Review by Frank Plowright

Jared Muralt had already completed this portion of his dystopian saga when covid spread around the world, but it endowed The Fall with a gravitas, transforming it into a look at what might have happened in a worst case scenario.

It’s set in Switzerland, opening with Liam having just lost his job amid a country in crisis because a flu variant is proving resistant to treatment, leaving people dying in their thousands. Liam, his teenage daughter Sophia, and son Ben (the names surely Americanised in translation) are among the fortunate few seemingly immune to the disease, although their mother succumbs. Muralt takes a leisurely pace in showing how life disintegrates in a city and people are left to fend for themselves as attempts to maintain order fail.

As an artist Muralt is dedicated to setting mood, and although his work is a whole lot tighter, there’s an emphasis on embedding people in their location bringing to mind fellow Swiss creator Bernard Cosey, with Hermann’s naturalism also seemingly an influence. Murat is an enjoyable, subtle artist who’s very capable of slipping something past readers while having it in plain sight, the cover being an example. It also presents his cast with unfortunately large chins, which isn’t as obvious internally.

There’s been considerable thought put into what might happen to pockets of humanity when order breaks down. Some are the province of horror with brutal men reverting to caveman rules, and in other places there’s some attempt made to maintain civilisation, although rules are harsh and the punishment for breaking them even harsher. Keeping the focus on a single family is the driving force. We learn early what kind of people they are in good times, and their characteristics are maintained. As they’re fundamentally decent it makes what they have to do to survive all the more shocking.

Despite Murat’s reservations about the early chapters in an interview after the story content, this is first rate action drama, attempting to maintain a realistic focus. After reading it the frustration will be that it takes time to produce, which should be evident from the overall quality, and although this English collection of the opening six issues was published in 2021, only three further issues have been published since. At that rate there’ll be no further English material until 2026.