Culture Comics 1: A Brief Introduction & History

Growing up visiting Czech Republic every summer, a large part of that experience was sitting in my parents’ childhood homes and reading the comics they grew up with. It served as a great reading exercise in a language I wasn’t as familiar with, along with an opportunity to bond with my parents over a shared interest. Being a part of this class inspired me to think back on these stories and revisit them as an adult, hoping to learn not just more about the artists and stories, but also the circumstances under which they were created and perhaps the impact that Czech comics in general had on my parents’ and my own culture.

For this first response, I wanted to start with a historical understanding of Czech comic productions. Generally speaking, Czech comics had an intriguing cultural shift when the country went through the Stalinist era, resulting in a multitude of varied actions taken between artists. Some stopped production altogether, others changed their cartoons in order to keep their publications, and some even continued to produce their work while unchanging its content, being faced with bans or potential incarceration. Through the 1950s to 60s, comics were completely outlawed as an anti-socialist medium, but by the 1970s was used as a vessel for propaganda.

Evidently a large portion of early Czech comics featured stories already discussed in class, but the first highly successful Czech series was titled Rychlé šípy, translated to “fast arrows”, published in a magazine titled Young Herald beginning in 1938. Although published nearly 80 years ago, the tale is fondly remembered by Czech people born during the late 1960's - an interesting phenomenon, considering the comic was banned three different times. Due to its resemblance to American Boy Scouts, the story was banned for the first time in 1941, and made disappearances and reappearances until banned permanently by 1971. This lead to its popularity spanning generations, and still fondly remembered by those generations today. On the other end of the political spectrum, the children’s comic Ferda Mravenec is an example of a story modified for political propaganda, which completely changed its characters to reflect a “model USSR citizen”.

Another extremely important comic to Czech culture is called Čtyřlístek, the “Lucky Four”, which revolves around four anthropomorphic characters facing a variety of adventures. It was the only published comic for an extended period of time and the only one that continues to be published to this day, and the only one to survive the so-called comic crash of 1993.

Since Czech Republic’s attainment of political freedom, comics had become almost non-influential on Czech culture until 2000, after the market had gained some stability and artists were finding opportunities to publish once more.

The history of comics in Czech serves as a fascinating tool to show the powerful impact that comics can have on generations not despite of, but because of political influence. I look forward to engaging in more of my cultural history, and gaining a new appreciation for the art form that I grew up with.


Resources:

-https://www.radio.cz/en/section/in-focus/study-traces-czech-comics-evolution-from-lowbrow-to-respected-medium
- Parent’s recounting of events and stories