Spoilers.
In his memoir “Christ Stopped at Eboli,” Carlo Levi, the Jewish-Italian artist turned communist agitator, famously said, “The future has an ancient heart but a contemporary mind. What we need most of all is to have the courage to look at the past and grasp it, to understand it and to shape our future.”
Levi’s memoir is more preoccupied with reflecting on being a political exile in Mussolini’s Italy, but this quote rings true. The more Western civilization seemingly “progresses” (technologically, scientifically, etc.), the more detached we appear to become from its ethical foundation while becoming more aligned with various forms of pagan idolatry. At the same time, the ongoing explosion of technological secularism is destroying the philosophical and institutional mechanisms keeping the darker aspects of human nature, en masse, at bay. In many ways, it seems as though we are immersed in a Hobbesian state of nature despite our material prosperity.
And this, in part, lies at the heart of Matt Battaglia’s debut graphic novel “House on Fire.” According to a synopsis on the back cover, the work is meant to “tease[] out the differences in a personal-political cruise through a fallen world, where fear is rational and obedience your only refuge.”
The piece follows an unnamed male protagonist as he ventures into a city blockaded by militarized guards (decked out with thermometer guns, respirator masks, and medical ID scanners) to acquire “shots” for his critically ill wife, who is stuck at home on some form of ventilator
