Now everything is different. More than a year ago, the disease that divided the world into before and after showed how shaky and unstable our reality is, which can fall apart with the movement of a bat’s wings. In just a few weeks, we found ourselves in a new world: a world with closed borders, a world full of dangers, and a world of alienation. We put on our masks, gloves, limited our social contacts, locked ourselves in the spaces of our own homes and asked ourselves: “Where are we now? Where is our place?” Like Wanda Maximoff, who lost everything most precious to her, we built our own worlds around us, immersing even deeper in TV series, movies, games, comics, books, fleeing from reality, and choosing our own favorite universe.
Today, we feel more confident in these realities. Mankind is slowly adapting to the new rules and sees hope. We have not forgotten how to speak; we still need meetings, communication, and synthesis. And the proof of this is this year’s Book Arsenal, along with a program dedicated to comics.
Despite the uncertainty about the future, optimists and dreamers not only translate world-famous comics series and graphic novels, including the famous Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, but also invent new stories, which will be talked about at the event Presentation of the Ukrainian Original Comics Series, because it is important for Ukrainian authors to experiment and create their own national contexts. We will once again discuss comics as a serious art form, which is a powerful and influential agent of change today by raising issues such as feminism and social taboos. We will also talk about comics as a separate phenomenon, as well as discuss their role in the media environment.