Modern Ukrainian «mal’opys» (graphic literature): realities of publishing and perspectives

The purpose of this study is to describe the main genres of graphic literature —comic book and graphic novel — as objects of publishing, its place in the publishing repertoire of the independence of Ukraine and the revealing of the publishing potential of the Ukrainian “manuscripts”.

Unlike many cultures of the world, the tradition of creating and reading comic books and other genres of graphic literature in Ukrainian culture has not been well developed. This explains the fact that, on the scale of its integration into the theoretical and practical spheres, it significantly outweighs the experience of those countries whe­re the culture of graphic narrative has a long history, is constantly modernizing, evolving toward high art, causing the attention of academic science. The prospects of Ukrainian studies in the field of graphic literature are seen in the comprehension of the developments in world science with their subsequent adaptation to Ukrainian cultural and publishing realities.

The analysis of the dynamics of the release of comic books in Ukraine during 1991–2018 showed a sharp rise from 2016 after a long stagnation (1–5 titles per year). The revealed reasons are the emergence of financially successful original and translated projects, the creation of institutions promoting culture reading graphic literature, forming favorable for the development of the phenomenon of communicative environment; the spread of cross-media technologies, the purchase of copyrights for the translation and publication of world-renowned comic projects in Ukrainian, etc.

Perspective in the development of graphic literature, its mediazation is determined by global trends — a relentless reorientation of society from the culture of verbal to the culture of spectacular. However, the modern Ukrainian painting has added value: unique images of Ukrainian superheroes that do not have analogues in world practice, hot social topics that are very important to the mass audience (war, freedom of war, corruption, etc.), unique graphic image, specific functions — creation and popularization of modern Ukrainian mythology. Due to this features comic and graphic novel are able to transform from creativity of some into a phenomenon of mass culture in contemporary Ukraine.

Keywords: graphic literature, Ukrainian comics and graphic novels, publishing market, genre-typological characteristics, Ukrainian superheroes.

doi: 10.32403/0554-4866-2018-2-76-64-75