By Wostok & Grabowski, translation edited by Chris Watson (Slab-O-Concrete)
ISBN: 978-1-89986-610-6
In the last decade of the previous century, independent, alternative and international cartooning finally took off in the UK. It’s not that it suddenly got good, it’s simply that due to the efforts of a few dedicated missionaries, the readers finally noticed what Europe had known for years. Graphic narrative is as much about the art and the individual as it is about the money.
A superb case in point is this slim and eccentric softcover monochrome tome produced in English by the much-missed Slab-O-Concrete publishing/distribution outfit.
Daddy is So Far Away… is the surreal yet absorbing account of two-year old Poposhak and her faithful dog Flowers. The sad little lass stands at her mother’s grave and wonders where her father is. Suddenly he sees the tip of his beard sticking out of the front door and rushes towards it despite wise Flowers’ words of caution…
She will not stop, but follows the beard, through rooms, down tunnels, across plains, under oceans and even across the Milky Way itself, finding along the way friends and escaping monsters throughout all time and space. Always that long white beard unfurls ahead of them, a baffling enigma and a tantalising promise…
This eerie yet comforting blend of fable, bedtime story, shaggy dog tale and vision-quest is a compulsive and brilliantly drawn epic, more rollercoaster or video game than pictorial narrative, and encompasses the very best storytelling techniques of Eastern European animation…
Wostok and Grabowski, from the north Serbian town of VrÅ¡ac, creatively and intensively collaborated together between1992 and 1997; both in the incredibly fertile Eastern European market but also internationally, with numerous works appearing all over the place before going their separate ways, and – as is usually the case – are criminally unfamiliar to the average comic punter. I hope you can find their astounding poetic, innocently melancholic and metaphysical work without too much trouble, because it’s well worth the effort.
© 1995-1998 Wostok, Lola & Grabowski. All Rights Reserved.