Post-Apocalyptic
Post-apocalyptic comics take place after a catastrophe has destroyed civilisation as we know it, following survivors in the world that is left.
In depth
After a war, a plague, a disaster or the dead rising, survivors cross a broken landscape and rebuild — or fail to. The genre is as much about community and morality as about survival.
Landmarks
Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga, 1982–1994) imagines an ecological aftermath; Akira opens after the destruction of Tokyo. In American comics, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman (2003–2019) followed survivors of a zombie outbreak for 193 issues, and Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra imagined a world where almost every male mammal has died.
Related shelves
Post-apocalyptic stories overlap with dystopian fiction, where society survives but in a broken form, and with horror when the catastrophe is supernatural.
Kinds of catastrophe
Post-apocalyptic comics vary with the cause of the end: nuclear war, pandemic, environmental collapse, alien invasion or the dead rising. The cause shapes the world that follows, from irradiated wastelands to overgrown cities. Some stories begin at the catastrophe; others start generations later, when the old world is a legend.
Where it appears
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. post-apocalyptic manga by the director
The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman. long-running zombie survival series
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. post-apocalyptic science fiction
What it means today
Long series like The Walking Dead are best read in their collected volumes in order; the compendium and omnibus editions collect most of the run in a few books.
