The 34th Comic and Games Festival in Łódź has just concluded. In 1991, at a time when no one knew what the new, “Western” reality in Łódź would look like, the National Convention of Comic Creators appeared. Comics, a quintessentially Western form, are now ubiquitous but still associated with the West and its immersion in an excess of images. Characteristics so typical for Western mentality, such as irony and a tendency to satirically “exaggerate” any depiction of reality, find perfect expression in comics. Comics are a kind of play with what is established, fixed, and inviolable. They are part fairy tale, part baloney, and part blunt accuracy. They are as much a form of narration as they are visual. Notice how, every now and then, some “serious” part of everyday life starts to resemble a comic strip. The end of an election campaign effortlessly turns almost all social life into a comic. A significant portion of the citizens would vote for enshrining the constitution in comic form. For many, the Decalogue is a comic form, given its simplicity and frame-by-frame structure.
The variety of types, genres, trends, and fashions in comics, as seen in successive editions of the Łódź festival, is immense. Among the many awards given in Łódź, the award for the comic strip, an elementary, brief, laconic form consisting of three to five frames (5 x 5 cm), is noteworthy. The award, given for the second time in collaboration with the Przekrój Foundation in the Zbigniew Lengren competition, is the Professor Filutek statue. Professor Filutek, a character created and drawn by Lengren for Przekrój for over half a century (from 1948 to 2001), did everything he could to change the Eastern reality into something better. Perhaps that’s why his adventures were popular in such amiable countries as East Germany (where several booklets of his Przekrój adventures were published), People’s Republic of China, Czechoslovakia, and even the USSR. In the sixties, the solitary Professor found a dog, Filuś, and for forty years, they stuck together. After Zbigniew Lengren’s death, Professor Filutek’s place in Przekrój was taken by Stanisław from Łódź, “a mediocre fellow devoid of finesse and aspirations, a lover of beer and television, created by the outstanding satirist Marek Raczkowski”. Well, Łódź has always been at the vanguard of change.
This year’s contest participants were tasked with creating comic strips related to the elements. Przemysław Surma won with a strip dedicated to earth, or perhaps Filutek’s irony? As they say in the city: the foundation of everything is irony. Irony is the element we live in. Thanks to it, suddenly in the affable Krtek, one can see a Golem, and in the gloomy Golem, a helpful Krtek. What is unacceptable, dangerous, and complicated turns into bearable, funny, and simple. It will take some time, but even Stanisław from Łódź will reach this comic truth.