The Warsaw Uprising as a Comic
Uprising: Before the Storm is the first part of the comic dilogy authored by Marzena Sowa and illustrated by Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz. Originally titled L’Insurrection: Avant L’Orage, it was published by Dupuis in 2014 in France, Belgium and Switzerland. The Polish title is Powstanie – 1 – Za Dwien, Za Dwa.
When creating the comic, the authors had mainly French-speaking audiences in mind. Gawronkiewicz signed the work as Gawron. The first part deals with Nazi German occupation of Poland’s capital and terminates hours before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. The following part of the comic unfolds in the middle of the events.
The story takes place during the last couple of weeks before the Uprising. The event as such does not appear in the first part of the book. Instead, Sowa portrays occupied Warsaw, its inhabitants and their lives to bring the reasons for the onset of the Uprising closer to the reader. Clearly, the decision was made by the Commander of the Home Army; the attitude of the already exhausted capital, however, favoured the upcoming circumstances. The comic presents the events from a brand new angle, said Szymon Holcman, the Polish comic publisher of Kultura Gniewu.
The Warsaw Uprising comic book is the first collaboration between Sowa and Gawronkiewicz. Marzena Sowa is an author of Marzi, an internationally acclaimed comic book about a young girl’s life under communism with illustrations by Sylvain Savoia. She also authored the story for The Kids and The People with illustrations by Sandrine Rever, as well as Wild Fern, with its pictures by Berenika Kołomycka. Sowa’s work has been published in France, the US, Spain and South Korea.
Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz is a story board and comic artist. He is the author of the acclaimed Micropolis, written by Dennis Wojda and Achtung Zelig album with the story about World War II by Krystian Rosenberg.
Authored by Łukasz Chmielewski, Aug 2014; translated by Kasia Dolato; updated by LD, Jul 2019
Tytuł (nagłówek do zdjęcia)
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