Comics edition "Veseli četvrtak" ("Jolly Thursday")

Zagor is coming back home

The collectors and fans of comics were waiting in lines at the recently held Book Fair in Belgrade, so they could talk to Zagor's "parents" or get their autographs. The artwork creators of this comic - illustrators Galliano Ferri and Mauro Laurenti were guests of the "Veseli četvrtak" comics edition and have shown once again that the "ninth art", especially the characters of "Bonelli comics", is very popular in Serbia


By MARKO ANDREJIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA


The comics characters of the Italian editor Sergio Bonelli were the most common and most popular on the territory of Ex-Yugoslavia until the 1990's. Kids read them in schools, grown ups at college, but the collectors were numerous among elderly people as well. You could hardly find someone who didn't know, or at least hear about Zagor, Mister No, Tex Willer, Dylan Dog, Martin Mystery... With the destabilization in the country, comics disappeared from our region because the editor from Novi Sad - "Dnevnik" stopped printing them and allong came a lull which lasted almost ten years.

Many have tried, mostly unsuccessful, to return the old editions to quiosks. After a long period, since February 2008, we have a new comics edition "Veseli četvrtak" ("Jolly Thursday"), from the editor "Graf Art", who has brought Bonelli's characters back to Serbia. This editor has published more comics in a short period of time than anyone else in last seventeen years, at least when it comes to Bonelli.

- The readers' interest is suprisingly high. We wanted to take this job very seriously, put the comic back on track and bring it's old fame back. Well, maybe it's not possible for it to be as it was before, since now we have lots of new sorts of fun - there's Internet, video games, mobile phones... and kids hardly ever decide to choose a comic book. Still, we did it! We made it with an agressive campaign in the media, commercials, high quality editions and selections of good stories. We made some innovations too, for example, at the beginning of every episode, we bring to you a text that refers to the topic of that comic - explains for "WAVE magazine" Slobodan Jović, one of the editors of "Veseli četvrtak", about the return of comics to our country.

They started with four characters: Zagor, Dylan Dog, Mister No and Dhampir. Every Thursday, a new episode showed up and so the circle of a character per month started to close. Then they added Martin Mystery, Tex Willer and a new one, Brad Baron, as well as exceptional episodes of Commandant Mark that haven't been published here yet, plus a collectionary edition of Zagor. At present time, you can find thirteen different titles for sale.

- In Croatia, our neighbour state, the comic has been functioning successfully. We figured - why wouldn't it be likewise in Serbia, where the market is almost twice as big. We are not short of interest for it, we have readers, all we need is someone to do the job seriously. If your approach is thorough, if you have a developed plan and mature ideas, there is no chance of failure because Bonelli is the most popular here - Jović adds.

Cooperation with the "Bonelli" publishing house consists of materials arriving from Italy, some in written and some in electronic forms. Then comes the scanning, translating, equipping and, in the end, of course, printing and distribution to stores. The basic publishing office consists of nine people who work on the comic book, plus designers, the preparations, the printing jobs... Certain quality has been achieved and readers have recognized that.

- We had a good presentation at the past Book fair in Belgrade. We brought one of the Zagor's artworkers - illustrator from Italy, Galliano Ferri, whose presence caused a great interest of the public. Mauro Laurenti, who is the exclusive cover page illustrator for us, was also there. Collectors and fans of the comics were waiting in lines to get their autographs, which tells enough about their popularity - concludes Jović.

The "ninth art" always had it's admirers, and for now, "Veseli četvrtak" is running it's race with modern technologies quite prosperously.


(Published: 15.11.2008.)