Dante's Inferno

by Christos Gage, writer and Diego Latorre, artist
Hennepin County Library paperback unpaged
genre: graphic novel, "based on the video game"

So some of our Adventures eighth graders decided to read Dante's Inferno. I read part of the Wikipedia entry since I've never read the full translated work (or the original, for that matter . . . Fourteenth century Italian poetry is not on my "faves" list). I also do NOT have time (or the desire) to read the full work at this point in my life. When I was looking at options at the public library, I saw a graphic novel and thought that might work.

There actually was a lot of content that is true to Dante's work - the nine circles of hell and the different types of sinners in each. Dante was sort of led through by the poet Virgil . . .  Well, from the Wikipedia entry on the video game:

"The story is based on Inferno, the first canticle of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, and shares many similarities with the poem. The game includes damned found in appropriate circles of hell and various other monsters from the poem. The game follows the exploits of Dante (reimagined as a Templar Knight) as he journeys through the nine circles of Hell to reclaim the soul of his beloved Beatrice from the hands of Lucifer."

I wasn't sure why Beatrice played such a huge role in this graphic novel except for the fact that sex and violence are the two key pieces of this type of video game and she was in full-frontal nudity throughout the entire story. She seems to have an extremely minor role in Dante's work . . . but quite a major one in this graphic novel.

The artwork was kind of cool and kind of creepy, but eerie fits when you're traveling through hell. Dante is re-imagined as a Crusades warrior (and a rather vicious one at that). I'm glad I read it; I have a somewhat better feel for the scope of the work (and Inferno is only one PART of the Divine Comedy!) and don't feel a need to invest more time in this.