comics / Bosnian Flat Dog

 

¨ Max Andersson and Lars Sjunnesson take us on a funny
but very disturbing excursion through a traumatized Balkan landscape populated by a number of traumatized Bosnian psyches. Absurdist and surreal the story might be, but it touched the raw nerve of truth, making me wince with remembrances of my own time in Sarajevo.¨

- Joe Sacco

Page from album published in English, French, German, Swedish, Italian, Czech, Bosnian and Serbian.

The 1999 Nato bombing of Serbia.
A grenade shell from a Sarajevo souvenir shop.
A refrigerator with the frozen mummy of Tito.
These serve as the starting point for a journey further and further down the collective subconscious of the Balkans, where the borders between dream and reality are uprooted and redrawn until they form a tale as exciting as it is fantastic, a tale which could be about our times and a torn Europe but just as well might be an exploration voyage into the psyches of its authors or a discussion about the essence of drawing.

In May 1999 Max Andersson and Lars Sjunnesson, while attending a convention for alternative comics in Ljubljana, Slovenia, suddenly found themselves drawn into a chain of unpredictable events which took them on the road through Croatia and Republika Srpska all the way to Sarajevo in Bosnia, accompanied by the sound of NATO planes bombing nearby Serbia. Their experiences led to the creation of the comics project BOSNIAN FLAT DOG, which tries to recapitulate the story as faithfully as possible. In an effort to achieve the highest level of realism the two artists decided to draw every single panel and write every line of dialogue together, a project which ended up taking them four years.

The book BOSNIAN FLAT DOG, which includes an illustrated glossary, photos and detailed maps, is available in Swedish, German, English, Italian, French, Czech and Slovenian editions.

The story has also been published, chapter-wise or in its entirety, in the magazines Death & Candy (U.S, issues #2, 3, 4), Stripburger (Slovenia, issues #29, 32, 36, 37), Libra Libera (Croatia, #11), Knjiga Fabrika (Serbia), ALBUM (Bosnia-Herzegovina, issue #23), Inguine Mah!gazine (Italy, issues #2, 4), Quadrado (Portugal, issue #6).

Days with the Mummy of Tito by Jerry Lasota
Read article and interview

 

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