The Hollow Grounds v3: “Nogegon”

I’m going to bury the lede just a little bit here, because I don’t want you to judge a “gimmick” over the book, as a whole. It’s not even a gimmick, per se, but if I lead with it, you might be prone to thinking that.

If you can’t help yourself, scroll down to “Dropping the Bomb”.

Luc and Francois Schuiten completed “Nogegon” a decade after the first book from the Hollow Grounds trilogy, “Carapaces“. You can see a massive evolution in Francois Schuiten’s art between those books. With “Nogegon,” has has picked a style and is comfortable in it, and the types of stories he wants to tell. He’s also done a couple of the “Cities of the Fantastic” books in this same time frame of the 80s.

He’s put in his reps.

This book is weird and very high concept. It doesn’t feel like your usual North American story. The story serves at the pleasure of that high concept, and everything revolves around it, one way or the other. By the time you realize just how far Schuiten has taken it, you’ll laugh out loud at the sheer audacity of attempting such a beast.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about what the book is.

Credits Comics Credits

What’s Going On?

This book is set on Nogegon, the second planet of the Hollow Grounds system. It ties directly back to the last two books, also. We see, though journal entires between chapters, that Olive (from that opening story in “Zara“) landed on Nogegon a while back. She’s missing now, and so Nelle has come from Zara to find her. Add in a troublesome sculptracer (see the fog sculptor from “Carapaces” to see a foreshadowing of this), and a meddling detective, and you have the book’s cast.

Olive, we find out, came to the planet, had an affair of some sort with a not-terribly nice sculptracer, and then left in a very specific way. Nelle is determined to discover the whole story, and so jumps around the planet a bit, avoids an investigation into her offworlder’s presence, befriends the sculptracer, and learns the truth.

All of this happens with the backdrop of symmetry. The planet is obsessed by it and ruled by it. The name of the planet is a palindrome, as are everyone’s names and all the district numbers referenced in the story. Everything is symmetrical. The closer you look, the more examples you’ll find. Every character is supremely worried that something might knock the balance of careful symmetry to one side or another, and so systems are in place to prevent such madness.

This symmetry exists not only in the story, but also in the storytelling. Nelle walks onto the planet at the beginning and leaves it in the end. (She is renamed “Nellen,” also to conform to the symmetric ways of Nogegon.) There’s a detective near the end of the story concluding the case that the detective at the beginning of the story is opening.

The overall effect is that in her quest to find what happened to Olive, Nelle starts repeating Olive’s story. The other players in this story are aware of that, even if Nelle doesn’t quite see it coming. It’s a interesting additional angle to the story.

Dropping the Bomb, or The Lede is Un-Buried

Schuiten’s pages are all symmetrical, as well. Yes, this book qualifies as OuBaPo!

Remember issue #5 of “The Watchmen,” titled “Fearful Symmetry”? It’s the one in the center spread where Adriean Veidt takes out the would-be assassin in a panel that spreads across the center of the book, and you realize that there’s a certain amount of symmetry in the storytelling from that point forward. The layouts of the second half reflect the layouts of the first half. Often, the points of view or the camera angles are added along with it.

That issue saw print three or four years before “Nogegon” in 1990. However, Schuiten ramps up the concept to a darn near absurd level with this book. Since it’s the central conceit of the book, he can get away with it.

It’s not just that the page layouts are mirrored at the center of the book. Schuiten reverses the order of the panels on each page. What you wind up with are pages that are inverted more than mirrored. Schuiten also reverses the angles of every panel with the same person or the person in the second half of the story who replaced the person from the front half.

If Nelle is seen walking towards the reader on page one, she’ll be walking away on the final page. If she was walking left to right in the front half of the book, she’s likely walking right to left in the back. So the story structure is symmetrical, but the art that tells it goes the extra mile to carefully and at times painstakingly recreate that in the presentation.

Here’s a quick example. The first row of panels you see here is the top of page 33. The second row is the bottom arrangement of panels on its mirror page.

In film terms, the camera is flipped 180s degrees. It’s the exact kind of thing you’re not supposed to do inside of a scene, but it works for the symmetry here.

You can see that it’s not just the panel sizes and shapes that are the same, but it’s also the camera angle, the characters being used, and even their dialogue to a certain point.

It’s quite a sight to see. If you read the book in one sitting, you’ll see it happening as you go. You’ll recognize some of the memorable moments from the front half as happening again in ways that feel oddly familiar. Of course they are! Schuiten already drew it once. And now he’s drawing it again, just facing everyone the other way.

The page numbers, themselves, are symmetrical. The book starts with page 3 and carries through to page 36. After that, the pages countdown from 36′ down to 3′. (The example above is pages 33 and 33′.)

Page one is the book’s title page and, yes, Humanoids does go so far as to reprint the title page as the last page, also. The only thing not in on the gag here are the covers. The front and back covers are not symmetrical in their images, but they are symmetrical in their layout. The title is on the top of the front cover and the bottom of the back cover, so it still has a bit of the magic to it..

Does It Work?

Is this just an empty gimmick? Is this a trick played on the readers that leaves everything else behind, like logic, drama, and the creator’s sanity?

No, it does work. Yes, the story structure is a big part of the story reading experience. Once you catch on to it, your mind will want to work ahead a half step to see if you can predict what might come next. It’s a very good book to read a second time, just to catch more of the symmetry. And, of course, you’ll find yourself flipping back and forth to see how he reversed certain pages.

But there is a genuine, believable, well-structured science fiction story at the heart of this book. It IS about symmetry in a world and how fanatical dedication to it might warp society, but told through an outsider’s eye looking into how another outsider once fared going into it. There is enough tension and decision making between characters in the book to make it an enjoyable “romp” all on its own.

It gets super clever when the symmetry works with the characters’ story arcs, and not just the page or panel layout. On page 21, for example, Nelle and the sculptracer are fighting. He’s throwing her out of his house. On page 21′, he’s jumping into bed with her. (Yes, this is still a European graphic novel. There’s, again, toplessness.) Their relationship is always changing in the book and that symmetrical presentation of the material highlights it.

Looking at the book as a whole, Nelle arrives on the planet with a mission, and comes to a logical and satisfying conclusion at an answer. The story ends just before that big moment that Hollywood would want to jam in if they ever made a movie of this book. But as something of a short story on a 72 page scale, that works for me, too.

Recommended?

Yes, this is by far the easiest of the three “The Hollow Grounds” books to recommend. It has the strongest story, the best hook, and stands alone nicely. You’ll get a hair more from it if you’ve read “Zara” before, but it’s not essential to the story. Everything you need is right here.

Schuiten is showing off his architectural chops in this book. It’s the kind of work he’s best known for, and this is also the best of the three books that show that off.

It’s a shame that these books are out of print in English today. While you can still find a copy of that DC trade paperback from 15 years ago on eBay for a decent price, these are books that really are best enjoyed in the larger album format size. I hope someone brings them back someday in that way.