Alan Ford
(Translation, Yugoslavia)
Theoretically, this should go under Italy, but I can't be bothered to create a new entry in the countries table for a single entry, and that's reason number two - it would cost me two minutes and the restart of the app. The more important reason is that this is a cult comic which was indeed of italian origin, but was never popular nor cult at home, and it was all of that in SFRY and later. There were books published about it here, it was produced on stage in the nineties, it's simply an endemic phenomenon here which is still not completely explained, specially the question why did it fit us here so much better than the Italians.
Formally, the strip follows events around the secret agents of the TNT group, who are a pretend flowershop in some backstreet of Manhattan, who get everything done on less than just spit and polish, whose boss is a paraplegic oldster in a wheelchair, who suffocates them at times with his endless stories of historic events and his role in them (how he screwed Homer for the royalties for „Illiad“, how Napoleon wouldn't listen to him, nor would general Custer). This Number One guy wasn't there in the beginning, so meanwhile the boss was The Fat Boss, who is both worn out and licked up, and always carries in his shawl a guinea pig named Skviki.
There's also Jeremija (Jeremy/Jeremiah, dunno what he was in italian) is barely alive, mostly sleeps in the corner, and when he speaks, it's a litany of his diseases, organs in bad shape, and desire to be in a nice hospital. He's more or less become a unit of measure for sickness. If we say someone's a Jeremija, it's a diagnosis.
The master of tech is Grunf/Grumf (depends on when and where), who uses scrap parts to build vehicles, even airplanes, who invented a boomerang grenade, and always wears the same pilot's attire from WWI, with turtlenecks emblazoned with bold slogans like „who flies is worthy, who is worthy flies, who doesn't fly isn't worthy“, „run away or die“, or „if you mean to win, you must not lose“ (on the van). This last one was even quoted in NIN in some article about elections, and the tradition of making a reference to any of this in a serious article still persists (as of january 2024). All of it is actually in croatian, because the translator was Nenad Briski, alias Brixy, who did it maestrally, giving the strip the specific flair which it couldn't possibly have in its source version.
There were many other notable quotes, like „for viewers with cheaper tickets“, "we'll see, as the blind would say“ or „it's better to live a hundred years as a millionaire than a week as a poor guy“, by Bob Rock, the bignosed halfsize grumpy agent, who always wore a sherlockian cape and cap. He's done in the likeness of one of the authors. Also „cijena - sitnica“ - price, a trifle - is often spoken by ser Oliver, a thief of pretend noble british origin, whenever he lifts something and then calls a certain Bing to fence it. Everyone read him as „sir Oliver“, not ser, sir being cheese in serbian, so once I spotted a baloney (ok, bologna) with olives and cheese, „Cheese Olive“, I almost took a shot of it and wanted to photoshop an r at the end, to make him really a cheese.
The guy in crosshatch suit on the picture is general War, from the „ministry for ore research and waste of time“ (phrase which I still often find on the forum, and at times even in newspaper articles), who is also the source of „and bring also that Number 2 or 3, I'm bad with names“. That I often quote myself, when I mis(sis)remember a number. The guy often assigns them tasks which his regular services failed to solve, at a tarriff of a coffer of cash each time, of which Number One keeps everything and gives the guy a dollar apiece.
In our house slang we have a verb zgrumfovati, to grumf it up, which we never had to explain. In some sense, our house is one big monument to Grumf, or is at least studded with such monuments.
Mentions: 08-VII-1975., until about 24th, 10-XI-1977., 11-XI-1978., 29-III-1979., april 1980., september 1985., 08-III-1990., 15-VIII-1991., 31-XII-1991., 03-VI-1992., 21-XII-1993., 31-XII-1993., 30-X-1995., 01-XI-1998., 28-X-1999., 14-II-2000., 18-VIII-2000., 01-VI-2003., 13-XII-2003., 28-VII-2004., 15-VIII-2004., 02-IX-2004., 01-IV-2005., 11-VII-2005., 22-VII-2005., 15-XI-2005., 24-I-2008., 03-X-2008., 12-V-2009., 30-XII-2009., 31-V-2011., 09-IX-2011., 21-IX-2011., 31-X-2011., 06-II-2012., 05-V-2012., 31-XII-2012., 02-VI-2013., 04-V-2014., 10-XI-2015., 12-X-2023., 31-V-2024., 11-VIII-2024., 28-IX-2024., 07-X-2024., 05-III-2025., 28-IV-2025., 01-XI-2025., 07-XII-2025., 19-XII-2025., altos, blockade, Ender Aquila (Ender), Miloš Šandorov, Skviki, in serbian
4-VI-2024 - 18-V-2026