Today is Friday, but before that I would like to say a few words about the “Funny Pictures” themselves - this unique case of creating successful media.
The magazine has a clearly fixed birthday - September 24, 1956. That day saw the light of the first issue of the magazine "Funny Pictures" - the first Soviet magazine for preschoolers.
The happy (and large) father was the decree of the party and government "On the development of children's literature and children's periodicals", published in early 1956. A few months after its appearance, the number of children's magazines in the country doubled - already in September, “Young Technician”, “Young Naturalist” and “Funny Pictures” were added to the company “Murzilka”, “Pioneer” and “Kostr”, which released their first issues . This is what the debut looked like.
To say that the initiative was successful is to say nothing. The circulation of "Funny Pictures" in the best of times reached 9 million 700 thousand copies. Moreover, he was not just successful - he was an extremely profitable media project. Despite the penny cost of 15 kopecks, he brought a huge profit to his founder, the Komsomol Central Committee. Employees of the magazine liked to boast that “Funny Pictures” solos earn more money than all the magazines of the publishing house “Young Guard”.
What are the reasons for success?
Firstly, the small scale of the project. In my deep conviction, all breakthroughs are made where there are no large budgets, where medals are not planned to be distributed, where no one from the bosses calls, presses or pulls.
Funny Pictures was created as a small niche project, from which no one expected anything special. The office of the editor-in-chief served as the best indicator of a bossy attitude. Ivan Semenov came to VK from Crocodile, where the editor-in-chief had a huge nomenclature office with “turntables”. In “Pictures” he had a small closet, which he shared with the publication’s answer section, so he didn’t even draw in his office, but went to the common room, where there were special tables for artists.
Secondly, creative freedom. "Funny Pictures" was the only publication in the USSR that was not published. Censors in Glavlit wore all the magazines published, even Fish and Fisheries, even the Concrete and Reinforced Concrete magazine. It was like that. Here you are laughing, and the circulation, by buy-it-yourself, reached 22 thousand copies, one and a half thousand of which were sold for foreign currency to foreign subscribers.
And only “Funny Pictures” was not worn anywhere.
Thirdly, a leader. According to the norms of those years, the chief editor must have been a member of the party. The problem was that there were almost no communists among the artists - at all times this was still a freemen. As a result, the famous editor Ivan Semenov, who was a member of the party, but certainly was not a career communist, was appointed the chief editor of "Funny Pictures". Ivan Maksimovich joined the CPSU (b) at the front, in 1941, when the Germans pearl east, and the communists who were captured were shot on the spot.
According to the memoirs, this former sailor and handsome man was the ideal leader of creative people. I never beat hands, and asked only by the end - but here I asked harshly. And he also had one important quality for the head of a media project - he was an unusually calm person. It was almost impossible to lose his temper. The artist Anatoly Mikhailovich Eliseev, who worked in VK from the first day, told me such an incident in an interview.
Semenov was famous for his multi-figured compositions, such as, for example:
Somehow, one of the artists of the magazine brought from Finland a lead blot bought in a "joke shop" that is indistinguishable from the real one. We decided to play the chief editor, who, as usual, drew in the common room. They waited until Semenov almost finished the composition, filled the pipe and went out for a smoke - and put a blot on the almost finished drawing.
Semenov is back. Had seen. I got up a pillar. He chewed his lips. He dropped gloomy and heavy, like a cobblestone: "M * daki!".
He pushed the “spoiled” drawing onto the next table, sighed, took out a blank sheet and, looking to the right, began to paint everything anew.
In general, tore people rally.
But much more important than partisanship was the fact that Semenov was considered one of the best book schedules in the country according to both official and unofficial ratings and therefore was a very authoritative person in the professional environment.
" Bad brother, you Magyar know!" Illustration by I. Semenov to “The Good Soldier Schweik”
This allowed him to collect the fourth component of success - the team. Already in the first issue, funny pictures were drawn by the best children's charts of the country: Konstantin Rotov, who invented the appearance of old Khottabych and captain Vrungel, Alexey Laptev, who painted the classic Dunno, Vladimir Suteev (classic illustrations for Chipollino, although I do not know who is crucifying Suteev?) , the aforementioned Anatoly Eliseev. In the first year, they were joined by Aminadav Kanevsky, Viktor Chizhikov, Anatoly Sazonov, Evgeny Migunov and another whole constellation of stars of the first magnitude.
Well, the last component is production technology. For the production of the magazine, Semenov quite successfully imported and adapted the "crocodile" number preparation system, built on the principle of "come up with a joke and draw a joke - these are different types of brain activity." No, of course, there are exceptions, like Viktor Chizhikov, who thought up most of his projects in VK, starting with his debut “About the Girl Masha and the Doll Natasha”, but in general ...
Here is how this system was described by Felix Shapiro, editor of the Funny Pictures magazine from 1956 to 1993:
Among the employees of the magazine were the so-called "temists" - those who know how to well invent plots for drawing and can share them with others. Our temists were brilliant. (For example, the famous director Aleksandr Mitta - VN) started the theme in The Fun Pictures. They came to the so-called “dark meetings” with their sketches. The meetings took place in a room with many, many chairs and only one table. At the table was Ivan Maksimovich. He looked around everyone and asked: “Well, who is brave?” Some of the Temists went out and gave him their sketches. He showed them to all those gathered and monitored the reaction: if people smiled, the sketches were put aside in one direction. If there was no reaction - to another.From the "dark meetings", according to the stories, sometimes they came out "on the wall", mocking hysteria. And in general, judging by the recollections, the working atmosphere in the "Funny Pictures" was most reminiscent of the "Monday begins on Saturday" by the Strugatsky - with draws, tricks, periodic drinking of famous drinks, but most importantly - reckless love for their work.
They made the best children's magazine in the world and did not agree to less.
A magazine where, for example, comic books unusual for the Soviet Union were published from the very beginning, and this is not a figure of speech. Here is the famous Semenovsky "Petya Ryzhik" from the first issue:
The magazine, with which the best artists of the world did not disdain to collaborate: Jean Effel from France, Raul Verdini from Italy, Herluf Bidstrup from Denmark.
However, sometimes international cooperation turned into serious troubles. So, at the end of August 1968, an unremarkable issue of Merry Pictures was released.
Where, among other things, was the innocent tale of the Czech writer Vaclav Chtvrtek (how do they pronounce these names?) “Two insects”. Here she is:
And all would be fine, but it was at the time of the publication of the magazine that the famous “Prague Spring” ends with the introduction of army formations of the countries of the socialist community into Czechoslovakia.
Operation Danube begins, Russians, Poles, and the aforementioned Magyars ride tanks in the Czech capital, Czechs build barricades, fronder Yevtushenko writes the poem Tanks Are Walking in Prague, dissidents staged a demonstration on Red Square, enemy voices shout in shame on all radio frequencies, the KGB standing on his ears and seems to be transferred to the barracks position.
And at this time, "Funny Pictures" tells the whole Soviet Union that in Prague there are now many birds that peck Czech insects and therefore need to be felled from Prague.
The heads flew in those days and for less - "Technique - youth" almost closed in the much more vegetarian Chernenko era.
In “Funny Pictures”, as the most perspicacious ones have already guessed, what happened is an ass aggravated by the lack of censorship. To send the number to the printing house, the signature of the editor-in-chief was enough.
But this also meant that he would be responsible for everything - he too.
As the employees recalled, the editorial office had been lying for two weeks, as if the deceased were lying - everyone moved around the wall and spoke only in a whisper. Semenov sat locked in his office, breaking his own prohibition, constantly smoking and hypnotizing the phone.
Then they began to exhale quietly.
Carried.
Did not notice.
And if anyone noticed - did not knock.
Still, we loved Semenov magazine. Loved it very much. Both children and their parents.
In order not to end with this Soviet insanity - a few words about a completely brilliant idea with the "Club of Merry Men" and the most famous character of Ivan Semenov.
Even at the stage of creating the magazine, he came up with a talisman for the magazine - a shaggy magical artist in a black hat, a blue blouse and a red bow.
And then they decided to pick him a company - famous fairy-tale characters who will hang out from room to room. In the first composition of the Club there were only five members: Pencil, Pinocchio, Chipollino, Petrushka and Gurvinek.
And in the very first issue of young readers they began to acquaint them with, naturally, starting with a permanent chairman.
Semenov’s comrades would know that their random notion, made on their knees, will become a real cultural phenomenon, that they will make cartoons and write scientific articles about the Club of Cheerful Men, that several generations of people will grow on it.
People who draw philosophical cartoons today, I would say. Like this one, which I call the Living and the Dead.
The pencil starred in five cartoons,
became the hero of countless books
And to this day remains the mascot of the magazine "Funny Pictures" and the most famous creation of the great children's artist Ivan Semenov.
It is no coincidence, for example, that Viktor Chizhikov, who began working in Veselnye Kartinki as a third-year student at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, invariably painted his teacher with his favorite character. For example:
Or here:
It is curious that on the other side of the Earth, in Australia, lives the twin brother of our Pencil. Also in a blouse and with a bow.
Anticipating unavoidable questions - our Pencil is three years older, an Australian magical artist appeared in 1959. The clone’s name is Mr. Squiggle, and he was the star of the show of the same name, which had been on Australian television for forty years, from 1959 to 1999.
Mr. Squiggle is a puppet with a pencil instead of a nose, which first drew up the “little fools” sent by the children and made full-fledged pictures of them, and then grew to his own hour and a half show with invited guests and concert numbers.
In February 2019, grateful Australians issued a series of two-dollar coins to mark the 60th anniversary of the cult character of their childhood.
And our Pencil on its anniversary did not even receive a postage stamp.
All memory - only sincere gratitude of the former October people for a happy childhood.