Necropolitics and Pandemic Premediation in The Fall’s Neo-Western State of Exception

Abstract

Jared Muralt’s ongoing comics series The Fall (2018–) depicts a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a flu pandemic, in which the responses to and consequences of the fictional disease outbreak premediated the reality of the COVID-19 spread. While embedding the narrative in mainstream post-apocalyptic tropes and plot developments, Muralt adopts European western comic conventions and draws on specific representations of place, landscape, and social conflict to shape his take on a pandemic state of exception in different configurations in urban and rural contexts. Focusing on the first six issues of The Fall this article demonstrates how the deathscape created by Muralt resonates with necropolitical measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the formation of fictional makeshift communities in the Alps in which rule is based on threats of violence and the marginalization of the sick and refugees.