#dylan dog

Dylan Dog 77 - The Last Man on Earth

First story

First published on February 1993

Story continue under the cut as usual!

Dylan is suffering from something; it began with a mild cold, but the virus keeps going. If it even is a virus — the doctors still have a few other ideas. First an MRI, then a series of tests, and finally the time comes for more serious procedures. The common saying “once you go to the hospital, you end up staying longer” here reflects the writer’s underlying (and quite obvious!) fear that a visit may be prolonged because a serious illness is discovered. The same fear forms the foundation of the story about Mater Morbi.

I was prepared for Dylan Dog to balance on the edge of wakefulness and nightmare, but Mater Morbi does something more: it leads the protagonist into a space where horror stops being a metaphor and becomes a bodily experience.

Unusual, suffocating — for me it works as a fantastic invitation into this world. Truth be told, I know this universe only indirectly (indirectly, because it wasn’t an adaptation) through Michel Soavi’s wonderful film (where the protagonist was named Francesco). I mean Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore), in which Rupert Everett played the lead role, partnered by the beautiful, seductive Anna Falchi.

And now, after reading Mater Morbi, I see how deeply Soavi “felt” Dylan Dog (even if the film didn’t refer to the comic, but was a cinematic translation of Tiziano Sclavi’s novel — Sclavi being Dylan’s creator). Although I’ve seen the film several times, today I appreciate it even more — precisely for its perfect transposition of atmosphere. All of Dylan’s fears are directed toward an intimate, almost claustrophobic confrontation with something that cannot be defeated by a gun or by irony. In the comic, illness — embodied in the figure of Mater Morbi — becomes an absolute opponent: immortal, omnipresent, unpredictable. How do you defeat Mater Morbi? The answer is probably very human — the kind one must apply in the real world, far from the comic medium. One can, and even must, fight illness, but above all one must accept it.

You can clearly feel the author’s fondness for symbols, allegories, melodramatic expression — after all, this is a horror comic, which for me stands quite close to Italian horror cinema. The content is filtered through a contemporary sensitivity, aware of the fragility of human life.

Alongside my admiration for the story — which I also understand in connection with my own recent stay in the hospital — I must admire the illustrations. They are dense, sticky, precise. The beautiful detective of darkness faces the beautiful Mater Morbi with his romantic mug. Oh, what a confrontation — on the border of suffering and pleasure. The contrasts between hospital white and darkness are not a backdrop or landscape, but a psychological state. Each panel is a step deeper into illness: nightmarish visions appear, fears take shape, and each new medical diagnosis only fuels the metaphorical horror that — naturally — thickens in the drawing; the horror coagulates.

Personagem de culto da banda desenhada italiana, Dylan Dog é finalmente trazido para Portugal numa edição Levoir da coleção Novelas Gráficas.Para este primeiro contato do público português com um dos mais intrigantes títulos de fumetti da editora Bonelli, os editores da Levoir escolheram Mater Morbi, uma das mais perturbadoras histórias recentes desta longa série. Mater Morbi: A queda de Dylan…

"This is the ballad of the night that is still there,

that does not want to give way to the light of dawn,

and still amuse themselves, the darkness and the fate,