Alix #13

Brutus, leader of the Moloch cult in Le Tombeau Etrusque, is back with more child sacrifice madness and some facial scars from his run-in with that eagle! (Eagles were a stand-in for Jove/Zeus in Roman augury, get it?) Alix and Enak arrive at Carthage to pose nude for a statue of Castor and Pollux, but it was all just a ruse by the artist to get them naked in his studio! to come to Carthage! This story is very plot- and dialog-driven and that makes it hard for this non-French speaker to get the gist, but Carthage was looking quite alive in L'Isle Maudite, so there's prolly a continuity error (i.e. Jacques Martin was learning more about Carthage by writing about it and apparently Carthage's destruction in 164 BC didn't factor into the earlier book) So now Carthage is mostly in ruins with a small Roman colony amidst the ruins. So yeah, Brutus is back and doing new things to appease Moloch while Alix is out to thwart him. At least Brutus is a little more interesting and motivated than Arbaces. The story climaxes in the wreckage of Carthage's old military harbor and Brutus is again smitten by Jove, for all of you pagans keeping score. Great art. First class art, but from here on out the jokes about Alix and Enak having a thing goin' on just cannot be ignored.