Year 2016 review
2016 turned out pretty good regarding comics for me. The personal collection improved significantly (my wallet is not too happy about this), did three festival visits (not too bad, but planning a lot more next year), grabbed my first original page (thanks to Guillermo Ortego), lot of sketches (for this thanks to all the great people I met at festivals) and most importantly met a lot of comic fans! This site was started at the end of this year, and I need to thank all of your for your support and feedback!
I had the pleasure to attend 3 festivals this year. During May, I was in Zagreb, went there to visit the 19th Crtani Romani Šou (CRŠ). After that, visited Montenegro for the first time, and fell in love with Herceg Novi thanks to the 10th Hercegnovski strip festival. To close out this year, Bosnia and Herzegovina got its comic festival in Mostar. Guys from Mostrip organized the 1st Mostar comic weekend (more are to come our way).
Publishers in the region were very active even-though the economical situation was not that great. In Serbia, Veseli četvrtak was keeping Bonelli fans pleased with their standard editions (Zagor, Mister No, Dylan Dog, etc.) and kicked it up a notch with new editions such as Texone, Texone color and Napoleone. Darkwood, which is already publishing everything more or less (from French-Belgian albums to manga), started to reach out more into the Marvel world (Deadpool, Dr. Strange), as well as Čarobna knjiga with their Best of Marvel edition. Komiko, Makondo, System Comics, Besna Kobila, Modesty Comics and Phoenix Press were also pretty active with new releases, introducing new authors to this region. The Croatian publishers were active as well, with Ludens keeping the supply of Bonelli to the Croatian comic fans, and Libellus with their deluxe Bonelli editions. Fibra was on plan and celebrated 10 active years of publishing (hats of to Marko), and kept on publishing fantastic editions throughout the whole year (Hombre, Hitman, Scalped, Fables, Realist). Hope all of them keep it up in 2017!
My highlight was to see a lot of young readers buying comics, dragging their parents to comic stands, waiting in lines to get a sketch or a dedication. It was great to see workshops full of kids on these festivals! For next year, the plan is to visit more festivals (this year I could not manage to get to Serbia, hope to make it up next year, and of course Mafest which was cancelled this year), do more reviews and interviews, meet and reach out to more people!