Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland by Ewa Stańczyk

Abstract

Reviewed by: Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland by Ewa Stańczyk M. Jutkiewicz Stańczyk, Ewa. Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland. Studies in Comics and Cartoons. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH, 2022. xii + 211 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $149.95; $34.95. Throughout their history, comics in Poland have been perceived as a niche and marginal art form, despite the influence the medium has had in other countries. This is why most research has focused on demonstrating that there is such a thing as Polish comics, and has been an important part of Polish culture with a history of its own. This perspective, and the overall assumption that the history of art and popular culture in Eastern European countries is unique because of historical determinants, means that historians and scholars of comics in Poland tend to portray Polish graphic storytelling as an autonomous art form, isolated from the global field of cultural production (e.g. A. Rusek, Komiks polski. Od Łapigrosza do Funky’ego Kovala. Historia komiksu polskiego do roku 1989, Warsaw, 2021). According to these analyses, there have been only two periods when Poles had access to comics as part of global popular culture — during the interwar years and after the political transformation of 1989 — leaving the comic art of the Polish People’s Republic (1945–89) as something distinct from global trends. This myth has been revised and deconstructed in Ewa Stańczyk’s book. Stańczyk’s main assumption is that Poland has never been fully isolated, and that global trends were always evident in Polish culture. According to Stańczyk, the comic medium was intertwined with modernism and the global culture that emerged during the nineteenth century. The history of comics in Poland, therefore, has to be seen as a complex narrative, a product of both global and national cultural trends, even as representative of the complexity of Polish cultural history itself (pp. 3–12). This perspective is unique in the scholarship, and is best exemplified by the section of the book that considers Polish critics’ denigration of comic art during the 1950s, which paralleled the [End Page 541] critical scepticism expressed in the United States at the same time. Stańczyk shows how Polish academics, journalists and critics used the same arguments made by their Western counterparts, even though their reasoning was based on Communist discourse and propaganda. This paradox exemplifies the way in which Stańczyk deconstructs an assumption that is dominant in the field, namely the belief that this critical position was a result of socialist states perceiving the medium as a conduit of Western decadence. Stańczyk does not forget about local culture and politics, but sets them in a bigger, global context, forcing scholars to reinterpret them as an intertwined web of relations. The history of comics in Poland, even though more peripheral than in other parts of the world, is very extensive. Stańczyk has chosen her examples carefully, but there are a few omissions that would have strengthened her narrative. There is no mention, for example, of the emergence of fan culture during the 1980s. Stańczyk does mention some aspects of the history of fandom in Poland, particularly the recent popularity of manga, but its history extends further back to the period of social unrest prior to the collapse of the Polish People’s Republic, when it was modelled after Western fan communities, and was perceived as subversive towards the state (see A. Nowakowski, Fanzin SF. Artyści – Wydawcy – Fandom, Poznań, 2017). Polish science fiction and comics fandom was political, as reflected in the comics published during this period, which were satirical and distrustful towards the state and political power in general (see J. Szyłak and J. Konefał, ‘The Influence of Local and National Press on the Comic Publishing Industry in the Polish People’s Republic between 1956 and 1989’, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, February 2022 <https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2022.2032231>). Stańczyk gives little attention or else completely omits examples of graphic narratives that were critical of the state, especially after 1989. There is some mention...