30(+2) years of Stripburger

1990s. The Soviet Union had collapsed along with the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall just a few years earlier, and in 1991 Yugoslavia followed closely behind, ushering in one of the darkest pages of recent European history, those Balkan wars that precisely thirty years ago experienced some of their most infamous and cruel moments. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia was the first country to declare independence from Yugoslavia, and after a brief conflict (the Ten-Day War) it managed to emancipate itself and embark on the road to democracy.

Let’s come to 1992: the Slovenian underground cultural scene, already active in the previous years, becomes fertile ground for various experiments and projects, and among them comics play a key role. In fact, it is precisely in 1992 that the first issue of Stripburger sees its birth, an underground comics magazine, full of stories, commentaries, interviews and much more that, after an initial interest in the local scene expands its collaborations internationally, soon becoming a reference in the underground and self-published world thanks to its shared decision-making process, its philosophy and the quality of both content and format.

After publishing eighty-two issues (soon to be eighty-three) involving authors of the caliber of Riad Sattouf, Marjane Satrapi, Joe Sacco, Winshluss, Lewis Trondheim, Art Spiegelman, Michael LaForge, Noah Van Sciver, Posy Simmonds, Julie Doucet, Ulli Lust, Anke Feuchtenberger, and many Italians such as Lorenzo Mattotti, Alessandro Tota, Stefano Zattera, Federica Ferraro, Alessandro Ripane, and so many others (a list of nearly eight hundred authors here), in 2023 Stripburger published the nearly three-hundred-page celebratory volume titled Dirty thirty, a thoughtful collection of some of the stories to which the editors are most attached. On the occasion of this once-in-a-lifetime anniversary for such a magazine, we interviewed the magazine’s full editorial staff.

Hi and thanks for your time. Let’s start from the beginning, to present your magazine and work to the Italian audience: what is Stripburger?
Stripburger is an international comics magazine, based in Ljubljana in Slovenia, that focuses on alternative and artistic comics. The first issue of the magazine was published in 1992.
We publish two issues per year, the most recent is number 82, which means that we’ve been publishing it for more than 30 years now. Apart from the regular issues, we also produce special anthology issues featuring themed comics, and several comic books yearly, mostly by Slovenian artists. Stripburger stands for »strip« (comics) and »burger« (as in hamburger), and is as such like a sandwich filled with comics (artwork), a feast for both the eyes and the brain.

You started your project in a particular time for your country, just one year after the dissolution of Yugoslavia and a turbulent time for the Balkan countries. What was the push behind your choice of comics as a medium for a cultural restart? Although maybe not well known in the rest of Europe, Balkan comics have quite a long tradition: how was the status of comics at that time? And the cultural surrounding in general?
Initially, Stripburger started as an international art fanzine which would cover a wide variety of alternative art – from music to visual art. Strip Core was a collective of youngsters, active members of the alternative cultural scene in Ljubljana. We were doing things no one else was doing in our country at that time: graffiti, comics, experimental videos, visual arts in general, all connected by hard core music both as a scene and as a way of doing things. Stripburger was the medium in which we could publish everything that we found interesting at the time. As we were penniless it took as two years to raise the funds for printing the first issue. A lot of its content became obsolete in the meantime, especially the reviews of photo exhibitions and reports from concerts, so they had to be thrown out of the magazine. This is how Stripburger turned  into an exclusively comics magazine. 
At that time, there was no comics magazine in Slovenia, and in former Yugoslavia, there were practically only mainstream comics. We read everything that was available at that time, but we were interested in developing the comics art scene. In Slovenia comics were considered as reading material for kids or for the half-literate. It was not like in some other socialist countries, where comics were forbidden for some time. At the beginning the magazine didn’t shy away from mainstream comics like it does today, but it was the zine-esque nature of the medium that attracted predominantly alternative artists and that orientation was later followed by later editors who kept the initial line. 
Initially, our focus was on reconnecting the comics scene in former Yugoslavia while keeping an interest in the international comics scene. This was very important to us and even in the early post-socialism period, when borders kept popping up all around us, we transgressed them as if they didn’t exist.  We were constantly corresponding with various artists around the world who were doing similar things.

You always gave and keep giving an important space to Slovenian comics creators and you have a privileged point of view in this. How is the Slovenian comics scene doing in these last years? And how is it going for the neighboring countries?
The scene is small and we all know each other and it’s easy to know it. The scene improved a lot in the last 30 years, also thanks to our continued support for domestic artists, encouraging and supporting them to publish their comics and further develop their own artistic expression, enabling them bigger book projects, exhibitions etc., especially since we’ve been the only strictly comics player on the scene for a long time. An important part of our program are also educational and promotional activities such as exhibitions, workshops, talks, contests … We feel it’s important that the new generations not only come in touch with comics, but that they learn how to read them and how to make them. 
Now there are more publishers with comics, mostly for children. We are noticing a rising variety in the offering, despite the fact that other publishers mostly translate foreign titles while the majority of our book program is by domestic artists.  In general, comics are attracting new audiences and are gaining further recognition as an art form. Even schools, museums and galleries are starting to recognize their artistic and educational value.
Although comics still has yet to become a regular part of university art education (more or less all of the currently active Slovenian comics authors are self-taught or have studied illustration, painting, graphic design, art pedagogy or something completely else…). For the last ten years, we have been also co-organising the annual Tinta comics festival that brings together various actors of the local comics, cultural and art scene – galleries, libraries and other cultural venues in Ljubljana, as well as artists, publishers, readers with the aim of celebrating and promoting comics creativity. 
Since the magazine has always been international, over the years we have been publishing many artists from former Yugoslavia with whom we are also friends (such as Danijel Žeželj, Aleksander Zograf or Wostok, to name just a few, who have been part of the Stripburger story since the 1990s). We like to maintain these existing personal connections and establish new ones with younger generations of artists who are creating their own local scenes.

Let’s talk about the magazine itself: how do you choose contents for every new issue?
Each issue is the result of the collective work of our editorial team, currently we have seven members, plus around five regular external collaborators (translators, proofreaders, designers). Throughout the year, we receive comics from artists we do or do not know, we invite specific artists whose work we think fits the magazine, and we also publish open calls for submissions to collect material for the content. 
We try to stick to the collective editing process and choose the content for each issue together. Editorial selection process is based on lively discussions with arguments & democratic decision making. We swear by comics as an original work and a form of artistic expression that allows diverse narrative possibilities, approaches and experimentation.  We like being challenged, both in visuals and in stories, and we strive to present a strong variety of content: both in artists of different ages, experience levels or backgrounds and in their comics themes and styles.
Driven by curiosity, we like to explore specific local and national scenes, and highlight certain artists or collectives we deem worthy of attention. Each issue also features interviews with Slovenian or foreign artists we find interesting, while the Compendium supplement delivers reviews, deliberations and essays on comics as we feel it’s important to nurture critical reflection of comics as well. In short, we are interested in what comics can do and how they do it. The magazine/anthology format is the perfect format to present this.  It’s like a sample book of possibilities, a platform for showcasing diversity in the comics field, an interesting cross-section between young talents and older veterans of comic art from around the globe.

Your magazine is quite well known in the rest of Europe and beyond, especially in the independent comics scene. Was it always one of your aims, to get as international as possible? How did you get to this level of reputation?
We started in very different circumstances than they are today – at that time Stripburger was a peculiarity in the European indie comics scene. In the early Nineties the founding collective was already well connected internationally as it was part of a broader alternative (again: hardcore) scene  and this is one thing that allowed us to reach out to yet unknown artists all over Europe and globally. 
We never felt connected merely to the Slovenian scene and we certainly did not wish to focus merely on this scene. Especially as the scene was so small you soon started repeating yourself, so we couldn’t focus merely on Slovenian comics.  Persistent international networking (we did it before it was a word) was inbuilt into the magazine from the very start, reflecting our strong orientation outwards, as we always tried to overcome borders of any kind, collaborate with foreign artists as well, and discover entirely new creators and scenes. This is yet another reason why each issue is both in Slovenian and English: we want everyone to be able to read it. 
Gradually and with dedicated effort for over thirty years, lots of personal engagement, passion and volunteer work, with a consistent editorial policy and style, a hefty dose of luck, and also thanks to all the artists who contributed their comics, we’ve managed to become some kind of dinosaurs, hardened veterans of the independent comics scene with only few other fellow and similar magazines in Europe. 

And this diffusion around Europe gets through festivals and comics fairs. How important is it for you to take part in these events? 
Making and nurturing connections, exchanging ideas, socializing creatively are the foundations of any scene – that’s how Stripburger started and that’s still of utmost importance to us today. The basis is the personal contacts with authors, collectives, other indie publishers & distributors, comics event organizers around the world. 
The publications circulate in a network that stretches over the globe with indie festivals and fairs as the most important and democratic distribution points. These are the places where the scene comes together, where comics lovers and comics makers meet to show respect and admiration to each other or to start new collaborations. We are all dependent on this network for creative exchange, motivation and support to keep doing what we are doing the best we can.

You are now in the comics business for more than 30 years, 30 years and more than 80 issues. What were the highlights of this long journey, if you could choose a couple?
First, we are (in a) scene, not (in a) business. The short answer to this question would be Dirty Thirty, our lifetime anthology, with all the highlights you may expect. It is the result of establishing and maintaining personal connections with other fellow minded people in comics.  However, one such example could be Stripburek (1997) which launched us straight into the atmosphere. This was the first anthology of comics “from behind the Iron Curtain”, namely countries of Eastern and Southeastern Europe and former communist countries ever. We were the first to present them to the Western world and familiarize the Western comics scene with the Eastern one, again: establishing cultural connections across borders. Stripburek is a publication that reveals our passion for discoveries and our tendency to connect. 
Another very important milestone was the award for the best alternative comics fanzine at the most important French/European comics festival in Angoulême in 2001. This opened up opportunities for connections and cooperation with new foreign artists, collectives, invitations to other international festivals…

And what was the issue that you are more bound to or proud of? I know it’s always a difficult question, like asking what’s your favorite child, but maybe there is a special anecdote for one or a couple of them…
Apart from the Stripburek anthology that paved the way for us and brought us international recognition, we also hold dear some other following anthologies dedicated to selected social issues such as Warburger (2003) with (anti)war-themed comics (this was our response to  US military invasion of Iraq), the Honey Talks (2006) collection of comics inspired by a unique form of Slovene folk art, namely painted beehive panels, or Workburger (2012), which revolves around the theme of work. They were also accompanied by big traveling exhibitions of original pages, posters, prints and ready-mades that toured Europe. We also toured with them and kept on establishing and maintaining personal connections around the comics scene, as always. These international field trips always somehow included domestic and foreign artists that contributed to the book and to the exhibition. This is why we are sure they have plenty of cool stories to tell, maybe you could ask them in one of your future interviews?  

I really liked your 30 year special edition book: amazing stories and a really interesting editorial format. How did you work on this book?
The Dirty Thirty anthology is a tribute to all artists who have been part of Stripburger story & without whom Stripburger would not exist. When we started thinking about how to celebrate our 30th anniversary, we quickly came to the conclusion that with what we love most: comics!
For this special anniversary edition, we looked over our shoulders, plunged into a quagmire of comics and read again our entire publishing history from the very start. Each of us had to re-experience about a thousand comics stories from almost 800 artists that were published in the magazine since issue #1. Then we held several sessions of open deliberation, discussion and selection of comics. It took us a long time, so much, in fact, that we missed all deadlines and actually published the anniversary anthology only the next year. This selection is not a “the best of” Stripburger, it is our “most favorite comics” that are representative of the magazine and of the scene we co-created by publishing the magazine. It features (almost) all our favorite stories and includes (almost) all our comics artist friends we made along the way. Our selection was driven by the wish to present timeless comics stories with no expiry date by a wide selection of creators of all backgrounds. It was a dirty job but someone had to do it.
Also our designers – Anja Delbello & Aljaž Vesel – did an amazing job! Together we came up with the design of the book that perfectly supports the content: it combines the alternative fanzine spirit of the 90s, underground/alternative comics aesthetics, freshness of contemporary design… The included zines represent our history and context, and the back-cover illustration by Matej Stupica is a tribute to the cover of the very 1st Stripburger issue (yes, it actually had a hamburger on it, if you were wondering).

Let’s close with some perspective: what’s next in Stripburger history? Are there some new projects cooking?
At the moment, we are working on the next issue of the magazine (number #83), this time dedicated to wordless comics, the most essential, basic, challenging and constitutive form of comics storytelling. Holyburger, our next thematic international comics anthology is in the works at the moment (have been for several years already but gods of comics are fickle bastards and haven’t been kind to us). Come attend indie comics festivals and other events around Europe and you might be able to meet us there – this is what the scene is about! During the summer you can catch our exhibition in Poitiers in France, where La Fanzinothèque, the legendary library & temple of micro-publishing and the alternative press, has had its base for over 30 years. We may come with a big exhibition project to Italy next year, but we can’t tell more, you will learn about it when it’s ready.  

Interview conducted by e-mail between March and May 2024
Answers were provided collectively by members of the Stripburger’s editorial team: Tanja Skale, Katja Štesl, Bojan Albahari & Katerina Mirović

Stripburger

Stripburger is a publishing pioneer of independent comics in Slovenia. Since 1992, we publish a renowned international comics magazine dedicated to showcasing the work of contemporary comics artists with personal styles and stories.

Alongside the magazine, we also publish Slovenian and translated comic books and graphic novels for adults and young readers.

Additionally, an important part of the Stripburger’s activities are comics exhibition, workshops, contests, lectures and other events that aim to promote comics culture and creativity in Slovenia and abroad.