FIBDA & "It's at Night that I Ask the Questions" Part 1/4

[drexer]

So, I understand that the comics internet has been very enthusiastic those days after the NYCC event. Which was nice you know... for a kiddies comic-event. I believe it's time to talk about you folks about a comic event for real readers. :P




Ok, I'm done with the semi-trolling and am now starting the real post.

So, for those not in the know from my previous few posts, I'm a Portuguese reader who got back into comics just some 2 years ago and I've slowly been starting to educate myself on the backstory of my own country in the comic medium. However, I had quite an history in my childhood of serious comic-reading, an habit perpetuated by the fact that my home town of Amadora is home to the most important comic-related festival of the country, FIBDA(Festival Internacional de Banda Desenhada da Amadora/International Festival of Comic Books of Amadora) or commonly know as AmadoraBD.


The poster for this year, the theme is 'Humour', hence the family with underpants over their heads.

After a long hiatus since the days where every year I had a school field trip to it, I did plan to go there last year but personal matters got in the way. Nothing is in the way this year though, so I am currently dragging as many of my friends as I can to go there in the following weeks(it lasts for two full weeks since last weekend). In the meantime I've decided to take this as an opportunity to share some of the small quantity of Portuguese works I've started to acquire and perhaps make an habit out of sharing them with those interested in seeing something different.

As such, we start with quite a bit of history with "É de Noite Que Faço As Perguntas"/"It's at Night that I Ask the Questions", a slightly political/slightly historical book, launched last July in commemoration of the 100 years of the Portuguese Republic in 2010. It has work by 4 different artists and one common writer(David Soares) and it starts not in the present, but some decades ago, when Portugal was in the midst of the dictatorship the the Estado Novo from the viewpoint of an old man who writes starts writing a long letter to his son who is a member of the PIDE(the secret political police). This part was drawn by Richard Câmara.


All translations done by me, unfortunately there is no English version I can point you towards

Part 1 - It's Just Someone Who Went Hunting
(drawn by Jorge Coelho)

Addendum: Do try to avoid relating the term 'republican' with any political party you might imagine, we're talking about quite different concepts here.

Our main character is just a kid, and the year is 1981. There is an English monster under his parents bed(a chamber-pot that looks like an English butler, you'll see it in a bit) and since the independence of Brazil and the British Ultimatum there is quite a large one indeed under the bed of the king D.Carlos.

There were talks and rumours about a strange breed that the boy heard as 'republicans' and one day his father pointed one out to him on the Lisbon tram. He was a normal man, not the pirate or monster he had imagined. Until a day in 1908 he went hunting outside Lisbon with his father.







The king was killed and his youngest son was the new king, if you want to read more here's a more detailed explanation. In the end, his reign was short lived, and through turbulence and confusion the first Republic of Portugal rose:



Hang on dear readers, the road is just starting and there are a lot of bumps ahead...

PS: Suggestions, criticism? Any more information that I should try to transmit? It's never easy to work upon cultural-historical materials like those, but I hope you enjoy it.

Part 2/4 HERE!

Comments

[rocketlindy]

Your translations are very good. There are a couple small errors, but it is easy-to-understand. If you do more, I would recommend using a more simple font for the text--there are some places where it is hard-to-read.

I love the art in the second part of the story, with the red/blue coloring. What is the name of the artist who did those pages?

[drexer]

I tried to use the font that was the most approximate for the one used in the book itself originally. Unofrtunately, I didn't notice that whenr edimensionating the images to 800 width it got quite a bit worse, specially the w's. I'll be trying a better one in the next part. This first one was a bit rushed so I plan to be more careful with the translations of the next parts(although there will always be the conflict of balancing the meaning of the phrase with the gravitas transmitted throught the words themselves).

The artist for the second part is Jorge Coelho; Richard Câmara was the one which worked on the part that serves as prologue(the alone page right at the beginning) and as epilogue(we'll get there in the end). I've updated the post itself to link to the blogs/webpages of the respective authors and I'll be linking the future ones in the next posts as well.

Thanks for the interest. :)

[silvercatmon]

Thanks for translating and post. Seems like an interesting story and I like the art I'm seeing.