In front of the comics

Tomas Prokůpek, Martin Foret

After a successful publication, half of her author’s team went even deeper into the past, to the very beginnings of the domestic tradition of the picture series, which can be put into the middle of the 19th century. They have not yet been fully explored and unwritten. The present book does not aim to establish an exact date or specific work as a “the beginning of a home picture series”, but it maps in detail the tendencies that led to the establishment of the domestic variant of comic creation, and follows the influences that co-shaped this formation. A spring survey of dozens of periodicals published in Czech and Slovak on the territory of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire made it possible to identify and distinguish individual protocomical forms of the 19th century. In the 19th century, as they gradually represented and promoted themselves in the home space, their boundaries and mutual relations were defined. The links of these germ-based picture series to the cartoon, newspaper illustration and other concurrent “competitive” forms were also monitored, as well as their influence on the later tradition of domestic comics and the context of contemporary foreign creation. A publication intended for all those interested in a home picture series, but also more generally visual or print culture of the 19th century. In the 19th century, he viewed the optics of “comics before comics” as well as the work of well-known Czech artists, illustrators and cartoonists, such as the Czech artist and cartoonist. Josef Mánes, Karel Václav Klíč, Mikoláš Aleš or Artuš Scheiner, whose work is thus reinterpreted in this context. Of course, the richly illustrated volume also represents the work of a number of other authors, often forgotten today, who devoted themselves to various variants of the picture series in period prints (e.g. Karel Ladislav Thuma or Karel Krejčík).

550 CZK