What if nature was the best way to solve the climate crisis? The Carthago series shows that the seabed holds secrets that can eliminate overpopulation and it is not volume 14 that will deny this assertion …
Carthago or the world of the past future
This volume of Carthago published by Les Humanoïdes Associés marks the end of the diptych of the Brawler, around a giant shark. Screenwriter Christophe Bec, cartoonist Ennio Bufi and colorist Andrea Meloni extend volume thirteen and broaden their description of an Earth plunged into a post-apocalyptic world.
Lou Melville has just saved a monk who was jumping into the water. Caught up in a mystical madness, he was going to offer himself as a sacrifice to a giant shark. She does not understand what is happening. Victim of a diving accident, the young woman was saved by a group of Catholic monks who installed her in their refuge on a former marine station. However, Lou is not the worst off and, on the contrary, she seems to be the last to keep her sanity. Several monks chant the name of a prehistoric shark, the megalodon Abzu. In a dystopian universe of Carthago, nature has crushed humanity. Shreds of civilization persist but, like this community of monks, these survivors gradually return to savagery. Nature becomes a religion again because the monks return to paganism with a totem animal, here it is a giant shark. The reader feels a strong medieval influence in the description of the religious community. The series then goes from real to science fiction dystopia inspired by heroic fantasy.
Carthago is also an ecological anthem. The previous volume showed the destruction caused to human beings. Here, the reader understands that humans do not dominate wildlife. The violence of the animals of Carthago is a reflection of that of men. This can be seen in the drawings of Ennio Bufi. His realistic style, in line with his work on Vance's XIII , impresses with its precision. Some underwater scenes are reminiscent of scenes from Jaws. Bufi impresses the reader with his representation of the gigantic size of the shark. This blockbuster aspect is found in a series of several double pages, worthy of the most beautiful disaster movie. The layout is also much more modern. No page chooses the waffle iron but rectangular boxes of different sizes. However, reading is always easy
A closed door in the open sea 
For two volumes, Carthago describes a group locked on a station in the open sea. They took refuge there to flee the contaminated land. This monastery shows us a double confinement: a geographical closed door because we can not leave the resort but also religious because the least live in rupture of the outside world. This rejection causes a feeling of oppression and contaminates the thoughts of the occupants of the station. Indeed, there is a conspiracy among the Dominican monks. Even among these believers, Christianity is overwhelmed by the new context. A neo-pagan movement exists in secret and, becoming more and more numerous, it wants to take power.
In this new volume of Carthago, the conflict becomes open and blood flows as community leaders seek the secret place of Abzu's worship. The prior was overwhelmed when the division within his community resulted in a pitched battle. Peaceful monks became pagan savages. Tension rises with the arrival of a third group, pirates from the continent. These brutes are looking for a treasure hidden in the resort.
These conflicts are an opportunity for the screenwriter Christophe Bec to embark on a reflection on Christianity. Lou is an atheist. For her, the afterlife is like a deep ocean: a nothingness.The different themes are transmitted in a few words in this volume because the essential goes through the drawing
This first volume of the new cycle of Carthago offers an intimate story built around the discovery of an island of survivors threatened from the inside. This sequel broadens the horizon by switching into an impressive blockbuster and even totally delightful by the drawings. A new cycle emerges in the last part: Lou can talk to the shark by thought.
Find on our site, the chronicle of the previous volume as well as the continuation of the mythical series of Meta-barons at the same publisher
