Aargh!

The Aargh! magazine first appeared in 2000 in Brno. It was created by the publicist Tomáš Prokůpek and the illustrator Tomáš Kučerovský. At first it was a black and white fanzine (a periodical published by fans). The editorial staff’s announcement in the first issue is symptomatic: “Honestly, we don’t really want to do this magazine. But, we have come to realize that somebody simply has to do it. And nobody else wants to do it.” The people that gathered around the magazine gradually became the so-called “Generation O”, which played a key role on the Czech comics scene. The periodical Aargh! is fundamentally different from the other comic periodicals. It publishes equally original works (e.g. by Jiří Grus, Karel Jerie, Pavel Čech and Jan Bažant) and translations, as well as being one of the few periodicals that dedicates a lot of space to comics journalism. Due to the fact that it is not published as ordinary commercial production, the editorial staff can afford to pay less attention to the tastes of mainstream readers. Every issue is thematic, dedicated either to a particular area of European comics production or focused on a particular theme or genre. Among the issues published so far, there are those dedicated to the history of Czech comics, the Hungarian or Flemish scene, or stories by female authors.