STRIPBURGER #63 – bloc theme: RADIO
Stripburger’s editorial board has cooked up a new comicosity again: we’ve decided to dedicate the next issue’s bloc to one of the first mass media that seemingly couldn’t be farther from the comics medium: the radio.
It’s younger than comics, but in spite of that its use and popularity quickly gained ground. Soon it became (and remained as well, until the TV came around) the main tool for mass (dis)information and propaganda, but performed really well as an education platform and a field of artistic creation. The radio signal was able to reach many remote and informationally challenged places, while writers and playwrights wrote radio plays and dramas especially tailored to suit this medium. Sure, radio is a distinctly auditory medium which you cannot enjoy in any other way, while the comics are a deaf medium that heavily relies on the visual. Nevertheless, if we take into account that comics too are able to inform, educate, entertain and aesthetically please the reader, then we can conclude that comics and the radio do no differ that much at all. Nowadays, radio hasn’t become extinct because of the arrival of new communication technologies, as some have been foretelling. Instead, it succeeded in securing its niche and a loyal audience in bars, auto repair shops and other workplaces, nursing homes, cars, busses and trucks, at home while the listeners are sipping their morning coffees and in many other places.
That being said, we’d like to invite all the artists to use a comics story to present us their experience, their passion or even contempt for the radio. Let your comics become a homage or an ode to it, a demystification or a critique of the medium. We’re looking forward to seeing how you will cope with the representation of the music and sound in the comics, but we’re also interested in your attitude towards the radio and its meaning and relevancy in your lives. We expect you to find a way to crossbreed both media and merge the best of both worlds in your comics stories. We’re hoping for original, imaginative, funny and elaborate solutions that will blur most, if not all of the distinctions between both media. The gauntlet has been thrown, will you pick it up?
Deadline for submissions: 1st March 2014
TO BE SENT TO:
burger@mail.ljudmila.org
Stripburger / Forum Ljubljana, Metelkova 6, SI – 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Yours truly, Stripburger magazine
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