wostok
Our Sow went out in the burning period of Serbian history from 1996 to 2001 on a regular basis, and then on two occasions in the summers of 2002 and 2003, as an extraordinary, annual editions. Wostok collaborated with the newspaper from 1998 till it's end, but his first comic was published in a release on December 30, 1996, it was Wostok's gay version of the comic about Zagor and Chico. The first editor, Petar Lazic, did not like Wostok's sense of humor, so this did not become a regular practice, but when the leadership changed and Milenko Mihajlovic came to the forefront of the magazine, Wostok got his column "Mirko and Slavko are on the horse again!" and underground comics plunged into the mainstream magazine, through Wostok, several other underground comic authors published in the magazine, such as Grabowski, Lazar Bodroza, Seljak, Mr. Stocca ...
On this page you have the opportunity to see some of the saved published Wostok's comics, which in this electronic form are not available anywhere on the net, we have scanned them specifically for this site.
DANILO MILOŠEV WOSTOK
I DO NOT KNOW WHO ARE MIRKO AND SLAVKO
I was surprised when I realized how much I spent the past year, year and a half in my scriptwriting and writing work on Mirko and Slavko. Namely, Mirko and Slavko were the heroes I have never particularly loved, and I can say that this is a comic book that I have mostly a bad opinion. But fate wanted me to deal with them in the public drawing workshop of a short story about Mirko and Slavko in Pančevo last summer. Then I drew several short stories with the two heroes and made an entire issue of my fanzine Krpelj dedicated to Mirko and Slavko. I mostly talked about them in an interview with my companion Peki which was published in one of the last numbers of Krpelja. (Below I pass a short excerpt from this interview.)
PEKI: Yes, what you are doing under the pseudonym Mediokritet, this can not be compared by its extremism with anything else.
MEDIOKRITET: What is your opinion of this comic strip?
PEKI: Well, I do not know, I really love comics that are not template, and they are in some way sick, y'know?
MEDIOKRITET: Yeah!
PEKI: I'm planning to put your comic of Mirko and Slavko on my T-shirt with the help of the silk screen printing ... I'm interested in the comment of my ma when she has washed and hung t-shirt to dry, when she is facing this version of Mirko and Slavko! .. .
MEDIOKRITET: You know, in that comic the idea was ... What were Mirko and Slavko in 1943 if not Stalinists? Because then, all the Communists were Stalinists, you understand, and why wouldn't they be whipping each other, that - a solid hand, a high boot! .... You know, I wanted to show that Partisan world a bit more realistic. Because, in the school, we are taught that Mirko and Slavko are two innocent characters, in fact, two of them, who kill so many people in these comics and by that in some way it's suggested that killing is a normal, even positive thing!
I hope that from this fragment you can already see the way that I treat those two classic heroes of our comic. Namely, what Mirko is forcing the obese female prisoner to have oral sex or what Slavko dressed in a woman's clothing scourges the male prisoner who is tied down or that Mirko and Slavko have sexual relations to each other is probably some kind of my parody revenge on the morbid ideological system that has not only created so stupid artwork, but also was pushing us to consume it compulsively.
(All of us, the former Tito pioneers, with sorrow and grief, we come across the sheets of "Tick-Tack" and "Dečje novine" (Kids magazine) whose purchase was obligatory, and the monstrous comic strips of Mirko and Slavko had a central place.)
As I transcribed this text, at one point it seemed to me that I was still overwhelmingly unhappy at Mirko and Slavko and that perhaps there was still a certain dose of objectivity missing. I decided to show the comic about two small partisans to someone who was in any way emotionally tied (positively or negatively) to them and who could be objective. I have said that this one is my daughter Lola (who also deals with the strip in her own childish way). I showed Lola a Tick-Tack where was a short story about Mirko and Slavko published. The following conversation developed between us:
DAD: Have you ever read Mirko and Slavko?
DAUGHTER: No.
DAD: Look, look, this is a comic strip, do you want to look at it?
DAUGHTER: (Looks a little) Uhm, no.
DAD: Well, whatever you wish ... Where do you go?
DAUGHTER: I'm going to watch Kassandra! (TV soap opera)
DAD: O my,... Mirko and Slavko, come back, everything is forgiven!
published in magazine "Sveske" (Notebooks) in December 1997.