Druuna
Encyclopedia
Druuna is an erotic
science fiction
and fantasy
comic book
character created by Italian cartoonist Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri
. Most of Druuna's adventures revolve around a post-apocalyptic future, and the plot is often a vehicle for varied scenes of hardcore pornography
and softcore sexual imagery. Druuna is frequently depicted as sparsely clothed or nude, and Serpieri's high quality renditions of her are often reproduced as poster prints.
Druuna starred in eight volumes of the Morbus Gravis ("Severe Disease") series between 1985 and 2003; these stories were featured prominently in Metal Hurlant
and Heavy Metal
magazines. Druuna has also been featured in Serpieri's numerous and popular sketchbooks, which have sold more than a million copies in twelve languages. Serpieri himself appears in many of the stories as the character Doc.
In the first volumes in the series, the action unfolds is a place called The City, a futuristic but degraded urban environment. Humans live in a cramped, hostile, and decadent society, controlled by an religious oligarchy based on the knowledge of "Truth." In this society, books are banned and power is exercised by a corrupt and despotic militarized bureaucracy.
Although never clearly stated, this current era, known as the "Age of Man," is presumed to be the aftermath of a kind of war. As told by the priests, Evil had been visited on the populace by an incurable, infectious disease that transforms people in a progressive and rapid fashion into amorphous, tentacled mutants. As a precautionary measure, all of the City's inhabitants are forcibly injected with a serum periodically distributed in overcrowded health facilities. Many believe that those found to be "healthy" will be sent to the City's upper levels, a place inaccessible to the majority but where those selected enjoy a better life free from want and hardship. Similarly, those infected with "Evil" are sent to the lower levels. Druuna and her lover Shastar exist in this environment.
After a series of adventures, Druuna discover that the City is actually a giant spaceship which left Earth after an unspecified cataclysm and has drifted through space for centuries. At some point, Lewis, the ship's captain, delegated control to the computer Delta, which is responsible for creating the current state of affairs. (The Priests are actually androids operated by Delta.) Delta transformed Lewis into an immortal being, using organic parts from the healthy people who had been admitted to the upper levels of the City. Now, Lewis, tired of immortality, wants to die, which would eliminate Delta and destroy the city. This conflict is partially responsible for the gradual degradation of life on the ship/planetoid.
Druuna is recruited by Lewis to help with his plan, but she falls in love with him and changes her mind about destroying the City and all its inhabitants. In turn, Lewis puts Druuna in a state similar to hibernation for centuries, waiting for an opportunity to improve conditions on the City. Something happens when a new ship, initially believed to be an asteroid, enters the equation. Commanded by a character named Will, the new ship is revealed to be similar the City, which has become, thanks to the evolution of Evil, a super-organism. At this moment, the reader discovers that apart from the City, humanity is not entirely extinguished, but that other groups of humans survived, using genetic engineering to improve their abilities.
Embarking on Commander Will's spacecraft, Druuna discovers that the minds of Shastar and Lewis have been merged and transferred to the new ship's computer. The disease called Evil appears among the new ship's crew, so Will and Doc (author Serpieri's alter-ego) telepathically introduce Druuna into the mind of Lewis-Shastar, discovering the elements that make up the antidote serum. When Druuna gets trapped in the computer mind, Will enters it to rescue her. Discovering that they actually have no means to develop a cure for the disease, they decide to destroy the ship and crew (as well as the computer that houses the merged minds of Shastar and Lewis). Druuna, Will, and a few others escape in a rescue capsule, where they are all put into a state of suspended animation.
After the capsule crashes on an unknown planet, Druuna awakens alone. She is soon caught in a war between two alien species, one of which is composed of parasitic beings who need organic specimens as hosts, and the other intelligent robots pursuing the objective of creating organic life. Apparently, the planet is Earth thousands of years after the disappearance of man. The machines want to recreate their creators (whose extinction was caused by a war between men and machines) to try to understand humanity. Will briefly reappears and is kidnapped. Shastar also reappears, now working with the machines in their aim to recover the human species. Toward that aim, they decide to clone Druuna.
, she has been raped on more than one occasion in the series. Serpieri claims that the character's approach to sexual pleasures is a challenge to Judeo-Christian
mores
on sexuality.
In the album Druuna X, Serpieri asserts that he styled Druuna as influenced by Valérie Kaprisky
's appearance in the film La Femme publique
but because he had drawn so many Western comics
in those days, in the first few pages of Morbus Gravis Druuna was portrayed with Native American
facial features before reaching her current look.
.
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
character created by Italian cartoonist Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri
Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri
Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri is an Italian comic book writer and illustrator, noted for his works of highly detailed renderings of the human form, particularly erotic images of women...
. Most of Druuna's adventures revolve around a post-apocalyptic future, and the plot is often a vehicle for varied scenes of hardcore pornography
Hardcore pornography
Hardcore pornography is a form of pornography that features explicit sexual acts. The term was coined in the second half of the 20th century to distinguish it from softcore pornography. It usually takes the form of photographs, often displayed in magazines or on the Internet, or films. It can also...
and softcore sexual imagery. Druuna is frequently depicted as sparsely clothed or nude, and Serpieri's high quality renditions of her are often reproduced as poster prints.
Druuna starred in eight volumes of the Morbus Gravis ("Severe Disease") series between 1985 and 2003; these stories were featured prominently in Metal Hurlant
Métal Hurlant
Métal Hurlant is a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas.The four were collectively known as "Les...
and Heavy Metal
Heavy Metal (magazine)
Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. In the mid-1970s, while publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to jump-start the French edition of National Lampoon, he discovered the French...
magazines. Druuna has also been featured in Serpieri's numerous and popular sketchbooks, which have sold more than a million copies in twelve languages. Serpieri himself appears in many of the stories as the character Doc.
Plot
During the thirteen years of publication of Druuna's adventures in Morbus Gravis, the plot has evolved through several stages, differentiated with numerous jumps in the storyline, with some attendant inconsistencies.In the first volumes in the series, the action unfolds is a place called The City, a futuristic but degraded urban environment. Humans live in a cramped, hostile, and decadent society, controlled by an religious oligarchy based on the knowledge of "Truth." In this society, books are banned and power is exercised by a corrupt and despotic militarized bureaucracy.
Although never clearly stated, this current era, known as the "Age of Man," is presumed to be the aftermath of a kind of war. As told by the priests, Evil had been visited on the populace by an incurable, infectious disease that transforms people in a progressive and rapid fashion into amorphous, tentacled mutants. As a precautionary measure, all of the City's inhabitants are forcibly injected with a serum periodically distributed in overcrowded health facilities. Many believe that those found to be "healthy" will be sent to the City's upper levels, a place inaccessible to the majority but where those selected enjoy a better life free from want and hardship. Similarly, those infected with "Evil" are sent to the lower levels. Druuna and her lover Shastar exist in this environment.
After a series of adventures, Druuna discover that the City is actually a giant spaceship which left Earth after an unspecified cataclysm and has drifted through space for centuries. At some point, Lewis, the ship's captain, delegated control to the computer Delta, which is responsible for creating the current state of affairs. (The Priests are actually androids operated by Delta.) Delta transformed Lewis into an immortal being, using organic parts from the healthy people who had been admitted to the upper levels of the City. Now, Lewis, tired of immortality, wants to die, which would eliminate Delta and destroy the city. This conflict is partially responsible for the gradual degradation of life on the ship/planetoid.
Druuna is recruited by Lewis to help with his plan, but she falls in love with him and changes her mind about destroying the City and all its inhabitants. In turn, Lewis puts Druuna in a state similar to hibernation for centuries, waiting for an opportunity to improve conditions on the City. Something happens when a new ship, initially believed to be an asteroid, enters the equation. Commanded by a character named Will, the new ship is revealed to be similar the City, which has become, thanks to the evolution of Evil, a super-organism. At this moment, the reader discovers that apart from the City, humanity is not entirely extinguished, but that other groups of humans survived, using genetic engineering to improve their abilities.
Embarking on Commander Will's spacecraft, Druuna discovers that the minds of Shastar and Lewis have been merged and transferred to the new ship's computer. The disease called Evil appears among the new ship's crew, so Will and Doc (author Serpieri's alter-ego) telepathically introduce Druuna into the mind of Lewis-Shastar, discovering the elements that make up the antidote serum. When Druuna gets trapped in the computer mind, Will enters it to rescue her. Discovering that they actually have no means to develop a cure for the disease, they decide to destroy the ship and crew (as well as the computer that houses the merged minds of Shastar and Lewis). Druuna, Will, and a few others escape in a rescue capsule, where they are all put into a state of suspended animation.
After the capsule crashes on an unknown planet, Druuna awakens alone. She is soon caught in a war between two alien species, one of which is composed of parasitic beings who need organic specimens as hosts, and the other intelligent robots pursuing the objective of creating organic life. Apparently, the planet is Earth thousands of years after the disappearance of man. The machines want to recreate their creators (whose extinction was caused by a war between men and machines) to try to understand humanity. Will briefly reappears and is kidnapped. Shastar also reappears, now working with the machines in their aim to recover the human species. Toward that aim, they decide to clone Druuna.
Style and content
The Morbus Gravis series is noteworthy for featuring explicit content in terms of both graphic violence and sex. Volume 3, Creatura, in fact, features near-totally explicit sexual penetration, and the three subsequent books feature totally uncensored penetration. The Heavy Metal reprints differ from the stand-alones by having censored hardcore portions via oversize speech/thought balloons. In vol. 5, Mandragora, several pages were simply excised. The series returned to a non-explicit depiction of penetration in such scenes with vol. 7, The Forgotten Planet.Character
In most cases, Druuna's role is that of a willing sexual object, submitting to sexual advances of all kinds with little or no complaint, other than the occasional sad poutPout
Pout may refer to:* A facial expression* a commune in Thiès Region, western Senegal* Trisopterus luscus or Pouting, a fish in the Gadidae family* Ocean pout, a kind of eelpout in the family Zoarcidae...
, she has been raped on more than one occasion in the series. Serpieri claims that the character's approach to sexual pleasures is a challenge to Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...
mores
Mores
Mores, in sociology, are any given society's particular norms, virtues, or values. The word mores is a plurale tantum term borrowed from Latin, which has been used in the English language since the 1890s....
on sexuality.
In the album Druuna X, Serpieri asserts that he styled Druuna as influenced by Valérie Kaprisky
Valérie Kaprisky
Valérie Kaprisky is a French actress.She was born Valerie Chérès in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Kaprisky is her mother's maiden name....
's appearance in the film La Femme publique
La femme publique
The Public Woman is a 1984 French drama film inspired by Dostoevsky's novel The Devils and directed by Andrzej Żuławski, starring Valérie Kaprisky, Lambert Wilson and Francis Huster as the lead actors. The film had a total of 1,302,425 admissions in France where it was the 28th highest grossing...
but because he had drawn so many Western comics
Western comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century...
in those days, in the first few pages of Morbus Gravis Druuna was portrayed with Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
facial features before reaching her current look.
List of appearances
- Morbis Gravis
- Morbus Gravis (Dargaud, 1985) ISBN 3933187699 — reprinted in Heavy Metal Magazine Vol. 10, #2 Summer 1986
- Druuna (Dargaud, 1987) ISBN 2908406632 - reprinted in Heavy Metal Magazine Vol. 12, #1 Spring 1988
- Creatura (Bagheera, 1990) ISBN 3933187710 - reprinted in Heavy Metal Magazine Vol. 16, #4 (magazine lists it as Vol. 17, #4) Nov. 1992
- Carnivora (Bagheera, 1992) ISBN 3933187729 - reprinted in Heavy Metal: Software Special Edition Vol. 7, #2, 1993.
- MandragoraMandrágoraFor other uses see Mandragora .La Mandrágora was a Chilean Surrealist group "officially founded" on 12 July 1938 by Braulio Arenas , Teófilo Cid and Enrique Gómez Correa . The group had met in Talca and first started exchanging in 1932...
(Bagheera, 1995) ISBN 2908406322 - reprinted in Heavy Metal Magazine Vol. 19, #4 Sept. 1995 - Aphrodisia (Bagheera, 1997) ISBN 2908406691 - reprinted in Heavy Metal Magazine Vol. 21, #4 Sept. 1997
- La Planète oubliée (The Forgotten Planet) (Bagheera, 2000) ISBN ISBN 2908406608 - reprinted in Heavy Metal Magazine Vol. 25, #2 May 2001
- Clone (Bagheera, 2003) ISBN 2908406721 - reprinted in Heavy Metal Magazine Vol. 27, #5 Nov. 2003
- Serpieri sketchbooks
- Serpieri Obsession: In Search of Druuna (Heavy Metal Magazine, 1993) ISBN 9781882931231
- Druuna X (Heavy Metal Magazine, Dec. 1993) ISBN 9781882931033
- Druuna X 2 (Heavy Metal Magazine, 1998) ISBN 1882931416
- Serpieri: The Sweet Smell of Woman (Heavy Metal Magazine, 2000) ISBN 1882931602
- Croquis (Bagheera, 2001) ISBN 2-908406-30-5
- Serpieri Sketchbook (Heavy Metal Magazine, 2001) ISBN 1882931149
- Serpieri Sketchbook 2 (Heavy Metal Magazine, 2002) ISBN 1882931904
In other media
The character has also appeared in the 3D videogame Druuna: Morbus GravisDruuna: Morbus Gravis
Druuna: Morbus Gravis is a 2001 video game, based upon the science fiction and fantasy comic book character of Druuna. The adventure game was developed for Windows by Artematica and published by Microïds....
.
External links
- Druuna at BD Vore
- Ecofeminist Themes in Serpieri's Morbus Gravis article at Interdisciplinary Comics Studies