Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri
Morbus Gravis

First published in 1985, "Morbus Gravis" has over time become a cult comic, acclaimed more abroad than in Italy. Created by the well-known Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, who was already working in the comic field on western-themed stories, he gained fame abroad thanks to magazines like Metal Hurlant in France and Heavy Metal in the United States, giving rise to a long series of sequels, always characterized by a mixture of science fiction and eroticism.

The story, later endlessly expanded, but initially meant to be limited to a single volume, shows humanity now annihilated, imprisoned in an unspecified futuristic (and feasible) city, besieged by a strange disease and the fear of contagion, in a world where religious fanaticism is at its peak. For some time, what remains of the human race has been living in the Lord's Era, a social order imposed after a disease decimated men, transforming the unlucky ones into tentacled monsters not too dissimilar from the many mutations of Carpenter's "The Thing," certainly among the inspirations for Serpieri's work. The only way to save oneself, or at least temporarily curb the virus’s effects, is a mysterious and sought-after serum, distributed sparingly by a caste of powerful priests. In this landscape of enormous physical and moral degradation, there is her, Druuna, the unintended heroine of the convoluted story. Beautiful, dark-haired, and extremely curvy, she seems drawn more from a Playboy centerfold than from a science fiction story. Worried about the condition of her beloved Schastar, a researcher long afflicted by the incurable disease, she lives her life prostituting herself for a few doses of serum, always at the mercy of sleazy doctors and unsavory guards until, thanks to an apparently random encounter, she comes into contact with some mutants, and from there begins her adventure to try to learn more about an uncomfortable yet shocking "truth".

The character of Druuna has over time become a classic of science fiction comics, thanks to a carefully crafted plot and the protagonist's extreme sensuality, without neglecting possible points for reflection. The world that serves as the backdrop for the story is a highly hierarchical one, dominated by an apparently untouchable religious caste. The already terrified populace blindly believes the priests' words, also because they are the only ones possessing the much-sought antidote: sin manifests with the disease, those who live in sin, and thus are ill, can only be transferred to the City Below, a veritable hell populated by ravenous mutants. Indeed, Druuna's world strongly resembles a Dantean circle, with a city divided into three levels: the City Below, where the infected are exiled, the Middle City, where healthy individuals live but still need the serum, and the City Above, a mythical place where those who are now completely healed are transferred and can start a new life. In a world now contaminated and decadent, where the dilapidated structures perfectly represent the people who inhabit them, Druuna seems to be the only one who has retained her humanity, often depicted as a kind and naive girl, even though she is now aware that her physical exuberance is, on more than one occasion, an excellent entrance pass. Speaking of such a comic, one cannot fail to mention its purely erotic aspect: if the sci-fi part plays a fundamental role, the erotic part is equally important. Druuna is a breathtaking beauty who almost always roams semi-nude, in skimpy and provocative clothing, and there will be numerous occasions where, besides willingly indulging herself, she will be raped by the current guard/soldier/mutant, with the risk of giving birth to some strange crossbreed. In her own way, she is a sort of healthy bearer of beauty and happiness in a world now condemned to extinction. And if the most sexually explicit boards are presented as a means to criticize "Judeo-Christian morality" (is it a coincidence that the "villains" are represented by a stern priestly class?), it must be remembered a third aspect at the base of the comic's success, namely the purely oneiric one. The entire narrative is indeed suspended between dream and reality, with various hallucinations, often caused by the serum the protagonist herself is forced to inject, becoming the only moments of calm and happiness. There will be numerous instances where memories, images from a distant and lost past, a sort of Golden Age that will be impossible to return to, before the contagion and the Lord's Era, will resurface, revealing in some cases to be true epiphanic moments.

These are the elements that have decreed the success of "Morbus Gravis" and the character of Druuna, so much so that what was originally intended to be a standalone story, confined to a single volume, actually gave rise to an endless series of sequels over almost twenty years, all, it must be said, judged of questionable quality. Discovered almost by chance, it must be said that the various volumes are easily available, at comic fairs, on the internet, or even in regular bookstores and comic shops, as they have been reprinted on several occasions. The subsequent chapters may pass, but at least for the first one, it's worth the search.