Comicscapes, fashion, pratiche del corpo: una comparazione mediologica fra Eva Kant e Valentina

Abstract

The essay develops a comparative analysis between two cult figures of Italian comics: Eva Kant and Valentina. The two women di carta appear on the cultural scene in the first half of the Sixties, configuring themselves as avant-garde icons of a renewal in the national comics scene, which will converge more and more towards innovative representations of the feminine, more free from stereotypes and idealizations. From the observation of the narratological, semiotic and aesthetic patterns that emerge from the analyzed panels, it was possible to thematize how they reflect the relationship of interdependence that the universe of comics has always had with the world of fashion and with the cinematographic medium, establishing a creative dialogue with them. Therefore, bearing in mind that "fashion has always been word and image” (Calefato 2021), the focus was placed on the spatialization of the women's body in comics (Grüning 2021), as well as on elements of graphic, expressive and clothing characterization, which reciprocally reflect both practices of objectification of the female body and an ideographic representation that obeys the emancipatory logic of the same. The purpose of such a contextualization is to offer an interpretation of Eva and Valentina which, by stressing the similarities and differences between the two characters, helps to understand their interconnected figures.