CEYLAN YAYINLARI: PIONEER PUBLISHERS OF ITALIAN WESTERN COMICS IN TURKEY |
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Ceylan Yayınları [Ceylan Publications] is widely given the credit for the start of the comics magazines boom in Turkey in the mid-1950s. The roots of Ceylan Yayınları lie at Ceylan, a children's magazine with extensive comics, started initially by a partnership between Tekdal Brothers and Erdoğan Egeli (1925-83) in 1955, but soon taken over solely by Egeli himself. Egeli, who established Ceylan Yayınları, also began publishing another magazine titled Bill Kid in which the post-war Italian western comics 'Capitan Miki' by the EsseGesse team was used as filler space. When readers demanded more space to be devoted to this comics, Egeli bought its rights from the French subcontractor Opera Mundi and began issuing it as a separate comics magazine titled Tommiks. All of this took place within the span of a single year in 1955. Tommiks was a big hit and was joined the next year by Teksas ['Il Grande Blek', another EsseGesse effort]. The influence of these magazines was to such an extent that the phrase "Teksas-Tommiks" became synonymous with comics for years (those whose teenage years were in 1950s still refer to comics as "Teksas-Tommiks"). Ceylan Yayınları was a major force in the Turkish comics market throughout the 1960s as well. While its most successful titles were western comics of Italian origin, it also experimented with American material such as 'Superman' and 'Mandrake', but they proved short-lived. Ceylan survived on the market untill late 1980s with mostly reprint series. The covers of Ceylan's magazines feature art by Samim Utkun, who also drew some 'Kinowa' stories when the original Italian stock of this comics was depleted. |
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Titles published by Ceylan Yayınları | ||||||||||||||
Title [original title, if different] year of debut Bill Kid [?] 1955 Tommiks [Capitan Miki] 1955 Teksas [Il Grande Blek] 1956 Süpermen [Superman] 1958; another series in 1967 Kit Taylor [?] 1959 Kinova [Kinowa], retitled as Kinova-Tex 1960 Tex 1961 Zagor 1962 Mandrake 1962 Akbulut (Turkish medieval heroics) 1964 Tina 1967 Tim (western) 1967 Tomteks (western) 1970 Billkid (western) 1971 |
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Left: cover of no.3 of Ceylan's Tex (scan taken from an online auction [the mag. was sold for app. 17 eu]) | ||||||||||||||
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