Anthropos 56 (1): 127–150 | issn0587-5161 | e-issn2630-4082 Graphic Memories of Yugoslav Wars: Rat by Đo & Dju and Vojna by Goran Duplancic Tanja Petrovic Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia tanja.petrovic@zrc-sazu.si ©2024Tanja Petrovic Abstract. Starting from the capacity of comics to simultaneously con-firmandchallengedominantnarrativesofwarandconflict,thisarticle discusses graphic narratives of the wars in which socialist Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s. It outlines an arc of the comic production related to the Yugoslav wars, from those which emerged in the course of the wars, to those made and published with a temporal distance. Such a broad temporal arc offers a lens for understanding the ways in which comics relate to different layers of memory of wars and what they add to other narratives about war experiences. The central part of the article is dedicated to the discussion of two comic books that poignantlyaddressquestionsofthesubjectiveexperienceofsoldiering in the 1990s, but also the generational experience of war and trauma: Rat (The War) by Đo & Dju (2018) and Vojna (The War) by Goran Duplancic(2021).Theconcludingpartofthearticleisdedicatedtothe discussion of the ways these subjective and generational graphic nar­ratives intervene in the memory landscape of post-Yugoslav societies. Key Words: Yugoslavia, war, trauma, comic, cultural memory, Goran Duplancic, Đorde Balmazovic Graficni spomini na jugoslovanske vojne: Rat Đoja in Djuja ter Vojna Gorana Duplancica Povzetek. Izhajajoc iz zmožnosti stripov, da hkratipotrjujejoin izpod-bijajoprevladujocepripovediovojnahinkonfliktih,clanekobravnava graficnepripovediovojnah,vkaterihjevdevetdesetihletihprejšnjega stoletja razpadla socialisticna Jugoslavija. Opisuje in razclenjuje pro-dukcijo stripov, povezanih z jugoslovanskimi vojnami, od tistih, ki so nastali med vojnami, do tistih, ki so bili ustvarjeni in objavljeni s ca-sovno distanco. Tako širok casovni lok ponuja objektiv za razumeva­njenacinov, kako se stripi povezujejoz razlicnimi plastmispominana vojneinkajdodajajodrugimpripovedimovojnihizkušnjah.Osrednji https://doi.org/10.26493/2630-4082.56.127-150 del clanka je namenjen obravnavi dveh stripov, ki pronicljivo obrav­navata vprašanja subjektivnega doživljanja vojskovanja v devetdesetih letih,intudigeneracijskeizkušnjevojnetertravme:Vojna(Rat)avtor­jev Đo & Dju (2018) in Vojna Gorana Duplancica (2021). Sklepni del clanka je namenjen razpravi o tem, kako te subjektivne in generacij­ske graficne pripovedi posegajo v spominsko pokrajino postjugoslo­vanskih družb. Kljucne besede: Jugoslavija, vojna, travma, strip, kulturni spomin, Go­ran Duplancic, Đorde Balmazovic Introduction Comics, just as films, have always been a fertile ground for both fic­tional and non-fictional narratives of war, conflict, combat and soldier­ing. AsarguedbyProrokovaandTal(2018,6),‘warprovidesagoodstory, uniquely bringing together universal themes, such as the battle between good and evil, and offering tales of heroism and transcendence, tragedy and heightened drama. Unsurprisingly then, graphic novels and comics about war are perhaps the most established and most popular genre of graphic narratives.’ With their Manichean narratives about heroes and enemies, and privileging heroism over the suffering and horrors of war, comicshavealsobeenanimportantvehicleforpropagandaandnational­ism in times of war and their aftermath. In case of theus, Trischa Good-now and James J. Kimble argue that comics ‘helped forge a united home front by cultivating a patriotic sensibility that celebrated both American triumphalism and virtue’ (Goodnow and Kimble 2016, 4; see also Rech 2014). Harriet E. H. Earle similarly argues (2017, 11) that ‘the early super­heroes were all, to some extent, symbols of nationalist pride, and Super­man isnoexception.However,itwas theintroduction ofCaptain Amer­ica in 1941 that opened up the comics form as a medium for conveying nationalist pride and encouraging “homeland morale.”’ At the same time, comics have demonstrated an important capacity to challenge fixed narratives about wars and conflicts and complicate our knowledge about them, thus defying the widespread view that they are ill suited to serious subjects, especially those that incorporate authentic social history (Schjeldahl 2005). Writing about the journalist and comic author Joe Sacco, Edward Said pointed to comics’ capacity to open ‘new and radical imaginative avenues’ (Earle 2017, 16). Said wrote that ‘comics seemed to saywhatcouldn’t otherwise besaid, perhaps whatwasn’tper­mitted tobesaidorimagined,defyingthe ordinaryprocessesofthought, which are policed, shaped and re-shaped by all sorts of pedagogical as well as ideological pressures [...] I felt that comics free me to think and imagine and see differently’ (quoted in Whitlock 2006, 967). An already classicaland still resonating example of this capacityof comicsto articu­late and bring into public consciousness what is otherwise difficult to say is Art Spiegelman’s Maus:ASurvivor’sTale(see Chute 2016b). Starting from the capacity of comics to simultaneously confirm and challenge dominant narratives of war and conflict, this article discusses graphic narratives of the wars in which socialist Yugoslaviadisintegrated in the 1990s, focusingon the comicsnarrating the realityofwar from the perspective of combatants/soldiers. This section is followed by an out­line of comic production related to the Yugoslav wars, from those which emerged in the course of the wars to those made and published with a temporaldistance.Suchabroadtemporalarcoffersalensforunderstand­ing the waysin which comicsrelateto different layersofmemory of wars and whatthey addtoother narratives aboutwar experiences. The central part of the article is dedicated to the discussion of two comic books that poignantly address questions of the subjective experience of soldiering in the 1990s, but also the generational experience of war and trauma: Rat (TheWar)byĐo&Dju(2018)and Vojna(TheWar)byGoranDuplancic (2021). In the concluding part of the article, I ask how these subjective and generational graphic narratives intervene in the memory landscape of post-Yugoslav societies. Comic (Super)Heroes of the Yugoslav Wars In the series of ethnic conflicts in which Yugoslavia disintegrated, a va­riety of military and paramilitary units took part – from the Yugoslav People’sArmy(thejna/jla),whichaligneditselfwiththe Serbiansidein the ensuing ethnic conflicts (Bieber 2008), to more or less spontaneously formed units of national armies, paramilitaries and criminal groups – among which a clear dividing line could not always be drawn (see Sacco 2003; Vivod 2013; Vukušic 2023). In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, the early 1990s were marked by local comic production that brought new (super)heroes, placed in the battlefields where newly estab­lished armies and paramilitaries were fighting each other. This produc­tion was densely intertwined with other popular culture products, such as movies,tvseries,illustrations,stickers, etc. (seeMatoševicandŠkokic 2014; on Cro-Army stickers, see Bukac 2021). Many already established comic authors, active in ‘the golden age’ of Yugoslav comic production of the 1970s and 1980s, embarked on this new production of war comics. The comic Zelene beretke (1994) was created by Ahmet Muminovic, the author of ‘partisan comics’ Otpisani (in the late 1970s) and Valter brani Sarajevo in the mid-1980s. Jules Radilovic, the author of the series Parti­zani(startedinthelate1970s),createdillustrationsofCroatianArmysol­diers publishedas chocolatestickers forthe albumCro-Army (seeBukac 2021; Dragaš et al. 2014). In 1991, Belgrade Politika started publishing Knindže – vitezovi srpske krajine (byŽarkoKaticandDankoĐukic),inspiredbyparamilitaryunits whose name combines Japanese ninjas and the name of a Croatian city andamajorwarzone,Knin.TheyhadnamesfromSerbianfolklore(Sava, Radojica, Milica, Dijete Grujica, Starina Novak), and were presented as descendantsofSerbianfreedomfightersfromtheremotepast,devotedto traditional, patriarchal values, having superpowers and far eastern mar­tial skills, but also rich cosmopolitan experience obtained in the crimi­nalundergroundacrossEurope(seeColovic2000;Matoševic2004/2005; Vivod2013;Pasanovic2018);theywere‘ingoodphysicalshape,dressedin modern camouflage uniforms’ (Shymkevych 2021). Dragan Vasiljkovic, akaKapetan Dragan, leader ofthe Serbianparamilitaries inKninskakra­jina, was an inspiration for comics as well: Osmica published the comic Kapetan Dragan, while Radiotvrevija published aseriesofcomic strips Kapetan Knindža in 1991 and 1992 (Zupan 2007, 112). A Croatian superhero from the same period was Superhrvoje (Ercego-vac and Listeš 1992) who came into being when Hrvoje Horvat, a son of Croats who emigrated to Germany and got killed in a traffic accident, cametoCroatiaafterreceiving acallfromhis bestfriend Stjepanand got transformed into an undefeatable stone-man. Bosnian comic superhero, Bosman (created by Ozren Pavlovic in the mid-1990s), fought ‘wild Chetniks’ who attempted to conquer Sarajevo. Created in the besieged Sarajevo, Bosman ‘was envisioned as an ongo­ing story for young readers to bring them hope and a form of escape from their daily horror’ (Pasanovic 2018, 60). Similarly to Serbian and Croatian (super)heroes, Bosman wasclosely connected toaremote, past mythology; in his case, pre-Ottoman and Ottoman imagery and tradi­tions. Simultaneously, he was modern and cosmopolitan: he runs half-naked ‘through the woods and observe[s] the occupation forces moving around Sarajevo months before everyone else will admit there is a prob-lem.Whensnipersstartshooting,heiswokenfromhisyogaritualsandis depicted astheonlyonewhorunsintobuildingstostopthe snipersfrom killing innocent people in the crowds protesting wars in Bosnia,Croatia, and elsewhere’ (p. 60).ą As several authors have already pointed out, these post-Yugoslav su­ perheroes draw from both global superhero imagery (characters such as Captain America, Superman, Flash Gordon, etc.) and rediscovered (me­ dieval) national imageries and histories of their respective nations. They werealsobasedonthesharpoppositionbetween‘us,’patriotic,tradition­ alist, but simultaneously modern, West-oriented, and ‘the enemy,’ pre­ sented as wild, cruel, incompetent, and primitive. These heroic graphic narratives donot depict traumaticeffects ofwar events,butanother kind of trauma often shapes and drives their superheroes’ actions: it is trauma relatedtoYugoslavsocialism.ItturnsoutthattheYugoslavregimewasre­ sponsible for the death of Hrvoje Horvat’s parents in Super Hrvoje, while his best friend Stjepan’s father was imprisoned in Goli otok in the 1970s because,whiledrunk,heblamedtheYugoslavregimefortheirdeaths(see Matoševic and Škokic 2014, 133). The childhood of Savo, protagonist of Knindže – vitezovi srpske Krajine, hasalsobeenmarked bythe trauma of Yugoslavsocialism:in1971,hisfatherwaskilledbyUstašeinLikabecause heallegedlyworkedforudba(Yugoslavsecretpolice)(p.126).Inthisway these comics contributed to the widespread Balkanist tropes of the Yu­ goslav wars as being caused and driven by centuries-old hatred among different ethnic groups, as just another iteration in an endless chain of violence, and thus as something primordial and inevitable. Closer to the real experiences of combat are comics describing ex­ periences of young fighters, whose authors sometimes had a first-hand knowledgeoffightinginthewar. Manyofthesecomicswerecreateddur­ ing wartime by Croatian authors (e.g. Mudraci by Štef Bartolic (2011), ‘Cistaci’ by Miljenko Horvatic and Mario Kalogjera (2014), ‘Savjest’ by Brajen Dragicevic and Goran Sudžuka (2014), all comics were first pub­ lished in 1992). Despite their narrative complexity and emotional multi­ layeredness,thesecomicsstillfollowtheclearpatterninwhich‘our’fight­ ers are presented as ‘good boys,’ modern, listening to rock music and having ‘western’ values, while ‘the enemy’ is homogenized, presented in ą Kosovo-AlbaniansuperheroShqiponja(2012)bycomicartistfromPrizren,GaniSunduri, may be added to this list of national(ist), post-Yugoslav comic heroes, although his au­thor ‘was insistent his superhero had no political message, and was aggrieved that some thought he harked back to the political superheroes of the Yugoslavian era’ (Freeman 2022). a stereotypical,caricatural wayasprimitive,dirty, cruel and grotesque.˛ ThisisalsotrueforthemajorityofcomicscreatedaftertheYugoslavwars were over. They do not challenge dominant binary views based on the idea of the moral and cultural superiority of ‘us’ and serve to support nation-building narratives. The preface for the collection Domovinskirat ustripu (Dragaš et al. 2014) was written by then president of Croatia Ivo Josipovic,who stated (2014, 3) that the ‘popularityofcomicsoffers possi­bilities to show the greatness of the Homeland war to many generations andalsoexpressacknowledgement,respect,andgratitudetosoldiersand allvictimsofwar.’Butthisbookitselfreflectsthecomplexityandambigu­ityofwar, thememory ofitand its effects, showing howheroicnarratives ofwarareinseparablefromthoseexposingitsabsurdity,terrifyingreality andthedeep,painfultracesitleavesonindividuals,communitiesandso­cieties.ł Among the comics produced with a temporal distance from the war in this collection, there were also those which address the disastrous aftereffects of war – trauma, mental health issues, loneliness, difficulties of reintegration, etc. (‘Poslije rata’ (Sudžuka 2014) or ‘Baba i ja’ (Petruša 2014). Trauma, generational loss and discontinuity are also at the cen­tre of the twolonger albums, Papak by Frano Petruša (2010a; 2010b) and Vukovar Haš by Nenad Barinic (2018). Another important body of comic works addressing the wars through which Yugoslavia disintegrated mostly concerns the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and consistsofworksauthoredbyforeign artists whoeither had a chance to observe war events as war correspondents, or to learn about these events from their friends and acquaintances in Sarajevo or other places. Sarajevo and the war in Bosnia were the subject of Her­mann’s Sarajevo Tango (1995) and Joe Cubert’s Fax from Sarajevo (1996), Tomaž Lavric’s Bosanske basni (1997) and Evropa (2003), and Les tam- ˛ War comics The Prout Pictures by Dubravko Matakovic, published in Nedjeljna Dal-macija in the 1990s, abounded with grim and ironic humour, cruelness, grotesqueness and absurdity, and offered a picture of war in Croatia that was an alternative to the nar­ratives of heroism and moral superiority of Croatian soldiers, but also ironically mocked all conflicting sides in the Yugoslav wars, ‘chronologically following events related to the startof theHomelandwarinCroatia,ten-dayswarinSlovenia,warinBosniaandHerze­govina, animosities within the disintegrating federation, but also the mentalities of its citizens’ (Banic 2014, 34). ł For an overview of ‘the independence comics’ in Slovenia and Croatia, see Gale (2019). Gale emphasizes the importance of narrating the wars for independence of these two societies through the comic medium and thus paying tribute to the selfless soldiers who fought for it, but also points to the pointlessness and cruelty of war. bours de Srebrenica by Lobjois and Raimbeau (2019). Joe Sacco visited war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina several times between 1992 and 1995 and authored several war comics (Christmas with Karadzic (1997), Šoba (1998),SafeAreaGoražde:TheWarinEasternBosnia1992–95(2000),The Fixer:AStory of Sarajevo (2003)). These comics stand out as complex narrativesexposingambiguitiesofpositioningwithinarealitydefinedby warand violence.They are also characterized by a high levelofthe au­thor’sself-reflexivityandawarenessthatthesesameambiguitiesdefinehis own position of ‘confused observer’ (Georgievski 2022). Tomaž Lavric’s comics related to the Yugoslav wars are also multi-layered, exposing the brutality of war, the ambiguity of its effects, and the long-lasting damag­ingconsequencesofviolenceandtrauma,aswellasthetroublingworkof hegemonic relations of power that have marked the European continent for centuries already and have strongly shaped relations, operations and people’s destinies in the wars of Yugoslavia as well. The above overview of comics related to the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, although inexhaustive and inevitably simplified, points to the va­riety of discursive frames, domains of media content production and genre conventions with which they communicate. What connects this diverse comic production is a complex, often tense dialectics between the reality of war and combat and these broader frameworks. Some of the comics, particularly those made during the wars and published by mainstream media such as Politika in Serbia or Slobodna Dalmacija in Croatia easily read as nationalistic war propaganda. They were simulta­neously interpreted as a way to keep the spirits of the population high. Whattheveryshortlifeofcomicssuchas Super Hrvoje,Bosman andoth­ers seem to suggest is that their propagandistic narratives did not really resonate with the reality of life in war – the same suggestion is made by the authors who have analysed these comics so far (e.g. Matoševic 2004/2005; Pasanovic 2018). More personal comic narratives, many of which were told from a temporal distance from the war events, are more complex, but often remain within the binary understanding of two sides in war and insist on clear, unquestionable moral positions. As a con­sequence, they are perceived as a suitable tool for nation building and shaping the collective memory in which the figures of fighters for inde­pendence/freedom/democracy have the central role. Some of the comics created in the wake of the Yugoslav wars reveal aspects of war which are lesssuitableforromanticizing and veneration – thecriminal background ofparamilitariesandtheirleaders,corruptpoliticians,thehighlyambigu­ous role of the international community and theunforces, etc. They are often characterized by a blend of genres and referentiality: from a crime drama (Sarajevo Tango), a road-movie (Evropa), and a thriller (Les tam-bours de Srebrenica), to more (self-)reflexive works that explore ‘the lim­its of autobiography’(Matovic2022, 256) and blend ‘field journalism and its subsequent, often painstakingly long, graphic envisioning, altogether commonly referred to as comics journalism or graphic journalism’ (Ma­tovic 2022, 256; see also Chute 2016a), as in Joe Sacco’s graphic accounts of war in Bosnia. Such diversity of a rather limited number of comics re­lated to the wars in Yugoslavia confirms the plasticity of the genre of the graphic novel (Hatfield 2005, 4). Time, Biography, Generation With the passage of time, the comic narratives on the Yugoslav war be­came even more rare. Les tambours de Srebrenica, published in 2019, presents a rather isolated event, and it seems that in the late second decade of the twenty-first century the international publishing market largely lost interest for the now distant Yugoslav wars and graphic sto­ries about them. The appearance of two book-length graphic narratives whose titles both translate as War in this same period thus may seem a surprise: in 2018, Belgrade publisher Fabrika knjiga published the comic book Rat with Đo and Dju listed as its authors,4 while in 2020, another small, independent publisher, Barbatus from Zagreb, released Vojna by GoranDuplancic.5 But,asIwillarguebelow,theirappearanceatthatmo­ment reflects the fact that time and its passing are essential for the very 4 ThesepseudonymsaremadeofthefirstlettersofthefirstnameoftheartistĐordeBalma­zovic, who wrote and drew the comic book, and of the surname of Saša Đukicin, whose story was told in the book. The decision to indicate authorship in this way has been in­formed by the long-lasting opposition by Đorde Balmazovic and the art group Škart to which he belongs to the art-historical regime in which the authors and their identity are central and decisive to the artistic value of their works. In addition, it was important to acknowledge Saša’s equal role in the creation of the comic book (interview with Đorde Balmazovic, 10 January 2024). 5 In this article I refrain from using the designation graphic novel to describe Rat and Vo­jna,althoughtheysatisfymostofcriteriausedtodefineitasagenre:theyareboth‘longer narratives that are contained within one book’ (Earle 2017, 23) and represent ‘long comic books that require a bookmark’ (Spiegelman 2011). My reasons to call them comics or comic books instead are similar to some of those informing Harriet E. H. Earle’s decision toabstainfromreferringtocomicsasgraphicnovelsinherwork:shequotesDanielRae-burn, founder and writer of The Imp, who writes (2004, 110): ‘I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension – the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a “san­ possibility of articulation of the personal and generational experience of young men coming of age during Yugoslavia’s disastrous dissolution. At the heart of Rat – prica u slikama (The War – A Story in Images) is the story of Saša,amanfromNoviBecej in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, who answered a call for mobilizationin 1991 and ended up in thebattlefieldsofEasternSlavoniaintheuniformoftheYugoslavPeople’s Army. ‘Saša’s Story,’ the chapter describing events from the battlefield, is preceded by the chapter ‘May 2007,’ which provides a framework within which the main narrative that follows has been shaped. In May 2007, Đorde Balmazovic Žole, an artist and activist, and member of the artist duo Škart,6 headed to London and stayed there with his friend Saša, who have lived there already for many years. In company of Miško (Mišel), Saša’s Montenegrin friend who works as a taxi driver in London, they sit, talk and listen to music. At some point, they listen to Miles Davis’ songs and start discussing when exactly he passed away. Žole asks whether it was in 1992. ‘No, in 1991,’ answers Saša. Žole asks if he is certain about it, and Saša answers: ‘I am positive. It was at the end of 1991. I was on the frontline then.’ This is an interlude into Saša’s story about how he got mobilized, sent to the frontline, about the bizarre everyday reality of war, and about his injury in a battle. The story is not linear and gets inter­ rupted several times with zooming out to its narrative here-and-now, in whichSaša,ŽoleandMišelcontinuetheirconversation,askingquestions itation engineer” – and second because a “graphic novel” is in fact the very thing it is ashamedtoadmit:acomicbook.’AsEarl(2017,24–25)furtheremphasizes,‘Tomymind, the term “graphic novel” serves to give legitimacy to a form that has been unfairly tar­ nished by its past as a mass-produced medium, or more precisely by high cultural prej­ udices about the age of mass production. Comics has earned its stripes as a legitimate narrativeform. As such, there is no reason whya long comic thatdealswith “serious” is- suesandmemoirshouldhaveanyspecialterm,hencemypreferencefortheoriginalterm “comic”.’ An additionalreason not to use graphic novel for Rat and Vojna comes from the fact that their authors do not use this term, either. Rat is described in the subtitle as ‘a story in images’ (serb. prica u slikama), and Goran Duplancic refers to Vojna as ‘a comic’ (cro. strip). 6 Škart is an artist-activist group consisting of two members – Dragan Protic Prota and Đorde Balmazovic Žole. As stated on their website, ‘Škart is a collective founded in 1990 attheFacultyofArchitectureinBelgrade.Whileexperimentingthroughtheirwork,they focus primarily between the medium of poetry and design. “Architecture of the human relationships” is their main concept. Through the constant flux within the collective, present since its very beginning, members collaboratively work to develop new values. Theyareparticularlycapablethroughtheprocessofmaking,toembrace “beautiful” mis- takesandtirelesslystrivetocombineworkwithpleasure’(Škart,n.d.;seealsoYildiz2022). about Saša’s war experience and commenting on it. The epilogue (‘What happened afterwards’) has been crafted after a friend suggested that the authors add it. It talks about Saša’s transfer to the Novi Sad hospital af­ter wounding, his hospital days, return to his home town, and travel to Sarajevo, from where Saša emigrates to theuk. The book ends with his boarding the London-bound plane. Vojna is the personal story of Goran Duplancic, who in 1991, as a 19­year-old man from the town of Split, performed mandatory service in the Yugoslav People’s Army (jna) in the Boris Kidric military base in Ljubljana’sŠentvidneighbourhood.Togetherwithotheryoungmenfrom all corners of former Yugoslavia, Goran found himself in the middle of theconflictbetweenthejnaandTerritorialDefence,themilitaryunitsof Slovenia who just declared independence. Under information blockade, without electricity and without food supplies, Goran and his army bud-diestakecareof,encourage,andsupporteachother. Aboundingwithhu­mour and details recognizable to several generations who served in the jna, with tense situations, chaos, and absurdities, this comic book ends with no tragedy, but announces tragedies of an incomprehensible scale that unfolded when the war moved further to Croatia and then Bosnia and Herzegovina. Vojna focusesonthetensedaysofthesummerof1991inSlovenia,with­outan ambition to placethem in a broader context of consecutive events inwhichYugoslaviadisintegrated,ortoreflectonthemfromthepresent­daypointof view. As the writerMiljenko Jergovicpointedout(2021), Vo­jna’sauthor‘managedtorecreatetheemotionofadistantpast,makingno use ofthe privilegeofknowing the outcomes.’Althoughframedas a per­sonalaccountofeventsencompassingashortperiodinŠentvid,Slovenia, detached from what came after, Vojna narrates a generational trauma of young men marked by violent conflicts in Yugoslavia. For this reason, it cannot be read (only) as an amusing, albeit tense, episode with no tragic consequences. Drawninfast,sharp moves, Vojna relies uponand simultaneously cre­ates a recognizable imagery of war comics – it shows men in uniform, strategizing,weapons,etc. Atthesametime,however,theauthorpictures hisarmybuddiesandhimselfasrich,diversecharactersanddepictscom­plexrelationshipsamongthem,includingcare,solidarityandlove.Atthe very end of the comic, the reader is faced with the author’s photograph fromthearmydaysandwiththefactthatheandothersoldierswerevery young, almost children, at the moment they were pushed into an absurd Figure 1 A Detail from Goran Duplancic’s Sketch­book with Drawings from Vojna (repro­duced with permis­sion of the author) armed conflict – a fact that has been slightly obscured by the sharp lines in which the author portrays himself in comic frames. Rat, on the other hand, engages more explicitly with the narration of the generational experience by addressing the lasting effects of war vio­lence: emigration, trauma, separation, and loss. It is visually narrated in simple, black and white images, which amplify the intensity, absurdity andtragedyofeventsdescribed.While Vojna isapersonalstory inwhich the author is the protagonist and in control of the narrative, Rat’s narra­tiveresultsfrominterpersonal interactionandnegotiationbetweenŽole, whodrewthestory,andSaša,whonarratedit. Theirrelationshipandrole in shaping the narratives is muchmore complex,though: they both grew upinNoviBecej,wereinthesameclassandhavebeengoodfriendsfrom those early days. The voices of both of them are present in the book and equally engaged in shaping the story, including when their views of the past diverge significantly. From the closing text on the last page (p. 158), which offers the readers an insight into the process of creating the comic book, it is clear that one of the factors contributing to its long-lasting productionwasanegotiationbetweenSašaand Žoleover thecontent, its presentationandformulation.Thereaderslearnthattheytook20months to compete the epilogue. ‘We argued most over the footnote on page 42 – whether it is necessary at all and what should it say.’7 In spite of different narrative techniques, both Rat and Vojna tell per­sonal stories that are simultaneously a story of the Yugoslav generation coming of age in the 1990s, and a universal story of the absurdity of war and dangersofnationalismandwhattheydotoindividuals,theirdreams andfutures.Whatisalsocommontobothisthattheywereshapedduring a long period of time and after a significant amount of time has passed since the events which they describe took place. Goran Duplancic (in Mager 2023) thus explains his decision to start drawing his story as late as in 2013: When I was experiencing these events, I was telling myself that this would be a good story to make a comic, if I only make it through. But then, Ifeltnoneed to putit onpaper foralong time,probably also because after every war ‘big stories’ of suffering and heroism dominate the public sphere, while ‘little stories’ seem unimportant incomparisontothem.ThefactthattheconflictinSlovenia,ascom-pared to subsequent wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, seemed quite unserious did not work in favour of making a comic, either. I actually started working on it once I had my own children. I started thinking ofwhat couldIteach them aboutbigtruths of life and realized that everything I know I learned during those ten days ofwarinSlovenia.Thoseeventshaveirreparablyaffectedmyselfand our entire generation. To be told as a graphic narrative, Saša’s traumatic experience of partic­ipating in war operations in Slavonia had to wait for the two childhood friends to reunite in London in 2007, and then making the comic book took several years. Both comics thus resulted from a long process and became tellableonlyinacertain moment intime and from acertain dis­tance from the traumatic events.8 7 This footnote explains who Slobodan Miloševic was. 8 AsignificantamountoftimeusedfortheproductionofwarcomicsalsocharacterizesJoe Temporal distance notwithstanding, the authors of these two comic books were careful to remain faithful to the events as they really hap­ pened decades ago and to provide exact and just representation of their actors. In the introductory note to Vojna, GoranDuplancicstatesthataf­ ter almost 30 years he does not remember the faces and names of all the participantsintheeventshedescribed,and ‘thatthosehestillremembers werearbitrarilyascribedtopersonsinthecomic.’ĐordeBalmazovictold me that for Saša it was very important that the events from the 1990s were told exactly as they happened, and once they started talking about the war and mobilization, he started remembering details gradually, in the process of creating the comic book.. Another common characteristic of Rat and Vojna, which separates themfrommostofthewarcomicsfromthe1990s,isthattheydonotcre- ate a narrative with a clear dividing line and a moral opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Rat discussesopenlythe Serbianroleinthe Yugoslavwars and responsibility for it. Vojna, as Miljenko Jergovic emphasized (2021), is a book ‘that can be read with exactly the same feelings in all countries from which the soldiers came to the Šentvid military base 30 years ago.’ Goran Duplancic carefully and skilfully draws his characters of the sol- diersfromdifferentpartsofYugoslavia,emphasizinglinguisticandother differencesbetweenthem.However,specificlinguisticandotherfeatures, which indicate the ethnic background and geographical origin of young men are not caricatured and used to mark anyone in a negative way, as was a standard technique in most of the comics about the Yugoslavwars. Fear, Trauma, and the Workings of War While fear and trauma do not go well with heroic narratives of war, comics seem to be a suitable form for mediating traumatic experiences and memories (seeWhitlock2006), duetotheir capacity to locate ‘the reader in space’ and ‘to spatialize memory’ and thus ‘to map a life, not only figuratively but literally’ (Chute 2011, 108–109). Goran Duplancic, the author of Vojna, also points to the ability of comics to tell traumatic (hi)stories: ‘The written text is invaluable, but it cannot be rewound. But one can rewind images and drawings. Even film does not have such Sacco’s work, which has been labeled ‘slow journalism,’ ‘not solely because of the sheer amount of time it takes to complete the publications, but more significantly because of thekindofreadingexperiencetheyprovide’ (Matovic2022,257;seealsoChute2016a,7). . Interview with Đorde Balmazovic, 10 January 2024. power, because you cannot pause your gaze and establish a relationship with protagonists, you are primarily a spectator. In comics, on the other hand, the reader chooses the rhythm herself. For these reasons, there is nobettermediumthanacomicbooktotellpersonal, emotionallyloaded stories’ (Duplancic in Mager 2023). The feeling of fear and its workings are the central motive of both Rat and Vojna. In Duplancic’s comic book, the fear the main protagonist/the author feels during the days he was trapped in the military base during thewarinSloveniaisdepictedasaterrifyingblackwolfhauntinghimand knowntohim from hisearly childhood days.In Rat, the fear is explicitly mentioned and discussed several times. It is exposed as a driving force for decisions and as a feeling in the roots of important moral questions the two friends keep asking themselves over the years. On pp. 38–40, the authors deconstruct the very idea that answering the mobilization call was a sign of braveness while draft dodging was a sign of cowardness: Saša explains that his going to war was a consequence of the fear that one of his friends would get mobilized instead of him, and he would feel guilty in front of him or his mother. ‘The same way your mum feared my reaction because you did not respond to the call to go to war. She told me that when I met her after I came back,’ he says to Žole, adding: ‘In my mind it looked like choosing between war and jail. For some reason, going to the front line seemed as a less bad option. At least I thought so backthen. In a way, I went to the war because ofcowardice.’ ‘So youboth were afraid?,’ asks Mišel. Saša and Žole both exclaim: ‘Yes!’ The authors of both these comic books, as emphasized above, con­cern themselves with the precise and faithful narration of war events. The strong presence of fear and the fact that many years passed between the events and their recreation in the form of comic books (the process of remembering suppressed events and experiences particularly shaped Saša’s story), already signal the highly traumatic nature of these events. However,neither ofthesetwocomicnarrativesreflectsontraumaexplic­itly, which is in line with the insights that trauma is not ‘fully narratable,’ but‘itunquestionablyinfluencesnarrativesthatemergearoundit’ (Jelaca 2016, 3). Rat faces the readers with terrifying experiences of death, wound­ing, and destruction in Eastern Slavonia during war operations and the painfulreality of warinSerbiaatthe same time. Discrepancies between simple moves that slightly resemble children’s drawings, mostly static, often metaphorical (e.g. soldiers depicted as skittles with helmets) and Figure 2 Adetail from Đorde Balmazovic’s Sketch­book with Drawings from Rat (repro­duced with permis­sion of the author) scenes of killing, suffering and destruction have profound effects and point to the inability to comprehend and narrate events in all their trau­matic dimensions, simultaneously revealing the absurdity and pointless­ness of war. With such a driving technique, Balmazovic breaks with the tradition of comicrepresentations ofwarasheroic and abounding withaction and glorification of war and conflict (Earle 2017, 13) which erases ‘all the gore and truth from the battle’ (Kermode 2011, 4). Moreover, Rat overtly op­poses the mythology of war heroism extensivelyemployed in the nation-building narratives with humour and fine sarcasm: in the beginning of Saša’s storyfromthe frontline, there isascene in which,insearchofa place to go to toilet, he crouches in the field with his pants down. The bullets start flying above his head, so he runs back to the transporter in rush. He then imagines how his monument would look if he got shot while relieving himself – a crouching soldier with his pants down and full military equipment on a pedestal. Vojna, on the other hand, does not depict armed conflict, casualties and violence directly. According to its author, his ambition was to recall inthecomictherecognizableatmosphereofservingintheYugoslavPeo­ple’s Army: ‘I wanted to give the comic the aura that resembles conver­sations of friends who meet and evoke memories of their youth. Many people who read the comic told me that comics remind them of their high school days, although the events my comic describes are not really something they want to recall’ (Duplancic in Mager 2023). It is rather what could happen than what happened (as well as the knowledge that it did happen just months later in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) that points tothefactthattraumasignificantlyshapesthememory ofde­scribedeventsinVojna as well.The recognizablejnahumourandcomic situations Vojna abounds with do not conceal the fear, tension, and ab-surdityofwar,but actually amplifythem. Vojna describes a moment in whichGoranandotheryoungmentrappedintheŠentvidarmybasewere denied the possibility to imagine the future and have dreams and plans for it. Between one day and the next, from being the soldiers of the com­mon socialistcountry, they became enemies forthe Slovenian Territorial Defenceandthepublic(despitethefacttherewerestillSloveniansoldiers among them), while thejnaauthorities required them to blindly follow orders, even when it implies shooting at a friend who attempts desert­ing and leaving the confined space of the barracks where they were kept without food, electricity and information for weeks. Several renowned researchers of trauma maintain that trauma has a distinctively individual character and insist that trauma is a singular ex­perience (LaCapra 2001;Tal 1995;see also Earle2017).For example, Do-minickLaCaprawarnsagainstgeneralizingandrelativizing,pointingout that ‘the notion of trauma [should not] be rashly generalized or the dif­ference between trauma victim and historian or secondary witness – or, for that matter, between traumatization and victimhood – be elided’ (La-Capra 2001, 97). Both Rat and Vojna narrate personal experiences; how­ever, these experiences strongly resonate both generationally and within the space and time of post-Yugoslav societies. They expose trauma as cultural memory (see Jelaca 2016), shared by many belonging to the last Yugoslavgenerationswhoexperienced mobilization,draft-dodging,war, forced migration, massive emigration and futures cut short. Trauma also marked the lives of the parents of these generations and significantly shaped inter-generational relations (which is poignantly illustrated by a scene in Rat in which an unknown woman cries and embraces Saša after he is back home fromhospital and tells him ‘Children, what did we do to you.’). The way these two comic books evoke trauma goes beyond the di­chotomy of victims vs. perpetrators, destabilizes moral positions these two categories usually imply, and points to the ambiguous nature of in-volvementinwarand conflictand the consequencesofthatinvolvement. IntheŠentvidmilitarybasein1991,Goranisfacedwithanordertoshoot athisfellowsoldiers,whichherejects,puttinghimselfintodanger.InRat, Saša tells his father who manages to visit him on the frontline: ‘Dad, why am I here? What do we want here? I just want to save myself. Dad, I can­not shoot at another human being!’ His father answers: ‘Son, if you have to choose whom to save, choose yourself!’ The authors also reflect upon other workings of war that profoundly affect an individualin ways which often do not relate to what kind of person this individual is in ‘ordinary’ situations: Goran is rude and violent toward a Spanish female journalist who comes to the base andtriestogeta statement from him.In Rat, Saša and his fellow soldiers laugh when they hear that their transporter hit Fica, a small Yugoslav automobile. Later, in the hospital, he encounters the driver ofthatcar,who is badly injured,withmultiplefractures in his legs. ‘I was horrified remembering that a few days ago we were laughing because of the accident between Fica and our transporter,’ says Saša. Both comics critically expose war propaganda by both opposing sides and the ways it dehumanizes ‘the enemy,’ and what this dehumanization does to soldiers on the frontline. For example, in Rat, Saša and other sol­diers watchtvnews, first on the Belgrade television channel, where the reporter saysthatCroatianunitsbroketheceasefire, andSerbiansoldiers liberatedthevillageofSarvaš.Thesoldiersloudlyapprovewhattheyhear. ThentheyswitchtotheZagrebchannel,wherethereporterssaythatSar­vaš was occupied by the Serbian aggressor army. The soldiers disagree in rage,andattackSašawhenheasksthem:‘Haven’tyouseenwithyourown eyes what happened?’ These comics do not romanticize war, battles, and bonds among men resulting from participation in dramatic and traumatic events. In Vojna, solidarity and comradeship among soldiers is not presented as a social infrastructure fosteringtheir braveness and readiness to fight, butas sur­vival strategy, their last resort and a way to oppose the hegemonic work of war and the military institution. They also expose collectivity and sol­idarity as sources of pressure and hegemony in war situations: before attacking Vukovar, the officer asks men in Saša’s unit if there is anyone whofeelsincapableofparticipatingintheforthcomingaction. ‘Everyone was silent, so I was silent, too,’ describes Saša in Rat of how this pressure works. In Vojna, Goran refuses to escape the military base and go home to Split when his mother visits and proposes it. The Slovenian soldier, Tomaž, also stays in the barracks with his army buddies, even though he meets his brother on the other side of the fence, whoisamember of the Slovenian Territorial Defence unit, and although everyone expects him to leave. Rat, Vojna, and Memory Cultures in Post-Yugoslav Societies If we understand cultural texts as ‘repositories of feelings and emotions, which are encoded not only in the content of the texts themselves but in the practices that surround their production and reception,’ following AnnCvetkovich(2003,7), then Rat by Đo& Djuand Vojna by Goran Duplancic may be read as cultural texts. They engage the readership and thepublicintheformerYugoslavsocietiesincomplexandmanifoldways. These two comic books have manifold lives, too. Vojna was originally published on the largest regional web forum for comic authors and lovers, www.forum.stripovi.com, under the name Na mestu ... vojna! Thefirstsixpagesappearedon8March2013,andtheau­thor periodically published new pages over the next two years. The last, 264th page, was published online on 14 January 2015. From the author’s post on the forum preceding publication of the first pages, we learn that he decided to publish a web comic although it was originally planned to appear in print in the Q Library edition.ą° He enjoyed the immediate online interaction with the readers – members of the comic forum com­munity andtheir feedback,and wasquite surprisedbyanideabyJosip Sršen,anothercomicauthorandpublisher,topublishthebookthatcame several years later.ąą Publishing house Barbatus released Vojna in 2021, six years after Duplancic uploaded the last page on the web forum. The author was even more surprised by the significant interest in the comic book – the first edition sold out within only half a year, and the second addition appeared in 2021. In autumn 2022, the Slovenian translation of Vojna was published by the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences andArts(Duplancic 2022).Itprovokedinterestthatclearly exceeded the usual circles of comic fandom and, travelling across state borders established through the events it describes, engaged in new de­batesinthewaysitsauthordidnotanticipateorcareaboutwhilecreating ą° See http://forum.stripovi.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=43600&whichpage=1. ąą Interview with Goran Duplancic, 22 April 2023. it. If the dynamic, witty and emotional story and numerous references to militaryserviceintheYugoslavPeople’sArmymadethiscomicappealing for readers in Croatia and other parts of former Yugoslavia, in Slovenia it acquired additional, more distinctively political meaning. As the first­hand accountof dramatic events duringthe ten-day-warin Slovenia, Vo­jna challenges the narrative dominating the Slovenian public sphere, in whichjnasoldiers, including the young men performing their military service who were trapped in military bases across Slovenia, were pre­sented as the enemies and aggressors who were eventually defeated by the heroic actions of the Territorial Defence. October 25, the day when in1991 the lastjnasoldierlefttheterritory ofSlovenia,ismarked asa national holiday(see Janša2013).Withabiographicalstoryfromthe ten-day war, Vojna insists on that war’s absurdity and pictures it as chaotic and morally ambiguous. Its challenge of the fixed narrative of virtuous and victoriousdefeatofthe aggressorhad asomewhatcathartic effect for the Slovenian public because it opened a space to remember the days of getting independence outside the petrified categories of national(ist) mythology.ą˛ Mostofthememorable,witty,andtragicimagesthatcomprisethenar­rative of Rat carry strong and importantanti-war messages if taken indi­viduallyor in shorter sequences. As painful ‘postcards of the 1990s’ (Kal-aba2019),theyfindtheirplaceinartexhibitionsintheregion.InDecem­ber 2019, the Museum of Yugoslavia staged the exhibition The Nineties: AGlossaryofMigrations whose aim was ‘to generate a new vocabulary that would at least temporarily rearticulate [...] dominant concepts and discourses’ about the nineties in former Yugoslavia. ‘All the artists were invited, in collaboration with the curators, to choose a term, syntagm or idiom that they thought articulated the position of the work, initiative or communityinthemostaccurateway –ofcourse,primarilyfromtheper­spective of the exhibition’s problematic focus – and they were also asked to write a statement explaining that choice’ (Ognjanovic 2019, 27–28). Škart/Đo & Dju choose courage and/or cowardice. The words constitut- ą˛ See, for example, the discussion at the book launch of Vojna in Ljubljana, 23 February 2023,availableatzrcsazu(2023).Althoughitmighthavenotbeentheauthor’sintention or ambition, Vojna thusjoinedabodyofothertextsandworksofartwhichproblematize theideaofSlovenia’smorallyunquestionableandsuperiorroleinYugoslavia’sbreakdown and the narrative which is the foundation of the Slovenian independent state. Among them are the theatre play Republika Slovenija (2016), and Zoran Smiljanic’s and Marjan Pušavec’s comic Zadnji let Tonija Mrlaka (2017). Figure 3 Frames from Rat (acrylic on cardboard, reproduced with permission of the author) ing this pair seemingly function as antonyms, but actually demonstrate that ‘inthe givencontext,it was difficulttodiscern betweenchoiceand coercion, that is, between the possibility of stepping out of the discourse of absolute victimization and passivization’ (pp. 25–26). This is how the artists reflect upon the meaning of these words (Škart 2019, 169): What did it mean, in the nineties, to be brave, and what did it mean tobecowardly?Toheadontoawaronedidnotknowthereasonfor, or to avoid it? Now, almost thirty years later, when it is known that the war resulted in approximately 140,000 killed and that around 4 millionpeoplebecamerefugees(mostofwhomleftYugoslavia),the extent of the evil brought on by nationalism is clear and why it is so important to recognize it in time, and stop it. This statementisaccompaniedby several frames fromthe comicbook Rat –thosedepictingthe conversationbetweenSašaand hisfather, those in which the officer asks whether anyone feels incapable of participat­ing in the forthcoming action and everyone is silent, an image of Saša on the monument pedestal with his pants down, and some others. Frames from Rat were also exhibited in Sarajevo in the summer of 2023, in the framework of the exhibition Art War curated by the artist Slaven Tolj. The Škart was faced withnegative reactions by some visitors of this exhi­bitionbecauseoftheframesdepictingdifferencesinreportingonthewar operations in Sarvaš ontvchannels in Belgrade and Zagreb – for these visitors, even after so many years, it was unacceptable to publicly present the ‘Serbian side’ of the story in such a negative light.ął Rat and Vojna are graphic narratives of the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s that both offer individualized accounts and tell of personal experi- ął Interview with Đorde Balmazovic, 10 January, 2024. ences, traumas, fears and moral dilemmas. Due to their testimonial na­ture, immediacy and high affective charge, they are capable of emotion­ally mobilizing different publics in various localities. However, the focus on personal and individual stories and memories by no means implies that these comicbooks de-politicizeevents, persons and their voices.On thecontrary–asŽoleemphasized,‘itisveryimportanttocollectasmany documentsandtestimoniesaboutthe1990saspossible.Thatisoneofthe reasons Saša and I made this book. Documenting events through testi­monies prevents perpetuation of myths and legends. Myths and legends are either exaggerationsorlies,they fabricatehistory, and wewitnessthis fabricationalmostdailyinSerbia’(BalmazovicinKalaba2019).Manifold ways in which these two comic books engage with dominant narratives about the Yugoslav wars, traveling from one post-Yugoslav state to an­other, from the web to printed media, from printed pages to the exhi­bition halls, from one language to another, demonstrate the capacity of these individual and personal voices to challenge and destabilize fixed, hegemonic and binary discourses and imaginations of the wars through whichYugoslaviadisintegrated,andtopointtoalternative waysofbuild­ingacollective,thinkingsubjectivityandresponsibility,rememberingthe past and imagining the future. Note This article is a result of the research programme Historical Interpretations of the 20th Century (p6-0347) financed by the Slovenian Research and Innova­tion Agency. References Banic. 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