Saturday, February 11, 2017

Dante, Beatrice, and Nancy


[Gustave Doré and Ernie Bushmiller, with help from the alpha tool and me. Click for a larger view.]

Not exactly a beatific vision, but as close as I can get.

Related reading
All OCA Dante posts : All OCA Dante and Nancy posts : All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

comments: 4

Frex said...

Fan art!!!
I was just writing about fan art based on comics, or comics based on art.

May I ask you to say a little more about this?
Is Nancy really a beatific vision--I mean, is there really something in the comic to make that case? (I grew up reading Nancy--my parents got two papers and the Sunday funnies with Nancy on the front went to me first--my sister got the one that displayed Blondie---weirdly fitting for our personalities, actually, but I have no thoughts on the subject of Nancy & Dante.)

Michael Leddy said...

I like Ernie Bushmiller’s draftsmanship. Many people in the comics world (who know much more about comics than I do) have praised his clean, exact lines. He draws a perfect world. So I guess there is something of a beatific vision in there. I got the idea to put Nancy in the Doré after seeing the panel in which Sluggo seems to be assuming the role of Virgil trying to persuade Nancy to go back to the underworld. Silliness. So why not put Nancy into the Paradiso — not as a visitor by a permanent resident? The John Ashbery collage with Krazy Kat might have been somewhere in my head too.

The artist Joe Brainard devoted much time to Nancy. See here. (I’m trying to figure out why I’ve never written about The Nancy Book.)

Frex said...

Thanks for saying.
I remember my college physics-for-nonscientists prof saying that a sign of a good physics theory is that it offers the possibility of extension.

(There's a better way to say that but I can't think of it. She was saying that there are lots of ways to explain phenomena, and one way to choose the best theory is that it could be built upon... and has the least obfuscation. Not like this comment.)

I'd say the same of art--the good stuff is extendable.

Still...
Dore & Bushmiller--who'da thunk?
(Well, you!)

Michael Leddy said...

Oh my goodness — I have something to post tomorrow from Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. No kidding.