Talbot's Tale
English cartoonist, Bryan Talbot is particularly familiar with
Octobriana, having used her image in one of his comic strips.
Carl Malone travelled to Preston in Lancashire to find out more
about the enigmatic Russian Devil-Woman.
 When did you first hear about Octobriana?
Sometime in the very early 1970s. I was at my girlfriend's house,
trying to act respectable in front of her middle-class parents.
While she was helping to prepare lunch I picked up the Sunday
paper (the Sunday Telegraph) and there was Octobriana, right on
the front cover of the colour supplement -- an oil painting of
her with cowboy gun and gunbelt and the Klu Klux Klan in the background.
I guess that the Petr Sadecky book must have just been published,
because that was what the feature covered. Being an avid reader
and collector of underground comics, I was immediately interested,
though it was about four years later that I finally got my hands
on a copy of Octobriana & The Russian Underground.
What do you think the character represents?
The Spirit of the October Revolution. The pure ideal of communism,
as opposed to the abortion that was Russian communism or the totalitarianism
of China. Having said that, communism did save the vast majority
of the starving peasants' lives in those countries. Giving them
a better life than they'd had under the old regimes, despite all
the purges, pogroms and other acts of tyranny. Octobriana also
stands for sexual liberation, both in the sense of sexual equality
and of free love. If we are to believe Sadecky, PPP equated political
liberty with sexual freedom.
Why does the character have such an appeal?
She is a true icon and a powerful character, a strong-willed,
vivacious, libertine warrior. Octobriana also exists on the level
of political satire, giving extra depth to the stories. Also,
her mongolian features make her startlingly different to the vacuous
Hollywood babe look sported by other superheroines.
Do you think the book, Octobriana & The Russian Underground, was
a hoax?
According to Reima Mäkinen (who drew and published a Finnish edition
of Octobriana a few years ago) in a 1973 interview in the German
Magazine Stern, the Czech artists said they drew 'Amazonia' for
fun. Then Sadecky took the drawings to England, re-worked them
and invented the whole Octobriana myth. In 1970 he drew a bat
over the star on her forehead and got it published in Vampirella
as a piece of fan art!
 Do you think Petr Sadecky is a 'real' person or just a pseudonym?
I should think he is probably a real person.
In your opinion, does PPP exist?
No idea. As an aside, nobody I've met from Russia's ever heard
of Octobriana. Trina Robbins [a San Franciso-based cartoonist]
met a bunch of Russian animators in Lucca, one of whom had heard
of her. Although he claimed that Octobriana was a piece of American
anti-Soviet propaganda, produced by a woman cartoonist from San
Francisco. This is highly unlikely, as Trina knows all the women
cartoonists in San Franciso.
What made you use Octobriana in The Adventures of Luther Arkwright?
As a tribute to the bravery of the members of PPP, for producing
an anti-state comic book in the face of terrifying repression.
The idea of people being shot or sent to jail for merely producing
a comic book! Of course, this was before I'd heard any of the
preceding hoax stories, which may still turn out to be urban legends
of comic-dom. Why doesn't Sadecky speak out? Incidentally, Dave
Britton spent several weeks in jail last year for producing the
Lord Horror comic, right here in Britain! The comic was seized
and destroyed by Manchester police. Yes, we're a free country
over here all right!
Do you have any plans on using the character in the future?
Not really. For a while I was working on an Octobriana/Wonder
Woman story. Then DC Comics changed Wonder Woman's continuity
and she was no longer a symbol of America. That sort of killed
the idea, though I could probably do it now under their Elseworlds
banner.
Check out Bryan Talbot's official fan site at: www.bryan-talbot.com
extracted from Octobriana: Filling In The Blanks 1
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