Calypsis. Submerged Worlds and Post-Apocalyptic Subjectivities in Contemporary Comics

This paper examines contemporary post-apocalyptic comics centered on the aquatic element. It builds on three Italian graphic novels: La terra dei figli by Gipi (2016), Celestia by Manuele Fior (2019), and Troppo facile amarti in vacanza by Giacomo Bevilacqua (2021). It aims to investigate the theoretical, aesthetic, and symbolic role of water in the narrative articulation of the Anthropocene crisis in recent comic book production, beyond its literal diegetic functions. The analysis takes an interdisciplinary approach combining ecocriticism, visual semiotics, comics studies, and media theory. We introduce the theoretical category of ‘epicalypse’ to describe a mode in which the post-apocalyptic condition is inscribed within the present, haunting its imaginary with the idea that the catastrophic event has already occurred. Within this framework, water becomes a medial metaphor and a cultural grammar through which contemporary comics articulate life after the end – simultaneously evoking destruction and generation, concealment and revelation, the dissolution of entrenched institutions and the potential for posthuman subjectivities.