From today’s perspective the fact that in the SFRY comics were published (and read!) in millions of copies seems almost unbelievable. However, this is not by chance but a continuity of a practice that began in the 1930s, when the first comics were published in former Yugoslavia. The influence of American comics was so strong that even the name “the ninth art” was taken, albeit somewhat abbreviated. In many cases, heroes were domesticated and adapted to the new environment.
This is also the starting point of the mapping which then spans a wide period of time extending to the present day. Within it was the field of commercial comics (those translated and printed under license, as well as those created by “Balkanization”) and the underground or alternative comics, as well as the wider field of popular culture (amateur and other forms of interpretation of content that stemmed from these comics). Through the themes of comics, we problematize the relationship between a dominant and marginal culture. We notice that it is not a one-way process (from dominant culture to marginal, as would be expected), but an exchange. These influences are not unambiguous, but often reversible. Domestic alternative comic book authors, for example, those whose transformative creative experience is represented by the discovery of American underground comics, over the years establish transnational connections with American authors, publishers, and audiences. They are published in the United States, and their works then follow complex distribution, circulation, and reception pathways.
Mika Miš (or Mika the Mouse) was one of the first popular Yugoslav comic heroes – a “balkanized” version of Mickey Mouse, tailored according to local customs and setting. From 1932 until the beginning of World War II, Disney comics flooded Yugoslav newsstands, sharing the limelight with translated, licensed detective and adventure comics, as well as masked hero comics. Additionally, based on these foreign templates created at the time, were local comic book heroes such as Detective Harry Wills and the masked hero (and justice fighter) Zigomar.
The political and ideological attitude towards the U.S. culture and its influence can be defined as ambivalent and complex. Since the 1930s, and especially after World War II, comics had been criticized from the left, primarily for fear of their authority over the youth who might adopt American and capitalist values. Such criticism is neither singular, nor exclusively local. Despite such resistance, the U.S. commercial comics made a comeback in 1952, and the mass release of different comic books along with the popularity of Disney heroes in particular, resulted in amateur comics, inspired by the latter’s popular heroes. This consequently led to the merging of popular culture and national expertise.
For the purpose of tracing this type of ideological position, it might prove interesting to take contextualization into consideration and go into detail about the circumstances that led to the exhibition American Underground Comics – An Exhibition of the Collection of American Underground Comic (Note) Books held in 1980 at the Student’s Cultural Center (SKC). This exhibition is an example of the institutionalized representation of comics at a time when works by American underground artists – Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton in particular – were only sporadically published in magazines such as “Pegaz,” “Treći program” and “Kultura.” The broader influence of the U.S. culture on experimental comics as an artistic medium emerging with the wave of abstract and conceptual art should also be taken into consideration. Before the 1990s, not a single comic by U.S. underground author was published. Then, in 1993, the publisher “Šund d. d.” issued a non-licensed edition of The Classics of Underground Comics, which included Crumb’s and Shelton’s works. Ultimately, the first licensed books presenting the two artists were published in 2012 by “Komiko,” when Crumb was a guest of the Belgrade International Comics Festival in SKC.
Research so far, has focused on the 1990s and 2000s, as well as (post)-Yugoslav alternative comic books, creating the framework for the summary of all influences that are mapped, with protagonists that are still an active part of the scene.
Alternative comics were invisible to institutional culture and the general public during the 1990s. This mainly involved samizdat production and distribution. Publications were printed on photocopiers, without binding, in very few copies that were distributed among friends and a relatively small fan base. Nevertheless, these comics did appear on the international cultural scene at a time when worldwide communication was virtually zero. Two separate case studies offer a review of the activities of Aleksandar Zograf and Danilo Milošević Wostok, with special reference to their books published in the United States, and the reception of these editions among U.S. comic book theorists and critics.
Saša Rakezić (alias Aleksandar Zograf) has been publishing comics in the U.S. since the beginning of the 1990s. Having connected with American underground comic authors, the likes of Jay Lynch and Robert Crumb, he published his work in Weirdo, Zero Zero, Rare Bit, Friends, etc. He is best known for comics where he deals with life in a country that is falling apart. In them, documentary elements are sifted through a surreal and dreamlike filter, as if created in a hypnagogic, state of half-sleep.
Life Under Sanctions (1994) and Psychonaut 1 & 2 (1996) were published by Fantagraphics Books from Seattle and The Dream Watcher (1998) by Slab-O-Concrete, to name a few. In 2002 he displayed his work at a solo exhibition organized at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco and in 2003, as part of the American Effect exhibition at the Whitney, his comic book How I Met America was showcased. Aleksandar Zograf is also important. Through his mediation, alternative comics from the Yugoslav region gained visibility among the U.S. public, including comic theorists, critics and artists.
The 2003 comic Illegal Emigrants by Vršac-based author Danilo Milošev Wostok (script by Goran Vasić Burek) is based on Disney characters that appear in a highly sexualized and perverted context. The comic book deviates from the original template to its farthest point and it seems as if we are witnesses to echoes of a balkanized Mika the Mouse brought to its most extreme. The comic was published in 7 copies and is also available online. Despite its obscurity, it provoked quite an uproar and disapproval on matters of preserving the drawings’ purity, and the moral decency and incorruptibility of local comics. Parodies of Disney characters are a theme that also occurs in the works of Nikola Vitković and the art group “Momci” (Guys), Neda Dokić and Zoran Janjetov.
Thirteen years later, Wostok published his book in the U.S.. In 2016, Lovecraft House publications issued Robusto!!! – a selection of 24 comics created at workshops held in 2004 and 2005.
Key figures:
Dušan Duda Timotijević (1903–1967) was a journalist and from 1922 the editor of the Belgrade-based magazine for art, literature and philosophy “Putevi.” Between 1932 and 1941 he was a full time associate and special correspondent of the daily “Politika.” He started “Politikin zabavnik” and wrote film reviews. From 1941 to 1945 he was a war prisoner in German concentration camps where he was editor of the illegal bulletin “Logorske vesti” (Concentration Camp News). From 1945 to 1959 he was editor-in-chief of “Glas,” “Borba” and “Međunarodna politika.” He taught film history at the Higher Film School in Belgrade. He was the first director of the Yugoslav Institute of Journalism. He was elected president of the Association of Journalists of Serbia and the Association of Journalists of Yugoslavia.
Vlastimir Vlasta Belkić (1896–1946) was a comic book author, illustrator of the so-called Golden Age of Serbian comics and one of the pioneers of modern Serbian adventure and humor comics. Belkić was the creator of Mika the Mouse comics, as well as the first Serbian action comic The Adventures of Detective Harry Wills, modeled on Detective X9.
Saša Rakezić alias Aleksandar Zograf is a comic book author from Pančevo, who published approximately 50 comic book collections in Serbia, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy, to name a few. He exhibited his work in solo exhibitions ranging from the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco to the legendary gallery Mondo Bizzarro in Rome. From 2003, he has been a regular contributor to the Serbian weekly “Vreme” and occasionally the Italian weekly Internazionale.
Danilo Milošev Wostok is an underground comic artist and screenwriter from Vršac, one of the leading figures of Serbian alternative comics. Other media of interest include painting, video and music. Wostok, supported by his other pseudonyms, has built a distinct poetics that is an amalgamation of dark stories, sarcasm and parody, constantly investigating the boundaries of the comic book media.
Robert Crumb (1943) is a comic book icon, author of Fritz the Cat and founder of the famous Zap Comix, for which he created some of his most celebrated characters (the Snoid, Mr. Natural…). In the 1960s, his grotesque works shocked the Puritan public and started a true revolution within the comics industry.
