From Hell to Angola Janga: the history and mythology of the Quilombo de Palmares in Marcelo D'Salete's graphic novel

Abstract

Angola Janga (D'Salete, 2017) tells of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares, leader of the most important Quilombo of the African Diaspora in Brazil, an autonomous community of Africans escaped from slavery. This saga is memorialised in poems, films, monuments and memorials, but comic-book provides a medium with specific potential for mixing history and mythology. D'Salete combines historical research and imagistic poetry to tell a particular story about this living mythology. For this, the following are important: the choral plot involving non-Manichean characters, the weight of death in colonial necro-politics, the non-linear temporality that makes Quilombism survive until the present day, and the writing of the territory with ciphered markings. For comparative purposes, we comment on the works Cumbe and Encruzilhada (D'Salete, 2014; 2016), Zumbi dos Palmares (Moura; Moya, 1955) and From Hell (Moore; Campbell, 2000), paying special attention to the articulating tools which connect history and mythology in comic-books.