Eventually I will have to stop collecting comics about Venice – there are simply too many. It’s no wonder comic artists are attracted to Venice. As Kia Vahland has recently written in a German newspaper article: “The principle of resilience through beauty has a long history in Venice, which is the only reason why it still works so amazingly today.”
Here is a recent example from the legendary Asterix series. “Astérix et la Transitalique” is a comic issued in 2017 and it features only a very short sequence about Venice. This snippet is from my German edition:
The captions read: “We are building our city Venexia. The area is a bit swampy, but the view is belissima! And so peaceful!” “But your city is sinking!” “It’s only the water of the lagoon rising! The climate is not what it used to be!”
It would be worthwhile to investigate how the topic of flooding gained prominence in depictions of Venice in comics over the last 100 years and when flooding started replacing the other iconic features of La Serenissima. (I am sure Venice popped up in the Asterix series before, but I did not check.)