Mirko and Slavko – Never a Slave

Six decades since the creation of one of the most important Yugoslav comics ‘Mirko and Slavko’ will be marked with an exhibition along Despota Stefana Boulevard, in the period from 26 to 30 October, during the Comic Book City.

‘Mirko and Slavko’ is the first Yugoslav high-circulation domestic comic about two boys, partisan couriers, Mirko and Slavko, which was published in the ‘Nikad Robom’ (Never a Slave) edition of the publishing house ‘Dečje Novine’ from Gornji Milanovac. The main author of ‘Mirko and Slavko’ was the cartoonist Desimir Žižović Buin, along with numerous collaborators. A feature film of the same name directed by Branimir Tori Janković was made based on the comic book.

Contemporaries of the comic will know that the demand for the ‘Mirko and Slavko’ comics series, especially since 1969, when one episode was published as a volume of comics ‘Never a Slave’, was the highest since the arrival of the Slavs, until the confrontation with class enemies.

The circulation of the weekly volumes of ‘Mirko and Slavko’ reached 180,000 copies per edition, and there are witnesses’ claims that there were even several reprints when the first circulation of the frenzied SFR Yugoslavia would have already sold out on Friday… There were at least 400-500 different volumes with the two of them.

The curators of the exhibition are Slobodan Ivkov and Aleksandar Gatalica.