Actually, I don't quite follow comics scene - I have to be hit in the head with something as good as Bilal's work to notice . The last time I more or less knew what was happening was in the days of "Novi kvadrat" ("New Square" of "New Frame") group in the late 70's (Mirko Ilic, Igor Kordej, Kresimir Zimonic, Radovan Devlic, mostly Zagreb-based, but with some members from all-over what was then Yugoslavia...). Some of them are nowadays successful in the USA (particularly Ilic, but as illustrator), some innactive, some do more main-stream graphics work, some are dead ... In the "Novi Kvadrat" days high-quality comics by local authors were more or less mainstream - there were several publications devoted to them, and they were featured in anything even remotely targeting younger audience. Today they are mostly ghetoized in obscure fanzines. On newsstands one will only find "Marvel" and such. As the result, I only heard of Biukovic, never read anything he did.

The situation with comics is, sadly, representative of all of our art: shift towards the most vulgar commercialization. Sigh, I suppose that's what you get with free, but very small market, lack of public funding and the fact that potential private donors are barbarians.

I never heard of Bilal (Enes Bilalovic) before, either. But then, for all intents and purposes he is a French author - IMDB bio says his family emigrated from Belgrade to France when he was nine.

I didn't read "Fax from Sarajevo". I looked it up on Amazon when you mentioned it, and, judging from several panels available there, I would say that this is an example of word being stronger than image - somehow it does not seem to quite work for me. But I will try to find it.

Edit: This is a concise summary of our comics scene history and present situation, by a guy who is a kind of premament fixture in comics as well as animated film fandom circles. BTW, Zagreb was even more of "superpower" in "artistic" animated film some two or three decades ago (this coincided with the golden era of Canadian animation - awards on animated films festivals were almost reserved either for works produced by Natonal Film Board of Canada or by tiny "Zagreb Film"). Some of authors (e.g. one of my favourites Borivoj Dovnikovic or a bit later Marusic) did both comics and animated films.