Anyone who grew up with the television series I Dream of Jeannie is already familiar with the world of genies. In this 1960s series, astronaut Tony Nelson, played by Larry Hagman, found a bottle on a beach that hid the genie (“djinn”) Jeannie, played by Barbara Eden. Her magical powers (and jealousy) kept getting Tony Nelson into trouble.
Almost sixty years later, French scenarist Jean Dufaux and Spanish illustrator Ana Miralles created the comic series Djinn, of which 13 volumes have been published. If I Dream of Jeannie already had a definite erotic undertone in the relationship between Nelson and Jeannie, it becomes much more explicit in this comic series. And even the last names of the protagonists show a reference to the TV series.
There are two interrelated narrative threads in the albums, whose stories take place in three cycles in Turkey, Africa and India. Kim Nelson, who grew up in present-day London, sets out to discover the story of her mother and grandmother, Jade, who is said to have been a djinn. Her magic as a djinn was that she could make women and men fall hopelessly in love with her and give up everything for her, even going to their deaths. For a djinn, however, this means that she herself can never feel love, as much as she wishes to, and thus all relationships inevitably break down.
Continue reading I Dream of Djinn – An (Erotic) Excursion into the World of Sultans, Goddesses and Maharajas