Richard Fischer
Džian Baban is a screenwriter and musician. In 2004, he joined forces with Vojtěch Mašek, founding the creative group Fred Brunold’s Monstrkabaret, and the duo have been writing comics, screenplays, and theatre plays under the label since. Together with artist Jiří Grus, they have been awarded several Muriel awards for best screenplay and comic book of the year. Džian and illustrator Richard Fischer also won the 2020 Muriel Award for Best Screenplay for his script for the first volume of his comic saga Rváčov, which brings back to life Jaroslav Foglar’s ‘Vonts.’
Richard Fischer Jr. was born in 1968 in the town of Tábor. He studied mechanical engineering in Sezimovo Ústí, and after completing his military service, he spent two years working in a factory before defecting to a school of art and management, where he majored in promotional graphic design. He has been a freelance artist ever since, making illustrations and comics and delving into applied painting, interior design, and textile prints within his family project, Domácí dílna. He also creates illustrations for printed magazines and books. His first comic book, Rváčov, based on a script by Džian Baban, was published in 2020. When working on passion projects, he often falls under the spell of gloomy, forgotten or vanished places of old Prague.
Brawler District
December 2023, 168 pages
This is a comic book that combines the fictional with the natural, partly drawing from oral history and relying on imagination.
It is the story of a group of children between the 80s and 90s, a generation that explored and discovered Prague’s Old Town at a unique point in history in a way that no generation after has.
The second volume of the comic novel Brawler District by illustrator Richard Fischer and screenwriter DŽIAN BABAN is set in the 1990s. The 1980s generation of children has left the city, and in the wild post-revolutionary times, the Old Town and Lesser Town are getting smaller and smaller with the rise of the next generation. Courtyards and attics are being locked up or rebuilt; houses go from public to private ownership. Still, the first half of the 1990s is no less a unique time, and the fictional district of Stínadla is abuzz with plenty of adventures. Migrén, Šídlo, Bob, the narrator Béla, Marie and her strange, secret-keeping ‘aunt’ Marta. Similarly to the first volume, the story cuts through several timelines, taking the reader from the noughties to the Middle Ages. The story culminates in mid-August 2002, with water rushing through Prague and flooding the city.