The West has incredible potential for change. We’ve been telling the story of the Old West for decades, and there are many instances where these types of stories get lost in sheer exhaustion or excess. However, he always finds a way to restore it in one form or another. Hoka Hi! He makes all those commonplaces of the genre his own with fresh energy, heartfelt dignity and righteousness.
From the imagined adventure of a pioneer to the brutality of the Italian West, incarnations of the Wild West are many and varied. Attempting to construct a mythology for a nascent nation in need of founding ceremonies, the passage of time has produced a more realistic, even vivid, vision of the fantasy on which the American dream was built. Neyef (pseudonym of French author Romain Mauford) captures the essence of the journey of initiation, the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. The end of innocence in an environment as beautiful as hostility, where there is no room for purity.
Hoka Hi! A battle cry.
Hoka Hi! It’s a Lakota war cry. Great warriors who once roamed the fields. They were caught off guard, stripped of their past pride by the whites, subjugated and driven out of their country. The young man who is the main character of this story lives among those who humiliate his people, unaware of the true nature of his inner voice. But driven by horrific events, he discovers his identity in lead and blood.
From the brutal first scene, built with masterful rhythm, to the final vignette, Hoka Hey! It’s a wonderful story of wonderful contradictions. The beauty of the landscape is contrasted with the barbaric law of eat or be eaten, and the intellectual stillness is dramatically broken by the screams of the hawks.
Hoka Hi! It has the power of all the great stories of the Wild West. Through the pages of this amazing comic, you can see the classic cast of outlaws, bounty hunters, men with no morals, destroyers, hunters… the whole genre cosmos, of course, treated with as much intensity as sentimentality. By an author who knows how to understand the context of your story.
There is no mercy
There is no hint of the mythic fantasy that Hollywood has built around frontier stories about the invasion of the West. In Hoka Hey! We don’t have heroes in shiny white jackets riding shiny white horses. Instead we have a dirty, clean and simple existence. Wild nature is an abyss that looks back on the few echoes of civilization, an untamed land that feeds on humans and broken dreams.
The protagonists of this grim story are far from benign. They are driven by revenge, hatred, resentment of years of abuse and neglect into brutal and merciless violence. It’s a hopeless journey that goes nowhere, sugarcoating America’s roots. Civilization was blood-soaked, supported by racism, which had a fairly clear exponent in the Native Americans.
Literary content of Hoka Hi! It’s powerful, but the art department is simply superior. Nevf’s display is beautiful and the beast. The wonderful character design combined with the first-rate narrative, the vivid cinematographic references make for a highly moving read.
Beautiful landscapes, terrifying nature
Different landscapes and settings allow the artist to experiment with different emotions as he is a very emotional comic. With little effort, you can feel the wind running through the tall grass of the fields or the waves of the river in the pristine forests, just by the presence of man. The use of color in light games lingers on your retina, in stunning contrasts that fill every image with life.
The gunpowder of the buffaloes and their riders, the dried sweat of many days of horse riding, the clotted blood and the burning wood of the night burned in the middle. Neyef is crowned as the complete author of the most striking work in your reader’s memory.
Nuevo Nuevo, the publisher bringing this comic to bookstores, ensures that the continent is as beautiful as the content. The Hoka Hei edition is truly luxurious and the quality of the product is one of those that put it in a special place on the shelf. It does justice (in every sense) to Neyef’s work on the painting panel, making it easy to miss the evocative silences on some pages.
Hoka Hey is one of the most complete reads I’ve had this year, and it’s certainly artistically impressive. Even if you don’t like westerns, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this wild, brutal story of revenge. A bloody road of no return. If there is no possible redemption, the returns will not be the same.