‘Pure Prima Der Coronavirus’. Representations of the COVID-19 Era in Italian Collective Comics

Abstract

ABSTRACT The response of Italian comics artists to the COVID-19 pandemic was immediate and variegated. Since the first outbreak in the Western world, these artists have been reflecting on themes related to the pandemic, such as social and individual crises, awareness of climate change, the spread of misinformation and fake news, the dissemination of conspiracy theories through social media, institutional inadequacy, and the impact of these on underrepresented communities. This meditation through comics on COVID-19 related issues confirms the socio-cultural relevance of this medium in contemporary Italian culture, and its capacity to negotiate traumatic events during times of collective crisis. This article discusses a set of case studies of a particularly successful type of comics publication, collective comics, published in Italy since February 2020. These works show how pandemic graphic narratives can serve as a privileged observatory of the historical trends and current tendencies that characterise the present Italian comics world.