Abstract
During one hundred years of their history, comics have survived on the edge of Czech literature. Comic books used to be considered a genre only for children or teenagers and were perceived as being of low artistic quality and not intellectually stimulating. This situation dramatically changed after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now, Czech authors can draw inspiration and depict experiences from abroad, and many famous foreign comics have been translated into Czech. There is no external limitation for the writers, and even Czech universities have founded new comics studies departments. However, there is one particular subgenre that has been around since the beginning of Czech comics history—the adventure comic, inspired by life in America. This chapter describes five stages of the development of Czech adventure comic, focusing on the portrayal and role of the Indigenous characters. In the beginning, Czech adventure comics were based on an overly idealized image that showed America as a dream country of freedom and welfare. In this stage, the “Indian” characters were stereotypical, and their “function” in the texts was to be a part of the “Wild-West” landscape. Later, under the Nazi and then Soviet regime, comic-book authors tried to describe real Indigenous people’s lifestyle, even if the storylines were still too romantic. The plots were mainly focused on the “Indians’” fight for freedom against the colonizers, which was the issue that resonated with Czech society. In the 1960s, the hype around the German Winnetou movies led to the third stage, characterized by adventure stories and an imitation of life in harmony with nature, as depicted in these films. The 1990s represent a period when authors tried to portray Indigenous cultures realistically. This phase was extremely short and resulted in the last nostalgic stage after the year 2000. In the last two decades, the comic-book portrayal of Indigenous peoples has again been marked by a tendency towards idealization, this time associated with nostalgia. These most recent comics harken back to the “good old days” and stories from childhood in which good was clearly separated from evil.
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Notes
- 1.
Rostislav Matulík and Tomáš Prokůpek, “In the Torrents of Adventure Comics,” in Signals from the Unknown: Czech Comics 1922–2012, ed. Lucie Česálková, Pavel Kořínek, and Tomáš Prokůpek (Řevnice: Arbor vitae, 2012), 40.
- 2.
The coauthors of this comic are, in fact, children who sent their ideas of the “best adventure movie ever” to Pionýrské noviny, a magazine for children and teenagers. Caricaturist Jan Kristofori was amazed by their ideas and decided to create a comic based on it. In this story, Winnetou and his friend, Old Shatterhand, try unsuccessfully to save a girl named Ribana, who was kidnapped by some gangsters. The girl is saved thanks to three musketeers. Suddenly, the gangsters are scared by aliens from Mars who use flying drawers [sic!]. Unfortunately, the gangsters manage to kidnap the girl once again; they kidnap also one of these aliens and hijack their spaceship. As they cannot drive it, they have an accident on a deserted island, and Winnetou, Old Shatterhand, and Sherlock Holmes can rescue prisoners and bring hot dogs to the hungry musketeers. This story reflects clearly who were the children’s biggest heroes at the time: Sherlock Holmes, the Three Musketeers, and, of course, Winnetou and Old Shatterhand (Josef Ládek and Robert Pavelka, Encyklopedie komiksu v Československu 1945–1989, 2 vols. [Praha: XYZ, 2012]).
- 3.
The genre is described from the chronological point of view in Matulík and Prokůpek, “In the Torrents of Adventure Comics,” 36–67.
- 4.
See Matulík and Prokůpek, “In the Torrents of Adventure Comics,” 40.
- 5.
See Miloš Novák, “Lovec jelenů,” in Velká kniha komiksů, ed. Tomáš Prokůpek (Praha: Plus, 2019), 24.
- 6.
Matulík and Tomáš, “In the Torrents of Adventure Comics,” 42.
- 7.
“Koupili jste ji? Opravdu? A od koho jste ji koupili? Od indiánů, kteří jsou jejími pravými vlastníky, nebo od agentů, kteří prodají i to, co není jejich?” Miloš Novák, “Kurýr aneb Román ze života kolonisátorů Divokého západu,” in Velká kniha komiksů, ed. Tomáš Prokůpek (Praha: Plus, 2019), 46. ; Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Czech are my own.
- 8.
“Ano!” vyskočil hrubý Sam Brown, zaťav pěst. “Vy rudoši nás napadáte na každém kroku. Je čas, abychom s vámi konečně zúčtovali.” “Nechť se bílá tvář mírní,” řekl klidně náčelník indiánů. “Dokáži vám, že vy Američané jste násilníci a naši nepřátelé. My jsme vám svou zem neprodali.” Novák, “Kurýr aneb Román ze života kolonisátorů Divokého západu,” 47.
- 9.
Novák, “Kurýr aneb Román ze života kolonisátorů Divokého západu,” 48–51.
- 10.
“Byl naším učitelem a vedl nás k lásce a přátelství mezi lidmi bez rozdílu barvy pleti. Běloši však jednali jinak a přišli, aby nás oloupili a vyhladili. Takoví byli i ti, kteří nakonec Kleki-petru zavraždili.” Gustav Krum, Vinnetou (Praha: BB art, 2002), 218.
- 11.
See Matulík and Prokůpek, “In the Torrents of Adventure Comics,” 40–42.
- 12.
See Gustav Krum, Vinnetou, 249.
- 13.
“Odejděte, děti, hněv Manittův se neutišil. Běloši vládnou světem a rudochův čas se ještě nevrátil. Mé žití bylo příliš dlouhé. Během ranního květu jsem viděl syny Želvy šťastné a silné. A nyní, ještě než nastala noc, doprovodil jsem k hrobu posledního Mohykána.” (Jan Černý-Klatovský, “Poslední Mohykán,” Daildeca.cz, accessed February 25, 2023, http://www.daildeca.cz/cerklatnr.html).
- 14.
“Přišel jsem poznávat odvahu a čestnost na západ mezi jejími obyvateli a našel jsem ji mezi takzvanými divochy. Musel jsem se stydět za barvu své kůže při slovech toho mladého ʻdivocha.ʼ Kolik v nich bylo smyslu pro čest a spravedlnost” (Jiří Zvolský, “Vinnetou I,” Kometa, no. 34 [1992]: 18).
- 15.
See Tomáš Prokůpek, Pavel Kořínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš, Dějiny československého komiksu 20. století (Praha: Akropolis, 2014), 365.
- 16.
See Matulík and Prokůpek, “In the Torrents of Adventure Comics,” 40–42.
- 17.
See Prokůpek, et al., Dějiny československého komiksu 20. století, 799.
- 18.
See Prokůpek, et al., Dějiny československého komiksu 20. století, 993.
- 19.
See Lomová, Divoši, 128.
- 20.
See Lomová, Divoši, 27.
- 21.
See Lomová, Divoši, 87.
- 22.
See Lomová, Divoši, 139.
- 23.
John H. Moore, The Cheyenne (Malden: Blackwell, 1999), 107.
- 24.
Babička (The grandmother) by Božena Němcová is a classic Czech novel, published in 1855. It is considered one of the canonical works of Czech literature.
- 25.
Džian Baban, Jiří Grus, and Vojtěch Mašek. Ve stínu šumavských hvozdů (Praha: Lipnik, 2011), 30–31.
- 26.
Džian Baban, Jiří Grus, and Vojtěch Mašek, Ve stínu šumavských hvozdů, 14.
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Stražovská, P. (2024). Winnetou in Czech Comics. In: Runtić, S., Marešová, J., Kolinská, K. (eds) (Un)Following in Winnetou’s Footsteps. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7421-4_10
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