight permits were not given in the pyramid, although he has clarified that 1997 were other times.
He was inside for seven hours, at night, alone, with the pyramid closed.
He was a journalist at the time and wanted to write a report on Napoleon's stay.
“I had such a bad time, so much fear, that I didn't write anything, it wasn't until 2001 that I made the first version of
The Immortal Pyramid
to exorcise that memory from fiction.
Paraphrasing Napoleon himself at the exit of the pyramid, Sierra has said that what happened inside him “even if I told you, you wouldn't believe it”.
The album includes an epilogue by Sierra in which he explains the real or fictional adventures of other overnight stays like himself and Napoleon.
The cartoonist Dalmases has remembered that he was inside the Great Pyramid years ago (although he did not stay to sleep), but he does not have very clear memories —his partner at the time kept the photos—.
"I remember the fascination and oppression in the hallway, and coming out the feeling of being reborn, coming out of a womb."
Sierra has left open the possibility of a second part of
The Immortal Pyramid
based on Napoleon's son in Egypt.
"I'm still excited."
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