This year, the KOMA International Comics Festival has announced the KOMA Opencall, or open comics challenge - an original comic on the theme of COUPLE. We will present the selected comics and their authors, who work professionally and as a hobby, in a special section.


VIKTÓRIA BARCZIOVÁ (SK) – NIGHT SHIFT
Oliver, a gas station employee on the night shift, suddenly falls asleep. He only realizes he is dreaming after an encounter with a colleague who comes to relieve him in the morning. In his vivid dream, he unexpectedly meets his double.
Viktória Barcziová was born and lives in Bratislava. Since childhood she has been involved in graphic design, art and free maba, which led her to study at the Jozef Vydra School of Art in Bratislava, where she will soon graduate. After high school she wants to focus on illustration and concept art.


HATIYE GARIP (TR) – HIDDEN PEOPLE
Hidden People or Huldufólk is a short comic about the double lives of three invisible characters. The story is inspired by Icelandic folk tales. Today, many Icelandic people still believe the hidden people exist, and they can see them. The characters cannot be seen in the comic, but the locations and speech bubbles indicate that they are alive. The orange[1]framed pages on the left take place in eastern Iceland. The blue-framed pages on the right happen in several countries and cities such as Istanbul, Copenhagen, Malmö, and Stockholm. Two different ambient sounds accompany and greet these double life sequences.
Hatiye Garip is an illustrator, comic artist, and designer in Istanbul, Turkey. She likes to draw birds, flowers and ordinary moments. Her works have been exhibited and published in many countries, including Portugal, Belgium, Lithuania, South Korea, the USA, the UK, etc. She was an Adobe Creative Residency Community Fund recipient in 2020. Garip completed a picture book, Making My Own Way, focusing on her childhood memories of her grandmother in 2021. She is currently working on her new poetic and accessible comic book, The Land of Uncertainty, that will be published soon in the UK. You can see her work at hatiyegarip.com. Ambient sounds created and edited by Franklin Brice (EKADEK)


VIKTÓRIA BARCZIOVÁ (SK) – NIGHT SHIFT
Oliver, a gas station employee on the night shift, suddenly falls asleep. He only realizes he is dreaming after an encounter with a colleague who comes to relieve him in the morning. In his vivid dream, he unexpectedly meets his double.
Viktória Barcziová was born and lives in Bratislava. Since childhood she has been involved in graphic design, art and free maba, which led her to study at the Jozef Vydra School of Art in Bratislava, where she will soon graduate. After high school she wants to focus on illustration and concept art.


ANNA ČANÍKOVÁ (CZ) – WHERE THE SUN DISAPPEARED
Comic strips about the interactions of a normal gentleman and an abnormal sun. These two experience various unusual situations with each other. The sun in the man's life disappears when it is needed, appears where it shouldn't, and transforms into things that are not originally suns at all. Each strip is inspired by a human emotion.
Anna Čaníková (1996, Zlín) She works as a graphic designer, but since childhood she dreamed of becoming a rentier and drawing comics and pretty pictures without worrying about money. She lives in Prague, where she doesn't know anyone and hopes that there will be someone nice to be friends with at the festival. She likes peas, sweets and interesting facts about animals. She doesn't like cold and dill.


LENKA HOLÁ (CZ) – SIMON SANKARI
The number two appears in the comic not only in the context of the friendship between the two boys, but also in connection with the inner split of the main character Simon. In his imagination, he acts like a hr-din, but in reality fear wins out.
Lenka Holá (2001, Liberec) Student of the 2nd year of the studio of comics and illustration for children at the Academy of Fine Arts in Plzeň, she has so far focused only on illustration. It was only in the studio that she became enthusiastic about comics. Simon Sankari was the first comics, but definitely not the last.


LENKA KOŠUTOVÁ (CZ) – BLOW AWAY
When his friend is suddenly about to move out, a young student decides to reveal his feelings. The confrontation ends exactly as he feared.
Lenka Košutová (1998, Prague) has been drawing since childhood and believes in work over talent. She is currently studying at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art, where she likes to create comics. Her work has been nominated for the Muriel Award for student comics, among others.


JAN MACKŮ (CZ) – FECAL VEHICLE PÉŤA
Péťa is an ordinary fecal vehicle living a normal life. He travels around the countryside with his owner Honza and sucks the contents of the latrines. One day, however, he realizes that he misses a lady in his life who shares his passion for sucking poop. That's when Joan comes in. Will it be love at first sight? Or is Péťa doomed to a lonely life with his tongue at the bottom of the latrine?
Jan Macků (1996, České Budějovice) is currently finishing his Master's degree at the Studio of Comics and Illustration for Children at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art in Pilsen. He is also a member of the comics group MYMO.


MY LINH NGUYEN (CZ) – UPSIDE DOWN
We live in a society that judges people by their appearance and body image. People are forced to look the way society and the media see fit. But what is happening on the other side, the so-called reverse side?
My Linh Nguyen (2000, Český Krumlov) is studying at the Studio of Comics and Illustration for Children under the guidance of MgA. Marie Kohoutová at the Faculty of Design and Art Ladislav Sutnar in Pilsen. Originally from Vyšší Brod, she studied painting at the SUPŠ St. Agnes of Bohemia in Český Krumlov, where she became interested in comics and its creation.


DAVID PETRŽELKA (CZ) – POOR WOLF
They ripped his stomach twice, filled it with stones and threw it down the well. They had him boiled and called him stupid. They made him smoke a cigarette backwards. He was just trying to survive. Naturally... he's an animal. The story of the wolf, who's getting a little sad about it all.
David Petrželka (2000, Boskovice) studies acting at the DAMU in Prague. He likes to create comics and would like to devote his life to them. But to be Batman, like his uncle Christian Bale... he'd love to.


VOJTĚCH POLÁK (CZ) – BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Marek is a boy who escapes into the world of virtual games. He thinks that he will find everything in the game that he would not get in the real world, so he stays locked in his room for days. He is snapped out of this belief by his indignant mother, who sends him out to take out the garbage. A new world appears before Mark's eyes.
Drawing has been an inseparable part of Vojtěch Polák (2001, Náchod) since his early years. However, he became interested in creating comics and illustrations only in high school. He is currently studying at the Studio of Comics and Illustration for Children at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art in Pilsen. He enjoys improving his skills in creating his own short comics and illustrations.


ADAM ROSKOVEC (CZ) – PROJECT BROTHERHOOD
Adam Roskovec (2000, Jablonec nad Nisou) has enjoyed drawing since he was a child and his dislike of reading soon led him to comics. He was influenced by works such as Hell Boy, The Hobbit or The Way There and Back Again and Fan. He is currently studying at the Studio of Comics and Illustration for Children at the Faculty of Design and Art Ladislav Sutnar in Pilsen.
Do you know the feeling when a strange drunk starts talking to you out of the blue? So next time, drive him away before he gets you involved in his own problems, like it happened to our hero. The evidence of a secret government program that may have mistaken a clone for the original should not be known to outsiders.


RENÁTA ŘEHÁKOVÁ (CZ) – THE FIRST AGE OF FOREST
The comic The First Age of the Forest captures the primordial duality of this world in all its beauty. The ancient spirit gives life to the forest through its own self-sacrifice. He walks through his work as the creator, but with the flourishing life, death also walks hand in hand, becoming part of the endless cycle of age.
Renáta Řeháková (1996, Zlín) comes from Zlín, where she has lived her entire life so far. The slower pace of the village, the peace and quiet and fairy tale books have influenced her so much that she has been writing since she was a child, and she cannot do without proper illustrations. Thanks to this, she gradually worked her way up to comics. Now she is studying for a master's degree at the Faculty of Education in Brno. Here she has combined two great matters of the heart - Czech language and art education.


MARTIN TOUL (CZ) – THE TIME IS NOW
The comic plays out an absurd situation where a man "fires" his double because he has grown old and fat (just like the man himself), and is therefore not representative enough for today's hectic times, which are so attached to appearance and other "surfaces".
Martin Toul (1983 in Boskovice) is a graduate of screenwriting at FAMU. Currently he makes his living by making TV trailers. Apart from writing, he is also a visual artist under the pseudonym Matto. Among other things, he creates a series of strips with "Fingerprints", i.e. the little characters that have a fingerprint instead of a face.


KAROLÍNA VILÍMOVSKÁ (CZ) – LOVE?
The question of love projected in a silent comic. Everything from cosmic bodies, to human beings on earth and birds in the sky, to the smallest snail in the grass, is subject to mutual gravity, attraction. What is love? What is it? How does it change and affect us?
Karolína Vilímovská (1999, Prague) is a student at the Master's degree in the comics studio at the Faculty of Design and Art Ladislav Sutnar in Pilsen. Since childhood she has been interested in nature and natural science, which is reflected in her work. She is an illustrator of digital and traditional illustrations.


PROKOP WILHELM (CZ) – DOPPELGANGER
The Doppelganger is about the disintegration of man in time and the confrontation with his idealised past self.
Prokop Wilhelm (1981, Prague) became fully acquainted with comics during his year-long stay in the USA in 1991. From then on he wanted to make comics, but since there was no suitable school here, he studied animation first in Písek and then at FAMU. Now he is a filmmaker, but comics are his constant love.


KATARÍNA CHLEBNIČANOVÁ (SK) – LONG TIME, LONG SLEEP
The need for action, intuitive, unadorned and a little crazy, from our fantasies, dreams and imaginations. Exploring and questioning. The need or closeness, relationship, deeds, desires. At the cost of strangeness, of difference. Certainties turn into insecurities and so on and so forth. In this, the body catches up with the head. Sight becomes hardened. A life of interactions, attempts and errors is always funnier than without them. The theme of the comic was pulled out of a drawer where it had been put since 2016.
KATARÍNA CHLEBNIČANOVÁ graduated from the Department of Graphic Arts and Other Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, where she also lives and works.