Josif 1957

Writer: Davide Barzi
Artist: Fabiano Ambu

You know about Laika, the Cosmonaut dog sent into orbit on Sputnik 2. But no one knows about JOSIF, the first gorilla in space! Born on Josif Stalin’s birthday and subjected to terrible genetic experiments, Josif soon grew far too powerful. The leadership of the Soviet Union did all they could to stop him. But not everything went as planned!

While working as editorial director of CEX Publishing, this book was picked up by the publisher as an already-completed project: a six-issue mini-series that we were publishing as three double-sized issues.

The book had already been published — in Italian! So in addition to overseeing its production, as editorial director, I also served as the book’s localization editor.

We were provided an initial, very literal, translation, and used it as our starting point to punch up the dialogue, ensuring that it flowed smoothly and made sense to an American audience. This was also an Italian story about Americans and Soviets, and I wanted to make sure both of those cultures were accurately reflected in their dialogue — albeit filtered through the story’s satirical sensibilities.

This was, at times, an intense challenge, as some of the dialogue — and the humor in particular — came off as slightly incomprehensible in its literally-translated form. We also had limited access to the original writer (the project was brought to us by the artist), further complicating matters.

If this all sounds like a massive amount of fun…well, yes! To me, it certainly was!

Probably my smartest move on this project was to hire Michelle Kasten, an extraordinarily sharp and talented copy editor, to assist on the translation. Working closely with the creators to whom we had access, we managed to slowly chip away at the story, shaping it into a comic that honored the original spirit and intent, while also making sense on American comic shelves.