2024-03-01 07:12:53
Illustrator and author Štěpánka Jislová became the winner of the Muriel comic awards with her autobiographical comic novel about a breakup called Srdcovka. It takes home three, specifically for the screenplay, the best book and also won the main prize of the Czech Academy of Comics.
The winners were announced this Wednesday evening at the Edison Filmhub cinema in Prague. The ceremony was moderated by the comic artist Tomáš Chlud, broadcast by the station ČT art. “Czech comics are getting better year after year. It’s nice to see how it’s constantly growing. I thought that one of the biggest successes of Srdcovka is how it got beyond the border of people who read comics,” she said at the end of the evening Jislova.
Ladislava Sutnar, a thirty-one-year-old graduate of the Pilsen Faculty of Art and Design, produced the Heart in only two basic colors. But the relationship vicissitudes in it are depicted in all shades, from childhood and struggling with the role of a girl through the first relationships established via the Internet and entering college to young adulthood.
The heroine of the comic novel, published by the Paseka publishing house, experiences one unsuccessful cohabitation after another. At first he doesn’t understand what he’s doing wrong. “The guilt of the breakup sooner or later faded away, but the relief from loneliness never lasted long. I needed to want someone. With love came mania, and with mania came obsession. With obsession, frustration. In love, I suffered from a lack. In love, an excess,” writes the protagonist in one passage.
In the book, the author analyzes a toxic relationship and the circumstances that lead a person to it. “But for me and for the character from the comic, the real turning point came after the breakup,” added Jislová in an interview for Aktuálně.cz.
At Wednesday’s ceremony, among other things, she thanked her husband, who lived with her during the three years she was drawing Heart. She produced the book during residencies in the Czech Republic and abroad. Now with the prize, Muriel has won another one, in Spain. “It won’t be a month’s vacation,” she announced that she intended to work there.
The cover of the winning comic Srdcovka. | Photo: Paseka publishing house
Since 2013, Jislová has published short comic stories in domestic and foreign anthologies. She participated in the titles Česi, Milada Horáková, Hunting for Macbeth or Supro: Hrdinové na dluh. The comic without hair, which she drew based on the autobiographical experiences of Tereza Drahoňovská, won the Muriel Award in 2020.
This year, artist Richard Fischer takes home the prize for drawing thanks to the second volume of the comic novel Rváčov. Again, he applied his own style. “It seemed to me that it fits quite well, it follows on from various chronicles. The work with old paper, visual dirt and waste seemed quite appropriate to me,” said Fischer at the ceremony.
Rváčov, written by screenwriter Džian Baban, told the story of a group of children from Prague’s Old Town who discovered Foglar’s novel Shades in the 1980s. Their game of Vonty grows into a world of its own. The second part already takes place in the 1990s, when yards and lands are closed or reconstructed and houses pass into private ownership. The story culminates in August 2002, while thousand-year-old water is rolling through the Czech metropolis.
The FIK Illustration and Comics Festival in Ústí nad Labem was awarded for the contribution of comics, where artists from the world of contemporary illustration, comics and video games, talented students and important creators from the Czech Republic and Germany perform.
Kateřina Illnerová won in the Best Short Comic category for her publication Schovanec from the catalog of the Czech-German Comic Symposium. Petra Josefína Stibitzová and Jana Šrámková were nominated in the children’s category for the complete edition of all Matilda and Růžova vlk comic stories published by Raketa magazine.
According to the jury, the best translated comic was published by the Crew publishing house, it is the title Akira 6 by Katsuhira Otomo. The award for translation goes to Marie Voslářová with the first full-color comic by the Swedish author Liv Strömquist, entitled In the Mirror Hall. The Magnesia prize for the best student comic was then won by Martin Schütz for his bachelor’s thesis in the form of an author’s book in the form of the comic Trať.
Jiří Hromádko, the 85-year-old screenwriter of the series Blue Five, Robinson and Adventures with Heracles, was inducted into the Hall of Fame. “We were young and we missed the Fast Arrows. In the crisis years, to use the vocabulary of the time, we missed the tuplevans,” he recalled of the time when only pioneering comics were published.
The Muriel Awards have been awarded since 2007, and since 2018 they have been organized by the Czech Academy of Comics. It currently has 77 members and is chaired by the literary and comics historian Pavel Kořínek. In addition to him, the jury of this year’s 17th edition was made up of artist David Böhm, screenwriter Markéta Hajská, translator Viktor Janiš and journalist Tomáš Stejskal.
Winners of the 2024 Muriel Awards
Prize of the Czech Academy of Comics
Štěpánka Jislová – Srdcovka
Best comic book ever
Štěpánka Jislová – Srdcovka
Drawing
Richard Fischer – Rváčov 2
Screenplay
Štěpánka Jislová – Srdcovka
Short comic
Kateřina Illnerová – Schovanec
Comic book for children
Petra Josefína Stibitzová and Jana Šrámková – Matylda and the Pink Wolf
Translation comic
Katsuhiro Otomo: Akira 6
Translation
Marie Voslářová – In the hall of mirrors
Magnesia Award for Best Student Comic
Martin Schütz – Track
A contribution to Czech comics
FIK Illustration and Comics Festival in Ústí nad Labem
Hall of Fame
Jiří Hromádko