“The Lame Wolf” prowls Timișoara
During the 90s, almost all the Western culture arrived in Romania through our town, via Yugoslavia.
Text by Goran Mrakić; English version by Vlad-Marko Tollea
Danilo Milošev Wostok is a missionary of a lesser known subculture in Romania, underground comic books. It’s a fact that in my native Vârșeț things are not quite pink, but this scene has a long tradition in Serbia and former Yugoslavia.
Our neighbouring country had a special status in the Eastern block, that could open the gates to various forms of alternative culture. If the musical influences of jazz, rock and punk from the UK and the US proved extremely intense, Italy was the one that started the Yugoslavs’ appetite for film noirs and comic books.
Wostok, the artist, with great references in the US specialized press, took part on Saturday, June the 8th, at his first expo in Romania. And what a better place for that than Scârț, a local pub whose purpose is just that — promoting alternative culture.
“The Lame Wolf” is in fact a creation of Vasko Popa, a Romanian poet of Serbian ancestry, born in Grebenaț, inclined toward aphorism, sayings and popular mythology. His elliptical, succint and concise style, full of multiple meanings represented a turning point in contemporary Serbian literature, thus inspiring a whole generation of young poets.
Another one of Wostok’s creations is the comic book “Kurjak” (“The Wolf”), inspired from fairytales picked up by the Ciacova native scholar Dositei Obradovici, another bridge between Serbian and Romanian culture. The rest of his works, in Serbian and English, put forth assorted themes: the demystification of heroism through epic poetry, the caricaturization of stars from Serbian show biz, the penciling of some marginal, yet high social impact characters and suggesting new visions on the surrounding reality.
The author also presented “Vicko the Human”, a short movie about a guy that impressed him as much as he moved him, an extremely peculiar and self-destructive artist from the small town of Kać. He died in July of 2014.
Daniele Panteleoni, an Italian university teacher continued with a talk on the sensation surrounding the “Alan Ford” comic book series, that knew a flash success during the Yugoslav 70s and 80s, when a lot of the main characters’ text entered the vernacular. It’s about a group of secret agents, all rookies and marginal, lead by a wheelchair-bound old timer with of an imprecise age, named Numero 1. The characters promote a very tough critical view on consumerism, ooze top-notch black comedy and get into all sorts of predicaments and adventures that are funny, absurd and grotesque.
“Basically, during the 60s in Italy there were only submissive comic books. But in ’63 Kriminal is issued, that depicts a character lacking remorse. It was for the first time that the comic book world met dark humor and proto-tease, you could see half a boob or something.
The series was — for its time — pioneering, and the authors got nine first-instance convictions.” — Daniele Pantaleoni
At the end, the audience had the opportunity to buy a few items signed by Danilo Milošev Wostok, that remained on display at Scârț.
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