Old Testament In The Old West: A Second ‘Sons Of El Topo’ Analysis
by Tito W. James
In my initial review for Sons of El Topo Vol. 3, I noted that Volume 1 was out of print. I can understand why Volume 1 underperformed upon its initial release — the first volume follows Cain who’s just as unsavory of a character as the protagonist in Son of the Gun. However, I believe that the series is best read and understood as a complete set. I hope that if there’s interest in recent volumes that Volume 1 will get a reprint, or that a collected edition of all three volumes will be released. Now that I’ve acquired all three volumes, I thought it would be best to look at the Sons of El Topo saga as a whole.
Sons of El Topo is an odyssey of the bizarre as much as a retelling of the Old Testament in the Old West. The brilliance of Sons of El Topo is that it embraces the mythological and epic scope of ancient tales while breaking down arbitrary barriers of genre and dogmatic tradition. This is a spiritual story that on the surface is nothing like its source of inspiration but hits the truth at the bloody core of these characters.
Even secular readers, like myself, can recognize the archetypal figures of Cain, Able, Lucifer, the Wrathful Heavenly Father, and the Whore of Babylon. The new setting of a surreal western does more to communicate the harsh and unforgiving world of the Old Testament than any sanitized “Sunday School” rendition of these myths.
The depictions of violence against women are the most challenging to read– but the historical and mythological basis for these scenes justifies the graphic nature of the comic. Reading the comic becomes especially disturbing once you realize how much violence against women is canonical within many sacred texts. It’s enough to make one wonder how society would change if women’s voices and bodies were considered as sacred as any scripture.
The writings of Alejandro Jodorowsky have been consistently critical of religious zealotry while also celebrating the spiritual power of mythology. Sons of El Topo is mono-mythic not because it follows a hackneyed story structure, but because the world uses elements from various genres, myths, and aesthetic traditions and weaves them into something new.
Readers’ engagement with Sons of El Topo depends on what flavor of mythology they like. Perhaps it takes a Sexploitation Acid Western aesthetic to get secular readers to engage with Biblical characters. If your flavor of mythology includes duel-wielding tommy-guns in a Christ-pose while riding a horse into an army of banditos wearing cherub wings– Sons of El Topo is for you!
Sons of El Topo is now available from BOOM! Studios/Archaia.
