We just saw these fabulous ads for the Comics Museum in Lucca on Ads of the World and we had to share them with you. The tagline on all three is “Comics are art. Just funnier,” and to illustrate the principle they’ve taken three masterpieces of art and made a comic strip of them.
We’re still giggling about cartoon called “The Shot” that’s a play on Mantegna’s Saint Sebastian (above). The comic strips begins with the poor pierced saint tied to a pagan column. To make matters worse for this early Christian martyr, a hand reaches over and places an apple on his head, making him the human target for some not-so-skilled archers who riddle his body with arrows.
Jacques-Louis David must be laughing in his grave at the Comic Museums’ version of The Death of Marat. The comic is titled “The Bill” (below) and begins with Marat in his bathtub while a hand reaches in from the right and with a just-written bill. In the center panel, a close-up shows us that the bill is for room service and that the total is exhorbitant. It’s the shock of that sum that causes the death of Marat in the last panel.
And then there’s “The Waking Up” (below), a play on Mantegna’s Dead Christ. Christ, brilliantly foreshortened, lays in bed with a clock ticking beside him. At 7:00, the alarm goes off and we see a close-up of Christ’s hand as he reaches over to push the snooze button. In the final panel, we’re looking at Mantegna’s original painting and we see Christ slumbering for a few more moments before the alarm clock resurrects him again.
We don’t know much about the Museum of Comics in Lucca — called the Museo Nazionale del Fumetto e del Imagine — but we love these ads.
Advertising Agency: JWT Italia, Milan, Italy
Executive Creative Director: Pietro Maestri
Art Directors: Cristiana Boccassini, Flavio Mainoli
Copywriters: Bruno Bertelli, Paolo Cesano
Illustrator: Manlio Truscia
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