‘Who Sanitizes the Sanitizer?’: COVID Comics and Sanitisers

Much like face masks, hand sanitisers have become a household item and a prominent symbol since the COVID-19 pandemic. As sanitisers began to be widely used, contingent issues related to toxic ingredients in sanitising products, heightened pandemic-related anxiety, unscrupulous profiteering through inflated sanitiser prices, obsessive sanitisation, contamination fear, stockpiling, panic buying, and concerns regarding the overall effectiveness of hand sanitisers emerged. Building on these themes, the present article investigates the various issues related to sanitisers after a brief review of the history of sanitisers. To do so, the present article analyses sequential comics and single-panelled cartoons from comic artists such as Randall Munroe, Sarah Morrisette, Shivesh Shrivastava and Dan McConnell. This essay extends its inquiry beyond examining sanitisation practices during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated cultural implications. Drawing on insights from Object Oriented Ontology, this article brings to relief how sanitisers have evolved into objects that hold, govern and shape our modern existence. Furthermore, the present article highlights how the comic medium visually enunciates the lived experiences of the pandemic, rituals of sanitising and associated issues.