Comix Drawer (original) (raw)

Branislav Kerac was born in Novi Sad on 7th September l952. He keeps his notebooks from the age of four, filled with his first scribbles. Somebody could recognise something sensible (like a streetcar), but it does not look like anything significant, as somebody could expect. Fortunately, family friend Dejan Beslin, sculptor from Novi Sad, found some indication of talent, and gave to little Bane the first instruction: how to handle a pencil, what was the square, and what was the circle, where to make more pressure, where not. The result was that, at that time, while Bane's friends played football, he used to draw. At the fourh grade of elementary school, Toza Obradovic joined him and they compete who was going to draw better the comic heroes Kit Carson, Cansas Kid or Roy Rank. Toza 's enthusisasm did not last very long, but Bane practised a lot to reach his first ideals ( Hal Foster, Dan Barry, Masherot, Jesus Blasco, Sergio Tarquinio...whose works were published in "Kekec","Politikin zabavnik" and "Crtani romani"). "Plavi vjesnik", edition "Strip-Strip" and Lykos's "Strip zabavnik" introduced to Bane welknown names in Yugoslav comics like Beker, Radilovic, Maurovic, Navojev and Solovjev. The appearence of the magazine "Zenit" and the premiere of Romita's Daredevil had made decisive influence on him. At that time (l967-68), Bane had already started to draw seriously, with ink, in frames, with sound effects, and "real" scripts. The real "seriously" started in l975., when Bane accidentaly met Toza (they were separated for 10 years). After a long talk on the zebra crossing, they decided to make a comic "Lieutenant Tara" and offer it to the publishing firm "Dnevnik". Even more serious "Serious work" started in 1989. When world famous producer Ervin Rustemagic took over the distribution of Bane's authorised comics. With Ervin's firm 'STRIP ART FEATURES' CAT CLAW "counquered" Scandinavian countries and appeared in ten more countries all over the world. But, the situation in 1991. stopped the successfull campain in America (Publishing firm MALIBU from L.A. had published just 9 titles), but anyway, Bane got the status of recognised comic author. Bane got an offer form Andreas Knige, the owner of the firm CARLSEN VERLAG to make a short coloured comic for the album DURCHBRUCH, published for the ruining of Berlin wall, and simultaneously translated into 14 languages. If we say that the other artists who worked in this project were Bill Gibbons, Enki Bilal, Moebious...Bane got himself a good company. Knowing that Cat Claw was mentioned three years in a row the most popular character of Swedish magazine MAGNUM, we can say he is still there.