The story of the Herceg Novi Comic Festival (HSF) did not end when the festival was over. This time, it continued in Italy, where a visitor found a bottle containing a comic while swimming. The bottle had been thrown into the sea by HSF guests on September 8, the penultimate day of this year’s festival.

Brad, from South Africa, contacted HSF via its inbox. He is currently on holiday in Monticelli, Italy. As he explained in his message, he found the bottle while swimming yesterday afternoon.

“Hello, I found your bottle while swimming this afternoon. I’m interested to know where and when it was thrown into the sea,” Brad wrote.

After the organizers replied, Brad said he would try to find the comic’s author and invited the HSF team to visit him in Cape Town. He explained that he himself works in fields related to the sea and is a great lover of the ocean.

The comic found in the bottle was created by Selena Danilović, an artist from Novi Sad and a regular guest of the Herceg Novi Comic Festival.

This is the fifteenth bottle containing a comic to have been released into the sea over the past seven years, since HSF launched its “Comic in a Bottle” programme. The programme draws on the old maritime tradition of sending messages in bottles, while also symbolically connecting different shores and worlds through culture and art.

Connecting people, artists and different cultures is one of the main aims of the “Comic in a Bottle” programme, which continues to create new stories even after the festival has ended.