Signals from the Unknown

At the beginning of the third millennium Czech comics have gained a new lease on life

The present generation of authors follows world events, reacts to the latest trends and almost for the first time in a local context it is genuinely free to create, not bound by the restrictive limitations of censorship and cultural and social rejection. As Czech comics gain in self-confidence (and self-respect), they are slowly beginning to explore both the famous, and the less well-known, periods of their history. A concise, richly illustrated monograph, presented together with the eponymous exhibition in Brno, Czech Republic, offers the first complex work on the history of Czech comics available in the English language. Dispensing with purely chronological and historical description allowed the authors to focus on the motifs, personal and media context of sequential art in the Czech language. Together with the curators and the editors, the authors of the individual chapters include other specialists in comics and professionals from related fields such as art history, film studies and literary studies.