2016 It was “Year of Aristotle”. Then Thassos Apostolidis attended in Thessaloniki a series of discussions and events of the Interdisciplinary Center for Aristotelian Studies, dedicated to the great heritage of the ancient Greek philosopher. He was impressed by how, 2000 years after his death, the work he left continues to excite modern man in all corners of the planet.

Somehow, Thassos Apostolidis struck the final blow to put him in front. graphic novel For Aristotle. He, of course, always had in mind the creation of graphic novels about ancient philosophers and began to collect relevant literature to create a comic strip about a philosopher from 2014.

After all, the creator did not hide his weakness for the world of antiquity. He spent decades in the ninth art, revisiting subjects originating in Ancient Greece: Comedy from Aristophanes, their myths from Aesop, her Iphigenia, her Antigone, her Odyssey but comics about them Olympic Games in Ancient Greece.

In addition to being a comedian, Thassos Apostolidis he was also a teacher for 40 years. “The teacher lives in me” as he usually says. This is what awakens in him the desire through the entertaining world of comic frames to convey to the public things important to him, popularizing and dramatizing these works.

So, after three years of research and script writing, Thassos Apostolidis met Aleko Papadato (he’s behind Logicomix along with Annie Di Donna) to complete the venture, a process that took another three years or so. The second just finished a graphic novel “Democracy” and thus was “warm” from the climate of Ancient Greece.

Actually the book was made simultaneously in two languages: thus, while it was written in Greek, it was being translated into French at the same time. This means that Alekos Papadatos integrated the files for both languages ​​at the same time.

The creative team of “Aristotle” also had to overcome and distance problem: Thassos Apostolidis lived in Thessaloniki, Alekos Papadatos was at that time in France, a translator in the same country, but in another city, and two publishers in Brussels and Athens. As you can see, the comic was working remotely through this small “network” and there were coordination issues.

The plan was his September 2022 The book will be released at the same time France and beyond Francophone countries from Dargo –the publishing house that prints “Asterix and Obelix” – and, of course, in Greek Editions of Ikaros.

At her book fair frankfurt who followed him October, the book attracted interest from its publishers China, as well as the spread of “Aristotle” began to progress in Türkiye, V Portugal, V Germany (will be on the shelves of German bookstores in June), and the philosopher is preparing to “speak” even Spanish And Korean. The translation of the book into “international” has also been completed. English, which could not be missing from the list, in the format of an e-book.

It is, of course, not easy to convey philosophical concepts in the “folk” form of a comic strip. Thassos Apostolidis also mathematical and his science helped him, because – as he himself says – “Mathematics and philosophy are very close.”

The main difficulty, of course, was that the material available from Aristotle was notes for his lessons not a text intended for print, and therefore it was not scientific, but quite “dry” and edgy in its style. Because of this, it was difficult for the creator to finalize the concept of his comic.

In this topic, however, there was also “lightness”: ancient Athens bequeathed to us not only democracy, but also dialogue. That is one of the basic structures of graphic novels. And also a key component of philosophy. Somehow, two “distant” worlds come together, and even the difficult moments of philosophical theories can be understood by the reader.

There were, of course, obstacles that Alekos Papadatos had to overcome by creating faces for comics. For example, on the surviving busts, Aristotle has a frown, which he did not want to convey in this particular book and therefore had to “soften” his form, given that there are also humorous elements in the comic. And then he faced the difficult task of building around them 50 more characters for which there were not always enough sources and, on the one hand, they had to arise from the imagination of the creator, and on the other, he had to make sure that they are different from each other.

Finally, a graphic novel about a philosopher like Aristotle, What kind of reader is he “chasing”? “The fact that comics are mainly for children and teenagers is a myth,” Thassos Apostolidis confirmed. After all, people who are now 50, 60 and even more grew up on such comics as Asterix, Mafalda and many others, “so we have a pretty large readership around the world.”

Alekos Papadatos, for his part, is pleased that they managed to create “a hero who teaches us something more and causes sympathy, in the end he becomes one of us: he has his love, his disappointments, his joys and his sorrows. The reader they had in mind was, among other things, themselves, “so that we may be its judges”. But the goal was also to make it accessible to everyone, “between 17 and 77, as we say in the comics”, one of the two creators will end.

The graphic novel Aristotle by Thassos Apostolidis and Alekos Papadatos is published in Greek by Ikaros.