“So a second and a third volume was produced and after six or eight issues, someone said that it was enough. The magazine started as a single publication and there were no initial plans to present it as a series, but it had a really great reception and sold out really quickly. “According to stories told in the publishing house there were some early attempts to cancel Čtyřlístek. Were there any attempts to censor Čtyřlístek or to discontinue its publishing? Čtyřlístek was the only publication consisting solely of comic material.” At the time, comics were present in Czech magazines for kids and young people, but usually it was just one- or two-page-long episodes published as a series. “So Čtyřlístek was a magazine aimed at children from the age of six to twelve. “Čtyřlístek was the only Czech comic magazine that was published during the Normalization era in Czechoslovakia.” It was also accepted as a tool for acquiring reading skills. Comic books were perceived as this somehow difficult, slightly dangerous version of kids’ literature.
There were no comics that were more artistic. “There were nearly no comics aimed at adult readerships. In the 1970s and 1980s comics was tolerated as literature for kids. In the 1950s, comics were generally banned, because it was perceived as something that didn’t have a proper position in socialist society. “It was really a paradoxical situation for Czech comics at the time.
What kind of conditions were there for comic authors in the late 1960s and early 1970s?
“The first story was always reserved for Čtyřlístek, the eponymous series about the four anthropomorphised animals, and the remaining three series were different comic series from the genres for young kids and children.” In fact it was a series of magazines that consisted of four comic stories. It was called Knihovnička, which is something like editorial book series. “It was a 32-pages long magazine, which wasn’t published as a magazine. It was the only Czech comic magazine that was published during the Normalization era in Czechoslovakia. “Čtyřlístek started in 1969 and at the time it was really a unique type of publication for Czech readers. Photo: archive of City of Prague Museum I met with comics expert Pavel Kořínek, who is currently preparing a book on the history of Čtyřlístek, to discuss the ups and downs of the legendary children’s magazine, but I first asked him about its very first issue.
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