Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Mixing dystopian sci-fi, mythic fantasy, and zombie horror, Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis, is a graphic novel based on a suppressed opera written in 1943 by Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann, two prisoners at the Terezín concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The authors did not live to see their masterpiece performed.
Set in an alternative universe where Atlantis never sank but instead became a technologically advanced tyranny, the power-mad buffoonish Emperor declares all-out war—everyone against everyone. Death goes on a labor strike, creating a hellscape where everyone fights, but no one dies. Can the spirit of Life stop this terror with the power of love?
Includes designs from the original opera, historical essays, photographs, and more.
"This is beautiful and strange, both for what it is and what it isn't. As a story it's fascinating and excellently told, as an artifact it's heartbreaking and affecting. More than a footnote in Holocaust literature or a lost libretto given visual shape, it's a reminder of what art is for, and how it saves and shapes us when everything else is gone.”—Neil Gaiman
“Maass’s playful script, with its pitch-black humor and fiendish turns of phrase, honors the original opera... This parable captures the defiant spirit of artists.”—Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Maass and cartoonist Lay debut with an appropriately unnerving graphic novel adaptation of Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod-Verweigerung, a satirical 1943 opera scripted by librettist Peter Kien and composer Viktor Ullmann while they were imprisoned at the Terezín concentration camp. In the story's alternate history, Atlantis became a global empire instead of sinking into the sea. Emperor Overall, who has never seen another human being and calculates all decisions by profit margins, rules an Orwellian dystopia locked in eternal warfare. When the emperor declares "all out" war, "everyone against everyone," Death goes on strike, while his companion Life (drawn as a Pierrot who resembles Joel Grey's Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret) complains that no one wants his services anymore. Two human characters, Soldier and Worker ("turned rebel"), form a truce and set out to depose the emperor. Lay's art, tinted in smoky gray ink washes, evokes a landscape of desolation and smog that echoes the battlefields, ruined cities, and prison camps of WWII. Maass's playful script, with its pitch-black humor and fiendish turns of phrase, honors the original opera without being overly reverent. A grim but ultimately hopeful glimpse of an age when "humanity is in freefall," this parable captures the defiant spirit of artists during the Holocaust.