José Alaniz
explores the problematic publication history of komiks--an
art form much-maligned as "bourgeois" mass diversion before, during,
and after the collapse of the USSR--with an emphasis on the last twenty
years. Using archival research, interviews with major artists and
publishers, and close readings of several works, Komiks:
Comic Art in Russia provides
heretofore unavailable access to the country's rich--but
unknown--comics heritage. The study examines the dizzying experimental
comics of the late Czarist and early revolutionary era, caricature from
the satirical journal Krokodil,
and the postwar series Petia
Ryzhik (the
"Russian Tintin"). Detailed case studies include the Perestroika-era
KOM studio, the first devoted to comics in the Soviet Union;
post-Soviet comics in contemporary art; autobiography and the work of
Nikolai Maslov; and women's comics by such artists as Lena Uzhinova,
Namida, and Re-I. Alaniz examines such issues as anti-Americanism,
censorship, the rise of consumerism, globalization (e.g., in Russian
manga), the impact of the internet, and the hard-won establishment of a
comics subculture in Russia.
Komiks have
often borne the brunt of ideological change--thriving in summers of
relative freedom, freezing in hard winters of official disdain. This
volume covers the art form's origins in religious icon-making and book
illustration, and later the immensely popular lubok or
woodblock print. Alaniz reveals comics' vilification and
marginalization under the Communists, the art form's economic
struggles, and its eventual internet "migration" in the post-Soviet
era. This book shows that Russian comics, as with the people who made
them, never had a "normal life.