Award winners of the 3rd Grossmann Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Comics Festival are Darko Perović and Danilo Milošev - Wostok who both received their Honorary Vicious Cats for outstanding contribution to comic book art, Marko Vidojković who received the Honorary Vicious Cat for outstanding contribution to fantastic literature, and Marko Fančović who received the Honorary Vicous Cat award for outstanding contribution to comics and fantasy.
DARKO PEROVIĆ
This year, Darko Perovič celebrates four decades of comic book creation, four decades since he published his first comics in various Yugoslavian comic magazines. It is very hard to find a magazine that didn't feature some of his work. Before the war in Yugoslavia made him move to Spain, where he collaborated with writer Enrique Abuli, he contributed to Yugoslavian comic book art with outstanding works, such as his first full-length comic Brek that boasted extraordinary cinematic framing, and underwater horror Deep and Cold, where he introduced a finer line to which he will stick in the following years and decades. His recognizable style, smooth framing and sense of narration led him to collaboration with the largest Italian comic book publisher Sergio Bonelli Editore in 1997, where he started drawing Magic Wind, written by famous Italian writer Gianfranco Manfredi. He also collaborated with Frech publishing giants, such as Delcourt and Soleil. His quality was recognized already in 1987, when he received the Polet best comic book award for Brek. For his unique body of work, perfectly depicted stories and the mark he is still making on each new generation, Grossmann Festival is giving him the Honorary Award for Outstanding Contribution to Comic Book Art.
DANILO MILOŠEV – WOSTOK
Danilo Milošev – Wostok is always walking on the edge of alternative and mainstream art. His works, based on do-it-yourself principle, with their recognizable approach and merciless honesty have made an indelible mark on the non-commercial comic scene in ex-Yugoslavia, and have lost no relevance today. With his comics, made in the style of Panonian surrealism, he often brought some relief to people who found themselves very near the winds of war in the 1990s. Using extreme absurd, he proved to them that it is, after all, not as bad as it seems, and - above all – showed them a possibility of a different perspective. He published his comics all over the Western world, from the USA, UK, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, France, all the way to Macedonia. He also published in domestic publications, such as Danas, Vreme, Politika and Književna reč. He is also painting and making music and films, but this doesn’t take from his comic book work. Instead, it complements it and gives it possibilities of exploration of the comic book media limits. This makes his works irreplaceable and it is also why we are giving him the Honorary Award for Outstanding Contribution to Comic Book Art.
MARKO VIDOJKOVIĆ
Marko Vidojković is an author, social activist, journalist, broadcaster and musician. He is a human right activist who is unconditionally prepared to sacrifice himself for the ideal of social solidarity. He is also an honorary member of Slovene Writers’ Association.
The satirical alternative-history-multiverse of his novel “Thank You Ever So Much” made waves in most of ex-Yugoslavia and has even got, which is still very rare, a special edition and translation in each of ex-republics. As it is with all true utopian literature, his genuine literary contempt for what we’ve turned ourselves into is neither naïve nor lacking in irony while it displays a presumably perfect alternative world that turns out to be based on unseen violence. It presents numerous possibilities which were not made real in history. Principally non-genre writer used science fiction not only as a tool, but with deep understanding of its core.
The Honorary Award for Outstanding Contribution to Fantastic Literature goes to Marko Vidojković.
MARKO FANČOVIĆ
Author, translator, journalist, comic book writer, critic, and lecturer Marko Fančović is a legend of regional fandom and a great friend and one of favourite faces of our festival, ever since his first lecture on Moebius that officially started our symposium program four years ago.
He published in Sirius, Alef, Futura, UBIQ, Emitor, Parsek, Sirius B, Monolit, Tamni Vilajet, Večernji list, Nacional, Klik, Inverzija, and in numerous anthologies, such as the anthology of the Festival of Fantastic Literature and Istrakon. He wrote numerous novellas and short stories, some of most known are "Slike vremena“, „Brain Salad Surgery“, „Kraljevska krv“, „Kraljičina elegija“, „Jablanar“, „Ljubav i smrt“, „Timeo Danaos“ and „Ciganska svadba“.
Equally important is his work as translator. For decades, he brought to domestic readers the works of giants such as Dick, Bester, Howard, Pratchett, Gaiman, Powers, Burgess, Poe, Stross, Lovecraft, Heinlein, Zelazny, Adams, Vonnegut, Elliot, Davis, Huxley and many others.
With his wholesome and dedicated work in the fields of speculative fiction and comics, Marko earned the status of a living encyclopedia of popular culture and true promotor of genres that have, for far too long, been considered a branch of trivial literature.
As a historian and theorist, he contributed to another, still rare field: comic exploration, mostly with articles in Kvadrat magazine where he displayed a special affinity for the French-Belgian school and the avantgarde. As a tireless lecturer at numerous conventions and well-versed journalist, he is also considered as a reference for western movies and books, as well as classic Hollywood.
Due to all of this, as well as his unconditional support for our festival since day one, Marko Fančović is the receiver of this year’s Honorary Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Fields of Comics and Science Fiction.
