Tagged: comics

Born in 1951, Leonard Rifas loved comics but found cartooning to be hard work. He wanted to make sure the stories and messages he conveyed were important enough to demand such time and attention, so he turned to educational comics.

In 1976, he produced All-Atomic Comics, about the use of nuclear energy. That same year he created Educomics, a publishing label for educational comics, under which he has published such titles as Gen of Hiroshima and his own An Army of Principles: The History and Philosophy of the American Revolution.

Rifas has also taught cartooning to people of all ages, and has written books and articles about comics.

With comics being created throughout the world, it’s all too easy to overlook some of the medium’s best talents. The lack of recognition for Séra, the French-based cartoonist who’s created a collection of graphic novels sketching out tales of the Khmer Rouge.

Like Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi, to name two, Séra looks back on the ugly history of his native land and weaves it into comic book stories (he’s created 12 books). Séra (real name Ing Phouséra) was born in Cambodia and fled for France in 1975, just as Pol Pot took control of the country.

A recent article on TIME magazine’s Web site, takes a look at this largely unknown creator:

Séra started his first graphic novel about Cambodia, Impasse et Rouge — chronicling the years just before the Khmer Rouge — in 1987, five years before Art Spiegelman’s Maus would win a Pulitzer for its famous depiction of the Holocaust and demonstrate that gravitas and the graphic arts were not mutually exclusive. Impasse et Rouge wasn’t published for almost another 12 years. Although the following two titles about Cambodia, L’Eau et la Terre (2005) and Lendemains de cendres (2007), were picked up in fairly quick succession by the major French comic publisher Delcourt, Séra has still not had the international success that "serious" comic books artists like Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) have enjoyed. He teaches drawing by day and works as a night porter at a Paris hotel to get by.

I’ve looked to see if any of his books have been translated to English, but I haven’t found any so far.

Here’s a story about a comic book with a plot more interesting than most comics. Pal Korcsmaros was a Hungarian illustrator, who lived during World War Two and its aftermath, when the USSR ruled easter Europe.

One of Korcsmaros’ endeavors was comic books, and particularly remaking classic tales, such as The Three Musketeers. According to a story at Agoravox, the Communist regime placed severe strictures on the content that could be produced, so many of Korcsmaros’ works were taken and sealed away.

Those manuscripts have recently been found (including the page seen here, via Agoravox). Korcsmaros’ grandson has taken possession of the manuscripts, though a painful legacy remains:

What makes this case special is that this not only reveals a personal tragedy and the loss of privacy in the Communist dictatorship, but also the infringement of other fundamental rights to property and copyright. The destruction of personal liberties went together with the destruction of the liberal arts and the forums of freedom. The author of these comic books was stripped from his property, and for 33 years the heirs of the intellectual properties were also stripped from their rights. Not to mention the readers in Hungary, who had to wait for a generation for the re-publication of this classic comic book, and the readers in Western Europe, who have lost the possibility to get a decent publication of Hungary’s eminent comic books maybe forever.