Okay, I'll admit it. I'm not perfect. I'm human just like everyone else. But I've tried to be open, understanding, and liberal my entire life. I don't consider myself a racist or a sexist or really any other "ist" for that matter. Most of my favorite comic book writers are British, Scottish, or Irish, so I think I'm fairly open when it comes to my reading material. When it comes to European comics though, there is a black mark on my soul.

I've tried bits and pieces of European graphic literature over the years, mostly books from Germany, France, and Spain. There has been only one common denominator that I've found over too many years of forcing myself to read these books. I loathe European comics with a dark, seething passion that one should only reserve for child molesters or rapists. Mind you, there are exceptions, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you about them.

I can't stand Judge Dredd or 2000 A.D. I've never understood why Moebius is held up as a national treasure in both France and the United States. I love science fiction, but for years I've tried to make it through either a whole issue of Metal Hurlant or its American sister Heavy Metal. The work just leaves me cold. I've tried reading these stories many times and I've always been left with a hard, burning chill that makes me want to light these mags on fire and dance like an aborigine on their crumbling ashes. I never understood why, and it always bothered me to my core.

I'm better now. Basing my decision solely on the recommendation of Warren Ellis (I don't know him personally, he recommended it through his forum or mailing list), I gave The Metabarons a try. Now, I understand the beauty and complexity that can come from someone not working within the confines of my homeland. The Metabarons changed everything for me.

Ostensibly the history of a clan of uber warriors, The Metabarons is a science fiction epic on the literary scale of Frank Herbert's Dune, or Isaac Asimov's Foundation. The series creators are masters of plot and pacing. The art and story work with perfect synergy, as every bizarre plot twist and seemingly insignificant subplot combines perfectly into an epic saga that spans generations of humanity. Alexandro Jodorowsky and Juan Gimenez have crafted a grand and decadent culture on an intergalactic scale. They have created a paradigm of human society, occupied by people so far advanced into the future that even the simplest of human emotions seems complex and alien. The sublime irony is that the central framing sequence is played out by two robots that seem closer to our current model of mankind than any of the story's human characters.