‘Vydavnytstvo’ publishing house has made the maliopys ‘A Brief History of a Long War’, dedicated to the russian aggression against Ukraine, available for pre-order. It will be published in two languages: Ukrainian and English. The comic was drawn by illustrators Yulia Vus and Ivan Kypibida, and written by cultural critic and blogger Mariam Naiem. DTF Magazine asked Mariam to tell us more about her work on ‘A Brief History of a Long War’.
An offer from ‘Vydavnytstvo’
I was interested in the proposal of cooperation with ‘Vydavnytstvo’, because I have been thinking about creating a graphic novel for about five years. I’m not a fan of the comic book genre, by the way, although I know the most famous and iconic ones, and I’ve read some of them.
I immediately accepted ‘Vydavnytstvo’s’ offer because, to put it briefly, I was fed up with the fact that people not from Ukraine were talking about Ukrainians. By the time we started our cooperation, a work about the war against Ukraine had already come out, but it was not of Ukrainian authorship. Yes, it seemed to be written by an objective side, but that is never the truth, because there is no objective side. So, our idea was to reclaim our voice and tell the Ukrainian story in a visual format on behalf of Ukrainians. I saw it as a decolonizing discourse as well, that’s another reason why I agreed.
When I joined the project, I was a bit tense because it’s a serious project and I’ve been doing public work for two and a half years, with the start of a full-scale invasion. Plus everything I’ve done has been about popular culture. So what scared me more was that I needed to understand history very well.
And I honestly believe that I have a very poor grasp of history. And I also realized from the beginning that I didn’t want to turn this project into a recounting of historical events. So I was a little scared, and then I thought that life is short and we should do something more complicated. And then one day I had an idea for a plot, an understanding of how exactly the story should be told. After that, I felt calmer.
I started working on the mapping and decided on the size of the book — one hundred pages, and how many of them would be in each part. And then it was time to read historical literature. I chose three Ukrainian historians as my base: Orest Subtelnyi, Yaroslav Hrytsak and Serhii Plokhii.
Work on a comic book
At the beginning of the work, I had to come to terms with the fact that I had to compromise and agree with myself that some things, unfortunately, I would not be able to tell.
I chose first of all those events that I think can simplify and explain a little bit, for example, why language is so important for us, the continuity of the word genocide, why it is so important for us to have our own church — this is, of course, connected with russia and how russia occupied this word, why democracy is so important for us — and here it is important to remember the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity, without which in turn you cannot tell about the war.
I would also like to emphasize that Ukrainians have a certain cultural symbol associated with will, with democracy, with the mythological image of a Ukrainian who decides his own fate — here, of course, we are talking about the Cossacks.
That was my logic. And readers who will not find enough information, and I hope they will not, will go further and learn more. And, of course, ‘A Brief History of a Long War’ cannot be called a historical source. Other people have already written great books for that. Our comic is for showing the major events in our shared history with russia, demonstrating the length of its aggression towards us.
Collaboration with illustrators
It’s funny that Google, for the last 12 years, whatever I do, calls me an artist. Even though that hasn’t been true for a long time. But experience with visuals has helped me better collaborate with the illustrators of ‘A Brief History of a Long War’.
When I worked as a designer or illustrator, I was very annoyed when clients didn’t trust me and wanted to manage processes instead of me. After all, the biggest currency in cooperation is trust.
I told Yulia and Ivan my ideas, but always said they were free to do as they preferred. It paid off, because they understood the mood I wanted to convey.
I also think their work was harder. I spent most of the time in tears while writing the story, because it’s emotionally hard to write something like that. And I don’t really know how they felt when they had to paint the faces of russian propagandists and people like that.
I immediately said I see the comic as black and white or with one or at most two colors. It turned out that illustrators think the same way I do. When writing the script, I specified what the illustration could be, and Yulia and Ivan offered their vision. Yes, I wanted some of the images to look the way I see them, and that’s what we did. There were about three situations when I didn’t like what the illustrators presented, but it was about some small details.
Who is the audience for ‘A Brief History of a Long War’
When I was working on the comic book, I thought first of all about foreigners. Because I had to describe who the Sixtiers were, explain in detail what the Holodomor was, and so on.
For a Ukrainian, ‘A Brief History of a Long War’ will become an artbook, an artifact that can be bought as a memento. Because the main message of this comic is very clear for us. However, I would definitely buy it because of Ivan and Julia’s works, the illustrations in it are very powerful.
An example of the fact that this comic can be useful is the book ‘Ukraine: 50 Symbols of Resistance’. It describes such things as the Territorial Defense Forces, Patron dog, cruiser ‘Moskva’, bavovna, sunflower seeds, Azovstal, etc. I know all this, but I bought this book because I know time will pass, everything will be forgotten, although now history is being written, and in 20 years this book will be perceived differently. It will be the same with the comic book.
