Review by Ian Keogh

After spending six years completing the epic three volumes of Salammbô, Philippe Druillet intended to reconvene with Jacques Lob and produce a sequel to Delirius. Work began, but Lob’s 1990 death placed the project in limbo, with Druillet concentrating on other worlds for a long time thereafter. It left Lone Sloane hanging in space recovering from his intended death, but even when Druillet returned to his signature hero it wasn’t a fully original story, but the adaptation of a 1987 film script. By 1999 Druillet realised the film was never going to be made, and Chaos evolved.

He begins with Sloane having been missing for a decade, during which his old enemy Imperator Shaan has relished his absence. What’s immediately noticeable is how fully Druillet has embraced the possibilities of digital technology, of which he was an enthusiastic early adopter with mixed results. The opening pages of Chaos are filled with multiple images of shopped in old trains. This is surely an extension of his artistic sensibilities, so why draw every rivet on multiple old locomotives if technology permits their instant appearance on a page? Thankfully it’s a technique sparingly used, and most of Chaos is freehand.

Exactly whether Sloane is dead or alive is a mystery kept brewing. Shaan believes he’s located the corpse lying within an ornate sarcophagus on a planet where the treasures of the universe are acquisitively gathered by powerful beings. He wants the sarcophagus transported to him, and entrusts the task to a sycophantic commander who employs hundreds of troops to parade the sarcophagus in what’s a symbolic gesture of power. There is surely no expectation that Sloane will fail to be revived in a graphic novel bearing his name, and by halfway through he’s returned, in actuality if not entirely in spirit.

For all the grandiose nature of Shaan’s extravagance, Chaos is a strangely subdued affair. Whereas once the art was on such an impressive scale, here it’s so often forced into small, some miniscule panels, and whereas Kevin O’Neill was so obviously influenced by Druillet, it now seems as if he’s been looking at O’Neill’s work, especially Nemesis. As mentioned in the introduction, Snowpiercer by his old collaborator Jacques Lob is also an influence, ironically a feature that was eventually filmed. Only occasional flashes of imperious design display the assured Druillet of old.

There’s a cameo near the end for another of Druillet’s creations, but it’s not enough to save a lacklustre outing. Druillet would next revisit his collaboration with Lob to produce Delirius 2.