Art Young's Inferno
by Art Young
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Hell was once a desolate place of fire and brimstone wherein all were miserable. And then the capitalists came and supplanted Satan's rule with the almighty power of the dollar. Now, only the poorest of sinners suffer, while rich hellions live in relative comfort and luxury. Modern conveniences now placate the masses, swanky hotels and thrilling amusement parks entice tourists and Hell has become more hellish than ever before. In 1934, the celebrated political cartoonist Art Young conjured a show more vision of Hell that in its greed, inequity, and misery reflected the all-too-real hellscape of Depression-era America, and stands as one of the most searing indictments of capitalism ever published. This stunning re-issue of the classic illustrated novel presents Young's lush pen-and-ink drawings as facsimiles of his original pages; the artwork appears as it did on his drawing board, with visible brushstrokes and pencil annotations. This edition also includes a foreword by curator Glenn Bray and an introduction by acclaimed graphic designer Steven Heller plus the original 1934 essays by Young himself and his "friend, admirer, and attorney" Charles Recht. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This is a charming book about the author following Dante's footsteps through Hell, and finding it taken over by capitalists. There's a lot of relevance here. It strikes me as a better version of the Animal Farm type story, because it wasn't written as a reactionary polemic. Still, it's a very gentle book, and the illustrations are pretty cartoony compared with the agitprop the Soviets were putting out.
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10+ Works 89 Members
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- Original publication date
- 2020
- Disambiguation notice
- This is the 2020 Fantagraphics reprint with additional material. Please do not combine with the original work.
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- Languages
- English
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