Friday, May 8, 2009

How Stripolis was created

NOSTALGIA

Carried by the wings of nostalgia I have raised the force to realize my childhood dreams – the artistic cartoon. The comics, as a media, opened my mind and imagination, formed my personality and shaped my career as an artist. My desire is to share with others all this inner force and emotion which the art of cartoon created in me.

CHALLENGE

Our challenge is to achieve the universal dimension of the comics which will cross all kinds of frontiers and borders. Have I been successful with only few enthusiastic collaborators, without a lot of means, which gave their maximum to realize the project – the question is open and there is a lot of work to do. At least we proved one thing – our geographically distant place became closer to the world of the ninth art.

INTERNATIONALISM

Our desire is to present the best artists from the Serbia and all over the world, whenever they are known or unknown to the public. Their talent is a guaranty of the quality of “STRIPOLIS” and it's international character. The works from all over the world are included in our publication like, for example: Czech Republic, Poland, Brazil, Canada, USA, Italy, Belgium, Serbia…

STEP FORWARD

Between 13th and 18th April of 2009, our city, the center of the ninth art for a few days, has given a warm welcome to a few artist which have participated in the realization of this project. Different expositions, film projections, lectures and workshops have been organized. Their works are already published or will be published in “STRIPOLIS”. These are the names of some participants of the workshop: Boban Savić-Geto, Darko Perović, Zoran Tucić, Željko Pahek, Đorđe Milović, Dejan Nenadov, Šandor Gogoljak ...
That is only the first step forward and toward our aim – to become the member of the international family of the festivals devoted to the art of comics. To be able to enjoy in the ninth art in these parts of the world we need more than an enthusiasm of a few…

About “Stripolis”

I hope that you will like this atempt to revive cartoon comics as an art. Editorial policy meets a lot of difficulties, especially if we are aware that the authors made their contributions on a free basis. Being artist myself, I’m very well aware what does it mean to work for no fee, but as well, I know that artist a the man who lives in his own world of imagination, out of time and space, and that he is ready to sacrifice a lot in order to keep his art alive.

Some of my most beautiful dreams were fulfilled as I have been able to contact and to establish the cooperation with the great artists as Vittorio Giardino or Rick Veitch.

The aim is, and it will be, to present in each issue of “Stripolis” a great name of the ninth art. This time we presented Vittorio Giardino with never before published short story and Rick Veitch, veteran of the magazines "Epic" and "Heavy Metal". As an admirer of Veitch's work I fulfilled his desire by publishing his lucid parody about Charles Brown named "Nutpeas".

It’s not necessary to say that this just the begging of something better and bigger. I do not wish to promise impossible to the fans of comic books, but I’ll try to do impossible. Magazine, with all his qualities, is not faultless. For example: clearness of presentation and the mixture of different genres were not well balanced, but mistakes are there to be fixed. Anyway, without false modesty, I think that “Stripolis” deserves attention of everyone who considers himself as a connoisseur of the ninth art. This is just a first step toward something better and more beautiful.