Apocalypse now

A Peruvian graphic novel grapples with a collapsing world. Books in brief: Before We Sail, Carlos Yacolca et al.

Before We Sail, Carlos Yacolca, Michelle Lino, Diego Revello, David Escobedo and David Lloyd, 2026, Aces Weekly

By Gavin O’Toole

There are elements in Carlos Yacolca’s apocalyptic story that most of us will identify with, especially the sense that the world we knew is falling apart around us.

Before We Sail is a brooding, atmospheric graphic novel in which protagonists Jonathan and Kath flee Lima after a social breakdown characterised by zombie menace.

Yacolca’s debut, published in the online comic art magazine “Aces Weekly” by David Lloyd, co-creator of V for Vendetta, traces a tale in which the main characters flee the city to take to the sea.

While at one level it is a thriller in which they face mutant people and dangerous gangs, it is also meant to be a reflection on finding value in a world where the future has collapsed, resilience and the enduring qualities that make us human.

It achieves this through Jonathan’s notes, eventually despatched for a future reader as a letter in a bottle, which explore depression, guilt and aspiration in this dystopian landscape.

The images are striking and the story moves forward with dramatic urgency, making this work a testament to the talents of all those involved. Right now as we look around it is easy to identify with a world that is collapsing.

Yacolca, something of a stalwart in the Peruvian comic book world, has set out to expriment with this difficult medium and demonstrates clear potential as a storyteller.

The artwork by the award-winning Michelle Lino is both stark and flexible, creating the possibility of danger at every turn.

Peru has emerged as something of an emerging power in the world of comic art, and strong links with the UK scene have been forged by celebrated artists such as Gustaffo Vargas.

There is an immediate urgency to this genre, reflected among others in Before We Sail, that needs to speak out about the universal threats and challenges that we face beyond borders.

Peruvian artists have not been backward in putting themselves forward in terms of social critiques, and there is an established recent history of challenges through art to the status quo, one example being efforts to censor the work of Jesús Cossio.

Cossio’s signature work Barbarie—Cómics sobre la violencia política 1985–1990, used the medium of graphic stories to denounce the atrocities committed by Peru’s armed forces and the Maoist Sendero Luminoso guerrillas during the country’s civil war.

Before We Sail is published in a period when the country has largely got to grips with political violence, yet still captures the sense that we are all stalked by violence of a different kind.

Perhaps those zombies roaming the streets of this novel allude, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers when set against the suburban paranoia of McCarthyism in the US, to a deadly new ideological foe in our midst?