Yaroslav Horak's Czech Connection & Me

One of the 'fringe benefits' of maintaining this blog is that I'll often get surprising emails, completely out of the blue, from comic book enthusiasts across the world. The comparative ease with which people can contact one another via the Internet never ceases to amaze, and delight, me. Such chance encounters, while not impossible, were nonetheless quite rare back in the pre-Internet era of the mid-1980s, when I first began writing for Australian comic fanzines and correspondeing (by snail-mail) with comic book fans.

Late last year, for instance, I had a brief email exchange with Tomas Prokupek, one of the editors of Aargh! Komiksovy Sbornik, a Czech-based magazine devoted to comic art. Tomas was writing an article on Yaroslav Horak, who was born in Manchuria to Czech-Russian parents, and initially made a name for himself as a comic book writer-illustrator in Australia during the late 1940s, before achieving international recognition as an artist on the James Bond comic strip for the Daily Express newspaper (UK) during 1966-1977.

Tomas was in desperate need of some illustrations featuring Hoorak's earlier Australian work (little seen outside Australia), and I was only too happy to oblige by supplying scans of a Horak cover for Michael Chance Comics No.15 (featuring Horak's aviator hero, Jet Fury) and the Cop Shop comic book cover from 1983, which reprinted newspaper comic strip stories drawn by Horak, based on the Australian television series of the same name.

Concentrating on my university studies since then, I'd largely forgotten about Tomas's request until last month, when a copy of the handsomely produced 8th edition of Aargh! (pictured)lobbed in my mailbox, complete with Tomas's article on Yaroslav Horak. It's a gorgeous-looking magazine, which spotlights Russian comics, and Russian comic artists - hence the feature on Yaroslav Horak in this issue.

Time permitting, Tomas has promised to send me an English translation of his Yaroslav Horak article which I hope to reprint online, here at Comics Down Under. So, stay tuned....