PITCHE IN TURKEY

Afacan, whose first issue came out on Oct. 13th, 1932, would be one of the major children's magazines in Turkey in the 1930s. First and foremost, Afacan is notable for introducing 'Mickey Mouse' strips to Turkish readers (a subject which I had covered in an article on pre-war Disney comics in Turkey I wrote to Tomart's Disneyana), but it also included several other comics in its roster.

Afacan, in its first series (1932-34), was a very large-sized periodical in the format of newspapers. The bottom part of its front page featured a humor strip (re-)titled as 'Cabi Efendi' which is the only non-Disneyic foreign strip in Afacan that I can identify definitely: It is the Belgian-French daily strip 'Pietje'/'Pitche' by Alek Stonkus. It had began in Belgium as 'Pietje' in 1930 and was published in France as 'Pitche' until 1950. A rather murkily phrased statement in Lambiek.net indicates it might be the first non-American daily strip in France. Anyway, its Turkish version 'Cabi Efendi' is the first strip published in Turkey which I encountered so far that used speech balloons and did not use text outside the panels. All other strips published in Turkey till then were either published without speech balloons or with both speech balloons and extra-panel texts.

In the early 1930s, 'Cabi Efendi' was also published in Çocuk Sesi, another children's weekly put out by the same publisher as Afacan's.