Blog Doktora No

Reading comic books is one of my my favourite pastimes since the my childhood, and when I was little I learned how to read by paging through the classic Polish comics of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, for example “Kajko and Kokosz”, “Funky Koval”, and others (including “Thorgal”, which one was drawn by Pole living abroad). After that the socio-political transition period had began (that was the year 1989), and domestic marked was literally flooded with American superhero comics and franco-belgian comic books (like, “Forever War” by Marvano and Haldeman, and “L’Épée de Cristal” by Didier Crisse), giving the domestic writers and artists a very hard time.

With the exception of underground publications the Polish comic industry had suffered a serious stagnation, but it crawled back on its feet in the years 1999-2005, when it had experienced a boom, and once again Polish comics entered mainstream, unfortunately not for long, and in the beginning of the current decade we entered again a period of stagnation:

Mimo wszystko wychodzi na to, że krajowy komiks w PRL miał się lepiej niż teraz: http://t.co/d6S2KUP3

— DoktorNo (@doktorno) October 7, 2012

In Autumn 2014 the news had hit Twitter, that the cyberpunk comics series called “Staus7” made by duo of Mr. Adler and Mr. Piątkowski in the years 2003-2005 is now available for free on dedicated blog:

Najlepszy polski cyberpunk w postaci komiksu jest za darmo w sieci. Nie szanuję jak ktoś nie czytał! #status7 http://t.co/a4D41CkGpS

— Tomek Drabik (@quaz9) March 11, 2014

Some time had elapsed, before I could read them all, so it just now I could write a review of it.
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This text was published in Polish some time ago, but because of the recent release of the “Star Wars: The Force Awakes” teaser, I dusted it off and translated to English – ed.

1. They are everywhere!

I must confess, that for a long time in my life, I have never watched the original trilogy of “Star Wars”. And something interesting happened when I finally did it few years ago: despite the fact that it was my first screening of George Lucas’s masterpiece in my life, I had a uneasy feeling that I had already did it before, and everything related to these movies was very familiar to me. After short deliberation, I realised that I have this peculiar feeling because popular culture of today is oversaturated with shout-outs, homages and  blatant ripoffs of the “Star Wars”.

It doesn’t matter, if we are talking about “South park”, “Asterix and Obelix” feature film, “Family Guy” (the worst offender, when it comes to references) and many other films and TV-series, “Robot Chicken”, some obscure C-grade kid’s movies from my country (that were tormenting whole generation of kids in the 1980’s), parodies (like Mel Brooks’s “Spaceballs”) or advertisements, what really matter is than in these cases we always see some part of original “Star Wars” to the point that we are familiar with them without actually watching them…

I am not safe even in the supermarket: the “Star Was”-related toys, lunch boxes, rucksacks, notepads and so on are assaulting me with familiar images of Master Yoda or Darth Vader. Personally I am fed up with this all, It feels like being in companion with a buddy, who keeps telling all the time the same jokes that are no longer funny.

For sure, over the time that hype is fading away over the decades since the original release, but hell no, even serious journalists are making references to “Star Wars” when writing about civil war in Syria. God, have mercy! 😮

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1.)It lacks satirical “tooth”…

As I mentioned in an earlier review of “RoboCop” from 1987, the main selling point of that film was social satire on American corporations, the economic reforms of President Reagan and the culture of yuppies. Unfortunately, the 2014 remake is watered down and lacks the black humour, over-the-top characters, grotesque advertisements and tragic news interrupted with jolly music and comedies from the bottom of the barrel ( “I buy this for a dollar!” ) on in-movie television programme.

In the nutshell, the adventures of officer Alex Murphy in “RoboCop” 1987 were a populist and satirical allegory of life of the average citizen, who is exploited by the guys in suits, and the plot has been consistently built around this, in particular the motif of revenge and regained identity.

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