This is a 56 pages, graphic novel, called ”Mickey pe Dunăre”(Mickey on the Danube).

 

Art by Cristian Darstar

Written by Alexandru Berceanu

Cover by Sorina Vasilescu

Edited by Jumătatea Plină

Produced by the Czech Embassy in Bucharest.

Published in March of 2014

Size 21/15 cm, 8”/6”

(what follows, is insite on work process)

This book was the first in a series of graphic novels. A collaboration between Jumatatea Plina and the Czech Embassy. The second was ”Aripi de oțel”(Wings of Steel) by Adrian Barbu & Jiri Sitler, third was ”Karel Liman: Arhitect” by Maria Surducan, forth, ”Dolki-n trei straie” by Ileana Surducan & Petra Dobruska and fifth, was ”Piatra Sângelui” by Timotei Drob.


The book is about the Prague Spring in 1968, when Russia decided to invade Czechoslovakia, with troops and tanks, in order to overthrow the government for being too liberal, too democratic and too socialistic. That in itself is no problem, but in the global context of the time, this was a danger to the world order. The reason given by USSR was the infiltration of infiltrators ready to destroy the country. In any case, the Romanian Red leader at the time, was strongly opposed to the Soviet intervention and was the only red leader to refuse sending any troops or tanks.
The story of this book is sligthly detached from these historic events but they are the pivot of the whole tale. The book tells the story of a family of Czechs visiting the romanian see side at the exact date if the invasion.
How does Mickey(Mouse) get on the cover of the book? I cannot answer that. Well I can, but won`t.

Put out at the beginning of 2014,this here, is the first book I officially, ever publish. Worked on it in a rush since the editors told me they need it yesterday. Looking back, I wish they would have given me more time, but the good thing, one year later(now) it`s almost sold-out, people like it, the story is nice and it was lots of fun to work on.

I tried drawing four pages per day, but I would loose myself in the process and start adding details, difficult angles. Initially I wanted to draw everything in a static approach, equal panels, similar poses, but I wasn`t in that kind of a rush, so now and then I would really get to enjoy setting up a page, constructing a layout I would find interesting, experiment brush strokes. At the end of the day, my main goal was to make the story as clear as possible. Help the reader understand what`s going on but also give them some understanding of the setting.

When I first read the script, I thought there should be close to two hundred pages. A kind of  decompressed book. Lots of large horizontal panels, as that is IMO the perfect layout for a dramatic story. But he end result was a 56 pages book, so I had to shrink every panel, make them mostly vertical and short, so I could fit everything inside the book.  This gave me a constant feeling that I`m letting things out. The printed page is close to a A5 format, so the information in each page is limited by the size of the paper. In order to enlarge certain panels I resorted to using lots of bleeded panels and to varying their size depending on how much information was inside each, rather than focusing on tempo. This created very interesting layouts for me, but even as I tried creating an easy flow to everything, I think the more freestyle arrangement can cause some confusion, especially in new readers of the comic book medium. I wish to apologize to those, and say that on the pages I am drawing right now, I am paying special attention to making the panel layout as clean and easy to read, as possible!
Hope you find this book, read it, and enjoy a fun tale about critical historic events, illustrated in comic book form.
Have fun!