Forward
The following is a combination of my Reading Druuna articles and the dissertation I completed for my master’s degree. Longtime readers of the site will find the analytical sections of Morbus Gravis through Carnivora redundant, as they are already published here, but I hope that the new analyses of Anima andCame From the Wind are enjoyable. Eventually, I hope to produce proper Reading Druuna articles for Mandragore through Clone, as those volumes are only briefly alluded to here.
The focus of my dissertation was to argue for more discussion of Serpieri’s work in English comic book academia – and, frankly, a broader discussion of the works in general outside of their pornographic elements. Serpieri’s Druuna works are my favorite comics, and I hope my reverence for them comes through. I do table some criticisms, but they are more theoretical, exploring reasons as to why his work hasn’t been taken as seriously as I feel it should. Ultimately, I think his work hasn’t invited much analysis in English comic book circles simply out of ignorance of their existence, but that’s largely a subjective assumption, thus I utilize comparisons with other autofiction works for context.
This essay is hardly academic, but I have kept my references in-text for easy access. Much of the information I gathered for this paper needed to be translated into English (there isn’t an English edition of E Gli Al Tri Universi, for example, which contains a goldmine of content), so if my interpretation of the material isn’t exact, I apologize.
Introduction
How far can we travel in a single lifetime? Where are the boundaries that halt our travel, and what mutations occur as a result of moving through them?
Mutation is core to Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri’s Druuna series. The comic books are a mix of eroticism, horror, and science fiction. On a primary level they can be enjoyed simply as such. However, within the tomes of images, a drama of sorts is hidden in plain sight. A book seemingly about the plight of a young woman on a transdimensional adventure is also about the author and his struggle to rectify the methodologies through which he is bound to pursue her. She is a product of art, but no less tangible or powerful because of her seemingly fleeting nature.
Druuna lives many lives on many planes. Her story is one of terror and strangeness, with boundaries as fluid as they are vast. Her story is one of extremes, with captured moments of love and tenderness matched by eras of darkness, violence, and uncertainty. An unlikely heroine, she persists through both instinct and compassion. Serpieri scores his tale of tragedy with both sweeping vistas and fleeting moments of pleasure and pain. A masterwork of both art and world-building, Druuna’s adventures confine readers in a fascinating abyss of beauty, horror, and the strange mutations in-between.
Yet, Serpieri’s Druuna series is a work of autofiction that has, curiously, gone largely ignored by English-speaking comic book academia. This video will attempt to theorize why Serpieri’s work has been excluded, as well as make arguments for a more thorough examination of his Druuna works. Primarily, however, it will serve as a tour through Serpieri’s illustrative career, as told through his work with Druuna. This is not a biography of Serpieri, nor is it a retrospective or recap of the Morbus Gravis series. Rather, it is an exploration of an illustrator’s life work, as told through the medium of comics. Druuna is a creation not only for the audience, nor solely for Serpieri. She is obsession, personified.
Serpieri
Serpieri was born in Venice, Italy, on February 29, 1944. Drawing was an early passion for the young Venetian, though even before that, it was the wild west of the Americas that captured Serpieri’s imagination (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17). He saw They Died with Their Boots On starring Errol Flynn at just six years old (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17) and the film left a lasting imprint on him. Serpieri recalls his father traveling to America frequently for business, returning with books and art depicting the American frontier for his brother and him (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17). Though they could not read English, Serpieri and his brother were “spellbound” by the illustrations of Frederic Remmington and Charles Russell, among others (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17). To a young Serpieri, the Far West was, “a mysterious world, a place of pure adventure.”(Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17).
The Far West was seen as an exotic place in Italian culture, and the genre grew deep roots in the country’s media landscape. The term Spaghetti Western is known by anyone with even a passing interest in the genre, but Italy’s love of the Far West ran far deeper than films. Martina Caruso notes in her study, Native Americans in Visual Countercultures: Shaping Italianicity through
Cultural Appropriation, that First Nations peoples were seen as a sort of proxy for the Italian working class during the years after the second world war, with the Italian peasant viewed in parallel to First Nations peoples in light of America’s cultural dominance over the country (Caruso 2023, 278).
These feelings were shared throughout many parts of Europe, perhaps most aggressively framed in Andre Fougeron’s Atlantic Civilization, though Caruso notes that in Italy the act of “ethnic drag” went largely unchallenged by art critics of the time (Caruso 2023, 284). The popular Italian comic book Tex, for example, chronicles the adventures of Tex Willer. Tex is an outsider hero who befriends and lives with Native Americans, and marries a Navajo woman (Caruso 2023, 290). However, his integration into the imaginary “culture and history of the Native Americans” is somewhat illusionary, even problematic, with the Indigenous peoples depicted as weak and incapable of governing and fighting for themselves (Caruso 2023, 290). While the broader conversation of Italy’s adoption of the Far West is better discussed in Caruso’s article, the comradery felt with First Nations people, coupled with the arguably fictitious depictions of their life, in Italian post-war culture should be noted here in light of Serpieri’s early western work.
Serpieri attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome where he studied under Renatto Gutuso and Renze Vespignani (Burattini 2021, 80). During this period he admits that he wasn’t a fumetti reader, holding something of a prejudice towards the medium (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17). He recalled, “I was already a painter, and moving over to comic strips was a piece of advice I had oft received from friends who came to see my exhibitions of ink drawings, but being an artist and a left-wing intellectual, you can imagine what my reaction was.”(Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17) However, he states that he still admired comic book illustrators’ work during this period, including the Argentinian Jose Salinas (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 20), whom Serpieri credits with demonstrating that comic book illustrations could be done by brush, partially prompting his move to illustrative work (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 17).
At first, Serpieri claims that publishers were hesitant to embrace his style of dramatic
highlights, shadows, and hatching for western fumetti, but he eventually secured a role illustrating for Lanciostory in the 1970s (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 18).
Lanciostory launched in 1975 and was focused on content for adult readers (like westerns) and the growing audience of underground comic readers in Italy (Somigli 2006, 790). The underground comics scene was beginning to thrive in America as well, with popular artists including Robert Crumb using the medium to redefine the comic book audience through creative, crude, and sadistic imagery. While the underlying roots, and perhaps even audience, were hardly unified, there was a desire for this new type of comic book, and creative endeavors on both sides of the Atlantic quickly began to mix.
Heavy Metal Magazine began as a translation offshoot of the French publication Metal Hurlant, created by the Les Humanoid group formed of Jean Giraud (Moebius), Phillip Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and Bernard Farkas in 1974 (Marshall 2017). The publication focused on serialised and short comic strips from independent creators, and was partially inspired by the underground American comic scene that came to fruition in the early part of the decade (Marshall 2017). Leonard Mogel, publisher of National Lampoon Magazine, discovered Metal Hurlant on a trip abroad and obtained rights to have it published in English, eventually spinning it off into its own separate publication (subtitled ‘The Adult Illustrated Fantasy Magazine’) which focused on bringing international content to a North American audience. It also contained submissions from notable underground American talent (Lostboy 2022), being decidedly divorced in tone from traditional superhero comic book fare (Schmidt 2016).
Druillet and Giraud (Moebius) in particular played an important role in the magazine’s early years, with their esoteric works reaching American shores in time for this new wave of media. Comic books were being redefined, not just in terms of content, but in the actual material process, with zine and magazine formats, along with creators free to tell their story in short or long form. It was also a crucial branch in reaching across the spectrum of comics, bringing independent and European works to the same retailers as Marvel and DC.
The magazine had an estimated 200, 000 print run per issue by 1981, thanks in part to a Canadian-produced animated movie tie-in from the previous year (Dougherty 1981). This film popularised the magazine’s semi-official mascot, Taarna: a scantily dressed, sword wielding, alien bird-riding mute woman, whose movie segment was inspired by Moebius’ strip, Arzach. Though Heavy Metal Magazine established itself as an adult-oriented publication thanks to its National Lampoon connection, its cover art from 1980 forward moved to regularly feature sexualized female figures, further signalling to its intended male audience. In this light, one could assume that “underground” and “European” were pseudonyms for erotica in North America, and that the underground comic scene was at least partially synonymous with these aspects.
Roots
Serpieri’s early career was defined by westerns, but he quickly became in-demand, adapting scripts like Larousse’s Bible stories. Throughout his works of the 1970s and early 1980s, the genesis of what would become Serpieri’s personal written and illustrated epic began to unfold on the page.
When first planning Morbus Gravis, Serpieri imagined the strip as an erotic short story drawn in a highly caricatured style (Serpieri 1993). At this early point, Serpieri admits he didn’t even think the story would have a female protagonist (Burattini 2021, 79). Then, while on a beach in Ostie, he watched a woman emerge from the water, recalling, “The woman I had been looking for, for so long, was there before me, in all her naked splendor… At that precise moment in time, I had no idea that I would create an almost unending saga from that one vision.”(Serpieri 1993)
Finding Druuna, shaping her graphic form, is not only the story of her creation but the underlying plot of the entire Morbus Gravis series. Serpieri has spoken about his love of travel (speculating that it perhaps stems from being Venetian [Serpieri 1995]). Eroticism is directly tied to this love of exploration too, as he exposes in Serpieri Sketchbook, which contains a series of drawings of women he has had the opportunity to sketch over the course of his travels. Some of these women he was intimate with, while others simply modelled for him. Each drawing is accompanied by a short recount of Serpieri’s meeting with the women, including the location in which he encountered them, with some of the drawings done spur of the moment and some after the fact, acting as records of their interlude (Serpieri 1995). The pages are fantasy, a vacuous idea of freedom and adventure, but not a totally accurate representation of it. That’s not to say the recounts in Serpieri Sketchbook aren’t specific, nor to suggest his art lacks detail. Rather, it explains that Druuna is more of an idea than she is a model. In the introduction to Serpieri Sketchbook, Serpieri writes:
In January ‘94 at the French Comics Convention at Angouleme, a journalist asked me a strange question: ‘What did you think of the woman who was selling books at your stand last year… she was the spitting image of Druuna?’ I was dumbstruck! What woman? What stand? I, who for years have been desperately seeking Druuna, had spent four full days with her standing next to me, without even noticing her… It was at that moment that I realized that I had been looking for the impossible and that I had often met Druuna without even knowing it. The Druuna that I draw is nothing but a synthesis of all the women I have ever met at the four corners of the globe (Serpieri 1995).
Serpieri Sketchbook could be dismissed as little more than groomed accounts of sexual escapades. However, the book reveals an important trace of biography relating to Druuna’s realisation. The women almost all look out to the viewer, putting them in the vantage point of Serpieri as he drew them, with the illustrator only showcasing himself once by way of a mirror as he looks out from his canvas to reference his subjects (Serpieri 1995). Serpieri is a part of Druuna’s story, not just the author of it. Serpieri is not just attempting to showcase his aptitude for erotic art in Sketchbook, but to bring the reader along for the journey which inspired the creation of Druuna. She is the ultimate “other”, a woman born of an entirely different world, only truly existing on the page.
How Serpieri’s work fits alongside the more mature content being produced in the underground comics scene will be touched on later. First, however, we’ll need to explore Serpieri’s Morbus Gravis works in-depth, starting with the first volumes, Morbus Gravis I and II.
Morbus Gravis
In 1985 Serpieri published his original work, Morbus Gravis, in the French magazine Charlie mensuel by Editions Darguad (Bevilacqua and Priarone 2021, 20). Morbus Gravis introduced Serpieri’s recurring heroine, Druuna, and laid the framework for her saga of trans-dimensional cosmic horror adventures.
Following Morbus Gravis I’s publishing in Charlie, the story was translated and published in other regions in varying formats. Heavy Metal Magazine published the English language edition, initially serialised in the magazine before being published in hardbound books.
On the book’s first page, readers are guided around Druuna’s body, viewing it from the front, rear, and portrait as she lies in bed, reading a book. Both intimacy and claustrophobia are garnered in this opening scene, with each pane revealing clues as to how Druuna lives, as well as the broader implications of a world which propagates such poverty.
The setting of Morbus Gravis I is introduced via Druuna’s thoughts rather than omnipotent narration. We follow Druuna, dependent on her monologue to gather information, contrasting it with snapshots of the environment around her. As she mulls over the passage, “A thick and luxuriant vegetation covered the hills and mountains…”, one is spurred to wonder exactly what kind of place she lives in, with Druuna’s comprehension of the scene proving so difficult.
Druuna is pushed to leave her home at the request of her lover, Schaster – of whom the reader is only given faint glances of – to retrieve serum to combat his illness. Outside her home the view is no less grim. Sun-bleached stone and metal ruins cast heavy shadows throughout the toxic landscape. The City is in a state of decomposition, with throngs of pipes and wire weaving over the skyline, restraining sight any more than a few dozen meters ahead. Gas and steam waft up from sinkholes and pits, further polluting the streets. The sudden change in colour is striking, with Serpieri utilizing putrid, flat tones to colour the outside landscape. It’s warm, but not healthy, with a grotesque mixture of yellows and brown staining the page. Druuna navigates with hesitation, seeming to know her way through the labyrinth, and the dangers housed within.
Just around the corner from her dwelling, Druuna witnesses the desperation of “the sickness” – the ailment which has claimed hold of much of The City’s population. A man accused of being infected is apprehended by a group of soldiers under the watchful eye of a Priest – a gatekeeper of information and master of control. While we were given short glimpses of Schastar in Druuna’s home, the full effect of the mutation has not yet been displayed. Druuna is questioned shortly thereafter and forced to disrobe in front of the company to prove she is free of infection. Her hesitation to leave home, as well as her general fatigue and depressive state, become quickly understandable.
The abuse she meets just outside her home is not unique, and things only get worse as she continues on her journey. Taken off track by a stout homely man (the Gnome), Druuna is pushed to disrobe once again and swim through the dangerous waters of the lower levels, where the Gnome states someone will be waiting to meet her. The Gnome, not yet clearly defined as friend or foe, warns Druuna to make haste as mutants run amok in the sewers. Druuna heeds his advice, pushing through the swamp and emerging on the other side with a frantic gasp for air.
Here is where we get our first real look at the mutants. The buildup thus far may have led one to expect the worst, with the only glimpses of the sickness being long, razor-like tentacles and allusions to their insatiable hunger. Instead, we see a crowd of short, deformed humanoids, rushing the shallows to greet Druuna; their cheerful welcome based not so much on Druuna’s well-being as it is her willingness to breed. Luckily, the group is called off, saving Druuna from further molestation. A tall, hermaphroditic being enters the scene, excusing the behavior of her wives, introducing herself by the apt title of The Mutant.
The Mutant reveals that Schastar had been working with her, searching for information of possible routes out from The City. Apparently, he had discovered something of the utmost importance, though she had not yet heard his report. Druuna is blindsided by the revelation, having had no notion of her lover’s revolutionary activities.
The Mutant’s chamber holds a curious sculpture, apparently representing “the Master”. Here, we begin to see threads of Serpieri’s organic influence of industrial materials. A mess of pipes intertwine, coiling to form a humanoid face, contrasting with the organic play of the mutants’ builds, planting seeds for the broader plot.
Emerging back onto the main level with help from the Gnome, Druuna continues on to the clinic. This supposed haven holds little relief. Masses line up outside while armed guards patrol the area with paranoid enthusiasm. Druuna stands out from the lot, her colouring illuminated among a crowd of scowling faces drenched in grey. Moving into the lineup, Druuna looks about the scene with mourning, reminded of her father’s struggle to obtain serum, and how it cost him his life.
As the lineup moves inside of the clinic, colour begins to dissipate. Druuna engages in (captive) conversation with another woman in line, who soon reveals that she is a mutant before attacking a guard. Colour returns to the scene, though only in the woman’s mutating appendages and the spilling of blood before she is killed.
In the office, Druuna negotiates an early dose of extra serum with Doctor Ottonegger. He agrees, Druuna having disrobed and agreed preemptively to the doctor’s request of anal sex. Numerous samples and grafts of mutated human body parts frame the pair’s sexual pact – an apt metaphor for corruption.
Druuna’s exchange with Ottonegger is spied on by other medical staff. Leaving with the serum in hand, Druuna falls into a trap. A nurse and his goon intercept Druuna outside, stealing the serum back. Druuna pleads for her life, offering herself in exchange. The goon accepts, changing his mind once finishing. Druuna again makes a plea, telling the men she has more serum at her home. They agree to keep her alive, if just to steal more of her supposed reserve. Upon returning home, Druuna cries out for Schastar’s help. He intervenes, tearing her attackers limb from limb.
Safe again, Druuna injects Schastar with all eight vials, only to discover they had been diluted. Schastar returns to human form, but only partially – his arm remaining a collection of tentacles, and sores covering his skin. Knowing his time is limited, Schastar dons an overcoat to hide his infection. He takes Druuna back into The City, eager to share the truth he has learned.
On their way, Druuna and Schastar witness a husband and wife separated by a security gate locking down a dangerous sector. The man pleads for the guards to open the gate and let his wife through. They refuse, much to the delight of a crowd of onlookers. Shortly thereafter, a mutant pounces, raping and devouring her while the crowd watches on with rapt fascination. The violence itself is cut short, with Serpieri opting instead to focus on the crowd’s faces – the more disturbing part of the ordeal.
Schastar guides Druuna to an abandoned zone. Much to Druuna’s horror, a Priest seemingly lies in wait. As Schastar approaches, Druuna pleads for him to stop, reminding him it is forbidden to touch them. Schastar grabs hold of the Priest’s cloak and tears it free, revealing it to be nothing more than a cyborg; machine parts housing a rotted, malfunctioning brain – an apt metaphor for organized religion.
Entering the pristine white confines of an elevator, Schastar reveals they have reached the Upper Levels – a supposed paradise for those deemed biologically pure. However, before the elevator reaches its destination, Schastar’s mutation returns and Druuna is forced to take his life.
Druuna’s allusions of the Upper Levels soon disintegrate, furthering her despair. A voice identifying himself as Lewis begins conversing with Druuna telepathically. He reveals that the entombed bodies before her, supposedly the most healthy and worthy of ascension, were actually just manners of control for the Priests. Furthermore, The City lay not in the hands of men, but Delta, an ancient computer. Delta’s calculations perverted over centuries, leaving The City to fall into a natural – and now elevated – path of self-destruction. Druuna protests, asking Lewis (who is no more than a head in a jar) why they can’t simply leave. Here, Lewis comes to realize that in his centuries segregated from the population he has been forgotten, as has the greater predicament. In a stunning last page revelation, Lewis opens the massive shutter behind him to reveal an abyss of stars. The City is in fact a space ship lost in the cosmos. Its mission forgotten, the ship aimlessly coasts through the universe with its human occupants rotting their vessel from the inside out.
Form
Serpieri emboldens every wrinkle, tear, and fold of skin, cloth, concrete and steel. Thick, but calculated, brush strokes create a heavy sense of drama, with shade and light sinking or lifting each scene. The wild mutant builds stand in contrast to Serpieri’s life-like humans – a balance he would refine over the course of the series.
The Mutant is an extraordinary play of masculine and feminine forms intertwined, but many of the mutants are only teased, their slithering tentacles or eerie shadows orbiting panel frames. Others, like the Mutant’s wives/daughters, look as comical as they do animalistic, with their builds being anything but intimidating. The woman in the clinic mutates over the course of several panels, showcasing a transformation of muscle stretching and contorting in wholly believable ways to create a monster which was undeniably human minutes earlier, despite bearing no direct resemblance now.
The City’s human population is tattered, beaten, and filthy – with the exception being Druuna.
Ottonegger mentions in (lustful) passing how perfect Druuna’s skin is (a prelude of developments to come). Her attire not only serves to excite, but to highlight this truth. Druuna wears a simple shall, torn jeans, runners, and white top – which remains curiously clean (while it’s on). Both her skin and clothing remain largely undamaged, despite the trials of her adventure. If anything, Druuna’s armor seems to be her unharmed skin more than the thin fabrics adorning it.
Many of the books’ most notable scenes are not framed around Druuna’s face, but rather her rear. In Serpieri’s own words, “Of course, a woman’s face is important, but my obsession is to view her from behind…” (Serpieri 2002, 6) Tilted from a ground level ¾ view, Druuna is at both her most vulnerable and intimate when displayed at this angle. Eroticism and compromise clash, not only exciting the reader, but showcasing her character; Lustful, but not shameful; willing, but not always with delight.
Thoughts
In illustrating Morbus Gravis, Serpieri recalled:
Druuna found her graphic identity on about the third or fourth page of Morbus Gravis. That is really her! Today, many pages later, her face has become gentler, and even her body has changed. At the beginning of Morbus Gravis, Druuna had the body of a Native American. I suppose this comes from the fact that I had drawn a lot of westerns, and I really enjoyed drawing their characteristic faces and Mongolian features: high cheek bones, oblique eyes, and full lips. Druuna’s face changed, almost instinctively, with her first contact with the monk. In one of those images, Druuna is in profile and there, graphically, she is perfect (Serpieri 1995).
Once again, we can see the genesis of Serpieri’s work coming into play here, not just from the eroticism angle, as confessed in Sketchbook, but through his work on westerns and in travelling the world. Serpieri has also stated that the way in which Druuna transcends her environments is as pivotal as her looks (Licari 2000, 88). He stated on capturing and communicating the stance and gait of Indigenous peoples:
Indians did not move like white men. They often made films in the Fifties and Sixties (and even in the Seventies), in which an Indian, played by a white man, moved just like a white man. Try visiting the Maasai in Africa. You’ll see that they move in a completely different way from us. The Natives’ world was in all respects different from ours (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 19).
In a 2020 interview, Serpieri stressed this attention to detail when asked about how he represents the Algonquin and Iroquoi bands (among others) in his fumetti, stating that having learned the tragic reality of Indigenous peoples’ plight, he feels it is important to retain as much historical truth and identity as possible (Guarino and Pollone 2020, 19). The interviewer followed up with a point about the extreme detail Serpieri embeds in his representation of male Indigenous people, contrasting it against the women who are created more from fantasy, to which Serpieri replied, “That’s natural… In the end they are still comic strips.”(Guarino and Pollone 2020, 19)
While sex is a core theme throughout, the sex scenes in Morbus Gravis I are surprisingly muted, at least in comparison to subsequent volumes. Full frontal nudity is commonplace. However, actual intercourse is reserved or censored by vantage or speech bubbles. Morbus Gravis I is undeniably erotica, but story never takes a back seat to skin, with the two sensibly intertwined.
Experiencing nearly the entire story right alongside Druuna, Serpieri introduces not only the world as it physically exists, but delves deeper into the everyday life of its inhabitants. Instead of exploring it through the eyes of Schastar, the Mutant, or even the Gnome, we see it through the eyes of one of its most vulnerable citizens. This attachment is furthered by the fact Serpieri does not use narrative panels. While not quite first-person, readers are closely attached to Druuna throughout her journey both in physical proximity and via access to her internal monologue. Though always the protagonist of the series, not all future volumes focus on her vantage of the events unfolding as consistently as they do in Morbus Gravis.
Druuna’s debut tour of The City is a character and worldbuilding piece. In E Gli Al Tri Universi, Serpieri stated his appreciation of the film La Femme publique starring Valerie Kaprinksy. He spoke about how she moves through the city, and what her life and interaction with it are like. Morbus Gravis too is a regular, albeit dramatic, day in the life of Druuna, though it mutates into something extraordinary by the book’s end. It is still very much a prototype for a Druuna story. Had the book ended there, it would have been a fine standalone horror comic. But Druuna’s story does not end here.
Morbus Gravis II
Morbus Gravis II begins with Druuna on a vacant beach. Though she cannot remember coming to this place, Druuna gleefully splashes through the shallows, taking delight in her surroundings. A pale blue sea and bleached rocks brighten the first page. Druuna looks up towards a clear midday sky in the final frame. Moving to the shore to rest, she lies face down on the sand. Druuna is presented from a myriad of angles as she rests, with Serpieri’s signature ¾ view making an appearance near the bottom of the second page, queuing the entrance of another person.
A shadow crawls over Druuna’s back. She turns to see a man standing over her. He sits down beside her, checking on her wellbeing. Druuna recognizes him, though she cannot remember from where. Taking Druuna in his arms, they quickly become entangled, making love on the shore as waves roll in.
Druuna and the man toss about the sand, their bodies framed in short cuts, clipping between their faces, hands, and feet. It carries a sense of urgency and movement, the result being cinematic more than pornographic.
The scene ends with Druuna closing her eyes, drifting out of the dreamscape and back into reality. Her hair blows in the wind, bleeding into the panel below. Its black strands thickening into darkness, the shining black husk of a skittering beetle is the first thing Druuna sees as she awakens. Face down on the floor, Druuna finds herself exactly where she was at the end of Morbus Gravis I – in front of Lewis (head in a jar Lewis, not hunky beach Lewis). Lewis catches Druuna up on current events, recounting how she came to find him in the Upper Levels.
Druuna recoils in disgust after learning that Lewis implanted the vision of the beach in her head after she fainted. Dismissing Lewis’ prodding with short, frustrated answers, Druuna leaves the Upper Levels, only to discover Schastar’s body is gone from the elevator.
As she moves back into the ruins of The City, Druuna finds more amiss. The Priest uncloaked by Schastar has disappeared. Walls exist where they did not before. Her telepathic communication with Lewis lost, Druuna walks among a mess of pipes and brick, desperately searching for a way out. The panels stack at uneven angles, creating a jagged series of steps, drawing the reader’s eye up and down the page as Druuna navigates the rubble.
Druuna soon discovers the landscape’s apparent shift is not an artifact of her imagination, but part of a larger phenomenon. She meets a man and his daughter, Hale, who goes on to explain that he too has witnessed these strange architectural changes. Soon after, the group witnesses one of these shifts firsthand. The landscape tears open before them, revealing a portal to an entirely different sector. Three soldiers skulk in the distance. The central pane warps, with the smoke and haze bleeding into the panel borders. Toxic browns and yellows collide with the greys and blues at the other end of the portal, distinguishing the tear in reality. The panel structure is almost mirrored top to bottom, with both groups witnessing the phenomenon.
Mistaking the soldiers for mutants, the man fires a shot. The soldiers (Monk, Snake, and Sarge) retaliate, killing the man and taking Druuna and Hale as prisoners. Druuna attempts to comfort Hale, albeit only insofar as urging her not to rebel against their captors. Hale, understandably distrustful, dismisses Druuna’s advice.
As they continue on, the landscape’s tint begins to alter, with blue, grey, orange, and purple hues subtlety underscoring the temporal disturbances. The structures rot, coated with a thick fleshy-slime; not unlike how the sickness manifests in humans. In the foreground of page 19, the pipes morph to claw-like appendages, emphasizing the landscape’s hostility.
Druuna and Hale soon win their freedom, albeit at the cost of Monk and Sarge’s lives. Chased by a mutant, Hale and Druuna sprint into the darkness while a slithering mass of tentacles licks at their heels. The women are abruptly separated by a wall, seemingly having been erected out of nowhere. Druuna curls into the dead end, the mutant now only feet away. Just before it makes contact, the tentacle forms into a human hand, and the creature groans out an exasperated “Dr..uuu..na”. As it turns out, Schastar survived and had been following Druuna, protecting her from the shadows. Before the lovers can be reunited, the wall gives way once more and Druuna tumbles into the abyss.
Druuna’s arms spread, grasping for an anchor, while Schastar remains blocked off, his reach stopping just short of the break. As she falls, the pipes lining the pit walls launch one`s gaze upward, emphasizing the speed of her plummet.
When Druuna wakes up, she finds herself in a bed with Jock looking over her. Having found her in the Forbidden City, Jock brought Druuna and Hale back to the barracks.
Jock’s apartment is a mess of old linens, arranged as pleasantly as they could be in such a state of disrepair. Druuna is hardly given an explanation (other than seeing video feed of Hale’s fate) before Jock moves to take Druuna up on her promise of repayment for the serum.
As Druuna moves to the closet to get dressed in lingerie, she stands in front of a mirror. These frames are full, detailed reflections of Druuna’s body from two angles. It’s yet another of Serpieri’s talents on full display, showcasing Druuna’s form in such meticulous detail that he can draw it twice in the same frame. Druuna stands in front of a mirror to dress herself. Her reflection is showcased for several panels, displaying her body with thorough consistency. As Druuna ties her corset, we see the detail of her fingers working to hold the lace in the reflection, though her hand is blocked from the other vantage. The page ends with a full body display, Druuna pulling up her underwear as she turns to face the reader, her nipples floating just above the ill-fitting brazier.
Druuna wears the outfit without protest. Just as Lewis provided Druuna with visions and feelings of the past through telepathy, Jock has provided the physical remnants of another time period. As he puts it, “…a distant past, decadent and corrupted, where women still knew a thing or two about seduction.”, contrasting how both men use Druuna for the same purpose.
Their mutual joy soon collapses, and Druuna learns she has fallen into a trap. Jock reveals he has discovered Druuna’s attempts to work with the mutant rebels. In a fit of anger, he sodomizes Druuna before discarding her to his men, who in turn take her to the prison complex below.
Jailed, Druuna is briefly reunited with The Mutant, who lays upon a cot, nearly beaten to death. With her final breaths, The Mutant apologizes to Druuna, stating she was the one who gave them her name. After giving a chilling preview of what awaits her in the dreaded Room 77, The Mutant passes away. Druuna collapses by her side, sobbing.
Moments later, she is beckoned to stand up and exit the room not by soldiers, but by the hymn of a familiar voice. Druuna walks out the open cell door and finds Lewis standing on the beach where they first made love. She rushes out the door, falling into his arms with a gasp of relief. Lewis explains that upon making contact with her, Delta increased the auto-regenerative process – thus explaining the bizarre distortions Druuna witnessed in the book’s first half. Druuna, now aware the beach exists only in the dreamscape, explains that she is about to be taken away and tortured, and will no longer be able to help Lewis. Lewis reassures her he will intervene, though Druuna doubts how his power of dream-weaving will be of any use.
The guards’ commands soon pull Druuna free of the dream. A few lines of motion bleeding between the panels signals this abrupt transition – far less ceremonious than Druuna’s first awakening. Grasping onto Lewis in the page’s first frame, she closes in on herself, touching her own arm as she peers over her shoulder in the second, wearing an expression of pure fear.
Druuna’s preparatory torture session is interrupted by the rusted moan of Room 77’s door opening. A man emerges, stating he has finished his work and the room is free for use. The remains of his victim are dragged into Druuna’s torture chamber to be discarded into a pit. A Priest follows, asking whether Druuna is ready for processing in Room 77. In the midst of all the crossing conversations, a hand reaches up from the pit. The Gnome enters, complaining about a body being unceremoniously dumped on his head. The room recoils in horror as the Gnome looks about rather innocently before spotting Druuna and opting to attack and free her from the captors.
Escaping from the torture chamber, Druuna free-falls into the sewers below. Traces of white highlight her fall into the water. However, the motion of her fall rides on her physique as well. Her hair and breasts float upwards along with her arms, allowing her shirt to open. Capturing the build of a still body is one thing, but this panel showcases Serpieri`s ability to draft the swiftest of motions.
Arriving outside a massive tower, Druuna and the Gnome traverse a pipe bridge over a pit of mutants. The air is thick with a sickly pink mist. Organic matter sprouts out from the infrastructure, the flesh-like resin warping into eerie shapes of clawed hands and fanged jaws. The tower itself too is seemingly more organic than concrete, the upper stack having mutated into a massive collection of veins.
Upon seeing Delta, a being of pure energy personified by a human-like face in the midst of an electrical field, Druuna comes under telepathic fire from both Lewis and Delta (the Gnome, playfully ignorant to Druuna’s telepathic conversation, simply suggests they leave). Delta claims Lewis is lying, and that killing him will destroy the ship and everyone on it. Lewis urges Druuna on, telling her to stab the energy field with a piece of shrapnel in order to destroy Delta. As Druuna decides what to do, a trio of decrepit robots activate behind her. Closing in, they try to stop her, with one falling into Delta’s energy field, inadvertently activating a self-destruct sequence. As Druuna celebrates, she is soon informed by Lewis that he used her only as a mechanism to usher in his own death. While Delta had been trying to save the human race, Lewis had been trying to escape his centuries old prison. Druuna escapes the chaos of Lewis’ psychic link, pushing the robot free from Delta’s field.
Having saved the city, but still privy to Lewis’ telepathic whining, Druuna commits to find Schastar. The book ends with her walking out into the landscape, the Gnome opting to tag along against his better judgement.
Form
In Morbus Gravis I, Serpieri conveyed the setting through a series of dark and claustrophobic rooms. In Morbus Gravis II, the vantage has been pulled back, showcasing The City through a series of landscapes. This broader scope helps to tell the story from the viewpoint of characters like Schastar and Delta, observing the drama from afar.
From Druuna’s viewpoint, The City seemed like nothing but a labyrinth of ruined infrastructure. Chillingly, this is only affirmed when viewed in landscapes. Whatever the ship’s purpose and function before, it has dissolved into an inconceivable wreck beyond salvage. Drain pipes lead to nowhere. Pillars lay broken and scattered on the ground, the remnants of what they supported having long since disintegrated.
Morbus Gravis II also places a higher emphasis on movement and action. Druuna falls, leaps, and sprints about The City, showcasing her form in action. Unlike superhero comic fare, these sequences are never page shattering. Rather, the action is contained to panels, the urgency and drama born as a result of Druuna’s balance framed through background structures and line work.
One artistic anomaly in Morbus Gravis II are Druuna’s facial features. In 1995, seven years after Morbus Gravis’ publishing, Serpieri said, “The Druuna that I draw is nothing but a synthesis of all the women I have ever met at the four corners of the globe. I had unwittingly used Vanessa’s magic smile, and Monica’s flowing hair and the undulating curves of Greta’s body, and so on.”(Serpieri 1995) While some of these inconsistencies could be attributed to rushing, it’s unlikely a portraitist of his caliber would have fudged such details. Despite his claim that Druuna was truly realized on the fourth page of Morbus Gravis I, in Morbus Gravis II we still get to see Serpieri’s evolution in solidifying Druuna, with echoes of his muses permeating throughout.
The mutants Druuna and the Gnome encounter on the way to Delta stand upright on their hind legs, being somewhere between groundhog and human. Their limbs are stumpy and short with a hock-like bend. Their heads sit atop thick necks, expressionless faces looking on in wait. Yet, the father’s heavy gut and mother’s large drooping breasts look more human than rodent. Furthermore, their body language signals anything but unintelligent or rabid. The father takes a defensive stance by shielding his family with his arms and donning his teeth, rather than committing to all fours. Similarly, the mother pats one of her children gently on the back of the head as Druuna and the Gnome pass. In spite of their vastly different appearances, they act in wholly similar, human, ways.
Compared to the ravenous mutants – or more fittingly, the Priests – the robots guarding Delta are clearly not built for combat. They stumble about in a state of such disrepair, it’s immediately clear Delta’s efforts are not born of aggression. The robots walk stiff-legged, their large eyes wobbling about with each step. Their hollow, cylindrical torsos sit atop twig-like legs barely capable of propelling their chassis forward.
Delta’s composition is remarkably simple, being only a few jagged lines signifying electricity with a face animated in the core. In Morbus Gravis I, during Druuna’s visit to The Mutant, we saw another representation of Delta. The sculpture seen in the Mutant’s home builds his portrait through pipes and metal plates. Comparing the two portraits is interesting, seeing as Delta does not actually exist in a three-dimensional physical plane. He is a part of the ship, its energy personified.
Thoughts
From her wandering the forbidden zone, imprisonment, and time spent in Lewis’ dreamscape, Druuna is built up as a character in Morbus Gravis II. We see her forced to make decisions based on newly acquired knowledge regarding both The City and her place in it – often at a split second’s notice. She proves herself more than a vessel this time around. Druuna adopts a more active role regarding both her survival and that of The City. While she’s not exactly Red Sonja by book’s end, Druuna’s thinking evolves, and she becomes braver and bolder as a result.
Druuna bows to the orders of the soldiers, and urges Hale to follow suit, but she isn’t without compassion, asking Sarge to keep his subordinate from harming Hale. Later, we see Druuna reach the brink of desperation upon finding The Mutant in her cell. Even after The Mutant reveals it was her who gave the authorities her name, Druuna forgives her. Her resilience often manifests in kindness as opposed to anger.
Finding renewed vigor thanks to the Gnome’s intervention, Druuna not only fights her captors, but she (literally) pulls back the curtain on the Priests’ ruse, revealing the truth by stripping one of its cloak. Druuna may not have discovered the truth about the Priests or The City, but she was burdened with carrying and ultimately delivering the information. Though she is often used as a tool by others in Morbus Gravis I, the prison break in Morbus Gravis II is one of the situations where Druuna not only fights back, but makes the active choice to use her power.
While Schastar deceived Druuna, it was not in an attempt to use her for his selfish pleasure or personal gain. Rather, he passed his assignment on to Druuna after he could no longer complete it himself. Lewis on the other hand deceives Druuna for wholly selfish reasons. He gives her visions of comfort and pleasure, but only insofar as he can take pleasure as well. Furthermore, tasking Druuna with finding Delta does nothing but put her in further danger, and all for Lewis’ goal of self-annihilation (along with the rest of the ship’s population by default).
Prior to Morbus Gravis, Serpieri illustrated Larousse’s Bibbia: Antico e Nuovo Testamente. He stated the assignment was interesting, but was far removed from the themes to which he is attached, like the Far West (Licari 2000). On the topic of religion, Serpieri stated in a 2013 interview, “I am absolutely not a believer… I have no acts of faith, I believe in what I see, what I touch in a literal sense.”(Serpieri 2013)
This stress of scientific understanding over religious and cultural stigma is on full display in these first two volumes: Schastar’s revelation about the Priests, Druuna’s physical basis residing (at least partially) outside the racial archetypes of Western Christian culture, notions of shame relating to pleasure, and likening physical defects or illness to sin (Serpieri 1993, n.p.).
The woman Serpieri saw on the beach at Ostie seemingly stirred a throng of questions, fears, and inspirations. In this light, it should be asked how much of his own personality Serpieri put into Lewis – especially considering he literally brings himself into the story as a character in the next volume. However, in retelling the origin story of his muse on the beach one can only assume part of Serpieri’s searching for Druuna is mirrored by Lewis’. Serpieri stated that his visit to the beach in Ostie led to the creation of what would be an unending saga. These first two volumes may have simply been planned as such, with his desire to pursue the series farther occurring during or after their genesis; Point being, the autofiction elements we are about to witness in the following volumes may or may not have been planned from the start.
Serpieri’s Druuna works can be enjoyed as works of horror fantasy, ignoring the notion of autofiction altogether. However, if following his other published works, including Sketchbook, Druuna X, Obsession, and even his western catalogue, the process of self-insertion is evident. Serpieri is tied to Druuna’s world as much as she is, and books become a sort of therapy, or perhaps laboratory, by which to process, and chase, the artefacts of his life and illustrative process.
Creatura
Creatura opens with a narrative bubble underlining the title, stating, “In the beginning there was chaos. Then God created the supreme being… first among all creatures: Himself…” Bordering this text on all sides, an infant breaks from the womb and into a vast, dark ocean. The male baby, who matures at a steady rate each frame, floats out into the abyss, his left hand reaching just outside of the final frame as though to grip it, prompting the reader to turn the page.
He reaches the surface in a panicked state, and as a fully developed man. Unable to break through the sickly yellow resin he lets out an anguished gasp, succumbing to his fate, only to find himself awakened from the apparent nightmare by a woman. In this final frame of the page, the man (William) and his companion (Terry) are in a borderless box, whilst the nightmare sequence prior saw Will contained within bordered panels, stressing the claustrophobia of his dream state.
The two were entwined in a zero-gravity love-making session when Will fell asleep. Terry expresses her concern with Will’s wellbeing. Will is dismissive of Terry – hostile, even – stating he is merely lacking sleep and that he has no more interest in continuing their escapade.
Terry and Will get dressed and move to the ship’s bridge at the request of their crewmate, Rogers. Here, they meet roughly a half-dozen other crew members and begin discussing a nearby object they have discovered in space. The ship’s artificial intelligence system refers to the mass as a “paradox”, as the body seemingly emits a strange frequency; though some of the crew disagree, believing it to be nothing more than an asteroid. Will puts on a pair of headphones to listen to the AI’s feed of the signal, and it quickly causes him to fall under a trance, falling back into a dream.
Page 6 opens with Will slipping the headphones over his head. The following frame closes in from a bust shot to a portrait view. Will’s anguish upon hearing the noise is made evident by his tensed hands gripping the headphones, along with his eyes clenched shut and beads of sweat dripping down his forehead. Blue static radiates from around his hands, portraying both the sound and the sharp pain it seems to be causing. The static points even break slightly out of the lefthand frame, queuing the break with reality.
Will opens his eyes to see that he is no longer onboard his ship, but rather emerging from the body of water he found himself gasping for breath in a short while ago. Will walks towards a ruined city, his colouring now a ghostly grey and his state of dress changed. Colour returns to normal as he breaches the shore on page 7, perhaps meant to communicate the move to the dream world is in fact indistinguishable from reality.
He examines his surroundings, finding the buildings are being consumed by strange vegetation before noticing a reflection atop one of the towers. In the city, he finds an unintelligible mess of stairs, pathways, and buildings. Will theorizes he is having another nightmare, stating that only a “distorted human mind could come up with such a crazy building scheme.”
On page 9, Will approaches a woman in a red gown (soon revealed to be Druuna) as she gazes out at the desolate scene below. She states that the city, sea, and everything else has died, and she believes she will soon die as well. She then lashes out at Will, labelling him as part of the illusion. However, she moves from recoiling in anger to falling into his arms over the course of a mere five frames, with Will none the wiser as to the reason he finds himself here, or who this woman is.
Druuna takes Will by the hand, leading him down a staircase and into her private quarters; a room, much like the rest of the city, in a state of disarray, though unaffected by the parasitic creep. The room is filled with décor and objects of, what Druuna assumes, are a world long past.
Will’s arching back is flexed as he removes his shirt. Druuna, laid back on the bed, is in a state of excitement as highlighted by the flexed tendons in her neck as she gazes up to admire Will. Though the scene is scored by dialog and line of action, it is the muscle tension that communicates the pair’s lust.
Their pleasure is short-lived, however, and before long the dream begins to fade for Will, just as the mysterious woman whispers her name: Druuna.
The frame breaks into small glass-like shards and the colour evaporates to a grey-black overtone as Will leans over top of Druuna, with Druuna delicately cusping Will’s head in her hands. Horizontal white lines cut over top of the frame like television static, and the page ends with Will back on the ship’s bridge, the headphones falling from his ears as his crewmates look on in confusion.
The crew informs Will that he lost consciousness for a few seconds and woke up mumbling “Druuna…” Will suggests they move closer to the asteroid. Rogers disagrees, prompting Will to leave abruptly to go and see the ship’s doctor (Doc). Will and Terry then exchange words, with Terry trying to defend Will while Rogers makes veiled accusations about her feelings towards him, and what Rogers refers to as her “genetic programming.”
We then follow Terry as she moves to the bottom levels of the ship, obviously upset by Roger’s taunting. She approaches a door labelled “Prolet”. She wrestles with her desire for whatever awaits inside, stating she hates what they do to her but is helpless to fight her urges. Naked and against the wall, she presents herself, terrified as the mysterious beings approach and ultimately rape her, with only scant visions of the humanoids teased before the scene changes to Doc’s office.
Doc believes Will has experienced telepathic communication with a powerful being. Though Will dismisses the notion as absurd, their conversation is soon interrupted by a radio call from the bridge, stating they have reached the asteroid. Doc and Will gaze out the ship window to witness the object up close. The asteroid is a massive, seemingly organic or fossilized, object. A six letter message then appears in the computer’s feed: D-R-U-U-N-A.
Grey and black tones cast an eerie shadow over the scene, prompting Will to once again fall into a dream. He awakens in a cavern made of muscle tissue. A voice calls out for help from the end of the hall. Will moves to investigate, noting how the walls seem to be pulsating, or breathing, like a living entity.
To his surprise, a little girl in white dress calls him forward, asking if he is her father. Will states he is not, but asks how he can help her. She brings him to a corridor leading to a massive open eye, staring directly at him. Will recoils in horror, pinning the source of his nightmares, and the telepathic communication, to this being.
The sickly tunnel housing the eye, coupled with the red flesh creeping atop it, make it appear in a perpetual state of horror, aggression, or pain. It’s startling and pitiful, not letting the reader know its intentions, but rather just its state of focus.
Gazing into the eye with the little girl, Will sees an image of Druuna within the darkness of the pupil. Druuna is framed in the black void via cross hatching around the iris, focusing attention inward, with her black hair reflecting a bit of light. As the next frame closes in, and Druuna awakens, she still appears to be behind the lens of the eye – or rather, inside the mind of the being.
Back on the bridge, Rogers shows Doc and Will that they have found an opening in the asteroid. Will and Rogers spar about whether to move closer or back away, with Will citing the mission objectives they carry, seemingly rooted in their species exploring the far reaches of the universe.
The page rounds out with Terry in her room. She begins in the shower, resting her head against the wall before moving to the bathroom mirror. Draped in a towel, she looks at herself, stating how she fears the “brutes” will kill her one day. She then moves to the bed to inject herself with a serum of some kind, continuing her mental flogging, stating, “Rogers is right… No amount of drugs will change what I am.”
These frames with Terry capture a private moment of her life. Not posed in an erotic manner, nor engaged in a sexual act, she instead moves about her quarters, nude, lost in thought. It’s tantalizing insofar as she is bare, but not merely for the viewer’s pleasure. She doesn’t teasingly hide her breasts under the towel, but rather stands there in a moment of reflection. It’s a great example of how powerful, and intimate, Serpieri’s use of the nude body can be, eroticism aside.
In the next scene, Will orders Stephenson, Doc, and Terry to accompany him to the surface of the asteroid while they await the computer’s analysis. On page 24, the shuttle begins its descent towards the opening in the asteroid. The crater appearing far deeper and narrower than the video feed seen before, the warped perspective gives this frame a sense of vertigo and speed, with the shuttle craft plummeting towards the surface, fighting the asteroid’s gravity as they hastily deploy the landing gear.
After a rough landing, the crew begins exploring the surface. Doc and Will look at the remnants of the structures, theorizing who could have built them and why. The pipes and mechanical infrastructure bear an uncanny resemblance to the machinery and equipment seen in the crew’s own ship. Curiously, they do not immediately recognize it as manmade.
Soon after, Doc and Will lose communication with their crewmates on the surface. They are then informed by Rogers that the computer has solved the “paradox”. In fact, the asteroid houses a living creature, and that creature is trying to fuse with the internal artificial core. The creature is, allegedly, God.
After this revelation, Will suddenly realizes that he is now all alone. The squishy resin coating the ground begins to swallow the shuttle before reaching up for Will with an array of tentacles. He is sucked underground, the page ending with a flash of light in the dark.
The following page opens with this same flash, though now we are in the company of Druuna instead of Will. She appears to be waking from the dream of the city shared earlier in the story. Druuna lays upon a pedestal, covered in a wrinkled and dirty white sheet. With no recollection of how she came here, she only discerns that someone else must have wrapped her in the sheet. The cloth does not bend or wrap around her as she sits up but rather crumbles into dust, revealing her body.
Cold and alone, Druuna tries to remember how she got to this place, but finds herself only able to remember her dreams in the ruined city. She remembers Lewis, and how he put her there, but cannot recall for how long.
She moves from the dark room towards an opening in the concrete and rebar wall, emerging into a ruined, but brighter and warmer, landscape. A series of domes like the one she had been housed in line the yard. She opts to enter another, only to find it leads to a sewer tunnel. A collection of leeches cling to Druuna’s bare skin as she tromps through the waterway, though things get worse from there, with a wave of water crashing down the tunnel towards her.
On page 32, Druuna grabs hold of a hanging line to save herself from being swept away by the current. Like the scene with Will and Druuna making love from earlier, the muscle tension and definition displayed on this page do an incredible job of building suspense, scoring Druuna’s escape from the sewer by way of climbing a brick wall.
When Druuna emerges from the sewer in the fourth frame, where colour and light return to the scene, you can see the tendons in her left arm flex as she grips the wall while hoisting herself up via a thin platform. Her shoulders raised and tensed, Druuna looks like a natural rock climber, elegantly hugging the rock via the edges of the frame as though they were anchor points. The final frame shows her hands reaching over the ledge, and here too the tension in her muscles amplifies the stress of not only escaping from the crevasse, but by hiding vantage as to what awaits on the surface.
On the following page, her wrists are seized by an unknown individual. She is abruptly lifted out of the hole and into the company of three men and a woman, all wearing district and eclectic garb. The group lay claim to her, immediately stating their intentions to share and breed with her. The woman, Lornah, commands the pack, taking Druuna into her care and reminding the men what women are meant for in their community.
Druuna thanks Lornah for asking the man to let go of her wrists, promising she will not run away. Lornah responds by stating that she knows Druuna would not run away, as this side of the “wall” is far too dangerous. She then gives Druuna a simple white top, long enough to cover her torso, hips, and pelvis. Druuna goes along with the group, begrudgingly, trying to work out a way to escape.
The group hikes across a landscape of foothills, similar to the forbidden zone seen in Morbus Gravis II, though all traces of manmade structures seem to now be lost beneath the creep. As they reach the top of a ridge, Druuna’s companions point out a mass of flesh in the distance, spitting out a stampede of giant insectoid creatures. Lornah states they refer to the being as a curse in their community, though someone named Sha calls it a God.
At the gates to the city, Druuna asks who Sha is. Lornah states he is the most important man in the community, and lives in the dome. Before Druuna can learn more, the doorman opens the gate (just as a pack of the creatures attempt to attack, with the men, Gall, Rohko, and Bugh, fending them off while Lornah and Druuna rush the door), who happens to be none other than Druuna’s old friend, The Gnome, bookending the tense page of action with some comic relief.
Their reunion is short-lived, as The Gnome does not recognize Druuna. Reminded by Lornah not to speak to anyone inside the city, Druuna is ushered into the streets for the community to see. Men gawk and women gossip as Druuna passes through, Lornah informing her that coming into possession of a new woman is a sign of power within the community.
Page 38 ends with a wide frame of villagers all facing outward towards the reader while Lorna and Druuna pass in profile, left to right. At the far right, Will can be seen in the crowd, his face partly obscured by the hood of his cloak.
Druuna senses a familiar vibration which amplifies as she gets closer to Will. They exchange glances, with Druuna recognizing him from her dream, and Will repeating her name in his head. Rohko stands between the two, pushing Will aside by the shoulder, his forearm underlining their gazes.
Moving through the streets, Druuna sees the dome housing Sha in the distance. It is coloured with a grey and blue light – a colder tone from the tanned houses and buildings boarding it. An array of pipes and power lines jet out from the top of the dome as well, cracking through the concrete ceiling like roots.
Lornah moves Druuna into a room and tells her that she will be back for her later on. Inside, Druuna finds Terry sitting on a bed. Terry has, it seems, lost her memory of life on the ship, but still remembers the purpose of her construction – to make love. Druuna takes a seat on the bed next to her while Terry recounts what she can remember, and offers a warning to Druuna about how women are treated here. Terry stares forward with a vacant expression and heavy eyes, inhaling opium. She curls in on herself, hand and head rested against her knee, while one of her shoulder straps falls down, stressing her depressed state. Terry claims they (the villagers) need women in order to procreate. Druuna stands up from the bed, nervously fidgeting with her hands, recalling that she has yet to see a child anywhere in the city.
Page 41 opens with Lornah, Bugh, Rohko, and Gall entering the scene, blocking the lone door to the room. This first frame takes up nearly two-thirds of lefthand side of the page. Though the backdrop of the room’s archway is visible, the floor is absent, replaced by a blank white plot. Speech bubbles from the surrounding frames break into this frame, touring the eye around and down as Druuna is restrained and injected with a mysterious serum. The final two frames are punctuated with Lornah’s rear and breasts, displayed by way of corset, telegraphing the group’s intentions with Druuna.
The first frame of page 42 has Druuna, still dressed, restrained by Bugh and Lornah, her body forced into an awkward zig-zag pattern while Lornah and Bugh bracket her on either side. In the second frame, Druuna’s face is pressed into Lornah’s bosom. Lornah holds her in a firm, almost motherly, grip as though to comfort her.
The drugs Druuna had been injected with kick into effect soon after, and she becomes a willing participant. Like the opening frames on the page, Druuna is surrounded, trapped, between the group in every subsequent pane. In the fourth frame, where Druuna begins to feel the effects of the drugs, she is viced between Bugh’s arching body and Lornah’s breasts and head at the top and bottom of the frame, respectively. The next frame, Druuna is surrounded by all three men, with Lornah bordering the bottom of the frame. Even in the final frame, where Druuna performs fellatio, Lornah watches (approvingly) from above, keeping Druuna surrounded.
This structure continues onto the next page, with Druuna constantly framed by the three men and Lornah. For the entirety of the scene thus far, Druuna has been kept below the other members as they tower over her. In the final frame, however, while mounted atop Rohko, she is raised to the top of the group, the pile of bodies forming a triangle, with Druuna’s head making up the point. The drugs fully in effect, Druuna takes control of the scene, not just partaking in the acts, but commanding them.
Page 44 picks up some time after, with the group sprawled out across the bed, asleep. Druuna wakes up first, dressing herself and slipping out before the others notice. She stops to touch Lornah, reflecting on the pleasure she gave to her, but comments that she cannot stay in this place and must move on. Terry stops Druuna at the door, stating she wants to escape with her. The vibrant colours and bright light of the previous scene gone, Druuna and Terry slip out in the muted grey and yellow landscape and head towards the dome.
As they ascend the stairs to the dome, Druuna notes the sculpture of an eye. She recognizes it from her dreams, stating she remembers seeing it as a child. As Druuna reflects on her dreams, Terry voices her suspicions of the temple. Her rejection of the legends involving the man who lives inside, contrasted against Druuna’s reconciling of her dreams, is further reflected on page 46.
In the first frame, Druuna stands facing the eye while Terry lags a step behind, one foot still off the landing. In the second frame, both women are portrayed in profile looking left. Druuna, in thought, has long dark hair, while Terry, speaking aloud, has short blonde hair, providing another visual dichotomy to the scene. The third frame has both women entering the dark hallway of the temple, where Druuna is cloaked in black shadow, leaning right, while Terry remains in the light, hesitating, and leaning to the left.
Once inside, Druuna is greeted by a zombified man seated upon a throne. His skin is a sickly green and metal plates and goggles are affixed to his head. He mumbles to Druuna without moving his lips, and is unable to get up due to lack of energy. He reveals himself to be Schastar, and though he can barely sense her presence, he tells her she is just as beautiful as he remembers. Kept alive by the crude machinery, it is confirmed that a substantial amount of time has passed since Morbus Gravis, and that this is the same ship, though it has transformed into such a different place that Druuna could not recognize it.
Schastar tries to explain his condition, though Druuna is so overwhelmed that she throws herself upon him. Soon, his speech cuts out, and Druuna is greeted by another familiar voice: Lewis. As he explains it, Lewis merged himself with Schastar in order to keep him alive. After centuries, however, their minds conformed into one, with Schastar’s proving dominant, but soon thereafter the vessel was taken over by what Lewis refers to as the “living God.”
Lewis gives Druuna a brief telepathic glimpse of the eye from her nightmare, stating it belongs to a temporal being attempting to break into their world. The sickness seen in Morbus Gravis was only its first attempt to enter into their realm. In order to save Druuna, Lewis put her in a deep sleep and transferred her mind and body into an alternate dimension while he and Schastar stayed behind.
Before Druuna can comprehend the information revealed, two decrepit robots stumble towards her. Lewis states that there is no escaping their fate, and thus he has arranged for Druuna to meet with this entity. The robots escort her up towards a pedestal, undressing her and restraining her on the stone platform.
A horrific, almost liquid, mass crawls up over the end of the pedestal, transforming from a rounded blob into a fleshless humanoid. Druuna screams in fear as the beast moves up between her legs, entering her while still only partially formed. Page 51 opens with three concurrent frames, showing the creature’s face morphing into Lewis’. This transformation is stunning, with the first frame being an unrecognizable face twisted in anguish, the muscle definition being nothing more than a collection of red blobs and stringy tendon. In the second frame, flesh begins to cover the mass, and the look softens to one of relief, with the third frame forming into a healthy, young Lewis. He has come to form this illusion in order to help Druuna through the process with the “living God”, and to uphold his and Schastar’s end of the deal with the being, allowing Druuna to live.
Druuna falls into Lewis’ arms and the two begin to make love. In the middle of page 51, Druuna is atop Lewis, legs spread apart. A warm orange glow illuminates the righthand side of her body, while a grey light covers her left, telegraphing the realities she unknowingly straddles.
She then awakens with Lewis on the beach from Morbus Gravis II. She moves to stand, reaching out to the sea with her right hand while Lewis holds her left, anchoring her down. A flock of birds fly above her outstretched hand, showing the freedom that awaits.
They move into the water at Lewis’ protest. Druuna dives beneath the surface, with Lewis following thereafter. While they float underwater, he tells her that he is fading away. The one he called to take her away and keep her safe (Will) will soon come. With that, Lewis sinks into the abyss.
The top frames of page 53 all flow between one and other by way of broken borders, the water moving between them like currents, directing the reader’s gaze. The first frame has Druuna and Lewis breaking the surface, moving towards the frame’s bottom right corner which opens to them floating, hand in hand, in the ocean. Druuna’s body is angled slightly left, leading the gaze into the bottom two frames as Lewis says goodbye before sinking.
The page ends with Druuna collapsed upon the pedestal in the temple of Sha, clothed. The temple has begun to crumble, implying yet more time has passed since Druuna was taken by the “living God” and ushered away into the dream by Lewis. When Druuna sits up, she realizes the creature must have impregnated her while in the dream. She moves to leave the temple, stopping to check on Schastar, only to find him degraded to a mere skeleton. As Lewis had promised, they are now gone.
Druuna reflects on Lewis’ final words, regarding how the past, present, and future don’t exist. She questions whether she really is pregnant, and why she is alive and everyone else gone. Page 55 shows Druuna deep in thought, moving between close-ups of her face in reaction to these revelations. In the first frame, Druuna grasps at her head, communicating her confusion. In the fourth, she takes a seat, one hand on the ground and the other under her chin. Finally, she stands up, one hand on her hip and the other resting to the side, looking confidently out to the tunnel before her.
Venturing down the tunnel, Druuna hears the faint chatter of voices over a radio. One of the crew’s space suits lay on the ground. As she approaches, Will reveals himself. Rogers tells Will (via radio) to get back to the shuttle. Druuna and Will reconvene, with Will revealing he was sent to find her, and Druuna recognizing him from her dream. The two rendezvous with the rest of the crew, and though Druuna recognizes Terry, Terry has no recollection of their time together with Lornah.
As the crew moves to board the ship, Druuna theorizes that the creature is letting them escape because Lewis had tricked him into thinking she was pregnant. On board the shuttle, the men work to get the ship off the ground before it is consumed by the creep, while Terry takes the opportunity to question Druuna about her race and genetic makeup. Druuna responds by confirming she isn’t a primitive, and can in fact talk, though teases that her favorite food is human flesh.
The ship breaks free of the creep’s hold and moves back into space. Druuna looks back, saying her goodbyes to Schastar, Lewis, The Gnome, and The City. The computer suddenly interrupts, stating that the son of God has been conceived. Will dismisses the transmission as delirious. Doc on the other hand picks up that it is from old scripture. Druuna sinks in on herself, crossing her arms across her stomach in a dramatic end frame, doubting whether Lewis’ supposed plan had in fact worked, and questioning whether she is carrying a child.
Form
One of the most evident changes in tone from Morbus Gravis to Creatura is the more graphic depictions of sexual acts. That said, Serpieri (and/or the editors of various editions) have used balloon placement as a means to cover genitalia and penetration in several scenes, instead of the more careful framing methods seen in Morbus Gravis. Page 3 is an early example of this censorship, as seen with Will’s question mark bubble used to cover up his penis. This bubble is not present in all versions.
Though framing is still used to cover up some bits of full-frontal nudity, like on page 12 and the scene on pages 42 through 44, Creatura seems intentionally more graphic than its predecessor. Page 50 is a curious example of full-frontal nudity and insertion that seemingly escaped censorship, perhaps because the creature has not yet fully formed into a human – though that in itself seems more horrifying and worthy of censorship than Will’s zero-G penis.
The translation, balloon placement, and lettering are worth noting as a whole when comparing the Heavy Metal edition (translated by Michela Nonis, edited by Julie Simmons, and with lettering by Adam Kubert) with the more recent Lo Scarabeo edition (with lettering and translation done by Studio Manfont).
Though the Heavy Metal edition was subject to more censorship scrutiny, that’s not to say it’s an inferior translation. Text formatting in the balloons is less refined in the Heavy Metal edition of Creatura, with text often being off-centre or leaving large portions of the balloon space blank. It’s evident that the original text was simply whited out for Kubert to replace. Kubert’s italicised lettering fits the work nicely, and though not as well spaced and sized as the Lo Scarabeo print, his style fits with the tone.
That said, the formatting of text in the Lo Scarabeo version does look a bit cleaner, and the contrast between the lettering and balloon ink is more harmonious. There are a few odd translation choices between the two books, like when Druuna is being toured through the village by Lornah. In the Heavy Metal edition, she states, “Who are these people? What’s the matter with them?” In the Lo Scarabeo edition, she states in the same speech balloon, “Who are this people? What’s the matter with them?” In the final frame of the book, she states, “Hey… What if Lewis was wrong… What if the monster had me… Oh my god! No!” in the Heavy Metal edition, whereas in the Lo Scarabeo edition, she states, “Hey… What if Lewis was wrong… What if the monster made me… Oh my god! No!” Druuna’s moans of pleasure also vary between versions, sometimes being a “Hhhh…hh…” instead of a “Ahn… hhh…” Most of these differences are trivial, aside from the above cited extra balloon placement, but are nonetheless interesting to note (Email message to author 2021).
In Morbus Gravis, the attire worn by the populace was ragged and dirty, but resembled more or less what sort of practical scraps would be left behind in such a world. Druuna, for example, had a few pieces of denim wear and even sneakers. Schastar wore a trench coat – suitable attire for a man with secrets to hide. The security forces wore matching uniforms, Ottonegger wore a lab coat, etc. Point is, it was easy to discern what era this mysterious place had emerged from. In Creatura, time is a central theme, and the location in which the book takes place isn’t clearly established until late in the story. Will and his crew wear work gear, like thick jackets and cargo pants. The computer terminals are big – a messy collection of input boards and displays. It’s a similar brand of the angular, CRT, retro-future tech seen in the likes of Roger Christian’s set design for Alien. The space suits they wear on the expedition to the asteroid too look like 20th century space suits, albeit slimmed down a bit, though still with a notable amount of equipment tagged on.
Druuna’s gown from Lewis’ illusion is an obvious highlight, and is even featured on the cover of the book. It accentuates her body’s form, framing her head with vibrant frills and revealing much of her back, and echoing her movement by way of a train. Back turned to the viewer, Druuna appears to rest her face in her hands, striking a contrapposto pose as she gazes out to the ruined landscape, the sight seemingly weakening her. She is perhaps the only bit of life left in this decaying place, the vibrant red colour, frilled straps, and plunging neckline contrasting vitality against her crumbled surroundings.
Further on in the book, when Druuna is taken captive by Lornah, the fashion takes a curious turn. Druuna is clothed in a simple white garment, perhaps in reference to her innocence (or at the very least ignorance) of the situation she finds herself in. Gall, Rohko, Bugh, Lornah, and the rest of the community, have no definitive style of clothing aside from the unifying factor of “old stuff”. Cowboy attire, plate armor, and simple shawls are worn by the populous. Unlike the citizens of The City in Morbus Gravis, these people seem far worse off, hailing from a more primitive era, their dress being evocative of peasants. Or, perhaps it speaks to the dreamstate Druuna is able to exist within. Dimensional rifts, and the impact realties can have on one another, is a theme that permeates throughout the series from this point on.
In Morbus Gravis II, some of Druuna’s facial features appeared fluid, perhaps a result of Serpieri’s numerous references. In Creatura, her depiction is more consistent, and he even goes the extra mile to give readers a glimpse of Druuna as a young child. Serpieri’s depiction of young Druuna is not only notable as being the first time we see a child in the series, but in how well he has transcribed her looks into a much younger form. She is immediately identifiable as Druuna because her facial features are instantly recognizable, and this believable reduction in age is an incredible feat. Transforming facial features are seen throughout the series – like on page 51 when the living God morphs into Lewis – but the subtle note of young Druuna is a highlight of the book.
The book ends, as mentioned, on a similar note to Morbus Gravis I, with part of the mystery solved, though with the ramifications of the greater plot still unknown. In Morbus Gravis I, the last page reveal was a grand shot of the ship floating through space, the frame taking up half of the page. In Creatura, the final frame is small and abrupt, with Druuna leaning in on herself uncomfortably, eyes wide in horror at the realization that she may in fact have been impregnated. The rest of the crew is busy talking amongst themselves, trying to discern the computer’s new message, while Druuna sits in the dark, ignored, and terrified of what she may have brought onto the ship. This abruptness leaves the intended dramatic effect, with the reader flipping the page expecting more, only to find they have reached the end of the book.
Thoughts
Though Morbus Gravis had no shortage of dialogue, more time is spent on exposition and inner monologue here. Entire pages, like Doc and Will’s conversation on page 17 and Druuna’s analysis of her situation on page 55, fill the space with speech and thought bubbles in order to help explain to the reader what has transpired. This dedication to exposition is arguably necessary, thanks to the numerous twists and jumps in time as told from the perspective of multiple characters, and the broader plot may have been lost if the illustrations alone had to burden the load. Though, interestingly, Serpieri would create a textless narrative later on in the series, some twenty years after Creatura’s publishing.
Like Morbus Gravis, Druuna is once again used as a pawn here. Though her situation is confusing and often frightening, she is less oblivious to the happenings this time around, in-spite of their complexity. Serpieri stated that he considers Druuna to be intelligent, sensitive, and curious (Serpieri 1993), and she certainly proves herself to be here. Though guided by Schastar and Lewis, their role is more in the background for Creatura. The trickery they submit to in order to fulfil their deal with the otherworldly entity is undoubtedly sinister, though not done without love for Druuna (even if sacrificing her as a vessel). It perhaps speaks to the types of controls put upon women by their male counterparts, trying to have a hand in something innately feminine, like birth.
Perhaps the most interesting theme of Creatura is, broadly speaking, the repetition of organized civilization, and asking what it means to be human. It’s not just in the “barbaric” people that we see inequality and patriarchal themes. On the ship, it is established right away that Terry is seen as an outsider. She, like Druuna, is free with her love, and obviously has feelings for Will. Will does not reciprocate her feelings, and on pages 14 and 15, Rogers berates Terry, insinuating he and the rest of the crew know about her promiscuity and judge her for it. As she tries to walk away, he continues to push her, stating she cannot go against her role, or the programming of her genetic makeup.
What exactly he means by this isn’t clear in Creatura, though Terry soon after succumbs to her temptations, visiting the chamber labeled “Prolet”. Here, she begrudgingly submits to the humanoids inside, though not without hesitation. Torn between her “programming” and the judgement of others, she falls victim to rape from these beings, with their appetite for her seemingly being the only source of intimacy she can attain without rejection or judgement.
As explored in the scene with Druuna and Terry escaping to the temple of Sha, there is a sort of mirror between the two women. Both want the same thing, but are born of different worlds and have very different personalities. Terry carries the shame of judgement with her, and in the later part of the book when she and Druuna reach the shuttle, focuses her efforts on questioning Druuna with skepticism rather than compatriotism. Druuna on the other hand, though more often than not a willing participant in sexual acts thrust upon her, is drawn to the same intimate connections as Terry, though carries no shame. In spite of her objections to Lornah’s demands, she ultimately leaves with a respect, or at least understanding, of her situation. Terry on the other hand is, understandably, angrier with the pain she has had to endure. How these two women navigate the groups they are in is an interesting exploration and rectification of how women are treated in this horrifying universe (whether or not Druuna and Terry pass the Bechdel Test is debatable given their short conversations, but is still food for thought in such a sexually-charged narrative).
On page 58 when Doc and Druuna first meet, Druuna thinks to herself, “Hey, I know him!” Doc responds to Will and Druuna with, “Yes, but I only remembered what you looked like… If you didn’t exist, we would have to invent you…”
Doc, like the other characters, is oblivious to the outcome of the events, though as a “scientist and philosopher”, he offers theoretical explanations of the universe presented, while also struggling to navigate his way through it. He isn’t a love interest or hero; He is a protector and problem solver, sure, but ultimately Druuna is the one who traverses the void of this dangerous universe, and Doc is beholden to the results wrought by her. He is, perhaps like he suggests in real life, in search of this mysterious woman who is always just slightly out of reach.
Carnivora
Serpieri stated about Carnivora, “I have always been fascinated by the mystery of space. What lies beyond infinity? In Carnivora, I suggested that the small spaceship had reached the end of the universe. Is there anything beyond that? There lies the mystery. Perhaps an upside down world, where time runs backwards.”(Serpieri 1993)
The cover image of Druuna in the Kitchen Sink and Heavy Metal edition of Carnivora (note: Heavy Metal published an alternate edition featuring a different cover image but using the same framing method) suggests the book’s explicit content (emphasised by the picture’s small framing), hinting that there is more to the scene than revealed. It clearly advertises Druuna as a character in the book, and anyone familiar with Serpieri’s work would be able to identify the character by her typical state of undress and posture, though even readers unfamiliar with the series could make an assumption as to what the book is about from this first image.
Serpieri has a studio in Rome (Serpieri 1995). Though the Morbus Gravis series has no connection to the city itself, the skyline Druuna stands before is undoubtedly Rome; ascertained from Santi e Martina in the background. Curiously, this backdrop is a reproduced picture. While this may have been done for practical time saving purposes, looking at the interiors of any given Serpieri work showcases his aptitude at creating detailed architecture. Thus, this skyline is the first hint that Druuna does indeed border the real world, but is cut off from it, and only exists in Serpieri’s studio.
The cover image also subtly alludes to the book’s science fiction aspects via a collection of wires protruding from a socket in the wall next to Druuna’s feet. Wires collecting into organic-looking masses are prevalent throughout the series. Here, it is rather out of place given the setting, and if it were a genuine part of the scene being authentically recreated it’s hard to imagine why Serpieri wouldn’t have simply opted to exclude this detail in favour of keeping the image grounded in its erotic tones. This intrusion of a biomechanical mass builds suspense, with Druuna unaware of the creeping tendrils.
The setting of this cover image is so divorced from the setting of the book that only readers who have followed Druuna’s adventures would look past the erotic angle alone. Much like knowing that Doc is an avatar for Serpieri allows for an autofiction reading of the material, this cover image is dependent on a reader’s knowledge of Druuna and Serpieri’s relationship through offshoot publications like Sketchbook and Druuna X. Without this knowledge, Carnivora is a science fiction horror book with erotic elements; with it, Carnivora is about the deeper relationship between a creator and his medium.
In Carnivora, Doc appears on eight of the book’s fifty-eight pages, while the majority of the book’s pages depict Druuna. The opening page shows Doc in his laboratory, alone, speaking to the ship’s artificial intelligence computer. The first pane depicts his hand using a mixer, tuning the ship’s microphone. The following two frames switch from a frontal view of the ship’s computer – a pupil-like dot on a circular screen – and Doc, who stares vacantly out towards the viewer (or past the computer). The final frame of the page switches to a vantage from above, looking down at Doc through a network of pipes and wires, framing him as cornered amongst the machines, where he states, “… I’m about to lose my mind, go completely mad, and never reach my goal. Those accursed things, those beings are getting closer. I have very little time, but I must start from the beginning… From that woman…”
Page 2 begins with Doc in profile looking downward and to the right, stating:
Yes, I have to begin with her dreams… She was different from us. Closer to the species we call ‘Prolets.’ She emanated a strange but very powerful aura of sensuality.. I began to study her right away, with great interest. In the beginning, I had a hard time overcoming her stubborn suspiciousness. Her reluctance to recall her memories, analyze her thoughts, her anxieties, her dreams… Her dreams, or were they reality?
The construct of computers and machinery no longer in view, a black background frames Doc’s head, bleeding into the second frame, where we see Druuna moving through a landscape evocative of The City from Morbus Gravis. She wears a cloak and sneakers but has bare legs. Slowing her pace as she walks through the rubble, Druuna leans upon a wall for balance, mumbling to herself that she won’t make it much farther. Soon after she falls to the ground, clutching her stomach.
Druuna then wills herself back to her feet after hearing a sound in the distance, identifying it as someone chasing her. Curiously, only Druuna’s monologue is used to communicate the sound, with no lettering announcing her supposed stalker. She breaks into a jog, coming to a staircase leading to a door with an eye carved in the center. Steam escapes from the ground at the base of the staircase, forming borders on either side of her, corralling Druuna upwards in the direction of its flow.
She begins pounding on the door with her fists, pleading for someone to let her in. The vantage pulls back for the second frame of page 4, revealing the shadow of her stalker creeping up the staircase. The creature appears humanoid in shape, though fur seemingly covers its body. It leaps for Druuna, snatching her cloak just as the door opens. The first frame of this sequence is small, showing Druuna pounding at the door while the following two frames are elongated into taller rectangles. The second frame reveals her stalker’s shadow while the third is a close-up of Druuna resuming her pleas, with her eyes wide with fear. The following row of frames mirror this format, with the first frame being smaller than the second and third. This narrowing of frames produces suspense, quickening the reader’s pace as Druuna sprints through the opening door in the fourth frame, is caught off guard by the creature stealing her cloak in the fifth, and finally shutting the door in the sixth, leaning upon it as though it were the frame border, closing the page. However, the page continues with the final panel, compressing Druuna at the base of the page, and trapping her inside.
Two figures with putrid green complexions approach Druuna. She retreats, warning them not to touch her, but they quickly seize her arms and carry her into their operating room. Here, several more men await. Overhead, a large light illuminates a chair in the centre of the room. Hooked, bladed, and needled instruments hang from the ceiling, and blood splatter can be seen all over the room.
Up to this point the viewer has yet to see Druuna from the front and without her cloak on. Serpieri has hid Druuna’s frontal midsection through framing and posture, but as she is hurled onto the chair on page 6, it is revealed that the source of her discomfort is pregnancy.
Druuna is pinned to the table by the doctors. One produces a scalpel, plunging the blade into her belly. She screams in horror as blood erupts from her stomach. On the second last panel of the page, Druuna throws her head back, grunting in pain. The splash of blood from her stomach can be seen against the dark backdrop, though only her head and breasts are in view. On the final frame of page 6, Druuna abruptly sits up in bed. A sheet covers her legs, though from her uncovered torso and chest we can see that she is no longer pregnant, nor are there men around her. The whole ordeal appears to have been a dream and she is now in a bedroom, alone.
Druuna recounts that she has this same dream night after night. Before she can reflect on it further, a strange man bursts into the room. Druuna tries to calm him, caressing his chest and pulling away his trousers. He succumbs to her at first, but then pulls her head upwards, revealing a throng of onlookers have materialized behind him. The man’s colour drains, aligning his tone with the white and greys seen in the crowd and backdrop. Druuna remains the only character in the scene to have a flesh tone, and her red underwear contrasts with the white linens she sits upon. Hunching her shoulders and planting her hands behind her, she crosses her legs, signaling fear, but also curiosity.
Druuna placates the mysterious man and onlookers by lying face down on the bed and undressing. The second frame changes vantage to the perspective of the abuser. Looking down at Druuna on the bed from a first-person viewpoint, the abuser’s fist can be seen in the top right corner of the frame, gripping the handle of his whip. The whip cuts across the entire frame, cutting the image of Druuna in two, further stressing the duality of temptation and fear. The final frame of the page shows two of the onlookers up close, a man and woman dressed in black tie attire with ghastly green skin. The woman’s hands resemble paws with shortened thick fingers, more akin to claws than human hands.
The abuser then removes his trousers while the crowd of vile onlookers close in. Blood running down Druuna’s back from the strikes, she pleads for the man to be gentle. Her anticipation quickly turns to pain and then fear as the man, mounting her from behind, transforms into a quadruped mutant. His head elongates and his mouth sprouts fangs and a long, pointed tongue. The final frame shows the creature mutating, licking Druuna’s back as he clings to her hips with his stumpy, three-toed foot. Colour completely drains from the scene, bringing Druuna into the crowd’s cold realm.
The following page begins with a small profile portrait of Druuna, with her mouth agape as it was while under assault from the creature. It is then revealed that this event too was a dream, with the next frame showing Druuna’s head situated inside a large mechanical helmet with a speech bubble overtop reading, “Cerebral activity has resumed…” Druuna lies on a table surrounded by monitoring machines. As she wakes up, asking where she is, the monitor in front of her continues its reading of Druuna, though it is not clear who it is broadcasting to. The vantage then moves to the screen placed in front of her. As Druuna regains her focus, the blurry screen shows Schastar (now spelt Shastar) as he existed pre-mutation. He acknowledges Druuna, stating that he and Lewis managed to meld with the ship’s synthetic computer system when she came aboard, though his manifestation is only due to Druuna’s memory, with her being able to realize them into existence through the computer.
Druuna removes the helmet, stating she cannot remember what has happened, and contemplates whether she is having yet another nightmare. Schastar assures her that she is not dreaming, revealing that the ship’s crew have been using their equipment to scour her subconsciousness, though he is not sure what they are looking for. As Druuna leaves the lab, Schaster tells her that he loves her and warns her to be careful, as something terrible has happened on the ship.
Outside of the lab, Druuna discovers a hole ripped into a metal wall. She steps through it, noting that the room is a direct replica of the one she just left. She then finds a partially decomposed corpse on one of the medical beds, which begins moving as she approaches.
Upon closer inspection, Druuna notes that the corpse is only partially organic. Blood spews from its exposed organs, but the bones are made of plastic and metal. It also appears to be signaling Druuna by tapping its index finger, perhaps a Morse code message, though Druuna is more concerned with the trail of blood leading away from the severed torso. She follows the trail, discovering another mangled corpse nearby. She turns away in horror as the corpse begins speaking, stating that it has become a part of the “things” that devoured him. He warns Druuna that she is a Prolet, though the “things” do not distinguish, and will hunt her too. Before she can clarify what he means, Terry appears behind her, warning Druuna away from the man.
Terry identifies the man as Howard, one of the ship’s crew members. Druuna asks Terry why they had her hooked up to the machine. Terry ignores Druuna, instead opting to plunge a syringe into Howard’s head, extracting the matter within, explaining that he was a brilliant scientist and that his knowledge could be injected into a different “subject” later.
Terry and Druuna continue to walk/crawl and talk, with Druuna demanding answers to her questions. Terry scoffs at the concept of a curious Prolet, revealing that a breach has occurred and entities that devour human flesh have come aboard the ship. They do not know what these creatures look like, but she claims that Doc is working to find a solution.
Terry and Druuna opt to travel via air duct to avoid rousing the creatures’ attention. They come to a vent along the way, and Terry stops to show Druuna the horror the creatures have wrought. Several humanoid forms engulfed in a fleshy red web of resin can be seen in the room below, with the coating seemingly dissolving the bodies into formless sacks. Druuna recoils in terror, comparing the net to a spider’s web.
Terry and Druuna leave the hatch and make their way towards Door 6, where Terry states they will be safe. She contacts Rogers (now called Roger) over the intercom, but the door does not open. Rogers states there is a problem, and he will have to come down to assist. As they wait at the door, Druuna states that she can hear a slithering noise behind them. Terry theorizes that the noise was made by the Prolets, who have broken free of their housing and now roam the lower levels like “blind mice.” She states that they seem oblivious to danger, and often just stand and stare vacantly at the crew.
Door 6 opens on page 20, and Rogers and another crew member storm through, guns drawn. The second crew member is then revealed to be Terry, who looks at Druuna’s companion, stating how uncanny the resemblance is. Terry (Druuna’s companion) pleads for Rogers and Terry to put down their guns, but instead they shoot her.
The imposter Terry falls against the wall, looking downward at the hole in her chest before her body is flung up into the air as an alien form explodes out from the cavity, mutating and expanding as it moves. The creature is not unlike the mutants seen in The City, being a collection of tentacles and hooked appendages.
Terry and Rogers open fire once more, igniting the beast as it flees. As they turn to go back through the door, another hairy, cycloptic, crab-like creature emerges from the imposter Terry’s body, leaping at Rogers and knocking him to the ground. He drops his gun, but Druuna quickly recovers it and fires at the creature, prompting it to dash away.
Terry accuses Druuna of being a monster as well, tying her hands behind her back as they return through Door 6. Druuna is then brought before the rest of the surviving crew, who meet her with the same degree of skepticism. It is only upon Doc’s intervention that they halt their plans for disposing of her. Doc examines Druuna’s face, gently pulling her eyelid open with his thumb and index finger to examine her reactions, explaining that even if she is a Replicant, Replicants are often convinced that they are human. Doc leaves Druuna under Terry’s supervision while he goes to prepare a test that will determine whether Druuna is human or not.
Rogers then accosts Terry for suggesting a test of her own, calling her a pervert as the two women depart for the lower level. Here, Druuna is stripped and has her hands bound to an overhead pipe. Terry states that the creatures will be able to tell whether Druuna is human by how they treat her, and that if she is a Replicant, she will be torn apart. Terry then locks herself out of the room while Druuna is left alone, terrified.
As Druuna waits for the Prolet door to open, she contemplates whether she may in fact be a Replicant. She has trouble accessing her memories, though eventually recalls Schastar’s name. The frames dart between angles throughout page 27 — up close, full body, and overhead — with the rapid changing of vantage communicating Druuna’s distressed state.
On page 28 the Prolet door opens, releasing a pack of shadowy figures into the room. Darkness invades the space as well, and as the creatures close in and lay their hands on Druuna, the shade thickens, channeling Druuna closing her eyes and refusing to look.
A hermaphrodite figure takes command of the group, ordering them away from Druuna with a series of grunts. This figure wears a tube top which partially covers its chest, while a thong covers its bulging genitals. It wears a bag over its head with two eye holes cut out, through which the reader is given a view of its bloodshot eyes.
The figure hits Druuna repeatedly with their whip. Closing in and gripping the whip’s handle upright, the final frame of page 29 sets the thick woven handle against Druuna’s rear, signaling the rape to come. The following page is a brutal and terrifying display as Druuna is penetrated and groped by multiple figures, with her thought bubble in the final frame declaring, “Stop it! Stop it! I want to die! I want to die!”
The hermaphrodite figure then lifts Druuna off the ground by her hips and proceeds to penetrate her. Druuna curls forward, gripping her assailant’s hood with her teeth and yanking it free, revealing a hideous two-headed monster beneath. The page ends with a flash in the penultimate frame, followed by the outline of the ship in space in the last, leaving the reader to imagine the rest of the assault.
The scene then abruptly changes to Will seated at the control panel of the ship. A pale blue light coats the area. Will, who sits topless aside from a blanket draped over his left shoulder and arm, stares vacantly off into the distance, trying to remember what it is he is doing. Druuna, clutching a sheet over her front, enters the room, telling Will that she has been waiting for him. He states that he must do something, though he cannot remember what.
Druuna bends forward, caressing Will’s body, saying that she hates to see him in such a state. She then unbuttons his pants and performs fellatio. Will succumbs to the pleasure, gripping Druuna by the waist with his right hand as she leans over his chair. Then, from beneath the cloth covering his left side, a mechanical hand is revealed, not unlike the mysterious corpse Druuna discovered in the infirmary. Druuna stands up, beckoning him to follow her. Will leans forward and grasps at his mechanical hand, once again falling prey to distraction, thinking to himself, “Where does time begin?” Will leans on the doorframe with his right arm raised, framing Druuna in-between his torso and the wall as she crawls onto the bed. Before following, he finishes his thought with, “And where does time end?”
Will meets Druuna at the bed, standing beside it while Druuna, kneeling, reaches down and unfastens his pants. Will questions where Druuna is from, recounting somehow that she is a part of him. Druuna affirms this, stating she is there to indulge his desires. Their speech bubbles connect, situated one on top of the other, amplifying this connection.
As the two make love, the vantage switches from right to left on page 35, revealing Will’s mechanical arm once more. He embraces Druuna with it, using it to hold her waist and cup her breast, no differently than he uses his other hand to explore her body. Afterwards, Will falls asleep, mumbling that it is as if he has fallen into the abyss. Druuna slips away under the cover of dark in the final frame, her face coated in shade aside from pinpoint dots for her eyes.
When Will awakens, light has returned to the room. He reaches over to hold Druuna only to find that she is gone. A blood stain mixed with a mysterious sticky substance is on the bed where Druuna had been. Will follows a trail of blood to a hatch labeled 373, questioning why she didn’t come to him for help.
As Will descends into the hatch and navigates a mess of dilapidated corridors, he realizes that he is hearing voices in his head. He attributes these voices to a psychic being and remembers where he is; however, upon discovering another mess of blood and sticky resin, he also realizes that he may be in imminent danger.
Page 37 adheres to Serpieri’s oft-used stepped arrangement of panels, with the offset between the stacking of frames on the left and right guiding the reader’s eye down the page like a staircase. The mess of infrastructure in each frame adds to the sense of disorientation, with the final frame being a bust shot of Will looking to the right in shock.
Page 38 reveals a nest of bodies entangled in a web of resin. As Will approaches, one of the men engulfed in the net pleads for Will to take his life, stating that he is being eaten by the creatures. He warns that they should not have passed over into this dimension, as the forces of chaos have infected the ship. Will, still not able to recall transitioning into the abyss, attributes the psychic force to keeping him in a state of lethargy, and evidently had been trying to keep him away from the infected parts of the ship. As the crew member finishes his plea, the page ends once again with Will looking over his shoulder to the next page, warning that someone has appeared behind him.
Will sees Druuna in the distance, hunched over and naked, with a strange creature sitting beside her, prompting him to grab a metal pipe and spring into action. Upon reaching Druuna, however, Will finds her alone, back turned to him as she huddles over a web of resin with a human skull beside her. She chants, “No… No…” as Will asks why she is not moving. A putrid red steam rises beside her, floating off towards the corner of the page, signaling the horrific revelation to come.
Druuna is revealed to have been eating human flesh. Will backs away in horror. No longer able to connect telepathically, Will states that she cannot be Druuna, and she must have been holding him prisoner. Druuna pleads with Will, stating she does not know why she is doing this, repeating that she loves him. All the while, the silhouette of another appears behind him.
This silhouette is revealed to be a Replicant of Will. This new Will has no mechanical arm and sports deep green eyes. He corners Will, to Druuna’s protest, telling him that he too is a copy, a Replicant, like Druuna and he are.
Page 41 utilizes a split in the layout, keeping Will (with the mechanical arm) on the left while the Replicant Will and Druuna remain on the right. While the first row of frames mirror one another, the third frame (situated in the middle of the page) joins the men together, with their speech bubbles acting as a central border. In the final and largest panel of the page, Will backs away, gripping the pipe in his right hand and making a fist with his outstretched mechanical left, while the opposing Will steps forward, arms at his side and his hands flexing menacingly. Druuna, in profile on the furthest right, pleads for Will to stop.
Though her head and torso are in profile, Druuna’s arms and legs are posed, with her right hand raised to her face in concern, while her left arm rests at her side. Her right leg too steps forward, while her left remains straight and immobile, conveying her indecision.
Will inadvertently backs into a live nest of web, which quickly grabs hold and begins to devour him. He pleads in pain as the creatures penetrate his body, the anguish made evident by his face in the fourth frame as the tentacles encircle his neck. Druuna curses herself, stating that he shouldn’t have followed her. As he is lifted from view, Druuna panics, trying to convince herself that she is human. Then, from behind her, a swarm of the spider like-creatures roll into view, cornering Druuna between them and Will’s hanging body.
Page 43 opens with a portrait frame of Druuna, yellow veins having sprouted on her face and deep green eyes staring forward as she grits her teeth, mumbling, “Yes… Yes… Yes…” The scene then abruptly changes to Druuna, now wearing her regular white top, laying on a platform, seemingly asleep. Her hair drapes out to the left, breaching the Replicant Druuna’s frame, though her left hand grabs hold of a pipe situated to the right, as though it were an anchor. She awakens over the next two frames, hearing Schastar calling her. Upon sitting up, Druuna finds she is no longer in the bed, but rather in a vast field of grass with a wall situated ahead. The wall runs as far into the distance as she can see. Between her and the wall stands Schastar, calling her name. Druuna, now clothed with her top, red thong, and runners, stands up to meet him.
Schastar is not as we have seen him before – healthy, and wearing normal, well-fitted clothes — a far cry from the rags he wore as a mutant in Morbus Gravis. Schastar explains that he and Lewis are still bonded, though in many ways are incompatible. This area they find themselves has been constructed by Lewis, and likely resembles a real, but very ancient, part of the telepathic universe Lewis has been exploring. Druuna is understandably more enamored by Schastar’s presence, though eventually listens to his explanation. Hand in hand, they look to the sky, noting how the wall reaches higher than they can see, far beyond the rolling clouds.
Schastar begins making marks upon the wall, explaining the paradox. Once the ship breached the edge of the universe, time began to run backwards. Though the formula may be indecipherable to Druuna, and the reader, the strong winds surrounding Druuna and Schastar (evident by the characters’ blowing hair) clearly indicates the danger they find themselves in.
Schastar tasks Druuna with delivering this information to the ship’s captain. Though Will has telekinetic abilities, they are not developed, and thus he fell prey to the monsters. However, if they can turn the ship around, they may yet reverse and survive the events that have transpired.
The two then embrace against the wall. Though Schastar is only an apparition with no human form, he still tries to hold onto Druuna before fading away. In the third frame of page 47, Schastar begins to turn transparent. Serpieri uses grey and blue colouring to show this loss of form, with the pale green of the ground, and Druuna’s hand upon his chest, seen through the inked outline of Schastar’s body. In the next frame, Schastar dissolves entirely, with Druuna’s hands falling through him and hitting the wall while he evaporates, the lines moving up and through Druuna as she throws her head back in agony, crying his name. The final frame pulls out from the scene, showing Druuna leaning against the wall, head dropped and hair obstructing the view of her face, while lightning strikes in the background.
Collapsing against the wall, Druuna calls Schastar’s name once more before suddenly finding herself back aboard the ship. Druuna recalls that it must have been a dream, and then turns her thoughts back to the Prolets’ assault from earlier. Druuna leaves her cell through the open door, and we can see she is wearing the same complete outfit from the dream: white top, red underwear, and white sneakers. Determined to find Doc and relay the information Schastar gave her, Druuna stalls partway up a staircase when the ship’s alarm begins sounding, with bold lettering used to convey the emanating ring from the fog up ahead.
Druuna ascends the staircase as opposed to descending it, alluding to a reversal in time. The bottom two panels of page 47 stress this reversal with their vertical orientations, pushing her upwards and back towards the preceding panels.
Druuna then finds Rogers, torn in half, laying on the ground. Shortly thereafter, Terry is pictured brandishing a pistol, peering around the corner, shouting for Druuna. She scolds her for leaving the door open and pleads for her to come out as this sector is no longer safe. Behind her, Druuna, covered in darkness, stands in wait.
Druuna then reveals herself, wearing a blank look and casting a dark shadow on the wall beside them, building the unnerving sense that this may in fact be the Replicant Druuna. The two then take off up the stairs, meeting other members of the crew fighting off a throng of monsters. Terry directs them though the next hatch, but Druuna pauses momentarily, looking at the mess of tentacles under assault by the crew, with her gaze meeting one of the creature’s eyes.
On page 51, Terry and Druuna come face to face with Druuna and Rogers. The Druuna that had been accompanying Terry urges her to shoot the Druuna sitting next to Rogers. Meanwhile, a horde of the spider-like creatures sneak up behind Terry, with one of the creature’s eyes situated just over the Replicant Druuna’s left shoulder. The pipes overhead hang low, and the grid they form situates the Replicant Druuna and creatures together. Terry, meanwhile, is situated right in the middle, with a pillar separating her from the creatures and the real Druuna. The real Druuna stands outside of the frame, with the top right panel border dissolving and bleeding into the second and third panes, linking the real Druuna to her other depictions on the page.
Druuna turns to run, but Terry fires and hits her in the side. Druuna rounds the corner and clings to the wall, covering her wound, but escapes. Terry celebrates her shot, the smoke emanating from the barrel of her gun wafting into the void of steam around her. In the next frame, the Replicant Druuna congratulates her on the shot. The Replicant Druuna’s back turned away from the reader, we have only Terry’s look of shock to realize her mistake. Page 53 opens with a portrait of the Replicant Druuna in a wide frame with monster appendages sprouting out from behind her. A monster leaps out and pins Terry to the wall. She quickly opts to take her own life, placing the barrel of the gun into her mouth. Blood and brain matter splatter on to the wall in the following frame while the creature’s claws bend inward, signaling the coming penetration.
The following page opens with Doc cautiously leaning around a corner. He sees Druuna slumped against the wall, wounded, and carries her away, with the final panel of the page moving back to Doc recounting events, as seen at the book’s start.
On page 55 the computer states that it is receiving instructions not to process any more of Doc’s requests due to his emotional state. Doc immediately intervenes, giving the computer exact instructions to accelerate, then immediately reverse, as they hit the boundary between the two universes. If his calculations are correct, Doc theorizes that this will transport them 24 months into the past — before the infestation began.
Doc stands up from his chair and makes his way over to the nearby gurney. He pulls back the sheet to reveal Druuna’s lifeless body underneath, and states that he did everything she asked him to do, confessing that the calculations given to the computer will make the ship explode, but perhaps liberation will be found in their deaths.
Pages 56 begins with Druuna and Doc’s Replicant doppelgangers standing outside of the lab, using the intercom to speak, stating, “The spaceship is ours… you are alone… you have no hope… I know what you’re thinking but you won’t be able to do it… no. You haven’t got a chance, and, as you know, there is not enough room for two of us here…”
A sickly red resin sticks to the Replicants’ backs, anchoring them to an off-panel source. The Replicant Doc casts a shadow on the wall as he reaches up to the intercom button with his left hand, signaling the encroaching darkness.
The computer system announces that the instructions Doc has input will begin in thirty seconds, giving readers a sense as to how much time is passing over the following three frames. In the third frame, Doc takes a seat and removes the cigarette from his mouth, tossing it away. He stares forward blankly as the computer reaches five seconds in its countdown, with its formally circular pupil now a series of chaotic tangents. The fourth frame closes in on Doc’s face in profile, with the countdown reaching its final second. The frame here is slimmer than the third, prompting a sense of tension and quickening of time. The fifth frame switches from a vertical to horizontal orientation and moves from profile to a frontal view, giving vantage of Doc’s eyes as the countdown reaches zero. Though a bead of sweat could be seen in the fourth frame, here his perspiration is much more intense, and his narrowed gaze conveys a look of genuine fear as he stares out of the book.
The final panel widens dramatically, shattering this sense of time, and the backdrop changes from Doc’s quarters to a tunnel of light. Numerous focal point lines stem from the tunnel’s white centre, with Doc free falling towards the light. Doc’s movement through the space is communicated via his foreshortened position, with his right leg even breaking out of the bottom of the panel. A portrait of Doc screaming is situated on the left-hand side of the picture, scoring the bright space with a violent sound.
Page 57, like page 56, continually moves inward. The first panel of page 57 shows Doc, now at rest, hunched forward in profile with his eyes closed. Beams of yellow light radiate in from the left side of the panel, while a hand reaches out from the right side. His hair is also brown with a few white streaks, suggesting this is a younger version of himself. In the second frame, Doc turns to grasp the hand that was reaching for him, revealing it belongs to a woman named Tahinita. The two sit on a bed, with Tahinita naked and Doc clothed and sitting on the edge, as if about to leave. In the third frame Doc stands and turns to Tahinita. They embrace, but Tahinita turns away as Doc states, “I am looking for something up there… something that will help me fill the emptiness I feel inside me…” The pair are depicted in colour on the right-hand side of the panel. In the background to the left, a young man is sitting at a desk with his back turned to the pair. Here, the colour scheme is bluetone, separating the two events unfolding both in terms of space and time.
The fourth frame closes in on the young man at the desk, who turns to look over his shoulder, though Doc and Tahinita are no longer in view. Behind the young man is a window, through which a woman and small boy can be seen running. The fifth frame closes in on this pair, capturing them from a frontal vantage as they run from an explosion. Rounding a corner, the woman takes the young boy in her arms and states, “…They won’t get you… those damned machines… they won’t get you, my darling!” These final two frames are coloured with tones of yellow and blue, again signifying a separation in time and place.
On the final page of Carnivora, Doc finds himself back on the ship and in the company of his crew; alive, uninfected, and without memory of the book’s events. The page concludes with Druuna smiling at Doc (and by proxy, out towards the viewer), while Doc closes the book by wondering whether the alternate versions of the crew still exist.
Form
Carnivora begins with Doc’s hand adjusting a knob on the computer console, a tool he then uses to record the events leading to his predicament. Doc’s hand on the controls claims authorship over the story. It is positioned to attune the knob, but closely mimics the grip of a brush or drawing instrument. Serpieri is an illustrator, while Doc is a scientist, and this opening frame conveys that this story is his analysis of his own work. Furthermore, with his portrait situated near the centre of page 1, the page becomes a sort of singular self-portrait. The viewer’s eye goes to the centre of the page first, interpreting the collection of orbiting images as a whole, before going back to read the panels in a sequential order.
While the book may be about Druuna, the opening two pages and the final three pages encapsulate Druuna within Serpieri’s own internal conflict, portraying her adventure as the source of his inspiration, obsession, and turmoil.
On page 7 Druuna awakens in a small room. She lays on a single-sized mattress, recounting the events of her nightmare before flipping over and falling back onto the bed, face first. The bed’s headboard contains what looks to be the relief carving of a circular body, like a planet. Above the bed’s headboard, a framed painting tilts inward. The portrait of a man seemingly looks down at Druuna, who is oblivious to his presence, though she thinks to herself that she can feel someone is about to arrive.
The lighting in the room stems solely from the chandelier above the bed. Though it should seemingly light the entire room, it instead creates a sort of spotlight around Druuna and the bed, as seen in the fourth frame of page 7, leaving the door and picture frame cloaked in a menacing shade.
As Druuna fantasizes about waiting for the coming assault, she bites the bedsheet and closes her eyes, with her hand outstretched next to her face. In the following frame, her hand tightens, gripping the sheet while she opens her eyes and looks up, the lettering “TumpTum” over her head announcing movement nearby.
There is a semi-mirroring of the opening pages of Morbus Gravis here. On pages 1 through 4 of Morbus Gravis, Druuna also lays on a small, single frame mattress in a near state of undress. She reads a book describing earth, unable to understand the descriptions given by the author. She closes the book in frustration, thinking to herself that she should dispose of the literature, as it is forbidden by the Priests. On page two, she is also pulled away from her reading by a sound signified by the lettering “TunTump.” Lying face down on the bed while Schastar emerges from the cellar, Druuna turns her back in fear, biting the bedsheet just as she does on page 7 on Carnivora.
In Ecofeminist themes in Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri’s Morbus Gravis, Jones highlights the reflective quality of the graphic novel medium, citing how events on the page mirror the reactions and thoughts of the viewer, “…in calling attention to the cruelty of the spectator’s gaze, there is a reflexive referral to the readers gaze from outside of the text which effectively points out to the reader his own enjoyment of cruelty and suffering.”(Jones 2006) As demonstrated in the proceeding scene where Druuna is raped in front of a crowd, one may pause and reflect on their own reaction to the assault on display. Perhaps the reader is represented by the one spying on Druuna through the picture frame. The second frame of page 10 is shown from the first-person perspective, putting the reader in the role of the abuser, with his wielding of the whip being equivalent to the reader’s engagement with the page. The page finishes with the perspective turned around, showing the grotesque crowd of sickly mutants dressed in high-class attire, perhaps also meant to be reflective of the reader.
The man who eventually comes into the room on page 8 of Carnivora does bear some resemblance to Schastar, and with his mutation several pages later, this connection could be further argued. However, there are several differences between them as well, and the fact that Druuna does not appear to recognize the man as she does Schaster likely negates this.
When Druuna steps through the broken wall on page 14 she breaks out of frame, with her foot trailing outside the bottom left corner. On a practical level this conveys movement and directs the reader’s gaze; it also shows yet another transition between realities. Just as she escaped the city to awaken in a bedroom, and then awakened again on a spaceship, this is but another realm she has entered.
Page 16, for example, forms a curious parallel. The pipe in the top right of the second last frame aligns perfectly with a pipe in the final frame, only being separated by the small break between frames. However, the vantage pulls out and the women change positions, ensuring the rest of the mechanical folly in the background does not line up. Even in the stringent mechanical build of the spaceship, the tears in reality present themselves early on.
Druuna is labelled as a Prolet, making her sexuality inextricably tied to her foreignness. While nationality and ethnicity may have been inconsequential in Morbus Gravis I and II, in Creatura and Carnivora, Druuna possesses an innate obsession-inducing influence over certain crew members. Thus, while she was a symbol of anti-clerical thought in earlier volumes, here her sexuality is pinned as both culprit and cure to the predicament faced in Carnivora.
Exactly what the Prolets are, or where they came from, is never fully revealed, but they are treated as cargo – a sub-human species, except for Druuna, who is subject to various experiments. What the Prolets’ purpose is on the ship is never shown (aside from Terry’s use of them), though Druuna’s purpose is undoubtedly for study. Druuna, as a Prolet, is there to be consumed and used by the crew. Doc, it seems, is the only one who fully trusts her, understanding the plight of other human beings, including Replicants.
We previously spoke about Serpieri’s attention to gait and movement for his characters. Observing the Prolet scene on pages 28 through 31, the creatures’ movement is considerably different than that of the crew, or even the crowd from the dream sequence earlier. The Prolets walk in a hunched fashion; guarded, but also aggressive, reaching out to observe their world via touch instead of sight, as demonstrated when they converge on Druuna. The one who stands out amongst this group is the hermaphrodite with mutated twin heads, perhaps signifying the Prolets’ susceptibility to mutation on the edge of the universe as well. In Creatura, when Terry exposed herself to this same group, the mutant Prolet was not present. Thus, Serpieri is not likely suggesting the Prolets are innately barbaric, but rather that they are susceptible to outside forces in the same way as other humans. Nevertheless, classifying two distinctive groups of human beings is a point worth noting in one’s reading of Druuna and her role amongst the crew.
When Will confronts Druuna on page 39, for example, she is hunched over, eating a human corpse with her hands. Though she moved in a convincingly, or perhaps deceptively, human way the scene prior when her and Will made love, her Replicant side is communicated not only by the act of eating flesh, but in how she performs the act itself. Similarly, when Will confronts the Replicant version of himself on page 41, the Replicant’s posture is strong and tall, a far cry from the animalistic movement of the Prolets.
On the topic of movement and choreography, the firefight on pages 21 through 23 builds an effective aura of dissolution and paranoia. The use of atmospheric effects like shading and steam as backdrops keeps the focus on action, highlighting the characters and not the backgrounds, producing a sort of stressed hyperfocus. The watercolour bleeds employed to create smoke and flame in the final panel of page 21, for example, light the corridor up, leaving the surrounding background white. On the first two panels of page 22, smoke and flame billow off the fleeing creature, coating it in shade and obstructing its form from the reader. Most of the background disappears in the fourth panel, with the crew framed to look as though they are standing at the edge of a cliff and cannot retreat any farther.
As the second creature flees and the smoke and flame dissipate, Terry turns her weapon to Druuna. The backdrop turns to a pure black cloud in the second last frame of page 23, while a close-up of Terry in the final frame completely obscures the background infrastructure in darkness as she accuses Druuna of being a monster.
A recurring object used as a mirror between the realm of the humans, Replicants, and the reader is the eye. The ship’s computer is representative of an eyeball, as seen in the opening pages set in Doc’s lab, as well as page 56 when the countdown is occurring, and the “pupil” of the screen becomes distorted with static. The Replicant creatures too brandish cyclopean eyes. Will and young Druuna discover a giant eyeball at the beginning of Creatura, alluding to the gateway of transcendent physical form. If the eye seen in Creatura was God, or the forces of chaos, then the ship’s computer is the opposite – a being built on stringent logic and analysis, requiring data and knowledge consumption rather than physical matter. How characters interact with these different representations of God is highlighted in the crew’s straddling of extremes as they cross dimensions.
The wall bordering the end of the universe too invites analysis. Serpieri states that this wall is representative of what lies beyond the event horizon (Serpieri 1993). It’s a fascinating scene, as it unfolds in an ethereal dimension in which Schastar (and Lewis) can exist in a semi-physical form. Whether this wall and field exist or whether they are supposed to be the manifestation of Druuna’s mind attempting to comprehend the feedback surrounding her is up for interpretation, but it can once again be read as both a personal barrier for the questions Serpieri was pondering of his own life and illustrative process, as well as a narrative piece stemming from his fascination with the universe and what effects exploring its boundaries could have on human beings.
Another point to note about this scene is that Schastar draws his formula on the wall. The lack of adornment is curious, and the wall’s implacability between manufactured and natural begs the question, was this boundary erected by intelligent beings or was it formed naturally? If it was created at random, is the development of the Replicant beings a result of this boundary?
Prior to Doc’s introduction, Lewis shared the beach vision with Druuna, an experience Serpieri has cited as his inspiration for the Morbus Gravis series (Serpieri 1993). If Lewis, or Schastar, were early drafts of self-insertion, or a splintering of personality traits by Serpieri, Schastar marking the wall not only pushes the story forward, but represents Serpieri having reached the edge, formulating a way back.
Thoughts
Carnivora’s story unfolds in a nonlinear fashion and takes place across coexisting realities. It begins and ends with Doc; however, it is only Druuna who can transcend the different realities. Though Doc shouldn’t have vantage of all the events depicted in the book, they are nevertheless part of his recount because of his communication with Druuna, assumedly disclosed to him between when he finds her wounded in the hallway and to when she is seen deceased in his laboratory – or via the equipment monitoring her thoughts, perhaps. Druuna’s disclosure is purposefully left out of the narrative, perhaps due to page count concerns, or perhaps due to the story’s autofiction elements, alluding to the fact that Doc already knows what Druuna has been through, as he (Serpieri) has authored it. Covering the lifeless Druuna with a sheet while in his laboratory, Doc states, “Good-bye, Druuna… I did what you asked me to do. But even so, I promise you, those beasts won’t win. If our course of action is unsuccessful, the computer has been programmed to set off a system that will make the spaceship explode… Death is a liberation of sorts and the end of everything, including evil!”
On page 12 we learn that Druuna had been hooked up to the brain scanner, and this data may have been available to Doc as well, clarifying his recount. While Serpieri is the creator and overseer of the book, his conduit, Doc, is not. While it would be impossible for anyone besides Serpieri to clarify what events act as metaphors to real life and which are analogous to his artistic process, the revelation that the Morbus Gravis series is a platform for Serpieri to contemplate his illustrative work should alter the way in which readers view it.
Serpieri’s journey to comic books from fine art did not unfold without resistance. Though he classifies himself as an illustrator nowadays, Serpieri has cited leftover traits from his time as a painter (Serpieri 1993). Replicants mirror the crew they impersonate, giving into the most vicious of carnal desires. They are also partially human, however, and hold some aspects of care and compassion despite their all-consuming, pleasure-motivated instincts. Doc states in his final recording before hitting the breach, “The boundaries between the two universes. Two dimensions that are a reflection of each other, opposite and adverse… in a mirror one can see the worst part of oneself… two aspects of a same identity: one positive, the other negative. Good and evil. Two absolute but opposite values coexist within each of us… could it be that we gave[sic] created our doubles, the replicants, within our collective subconscious?”
This mirroring of dimensions, and desires, can be seen throughout the book, like the spread on pages 10 and 11. The panels on each page adhere to slightly modified proportions, but their arrangement is more or less mirrored. Furthermore, every panel is closed except for the final. By leaving the final frame of page 10 open (aside from a slight border line along the figures) the picture bleeds out into the real world, inviting the reader to sit alongside the gawking crowd. On page 11, the background is empty aside from Druuna and the beast’s shadows, allowing the scenario to transcend off the page, uncontained. Furthermore, the reader must actively grab hold of the page to turn it, activating the next part of the scenario, and whether safety or abuse awaits Druuna on the next page is unknown. The reader is not just an observer, but a participant in the act, and can, along with Serpieri, learn from Druuna.
Studying Druuna, it seems, inadvertently unlocked something profound. The act of finding Druuna resulted in the crew breaching the edge of the universe, but how much Druuna is a product of this event and much she is a victim is where the nuance lies. Was it Will’s psychic connection to Druuna that brought the crew to her, or Doc’s ambition to explore the far reaches of space? What exactly a Prolet represents is debatable, though in Druuna’s case she undeniably represents inspiration and curiosity. Druuna is Serpieri’s antithesis to societal and religious taboo, as aptly demonstrated in Morbus Gravis I and II. However, the question of her inspiration, that of the women and places Serpieri has experienced, brings into question other hard topics, like othering. Again, it’s a larger discussion than could be encapsulated here, though scholars, including Jones, acknowledge that Serpieri’s work can be consumed as purely pornographic media. However, Druuna’s protests to sexual advances, and her study from the cerebral and ethereal disciplines, should also be noted (Jones 2006).
Perhaps the most revelatory illustrations of the book are on pages 56 and 57. Doc is positioned in the second panel with his back turned to the doppelganger in the first panel, suggesting Serpieri’s willingness to turn away from this version of himself. There is a natural tendency to think of the future to the right of us, the present on us, and the past behind, as Elizabeth El Rafaie cites in her study about autobiographical comic books (Rafaie 2012, 125). Having the doppelganger Doc facing left (and by proxy backwards into the book) communicates the Replicant’s desire to regress. Doc, meanwhile, faces right, towards the end of the book, and towards the future.
On page 57, Tahinita is partially covered by Doc’s body, communicating a sort of privacy or exclusive connection between them. Who, or what, Tahinita represents Serpieri leaving behind is not fully revealed, though given her state of undress, and comparing this image to the ones seen in Sketchbook, Tahinita could be framed as analogous to one of the moments of lust which spurred Serpieri’s inspiration for Druuna, or perhaps as a moment of pain associated with the pursuit of his endeavor.
The solemn blue scene of the young Doc sitting at his desk is liminal, a space between two points in his life. Here, Serpieri is reflecting, as demonstrated by his younger self gazing out of the page. How these images read in the context of their creator, and in the years and experiences that pass in relation to their genesis, are what spur the reader to consider the underlying narrative in this otherwise defined erotic horror saga. In the final panel of the book, Serpieri illustrates himself against a blank background. His portrait breaks frame, slightly overlapping with the portrait of Druuna above, perhaps signifying the straddling between his real and artistic personas, and calling into question where Doc’s role ends, and where Serpieri’s begins.
Autofiction
Before resuming study of the Morbus Gravis series, it’s important to look at the graphic autofiction landscape as it existed in underground comics during the 1980s and 1990s.
Serpieri’s work is polished and cinematic in a way different from his contemporaries’ in the underground comic movement. Yet, it still shares much in common with the autobiographical and underground comic book genres. Serpieri masks his works’ autofiction elements behind a fictional storyline, making a deeper understanding of the story only possible if readers have followed his body of work outside of Morbus Gravis. Why Serpieri’s work has been excluded from the underground and autobiographical comic book conversation is perhaps due to its pronounced erotic qualities, with audiences dismissing the work as pornographic; or consuming it only for that very reason, failing to analyse the work on a deeper visual level. Serpieri himself has acknowledged and grappled with this issue, expressing that while the works need to be erotic in order for him to truly have authorship, he has created a dilemma in straddling the line between producing content for his fanbase while also wishing to use the medium to exorcise his own feelings.
Rafaie’s Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures analysed and contrasted eighty-five different works fitting the definition of biographical comics from across the Americas and Europe, including sub-genres like autofiction. Rafaie explored the genre’s long history with skirting “the margins of ‘polite’ society’”(El Rafaie 2012, 4) and built upon studies regarding identity and legitimization in the genre (El Rafaie 2012, 7).
After its French publication in Charlie, Heavy Metal Magazine published an English language edition of Morbus Gravis, and the magazine became the de facto carrier of Serpieri’s non-western work up until the early 2000s. The format and publishing routes of Morbus Gravis are notable as they situated Serpieri’s work alongside the underground comic book movement – specifically, the autobiographical sub-genre that began shaping during the 1970s and 1980s.
Part of what separated Heavy Metal Magazine and other underground publications from their mainstream contemporaries was their willingness to embrace controversy as positive press. The spring 1988 issue of Heavy Metal Magazine (featuring Morbus Gravis II), for example, was apprehended by Canadian Border services and several pages from the magazine were censored in order to comply with code 9956, prohibiting the importation of material depicting sex with violence (Rhodes 2016) (Note: a FOI request was submitted to the CBSA by the author regarding the incident, but they were informed that the 20 year records date had passed and no further information was available.) Heavy Metal addressed the incident with an editorial in the summer 1988 issue, stating:
We will not try to weasel out of this. We are not going to deny that there was “sex with violence, bondage, and other nastiness” in Druuna. There was. But there is a side of this strip that seems to have been ignored. Beyond the breasts, beyond the sex, there is an extraordinary power within the story – the horror of a world gone mad. We were not condoning the violence, simply presenting a frightening, oftentimes exaggerated look into a future even more violent than the times we live in (Simmons-Lynch 1988, 4).
Caludio Dell’Orso stated in the introduction to the 2019 edition of Morbus Gravis from Lo Scarabeo that Heavy Metal Magazine printed the English language edition with “censorial hesitation considering the seductive nature of the heroine and the awkward situations she gets herself into.” (Dell-Orso 2019, 13-14) Dell-Orso’s vocabulary is revelatory in understanding the Morbus Gravis audience. Despite the graphic depictions (“awkward situations”) of sexual violence and “a world gone mad”, the books are ultimately still seen as erotica almost forty years later. Curiously, Simmon-Lynch’s point about nuance in storytelling is followed by a statement that Heavy Metal publishes stories to entertain, not educate (Simmons-Lynch 1988, 4).
Despite his intolerance of censorship, Serpieri admits to having self-censored some scenes via visual barriers like “a strategically placed hand”, for example (Serpieri 1993). Page 3 of the Heavy Metal Magazine edition of Creatura is an obvious example, with a speech bubble pasted in for the sole purpose of covering Will’s genitalia. In the later published hardbound English edition by Lo Scarabeo (among others), this speech bubble is absent. Carnivora, and the entire Morbus Gravis series, is filled with highly exploitative and graphic renditions of sex, though for many of these early volumes, male genitalia is often masked, mostly by way of Serpieri’s aforementioned use of posture. Female anatomy is shown in near full, however, suggesting the male form to be pornographic or monstrous and the female to be erotic, or artistic. However, in noting this criticism for the Morbus Gravis series examined thus far, it cannot necessarily be applied to the later works, like Mandragore, nor his Sketchbooks, which are arguably as important to crafting the overarching autofiction as the mainline series.
An example of Serpieri bridging the dichotomies of erotica and commentary can be found on page 10 of Carnivora, where Druuna is whipped by a man while a group of onlookers gawk at the scene. In the end, this scene is revealed to be a dream with a computer probing Druuna’s subconscious. Recalling Jones’ reflections on this sequence earlier, Serpieri confirmed in an interview that when depicting totalitarian control it was natural for him to insert male figures, just as it was to insert women when it came to the stimulation of life, and opting to communicate these displays from an erotic point of view was a natural decision (Burattini 2021, 88). While the themes of domination and mechanisation in masculinity are explored throughout Carnivora, the choice to display Druuna’s complex relationship to these forces – as well as those of the impulse-driven Replicants and Prolets – through sexuality does support the metaphor, though how gendered violence is communicated here should be considered. In her dreamstate, Druuna is conflicted by her desire to be submissive to the man with the whip, which turns to fear as the man mutates into a monster – perhaps signifying how these desires can ultimately turn to something uninvited. This theme can be seen repeating on page 39 when Will discovers the Replicant Druuna, naked and eating human flesh after they had made love, mirroring the destructive tendencies of succumbing to impulse.
Critical analysis of Serpieri’s work may have been disregarded at this point in the publication history due to the sexually charged-tangents – the works being seen as pornographic, or the illustrator’s wet dream expressed on paper. For comparison, a Heavy Metal Magazine contemporary of Serpieri’s, Angus Mckie, explored themes of comic book creation by way of the medium itself. Published in the May 1990 issue of Heavy Metal Magazine, Comic Artist tours readers through McKie’s creative struggle. The strip chronicles McKie’s promotion from a struggling illustrator to a celebrated artist, only to have his freedom of expression stymied by success, eventually causing him to mutate into a monster with an innate need to express vulgarity. The book changes its tone and style constantly, from detailed airbrush colouring to four-colour printing, lifelike rendering to caricatured, as McKie lives out his own comic strip, struggling to find footing. Speech and narrative bubbles are arranged in erratic, comical patterns. The sixteen page story not only plays with the comic book format, but McKie’s critique of the poverty associated with creativity and the censorship associated with success make it a work perfectly fit for an alternative outlet like Heavy Metal Magazine – skirting the margins of polite society, as Rafaie highlighted.
In Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics, Hillary Chute explored Aline Kominksy-Crumb and Phoebe Gloeckner’s works. Kominsky-Crumb and Gloeckner both, like Serpieri, faced censorship and criticism for their graphic depictions of male and female sexuality in their autobiographical works (Chute 2010, 61). Serpieri’s work fluctuates between erotic and horrific. Gloeckener and Kominsky-Crumb too claimed their works to be representative of the complexities of sexuality, and attribute the censorship of their strips to the discomfort caused to readers by their depictions of abuse (Chute 2021, 29). Comparing Serpieri’s works to Gloeckner and Konisky-Crumb is worthwhile because it illuminates the perceived border between erotica and visual storytelling, and how these themes detract or contribute to a work’s perceived value as an autofiction work.
The complexities of sexual drive and fantasy, and how they seemingly clash with morality, are explored by Stephen Kershnar, who highlights that both men and women can be aroused by fictionalized depictions of sexual assault while still holding the notion of sexual assault to be abhorent and undesirable (Kershnar 2008, 262). Nicoletta Mandolini explored the accelerating coverage surrounding femicide in Italian media in her study Let’s Go Graphic, attributing the change in public attitude and representation of the issue to feminist activists’ efforts against the previously patriarchal controlled discourse (Mandolini 2021, 941). Mandolini also revealed that graphic memoirs are the dominant genre when it comes to representations of gendered violence in both Italian and international contexts (Mandolini 2021, 942).
Male characters in Carnivora are exposed to violence, however, they are not subject to gender-based sexual violence in the same way as women characters are. Men are taken into the weave of the Replicants’ webbing, which penetrates and eats away at their bodies. Horrific as this process is, it is different from the abuse Druuna faces. The penetration Will is subject to is wholly unbearable to him, as communicated by the anguish on his face as the web and tentacles constrict around his throat. However, if he is assaulted sexually in the same way as Druuna, this is only alluded to by speech and not visuals. This creates a (likely intentional) binary equation between men and women in the book, with their abuse based on gender. Men are penetrated and dissolved into the Replicants’ webbing, taking their bodies as a whole. Women, on the other hand, are attacked and abused in ways specific to their sex, and are saved from the nebulous fate of the webbing, only to be put on full display for the reader instead. The events illustrated have been constructed in a way as to avoid Doc, and other male characters, being subject to the same sort of revealing and humiliating occurrences that Druuna endures.
Chute cites that Gloeckner and Kominsky-Crumb, “refuse to ignore the complex terrain of lived sexuality that includes both disgust and titillation,”(Chute 2010, 29) exploring these avenues by putting themselves on the line. Gloeckner’s semi-autobiographical work, A Child’s Life, features a character named Minnie who acts as an avatar for her. Gloeckner has been noted to fluctuate between referring to ‘Minne’ and ‘me’ when interviewed about the book, stressing the deep connection she shares with her on-paper persona (Chute 2010, 66). Gloeckner has also stressed that truth is discursive, and that the term “autobiography” carries a putative sanctity (Chute 2010, 66). How scenes are produced from memory can be distilled into communicating a feeling more so than authentically reproducing an event. Chute describes of a scene from A Child’s Life:
The book establishes a rhythm between presence and absence in the repetition of the peephole frame (a child’s life, in one reading of this repetition, is encountering predatory sexuality); in the doubled looking of the image (we look from behind Minnie and her sister, but watch them watching their stepfather as well as watching the stepfather directly); in the presentation of interior and exterior space; and in the disruption that the engorged genitals create in the narrative emotionally and structurally. Time slows down in the frozen moment of this page and then picks up as the children subsequently run away in three different panels on the next. The rhythm of rupture is conveyed in the undecidable directions and tenors of looking (shame, desire, confusion) that the image sets in motion. Minnie and her sister are both attracted and repulsed, and we watch them as we watch ourselves, aware of our own spectatorship (Chute 2010, 72).
Dr. Joost de Bloois opens his study The artists formerly known as… or, the loose end of the conceptual art and the possibilities of “visual autofiction” by stating that autofiction creates “a participatory critique through role-playing” (Bloois 2007, 6). In the above cited example, it is clear that Gloeckner’s intent was not merely to arouse or condemn the reader, but rather to have them react to the situation alongside Minnie, sharing in the processing of the experience. Compared to the aforementioned display on pages 10 and 11 of Carnivora, the illustrator inviting the viewer to recognize their own gaze is perhaps more overtly communicated by Gloeckner.
A Child’s Life was banned from publication in France, Canada, and Britain (among numerous other regions) due to (among several aspects) its graphic depictions of child abuse (Chute 2010, 68). In order to circumvent these restrictions, Gloeckener’s publisher suggested she remove drawings of erect male genitalia from the book. Gloeckner pushed back, questioning why the image of an abused woman was permitted and male genitalia was not, highlighting how culturally familiar and accepted the image of an abused woman had become (Chute 2010, 68). Comparatively, the male genitalia edited out of the first page of Creatura may simply have been inconsequential to the story, making the censorship more palatable, even if undesirable. Gloeckner on the other hand maintains the imagery was central to her artwork’s impact.
Kominsky-Crumb faced similar stipulations. Her husband, Robert Crumb, faced criticism for his work regarding displays of anger towards, and the objectification of, women (El Rafaie 2012, 37). Yet, his work has also been widely celebrated and has even been heralded as one of the twentieth century’s most important artists by art critic Robert Hughes, who compared him to Brueghel and Goya (Chute 2010, 31). Kominsky-Crumb recalled the trouble she experienced in printing her work because of what she attributed to male printers’ discomfort with female sexuality when drawn by a woman (Chute 2010, 56), though stated others in the often male-dominated underground comic movement embraced her work because of its rawness (Chute 2010, 34). Gloeckner is a trained medical illustrator, and while her style fluctuates between caricatured and highly realistic, Kominsky-Crumb’s work has been referred to as “hyperexaggerated impressionism” (Chute 2010, 29), and Chute suggests this made her less marketable than other illustrators examined in her book (Chute 2010, 32) – let alone compared to her male contemporaries. This raises a curious point about palatability and the marketability of comic books as an industry and not an art form. Despite the Crumbs’ similar (and sometimes duelling collaborative styles), Robert Crumb’s work is celebrated in part for its detail and dimensionality, while Kominsky-Crumb’s work is far less known (Chute 2010, 31) in spite of equally high praise from art critics, including Roberta Smith, who stated, “Her clenched, emphatic style echoes German Expressionist woodblock in its powerful contrasts of black and white, and her female faces—especially those of her thinly disguised surrogate, The Bunch, and her relatives—have a sometimes uncontainable fierceness.”(Chute 2010, 58)
Serpieri enjoyed success in the western genre no doubt in part due to the general popularity of the subject matter in Italy at this time, though his highly detailed and realistic depictions of the human form also align the marketability of his work with Chute’s comments. Serpieri utilises a detailed and idealistic style of illustration, seldom relying on exaggerated foreshortening or caricaturization to emphasise drama or motion. Instead, meticulously consistent backdrops, atmospheric use of ink bleeds and watercolour, as well as cross hatching to convincingly build form, stressing the tension and flexing of muscles in human (and creature) anatomy, (theoretically) demand a thorough examination of the work (even if only at a surface level).
That said, if examining Morbus Gravis as a piece of autofiction, Serpieri stands apart from his contemporaries, including Kominsky-Crumb and Gloeckner, who process their narrative through cartooning, masking (but not censoring) the gravity of the events they endured. This stylistic difference may be key to the resistance in classifying Serpieri’s work alongside other underground works, but also for so much of the audience failing to recognize Morbus Gravis as a personal revelation instead of pornography. While cartooning doesn’t necessarily make the disturbing subject matter more digestible – though it could be argued that it does – the realistic, albeit idealized, rendering in Serpieri’s work has a pungent effect. Rafaie derives that autobiographical comics allow creators to depict their physical identities in ways representative of their inner selves (El Rafaie 2012, 51), exploring outside the physicality and boundaries of true form. This can be seen in the intimate ugliness utilised by Kominsky-Crumb in her depictions of intercourse with Robert Crumb, or Gloeckner’s self-portrait depicting her with pemphigus vulgaris to preface the trauma resulting from her experience in A Child’s Life.
On page 45 of Carnivora, Druuna finds herself at the barrier separating her universe from that of the Replicants. This wall is constructed of yellow rock and reaches high into the clouds above, with its peak hidden from view. Overhead, black storm clouds stir, and Druuna’s flowing hair and the waving grass in the fields surrounding her communicate the ferocity of the winds in this border area. Here, she meets Schastar. He informs Druuna of how to reverse the course of the ship and break free of the Replicant infestation, telling her to bring these instructions to the ship’s captain. As the two embrace, Schastar’s physical form begins to dissipate. Druuna is then transferred back to the ship, where she ultimately delivers Schastar’s message to Doc. Though she is the force that ultimately brings the story to its conclusion, allowing Doc to save himself and by proxy the rest of the crew, the data given to her by Schastar suggests that she is but a repository for masculine endeavours.
This parable is mirrored at a scene near the start of the book where Druuna is apprehended by a group of doctors who pin her to a table. It is revealed here that Druuna is pregnant, with her stomach having been hidden from view on the previous few pages. Surrounded by a menacing collection of blood-stained instruments and a collection of hooked and bladed tools hanging overhead, one of the doctors unsheaths a scalpel and plunges it into her stomach. Jones states of this scene, “The creativity of her body is literally stolen by the surgeon and his scalpel. This is also a potent symbol for how the medicalization of birth, in general, serves to subordinate feminine creativity to the masculine scientific worldview of production and control.”(Jones 2006) Again, while liberating in one regard (acknowledging the female ability to carry and produce life), Druuna’s role is somewhat stagnant. Serpieri states of Druuna, “She is sensitive, intelligent, and highly curious.”(Serpieri 1993) Curious as she may be, Druuna is not always capable of discerning the information presented to her. Whereas Doc is a “scientist and philosopher all in one” (Serpieri 1993, 58) Druuna’s power stems almost solely from her sexuality. The term “angel of the mimeograph”, coined by women activists in 1970s Italy amidst their subordinate role during an era of heightened political and sexual tensions (Brake 2014, 50), could perhaps be applied to Druuna. Though she is a revolutionary, it could be argued her role is more to support – or rather, inspire – men by being generous with her sexuality.
On the topic of culture, themes of biological jealousy permeated in 1980s science fiction and body horror media, with popular movies like Alien, Terminator, and The Fly portraying the horrific results of men attempting to create, or being superseded into, the birthing process (Creed 1987, 60). Serpieri has cited he is a reader of science fiction (Burattini 2012, 79). Themes of humans breaching the unknown, as portrayed in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and battling an alien force a-la Alien or The Thing are present in Carnivora. Even though Serpieri utilises these themes in an autofiction sense, with the border of the universe shown as a place of madness and impulse, they may very well be inspired by western media in much the same way as Druuna was partially inspired by the western genre through an Italian lens.
Baschiera explains in Italian Horror Cinema that while eroticism was a key component of Italian comedy films of the 1970s, it gradually became more prevalent in horror and western films during the 1980s (Baschiera 2016, 48). The comic Dylan Dog is cited as a prime example of how American horror cinema influenced Italian media (Baschiera 2016, 56), and it wouldn’t be a stretch to include the Morbus Gravis series in this continuum as well. Baschiera highlights that the Italian horror cinema of the 1980s has not been studied in-depth for a number of reasons, including its gratuitous use of violence, sex, and gore (Baschiera 2016, 47). Furthermore, it followed American trends so closely that this may also have led to many discrediting the genre’s achievements and innovations (Baschiera 2016, 54).
Another aspect preventing recognition of Serpieri’s work may be its marketability (in the positive sense). At the end of Simmons-Lynch’s editorial in the summer 1988 issue, she cites the exiting and beautiful work they have featured in the issue from Will Eisner, Milo Manara, Alberto Breccia, and Juan Gimmenez (Simmons-Lynch 1988, 4). Women illustrators who did make it into this era of the magazine, like recurring cover artist Julie Bell, often conformed to the established gaze. There was freedom of expression in this outlet of underground media, though content was focused more than it was inclusionary. Even creators that pushed against the standards of style and content in the comic book medium, like Gloeckner and Kominsky-Crumb, were seemingly relegated to a different underground space.
Gloeckner’s Minnie or Komincky-Crumb’s Bunch, for example, don’t have the same merchandising power as Druuna not only because of their stylistic differences, but because of the context in which female form is presented. While all three illustrators can undoubtedly be considered part of the underground comics genre, Serpieri has (perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not) managed to stand both inside and outside the confines of this genre. Druuna has appeared in her own video game, had collectable figures modelled after her, and even spun off into her own prequel series taking place before the events of Morbus Gravis I, penned and illustrated by new talent; It’s hard to imagine the same treatment given to Minnie would seem appropriate.
Finally, a key factor regarding Morbus Gravis’ exclusion from being recognized as autofiction is Serpieri’s experience being spread across multiple characters. For example, in Carnivora, Will sits in the captain’s chair, looking out towards the vastness of space. Suffering from lapses in memory, he recalls a vision from the beginning of Creatura, wherein he was an infant in a large body of water covered by a thick film, unable to break through and reach the surface for air. Will states to himself, “This oppressive universe is like a womb from which I should fight to get out…the symbols on my screen…that image that is always in front of me and has come to obsess me…is my ship…My ship is drifting…lost in the vast empty space within me.” Jones interprets this as Will struggling to rectify his place in the universe, being separated from the birthing process, stating, “From this it appears that, in the absence of the possibility of participating in giving birth, men perceive only transcendence (based their own birth) and work from this as a model to comprehend their place in the universe. Paradoxically, in working from this model, man’s place in the universe is outside of the universe.”(Jones 2006)
Drew Leder states that the comic book medium allows for a separation of mind and body, citing that, “One’s own body is rarely the thematic object of experience.”(El Rafaie 2012, 61) As author and illustrator of the book, Serpieri uses others as conduits for his scenarios. His role as a scientist in the book mirrors that of Serpieri’s role as artist in that he is trying to discern the reason for what is happening because of Druuna. Thus, while there is a revelatory element of the author in choosing to illustrate these sequences, Serpieri is a step removed in the biographical context in Carnivora, resulting in an autobiographical imprinting of the story onto Druuna, not unlike a portrait painter putting themselves into a patron’s scene, creating an alternative narrative in the process.
Studying Druuna as a character within the work as opposed to a muse, straddling realms, is an entirely worthwhile venture. Following Carnivora, Serpieri published Mandragore and Aphrodisia. These books continued the story of Will, Terry, and Doc as they examined Druuna’s mind. She bid farewell to the crew at the end of Aphrodesia, and in the following entries, The Forgotten Planet and Clone, Druuna fought for survival on a hostile alien world, ultimately discovering that she was not entirely human. These books are just as worthy of study as the first volumes, and for those interested can be read alongside Jones’ interpretation. For this study, we are moving forward to 2015, over ten years after Clone’s publication. Serpieri returned to Druuna after a prolonged absence in what is perhaps the most revelatory entry in terms of autofiction yet.
Anima
Backing away from the edge of the universe did not mean the end of all adventures, nor creative endeavors. Anima is a pantomime work that is considered by some to be a non-canon entry. While one can certainly exclude it from the Morbus Gravis–Clone story arc, it is not fully understood – or arguably, even meant to be read – without context of the previous volumes. It is not a dream sequence, nor a what-if; it is Druuna from another time and place – different, yet the same.
The book opens with a stack of four panels. A fly sits upon someone’s skin, prodding it with their proboscis. As the vantage pulls back, a woman (named Anima, according to Serpieri) looks over her shoulder at the fly before swatting the pest away.
Aside from hide stockings, Anima is entirely nude. Her features are akin to Druuna’s, though her hair is a dirty blonde, and the setting we find her in is totally foreign. She stands up and stretches before getting dressed, exuding a confidence and comfort that is seemingly misaligned with the Druuna we know.
Dressed, Anima leaves her dwelling. Beside the entrance to her Yurt hangs a (phallically) shaped flute, as well as a telescopic lens. She looks out to the sunny landscape before her with fists balled while a gentle wind rolls over her, evident by the Yurt flap and her lifted hair. She then marches towards a giant bird sleeping beneath a strange fruit tree. The tree’s branches appear to be tentacles, and its roots cling to the side of a rock, as if it is keen to move. The bird is a grey biomechanical mass of muscle and machine, but it is not foreboding or predatory. It sleeps soundly, with its lower beak slightly askew and its giant spherical eyes fully closed.
Anima mounts the bird and awakens it with a whistle from her flute. She grabs hold of the reins as it leaps off the edge of the plateau and takes flight. Soaring through the air, numerous other mesas spread across a forested valley come into view. Page 8 is a full-page shot, with the bird breaking frame as it soars up and over the isolated island they call home. The pair’s journey continues for several more pages, with pages 10 and 11 giving a closer view at the forest below as Anima looks through her telescope.
Descending, the pair follow a river before coming to land in a clearing. The bird immediately falls back asleep while Anima dismounts and moves to the waterside. She bends down on all fours, drinking a handful of water from the shoreline before disrobing (aside from her stockings) and entering the water.
As she bathes under a waterfall, the picturesque scene is interrupted when a snake uncoils from a nearby tree branch. The snake glides into the water and quickly wraps itself around Anima. She manages to grab hold of its neck before it can strike, and page 16 ends with the two gripping onto one another in combat. Anima lets out a scream as well, though notably, the lettering is not contained within a speech bubble, but rather exists within the environment.
Her scream travels to the next page, where a man in a loin cloth emerges from the forest, springing into action upon hearing her call. He is pictured running to the left as well, back towards her location on the page, rather than right and forward into the book.
A battle ensues on page 18 when the man unsheathes his knife in the first frame and begins cutting away at the snake in the second. The vantage switches from in front to behind, adding to the dynamism of the fight as the snake uncoils. On the following page the man offers the lifeless snake’s body to Anima, and the page ends with them looking at one another in two separate portrait shots.
The pair move from the water and begin making love up against a tree. On page 20 Anima is a willing participant, but on page 21 the man grabs hold of her hand and flips her over. Colour leaves the scenes, bleaching the man in a ghastly grey while he pins her down, teeth grit, holding a knife to Anima’s back and slapping her.
Anima grabs hold of a nearby rock, turning and hitting him in the temple. On the following page their colour tones swap – Anima retreats to the shade with the bloodied rock in hand while the man holds his wound. The following page opens with a large cat spying the scene from the trees above. The cat pounces on the man, killing him with a fatal bite to the neck. It then turns its attention to Anima, who is alert and on all fours. She backs up towards a tree as the cat approaches, but to her surprise it turns its body, brushing against her before putting its paw onto her chest and licking her face. Page 28 ends with a portrait shot of the cat’s head cupped in Anima’s left hand while she holds a finger up with her right, telling the cat to stay put.
Anima puts her clothes back on only to see that the cat has followed her. Then, in the only instance of balloons in the entire book, she explains to the cat that she is a human and he is a feline and they cannot mate. These balloons do not contain words, but rather caricatures.
The cat then rises to its feet, growling. It leaps around Anima and towards a charging creature. The creature is a multi-legged insectoid, not unlike the mutants seen in Druuna volumes prior. The cat and monster engage in combat while Anima runs into the forest for cover. She turns and looks back just in time to see the cat being tossed away by the monster, blood flowing out its body.
Anima pushes through the brush before meeting a seemingly impenetrable wall of foliage. A dead tree on the right hand side of the pane, coloured in brown, black, and blue, seemingly reaches out with its claw-like branches as she struggles to push through the dense brush. The page ends with the monster stampeding towards the treeline, heightening the suspense.
Anima squeezes through and resumes her sprint on the next page. Looking over her shoulder she sees the monster approaching, while ahead of her is the staircase to a ruined stone structure. The relief carving above the staircase is partially obscured, but seemingly represents an eye surrounded by tentacles. With her choices being to face the monster or risk the darkness of the temple below, the page ends with her entering the temple.
Anima discovers that the staircase leads to a dead end. The monster enters the underground as well, corning Anima against the stone wall. Luckily, the wall turns out to be a door, sliding open at the start of the next page, just as the monster is about to strike. Anima tumbles backwards and the frame border opens up at the bottom left, showing her free-fall towards the water below.
Anima swims underwater towards another staircase, slowly moving her head out of the water, squinting, processing the scene before her. Ahead is the entrance to another structure. A weathered seal has been hoisted between columns, though its installation almost looks haphazard, like it was erected posthumously. A warm amber hue invites her out of the water and past the seal, where she meets a crowd of small, hairless humanoids with pale complexions. Page 39 ends with her standing before them as they make a circle around her. Hands lifted into the air and eyes locked upon her, they seem honored by her presence.
However, on page 40 this reverence turns to predation. The crowd of humanoids gawk at Anima. The second frame bleeds into the first with a bust shot of Anima leaning back as throngs of claw-like hands reach up towards her.
She is ushered forward by the crowd to another relief carving – this one of a face, but once again contained within a tentacular adorned circular frame. The crowd does not follow her past this seal, and the page ends with Anima in a portrait shot moving through the dark.
Emerging from the dark, the focal point of the frame is a massive stone carving of a kneeling pregnant woman wearing a crown, from which masses of tentacles radiate out. Below the statue lies a court of cloaked figures surrounding a nude bald woman standing upon an elevated pedestal. As Anima moves forward and into the room the crowd takes note of her presence, and she comes to the edge of a pit filled with monstrous tentacles. The woman on the pedestal stands before this pit, not taking note of Anima’s presence, but instead looking down with a depressed expression of acceptance. She too wears a flute akin to Anima’s around her neck.
Anima approaches the woman while the cast of cloaked figures watch. She extends her hand to the bald woman, who looks between her and the pit before taking it. Page 46 erupts with the cult rushing the two women as they skirt along the side of the pit, dodging the licking tentacles reaching up as they make their escape.
The bald woman points out that they can escape through an opening in the statue’s vagina. The women travel through a narrow corridor with unevenly vaulted arcs before coming to a stairway that leads to a large, well-lit room. An interabang accompanies our heroine as she enters the room and looks up to behold a full-page reveal of a Druuna painting. The artist, seen in the bottom right corner, sits upon an adjustable crane stool, working on Druuna’s stocking.
Page 50 displays an exchange of glances between the women and artist – a caricatured version of Serpieri. He looks at them with impatience, slumping forward and resting his head in his hand while the bald woman looks at the painting with disbelief, and Anima simply scratches her head in confusion. They leave the room via a flooded tunnel on page 51, passing the statue of a knight, which Anima glances at with disgust.
Elaborate multi-figure scenes of statues depicting combat and rape decorate the area. Anima looks upon these statues intently while her companion notices something approaching from the left.
A horse enters the scene. Anima mounts the animal on the final panel of page 53, just as Poseidon-like figures manifest in the waves.
The bald woman leaps atop the horse too and together they gallope to outrun marauding waves, riding alongside the curl before being swept up by it. The horse is pulled under by the currents while the women manage to swim to the surface, emerging on a sun-lit rockscape. Before them stands the valley seen at the book’s start. Our heroine grabs hold of the flute around the bald woman’s neck, snapping it free of its bindings and using it to call her bird companion. She then mounts the bird and once again extends her hand to the bald woman.
Flying over the valley as the sun sets, they soon reach Anima’s home. The bald woman, having fallen asleep, is gently pulled off the mount and set to rest under the tree. Anima pulls free one of the fruits from the tentacle branches and gives it to her companion. She smiles with delight as she chews the fruit, juice running down her face. The women then move inside where Anima disrobes and the two begin to make love.
Page 65 pulls out of the scene, revealing it to be printed on the pages of a book. The bald woman, laying under Anima’s arm, appears to be dissolving into mist. In the second frame, our heroine is revealed to be reading the book. This frame is a copy of the opening page of Morbus Gravis, with slight differences to the details and itemization.
On page 66 Anima closes the book. She then disrobes and approaches a mirror, grabbing hold of her hairline in the final frame, and on page 67 our heroine is revealed to have been Druuna all along. She turns, looking away from the mirror and out to the viewer directly, smiling.
Form
Gianni Brunoro writes about Anima in E Gli Altri Universi, citing how readers are used to Serpieri’s substantial use of text in his comics (Brunoro 2012, 151). Though narrative bubbles are rarely utilized, speech and thought bubbles are included in the majority of panels, and lettering is never a neglected part of the storytelling. Yet, in Anima, lettering and bubbles are almost entirely negated, opening the page up to a new style of composition.
This (in part) makes for Anima being a lighter and brighter book compared to Morbus Gravis. Heavy inking is still used to convey darkness, the characters are still subject to volumetric cross hatching, and dramatic colour contrasts and violent black brushstrokes are still used to create drama, but the book is certainly not horror. Most pages only have two or three panels, negating any sense of claustrophobia, but also opening up to light.
Morbus Gravis was first published in English by Heavy Metal Magazine. In 2012, one of Metal Hurlant’s founders, Jean Giraud (pen name Moebius) passed away. Aside from being published under the same outlet, Serpieri and Moebius approached comics in similar ways. Both were known for their dreamlike qualities, and Moebius often used self-insertion in his work as well. In Anima, several shots of Druuna riding her biomechanical steed through the air are captured from directly behind. This is, I hazard to guess, a homage to Moebius’ Arzach works. Anima, like Arzach, is a pantomime, devoid of speech and narration. It is also surreal, taking place in a fantasy land, with the only real link of continuity being the main character and his steed.
Though Anima shares a striking resemblance to Druuna, her true identity is kept secret to the end. In part, her blonde hair sustains this distraction, but her posture and gait too create doubt that this is the same woman from Morbus Gravis. She often stands with her legs apart, conveying confidence and strength. Compared to her clone, who often stands with her legs together and body symmetrical, as if she were a doll. On page 52 she scowls at her surroundings, head tilted upwards – an angle we don’t usually see Druuna depicted from. She also doesn’t hesitate to snap the flute from her clone’s neck, showing her assertion through actions instead of words.
There is a subtle mirroring of Druuna meeting the Mutant in Morbus Gravis I with page 41 of Anima, where she is pulled forth by the crowd of short humanoids to come face to face with a stone relief carving of a face surrounded by wires (or in the case of Anima, tentacles). The sculpture of “the master” represents a personification of Delta, the ship’s sentience. In Anima, this could refer to Druuna becoming sentient, though this could also just be written off as similar imagery.
On page 51, Serpieri depicts himself in a comedic manner. The painting on the wall is from 2006’s Foemina, a Native American girl (Brunoro 2012, 157). Here, Serperi is not the strong figure seen holding Tahinita in his arms from page 57 of Carnivora. Rather, he is reduced to a small, cartoonish old man who is focused on his work as much as he is irritated by the “real” Druuna’s presence in his studio. It’s a blatant and comical break from the horror setting of Carnivora, with the author depicting himself in a humorous and self-aware manner more in line with the cartooning and caricaturization utilised in underground comic works.
Anima ends with Druuna laying on a bed reading the comic book Anima in a recreation of Morbus Gravis I’s opening panel. Instead of the stack of books with unlabelled spines and covers beside the bed like in Morbus Gravis I, Serpieri’s library of Druuna books are stacked beside the bed in Anima. Furthermore, a cup near the stack of books is filled with drawing and painting instruments, whereas this same cup in Morbus Gravis I is empty.
In the opening frame of Morbus Gravis I, Druuna states that she cannot understand what is being described in the book (“A thick and luxuriant vegetation covered the hills and mountains…”). In Anima she is silent, though now places the book onto the bed itself and uses both hands to caress the pages, whereas in Morbus Gravis I she cradled the book in one hand while rubbing her chin with the other, suggesting her trouble in interpreting the information. In Anima, Druuna is able to fully engage with the information being communicated through pictures sans any words, perhaps suggesting that in the end, Serpieri knows that his work is first and foremost interpreted as erotica. She then moves from the bed to the mirror where she removes her blonde wig, revealing that she is a brunette, and in fact has been the real Druuna all along before turning to look out and smile at the viewer in the final panel, revealing that she knows as well.
Serpieri’s irritation with Druuna entering his studio in Anima could be attributed to his note that he always pictured her as brunette, and in Anima she is blonde, thus he does not recognize her. Furthermore, he claims in Sketchbook that though he has apparently met the “real” Druuna many times, he always fails to recognize her, further cementing the idea that she exists solely on the page and that is where his interactions with her must play out.
However, the fact that Druuna is, aside from her attire and hair colour, depicted in a similar manner as she had previously been, the focus then turns to Serpieri. His studio in Anima is situated in the womb of a giant stone statue of Druuna, outside of which a cult of small goblin-like creatures perform rituals. Druuna’s clone is found here, and is saved from being prodded into a pit filled with tentacles while a group of cloaked onlookers watch. In this sense, this “new” Druuna saves her old “self” from the horrid fate cheered on by the cult – analogous again to Jones’ point regarding the audience’s cruel gaze. The fans too are the fly at the book’s start, hyper-focused at examining every inch of Druuna’s body – though this Druuna does not present herself for the fly’s pleasure, but rather swats it away, signifying that she has her own story to tell.
With Serpieri reduced to an illustrator creating works so far out of scale and style to his stature, pushed out from the statue he inhabits and given to the ravenous mass outside, the scene suggests a self-awareness of his erotic productions.
Thoughts
The title of the book, Anima, stems from what Serpieri calls a “primary essence”(Brunoro 2021, 151) – essentially, going back to the beginning, reviewing Druuna as a muse, before she was a popular character. Initially, Serpieri intended Druuna to be a science-fiction strip with a sexy protagonist getting into all sorts of unsavory situations, as highlighted by a reprint of 1981’s Peut-Etre, included as an epilogue to Anima. She was also born, broadly speaking, of nomadic peoples. The question then is, where did this version of Druuna go? Did she become lost in the page, or simply evolve with it?
A nitpick one could make about Serpieri’s first volume is the somewhat mistimed tonal shifts between drama and comedy. While the Gnome is an interesting character – and one whose role only grows over the course of the series – his introduction is awkward, with readers still digesting the Priest’s brutal display of power from a page earlier. Yet, in Peut-Etre, this weird science-fiction is communicated brilliantly. Serpieri is wickedly funny, and while Morbus Gravis I’s balance between humour and horror doesn’t quite hit the mark, in the later volumes The Forgotten Planet and Clone, the comedic relief offered by the Gnome is a major part of what makes the books so enjoyable. The same can be said of Anima, where humor is key, and despite the acts of violence, the book keeps an upbeat and adventurous tone as opposed to pure horror.
The tree on Anima’s mesa provides her with sustenance, but has a strange and almost sinister biology. On page 63, Anima shares fruit from the tree with her clone, which in turn prompts them to return to the Yurt to make love. The fruit, it seems, helps the clone shed her sense of shame. Though she felt a reluctance to leap into the pit of tentacles for the pleasure of the audience, she felt comfortable consuming the fruit. It’s a rather direct biblical metaphor, speaking to joy in creativity born of consuming the forbidden fruit, as Serpieri has so vehemently fought against the notion of shame being coupled with pleasure.
In Morbus Gravis I, Druuna’s dressing sequence is put on full display for the reader’s pleasure. In Anima, the introduction sequence begins with a fly landing on Anima – analogous to the reader’s gaze – which she swats away. The goblin creatures too lead Druuna to the temple doorway, but do not proceed inside, wishing only to watch the assault unfold – distancing themselves from the horror, but still enjoying the display. After the two women emerge from the caves, Anima forcefully pulls the flute from her clone’s neck and calls her steed. The clone had this ability the entire time, but lacked the fortitude to do so. Anima is a reclamation of gaze by Druuna, but not a disregard of the pleasure, or pornography, that is so core to her existence.
Brunoro writes in his chapter from E Gli Altri Universi, Riflessi(oni) di Fronte a Uno Spechhio Obliquo (Reflections in front of an Oblique Mirror) that while Druuna objects to certain sexual acts, like forced anal intercourse, she does not reject the lesbian relationship with her clone, nor does she violently reject the puma’s advances as she did the Tarzan-esque character who saved her from the snake (Brunoro 2021, 154). The book’s sole use of bubbles in this sequence is delightfully funny, and Serpieri’s love of cats is displayed in the puma’s reactions and mannerisms.
Returning to Druuna’s origins, Serpieri cited Native American and Mongolian women as his inspiration, and in Anima she lives in a Yurt. This, along with the fact that she acts so courageously compared to how we first met her in Morbus Gravis – afraid to go outside – suggests not necessarily a different character, but as Serpieri stated, a reexamination of the character’s “primary essence”. When she reaches to her hairline on page 66 there is a slight uncertainty, even if the question and answer are evident: who is Druuna?
With Anima, Serpieri stated that he abandoned himself to create a fantastic landscape filled with surreal monsters and exotic animals. Then, when it all comes to an end, Druuna slips out of her own fiction. In a 2016 interview, Serpieri quoted Dante in relation to Anima, stating “and we emerged to see the stars again.”(Brunoro 2021, 157)
Serpieri has spoken of how despite his intolerance for censorship, he had engaged in it for the series’ early volumes (Serpieri 1993). Upon reflection of this, he stated, “I don’t think the first two-three books were that hard, while the fourth, Mandragora, was certainly more daring.”(Burattini 2021, 82) Though he continued this pushback against censorship, he never felt the need to make the books gratuitous for the sake of shock. Clone, for example, had two editions, one being born of the publisher requesting more erotic scenes, even though Serpieri had thought the Forgotten Planet story arc simply didn’t demand such displays (Burattini 2021, 83). This pull between fan service, Druuna’s story, and how he (Doc) fits into the universe as an exploratory piece is a point he reflects upon with Anima.
Brunoro cites that in dreams, episodes follow one another often without conclusion (Brunoro 2021, 151). In removing text from the story, Serpieri emphasizes the dream-like nature of Druuna’s exploits. Anima is a dream; a non-canon entry, as some have cited, but can the same not be said about all of Druuna’s adventures? Each entry stands alone as a complete story, even with threads left hanging, but they are no less satisfying or thought-provoking because of it – in fact, this lack of conclusion merely emphasizes the book’s exploratory modality.
The creative struggles McKie exercises in Comic Artist ring similar to Anima. Like Anima, it is autofiction insofar as it is a critique of his own work, his own audience, and how the comic book medium is promoted and consumed. While much of the Morbus Gravis series adheres to a cinematic style, it could be argued that Anima is an underground comic book in the purest sense. As a lone book, Anima is a gorgeous display of human and alien forms traveling through excotic landscapes, though it is only through having read the rest of the series that fans will, like Serpieri, reexamine their relationship to Druuna.
In the next entry, Came From the Wind, Serpieri turns this question in on himself, embarking on one final dream with the woman who has been a guiding force in his life.
Came From the Wind
Came From the Wind begins with Druuna walking away from the reader, towards an opening in the floor located in the centre of the page. The room is dark, with the only light coming from the opening. Blocks of thought text line the page, with Druuna pondering the meaning of memories, consciousness, and time. A portrait frame in the top right corner is the only in-tact panel, with the other two being torn open, bleeding ink over a central white border. Importantly, Druuna wears the same attire seen in Anima: a tan thong and hide leggings.
Druuna steps into the opening and immediately finds herself falling through the void towards an inanimate version of herself laying in a field of tall grass. She hits this body, seemingly possessing it, and then stands up to examine the rolling plains around her.
On page 4 Druuna begins exploring her body, coming into her skin as though it were new, before turning her attention to the landscape. After drinking from a nearby body of water, she follows the scent of smoke, finding the remains of a decapitated man along the trail. The vantage tilts downwards, focusing Druuna’s attention on potential danger as she searches for food. The trail of death continues until she reaches the site of the smoke – a destroyed wagon.
She rushes towards the ruined vehicle, spotting an open barrel of grain. Upon taking a mouthful of food, however, she looks to her side and spots the decapitated heads of two more men hanging nearby. The colour palette on page 6 begins with some green in the first frame, but the wafting yellow/brown smoke takes over the next several frames, with greys and reds adding to the sickly scene before Druuna vomits onto the grass, with the cool green colour returning thereafter.
On page 7 Druuna confesses her hunger has been replaced by an overwhelming sense of loneliness. She looks out to the horizon of rolling planes leading towards a snow-capped mountain range. Soon after, someone, or something, approaches her.
A man on horseback confronts Druuna, pointing his spear at her. She runs away, but the man easily keeps pace. Druuna falls and begins crawling on all fours, watching the man circle her. He then dismounts and sits down, offering her food. Here, Druuna remembers that she too can speak, and her internal thought moves from narrative blocks to speech bubbles. The speech bubbles on page 9 are ill-defined, made of negative space in the watercolour backdrop instead of rounded balloons.
On page 10 Druuna and the man are framed through a spyglass, with voices off-panel providing commentary on the pair. They state that the man is a dangerous hunter, and that they plan to kill him and capture Druuna. Pulling out of the spyglass’ vantage, the voices are revealed to be Spanish. Their monk is called forward by the leader, Yefe, citing the superstitions that the men hold. The monk warns the leader that the woman is a trap, a demon; a result of the fact that they have delved too deep into the realm of chaos and lost their way.
Page 12 opens with the troop storming over the hill towards Druuna and her companion. The man stays to fight, telling Druuna to mount the mustang and flee. Arrows and bullets fly on page 13, with bursts of flame and smoke laid overtop the man as he fires his bow, with ribbons of negative space used to connote the string’s tension.
Druuna mounts the horse as her companion is shot dead. She turns and rushes the men, stampeding through them before taking to the planes. Page 15 ends with the leader of the troop snarling at Druuna as she rides away, thinking to himself that he will capture and tame her. Druuna, looking back to the scene of the battle, reveals that the horse rode of his own will. She notes that, like speaking, she seemingly knows how to ride by instinct.
The men collect themselves when one of the members notes that the hunter’s corpse appears to be moving. A creature like the ones seen in Carnivora erupts out of the cavity in his chest, rushing the men and killing them in quick succession. The monk stands upon a hill, looking over the massacre below, with the black and yellow smoke wafting over him as he states that there is no escape from the evil in this place. The page then cuts to Druuna riding the horse, looking over her shoulder upon smelling burning flesh and hearing screams. She then resumes her ride, asking the animal to take her to where it will.
Page 19 opens with a similar vantage to page 10, pulled out to reveal that Druuna is being spied upon by other beings. Here, however, it is Druuna herself looking at her plight unfold. This Druuna wears a red thong and white top, and reveals that she knows the woman she watches is her and wishes she could experience the things she does. In this dark realm, Druuna stands with Schastar, who states that Druuna now exists only as a virtual entity.
Schastar goes on to explain that the parallel universe they watch was created by the machines in an attempt to save what was left of humanity. Schastar is an anomaly to the machines, a diplomat between planes of existence, and his primary objective is to save Druuna.
Schastar guides Druuna through a portal towards a shoreline. Here, he tells her to dive and find a gate to the next world. She asks Shastar whether he is coming with her, to which he responds he cannot, and bids her farewell with a final warning that not all those who look human in the next world truly are.
Druuna dives beneath the surface just as the robotic Gnome, Gizmo, appears on the shoreline, wondering who she is talking to. Unable to see Schastar’s apparition, he contemplates his next move as Druuna swims away.
Page 24 opens with Schastar drawing a circle in the air with his fingers, creating a portal through which he can see the Druuna we left five pages prior riding across the plains. The eye through which Schastar can see is actually affixed to the head of a biomechanical bird who reigns down on Druuna. It seems to be terrorizing her horse, pushing it to travel a certain direction.
The bird pushes Druuna and her horse right up to the edge of a ravine. Unable to stop in time, they fall in, and the horse drifts away while Druuna dives beneath the surface, called deeper by some mysterious force. Page 27 ends with Druuna meeting her mirror image from the virtual world.
The two women confront one another amidst the dark currents. The second panel transitions to one of Serpieri’s signature mirror images, with the two framed touching hands and coming to recognize themselves in one another. Druuna lifts her mirror self to the surface as her form vaporizes, communicated by grey colouring and trails of watercolor extending off her body.
Druuna emerges from the water. She is still topless, but now wears her red thong, signifying a unification of the two forms. Her memories return to her, identifying Schastar as the man that helped her, and her clone as living in this vast open space she desired so much. Exhaustion quickly overwhelms her, and she collapses face down on the shore while the menacing shadow of a knife-wielding figure approaches from the left.
As it turns out, the knife-wielding figure is only Gizmo. He pokes Druuna’s rear with his blade in order to get a blood sample. Confirming it is indeed her, much to Druuna’s protest, the pair set out to find the human settlement as Schastar had ordered. The page ends with a man spying on the pair from atop a nearby hill. Druuna, remembering Schastar’s warning, approaches the man with her companion.
The man, named Iron Shirt, is able to communicate with Gizmo (whom he names Little Big Man of Iron, much to Gizmo’s delight). Iron Shirt runs his hands over Druuna, inspecting her, while the Gnome stands by and translates that he wants to mate with her, even though biological reproduction is impossible in this world.
The Gnome continues to act as translator, communicating telepathically between Druuna and Iron Shirt. The scene is interrupted when one of Iron Shirt’s wives arrives, tossing a severed head between the pair. Druuna recognizes the severed head as belonging to a woman who worked on a spaceship, but cannot remember her name. The woman on horseback who delivered the head is then revealed to be Terry. Druuna and Terry have a brief conversation, but Terry leaves abruptly after delivering her another gift, stating that her name is Wit-Ko-Win – Woman who gives pleasure.
The gift is a white garment. It covers Druuna’s top but leaves her legs exposed. Iron Shirt bids the pair farewell, referring to Druuna as Came From the Wind. Before they depart, Druuna asks Gizmo whether they should bury the woman’s head. Upon turning to look at it, however, Gizmo points out that in this world biological matter is precious and the machines have already begun to absorb the material for reuse.
As they climb the hill, Druuna questions Gizmo more about the machines. He reiterates that the machines are here to protect what is left of humans, stating that they are not a creation of the machines, as machines don’t really create, but rather an authentic copy. The page ends with Gizmo and Druuna reaching the top of the hill and looking out over the human settlement – a small hamlet and shipyard. Gizmo points to a building set into the side of a cliff, stating that a man lives there who can give Druuna answers.
Druuna asks whether Gizmo will come to the human settlement with her, to which he replies that he will need a disguise. He removes something from his bag, then over the course of two frames, turns away from the viewer while he applies it to his face. He then spins around to reveal his mask, which is that of the original Gnome from Morbus Gravis. Druuna recognizes him instantly, but like all copies of people in this world, he has no memory of her, and has in fact forgotten what they were just talking about. Nevertheless, with his mechanical legs still showing, they descend the steep hill and arrive in town, confronted by a group of humans wearing the same Spanish attire as the unit from earlier in the book.
They pass through the hamlet without issue after Druuna urges the Gnome to sheath his knife. However, we are given vantage of two men conversing in the group, with one stating that Druuna looks identical to a “savage” who escaped a brothel and killed a man named Della Vega. The man dismisses his comrade’s claim, but we are then given more backstory via flashbacks and thought bubbles, as Druuna can communicate telepathically with the man. Here, she sees the woman who she merged with held captive by Della Vega.
Approaching the cliffside building, Druuna spots an eye looking at them through a drainpipe. The Gnome seemingly cannot see the eye, signalling that along with his lost memories, the transformation to human form has robbed him of all vision of the emulated world.
The building is guarded by two armed soldiers, one in robes and one in armor. The robed man accuses Druuna of killing Della Vega and insults the Gnome. The Gnome responds by unsheathing his knife and attacking the guards. Meanwhile, the middle of page 43 breaks to show one of the men from before wandering the street, wondering why Druuna and the Gnome would be going to the cliffside building. He states that the Priests have said that a madman lives there, but he believes it to be just a rumor. Nevertheless, he decides to go and warn someone named Don Diego.
Druuna and the Gnome fight their way in after cutting off the guard’s fingers and accosting the priest. Moving inside, the palette turns to greys, blacks, and beiges, emphasizing the shade of the halls they climb. The page ends with the pair arriving at a door with a webbed relief carving and eye set in the keystone.
The door opens automatically as the pair approach. Inside, they find several crab-like mutant creatures scurrying towards them. The Gnome prepares to fight when a voice chimes in through one of the circular inlets above the doors, stating that the creatures are harmless. The voice invites the pair inside, and they continue through a cascade of offset arcways leading down a hallway deeper into the building. Page 47 ends with Druuna and the Gnome spying a female silhouette at the end of the hallway. They pause, and the Gnome debates unsheathing his knife once more.
Page 48 opens with Druuna coming face to face with the woman at the end of the hall, realizing it is a copy of her. After examining her for two frames, the copy smiles then turns and runs away, laughing. Druuna and the Gnome follow, with page 49 shedding the shadow tones and returning to bright yellows, oranges, and browns. They find themselves in a courtyard, with a mix of stone and pipe constructions surrounding them. The woman stands next to another stone door, pointing to it, beckoning them to follow her. Inside, they find the woman standing next to Doc, who sits in a chair, entangled amongst a mess of computers and wiring.
Doc greets Druuna with “Good morning,” though states there is actually no day or night in this place. He confesses that he was able to rebuild his lab here, and could not stand to live among the people of the village.
Page 50 is heavy with text, with word balloons overlapping frames as Doc and Druuna converse; Druuna expressing her discomfort with yet another clone. Doc tries to explain what he has discovered about this world, but admits he still struggles to understand it himself. The machines seemingly made a complete copy of the human world, and in this copy, two people can be the same, coexisting as one person. The clone of Druuna was the woman mentioned earlier, having escaped capture from Della Vega, and was left completely mute from the experience. Doc cared for her after her escape. During that time she spoke once when he asked her name, responding with the question, “Do I have a soul?” prompting her name, Soul.
Druuna and Doc walk down the corridor, continuing their conversation, while the Gnome and Soul stay behind. Doc then reveals that before Soul arrived he had another guest – a copy of himself. The man came one day asking for help. Doc let him in, and the man immediately got to work. Doc realized that he was working on the same problems as him, but was much farther ahead. Then, one day, the copy left the lab screaming. Doc chased him for some time, but when he found him, he was dead with a strange creature clinging to him. On page 53, we see Doc and Druuna examining this creature – one of the crab beings seen throughout the series, now housed within Doc’s laboratory.
Druuna expresses that she does not want to stay here; she wants to be free in the open spaces like she was. Doc reminds her that this place is a copy made by the machines, and that is not possible. He recounts that when he travelled with the tribes of the north they took him to the farthest known barrier – the edge of the world. Page 54 depicts Doc on this excursion. Wearing a hide suit he dismounts his horse while his guide waits. Doc places his hand upon the barrier, describing it as soft enough to push into, but with its cold temperature, he dared not, theorizing that beyond it lay the end of everything.
Druuna then moves into Doc, grabbing hold of his collar, wishing him farewell. She states she cannot stay here, and though she understands Doc’s theories, cannot bear to think about them now. Doc states that he will never forget her and has Soul here to keep him company.
Druuna and Gizmo then depart. Druuna asks him about borders, to which he states that of course he knows about borders, as he is a machine – and one of the best. She follows up, asking why he never told her, and the book ends with Gizmo raising his finger as he trots right and off the page, stating, “simple, girl, you never asked!”
Form
The beginning nine pages of Came From the Wind incorporate highly refined, volumetric, and bright colouring. Cross hatching is still used, but the pureness of the colouring and the delicate use of gradient is used to great effect in rendering forms. There is a curious change on page 10, with the linework becoming far more pronounced, resulting in a slightly darker, but more expressive, illustrative style. Whereas the first nine pages closer resemble Anima, the rest of the book harkens back to Serpieri’s earlier work – not using quite as much black and white as Morbus Gravis, but akin to his style in Creatura and Carnivora. This could simply be the result of Serpieri working on several pages, stopping, and coming back to them some time later, but considering Came From the Wind and Anima are only three years apart, it’s not like this was left on the shelf for a prolonged amount of time. Likely, this was an intentional stylistic choice, perhaps representing a move through time, like seen in the plot.
The way ink and watercolour combine on page 19 to represent Druuna and Schastar looking through the portal is another example of this thoughtful blend. Heavy cross hatching with an inking brush is a technique oft-used by Serpieri to create darkness and fog. Pure white space is used, but shadow is often rendered via hatching, showing sparkles of light and colour in the periphery. Here, the hatching has been laid over the watercolour landscape, beautifully displaying the dichotomy of Serpieri’s different brushstrokes – those for inking and those for colouring. The final panel of the page in particular is stunning, as the portal shrinks away, the landscape is reduced to small masses of blue, yellow, red, brown, and green, overtly displaying that even with all of the painstaking rendering of form, Druuna inhabits a world of illustration.
When Schastar leads Druuna to the sea which will take her to the machine’s emulated world, she dives in. Thus far, this void between worlds had been contained to individual frames, but here, at the bottom of page 22 and the start of page 23, she swims outside of the frames, connoting her journey out of one realm and into another. Druuna also steps out of frame on page 36 while witnessing the severed head be reabsorbed into the ground, proclaiming, “Oh fuck!” It’s in line with the reader’s likely reaction, again helping emphasize that she is a stranger in this land, existing on the page but coming from another place.
On page 52 we see another of Serpieri’s mirrors, sans any mirror. Doc opens the door to his lab to reveal himself standing in the doorway, with the frame acting as a space to mirror the profile and ¾ portrait of himself. This, like with the painter’s studio in Anima, showcases him reflecting upon his own work. In the middle panel of the page, Doc looks upon his clone working at the computer. With one hand he writes and with the other he attunes an instrument. The sloped construction of the computer leans towards Doc, and the retort flask in the background points at him, keeping the reader’s focus on the clone. The real Doc sits in the foreground to the left, and overlaps off panel, furthering the metaphor of looking upon one’s own work. While Druuna has received this mirror treatment several times in the series, this use of it on Doc suggests that it is more than merely pleasurable to view; rather, the notion of being able to effectively draw a reflection, the same body twice from multiple angles, is an intimate gesture.
Thoughts
Previously, we’ve spoken about Serpieri’s move from westerns to science fiction, and the transition of his career from fine art to illustration. This is something we’ve likely seen him grapple with on the page, primarily in Carnivora, though confessions about his process have also been laid out in the pages of his sketchbooks. In Came From the Wind we witness his early work of the Far West come into contact with his horror autofiction.
The Druuna from Anima, the primary essence of the character, enters the book on page 1. The Druuna from Clone, who evolved over the course of several decades, enters on page 20, and we eventually see the two lines of creation, the muse and her mutation, merge together.
On page 10, Yefe consults the monk, who states, “We’re lost! We’ve delved too deep into chaos and we lost our path!” He goes on to state that they are surrounded by evil and the woman is a demon, luring them into temptation. The monk could be an avatar for censorship, but on a deeper level he may speak to Serpieri’s creative state. Though surely he has no sympathy with the monk’s philosophy, the labyrinthian construction of this endeavour clearly rings true.
On page 49, when Druuna finds Doc, he states that he couldn’t live with the people of the settlement, and instead chose to live amongst the machines. He has turned his back on the traditional western, perhaps unable to conform to their criteria any longer. Instead, he lives in a constructed world, fully aware it is emulated by machines, so that he may continue his study. Soul, his companion, represents the conundrum of just how real Druuna is, as does his journey to the edge of the world with a native guide, displaying the limit of his work.
Schastar warns Druuna before she enters the robot world that not everyone is human. This is first made evident by the creature erupting out of the man’s chest and attacking the soldiers, harkening back to scenes witnessed in Carnivora. The creatures Doc houses in his lab, the ones which formally hunted them in Carnivora, are now docile. This begs the question whether Doc or his twin is the real Doc, and whether his and Druuna’s twins are analogous to, or the same as, the ones seen in Carnivora?
The machines created this world as an exact copy, suggesting that they are not Replicant clones but rather artifacts of the machines. Gizmo, for example, does not have a clone, but is able to transform into a previous version of himself, though he loses all short term memory in doing so. The clones in Came From the Wind are logical – not quite robotic, but adhering to the rules of the emulated world around them, with the exceptions being Druuna and Doc. Living like a machine, in a state of study and analysis, Doc has been able to understand and control the nightmarish creatures that once hunted him. He cannot leave the world, but also refuses to live within it, relegated to spending the rest of his life in the laboratory, with Soul at his side. Druuna, however, may not be limited by the edge of the world. She may be able to transcend this barrier as she has with so many others. As of this writing, the final volume has not been released, so we can only speculate.
Conclusion
The majority of sources cited in this study related directly to Serpieri come from European media and academia. Though the subject of autofiction comic books is well-represented in English academia, Serpieri’s works have largely been excluded from these conversations. Sexually charged narratives are common in autofiction works, thus it seems strange that Serpieri’s catalogue would be excluded from this continuum by conscious exclusion, though the extraordinarily graphic nature of the works, as well as the oblique methodologies used to make them into autofiction, may be reason enough for some; alternatively, their exclusion could simply be out of ignorance of their existence. Regardless, the conclusion drawn in this study remains the same – Serperi’s work deserves more academic study.
The goal of this paper was not to speak for Serpieri or write a biography; rather, it was to argue for the Morbus Gravis series’ place as a great – or at the very least criminally understudied – work in the comic book medium. So few personal stories have managed to straddle the line between autofiction and franchise, playing to an audience while simultaneously portraying the author’s mutations. Druuna is many things to many people, but to Serpieri, she has been a muse – a muse we the audience have also had access to in the same intimate ways as her creator.
Morbus Gravis is both reality and dream. It is as curated and edited as it is expressionistic and fleeting. Yet, Serperi’s ability to transfer this to the page in such a manner saves it from criticisms of being pure pornography. Morbus Gravis is not a pinup book, and it should no longer be lumped in with the genre. It is an encapsulation of a creative’s life, rendered through graphic imagery.
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