The many faces of a top-ranking humorist
The artistic career of Arkás is an excellent argument for those who believe that what is important in art is the work itself and not the promotion of the artist as a person.
His refusal to give newspaper interviews, to appear on television or to take part in anything that could be called publicity marketing has led to the creation of a myth around his name. Twenty years have gone by since the publication of his first comic-strips - the legendary Rooster - by the Greek comics magazine Babel, and his identity is still a mystery. His appearance was a minor revolution in the Greek domestic landscape, since he was immediately and universally received with great enthusiasm. His characteristic style of speech and image was so mature and well-designed right from his first publication that the general public had the impression that this was not a new young artist but an acclaimed master who was publishing under a pseudonym! Thanks to his unique humor with its heretical, sarcastic perceptiveness, his career has constantly been expanding through all these years. His comic books have been selling in impressively high numbers and are continuously being republished, very quickly breaking through the Greek borders with great resonance throughout Europe.
The secret of his success lies in his thoroughly international humor.
His characters “speak“ German and Norwegian just as well as Greek, since the dialogues and the situations described have the timeless universal spirit of all comics which over the years have become classics.
Nowadays, after having successfully created a whole galaxy of never repetitive, always new thematic series, this “mysterious“ author is a master of sarcasm and of the unexpected. And, most importantly, his name stands for the rich work of an artist who, unimpaired by the damage publicity and vanity can cause, remains so fresh and young that the “Arkás phenomenon“ is able to express the mood of today’s ever-restless youth as much as it did of those who became his first keen admirers one or two decades ago.
© AñêÜò