After many years, Albatros Publishing House has taken on the task of publishing the stories of the legendary Jaroslav Foglar's The Quick Arrows. It relied on illustrations by the well-known comic book author Jiří Grus.
The boys from The quick Arrows have been waiting for a new edition for over ten years. To be more precise, for the release of their adventures revolving around the hedgehog in a cage, entitled The Riddle of the Puzzle and The Shadow is Storming. The stories of Mirek Dušín, Jindra Hojer, Jarka Metelka, Červenáček and Rychlonožka, as all the members of the Fast Arrows are called, first saw the light of day in the 1940s, then in a sequel in the magazine Forward. Even after all these years, the five friends enjoy unprecedented popularity. To some extent this is due to the timelessness that the boys' stories carry. The desire to associate in societies and clubs that bear their names, have their rules and inalienable traits is humanly natural. At the same time, however, Foglar's stories can be interpreted as a kind of reminiscence of the old days, a liberation of ourselves and today's youth from the online space where more and more time is invested at the expense of face-to-face encounters. In the same way, one can see in the world of Quick Arrows the hard-to-realize ideas of how the streets of cities might function in today's world. Both stories are set in an unnamed old city with a large historic center full of winding streets.
The most mysterious quarter of this city is the Shadows, where every intruder is doomed to wander and then get lost in a tangle of stairs, courtyards and the most mysterious paths. But most of all, under siege from the followers of the local boyhood Vontes. The sect-like group tries to get the hedgehog in the cage in the first volume, The Riddle of the Conundrum. The mythical lost toy of the deceased boy Jan Tleskac is symbolically important to the Vontae club and could be decisive in the election of their chief. The Quick Arrows will be involved. At first as amateur journalists hungry for sensation and new readers with a view to greater profits, later as important players in the hunt to uncover the secret the hedgehog is hiding.
The quest continues in the next volume, aptly titled The Shadows Are Revolting. The fractious mysterious district is more aggressive and dangerous than ever before, and the inhabitants of the Other Side, the part of town where the Quick Arrows are based, are paying the price. That's why the boys from the club are trying to get into the mysterious district in any way they can to prevent further escalation of the dangerous skirmishes. But in doing so, they risk some hurt for themselves and their four-legged friend, Bubble the dog, especially when they meet the shadowy Broad.
Jaroslav Foglar is an ageless classic, which Albatros has proved once again. The edition, enriched with numerous drawings by Jan Grus, also perfectly captures the atmosphere that Foglar tries to describe in words. The inspiration from the iconic late 1960s television series is evident in the drawings, but who could blame Gruss for taking a chance? Where his drawings are breathtaking is in the imagination in rendering the intricate alleys of the Shadowlands. Some of the illustrations are literally paintings of Foglar's dream neighbourhood, which the reader is able to stare at for several minutes and always discover something new. The award-winning comic book author also adds his images to the interesting appendices that both books contain. These consist of colouring pages and various ciphers that add to the scouting spirit of Quick Arrows.
Matyáš Müller
FOGLAR, Jaroslav. Záhada hlavolamu. Ilustrace Jiří Grus. 11. vydání. Praha: Albatros, 2022.
FOGLAR, Jaroslav. Stínadla se bouří. 7.vydání. Ilustrace Jiří Grus. Praha: Albatros, 2020.
The review was created at the Department of Journalism of FSV UK under the supervision of PhDr. Jana Čeňková, Ph.D.