Weird, Old, and Rare Comic Books from Ukraine and my Past (With Translations)

[Nail]

So, I gew up in a post soviet country and just when I was a little kid comic books became a thing here. For the most part it was obligatory republished old american super-batmen-spider-man stuff, but to be honest, back then I haven't even seen those, cause in the bookstore in my town there only were disney ones: mickey mouse, donald duck, etc. But on the wawe of popularity of this new media some homeland stuff was made, although those efforts were quite scarce and died out rather quickly, which makes these three books I have even more valuable.

So long story short, I've got these comics when I was a kid, and for a long time I wanted to make some research on them and dig up some info. Being a bit intimidated by potential diving into deep waters of unknown world of post soviet comic culture I've been postponding my mission... for no reason. There's no info on these books at all. And it makes sense cause they were produced in small runs by small publishing houses, which, most likely stopped existing a loong time ago.
Anyway, I thought it might be interesting for people in here, so what am I going to do is to make a few post where I'll share some info on particular comics, give a link on where you can read/watch those online, and maybe share some of my personal nostalgia connected to them.
But also I'm kind of thinking of, maybe translate those on English, and make accesible here, so let me know if it would interest you.

• Make translation.
• Eat a donut

Show results

[Nail]

So, I guess, I'll start with "The Od Island"

The Od Island is an odd comic that involves:
Four-boobed rat ladies fighting flying space spermatozoids

Yoda Snoop Dog impersonators

Voluptuous butt-naked bat-vampire ladies

Skinny bald alien Jesus

And living flying lake of acid that smiles at you creepily AKA ex Skinny Bald Alien Jesus AKA ex Flying Space Spermatozoid AKA "a Space Ship now" (don't ask me, it's complicated)

And it all is cramped into 18 pages in a way that kind of almost makes sense.
This comic was created somewhere in between 1991 and 1993 by Vyatcheslav Lubenko about whom nobody nows nothing. Despite rather large run of 100 000 copies this book is a rere collective item (from what I can gather). I Ibelieve it has a lot to do with the fact that it's quiet cheeply made and the cover paper detiorates rather quickly. It's not hard to see why people didn't see much of a value in this print at the time.
Despite tha rarity of this particular comic I, believe I have two copies. I believe it has something to do with the fact that all 100 000 of those were printed in my hometown.
If I remember correctly, my grandma gave these to us: one for me and one for my brother. I can say the art style is pretty decent although it always weirded me out the way human faces were drawn. Also the begining of the story makes you think that there was some kind of preequeel to all this, or maybe it expands on some novel, but it wasn't the case.

[Kiweevil]

Four boobs, eh? Kinky.

[Nail]

Before Deviantart was even a thing!

[Nail]

Oddly enough the printed form wasn't the only one The Od Island was presented in. Back in a day we had those things called Filmoscops. Basycally it's a slide projector, but insted of separate slides it utilized continuous strip of film (diafilm) that you wouldscroll down from one frame to another. In soviet times the made a shitload of diafilms covering all sorts of topics, but mostly educational and... childrem entertaining, I guess. You would have films with folk tails popular cartoons adaptations... and that one with The Od Island. At least we did. I don't know where's that film now, maybe I'll find it someday... and I'll be happy (probably). But you don't have to wait untill then because I found this video:

It shows the whole film from begining to end. The commentary is in Russian but trust me, you won't miss anything but cringeworthy jokes about square butts. Also, I suppose, I have to mention the video contains some moderate nudity.
I wonder, wether they decided to go with the landscape page orientation in the book because they knew beforehead the'd gonna put it onto diafilm as well. I guess, we'll never know.

[vothnthorvaldson]

Thank you for presenting those!
I'm not sure how I feel about the apparent absurdity (but it's a thing that can't be known without reading the whole thing), but I really like the way it's coloured.

[Nail]

It's not that absurd if you follow the story, and I have to give a credid to the athor for that he went with his original one.

[skicoak]

That middle one.... That cover is sketchy in terms of it being "homeland" produced.

Unless my eyes deceive me, that's John Buscema Conan art.

[Nail]

Yeah. I was going to talk about it later. The thing is it has no information about author or publisher, nothing whatsoever. but the art looked like it was made by someone who was doing it for years, and the fact that all the spech bubbles were filled with computer fonts made me suspicious. I just haven't done any research on it yet.
But still... it's a homeland produced... shameless rip-off Not proud of that.
But there's also one thing in that picture that was "borrowed" can you point it out?

[skicoak]

But there's also one thing in that picture that was "borrowed" can you point it out?

On the middle cover? Would need a better look.

Would like to see the inside art as well.

[Nail]

Tre right one. Although, there's a small chance that I'm might be wrong. It was a while ago when I relizet it and I havent checked it yet.

[skicoak]

The right one.

Nothing I'm familiar with.

I'm betting that middle one is just a King Conan with altered word ballons though.

[Nail]

I'm betting that middle one is just a King Conan with altered word ballons though.

I looked it up. Yes it is. It was like two years after USSR fell, we didn't have all that intellectual property culture after decades of everything beinf for everyone (we still don't). Small companies were cashing in on whatever they could untill licensed publishers entered the market.

[IdiotWithPencil]

oooooh this looks interesting =o would love a translation and to buy them in amazon. =D
also eat that donut good sir

[Nail]

So I did it. Link to download PDF (21mb):
https://dropmefiles.com/Teplw
The link will be active for two weeks. The material is meant only for familiarization. Don't make a shitload of money of it by selling prints in shady corners of the street. And I'm not the author and not pretenting on anything.
So yeah, enjoy, comment, let me know what you think of the comic.

[Zaboem]

I know some guys who produce a comic book podcast. They will be interested in this.

[Nail]

I'm not an expert on the topic.

[Zaboem]

The pictures which you posted are more than enough to blow their minds.

[Nail]

Idk, feel free to to show this to them.

[Azifri]

I must admit this was a strangely good comic! but what did the author smoke to get those ideas? The weird scenarios and at times the narrative reminded me on some (I think) 70s comics my relatives had, only those had more sex scenes xD That free spirit though, what is that supposed to be? I need a cannabis brownie, maybe it'll make sense afterward.

Do you know if any of the elements in the comic are supposed to have political symbolism from the time it was published? I honestly have no idea so just asking out of curiosity.

Thank you for translating it! Will you do the others?