The Horde [Paperback]

Baranko (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2004

In the year 1206, Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde dominated an immense territory from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea with only 150,000 men. In the year 2040, the newest Russian dictator has a unique vision: to invoke the spirit of Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde to create an empire reaching from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. To do this, his secret service must find the corpse of the latest reincarnation of Genghis Khan. Their path will cross with the last Chechen, the survivor of a nuclear holocaust on a mystical quest. He has nothing to lose and fears nothing, especially not the Russian army and secret service.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

While a naked young woman meditates in a barren apartment in a rotting Soviet-era housing development in Tuva in September 2040, the dictator (sort of a Slavic Hunter Thompson) of a Russia that is totalitarian again (complete with hammer, sickle, star--and free drugs for all) dreams of reviving the Mongol empire of the Golden Horde, and in a Chechnya "cleansed" of all Chechens, the re-embodied spirit of a dervish-guerrilla cleanses a military outpost of its soldiers. Shortly thereafter, the dictator's military intelligence seeks out the last Bolshevik to pump him about Comrade Noyon, a young lama who claimed to be Genghis Khan reincarnated and whom Stalin executed in 1930. Baranko deftly cuts between the four plotlines he sets in motion, inserting many more intriguing characters as he unfolds an ingenious, darkly spiritual thriller that feels like an evil Indiana Jones romp but ends far more ambiguously than a similar movie would. Thanks to Baranko's top-drawer European mainstream-comics style, no matter how wildly it develops, The Horde is always grippingly good-looking. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Ukrainian writer/artist Igor Baranko was born in Kiev during the Cold War. After attending art school, Baranko served for two years in the Soviet Army, where he developed a great hatred of military life. He won the US Immigration Lottery in 1999, allowing him to move to the United States and has been creating graphic novels ever since, collaborating with Alexandro Jodorowsky for METAL HURLANT MAGAZINE, Jean-Pierre Dionnet on the sequel to Enki Bilal and Dionnet's EXTERMINATOR 17 and creating his own epic, THE HORDE.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Humanoids, Inc. (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401203604
• ISBN-13: 978-1401203603
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #983,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Jodorowsky-style mystic insanity., August 20, 2011

By 

Gabriel Matthew Martinez (Hollywood, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Horde (Paperback)

This graphic novel has everything: a resurgent Russia/Soviet Union run by a dictator who's also a former science fiction writer (complete with a fusion of Nazi/Soviet graphic design--sorta like if Eduard Limonov & the National Bolsheviks took over Russia), a Chechen dervish who's also an avatar of Shiva, the unquiet spirit of a long-dead Mongolian lama who was also the last reincarnation of Ghengis Khan, a telekinetic Ukrainian colonel born in Chernobyl who thinks the world is run by a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy... oh, yeah, and UFOs who steal the body of Lenin. Don't worry, it all makes sense at the end. Sort of.

Melding together Tibetan/Mongolian Buddhism, Islamic mysticism, and science fiction, this comic is a triumph of Jodorowsky-style mystic weirdness. Some people live, some people die, and some people finally resolve their karma. It's bloody, strange, futuristic, does a good job touching on the esoteric doctrines of several incompatible belief systems, and the artwork is flat-out amazing. Highly recommended!