It is difficult to place Hungary on the map of comics, and it is almost impossible to locate our output in the field of comics scholarship.
As far as comics artists are concerned, some of them did find their place in Dark Horse’s or DC’s outsourced projects as pencillers or inkers, but in general Hungarian comics are not translated into English.
As far as comics scholarship and the academic research of the medium is concerned, it turns out that a lot is done at various universities, mainly at departments of “Media and Communication.” Here, some courses are offered, but there is no systematic program.
Last year’s conference, organized by Ferenc Vincze was a big breakthrough in comics scholarship: it was the first time that some of the researchers who work in isolation could meet and exchange ideas. We have come from a multitude of backgrounds: I have a background in English and American comics and literature, others come from French studies, galleries, media studies, popular culture studies (especially music).
The volume based on this conference is the first collection of comics scholarship in Hungary. I can’t wait to read it!
I contributed with an article on Gergely Oravecz’s Blossza. This is an amazing strip series: for 100 days, Gergely was drawing a strip a day about his life. In the first part of the article I show some instances of ironic authentication (Charles Hatfield term) at work in Blossza, so we can say that I am not saying anything radically new about comics diaries, but the term has not been used in Hungarian, and I thought it is utterly important for Hungarian readers to know about it and to be able to approach non-fiction comics through the simultaneous filters of irony and authenticity. I also emphasize instances when the daily rhythm of the diary project is ironically undermined within the strips themselves.
In the second part of the article, and I really enjoyed writing this part, as it is close to my dissertation, I show ways in which the quality of the line contributes to the meaning of the strip. I show one such wordless strip at the end of this blog entry.
If you speak Hungarian, you might find this collection of essays interesting.
Eszter Szép 