Hungary's First Superhero Comic

By | Tuesday, May 04, 2021 Leave a Comment
One thing I've found fascinating over the years is how pretty much every country with a comics industry experienced a backlash against the medium in the middle of the 20th century. How exactly that manifested, of course, varied depending on the politics of the country at that time, but that there was some decided negative attention given to the medium is striking. Superhero comics, for example, were banned in Hungary during its communist regime, in part because of Fredric Wetham's arguments in Seduction of the Innocent, which were echoed and expanded upon. The first superhero books weren't published in the country until 1989 when it was on the verge of becoming a democracy.

But here's the REALLY weird bit: the first superhero comic that was published in Hungary was...Revenge of the Living Monolith

Does it seem to be a really unusual choice to anyone besides me? I mean, I can see the potential appeal because it's got a lot of characters in it, which might mean something legally or could be used to test readers' reactions to different characters, but I think they could've picked other stories using those criteria that were better/more powerful. I'm not knocking Revenge of the Living Monolith -- it wasn't a bad story, and it holds a soft spot in my heart as the first "graphic novel" I ever got -- but it doesn't seem like a really great choice either. What about FF vs. the X-Men? Or Secret Wars? Contest of Champions? Or just about any story arc from Roger Stern's Avengers?

Again, Revenge of the Living Monolith wasn't bad, but I'm just saying it's not the story I would've led with and I can't imagine what the thought process was that led to that particular decision.
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