The Treasure of Vagia, the first book written by Georges Sary in the late 1960s, was a summary of the summer that his children more or less experienced in Greece during the 1960s, 1970s and 1960s. And, as is the case with any significant, cultural classic, this summer adventure of a group of children on the island of Aegina triumphantly survived decades and generations and was expressed by each in its dominant and popular form: when it was written in the late 1960s, it became a book, in the early 1980s a television series, and today, exactly one hundred years after the birth of the author, a graphic novel drawn by the leading illustrator and one of the main protagonists of the spectacular heyday of comics in Greece over the past few years, Kanellos Kob.

In a short conversation that we had with him, he tells us that the author herself once appeared in his life and involuntarily defined the spirit of his work with one phrase: “I must have been in the fifth or sixth grade.” he tells us, “when George Sari came to the school to talk to us, at the invitation of the Parents and Guardians Association. And I remember after she gave her presentation, I asked her a “strange” question: “What are you doing, are you doing it because you like it, or because of the money?” She answered me to something that forever stuck in my memory: “These works are not done for the sake of money, but because you love them.” That’s how I contacted her, not only because I read her books as a child, but also because she gave me something like the first advice about the work of an illustrator, which I will practice in the future.

“These jobs are not done for money, but because you love them,” the author told an elementary school student, and he reciprocated by illustrating what she imagined.

“Labor of Love”

Indeed, leafing through Kanellos Koba’s Treasure of Vagia, published by Patakis last autumn, we marvel at the “labor of love”, every frame, every corner of which testifies to a genuine and deep connection with the legendary original material. That scene on the deck of the ship sailing to Aegina, a warm morning lost somewhere in time (in the book somewhere in the mid-60s, in the series somewhere in the early 80s), with two little protagonists talking about summer, which is about to begin, are the prologue to this little summer epic that Sari has presented in the most moving and lively way. A preface that pays homage not only to the author himself, but also to a small television masterpiece directed by Dimitris Dimogerontakis for ERT in 1984, with the imagery of Kanellos Kob and the impressive way in which she conveys light and shadows.

Glitter and color from the 60s

The chain mail that appears in the book, the legendary “Orange Sun”, is replaced in the television adaptation by another legend of our coastal navigation, the legendary “Mycenae”, and, as Georges Sarri wrote, she sailed that warm morning in the “unsalted sea”, which would have looked like glass , “if not for the white foam that the ship raised, scratching her.” The graphic novel, however, remains true to the novel’s reference to the Orange Sun, a ship that was a casino before Costas Latsis made it a passenger and whose impressive name was associated with Argosaronic cruises from the 60s to the 80s and which, sadly became scrap metal in 2020. The illustrator creatively resurrects it, taking great interest in its shipbuilding details and its authentic luxury atmosphere, which is like becoming its own shipbuilder. He even brings his orange canopies to life, and in the scene where he deifies him (the one in which he sails to Aegina), in addition to shipbuilding, he also becomes an architect, “building” with his pen in the most gentle way. island port.

The mansions of the historic maritime state are sculpted by Kanellos Kob one by one, as if they were really built with his pen, as if every window, every marble balcony is important, and Agios Nikolaos “Stterianos” dominates among them with its imposingness. bell towers.

As he himself told us, “I need to capture in detail the space and place in which the story that I have to tell takes place. I want to take the reader by the hand and say: “Yes, this place was exactly like that.”

In addition, the architectural element attracts me very much, maybe even more than the human one,” the illustrator will tell us, and meanwhile, in this work he creates portraits that are equally figuratively alive and human.

A group of child protagonists, born of the imagination of Georges Sari, relying on autobiographical elements, here looks completely cinematic, as if receiving a second life in the wonderful realm of comics.

A ship that has sailed the Saronic Sea for decades is returning from the ocean of History thanks to the imagination of Georges Sary and the pen of its creator.

And while in the TV series Stamatis Spanoudakis graces the action with an irresistibly touching soundtrack, in the graphic novel Kanellos Cob works his great magic with color. Color, together with details, is the irresistible weapon of his technique. A weapon that is skillfully used not only to create emotions, but also to convey a sense of space and perspective.

Moreover, having visited Aegina and having seen all the scenes of “action” up close, he makes her the main character in his shots, as important as the human heroes of the story.

In fact, by bridging reality and fantasy, he portrays it as a transcendent place, as if the Franco-Belgian school of comics was always born in Athens and in the waters of the Saronic. Its color palette is not at all random either: it is studied to smell of nostalgia and the 60s.

Heritage

The Treasure of Vagia by Kanellos Coba is the transformation of the masterpiece of our recent past into a masterful heritage for the youth of the future. The master illustrator comfortably carried the burden of history on his shoulders and succeeded in doing so, channeling not only his incomparable seductive art into his work, but, above all, a lot of love. Georges Sari herself is sure that, bathed in the “orange sun” of the Saronic, she looks at him smiling.