Ayize Jama Everett

Tristan Roach

The Last Count of Monte Cristo is a bold retelling of Alexandre Dumas's classic tale of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption. This speculative update pushes the narrative into a future hundreds of years after the polar ice caps have melted and submerged our planet into a new era of technology and culture. In this futuristic reinterpretation, author Ayize Jama-Everett and illustrator Tristan Roach revisit the original inspiration of The Count of Monte Cristo--Alexandre Dumas's own father. A greatly respected general during the French Revolution, Dumas was one of the highest-ranking officers of African descent in a Western army in history. Like the protagonist of his son's story, General Dumas was betrayed and spent years in prison before getting a chance to return to his beloved France. The Last Count of Monte Cristo is a radical and powerful graphic novel update that reclaims the cultural heritage of Dumas's tale and suggests the terrible future that could threaten the human race if we continue to destroy our planet.

The Last Count of Monte Cristo

Sabrina D. 

But it was their vestigial sense of colonialism—their belief in their own right to be everywhere, see everything, taste every piece, couple with every species—that doomed the planet. 

The blanket whitewashing of history has often regulated the entirety of Black history to the slave trade, the colonial vivisection of the continent of Africa, and further harmful stereotypes. By portraying Dantes in The Last Count of Monte Cristo as a Black man, Ayize made a radical and powerful update to the original story. This change reclaims the cultural heritage of the original inspiration for the character of the count and allowed us to shed light on social issues around representation and unjust imprisonment that continue to plague us to this day.

“One of the earliest lines Ayize wrote in the description of this tale”

“Torn solar sails provide uneven power to navigate plastic-choked oceans.”

While the world of the original Count of Monte Cristo had the Napoleonic wars and politics as a cultural background, Ayize chose to have the battle against global warming serve as the backdrop in the futuristic setting of The Last Count of Monte Cristo. The solar punk technology seen scattered and discarded throughout this story represents the attempts society has made to stave off the inevitable. This subgenre of science fiction is called solar punk because it has an element of the DIY punk tradition, which focuses on creation and accessibility. They needed to depict the effects of climate change on the planet and explain how these characters might combat the growing climate apocalypse. Ayize and Tristan imagined a future in which the technologies that survive are open-sourced, easily malleable, and as accessible to the many as the few. 

As an Afrofuturist, Ayize wanted to project his love and pride for Alexandre Dumas and the count beyond the present. There, on the distant shores of the future, presiding over burning oceans and the sun-bleached bones of forgotten species, you'Il find The Last Count of Monte Cristo, teetering between a desire for revenge and humility in the face of Providence.

The Last Count of Monte Cristo quotes

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