AlternAtive comics in serbiA 1980-2010

Aleksandra Sekuli (voice one, the cultural-political one) Radovan Popovi (voice two, the comics-drawing one) Instrumental accompaniment: Metaklinika, Damir Rijovich, Damir Smith, Wostok, Zograf, Mirko Stoilkov Mirez, Kosmoplovci

introduction into invisibility

Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowlyjust like thatuntil the cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that! And then Invisible man, H.G. Welles, Chapter IV, Mr. Cuss interviews the stranger
A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

What is the specificity of this exhibition and this publication which allows us to describe them as a sort of screen broadcasting live from the world of invisibility? It is an experiment: an attempt to present a dynamic, intensive and peculiar production of comics outside the scope of its usual presentation model and distribution network. We will try to delineate a principle according to which its history has been structured as a part of one or several cultural systems and which has provided a continuity of the production that can be labeled a culture of enthusiasm. Such an overview will expose representation levels, roles and potentials of alternative/authorial/independent comics that have assured its invisibility1. In accordance with its basic tenets and motivations, this cultural scene will
1 The invisible theatre, according to a definition, is a theatre taking place in unexpected places (it has its origins in the theatre of the suppressed). The invisible movie, likewise, questions the ways of movie presentations and politics of curatorship and screening (www.filmskemutacije.com). The invisible comics will now for the first time publicly memorize, embrangle and problematize its invisibility game.

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

be presented through a series of selected time and space dots that constitute a personal map of alternative comics as experienced by the authors of this text. It will not pretend to fully encompass the rich, complex and interesting history with its few dots. However, this experiment actually announces a more thoroughgoing historiographical and archival work, which will be supported by the National library of Serbia, which will make a part of the entitled The Invisible Comics virtual exhibition. The text that follows is therefore logographic and represents an attempt to extract stories from individual experience that may help the reader gain an insight into the context that has shaped the selected works that make this exhibition. The Invisible Comics virtual collection has been conceived as the connecting line between peculiar independent, authorial, alternative comics production in Serbia in the last 30 years and new possibilities of archiving and interface, as well as institutional culture, because alternative comics is the production that is rooted in alternative and samizdat modes of creation and distribution. Its long-standing invisibility for official representation of culture justifies the concept of digitalization in the form of a participatory platform containing an option of constant, capillary feed-in and developing an archival strategy that parallels the way of functioning of this scene through joint and open exploration. The story about comics as a hybrid of two media, namely the drawn image and the written text, so charmingly located in small round clouds, is old, older than the others. The sad mainstream adherents, blind followers of mainstream excess sizes lost in mathematics of literal understanding of activity of adding up the text to the image, blind to their own comics medium which, to reiterate for hundredth time, is not just a simple summing up of these two forms of expression, but, contrary and in opposition to fun mathematics, is something in-between, the seemingly empty space between the two comic strips, something unsaid above the three dots, not known although it is felt, whoever

can and whoever knows and wants and loves and dares and is able and has to and should feel, having even when he doesnt have, because it was so and is so, not that its not and because and why not. You will understand me, my dear readers, adherents of the commissioned written word, fans of nice images, my friends from the entire world of comics, love and love comic fanzines!!! The old comics from the Universe of the Future where the stars that still shine even though they have been dead for eons are throwing light on the path leading to but unable to take you back.... Continuing the tradition of samizdat activity that has characterized youth and alternative culture in Yugoslavia, alternative comics in Serbia experienced were in full swing in the 1990s. Due to its innovativeness, intensity and intertwining with tendencies in various other fields of alternative culture, the alternative comics turned out to be the cultural production from Serbia which was the most present on the international scene, despite the social circumstances that were greatly aggravating the lines of international communication. This cooperation was taking place outside the bounds of institutional culture, but it has nevertheless proved to be effective in opening new platforms for production and exchange, producing a new generation of authors and generating growing interest by both institutions and audience. Zograf, Wostok, Saa Mihajlovi, Danijel Savovi, Milan Pavlovi Stocca, Damir Rijowitch and Damir mit, Aleksandar opai, Radovan Popovi, Maja veselinovi, Nikola vitkovi, lazar Bodroa, Nikola kora, vuk Palibrk and a series of other authors who have been included in this dynamic development with their creative, educational or organizational activities, enabled us to perceive their work in continuity of an alternative scene tradition and find ways in the new context to develop the discussion about what is an alternative in both comics and culture. The Invisible Comics collection will also display and preserve digitalized independent/ samizdat comics print and fanzine comics production that has not previously been systematically

collected and preserved in institutions (including magazines the manner of production and distribution of which makes them equivalent to fanzines, such as Striper, Mutanat, Tit bit and others; self-issued graphic magazines in fanzine form published under labels such as Momci, Phantom works, Morcina, Feathered Friends; comic fanzines by authors and collectives directly stemming from punk fanzine culture, such as Krpelj, Debilana, Titov zabavnik or Zadrugar; products of workshops and collective work such as Kuhinja, ovek iz bunara and so on; and experimental forms which are the result of the process of osmosis in the new media, which can be found at the Studiostrip platform, e.g. Gorski vijenac, Bolji ivot, Bizar, Tvrdi strip, Hororretard, Intimna Maina etc). The collection will provide an insight into various materials both from the point of view of media archeology, implying the concept of fanzine as a vernacular2 print cultural production, and from the point of view of the history of comics in Serbia and the region, in order to affirm more intensive institutional concern for this continual and vital production. The times have passed when strip fanzines were bringing regular information about local, regional, European, global or wider scene belonging to alternative, underground, authorial, honest, classical and more comics, comic strips, cartoons, graphic novels, adult picture books, about the past, far away past, pre-history of comics, and about current trends, trends that you have just missed or that are about to happen, that are drawing so close that you are already late in casting your glance on them, that which you can catch up with if you hurry, that you can still catch up, that can be followed at leisure or that will happen so far away into
2 vernacular production is the one that has not been created within the bounds institutional culture; the appearance of video portals and merging of various media have exerted a strong pressure from the new media to view vernacular creativity as a part of the cultural system rather than as an antropological-research resource. See more in Sherman, Tom, vernacular video in: Videography of the Region, Belgrade: DkSG, 2009. www.medarh.org/videografijaregiona (alternatively, Tom Sherman: vernacular video, Chto delat, special issue Make Films Politically, www.chtodelat.org ).

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

the future that you will need to be reminded about them at least once or twice, that will take hold so far away into the future that it is not certain at all that you will come to see them, that you will be telling about to your children and grandchildren, children of your children and children of their children, fanzines for the young and the old, children and elderly, women and children, girls and boys, wives and husbands, female and male pupils, former, present and future pupils and students of fine arts, from art schools, applied visual arts, pupils pedestrians, natural and social scientists and their followers, painters, writers, interdisciplinary attendants of multidisciplinary arts, playwrights, script writers, collectors whose collections are incomplete without this hard, hardly tangible, concrete and concretely hard and firm, but noble and gentle like spring bud, oh, fanzine stripped of information, only the fruit of love between image and word, between invisible, infinite space of the universe which exists between comic strips. The small print run of this or that fanzine gives us the right to repeat the same empty words till eternity, the same images in two, three different comics, in five or six fanzines, for ten or dozen people, for our audience.

The context within which we hereby perceive independent comics production underlines the question of representative quality of authorial comics for the culture from which it stems. The levels of visibility of this peculiar production enable us to approximately define it as invisible comics. With its impressive development and emancipation from the existing codes of classical, sequential narrative, and its graphic and drawing standards, it has ensured increasingly intense involvement in current

At the first glance, everything looked exactly the same, the same books, the same magazines, the same people involved, everything in its place... I approached the stand with comics. Piles of freakish, superheroes comics, bodybuilders dressed in boys tights, bodybuilders in tights with occult symbols on their chests, for adults, cheap photoshop tricks, low kicks, sad humorous comics, the southern comfort, failed writers, untalented
3 For example: journal Re, Naa borba daily 4 Primarily, Aleksandar Zograf and Danilo Miloev Wostok. 5 Studiostrip www.kosmoplovci.net/studiostrip, comics news www.stripvesti.com 6 one of the most conspicuous examples of such exchange has been documented in the text by the comics author Chris lanier in the Comics Journal no. 251 GRRR! A Travelogue of Sorts A Tour on Serbian Cartooning scene about his view of the comics scene in Serbia after the GRRR! Festival in Panevo in 2003, in which he states that this scene is the central point of alternative comics in eastern europe.

The phenomenon of alternative authorial comics scene has been perceived in Serbia as a part of 1990s alternative culture, which has inherited its production and event forms from the previous decade, but it was the originality of Yugoslav cultural history that has enabled continuities that stem from the concept of the culture of the enthusiasm. The Socialist Yugoslavia has been making efforts to democratize its culture by supporting amateurism; culture produced from enthusiasm and has provided the institutional framework for

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

trends on the international scene, has found channels of international communication and has been recognized and found, presented and glorified across the border, although in official culture, in public events and media public space in Serbia in the 1990s it almost does not exist. With few exceptions in dailies and literary magazines3, the authorial alternative independent comics remain invisible for those outside its insider audiencecommunity, within Serbian borders. This production, at the same time, is one of the most visible and present art practices from Serbia outside its borders. Paradoxically, in the 1990s this representative role is partly enabled by the network of interchange and cooperation between comics scenes in the ex Yugoslav region through fanzine distributional and net strategies, as well as through acquired reputation and popularity of certain authors4, who managed to attract inquisitive glances to the entire scene. The field of contemporary art was the first to show itself to be open and accessible for involvement with the alternative comics scene. After 2000, the new swing was produced by more intensive communication and increased mobility, articulation of Internet initiatives and portals5, and easier organization of international events.6

plagiarizers, unrealized patriots, too young for the war behind them, thus too weak for the new, patriarchate, barons and warlords, best friends, destroyed charm of two-pence comics, local adventure comics that look as if they were done by Chinese hired drawers cheaply and mass-produced commensurate to their quality, and equally badly written by the same man. The village comics shows, the megalomania of emancipated hooligans, poor attempts at glamourisation, unsuccessful attempts of existence as such, the sorrow and bitterness, products by authors whose works looked like forced deeds, like something done for the sake of revenge, repulsive faces, vulgarities, kid-like chauvinism, rejects of civilization, here to remind us that even in deserted, hidden areas, like the comics form nasty dwarfs exist, eternal freaks, half humanoids, failed experiments of mother nature, bastards of genetic engineering and stepmother nature, white monkeys and stupid white men, hesitant fanatics, boring, overly aggressive, conceited, eternal autobiographers obsessed with a false picture they made about themselves with the help, again, of the photoshop, the gallery of thugs not eligible even for jail. What are they doing in comics? We hoped at least there they wont be looking for us.

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artistic creativity in leisure time7. The strengthening of this mode of vertical democratization of culture in the mid 20th century generated extremely important frameworks for the development of experimental film practices in the amateur film movement. The amateurism, in the sense of practice performed not by professionals, but by adorers and fans of art, encompassed wide range of activities, but in the meaning of practice free from academic or official regulations, the field which is open for pushing the borders and for experiments, was realized as an idea precisely in the sort of culture that stood up against the given cultural system of a country that was taking itself less and less seriously: namely, in the alternative culture of the 1980s. Just like rebellious youth and students press from the 1960s, the culture of fanzines that followed and developed along music trends (punk and other movements), was multiplied and distributed within the frames of unofficial cultural production, but with huge influence on creating a youth culture model. one of the results is the comic strip fanzine, a form that enabled furious development of an entire generation of comics authors in Serbia in the 1980s and intensive interaction of the local with the international scene. The actualization of the term of vernacular production in contemporary conditions of digital capillarization of cultural production has namely enabled the consideration of the specific tradition of independent, alternative, and authorial comics production, the development of which, inspired precisely by the practice of selfgenerated editorial activity, individual expression and group work, illustrates continuation of the culture of enthusiasm from proclaimed state cultural policy to support amateurism to alternative culture practice in which enthusiasm represents a powerful engine of development of the independent scene.

The space is contaminated, even this last space of autonomous territory, the corridor, comics. Theres nowhere left to go. The Christ disciples, his inquirers, lifetime religious rulers, popes of comics, cardinals of theory, editors of morality, in short actors of the most grotesque story about the comics moved from the comics themselves to everything that surrounded it. So let`s salute them! Politicians rockers, nerds, epic phantasmagorics, lords of the ring, cheap mystics, mass-produced plagiarizations, torn pages of recent releases. The recent, and the most recent, still uninvented weapons, naked women with huge and various-sized boobs out of all proportion, two left hands leaping from the head, silent monologues, ideas and roles, cowboys and so on, unbelievable, cowboys against Indians, white men civilizes savages once again. The old air-brush school, unbelievably awful colors even without photoshop interventions. The mainstream that nobody reads, communicative comics understood only by themselves, among all that pile of thrash, contagious, unsuitable even for my deformed and perverted sight and sense of hearing, a black-and-white cover. Suitable combination, I thought, just like this, without the red, too easy and clichd combination. Dark, heavy and tense, though invisible. Rabbit on the cover, a human, primitive drawings, all that reminded me of cave drawings. Finally, a good fanzine8. The point in time of media archaeology from which we observe the history of comics production as a medium is the time of the Internet era, which partly makes impossible the emulation of influence and importance of the print comics medium at the time of print as the dominant medium, given that alternative culture at the time had implied social networking, informing and unity in getting together at events of this form of culture. The same strategies of production
8 Refers to komikaze fanzine.

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7 Describing the work on the project enthusiasm, Neil Cummings noticed on the example of film clubs in Poland the significance of these fields for art production precisely as places of enthusiasm, and contrasted current absorption of this necessity in the process of work and production, in parallel with the process of lack of or control over free time http:// www.chanceprojects.com/node/115 .

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and distribution have emerged due to the influence of different fields of alternative culture, music, film, video, literature, and it was logical that the comics scene should develop in flux, in osmosis, and finally, symbiosis with the kindred scenes of the 1990s9. With the breakup of Yugoslavia, the wars, the economic and cultural sanctions and isolation, the alternative culture has increasingly defined itself in the framework of a culture dominated by the nationalistic model, in autistic and closed media system, and has therefore developed parallel structures of production and dissemination, open, but with a limited range. The alternative comics scene managed to create its audience and new generation of authors through initiatives of individual enthusiasm, supported, strengthened, and developed through forms of joint event forms of alternative culture. During the 1990s, this comics scene developed performance aspects of its activities, through public workshops, exhibitions with musical, film and video content, promotions of magazines. An important cohesive event of the comics scene was certainly a comics festival (rarely merely a fair), that has developed out of the tradition of record stock exchanges, the key place for the exchange of information, nourishing an audience and a practice of collection of the 1980s alternative culture. The concept of unofficial economy of alternative culture is most clearly visible in the fanzine culture, D.I.Y. (DoItYourself) activity that has had the strongest uprising in Yugoslavia in the 1980s as an attribute of punk the music and social movement, which has emancipated the comics production from the mayhem of official editing in the 1990s and enabled to the comics fanzine as a medium to open a new public space for new authors and audience. In the centralized culture, this medium has enabled authors from different cities to fully contribute to the development of the entire scene, and in tandem with festival and rarities (magazines) production, has made
9 The example is Zadruga created through cooperation of the Striper initiative with the low-Fi video movement, the computer demo scene represented by the group Corrosion, a group of authors our Pictures an association which during 1999 and 2000 toured the towns of Serbia to help sustain the continuity of the scene even after institutional venues and previous infrastructure for events of such fields of alternative culture have been destroyed.

comics one of the most widespread media of alternative culture in Serbia in the 1990s. Those rare comics magazines that featured alternative comics or which implied higher production and editorial policy standards have also been achieving their visibility in the context and framework of an alternative culture, underground, and consequently in view of their range and role in the development of the entire scene, can in most cases be considered as fanzines. Disguised in the veil of information, they were speeding and going forward, unscrupulous to the wider audience. There was no place anymore for self-doubt or doubt in ones followers. Now everybody could read what the story was about... The catholic in me was burning in hell. The orthodox giggled mysteriously. The communist in me was getting red. The man was silent. The reader was reading the images that the viewer watched. The ink was dropping like blood from the tip of the knife that was just used as a weapon for a murder. Another murder. The last, like the previous one, and all previous ones, like all previous robberies and lies that we have more and more easily and unashamedly been firing from our filthy mouth with lurched lips, cramped from crime callousness, in sin. Her eyes were green, green like her blond hair. In that moment the wind blew a bit harder, just a bit harder. Somewhere in southeast/ southnostalgic /Asia, the typhoon was gathering people from the face of the earth, and was blowing them towards the sky. They never came back. That`s Asia. I put the book in the plastic bag with my monogram on it. She was just giggling. I hurried back home, covered with sweat, feverish, half- mad. I ran through the corn fields that once upon the time used to dominate my home landscape. Now its full of concrete blocks, iron concrete chunks on the top of my building. There are only skyscrapers there now, no more people such as us. Or women like you. I took off all of my clothes, poured the whole glass of scotch over crushed ice. Purple label, 60 years old. I took it from the grave of my ancestors, pulled the record from the sleeve,

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Stravinski, pictures from pagan Russia. The best performance. I lighted up Hindu incest ropes and lit up the cigarette with the same taste, purpose, and effect. I sat in my favorite armchair, the only piece of furniture I had, my favorite part of this damned planet. The incense sticks started to spread their smell. It`s time. I moistened my hands with the special cream for leafing through fanzines, which I had previously scrubbed thoroughly with blueberry flavored soap. The most luxury cream I owned. I usually do that when I read a borrowed book. This time, the fanzine was mine. And will remain being mine. On conspicuously offensive black and white cover two figures.

through a network of international magazines and festivals. velocity and unboundedness of Internet distribution as the key factor for international visibility of this production has been amply served its purpose in the case of Aleksandar Zograf11, whose work has been printed and distributed worldwide at the time when Yugoslavia was undergoing the worst period of international isolation, wars and crises.12 We have been reading two kinds of comics: the heritage of comic strips from the 1980s, the print runs from those times were large and copies could still be found for years afterwards, and simultaneously domestic endeavors to make publications with foreign alternative comics, Crumb, Shelton and other piracy editions of our friend Rigonat as well as local alternative comics. Fanzines. Zograf was the only connection with the West, symbolizing the idea that people can publish something there. The problem is that there is no continual attempting to do it. Isolation is also the quality of the Serbian scene. There was a lot of communication within the scene. Like Russian alternative literature of the 1920s and 1930s, it was an utterly unfavorable, closed society. The theory of art has taught us how avant-garde
selection and text (D. Macan) which somewhat exotizes it, reminiscent of similar processes in mediation of contemporary art production between the Balkans and europe. 11 Zografs fanzines Kreten and Iznad are probably the first or among the first comics fanzines in Yugoslavia and his activity was intensive and well-known internationally even before the 1990s. 12 Aleksandar Zograf has conducted a peculiar diary which was published in series throughout the world and thus enabled absurd images from Serbia under sanctions (the one which was translated the most was life under Sanctions) or horrible images of war and media contamination of life to appear in graphic narration. Their imagery, logics and context build up preciselz on the corpus of global alternative comics with which Zografs generation was growing up. It is a small wander that the international scene of alternative comics had no problems understanding and recognizing his work, it has swiftly reacted with the support, intensive communication and inclusion of his work in cutting-edge events, also including the GRRR! Festival and other events from the famous town of Panevo. To the importance of this communication testifies the fact that this attention and the possibility of becoming acquainted with the global production has motivated an entire generation to preserve Panevo on the map of the european alternative comics.

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

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The magazine production which has enabled production and public context for alternative comics builds upon rich and interesting tradition of presence of comics in mass media, print media, popular and youth culture in Yugoslavia. The magazines such as Patagonija from vrac or lavirint from aak, as well as a handful of other print media, have enabled alternative comics to become included in the general overview of all current comics production outside the usual fanzine editions. The Striper magazine, the production and distribution strategy of which testifies that it has exceeded the fanzine level, has established the most direct magazine medium for new alternative comics in Serbia in the 1990s, as well as a channel for its international promotion, primarily through cooperation with the Stripburger magazine10, and subsequently
10 The special issue of Stripburger: Stripburek, dedicated to comics from the Balkans, this growing production was presented to the european audience in 2002 with an interesting

movements have been emerging amid crises and we were trying to make use of that isolation as much as possible and I think it is good that we have had few contacts with the outside thus we have been fantasizing and hallucinating a lot on the inside. Two things have emerged as an outcome of such a situation: a lot of originality, indigenousness and strangeness, and narrow transmission of all that to the outside world, including domestic publications, little is publicized, little is known. We have been more accustomed to supporting one another, we have even been accused of being a sect, people helping each other, sleeping over at one another... like Jews, somebody said, jealous because mainstream is not like that. There was a lot of unconscious, un-thought-of, carried by emotions. We were threatened both by the regime, but also by the West, under pressure from two sides, somewhere in between, trying to survive.13 The establishment of the Studiostrip Portal marks establishment of a new form of independent electronic publishing, which has stemmed from the overall activity of the kosmoplovci collective and exponentially accelerated both production and distribution, continuing the activity of Striper magazine in the new circumstances. The Grafika zavera magazine, editions of SkC (Student Cultural Centre) Belgrade and SkC (Student Cultural Center) Novi Sad provided in the 2000s occasional or regular insights into topical productions. The journal for literature and culture Re was among the first in the 1990s to open a space for affirmation of alternative authorial comics and has enabled permeation of new literary production in Serbia with experiments which alternative comics were conducting in narrative and visual modes. It continued to occasionally include comics in its editions during the 2000s, in the way that has made the potential of new comics visible in high level print production. The cooperation of journal editor Dejan Ili with alternative comics scene has reached its peak in an edition which represents joint production of publishing house Fabrika knjiga and Studiostrip,
13 Radovan Popovi quotes Wostok.

and in which authors are given a rare opportunity to publish comic books (Aleksandar opai, lazar Bodroa, Radovan Popovi and others), whereby the scene is presented in its full power as capable of mastering this demanding forms of comics. one of the best and most successful examples of a publishing experiment on the crossroads between literature and comics is certainly Symposion magazine from Subotica: by connecting writers and comics authors into a process of creating a common graphic-literary work, it has produced a very successful symbiosis and rich issues which restore the idea of comics as a field for narrative experimenting in a grand manner. A good example of making use of the potential of media externalizing and simultaneously of one of the most basic tenets of alternative nature of new comics, namely its social engagement and criticism, is certainly literary supplement Beton, which has recognized this important element of alternative comics production and has been including it in this biweekly paper supplement last couple of years. However, the dominant alternative comics medium the fanzine has continued to blossom in previous years and to experiment with new interfaces digital distribution has provided independent publishing with an opportunity to overcome limitations of print run and transport and comic fanzines are produced and distributed in both print forms and on comic fairs and in electronic forms on Internet portals and among digital communities. The possibility of limitless digital reproduction has somewhat problematized collectors rituals and live exchanges such as fairs and alternative culture stock markets, the very roots of original comics communities from the 1980s and 1990s, which has made numerous alternative comics focus on live meetings and live communication as a supplement to their electronic activities. A kind of permanent spot for fanzine and comics distribution is Belgrade bookstore Beopolis, which is continually concerned with diffusion of information and dissemination of editions, permanent exposition of alternative production and its live contact with the audience. In the backwaters of fanzines there were more authors, groups and sub-groups and

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A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

their projects than members and there was fantastic desire to create comics, to experiment not only with content and form, but also with psychological aspects of the work on fanzines, magazines, groups, unfortunately, often to the detriment of mental and physical health of members themselves who, during their work, on several occasions, have willingly or unwillingly, consciously, unconsciously or subconsciously encountered phenomena such as clinical death, mass hallucinations, local, indigenous rituals called forth by various methods, both ancient witchcrafts, modern technology and cheap chemistry, but preferably by pure and uncorrupted limitless freedom, often spiced up with frameworks, very strict and sometimes exhausting limitations within and during the work, owing to the realization of the inspiration inherent in limitations themselves. The Tarot comics, future telling, interpretation of the past through comics, entry, residence and occasional permanent habitation on the other side of the comic strip, the method that has perhaps more than any other shaped and defined the work of fanzine and other comic studios as well as limitless exploration of the space between the strips themselves even in the case of not so rare Siamese strips, the physically and conceptually inseparable moments of comic narration flow. Comics festivals have provided an opportunity for the scene to be created and for exchanges to take place. In addition, they have facilitated production through various workshops and editions. one of the best examples is the GRRR!14 Festival in Panevo, founded upon the
14 The GRRR! International Authorial Comics Festival was held for the first time in 2002 in the cultural center Panevo. It has introduced the concept of a festival-city, spreading programs and exhibitions throughout cultural institutions venues, but also pastry shops, shop windows, marginal city venues, city radio etc.... Numerous authors from the entire world, collectives and artists from the region of former Yugoslavia, audience from towns of Serbia, children from the Panevo surroundings, comics pioneers, historians, comics theoreticians, musicians, writers they have all been a part of an interesting experiment during this festival thanks to the openness of Panevo cultural institutions (Cultural Center Panevo, Youth Hall). The comics were an essential component of the local cultural policy adopted as such alre-

initiative of and organized by Saa Rakezi alias Aleksandar Zograf, the author who launched the local scene in the 1990s and who, by organizing this festival in the 2000s, brought together a large number of authors, collectives, publishers and initiatives from Serbia, the region and around the world. The workshop kuhinja and other activities have affirmed and instigated the local scene to make joint appearances (Stevan Marku, Zontag, Mr. Spiral & lulu, leta, vuk Palibrk, Napred u prolost group and others). The GRRR! continues to exist through events and discussion programs within elektrika Gallery in Panevo, in lively cooperation with Panevo initiatives klopka za pionira15 and Ceger Fanzine, numerous local and regional groups and Turbo Comix organization, and is probably the most active center of continual public presentation, promotion and exposition of alternative comics in Serbia today. one of the key events in Belgrade the XeR Festival which was organized in 1998 by Striper magazine and Radovan Popovi, established a model of flexible, interventory festival of the comics and all kindred activities and (re)connected an initial network of cooperation in the region of former Yugoslavia16. The promotions of Striper magazine, conception and distribution of which has its origins in fanzine tradition, have enabled the scene in Belgrade to be established as a dynamic field of new expression and experiment, clearing the way for new authors
ady in 1992 when the First Comics Salon was organized in Panevo. The GRRR! has also distinguished itself from other such event with an additional trait its continual work on development and promotion of historiography of comics in Serbia, its staging of special historiographical exhibitions and issuing of publications in cooperation with comics historian Zdravko Zupan. 15 http://www.klopkazapionira.net/bio.php 16 The XeR Files, the festival catalogue, brings articles reporting from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Macedonia, Serbia, as well as products of workshops and documents from exhibitions that have been held at the festival. However, the importance of the boost and the importance of the live meeting which the XeR has brought is hard to overestimate as well as all its imaginativeness with which it has overcome all objective hurdles in regional communication. Despite the war propaganda, blockade, disfunctioning of postal and traffic relations, contacts have not been completely cut off. Probably the most intensive contacts have been maintained by people engaged in alternative culture. The desire is to rebuild and strengthen existing bridges... katarina ivanovi and Radovan Popovi, XeR Files, Radio B92, 1999.

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A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

such as Danijel Savovi, Saa Mihajlovi, Milan Pavlovi Mr. Stocca, Nikola vitkovi and Momci group, Neda Doki, Ivan Grubanov and others. Subsequently this generation was followed by another, including authors such as Maja veselinovi, lazar Bodroa, Seljak, Burek and many other younger authors. The Cyber-Rex17 Platform has provided digital infrastructure for development of new interfaces and comics formats and inspired some long-term projects and cooperation between the demo scene and the comics. The scene has certainly been given a boost with its participation in the low-Fi video movement18, which has provided, through the events it has been organizing, cohesion of all active alternative culture currents and productions and exertion of mutual influence, opening an unsuspectingly wide field of influence on the wider audience for comics and for development of a new generation of authors. The comics scene in Subotica, with its rich tradition of fanzines (Entropija) and alternative culture, in the town which hosted Yugo17 Cyber-Rex is a platform established in the Cultural Center Rex in Belgrade, with an aim to affirm digital field of cultural production and broach the possibility of education in the fields of digital communications, cultural production and exchange. Due to this project, technical and institutional infrastructure for digital activities has been established and in 1999 alternative culture transformed its production and dissemination and has speedily increased its power of absorption of new ideas and communities such as the computer demo scene. 18 low-Fi video was established in 1997 as an independent organization (Milo kukuri, Igor Basorovi, Aleksandar Guba) the aim of which was to produce programs that would project video and film works collected by open call, promoting the idea of video as an accessible technology for democratization of art creativity and promotion and rejuvenation of tenets of Yugoslav film amateurism. low-Fi video has swiftly evolved into a movement gathering together hundreds of authors and giving a boost and cohesive event-organizing for alternative culture, established international cooperation and became included in the microcinema movement. Specific collage programs, made up of works of film amateurs, video activists, beginners and affirmed artists, have created a context for the new scene that reacted to the autistic media environment by establishing a parallel system of critical reading of culture and social reality. After hundreds of programs, numerous fairs and festivals, international guest appearances and prizes (from the Sundance Festival in the uSA to the kansk Festival in Siberia), social engagement in decentralizing the culture in Serbia, experimental Tv program on B92 Television, reinforcing of alternative culture, work on introducing international production, low-Fi video decided in 2003 to freeze its activity. The archive of this movement is being digitalized and gathered in the hope that they will resuscitate the microcinema principles in the new circumstances.

slav Cheap Film Festival,19 has displayed the fruitfulness of the crossover between currents and activity fields probably best illustrated by the work of the Damir Rijovich& Damir Smith tandem, whose parallel and intertwined opuses within both low-Fi video movement and the comics scene are probably the best example, but also a number of other comics authors coming from Subotica (Damir Pavi Septik, Miroslav lazendi, leo fon Punkerstein etc). Danilo Miloev Wostok, from early fanzine actions of the 1980s to activities within Patagonija magazine, has managed to initiate workshop and exhibition events on the local scene of his hometown of vrac20 (Grabowski, Zlikovac, lola and others). With his extraordinarily varied work, he has been recognized at the international scene already in the early 1990s, and has managed to draw attention of that scene to the ongoing production in the entire region. Hundreds of numbers of Krpelj fanzine probably provide the best example of efficiency of this production and its influence,21 despite the fact that many have been distributed in merely several copies. It was this author who was the first to explore and test the possibilities of new interfaces for fanzine activism and alternative comics, the
19 Yugoslav Cheap Film Festival (Jugoslovenski festival jeftinog filma -JFJF) has been taking place from 1998 to 2002 in Subotica and was organized by the low-Fi video movement and klJuN from Subotica, led by Stipan Milodanovi. It consisted of domestic competition program, numerous review video and film programs as well as obligatory musical and accompanying programs of comics workshops and exhibitions. This interdisciplinary character has enabled the authors from various fields of alternative culture production to meet and articulate their ideas in workshops (authors of such varied profiles include Daniel kova, Milo Tomi, etc) 20 Since the first exhibition of comics in vrac in 1992, the comics scene has swiftly developed and been recognized locally in only a couple of years: Wostok and Grabowski were awarded the october Prize in vrac in 1996. The same year, the first Comics Meetings were held in vrac. Wostok gathered an odd group around the Krpelj production, who have produced an impressive number of fanzines and developed activities nearing an audio-visual performance, continuing to (re)animate the audience making use of social networks. 21 Particularly interesting is the case of the comics Illegal Migrants published in one of the issues of Krpelj, which showed that provocativeness of alternative comics has mostly been recognized precisely as a dangerous competitor to the frustrated mainstream scene, but is also capable of drawing the most diverse audience. one of the metacomics that has been created as a reaction to such attacks on alternative comics used one such text for its motto and name, The Bunch of Drugged Maniacs Terrorizes our Comics Scene.

18

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

so-called facebook librarianship, thereby establishing new lines of communication between older and topical production and drawing unexpectedly large audience. The fanzine activity in Zrenjanin, kragujevac and Novi Sad also generated a number of authors who have swiftly become included in alternative comics map22. The work of the Kosmoplovci group since their inception in 2001 has indicated vast and varied possibilities for symbiosis among the computer demo scene, music, video and comics production within the framework of an Internet platform23, for intensive cooperation with the international scene and regional authors and for organizing joint events, the example of which is NoMAD electronic Art Festival. Among the authors who have shifted understanding of comics as a two-dimensional space to its understanding as a new media experiment are those from computer demo scene such as Dominator and Ilke, as well as comic strip drawers such as Aleksandar opai and lazar Bodroa. With his work on visualization and reading of the epic form (Gorski vijenac), Bodroa has developed the initial comics form from a visual art study to a complex film provocation. one of the most important activities of Studiostrip section, the work of which can fully be seen on one of the podcasts of the Kosmoplovci platform, is regional cooperation, especially with the group Komikaze from Zagreb, which encompasses numerous tours, workshops and exhibitions. This activity has been intensified in the last couple of years with the appearance of Turbo Comix organization, which in Belgrade in 2009 launched an event directly focused on alternative comics - the New Age Festival, which continues and intensifies regional and international cooperation of the scene that now faces new demands and challenges, labeling itself the non-aligned comics.24 one of the numerous reasons for this designation is an allusion to increasingly obvious internationalization of alternative comics in Serbia, starting from regional cohesion to increasing number of authors and theoreticians
22 The example for such activity is Dejan uzelac from Zrenjanin. 23 www.kosmoplovci.net 24 www.novodobafestival.net

from other countries who are becoming its actors and historians.25 The joint work on a comic, frequently with ill-defined or no rules at all, extreme disrespect, on the verge of true respect, the defining feature of this work, with participation of various groups, individuals, friends, often also enemies, of course not from the point of view of the very scene of fanzine approach to comics. Let us remember psychological-propaganda experiments such as Southern Solace, Rascal Baby, A Bunch of Drugged Maniacs Terrorizing our Comics Scene, Serbian Orthodox Church i.e. its exclusively holy wing and so on, its futile and sometimes not so harmless to discover all manipulations used by the discrete barrier of distance of fanzine approach for all those years since it had been established, which will probably, if the future history does not decide otherwise, not be revealed, regardless of objective attractiveness of experiments from which the scene has successfully stayed away, using its time and energy, material and human resources, for direct work on comics themselves and graphic telling in general, often graphic non-telling, i.e. conversely, exclusively graphical narration, often without making use of any text, even in titles of comics, which is an important project of fanzine production, establishment of total communication, of course in potential form, never, never in literal and actual form.

25 After comics exhibitions and workshops she organized in cooperation with the French Cultural Center in Belgrade and the elektrika Gallery in Panevo, Johanna Marcade established in Belgrade, together with Bruno Toli, the Turbo Comix organization. one of the first editions of this production was the book issued in 2009 Strips/Strips Contemporary Comics in Croatia and Serbia. These two scenes, by now intricately connected, are also associated with lisa Mangum, comics historian and katie Wozniacki, the author. The New Age Festival was created in close cooperation among Turbo Comix (organizers), Studiostrip and Metaklinika with komikaze group from Zagreb as well as initiatives from Belgrade, Panevo and Subotica, namely klopka za pionira, Studiostrip, Metaklinika, Ceger Fanzine and the young generation of activists such as Bojana Petkovi, vladimir Palibrk and others....

19

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

Since the 1980s and early 1990s direct and unmediated communication between comics and visual art institutions is established in the work of artists such as Sran ile Markovi, Saa Markovi Mikrob, uro uri, Stevan Marku and others. The field of contemporary art in the 1990s showed an interest and potential to include alternative comics in its dynamics. The example of recognition of importance of alternative comics is exhibition The end of an episode held at the SuluJ Gallery in 1999, which, in cooperation with comics scene protagonists was curated by Dejan Sretenovi and produced by the Center for Contemporary Art. The exhibition gave an overview of ample production and gave new boost to the youngest generation of authors, who have grown up as artists through workshop work. This was also an opportunity to summarize and reexamine the qualities which the scene perceives as its specificities26. Inclusion of comics by Aleksandar Zograf and Stevan Marku in major events and exhibitions such as october Salon 2000, participation of kosmoplovci group at the october Salon 2003, inclusion of Zografs work in the exhibition on Normality Contemporary Art in Serbia 1991-2001 by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade in 2005, has shown that contemporary art presentational field has the greatest potential to include alternative/authorial/independent comics in official institutional culture. This was subsequently confirmed on numerous occasions27.
26 This was articulated by Radovan Popovi in the text of the catalogue: elusive and unbelievable variety of visual identity of new comics; devastating subversion to the point of terrorism; provocation to the point of reexamination of ones own as well as general aesthetical and ethical norms; authenticity and honesty stripped to the point of confession; communication approaching intimacy; immediacy even at the expense of banality; originality and autochthony on the verge of autism; orthodoxy to the point of fundamentalism; sermon-like power of the message and a defensive resolve to search for new expression even at the risk of being led astray into hermetic obscurity, indicate that the new comics in Yugoslavia is treading its own, unexplored and impenetrable way. It has to find it all by itself. And it will be entirely new. Radovan Popovi: The End of the Episode Romanticized Monograph of New Yugoslav Comics, exhibition catalogue The End of the Episode, Center for Contemporary Art, Belgrade, 1999. 27 one of the most important venues for gallery display of this scene was the independent Remont Gallery in Belgrade, which has enabled continual exhibition, discussion and presentation of print production activities throughout the 2000s. The Student Cultural Center with its workshops and

Now when literally every main or marginal author of parallel or wrong orientation seeks to simplify, minimize and establish once and for all the shape his style, in the necessary act of submission to contemporary market laws, in Europe, USA or Japan, the new scene of authors influenced precisely by 1990s or later fanzines, unwittingly or wittingly, sometimes randomly, but mostly almost exclusively intuitively, by the way, also fantastically intensively, fruitfully, are continuing, on the one hand, just like before, to make complicated works, to continue what has objectively already been finished, but on the other, are staying true to experimenting with styles that had been an unwritten agreement from the very start, with styles that have been derived from authors, groups, even movements that have been appearing throughout the short but killingly rich history of comics, bad examples from the recent past and almost completely perfect examples especially from the early beginning, the work admired and even uncritically adored by Gertrude Stein, Jack Kerouac, Pablo Picasso, or works of authors whose comics would provoke a sad smile on
the Comics Salon has created a new space for widening the comics audience and for diversification of streams and levels of comics production. The Cultural Center Panevo was among the first in the early 1990s to enable gallery exhibition of comics. Such exhibitions have reached their peak at the international GRRR! Festival that has supported the extraordinary enthusiasm of the newly emerging local scene. Following initial presentations of alternative comics in programs of the Student City Culture Center, the kosmoplovci group has continued to cooperate with the Academic Film Center in the 2005-2008 period (which Aleksandra Sekuli, the author of this text, is proud to have established and conducted) by connecting the comics contextually and performatively with the alternative film and video scene, the Student City Culture Hall opened the possibilities, through the program edited by Maida Gruden since 2006, for common actions of alternative comics, music and video. The Student Cultural Center presented an exhibition Hard Comics organized by Studiostrip in 2006 within the visual Program by Stevan vukovi, which summarized the directions explored by the Studiostrip section as well as other groups, complementing their electronic editions. The Center for Cultural Decontamination curator vladimir Tupanjac organized in 2008 a one-day alternative comics program, merging workshops, exhibitions, discussions and additionally the presentation of the computer demo scene and has subsequently developed this program line by cooperating with the Metaklinika group and the New Age Festival in 2010.

20

the lips of actors, authors, activists, groups, platforms, pupilless schools, pencilless pupils, a 5-dinar pencil. After 2000, comics workshops have occasionally been recognized and supported through local cultural policies as an interesting way of communicating with youth. In some cultural centers regular programs of this kind have been established28. This form of open public happening acquired its shape already in the 1990s at festivals such as Yugoslav Cheap Film Festival (JFJF) and was subsequently developed by Serbian electrical Film Festival (SFeF)29, NoMAD and others. In the process of work on its own production, kosmoplovci collective promotes workshop work, both collective and team work, but also as a part of its activity in public events in which it takes part, thus resembling comics collectives (Syndicate Bill Mclurre) who have authored science fiction comics and been included in Yugoslav youth magazines. In addition to workshop activities enabling new generation and the youngest authors to meet the international scene, Turbo Comix group has launched an interesting form of performative distribution implying a tour of various towns in Serbia and the region, staging a series of events assembling large audience and many authors in the public process of producing screen prints, multiplying of various comics forms, workshops and exhibitions. one of the first and, as it turned out, rare examples of participation of alternative comics in programs of national institutions in Serbia was the exhibition organized in 2002 in the National library of Serbia by kosmoplovci group, entitled The Museum of the universe, which was accompanied by an edition The Travel to the universe, published by the National li28 The pioneering example is the activity of the Kuhinja workshop in Panevo (and villages in Panevo surroundings, especially Banatsko Novo Selo where the Alternative Cultural Club used to function), the workshops of vladimir vesovi in the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade and numerous workshops within local scenes in vrac, Subotica, Novi Sad etc. 29 SFeF The Serbian electrical Film Festival was held in Belgrade in 2002 organized by low-Fi video-Striper-kosmoplovci group and included parallel and interwined programs of computer demo-party, comics workshops and exhibition, concerts, literary performances and competitive film projections.

brary of Serbia. The exhibition has symbolically enabled this production to make a step into the dynamic of reformulating institutional culture in Serbia. The library as the central locus of cultural memory, with the digital collection of comics, has enabled externalization of the Invisible Comics in an open, ongoing process of creation and development of archival practice at the institutional level that will surely find also its performative shape. The old school, low school, even lower one, and then higher, again lower, north icic, south southeastern school, eastern, far and middle eastern, heavy school, corresponding, oral, written, school of life and death, special school, school in flames, self-supporting school for the self-taught, non-school, evening school, auto, astro, air, antischool, comprehensive school, preschool, postschool, subsequent school, beyond school and quasischool education. The way to school, entry and exit from school, infiltrating and expelling, construction and subversion. All-school. The favorite place in school has always been school library and exit leading to the street. Thus, something in between and not in the building itself. The street kung fu school, two-pence fanzines, exchange, subsequent realization concerning distance from reality, superfluous armor of bourgeois morality. Now, right now or whenever, it is never late to fly dangerously. Fanzines which await to be born. The future....

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

22

Insistence that openness for both new and initial and sophisticated forms of subversion of status quo and the given system based on educational-participatory-production programs is the essential quality that gives alternative comics its vitality and enables its constant

30 The history of the comics in Serbia usually begins with the first half of the 20th century and its huge impact by means of daily press until its peak in the production of specialized magazines, keeping track of the global production, youth media etc; this rich tradition, the presence of comics in public media field is certainly an important element of a Buildungsroman of the generation who has launched alternative comics. However, this production has not been included in this book and this exhibition, since they focus on the comics which has not yet had its systematic overview and treatment, namely the alternative comics of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

23

A. SekulI, R. PoPovI Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010

rejuvenation is precisely what makes this scene so flexible, unpredictable and an alternative. At the time of resuscitating samizdat and fanzine culture created by punk, the idea that ones own (even artistic) expression of rebelliousness is possible and accessible to everyone has remained the basis of subsequent history of what can be termed alternative comics. In the 1990s, this basis was also shared by the lowFi video movement: suspension of standards professional and conventional - in the desire to externalize potential for enthusiasm, to enable simultaneous and joint presence of both beginners and top-notch works in the creation of a new context and intervention in the social and cultural system as an example of unexpected united action. In the 1990s, these movements accomplished the impossible: they gathered extraordinary strength, stirred response and resuscitated alternative culture, previously exclusively reduced to the music scene. By demonstrating such an open structure, experiment and critical attitude, both movements have deserved their status of an alternative mostly owing to the new social circumstances and their position within the cultural system, rather than owing to their formal or stylistic prerogatives as they pertain to official art disciplines. Therefore it is difficult to set alternative comics in opposition to mainstream comics of the 1990s since the latter practically did not exist or to local and global comics traditions30 they were present as an object of appropriation and game, even ironic self-historization which alternative comics sometimes writes of itself. The communication which alternative comics have enabled throughout former Yugoslavia, within the international scene and among various fields of cultural production, is made possible precisely

due to this flexibility, this shying away from established and expected models, to transformations and experimenting. Criticism and subversion manifested by alternative comics and have been recognized by socially engaged literature, contemporary art, music and other scenes that have included it in their critical discourses. After 2000 subversiveness of alternative comics has been demonstrated largely with their capability to speedily react, distribute and merge with other forms of public activities, while its incontestable innovative quality and openness for exploring new possibilities and interfaces in integrated media systems hold huge potential for articulating a new alternative. Erasing the border between beautiful and ugly, fiction and fact, authenticity and minutely crafted plagiarism, pride and shame, tragedy and comedy, mostly through intensive substitution of arguments, twoway and sometimes multiple-way conversion of direct opposites, both aesthetical and theoretical, stylistic, frequently also generally established and moral, in the play of symbols exhausting to the point of masochism, play of image and words, color and whiteness, frequently also blackness of the paper, screen, wall or air, empty clouds above nameless faces of invisible actors of the sketched show. Each strip and image, word in a sentence, regretted or not, false or not, contains a trace of a manifesto that has truly never existed, but can potentially be created, or might have existed, and is very likely that this text could precisely be it, although in the general nature of things, in the very construction and the overall mood, the current ideological platform that will change repeatedly out of recognition until the next time, is almost probably impossible, even most probably another swindle of sphere of action of a certain number of people tied by a pencil, a paper and a cheap copy shop or even their own cheap printers, or onthe-job printer of one of us.

Invisible comics sketched on the basis of dreams, transcedental experiences, notes from the past and half-conscious thoughts.

26

WoSTok - Grapes for Aaron

27

WoSTok - Fifth scene

28

WoSTok - Fifth scene

29

WoSTok - Fifth scene

30

WoSTok - Fifth scene

31

WoSTok - Fifth scene

32

WoSTok - Fifth scene

33

WoSTok - Fifth scene

34

MoMCI - A rats eating it

35

MoMCI - A rats eating it

36

AlekSANDAR ZoGRAF - The well of prophecy

37

AlekSANDAR ZoGRAF - The well of prophecy

38

AlekSANDAR ZoGRAF, SloBoDAN TIMA - Metropolis (excerpt)

39

AlekSANDAR ZoGRAF, SloBoDAN TIMA - Metropolis (excerpt)

40

WoSTok - The burrow

41

DeJAN uZelAC

42

DeJAN uZelAC

43

DeJAN uZelAC

44

DeJAN uZelAC

45

DeJAN uZelAC

46

MIlAN PAvlovI MR. SToCCA - at gnjuta

47

MIlAN PAvlovI MR. SToCCA - at gnjuta

48

MIlAN PAvlovI MR. SToCCA - at gnjuta

49

WoSTok

50

MAJA veSelINovI - Gone mad with beauty

51

MAJA veSelINovI - Gone mad with beauty

52

MAJA veSelINovI - Gone mad with beauty

53

MAJA veSelINovI - Gone mad with beauty

54

ToMA PAN - Jova

55

ToMA PAN - Jova

56

ToMA PAN - Jova

57

ToMA PAN - Jova

58

ToMA PAN - New Age

59

DANIJel SAvovI

Invisible comics in the dialogue with tradition and social legacy

62

NIkolA koRA - eddie

63

NIkolA koRA

64

NIkolA vITkovI - The foundry of astro technology

65

LO THE DEVIL WITH SEVEN SCARLET CLOAKS, WITH TWO SWORDS AND WITH TWO CROWNS ON HIS HEAD, THE GREAT-GRANDCHILD OF THE TURK, WITH KORAN!

66

lAZAR BoDRoA - The Mountain Wreath

BEHIND HIM HORDES OF THAT ACCURSED LITTER, MARCH TO LAY WASTE TO THE WHOLE PLANET EARTH, JUST AS LOCUSTS DEVASTATE THE GREEN FIELDS.

NOW BYZANTIUM IS INDEED NOTHING BUT A DOWRY OF YOUTHFUL THEODORA; THE STAR OF DOOM STILL HOVERS OVER IT.

67

WHAT CAN I DO? WHO IS THERE TO HELP ME? THERE ARE FEW HANDS AND ALL TOO LITTLE STRENGTH. I'AM A LONE STRAW TOSSING IN THE WHIRLWIND, A SAD ORPHAN WITHOUT FRIEND OR KINFOLK. MY PEOPLE SLEEP A DEEP AND LIFELESS SLEEP; NO PARENT'S HAND TO WIPE AWAY MY TEARS.

68

lAZAR BoDRoA - The Mountain Wreath

UPON MURAT PALEOLOGOS CALLS TO BURY BOTH GREEKS AND SERBS TOGETHER.

69

lAZAR BoDRoA - The Mountain Wreath

ABOVE MY HEAD THE HEAVEN IS SHUT TIGHT; IT DOES NOT HEAR MY CRIES OR MY PRAYERS. THE WORLD HAS NOW BECOME A HELL FOR ME, PEOPLE HAVE TURNED INTO HELLISH SPIRITS.

O MY DARK DAY! O MY BLACK DESTINY! O MY WRETCHED SERBIAN NATION SNUFFED OUT! I HAVE OUTLIVED MANY OF YOUR TROUBLES, YET I MUST FIGHT AGAINST THE WORST OF ALL!
lAZAR BoDRoA - The Mountain Wreath

70

PLAGUE OF MANKIND, MAY GOD'S WRATH BE ON YOU! IS HALF A WORLD YOU'VE ALREADY POISONED WITH YOUR MEAN DEEDS NOT LARGE ENOUGH FOR YOU, THAT YOU HAD TO SPEW OUT ALL THE VENOM OF YOUR BLACK SOUL ON THIS HARD ROCK AS WELL?

71

lAZAR BoDRoA - The Mountain Wreath

74

MIleTA MIJATovI, JoHANNA MARCAD - The herd

75

MIleTA MIJATovI, JoHANNA MARCAD - The herd

Moving and less moving human destinies, broken hearts, lethargy, arragonce and envy.

78

NeBoJA CveTkovI - Graphisms

79

NeBoJA CveTkovI - Graphisms

80

NeBoJA CveTkovI - Graphisms

81

BeRNHARDA XIlko - In the meantime

82

IvAN GRuBANov

83

IvAN GRuBANov

84

IvAN GRuBANov

85

IvAN GRuBANov

86

NeDA DokI

87

NeDA DokI - evergreen

88

NeDA DokI - uncle Misho?

89

vlADIMIR vukovI SelJAk - oedipus complex

90

RADovAN PoPovI - examples

91

RADovAN PoPovI - examples

92

RADovAN PoPovI - examples

93

RADovAN PoPovI - examples

94

IvANA FIlIPovI - My Neighborhood

95

IvANA FIlIPovI - My Neighborhood

96

MIlo kRSMANovI kRle - lost youth

97

MIlAN PAvlovI MR. SToCCA - The sudden death of waiter laza Derikoa

98

MIRoSlAv lAZeNDI - Talk Show

99

GeZA CSAT, DAMIR RIJoWITCH oRIGINAlov - little emma

Invisible comics with science fiction themes, intimate micro-universes, apocalyptic graphisms and an apocalypse of the genre.

102

elJko loNAR

103

elJko loNAR

104

elJko loNAR

105

elJko loNAR

106

NIkolA vITkovI - Glow in the grass

107

NIkolA vITkovI - Glow in the grass II

108

NIkolA vITkovI - Glow in the grass II

109

NIkolA vITkovI - Glow in the grass II

110

NIkolA vITkovI - Gaze

111

NIkolA vITkovI - Gaze

112

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

113

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

114

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

115

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

116

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

117

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

118

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

119

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

120

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

121

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

122

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

123

DANIJel SAvovI - 1922 (excerpt)

124

AlekSANDAR oPAI - The secret of spiders blood

125

AlekSANDAR oPAI - The secret of spiders blood

126

AlekSANDAR oPAI - The secret of spiders blood

127

AlekSANDAR oPAI - The secret of spiders blood

Text authors Aleksandra Sekuli, B.A. in General literature and Theory, M.A. in Cultural Policy Studies, PhD student of Theory of Art and Media at the university of Arts in Belgrade. A member of the low-Fi video movement till 2003, of the kosmoplovci group and the Media Archeology team. Curated and organized programs of the Academic Film Center from 2005 to 2009. employed at the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade since 2010. Radovan Popovi, Comics author and publisher from Belgrade. A member of the kosmoplovci group, a founder of the Studiostrip platform, an initiator and editor of the Striper magazine, XeR Festival, the editor of the Studiostrip edition (Fabrika knjiga), an initiator and editor of numerous alternative comics events and comic fanzines in Serbia and the region. Authors of the Virtual Exhibition of Alternative Comics in Serbia Metaklinika www.metaklinika.com

ThE InVISIblE CoMICS Alternative comics in Serbia 1980-2010 Publisher National library of Serbia Skerlieva 1, Belgrade www.nb.rs nbs@nb.rs For the publisher Sreten ugrii Publication editor lazar Bodroa Text authors Aleksandra Sekuli and Radovan Popovi Design and graphic layout Metaklinika (lazar Bodroa, Nenad Trifunovi, Ivan kosti, Johanna Marcad, Duan orevi) Translated into English by vanja Savi (text) Milan Petrovi Tica, Tijana Tropin (comics) Print Altanova Print run 300 Electronic edition www.strip.nb.rs belgrade, 2011 The printing of this publication has been supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia.

CIP - katalogizacija u publikaciji Narodna biblioteka Srbije, Beograd ISBN 978-86-7035-232-2 CoBISS.SR-ID 182269196