Kája Saudek

13 May 1935, Prague – 25 June 2015, Prague

Kája Saudek (real name Karel Saudek) came from an affluent and educated family and he was not allowed to study due to political reasons. After primary school, he started working as a technical drawer and s stagehand in Barrandov film studios. For him, drawing comics was a means of escape and self-realization, originally focusing on works inspired by American comics and without publishing ambitions. However, Saudek’s pastime turned into a life mission. In April 2006 he suffocated and fell into a coma. He lay in a vegetative state for nine years and never recovered.

Saudek published his first works in the magazine Student. They included Agent Nr.00-WC (1966), The Conscientious Censor Svoboda (Svědomitý censor Svoboda, 1966), End of Future (Konec budoucnosti, 1967) and In Castle and Above (V zámku a nadzámčí). He received recognition in 1966, when Miloš Macourek used his drawings for the film Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Kdo chce zabít Jessii?). Saudek created three pages of a fictive comic series, headlines and a poster. His even bigger opportunity came with the founding of the magazine Pop Music Express, where he started working as a graphic artist in 1968. Here he revived the story of the “negative protagonist” – a hippie named Honza Hrom. Even then, Saudek’s love of drawing nude women was visible, which later caused him problems with censors. His most famous project, Muriel and Angels (Muriel a andělé), was based on Miloš Macourek’s script as well. In 1969, 29 black and white pages, out of more than a hundred that were planned, appeared in Mladý svět. The full book edition was published as late as 1991. The comic has a sequel: Muriel and Orange Death (Muriel a oranžová smrt). The two main characters were modeled on Saudek’s brother Jan (general Xeron, the negative character) and the Czechoslovak actress Olga Schoberová (the beautiful doctor Muriel). It was the first independent comic publication in Czechoslovakia.

The second and final film project that Saudek participated in was Four Murders Are Enough, Darling (Čtyři vraždy stačí, drahoušku, 1971). He created the headlines, the poster and a number of covers and inside pages of the comics that the characters read. During Normalization, the comics magazine Mladý svět printed the series Lips Tulian, the Most Feared Chief of Thieves (Lips Tulian, nejobávanější náčelník lupičů, 1972). The series was very popular, but due to censorship pressure it ceased publication. For the magazine Pionýrská stezka Saudek created a comic based on motifs from the series Thirty Cases of Major Zeman (Třicet případů majora Zemana, published in book form as Major Zeman and His Six Cases – Major Zeman a jeho 6 případů, 1999). After four episodes of the series with the same name, the cycle was banned. In late 1970s, there was almost no magazine whose editorial staff had the courage to print Saudek’s comics. A change came in 1980s, when Saudek published more extensively than ever: The Secret of the Golden Horse (Tajemství zlatého koně, 1979), In Yetti’s Footsteps (Po stopách sněžného muže, 1980), Peruvian Diary (Peruánský deník, 1984). In the official publications of the first half of 1980s Saudek’s works appeared only sporadically.

The next phase of Kája Saudek’s work is marked by Arnal and Two Dragon Teeth (Arnal a dva dračí zuby, 1988) based on a script by Ondřej Neff. In that year, the official periodicals such as Mladá fronta, Slovíčko and Svobodné slovo again started accepting his work. After that he started working for the modern comic magazine Kometa. After November 1989, his comics were among the most sought-after by the publishers. Most of his works were fully published or reprinted in 1990s. At that time his comics were published by the weekly magazines NEI report and Pivní kurýr. Some of his work of the period was borderline pornography. At the turn of the century, in 2000, Saudek still published several smaller works, although none of them had as large an impact as the previous ones.