Janusz Grzegorz Bücher

Manuscripts are disappearing from European libraries. Along with them, the memory of authors and their works is vanishing. The heritage of European culture is at risk. Stanisław Lem often expressed the opinion that there are too many books in the world, and in the flood of printed paper, we miss what is truly important. In "The Illusory Greatness," he wrote: The voice of a million Shakespeares is as much a clamor and furious noise as the voice of a herd of buffalo on the steppe or of waves at sea. And then one day, the noise of the paper sea quiets down a bit. Books begin to disappear; someone is stealing them. They do it so cleverly that all copies of a given work vanish without a trace from bookstores, second-hand shops, and libraries, and in the memories of readers, all evidence of them also disappears. The cunning thief targets the texts of Shakespeare, Borges, Kafka, Verne, Miłosz, and Lem (who surely did not intend such a solution to the problem of literary excess), while humanity remains unaware that it is being systematically robbed of its most precious treasures. It is a perfect crime. Almost perfect. This is how the plot of the comic "Meanwhile" begins, with a script by Grzegorz Janusz. The album was illustrated by Przemek Truściński and colored by Krzysiek Ostrowski.