Hungarian comics


Hungarian comics are comics made in Hungary and by the Hungarian diaspora of the surrounding countries. When dealing with Hungarian comics, one cannot separate comics made by Hungarians from translated foreign matter, since in some eras most of the publications come from the latter group and influence comics fandom and the general picture about comics in the country.
The roots of Hungarian comics reach back to the mid 19th century. Until the late 1930s the development of the genre were parallel to current trends in European comics. Comic strips were generally found in newspapers and magazines, featuring works from both Hungarian and foreign artists. Since comics were so closely bound to the printed media, their creators were mostly caricature artists as well.
The years preceding World War II proved to be unfavorable for comics as the mainly Jewish owned yellow press basically disappeared together with comic strips.
After the few years of the transitional phase following World War II, Hungarian cultural politics were influenced by the Soviet Union, as a consequence comics were regarded as "western cultural trash" and were basically forbidden for years. By the mid-1950s comics were tolerated, but with strict compromises. Under these years adaptational comics were made in great numbers. This period lasting until the late 1970s is regarded by some comics historians as the Golden Age of Hungarian comics; the most respected artists, Ernő Zórád, Imre Sebők and Pál Korcsmáros lived and were active during this period lasting until the mid-1970s.
In the 1980s, under a warmer political climate, translations of foreign comics were published in growing numbers. After the fall of the Iron Curtain a large variety of translated European and American comics were published in the country. Although most companies were full of enthusiasm, only few were strong enough in capital to live through the radically altering circumstances of the 1990s.
This course eventually resulted in the American comics' dominance by the middle of the decade. These years also witnessed the appearance of a new generation of Hungarian comics creators.
The few years preceding and following the new millennium seemed to be least successful for comics, many magazines folded during these years leaving several fans without comics. This and some other factors caused fans, artists, publishers, merchants to connect on the Internet and set up new foundations for a wholly revised comics scene. The period lasting since 2004–2005 is commonly referred to as the New Wave of Hungarian comics, since comics scene participants show a degree of activity never seen before.

Vocabulary

The Hungarian word for comics is képregény, a combined word from kép and regény. The word was already used in the 1930s, but it only became the exclusive term after 1948, before that, képes történet and other similar expressions described the medium The words comics, manga, bd / bande dessinée are sometimes used in Hungary, but, apart from manga, are not generally in use.

History

The history of Hungarian comics is best divided along political eras, because of the great influence politics has made on comics.

From the 19th century until World War I

During the late 19th century Hungary, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, kept pace with the European trends, pointing in the direction of what later became known as modern comics. Rodolphe Töpffer and especially Wilhelm Busch were popular and had great effect on Hungarian journalism, and soon the Hungarian equivalents were born. One of the most important writers of the time, Mór Jókai founded and edited a magazine called Üstökös based on Fliegende Blätter.. Pages were filled with caricatures and "pictorial stories", the European predecessor of modern comics. A short story was told in few sequential pictures, and the text was placed beneath the images. Many similar journals existed besides Üstökös. Hungary had a flourishing caricature culture at the time, and many of the greatest artists also drew these early types of comics.

Notable artists

This list contains those comics artists, who are emphasized in Hungarian comics history writings.
  • János Jankó, originally a painter, but for financial reasons chose to be a journal illustrator. He is considered to be the first Hungarian cartoonist who consciously dealt with this genre. Together with Jókai, they created many picture stories in the style of Wilhelm Busch. His published drawings exceed thirty thousand.
  • Károly Mühlbeck illustrated humor magazines as Kakas Márton, Borsszem Jankó, etc. He created a unique form of the comic strip, that headlined the newspaper, Új idők. These sequential drawings usually did not tell a story in chronological order, they rather showed a current topic from multiple point of views. These very popular works were collected in an individual album in 1935. In May–June 2011 kArton gallery held the first exhibition solely dedicated to Károly Mühlbeck's caricatures and comic strips.
  • Ákos Garay painter, graphic artist, ethnographer. From 1883 he drew caricatures for most of the humor magazines, Borsszem Jankó published his works for over 20 years. His early drawings were in a realistic style, later used distortion as an instrument for caricatures and humorous pictorial stories. One of the fundamental artists who helped Hungarian pictorial stories to reach its classic stage.
  • Dezső Bér Graphic artist and painter. Contributing artist, later editor of the humor magazine, Borsszem Jankó. Almost solely dealt with cartoons. One of the fundamental artists, who helped Hungarian pictorial stories to reach its classic stage. He is considered to be one of the most influential cartoonist of his time.
  • Miltiadész Mannó Graphic artist, painter, sculptor. Started his cartoonist career at Kakas Márton, than continued at Borsszem Jankó, Bolond Istók, Magyar Figaró. One of the fundamental artists who helped Hungarian pictorial stories to reach its classic stage.
  • Mór Jókai : novelist, editor. Although not a cartoon artist, his contributions to the development of classic Hungarian comics are great. He founded and edited humorous, political satire magazines, Nagy Tükör and mainly Üstökös, which published the very first proto-comics. Jókai also wrote scripts for the cartoonists, these instructions in many cases included detailed layouts, sketches. When Jókai founded Nagy Tükör and Üstökös, cartoonists were hard to find in the country, therefore he himself drew many of the cartoons published in his magazines. This lasted until he employed János Jankó.

    Interwar period

The comic strip boom of the United States had a growing effect on Hungarian newspaper publishing until the late 1930s. American comics flooded all kinds of newspapers, magazines. Hári János , a magazine for children is considered to be the first Hungarian comic book magazine, with comic strips on every page. Walt Disney strips, Secret Agent X-9, Little Nemo in Slumberland, George McManus strips and many others marked this period.
Not as many Hungarian comics were made in this period, while – for example – Yugoslavia, the southern neighbor, claims this period to be their Golden Age.
During this period the truncated Hungary was an ally of Germany. In 1937 the Minister of Justice began restricting the great amount of pulp literature and yellow press. In 1938 a decree ordered the whole press under the control of the Government. In the same year the "First Jewish Law" was issued. Among others the goal of these two were to "clean" Hungary's cultural life, to eliminate pulp literature. As the Újság, a Hungarian extremist newspaper, commented in 1938: "These are not at all capable to nurture Hungarian self-knowledge, Hungarian honesty, Hungarian heroism, consequently to nurture the Hungarian folk, national and racial self-knowledge." Since most of the comics were published in the mostly Jewish owned yellow press, comics vanished after the law took effect. The situation became even worse after the German troops marched into Hungary: all leftist and liberal media was banned. The only comics of the time were antisemitic ones, from magazines as the militant Harc or anticommunist ones from newspapers as Egyedül vagyunk.

Notable artists

This list contains those comics artists, who are emphasized in Hungarian comics history writings.
  • Károly Mühlbeck
  • Kata Benedek: Drew comics for the children's magazine, Tündérvásár. Her series, Lekvár Peti kalandjai ran for over twenty years, and was one of the most popular children's series between the two wars.
  • Jenő Jeney painter, graphic artist, illustrator, cartoonist. Studied art from Károly Lotz, his first cartoons were published at the age of 16. His style ranged from precisely detailed realistic cartoons to sketchy jokes, portraits. Friss Újság's Vasárnap published his comic strips even after 1938, when comics in general vanished from newspapers.
  • Balázsfy Rezső Graphic artist, painter. Studied at Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and the painting academy in Vienna. Friss Újság's Vasárnap published his and Jeney's comic strips even after 1938, when comics in general vanished from newspapers.

    Main publications

This list contains those publications, that are emphasized in Hungarian comics history writings.
  • Áller Képes Családi lapja
  • Hári János
  • Tündérvásár
  • A Kis Lap
  • Hasznos Mulattató
  • Vasárnap of Pesti Hírlap
  • Vasárnap of ''Friss újság''

    Communist era

In the post-war period, Hungary's cultural-politics were heavily influenced by the Soviet Union. In the first few years comics returned to the newspapers and other magazines: first humorous children comics in 1945, then communist propaganda strips in 1948. The Hungarian term for comics – képregény – became widespread during this short period. In 1950 – according to a famous anecdote – during a visit to Budapest, Finogenov, an influential aesthete from Moscow, called comic books an "imperialist vestige". Within a few days Hungarian prime minister, Mátyás Rákosi withdrew all the "western cultural trash" from the press.
Furthermore, Dr. Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent attracted some attention on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain. His anti-comics accusations echoed in Hungarian newspaper articles. Some of these were written by Hungarian journalists, but some were translations of American articles. During these years even caricatures ridiculed comics for its aggressive nature and pairing it with western trash.
In 1954 Ernő Zórád, one of Hungary's all-time greatest comic book artists, dared to bring back comics with his adaptation of Vladimir Obruchev's Plutonia. This was published in Pajtás, a magazine for the Pioneer movement. 1955 was a milestone in Hungarian comic book history, since this was the year when graphic illustrator Sándor Gugi convinced Tibor Horváth to create some comics together. It was also Gugi's idea to produce comics that adapt classic literature. No one could call adaptations of famous and recognized literary works "decadent western trash", so comics received a green light at the time. Gugi presumably got the idea of adaptational comics from Classics Illustrated. Adaptational comics, what started out as a trick, became dominant for decades. Sándor Gugi left the field relatively early, but Tibor Cs. Horváth produced a vast of comics scripts for some very talented artists such as Imre Sebők, Pál Korcsmáros and Ernő Zórád. These three had their own easily recognizable style and are considered the greatest comic artists of Hungary.
At the time comics were not published in separate comic books, but sequentially in newspapers, magazines, and the crossword puzzle magazine Füles. Füles later became a flagship of Hungarian comic publishing. In December 1956, a few weeks after the soviet tanks ended the Revolution of 1956, György Gál and some journalists started conceiving a new, entertaining weekly magazine based on previous magazines such as Pesti Izé and Füles Bagoly. The magazine based on crossword puzzles, articles and comics immediately became a large success. Some say the magazine had a role in healing the wounds. Between January 1957 and December 1960 11 artists drew especially comics. The sum of their work during this period was 145 comics in 2000 pages. 50% of the storyboards were written by Tibor Cs. Horváth, the other by 17 other writers. 40% of the art was done by Pál Korcsmáros, 20% by Ernő Zórád and 14% by Imre Sebők.
Some attempts were made to create pure comic magazines. One of these was Tábortűz, another magazine for Pioneers, based on the French Camera 34 and full of fresh ideas. Although it did not meet the Pioneer Association's ideas and ordered the editorial to drastically reduce the number of comic pages in the magazine.
Adaptational comics are still the source of controversies and debates. Although in most cases the art was beautiful, the panels were heavily packed with narrative texts – a trademark of Tibor Cs. Horváth. By the early sixties this comics type fell into a trap from which it could not escape until recent times. On one hand intellectuals criticized these works for the lack of originality, novelty and artistry, while another major accusation was that comics in general restrict reading habits. However, adaptational comics provided a safe relationship with the cultural-political leadership, and were still popular, comic book import was close to zero, so nothing forced comic artists to move on further.
Still, this compromise made the production of comics possible. In many other countries of the Ex-Eastern Bloc the situation was even worse with almost no comics of their own. However, some other Eastern Bloc countries at that time had substantial comic book culture, like Yugoslavia and Poland. For further readings on Ex-Eastern bloc comics culture: Serbian comics, Polish comics, Czech comics

Ernő Zórád ended his professional relationship with Tibor Cs. Horváth and wrote his own comic scripts. Luckily Zórád was not just a great artist, but also a talented storyteller: these comics came much closer to the medium's own language. He also made experimental collage comics in the early seventies attracting international attention. These works were invited to the Salone Internazionale del Comics festival in 1970 but his portfolio – due to Hungarian bureaucracy – has arrived late. Furthermore, the works has been stolen from the festival. By the late seventies the classic trio of Hungarian comics creators disappeared: Korcsmáros died in 1975, Sebők died in 1980 and Zórád retired temporarily. Since young talents were not introduced during the preceding three decades, many mark these years the end of Hungarian comics' golden age.
In the early 1970s famous cartoonists made ventures in the comics medium. Both of them were talented comic book creators, but both of them rather considered animation as their main field. Jankovics even went as far as publicly despising comics. Dargay continued to create comics in the 1980s.
At the time very few foreign comics were allowed to be published for the Hungarian market. The exceptions were mainly comics from the Eastern bloc or comics with socialist/communist background. The exceptions:
  • Mozaik: The East German Mosaik was first published in 1971 and ran as a monthly comic book series from 1973 until 1990. Outside East-Germany Mosaik was the most popular in Hungary, and still has many hardcore fans. The issues were edited in Hungary, published and printed in GDR together with the original German version, than distributed by the Hungarian Postal Service. The title returned to the newsstands in 2001 and is still published alongside many special issues for collectors.
  • Pif and Vaillant: These were imported from France and sold at newspaper stands. This was allowed because the biweekly magazine belonged to the communist L'Humanité newspaper group. In the seventies some French and Italian comics were published in Füles, Pajtás, etc.
  • Danish and Finnish editions of American superhero comics were printed in Hungary's Kossuth nyomda. A large number of these forbidden fruits were sold/traded on flea markets, despite the fact most Hungarians could not read them.
In an environment much more liberal, the Hungarian minorities of Yugoslavia published many comics. The most important publisher of the time was Forum Marketprint, which presented Buksi magazine in the sixties. This was the Hungarian language print of the Serbo-Croatian Kekec magazine, also published by Forum-Marketprint.