“Panter is a legend of independent comics; considered the father of punk comics, he has influenced many, including Matt Groening, and warped the look of children’s television with his sets for Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Jimbo’s Inferno is the prequel to his critically acclaimed Jimbo in Purgatory, which came out in 2004. Inferno originally appeared as part of a short-lived line of art comics published by Groening, but here it’s been reformatted to the terrifyingly deluxe oversized standards of Purgatory. Like that volume, this follows the outlines of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but combines and conflates specific events, looking at them all with a satiric rock and roll flair. The erstwhile hero, Jimbo, guided by the boxlike Valise, travels into Focky Bocky, a subterranean mall that spirals downwards, containing a modern vision of hell. The art is a Boschian mishmash of grotesque and comic, all in Panter’s signature proto-punk style. The dialogue borrows as much from Dante as from Lewis Carroll and Frank Zappa. Together, it is a dizzying re-envisioning of Dante. Perhaps because of its earlier format, it lacks the intricate polish that made Jimbo in Purgatory a groundbreaking comic, but as a rough sketch of twisted genius, it still amazes. (Apr.)” –Publishers Weekly, Amazon
LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, “The System of Dante’s Hell” (1965)
“[T]he function of writing about Dante and the control over access to the part of the tradition that Dante inhabits can liberate the black writer. At least it liberates LeRoi Jones, turning him into a new man with a new name, Amiri Baraka, whose experimental literary project culminates in The System of Dante’s Hell in 1965. Dante’s poem (specifically in the Sinclair translation) provides a grid for the narrative of Baraka’s autobiographical novel, and at the same time the Italian poet’s description of hell functions for Baraka like a gloss on many of his own experiences. [. . .] Baraka uses Dante first to measure the growing distance between himself and European literature, then, paradoxically, to separate himself totally from it. His Dante is a marker of separation rather than integration.” — Dennis Looney, Freedom Readers: The African-American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2011), pp. 105-106
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