Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky was born on 17 February 1929 in Chile, later becoming a naturalized French citizen. Best known to mainstream audiences as an avant-garde filmmaker—particularly for the midnight-movie sensation *El Topo* (1970) and the surrealist *The Holy Mountain* (1973)—he also built a significant parallel career as a comic book writer. After dropping out of college, he worked as a clown and mime, founding his own theater troupe in 1947 and studying under Étienne Decroux in Paris. In the 1960s, he co-founded the Panic Movement performance collective and created his first comic strip, *Anibal 5*, in 1966. His most celebrated comics work is the science-fiction series *The Incal*, which he wrote throughout the 1980s, alongside other series such as *The Technopriests* and *Metabarons*. His comics are known for their dense, mystical, and often violent imagery, blending esoteric themes with space opera. Key collaborators include artists Moebius (Jean Giraud) and Juan Giménez. Jodorowsky also developed his own spiritual system, "psychomagic," which he has extensively lectured and written about. He continued to write comics into the 2020s, with credits on over 110 issues. His later life saw the completion of two autobiographical films, *The Dance of Reality* (2013) and *Endless Poetry* (2016).