Fri Apr 11, 2008 — by Van Jensen

Hungarian Comic Suppressed by Communists Finally Unearthed

50 years later, classic comics located in communist archives

Here's a story about a comic book with a plot more interesting than most comics. Pal Korcsmaros was a Hungarian illustrator, who lived during World War Two and its aftermath, when the USSR ruled easter Europe.

One of Korcsmaros' endeavors was comic books, and particularly remaking classic tales, such as The Three Musketeers. According to a story at Agoravox, the Communist regime placed severe strictures on the content that could be produced, so many of Korcsmaros' works were taken and sealed away.

Those manuscripts have recently been found (including the page seen here, via Agoravox). Korcsmaros' grandson has taken possession of the manuscripts, though a painful legacy remains:

What makes this case special is that this not only reveals a personal tragedy and the loss of privacy in the Communist dictatorship, but also the infringement of other fundamental rights to property and copyright. The destruction of personal liberties went together with the destruction of the liberal arts and the forums of freedom. The author of these comic books was stripped from his property, and for 33 years the heirs of the intellectual properties were also stripped from their rights. Not to mention the readers in Hungary, who had to wait for a generation for the re-publication of this classic comic book, and the readers in Western Europe, who have lost the possibility to get a decent publication of Hungary’s eminent comic books maybe forever.

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