Adapted from a 1976 French science fiction novel, “Savage Highway” puts the wasteland on the road. But this is no Mad Max: Fury Road. It may very well be one of the most generic and regressive views of the post-apocalypse to come out in quite some time.
Written by Mathieu Masmondet and Julia Verlanger
Illustrated by Zhang Xiaoyu
Translated by Cristy Styles and Montana Kane
An ancient highway spans the wasteland. Its cracked surface has become a migratory route for the lawless hunters and marauders who inhabit this desolate, future Earth. Along the highway, Helene, an educated young woman on a perilous mission to rescue her sister, meets Mo, a solitary hunter, and Jin, an Asian warrior. Together they embark on an epic journey to a Paris in ruins, where a new social “order” is being forged.
The quickest way to sum up “Savage Highway” is as outdated. From its politics to its motivations, from its set pieces to its character dynamics, this book feels like a relic of a past thought-process. Adapted from a series of post-apocalyptic stories originally by Julia Verlanger (the pen name of French science fiction writer, Éliane Taïeb, aka Gilles Thomas), neither Mathieu Masmondet or Zhang Xiaoyu do enough to give context to the material or commentary about gender roles in 1976, when the novel was first published. It’s odd, somewhat tone-deaf, and practically regressive in its treatment of its characters.
Set mostly on this decrepit highway, the last remnants of a thriving society, “Savage Highway” focuses on Helene and her desperate search for her sister. Not too long earlier, she had been living in relative peace with her father, fiancé, and sister. Then, one day, a band of pirates raid their fortress. Helene barely escapes with her life, while her sister is kidnapped. Though she attempted to launch a rescue mission, she found herself abducted by another band of raiders and used as a sex slave. Despite everything she goes through, despite the demeaning treatment she endures and the violence she encounters, she never loses sight of her mission. She’s willing to do anything to get to Paris.
Enter Mo, the silent lone wanderer figure, who saves her and takes her under his protection as Helene continues her search.
Almost immediately, “Savage Highway” falls into some problems. It isn’t just that this setting is generic post-apocalyptic setting™ but in France or that the numerous sets of marauders are faceless, definition-less beings who exist solely for the purpose of being killed off by the heroes; it’s not just that the obstacles they encounter feel convenient and random, existing solely because Masmondet felt like the story was getting boring and needed something to shake the material up a bit; it’s that all of this comes together in a story that’s a.) boring and b.) as demeaning to Helene as the people they’re running from.
Masmondet and Xiaoyu try to make Helene seem like a character who’s capable of holding her own. She’s an expert shot with the bow-and-arrow — which is sort of the approved weapon for women in the apocalypse — and tough, resilient, and headstrong. But they mistake character flaws for stupidity. Yes, she’s dead set on accomplishing one goal, but it seems unlikely she would run off during the middle of a fire fight, for instance. Every time the characters get in trouble, the root of the problem is Helene acting at the exact wrong moment. She’s also quick to go from being essentially a sex slave to fucking Mo in the middle of the night, as if she didn’t just suffer a lot of loss and humiliation on her quest.
And sure, the second the world goes post-apocalyptic, a bunch of horned-up patriarchal machismo men will try to run everything into the ground with their various gangs and desperate grasps for some semblance of dominance. They’ve become the go-to villains of the genre because they’re pretty much the villains of our present. But what makes “Savage Highway” feel so degrading and abasing is that Masmondet and Xiaoyu gloss over big important character decisions for Helene. The scenes where she gets more comfortable, trusting, and intimate with Mo occur in a quick montage, where one panel she’s threatening him with a knife, and then suddenly hooking up with him in the middle of the night. They want to present her as a strong character, an individual, but she comes off as nothing more than a sexy lamp.
Continued belowWhat makes this all the more aggravating is that Masmondet and Xiaoyu do pull off some sequences with aplomb. The opening raid on Helene’s fortress home is actually thrilling, showing remarkable control over the page by Xiaoyu. Even though we know what’s going to happen, they know how to present information to get the ole heart rate up. The revelation of why the world has fallen into such despair, too, is delivered with some breathtaking visual cues. These are probably the two strongest sections of “Savage Highway.”
Xiaoyu’s much stronger at form and composition than he is at distinct representation. His images are clear, well-placed, and we’re never confused about what’s going on or where the characters are in the environment during the numerous action sequences. His blocking of the page and layout of the panels make it easy to fall into the rhythms of the narrative. I also appreciate how he spends some of his space simply lingering over a given image, allowing it time to develop intensity. The colors, however, are wasteland drab and sometimes overly rendered, but they do carry the mood. Characters feature the same face, which gives you pause when a lot of people are yelling at each other about as you try to figure out who is who. The costumes are unimaginative and situational, the kind of rags creators love to throw on people for after the world ends. I think we’ve seen that look so much that the only way to have an impact is to go full Mad Max or The Matrix.
“Savage Highway” is a mess. It’s filled with ’70s sci-fi politics with no commentary about how these politics a.) reflect the present or b.) belong to a bygone era. Masmondet and Xiaoyu don’t offer anything new to contribute to the generic world they’ve brought to life. The scenes they’ve chosen to depict in-depth don’t feel like the right choices and eventually the book becomes a slog to get through. There are several sequences that give us a glimpse about what this book might have been, but they’re quickly lost and buried beneath mounds of outdated thinking.
Final Verdict: 3.0 – An odd, tone-deaf, and outdated post-apocalyptic adventure.
