Gift (Armagan), 2023

Ship origamis exhibited in an antique lunch box were prepared from the pages of the 50s children’s magazine “Armağan (Gift)”. Hamid Şendur, the publisher of Armağan, whose first series was published for 100 issues, is one of the leading names in children’s magazines in the 1950s.

Interesting Fact: Hamid Şendur is the first Turkish publisher to include the famous cartoon character Tintin in his magazines, and he pioneered the method of publishing the foreign comics on tracing paper, from copies made by local illustrators on a royalty-free basis which was widely used after World War II. In the 60s, Şendur was punished for spying for a socialist iron curtain country and disappeared without being heard from again after escaping from prison.

(The text above is based on Kaya Özkaracalar’s analysis titled “The Publisher Introducing TINTIN to Turkey: From Children’s Magazines Publishing to Soviet Espionage by Hamid SENDUR” in the 86th issue of the comic book-themed e-Journal Gölge published in November 2014.)