Enis Čišić is Čišićobsessed with his job. He is a freelance visual artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) whose first encounter with a pencil – inspired by pictures from encyclopedias, picture books and a favorite television program – began in the 1980s. Although he absorbed ideas from various media, his creativity was mostly awakened after watching animated or feature films, after which Enis would take a pencil and try to reproduce on paper what he saw on the screen. Ever since then, the strong desire to express himself through drawing simply grew and grew. “Proof of my interest in the visual narrative are the drawings I found in a photo album, probably made when I was six years old. They are scenes of a plane fight that I saw in a partisan film. I would set up the planes and start drawing their positions and the dynamics of the fight in the air until the paper was completely covered. It was all forming before my eyes as I drew. I did not separate it out through frames, but it was all one drawing until the paper became congested with lines, and the shapes of the planes could no longer be recognized. It was only later that I learned that image montage has a better effect, and that’s when my first comic was created,” Enis recalls. Between agency work and freelancing Before putting his career as an illustrator and comic book artist first, Enis worked in the advertising industry. However, he wanted a change and decided to leave his agency job. He was grateful for everything he had learned working in advertising, and from the people with whom he had worked, but the desire to dedicate himself to comics was stronger. “The change happened when I got hired for Marvel Comics and it wasn’t possible to work in two places at the same time. My decision was the right one and very important for my career, and if I hadn’t made it I probably wouldn’t be where I am now. However, I do that quite often. I change my course because I like changes and I try to get out of my comfort zone as often as possible,” he adds. Enis is interested and motivated by lots of different things. So far, he has done illustrations for books, background illustrations for commercials, animation, and storyboards for movies. He collaborates with various artists, from musicians to directors and writers. He says that he likes to cooperate and socialize with people who know more than him, and that he does not limit himself in the way he shapes his or someone else’s ideas. The comic scene in the Balkans Comics are part of a large industry and go hand in hand with the gaming and film industries. America, Italy and France are the most productive countries in the field of the ninth art, with an astronomical number of annual editions between them. Enis explains that the Balkans had a long tradition of comics before the war. There were serious comics and an even more serious culture of reading them, but the situation changed after the war. The comic scene in the Balkans has started to develop again, but BiH has lagged behind. “We don’t have a single comic book publisher, only a small number of enthusiasts who probably have to finance their own publications. The situation is much better in the neighbouring countries because there are a lot of quality comic book publishers. Fibra is definitely the number one in Croatia, and there’s Darkwood and Happy Thursday (Veseli četvrtak) in Serbia,” he says. He adds however that BiH can boast of comic shops in several cities, as well as comic festivals. He singles out Salon stripa in Laktaši and Mostrip in Mostar. “These people do a great job of promoting comics through exhibitions, forums, lectures, workshops and the like. There are interesting statistics that I have heard about, that there are approximately 47 comic book festivals in the former Yugoslavia, which is a larger number than in the whole of France, which has a very strong comic market. But again, all cartoonists are looking for a job with foreign publishers, because in the end there aren’t enough readers in this area to be able to make a living from the art,” explains Enis. When a little boy’s dream came true Enis used to practice drawing by studying the works of Marvel artists. As a boy, he would copy John Busceme’s Spiderman, and then as an adult he was actually given the opportunity to draw characters like Spiderman, Iron Man and the Hulk. The work for Marvel Comics came as a result of many years of work on his portfolio, and a little luck. “Luckily, Marvel Scout for Talents, CB Cebulski, came to this area in search of new cartoonists at the Mafest comics festival, which is organized every year in Makarska. It was a unique opportunity to show my work. There were a lot of cartoonists from the region and I honestly didn’t expect to get the job.