I forget the bad sides, and only the good things remain. And comics brightened my life.

Rudi

Dino

It's yours to ask questions, ask for instructions and advice, and it's mine to answer. Awaiting your letters, I cordially squeeze your heroic right hand!

- It's not for nothing that my colleagues from the editorial office call me a master of all sciences! - boasted that mythical hero. – It's yours to ask questions, ask for instructions and advice, and it's mine to answer. - he wrote.

And the desperate Damir from Zagreb had big life problems at the time. Who else will give him better advice than some unknown all-rounder?

Out of anguish, he took a pen in his hand and wrote the question of all questions. He put it in an envelope. And sent.

Long weeks of suffering and waiting followed (because there was no fast internet, no-no).

And then that day arrived. As soon as the seventh B class teacher appeared at the door with a thick roll in her hands, the class started commotion.

A sharp eye would have noticed how, on that particular day, one boy in the pew in particular was fidgeting, shuffling and blushing....

When the thin paper covers touched his desk, the shy Damir broke into a sweat.

He knew that all the boys would first rush to read the latest installment of the "A Boy Wanted" comic book. He shouldn't have been suspicious.

Looking around, he opened wide his latest issue of "Blue Swallow" in his hands. He quickly ran his eyes over the black and white squares, just for order. Because he was interested in what was behind, that something else...

When he made sure that everyone around him had already started scrolling on, he too took heart. He put the magazine down on the table and leaned over it. It's like he's hiding something. He opened the "section of all sections". The eyes glazed over, and the pulse quickened.

"Dear Lastane! Last school year, I had a fight with another..."; Dear Lastan, how to earn money for a bicycle...."; Dear Lastan, how to pass mathematics ..." the boy's eyes flew over the letters. - No, impossible! Did he forget again... - he lamented quietly.

Suddenly, his little cheeks became redder than the ripest Zagorje tomato, and his eyes stopped on a piece of text:

"Dear Lastan, I like a girl from the seventh grade next door. How can I approach her and declare my love? Damir, Zagreb."

Little Damir's heart was beating as if it would jump out of his chest. He was barely breathing when he started reading the answer.

"Dear Damir..." wrote the unknown sage: "..wouldn't it be better if you said the most simple 'hello' to her first?"

The editors did a better job of hiding the author of these lines, but how would an agent of some secret service be hidden! This "unknown sage" helped thousands of little Damirs, providing them with answers to questions that they did not dare to ask even their parents. Only two people knew the name that was hidden from the iconic and winged Lastan, and that until 2007.

Then it was finally discovered that it was Rudi Aljinović, the author and initiator of this most famous and most read children's column, who was the first Lastan!

The meeting with Lastan was the place where Yugoslav children looked for answers to all their troubles. And Rudi Aljinović answered the children's questions clearly, deftly and, of course, teasingly. Just in style! This is why the column, which he started together with editor Dragutin Brigljević in 1969, has survived for more than fifty years, and it still exists today. And how did it all begin?

Screenwriter, journalist, travel writer and keen scout Rudi came up with the idea of ​​a boy who would help his peers solve their problems. He could have been called anything - Drago, Duško or Martin. The editor liked the idea and suggested that it be called "Lastan". And the idea was a hit.

The editorial office of "Modre laste" thus began to receive 600 letters a week, and in some letters even dinars were hidden! The children would enclose ten dinars and their home address with the letter, begging Lastan to answer them, if not in the newspaper, then at least through a letter.

Rudi "wrote" Lastana for ten years. After that, he left the successor to continue the good work, and he went to some other waters. Namely, in addition to responding to children's troubles, Rudi was also a great fan of comics.

In his long career, he wrote scenarios for more than thirty comics that were published in Yugoslav newspapers, and he collaborated with all the great domestic cartoonists - Beker, Maurović, Bednjanac and many others.

He edited the magazine "Izviđač", and as a freelance journalist he wrote for many newsrooms in which he would also publish his travelogues. As he said, many newspapers called him to get a permanent job from the beginning. But he decided right at the beginning of his career that he would be a "freelancer". And all because of - the sea. Namely, Rudi could not bear to spend the summer in Zagreb. As a great lover of nature, he loved to travel, go camping or lie on the beach. Therefore, he always needed at least two to four months of peace!

In his older days, Rudi expressed his long-standing love for comics by writing about the history of Croatian comics. He wanted to complete it with the work "History of Comics in Croatia", but unfortunately, the disease was stronger.

He told Marijan Ožanić, who was visiting him in the retirement home, his life story.

- I loved people and I loved life. Life is beautiful, the only downside of life is that it is too short. I forget the bad sides, and only the good things remain. And comics brightened my life. We do not live only to eat, sleep and satisfy existential needs, we must also have some spiritual and intellectual pleasures. –

This iconic author said only the best about his colleagues who worked during the "Golden Age of Domestic Comics":

– I was lucky to work with a good generation of great artists. As much as I could contribute to them, they contributed even more to me. I only have good memories with comics. –

Big Rudi finally concluded: - Difficulties are also important in life. Difficulties are the salt of life. –

If only today we had some more wise advice from the all-knowing Lastan! Because Rudi was also a really happy man in reality. But we have no choice but to give him a hearty hand in our thoughts! Until another reading…

Yugoslavia's most closely guarded secret

How was Bednjač's and Aljinović's iconic comic book "A Boy Wanted" created?

The famous Rudi, screenwriter of many comics, editor of the magazine "Izviđač", publicist and travel writer, revealed that he found the theme for his famous comic strip "A Boy Wanted", which was published in "Modroja lasta" in the seventies, in his family!

Namely, one of Rudi's sisters lived on Kvaternik Square and had four children. There were three girls and a boy. The oldest son was a high school student, while the oldest girl had to look after her two little sisters who were four and five years old. The girls were hot and bored during the summer, so they kept begging to go swimming.

One day, the mother relented and ordered the eldest to take them to the pool. And so the three of them went to Zagreb Salad.

When they had had enough of bathing, the younger girls wanted to go home. But the oldest still wanted to sunbathe. She didn't take good care and the two little kids went home all alone. And then there was panic!

The oldest girl thought that the little ones had drowned. She ran around the pool and looked everywhere for her sisters. And the kids remembered the way and came home by themselves...

From that, Rudi made a story for a comic book.

He told Marijan Ožanić: - That was the basic theme, but, of course, I didn't retell the event, but the idea was that a child got lost and that a real adventure story could be developed around it. –

Looking for a boy

How Rudi fell in love with comics and about the first comic he made.

Rudi, screenwriter, publicist, editor and the first "Lastan", grew up in Zagreb's Trešnjevac. His parents, Antun and Marija, moved to Zagreb in 1920. They met when Antun was a guest worker. Antun was a carpenter by profession, and after the end of the war he had a lot of work. Thanks to his father and mother, Rudi gained great respect for work and for everything created by human hands.

There were four children in the family. Josip's sister was the oldest, Mira was the younger, and Slavko and Rudi were brothers.

They were a modest working family. As Rudi told Marijan Ožarnić, his father and mother always rented an apartment. If they found an apartment cheaper by 200-300 dinars, they moved because that was money that could feed the family for almost 20 days.

When Rudi was four years old, his brother Slavko was already going to school! Rudi was very envious of him for having a school bag! And it was Slavko who was responsible for Rudi's love for comics and reading.

Sunday was a day of rest for the Aljinović family. Namely, every Sunday, newspaper delivery men (they were called "journalists") used the open "oberlicht" to drop newspapers into the house. And every pre-war newspaper had a children's page on Sundays.

Slavko gave the serious part of the newspaper to his father, but kept the children's page with comics. He also read comics to his younger brother Rudi in bed. Thus, the first comic that Rudi "heard" was "The Adventurer Ivica" written by the American Branner.

One of the turning points in his childhood was when he learned to read. Then he started devouring comics himself! His favorite authors appeared in Neugebauer's "Zabavnik".

Soon he started designing comics himself.

He made his first comic in the 2nd grade of elementary school, together with his friend Zvonko Lojen. They were then 8-9 year old kids.

Their magazine was called "Strip". On the title page was written "Strip", and below that in smaller letters the subtitle "8 pages of fun". All the pages were written and drawn by hand, and they copied it on indigo paper so that each boy got a copy. In it, they briefly described their adventures and crossed out caricatures from humor magazines. Inside they also had a comic book about the cat Felix, and all the drawings were carefully drawn out with ink after the pencil.

Their "Strip" "came out" in three or four numbers. Rudi, the acclaimed Croatian comic screenwriter, started writing in elementary school. But it didn't go too well for him from the beginning!

Namely, as an old man, Rudi remembered how he got angry when he would proudly show his work to his parents and aunts, and they would start laughing at him! They laughed at his strange sentences, and that would make Rudi sad. He would say: - Well, a child can't write like an adult! –

But after a valuable career, he saw that criticism only brought him good. His only regret was that he did not preserve some of his first works. He said: - In boy's games it was created and in boy's games it disappeared. –

The first comic

- But it also had a good side, because in prison I had more time to write the script for "Plavac". Rudi said.

Rudi, the acclaimed Croatian comic screenwriter, publicist and travel writer, has been writing for newspapers since he was a child. First, he published in school, and soon also in professional papers. His texts were published in Plavo vjesnik, Vjesnik and elsewhere, which is why he did not want to join the army.

At that time, he was waiting for his studies, and the editors asked him to leave the boy alone so that he could write.

Just when, in 1964, "The Rebel Ship" was published, Rudi could no longer get away with it. He had to join the army.

Nevertheless, the editors assigned him to serve nearby, near Ljubljana. He must have been there for 13 months.

But he was lucky! Later he recalled that he worked in a military warehouse where he had a completely free regime. He could sleep until 10 in the morning!

He would go to Zagreb from Ljubljana on Friday afternoon, as soon as the employees left. So he spent every weekend in Zagreb. He returned early Monday morning. He would get up at 3 in the morning and come to the barracks in Ljubljana in the dead of night. His colleagues in the army were collegial, and no one ever snitched on him. He would repay his colleagues with an interesting story about his experiences.

He had a great time in the army. He didn't have to work much and he could freely call newsrooms in Zagreb, write scripts for comics, collaborate with newspapers...

Once they came to visit him from Plavi vjesnik and asked him to write a script. Brixy saw that the list needed more domestic comics, Rudi is in the army, and Ljubljana is close. He said: "Guys, take the bus to Aljinović." He still has almost a year to peel the army, make an agreement with him. We need some kind of home comic."

And Rudi, of course, agreed. And so he participated in many projects during his time in the army. He sent scripts to Borda ("Hold the wheel straight") and to Maurović for the series about barbs Nika and Iva.

He once ended up in prison for running away. - But it also had a good side, because in prison I had more time to write the script for "Plavac". - He said.

Do you have any stories about this person?

Read more stories

Yugoslavia's most closely guarded secret

Looking for a boy

The first comic

Comic book from prison