A surprise anthology – a review of the comic book “Polish comics classic: Gods from the Aquarius constellation”

The most popular comic book in the Polish People’s Republic, Kapitan Żbik, focused mainly on realistic stories . However, there were titles that took on a fantastic scientific background. Already in the third book of his adventures, the chimpanzee Titus became a cosmonaut. Before Kajko and Kokosz fought the Zbójcerzami, Janusz Christa invented Kajtek and Koko in space. One of the authors working on this subject is Zbigniew Kasprzak, whose collected works were published by Egmont.

I wrote my master’s thesis on Polish science-fiction films from the period of the Polish People’s Republic. What kind of superpower do you have? OK, kidding aside. Of course, I am aware that this is rather the lowest of the niches, but there is something fascinating in the fact that Polish filmmakers took on science-fiction productions despite the lack of a budget and adequate technical facilities. At the same time, my knowledge of Polish comics on similar topics is negligible. Not so much because of the lack of access to them, but because of their retro style. Apart from a few exceptions, I do not like (with exceptions) pictorial stories created in the seventies and eighties, due to the fact that they have great problems with narration and pace. And be warned in advance, the Gods of Aquarius are no exception.

8 in 1

The old saying goes, “Don’t judge a comic by its cover.” All the more so if the said cover shows only one item and the whole thing turns out to be an anthology. And such a trick was made by Egmont, publishing a cross-section of Polish comic books created by Zbigniew Kasprzak. The title Gods of Aquarius is just one of the titles that can be found inside. The two-part story focuses on aliens (looking like ordinary Earthlings) helping one tribe to reach fertile lands. This story is a strange variation of the Mosaic myth combined with the then popular ideas of Erich von Däniken about the extraterrestrial origins of human civilization. In turn, in ” Guests from space” and ” Rebel”in vain to look for aliens, instead the reader gets the history of the meteorite that damaged the submarine and the efforts of the world government to deactivate it. The Hypotheses bring yet other moods . Destruction of Atlantis , in which there are two different “possible” causes of the destruction of ancient civilization. The volume also includes shorter forms: Regenerit , Man without a Face and Exponat AX .

Made in PRL

The various themes of the individual elements of the anthology are its greatest advantage. If anyone expects propaganda interferences here, they will be disappointed (?). As in other titles from this period, there is no mention of Poles or Soviets. The presented future is cosmopolitan and there is a “world government” in it, but this is due to rather naive expectations of reality (and a certain programming line of the periodicals in which the comics originally appeared). That’s it.

Unfortunately, the narrative of each story shows all the sins of the era in which they were created. Some pages are filled with walls of text – so much text there’s hardly any room for graphics. Elsewhere there is redundancy – the words describe exactly what you see in the picture. The scenarios themselves also leave a lot to be desired. In Bogach i Guests / Rebel, it’s hard to distinguish the main character, what’s worse, the characters of all characters are the same. In Atlantis, on the other hand, we have characters who get to know each other on one page, and on the next they have great infinite love for each other. Against this background, the Faceless Man is the most interesting ,consisting of several short episodes concerning the journalistic investigation in search of the futuristic Robin Hood. During the confusing plot, the heroes keep jumping from planet to planet, which sometimes gave me the impression that a few pages were missing to better explain what was going on. At the same time, Kasprzak lets your imagination run wild in this particular story. The cosmos is rich and diverse, and aliens can resemble snails, they are constantly fed up cars (Disney’s Carsmay hide). In addition, almost every page is saturated with erotic themes. Phallic spaceship? Why not. Aliens with penis noses? And yes. Or maybe a rocket in the shape of lush breasts? It will also be found. Funnily enough, the story itself has no erotic themes, and all of these elements provide (for some reason) the backdrop.

Divine release

Egmont’s release is impressive. Hard cover and large format. The size of the pages does not always serve the presented stories, because they do not have so many details (except for my favorite Man, who was filled with the above-mentioned flavors in the far plane), and the drawings themselves are slightly blurred. Kasprzak is a representative of the realistic style and all of his characters have square jaws and prominent cheekbones. This is quite problematic with what women look like – not only do they almost all look the same, but even if they are positive characters, they still look ominous with their sharp features (like Alexis from the Dynasty ). All kinds of vehicles and spaceships that are rightly angular for the era look good.

Classic

This is definitely not a comic book for everyone. Certainly, the target group here are older readers who remember the original editions. And although I do not belong to this target , it was quite pleasant reading for me. Yes, all the stories contained in the anthology are not so much a mouse, but a huge mouse. Thus, I will not change my opinion that in the People’s Republic of Poland SF books and films were more interesting than comics. However, there is a certain retro-charm in it, and I am very happy that Egmont allowed me to meet one of the leading authors of Polish science-fiction comic books of the bygone era – and in such a great edition.