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https://piefed.social/c/comicstrips@lemmy.world/p/2411619/jucika-and-the-courteous-bus-driver

Jucika celebrates pretty privilege, strip #387.

I’ve debated in the past ’what exactly Pusztai was going for in his Jucika comics?’ That is, is it just the idea that drawing a pretty young woman with the simplest of gag setups is enough to get favorable audience reaction? Was he actually trying to exercise any real creativity on his part, or was he just cynically milking his little cash cow? (if he was like Scott Adams of “Dilbert” fame, then evidently the answer would be yes!)

As for the character of Jucika herself, was she indeed simply out to exercise her pretty-privilege for the most part? Because at other times she’s having to fend off butt-pinching leches, often getting minor revenge on them. And yet at other times, you’ll see her being spontaneously creative and/or sympathetic towards someone / anyone around her visibly having a bad day. Or even sharing borderline intimate moments with her dates and temporary lovers, which also raised questions of her being something of either a gold-digger or a OTOH a ‘liberated woman’ of the time.

In the end, I mostly concluded that Jucika ("YOOTS-ika") was simply a template for a variety of simple gags and light topical humor. Trying to find consistency of character and her ‘true self’ seems mostly like a waste of time, not unlike how few if any background characters (including her romantic dates) in the strip ever appear twice. This in fact is pretty routine in comics and some animated shows– altho the writers do create material for the characters, the characters are also somewhat empty vessels for whatever can be done with them. With The Simpsons for example, you can often see this, particularly taking off around season ten. Lisa Simpson seems like the most consistent character, yet the rest of the family can range from being stumbling, uninspired, passive buffoons, all the way to assertive, creative, progressive individuals. Something like that.

What I also find interesting is that Pusztai did more than just Jucika, as we see here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=pal+pusztai+comics+-jucika&udm=2

Pretty girls, sure, but also a little more broad range of styles and humor subjects, seemingly freelancing quite a bit. Indeed:

Pál Pusztai was a Hungarian graphic artist, known for drawing postcards, advertisements and propaganda pamphlets. From 1959 until his death in 1970, he was a regular contributor to Lúdas Matyi magazine with the groundbreaking comic strip about the sexy ‘Jucika’ (1957-1970) and his military cartoon feature ’Iván és Joe’ (1959-1970). –LBK

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https://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/p/pusztai_pal/pusztai_ludasmatyi1960.jpg

“Where have you been, Joe?"
“You know, Ivan, we have a little base in Cuba. We went fishing there this weekend.”

TBH I think I’d already read that Lambiek entry about Pusztai’s other stuff, but had kind of forgotten over time. A big factor here is that I can’t read a lick of Hungarian, so my chance to analyze is cut down by the non-visual gags stuff. Oh well.

Previously-posted Jucika stuff here:
https://piefed.social/search?q=jucika&community=eurographicnovels