Jimbo's Inferno HC (2006 Fantagraphics) comic books 2005-2007

1st printing. Story and art by Gary Panter. "Don't try to pass a pop quiz on Dante's Hell based on a reading of this comic," warns Gary Panter. "It won't work. Even though the comic is engorged with Dante's Hell and though Jimbo mouths a super-condensed version of what happens in The Inferno, canto by canto, characters are fused, actions inverted, parodied, subject to mutation by my odd memories and obsessions and whims..." That said, Jimbo's Inferno is the hugely anticipated sequel (or prequel, as it was actually completed first) to Jimbo In Purgatory. In this oversize hardcover cloth-and-gold-finished volume, produced to the same exacting standards as 2004's Purgatory, Jimbo, accompanied by his trusty guide and ride Valise, visits Hell (here envisioned as a gigantic subterranean shopping mall called Focky Bocky), and in so doing runs across minotaurs, drug-addled punkettes, UFOs, giant robots, and more, leading him to such profound questions as, "Why do so many recreational activities involve smoke and heat?" Panter's Albrecht Dürer-meets-Jack Kirby graphics are wilder and more hallucinatory than ever, and given the full, expansive treatment they so richly deserve. Hardcover, 11-in. x 15-in., 40 pages, B&W. Cover price $29.95.