This is a comic strip which is circulated on social media during early 2020. In the
context of historical time, coronavirus outbreaks around the globe in which millions of people
are affected. The comic strip attempts to address the problem of leaders are not treating
coronavirus seriously despite the heavy loss of human lives. The author achieves his
purpose by using irony and well-chosen visual techniques.
Situational irony is employed to show how irresponsible the pilot is and hence brings
out the fact that many leading figures in the world are not treating coronavirus seriously,
causing a tremendous loss of lives. The speech bubble above says “This is your pilot
speaking. I’m working from home today.” Noted that the author uses the pilot language to
imitate real life situation, further enhancing the ironic effect. We often regard the pilot as a
leading figure, in which his job is to make sure that his passengers are safe throughout the
journey. Whereas here he is being irresponsible, as he is simply giving information of him
“ working from home today”. Furthermore, Coronavirus shifts the way of working from going
to a certain site, such as office, to working from home. This is because working from is said
to be safer as it reduces the contact with other people and hence reduces the chance of
being infected. Together with the information above, perhaps we can infer to the real life
situation in which the pilot is the leading figures in a country or the world, whereas the
passengers are the citizens. The leading figures are not doing their job to curb the spreading
of the disease, rather, they stay at a safer place and doing very little or even nothing.
The author also adopts various visual techniques to show that the phenomenon of
people not being serious to the Coronavirus and its impact. To illustrate, the painter draws a
wide diversity of people. Thus the people in the comic strips are gender-neutral and raceneutral, solidifying his opinion that people around the world are being affected. Both women
and men are drawn and a variety of races are shown in the strip. However, it does show a
certain social status. Almost all of them are in middle-class, as they are well-groomed.
Moreover, the facial expression also highlights people’s panic due to the fact that the
leaders’ responsibility. Some are clenching their teeth which shows how frightened they are,
and some are showing a ‘unbelievable’ and ‘surprised’ face. There is one thing for sure,
they are all not feeling secured. In other words, the job of the pilot, as well as the leaders,
are not fulfilled.
The comic strip ridicule the irresponsible behaviour of the leaders and hence
persuade people to raise awareness of Coronavirus and public health. The worried facial
expression and tense body movement all highlight the worries over the Coronavirus, if the
leaders continue to do nothing or very little, then the matter will just become more serious
and serious.