Calypsis. Submerged Worlds and Post-Apocalyptic Subjectivities in Contemporary Comics
Abstract
This paper examines contemporary post-apocalyptic comics centered on the aquatic element. It builds on three Italian graphic novels: La terra dei figli by Gipi (2016), Celestia by Manuele Fior (2019), and Troppo facile amarti in vacanza by Giacomo Bevilacqua (2021). It aims to investigate the theoretical, aesthetic, and symbolic role of water in the narrative articulation of the Anthropocene crisis in recent comic book production, beyond its literal diegetic functions. The analysis takes an interdisciplinary approach combining ecocriticism, visual semiotics, comics studies, and media theory. We introduce the theoretical category of ‘epicalypse’ to describe a mode in which the post-apocalyptic condition is inscribed within the present, haunting its imaginary with the idea that the catastrophic event has already occurred. Within this framework, water becomes a medial metaphor and a cultural grammar through which contemporary comics articulate life after the end – simultaneously evoking destruction and generation, concealment and revelation, the dissolution of entrenched institutions and the potential for posthuman subjectivities.
Downloads
References
Abruzzese, Alberto, Analfabeti di tutto il mondo uniamoci, Genova, Costa & Nolan, 1996.
Abruzzese, Alberto, Lessico della comunicazione, Roma, Meltemi, 2003.
Agamben, Giorgio, State of Exception, Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Benedetti, Carla, La letteratura ci salverà dall’estinzione, Torino, Einaudi, 2021.
Berardi, Franco, Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility, London, Verso, 2017.
Bevitori, Cinzia – Katherine E. Russo, “‘Because Climate Change Is the Crisis That Will Stay With Us’: Crisis, Polycrisis, and Permacrisis in the EU Discursive Space”, Critical Approaches to Polycrisis: Discourses of Conflict, Migration, Risk, and Climate, Eds. Tamsin Parnell – Tom Van Hout – Dario Del Fante, Cham, Springer Nature, 2025: 283-308. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76966-5_11
Bould, Mark, The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture, London, Verso Books, 2021.
Busi Rizzi, Giorgio, “Projecting, connecting, reconfiguring: nostalgic and antinostalgic features in Richard McGuire’s Here”, Comparatismi, 8 (2023): 128-148.
Busi Rizzi, Giorgio – Di Paola, Lorenzo, “Ghosts of our Lives: a Hauntological Reading of Multiverse Fiction in Contemporary Verbo-Visual Media”, Cinergie – Il cinema e le altre arti, 27 (2025): 113-127. https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2280-9481/21677
Busi Rizzi, Giorgio – Di Paola, Lorenzo, “Post-apocalyptic and Integrated? A Mediological Analysis of Gipi’s La terra dei figli”, Futuri, special issue (2024): 111-121.
Chute, Hillary L., Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2016.
Classon Frangos, Mike, “Comics Anthropocenes: visualizing multiple space-times in Anglophone speculative comics”, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 15.2 (2024): 236-251. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2023.2253897
Colonnese, Fabio, “The Narrative Potential of Architecture After-life in the Comics”, Envisioning Architectural Narratives, Ed. Danilo Di Mascio, Huddersfield, University of Huddersfield, 2021: 495-504.
Di Paola, Lorenzo, L’inafferrabile medium. Una cartografia delle teorie del fumetto dagli anni Venti a oggi, Napoli, Polidoro editore, 2019.
Earle, Harriet E. H., Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War, Jackson MI, University Press of Mississippi, 2017.
Frezza, Gino, La macchina del mito tra film e fumetto, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1995.
Frezza, Gino (ed.), EndoApocalisse. The Walking Dead, l’immaginario digitale, il post-umano, Cava dei Tirreni, Area Blu Edizioni, 2015.
Frezza, Gino, Nuvole mutanti: Scritture visive e immaginario dei fumetti, Milano, Meltemi, 2017.
Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man, New York, Free Press, 1992.
Gardiner, Ann, “Environmental collapse in comics: reflections on Philippe Squarzoni’s Saison brune”, The Discourses of Environmental Collapse: Imagining the End, Eds. Alison E. Vogelaar – Brack W. Hale – Alexandra Pea, London-New York, Routledge, 2018: 65-87. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315441443-5
Garrard, Greg, Ecocriticism, London-New York, Routledge, 2004.
Grusin, Richard, Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Hart, Kylo-Patrick R. – Holba, Annette M. (eds.), Media and the Apocalypse, New York, Peter Lang, 2009.
Heise, Ursula K., Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species, Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Malvestio, Marco, Raccontare la fine del mondo: fantascienza e antropocene, Milano, Nottetempo, 2021a.
Malvestio, Marco, “Sognando la catastrofe. L’eco-distopia italiana del ventunesimo secolo”, Narrativa, 43 (2021b): 31-44. https://doi.org/10.4000/narrativa.421
Malvestio, Marco, “Theorizing eco-dystopia: Science fiction, the Anthropocene, and the limits of catastrophic imagery”, European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes, 5.1 (2022): 24-38.
Malvestio, Marco, The Ecology of Italian Science Fiction, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2025.
Menga, Filippo – Dominic Davies, “Apocalypse yesterday: Posthumanism and comics in the Anthropocene”, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 3.3 (2020): 663-687. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619883468
Mentz, Steve, “Blue Humanities”, Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, Eds. Stefan Herbrechter et al., Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022: 1-20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42681-1_68-1
Neimanis, Astrida, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Olsza, Małgorzata, “Comics in the Anthropocene: Graphic Narratives of Apocalypse, Regeneration and Warning”, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, 12 (2022): 51-68. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.03
Oppermann, Serpil, Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Perry, Laura, “Anthroposcenes: Towards an environmental graphic novel”, C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings, 6.1 (2018), n.p. https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.37
Poll, Ryan, Aquaman and the War Against Oceans: Comics Activism and Allegory in the Anthropocene, Lincoln NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2022.
Poller, Jake, “New weird fiction and the oneirologic of both-and”, Textual Practice, 37.8 (2023): 1265-1280. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2022.2111701
Steinberg, Philip – Peters, Kimberly, “Wet Ontologies, Fluid Spaces: Giving Depth to Volume through Oceanic Thinking”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33.2 (2015): 247-264. https://doi.org/10.1068/d14148p
Ribault, Thierry, Contre la résilience, à Fukushima et ailleurs, Paris, Éditions de l’Échappée, 2021.
Ulstein, Gry, “Brave new weird: anthropocene monsters in Jeff VanderMeer’s ‘The Southern Reach’”, Concentric-Literary and Cultural Studies, 43.1 (2017): 71-96.
Comics cited
Bevilacqua, Giacomo, Troppo facile amarti in vacanza, Milano, Bao Publishing, 2021.
Cailleteau, Thierry – Vatine, Olivier, Aquablue, Paris, Delcourt, 1988.
Carpinteri, Giorgio, Aquatlantic, Quartu Sant’Elena, Oblomov Edizioni, 2018.
Cothias, Patrick – Adamov, Philippe, Les Eaux de Mortelune, Paris, Glénat, 1986‑2000.
DC Comics, Aquaman, New York, 1941‑present.
Duffield, Paul – Ellis, Warren, FreakAngels, Rantoul IL, Avatar Press, 2008-2011.
Eleuteri Serpieri, Paolo, Druuna, various magazines, 1985-2018
Fior, Manuele, Celestia, Quartu Sant’Elena, Oblomov Edizioni, 2019.
Gipi, La terra dei figli, Roma, Coconino Press – Fandango, 2016.
Golden, Chris – Sniegoski, Tom – Kobasic, Kevin, Waterworld: Children of Leviathan, New York, Acclaim Comics, 1997.
Grolleau, Fabien – Brochard-Castex, Thomas, Le Grand Océan, Paris, Cambourakis, 2019.
Grossi, Roberto, La grande rimozione, Roma, Coconino Press – Fandango, 2024.
Igarashi, Daisuke, Children of the Sea [Kaijū no Kodomo], San Francisco, Viz Media, 5 voll., 2009-2013 [2005-2011].
Ito, Junji, Gyo, Tokyo, Shogakukan, 2001-2002.
Kon, Satoshi, Tropic of the Sea [Kaikisen], New York, Vertical Comics, 1990.
Lob, Jacques – Rochette, Jean-Marc, Le Transperceneige (Snowpiercer), Bruxelles, Casterman, 1984.
McGuire, Richard, Here, New York, Pantheon Books, 2014.
Miyazaki, Hayao, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Tokyo, Tokuma Shoten, 1982-1994.
Ozawa, Satoru, Blue Submarine No. 6, Tokyo, Shogakukan, 1967.
Paliaga, Jacopo – Carlomagno, French, Aqualung, Milano, Bao Publishing, 2016.
Palumbo, Giuseppe, Ramarro. Guerre fredde, Napoli, Comicon edizioni, 2017.
Remender, Rick – Tocchini, Greg, Low, Berkeley, Image Comics, 2014-2020.
Sclavi, Tiziano – Dell’Edera, Werther, Le voci dell’acqua, Milano, Feltrinelli Comics, 2019.
Sexton, Mark – Lathouris, Nico – Fernandez, Leandro – Burchielli, Riccardo, Mad Max: Fury Road, New York, Vertigo/DC Comics, 2015.
Snyder, Scott – Murphy, Sean, The Wake, New York, Vertigo/DC Comics, 2013-2014.
Squarzoni, Philippe, Saison brune, Paris, Delcourt, 2012.
Sterte, Linnea, In-Humus, Bordeaux, Les Éditions de la Cerise, 2018.
Vatine, Olivier – Wul, Stefan, Niourk, Roubaix, Ankama Editions, 2012.
Wellenstein, Aurélie – Boiscommun, Olivier, La Baleine blanche des mers mortes, Charnay-lès-Mâcon, Drakoo, 2021.
Wood, Brian – Donaldson, Kristian, The Massive, Milwaukie, Dark Horse Comics, 2012-2014.
Zaffino, Jorge – Dixon, Chuck, Winterworld, New York, Eclipse Comics, 1988.
Copyright (c) 2025 Giorgio Busi Rizzi, Lorenzo Di Paola
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
