Druuna: Creatura

This comic (which I don’t have as a standalone but only as it appeared in the November 1992 Heavy Metal) is a sequel to the Morbus Gravis Druuna books, and there is a sort of continuity, at least insofar as continuity is a thing in the Druuna universe. The spaceship that was the setting for the earlier books has been overgrown by the Evil virus and now constitutes a sort of fleshy asteroid or floating tumor. Another spaceship captained by a man named Will comes across the asteroid, which seems to be communicating psychically with Will by giving him visions of Druuna. An away team lands on the asteroid, indeed enters it in a highly suggestive manner, and as they explore their surroundings reality seems to come undone and it’s not clear how much of what is happening is real and how much is a dream. Druuna’s lover Schastar, for example, appears to have melded into a cyborg creature that is part Schastar and part Lewis. Furthermore, he/it might have died eons ago but for the fact that time no longer has any meaning.

There’s a doctor (he seems to be a psychologist, primarily), who’s based on Serpieri himself, and he shows up to try to explain some of this to Will but I found his theories hard to follow. Otherwise, we’re just lost in the same world as before, consisting of a diseased superstructure built upon a cauldron of id that keeps looping out its tendrils to snag the buxom Druuna or any other nubile creature. The crew-cut Terry giving herself up to something called the Prolet project is another sexual-surrogate stand-in, like Hale in Morbus Gravis. In fact, she might be Hale. I don’t know.

Trying to make sense of all this is impossible. And this despite the fact that Creatura is a lot talkier than the Morbus Gravis comics. I’m just not sure how much of the supposed exposition was meant as a joke, how much was lost in translation, and how much was confused to begin with and then became progressively more complicated. It seems that something is being said about humanity existing in a parlous state between the poles of what I called the id (the Evil virus, carnality, violence, and lust) and a superego (the computer, robots, technology). While Druuna in all her lush voluptuousness would seem to be more closely aligned with the organic, that’s not represented as being an attractive alternative. Sex can be beautiful (especially on the beach), but more often it’s something cruel and degrading. Meanwhile, technology is more closely identified with what we might think of as civilization and a condition of order that we have to fight to preserve.

I won’t try to read anything more into it than that. Most of the pontificating done by the doctor and others strikes me as just a bunch of pretentious bafflegab. And by this point in the story I think it’s clear that there is no linear story being told. “Past, present and future mean nothing here,” Druuna is told by the robot Schastar/Lewis. And so she keeps running in place. There’s no escaping the human condition, even in space!

Graphicalex