Bane Kerac
Bane Kerac lives in Novi Sad, a small town (ca 200 000 souls) on the banks of the river Danube as the Capital of Vojvodina district which is in the northern part of Yugoslavia. He is married to Liljana, the lettering wizard in Keracs earlier comics, and they has got two sons, who have been named after Comic-characters:
Tara is named upon Keracs first comics hero "Lieutenant Tara". Tara is also the name of a river and a mountain in the heart of Yugoslavia.
His other son is named Neboysa (read NeBOYSHa), after Johnny Romita's hero "Daredevil" (Nebojsa is a direct translation, which means Fearless). An excellent comic, if you haven't read it, go look for it in an used comic book store.
He finds his inspiration in things that happens in a normal life: «Life is my source of inspiration. Just look around, use your senses. A car crash, for instance, can make a great manuscript!», he says in an interview. A concrete example of this is his "pumpkin gang", which teams up with Extremity. The gang was inspired by one of the heavy Metal group Helloween's live LPs.
Other characters are based upon Bane Keracs wife, friends and coworkers. They can be both good and evil, depending upon his mood when he is writing. He strongly refuses to reveal the source of Extremity, though ...
Before he became a full time cartoonist some time
in the middle of the 70s, Bane Kerac studied medicine and had a guest apperance
at a dental college. He was also the percussionist in a garage band, and
has continued his musical carriere.
Now, he is the percussionist and singer in a band called GeroMetaL, a hard rock band based on Deep Zeppelin sound. They have made two albums until now: «Der rauch am waßer» 1993 , and «Cat Claw» 1996. The First album is a collection of 70's hits like Smoke on the Water, Locomotive Breath, Allright Now, Proud Mary, Hey Jo, Into The Fire,Woodoo Chile, Livin' Lovin' Maid, Day Tripper etc. The second album contains 12 new Heavy Artillery songs styled as HeadBLOW Apocalypse, «punishment for ears and exctacy for real headbangers», or very hard rock.
Bane Kerac let his music taste shine through in most of his Cat Claw stories. Some of his stories are even described as "Rock n' roll comedies", and reminds the reader slightly more of a musical than a cartoon. How he manages to do that on plain paper? If you haven't read it, you couldn't possibly understand. The best examples are the episodes where the pumpkin gang, that is mentioned above, appears.
GeroMetaL
