Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry , Bugs Bunny
The first comics I encountered were those related to children’s themes. The 1990s in Poland abounded in various types of comic book publications, from Marvel and DC, and ending with Moomins, Pokemon or Donald Duck, and even Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes. As a child growing up in the last decade of the 20th century, I was somewhat “exposed” to children’s titles.
I received these comics mainly from my grandmother who, seeing the colorful “magazines for children”, so unattainable during the communist period, tried to provide them to her granddaughter. I loved the adventures of Donald Duck the most, which were first published every two weeks and then weekly. Why? Because for a long time I missed the duckling world present in Duck Tales, which series was taken off the air (it came back only in 2007). Donald Duck was giving me a bit of this universe .
Another eagerly read magazines with picture stories were Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny. The first title, initially published by TM-Semic, was a notebook without any additions, containing comics about the adventures of the famous duo from Hanna-Barbera studio, usually drawn by one cartoonist – Martin. Why were they so interesting? Well, unlike animations, comic stills showed us what the mute characters usually say. In turn, Bugs Bunny is the only position on the Polish market so far, which until 2002 published comics with Looney Tunes imprint DC Comics. Stories full of various types of gags were also a great complement to what Canal + was serving at that time in the bandFerris wheel . – Bartosz Stuła
Kajtek and Koko
One of the first comic books I read as a child was Kajtek and Koko. A duel with Abraham Janusz Christy, where the main characters move to the land of fairy tales, where they have to face the evil wizard Abrakapokushiperkadwatrzy, who, among other things, reduced the city’s inhabitants to the size of a mouse and kidnapped one of the princesses, and turned the other into a frog, because she did not want to become his wife.
This comic was published for the first time in 1964 in Gdańsk’s “Wieczor Wybrzeza” and it reached me in the form of an album released in 1991 in the series called “Retro seans” by the Adarex publishing house.
Janusz Christa, known as the first post-war creator of Polish comics, began his adventure with comics in 1958 with the permanent publication of comic strips on the last page of the aforementioned magazine “Wybrzeże Wybrzeża”, where stories about Kajtek and Koko appeared, and later – Kajek and Kokosz. The heroes won the hearts of readers of all ages, including mine, when I was still in kindergarten. Janusz Christa’s albums, published since 1981, already ten years later had a circulation of over 7 and a half million copies! – Aga Bot
