Post-apocalyptic cycle closure through metafiction

Martina lives on an island; she is a receptionist at a hotel and in her free time she works on her first comic book. She spends her days with Jon, her best friend. Until they meet Sofia, a successful illustrator who looks like Martina. Jon, half-jokingly, thinks she might be her double. This is the premise of Martina y la isla (Salamandra, 2026), by Jaume Pallardó (Valencia, 1978), a regular in the Valencian fanzine scene and author of the series L’Olivera (2024), for ARA. His latest long comic, La muerte rosa (Che Books, 2018-2019) is very notable. In his new work, a finalist for the Fnac-Salamandra Prize, he deals with themes often explored in postmodern metafiction: comics about people who make comics are already practically a genre in themselves, with their particular mannerisms. But Pallardó works with a mechanism of mise en abyme, that is, of stories within stories –the central one, that of the comic Martina draws and the novel written by the protagonist of this second comic–; another narrative convention that, in this case, dates back to The Thousand and One Nights.

Despite the risk of falling into clichés, the story works because Pallardó is aware of the clichés and does not let himself be governed by them. Thus, he achieves an absorbing and very polished fiction in which the metanarrative aspect is introduced intelligently and everything fits, even unexpected elements that border on the fantastic. The fictions that inhabit the main plot never have an excessive presence: they are read with Martina's narrative voice as a self-aware commentary on her reality. The great discovery lies in characters that are not at all stereotypical, supported by realistic and precise dialogues –it is a remarkably well-written comic, like the previous one, a fact not as common as it should be–, and sustained by a formal apparatus very coherent with the narrative tone. Pallardó uses a simple line and draws exactly what each scene needs, with an anti-spectacular style that does not even let loose in the action scenes. And he resorts to a very effective blue whale –with graphic changes to represent the different narrative levels– reminiscent of Daniel Clowes, from Ghost world.Daniel Clowes,, from Ghost world.

Deep down, Martina and the island is the story of a woman living at that point between youth and maturity when decisions must be made and a path of one's own must be found. Everything contributes to the comic, even the unexpected plot twist halfway through the story of a flood reminiscent of the Valencia storm of 2024, which, by introducing an ecological subtext, places us in the realm of the post-apocalyptic genre. Thus, a surprising circle closes: if Pallardó, without knowing it, chronicled the covid pandemic before it happened, with La muerte rosa, he now offers his post-mortem vision of another emergency experienced firsthand that is admirably integrated into the fiction and demonstrates that clichés only seem outdated if they are approached uncritically and routinely.