Sandık İçi

Sandık İçi #1

by Ersin Karabulut

Sandik Ici

Genres: Comics, Memoir, Graphic Novels, Turkish Literature, Humor

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

3 Haziran 1981'de İstanbul - Eminönü'nde doğdu. Öğretmen birer anne babası ve kendinden dört yaş büyük bir ablası vardır. Bayrampaşa ilköğretim okulunu ve Vatan Anadolu Lisesi'ni bitirdi. 16 yaşında ilk karikatürü, Pişmiş Kelle dergisinde yer buldu. Daha sonra çizdiği köşeler yayınlanmaya başladı. Bir Süre Gırgır ve Ördek dergilerinde de çizdi. Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi Grafik bölümüne girdi. İkinci sınıfta Lombak dergisinde ve daha sonra da Penguen dergisinde çizmeye başladı.

2007 Ağustosunda, Yiğit Özgür ve Memo Tembelçizer gibi bir grup çizerle birlikte, yeni bir dergi çıkartmak üzere Penguen'den ayrılmış ve 5 Eylül 2007' de Uykusuz adlı dergiyi çıkarmaya başlamışlardır.


Uykusuz'da çizgi öykü tarzındaki Sandık İçi isimli köşeyi çiziyor. Ayrıca, Sandık İçi ve Sandık İçi 2 adlı iki kitabı bulunmaktadır.

Reviews

[Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ersin Karabulut's Sandik Ici (roughly translated as Inside the Chest, as in a chest of belongings) is a collection of one-page autobiographical musings on life and the human condition. Most of the episodes are rather meta; Karabulut often talk about the creative process, what he should draw next, meeting (or missing or cramming for) deadlines. The tone is very casual and most stories beg for the reader to pity/empathize with him, no matter how atrocious his behavior might be in a given situation. He usually starts with a current situation, goes back into flashback to explain his inexplicable or wrong or dubious or strange or pitiful behavior in the present, and returns to the current situation by the end of the page. It's a good structure he manages to pull off with ease.

The title comes from all the things Karabulut imagines one puts in one's chest of things that come alive when things happen later in life. These things he doesn't name are usually called traumas in the West (but in the East, that word is even more loaded, so you wouldn't call, for example, an event that made you deadly afraid for elevators in your childhood a "trauma" necessarily...) So a chest of stuff that just lives with you and comes alive (a chest you may retreat in to, if you need to withdraw and escape). In English, "chest" seems like an apt translation; all those things that come alive and make you feel a tightness in your chest (granted, not everyone "feels" these things in their chest...) One could call it, almost literally, "baggage."

Speaking of words, Karabulut (dark cloud!) is an apt last name for the artists, as the tone is rather melancholy and depressed at times, but there's also a lot of humor, which helps alleviate the mood. I laughed out loud when little Ersin is singing out loud made up words for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song (the song being in English and him now knowing any English at the time). Ah, memories...

Overall, the first volume is a great read. My one compliant is that the size of the book is still too small; some of the writing is hard to read. Some people will need magnifiers! Recommended for those who like action figures, dancing at weddings, first love and (worrying about) failing at school.

[emre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kocaman bir tebessümle bitti. :)

[Serdar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arada okurlarla konuştuğu kareler, hayatının çeşitli dönemlerinden anıları ve o efsane msn döneminden kalma çizimin kime ait olduğunu öğrenmem kitabı bana tek seferde okuttu hem de iki kere.