Live: Angouleme

Today was the first day of the festival and everything has worked out great. The Swedish exhibition is up and running, we have had a steady flow of visitors all day and a lot of interest from media.


The exhibition is made up of a number of panoramas in sturdy cardboard, with free-standing characters in front of them, creating the illusion of small paper theatres blown-up to human size. The artists featured are as follows:


Kolbeinn Karlsson.


Joanna Hellgren.


Anneli Furmark.


Matilda Ruta.


Malin Biller.


Joanna Rubin Dranger.


Fabian Göranson.


Knut Larsson.


Loka Kanarp.


Besides this we also display a lot of framed originals from the participating artists.


In one end of the exhibition hall, we project the animated version of Joanna Rubin Dranger's Miss Remarcable and her career on a wall for the visitors to sit down and watch, which a lot do all the way through even though it's more than 30 minutes long.


Then we have an artist's work place where Swedish artists can sit and draw, something that always creates attention with the visitors. Above can be seen Jonas Darnell, captivating the audience, while drawing a Strindberg version of his character Herman Hedning.


At three o' clock in the afternoon we had the official opening, with the obligatory pompous inauguration talk by me and Josefin, red wine for everyone and afterwards a relaxed mingle with colleagues and visitors from all over the world.


Now it's time to close for the day and go and take part in the very official opening ceremonie, where we are supposed to talk about Swedish comics in front of all the VIP:s of the festival. It'll get back to you with more details as soon as I get a chance to sit down and write again.

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Live: Angouleme - Day 0

So, here we are, building a Swedish comics exhibition in Angouleme, France - to be featured at one of the largest comics festivals in the world.


It's been really hard work for quite a long time, but now we're actually on the finishing line. Today has been rather difficult, with many set-backs, and very rewarding with a great team-work. Me and Josefin arrived yesterday and have spent the whole day building and have slowly been joined by the Swedish artist, and everyone has joined in.


We have framed originals - quite often actually not breaking the glass, hammered nails straight and crooked into walls, climbed on ridiculously high ladders and adjusted the lighting and so on. And miraculously, as it always does, out of this chaos has come a really good exhibition.


Tomorrow is the grand opening and we are now ready for the onslaught of our adoring public. More reports to follow.

News: Sweden Goes to Angouleme!

It's getting close to the launch of the biggest comics festival in Europe, Festival International de la Bande Dessinée, in Angouleme, France. This year there will be a special focus on Sweden, as there is a special exhibition, La vie n’est pas pour les amateurs – Strindberg et la bande dessinée (Life is not for Amateurs - Strindberg and comics), an exhibition produced by yours truly and curated by Josefin Svenske, celebrating the 100th year since the death of the much talked about Swedish author August Strindberg. This marks the first time there is a major Swedish exhibition in Angouleme, and it is acompanied by a Swedish booth in the Nouvo Monde tent, where Swedish publishers and artists show their books to the general public.

I'm travelling to France today, to oversee the final building of the exhibition, and then the fun beginns. On Thursday, there is an official on-stage presentation of the exhibition; on Friday I will give a talk on Swedish Comics History and there will be a big panel discussion with several representatives of the Swedish comics culture. Then there's going to be a big release party for the brand new French anthology Rayon Frais, collecting the best of the new generation of Swedish comics artists, published in collaboration between Swedish Galago and French les Requins Marteaux, and much, much more.

As you can tell, this is going to be intense, and hopefully we will further the position of Swedish comics in the French speaking world. I will report here continuously throughout the whole festival, keeping you posted on what's happening.

Review: 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die

There's a new book on comics out, to which I have contributed. The title of the book really says it all: 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die: The Ultimate Guide to Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Comic Strips and Manga. This gigantic tome (960 pages!) was edited by friend and fellow comics historian Paul Gravett. Gravett did the impossible job of trying to include all comics cultures of the world, and not just the Anglosaxon ones - which is otherwise sadly often the norm in encyclopedical efforts of this kind (or only French comics, if it were written in France).

So far, the book is out in two different editions, one British and one American. As could be expected, the British one is fronted by Judge Dredd and the American one by Captain America. If there is a French edition I suspect it will sport Tintin on the cover...

All jokes aside, this is an interesting book, and not only because I was inloved in the making of it... The 1001 comics mentioned come from almost 40 different countries and are presented chronologically, with the oldest one from 1837 (The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck by Töpffer) and the newest one from 2011 (Habibi by Craig Thompson). This makes browsing the book feel like a quick guide to the evolution of the comics medium.

Gravett took the process of choosing the comics very seriously (see here for a description of the process) and had experts from all over the world help nominate comics for inclusion. My job was, of course, to nominate Swedish comics. This was an interesting but difficult task, as I wanted as broad a selection as possible at the same time as the slots for Swedish comics were limited. And the books also had to have been published in English... In the end, I managed to get seven books included:

Adamson’s Adventures by Oscar Jacobsson (1920)
Socker-Conny by Joakim Pirinen (1985)
Rocky by Martin Kellerman (1999)
Miss Remarkable & Her Career by Joanna Rubin Dranger (2001)

Bosnian Flat Dog by Max Andersson and Lars Sjunnesson (2004)
Frances by Joanna Hellgren (2008)

I also wrote the entries for these books and a few more scattered throughout the book.

All in all, this is a really solid book (both for its hefty volume and for its intent), a serious effort to create a canon of comics masterpeices. For someone like me, who have read vast amounts of comics from all over the world, it still contains comics I've never heard of. So, I'll keep this book around for browsing and getting inspired for a long time.

Jewish Images in the Comics: The Lecture

Today, for those of you who are in the area, I give a lecture tonight, based on my new book Jewish Images in the Comics, to be published in the U.S. by Fantagraphics this April. The lecture will be held at Kulturhuset Mazetti, Friisgatan 15 B, Malmö, in the lecture hall of the Comics Art School, and starts at 19.00. Hope to see you there! 

New book and big international exhibition

Phew! The last couple of months have not seen many updates here, due to the autumn having been even busier than usual. Now it is starting to look a bit better. A few days ago I delivered my new book, Jewish Images in the Comics - A Visual History, to my American publisher Fantagraphics Books. That was a load off my mind, I can tell you. It will be much longer than any of the earlier books in this series (Black Images in the Comics and Comics Go to Hell) and contain almost 150 different comics featuring Jewish culture in some way or other. As usual I have spread the examples historically, geographically and chosen them from different genres, publishing formats and so on, in order to make the book as broad and as interesting as possible. I'm really looking forward to the book release at MoCCA in New York in April this year.

Then there's the Swedish exhibition in Angoulême, France, which I am producing together with Josefin Svenske. This will be the first major Swedish exhibition in Europe's biggest and most important comics festival, and this has been a lot of work. The exhibition will focus in the world famous Swedish author August Strindberg - who died 100 years ago this year - and feature huge panoramas on the subject of Strindberg, created by some of the most interesting Swedish comics artist working today. The festival is getting closer (it's on between the 26 and 29 of this month) and there are still a lot of things left to do, but I can at least see the end of this too. More on this as we get closer to the exhibition.

Lastly, some major changes are due here at Sekventiellt. Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas!

Season's greetings, drawn by my wife, Hanna Strömberg. As I am an old Asterix fan, it was an enjoyable experince being converted into an indominable gaul. I can just see us, living in one of the houses in the Asterix village.

Comics Salon: Patrik Norrman

This Thursday (the 15th), you are cordially invited to the second Comics Salon in the Comics City of Malmö. We have the pleasure of presenting a talk by and with comics creator extraordinaire Patrik Norrman (Bacon & Egg). Norrman, who recently drew his 100th episode of Bacon & Egg, will show examples of his art, discuss his career and his creative process and of course answer questions from the audience.

At 1900 hours on the fourth floor of the Culture House Mazetti in Malmö, the talk commences. The event is a collaboration between the Swedish Comics Association and the Comic Art School of Malmö. More info at the Facebook Event. See you there!

Swedish Comics Advent Calender

This year, waiting for Christmas just got a bit more interesting. For each day, Swedish television releases a new short animation based on the comics by some of the best artists in Sweden: Sara Granér, Liv Strömqvist, Nina Hemmingsson, Martin Kellerman, Ulf Lundqvist and Jan Stenmark. This Advent calender will continue until Christmas Eve, and all episodes will be available until the end of the year, so go to SVT Play and check it out.

The really good thing about these animations, apart from them being based on comics by some really talented artists, is that the animators have stayed true to the original comics, not adding too much animation or talk, but simply adjusting them to a moving media, making them a mix of comics and animation. Really interesting, and fun.

News: Lecture at the University of Aarhus

This autumn has been one of the most hectic periods I've ever experienced. Several big projects in the making, including new books, big exhibitions and more. I have also managed to make a few official appearances, and tomorrow (the 29th of November) is one which I am really looking forward to.

I will be part of a seminar on comics and education, held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, as one of four speaker; the other three being Dr. Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff, who will be talking about the impact of manga, fellow PhD student Rikke Cortsen, who will talk about graphic novels and finally artist extraodinaire Peter Madsen, who will talk about his masterpeice Valhalla. I will talk about my experiences of the combination of pedagogics and comics, both in general and more specifically about the Comics Art School of Malmö.

The whole program can be found here. This is not a free seminar, but if you are a student at the University of Aarhus you do get a discount on the entrance fee.

News: Swedish/Finnish Comics Seminar

Comics seminar in the Selma (Lagerlöf) room.

The Swedish Comics Association has been on a two day seminar with the Finnish Comics Society, discussing comics, politics, economy and how to integrate our two Comics cultures more.

Hanasaari-holmen.

The seminar was held at the beautiful Hanasaari Cultural Centre, just outside of Helsinki (as can be seen in the photo above) and was organised by the Finnish Comics Association.

Yours truly talking about Swedish Comics history.

Jamil Mani Talking about Swedish Comics of today.

Mattias Elftorp, talking about Wormgod.

Representatives for the Swedish Comics Association were yours truly, Fredrik Strömberg (President of the Swedish Comics Association and Editor of Bild & Bubbla), Jamil Mani (Vice President of the Swedish Comics Association and President of C'est Bon Kulur) and Mattias Elftorp (founding member of Wormgod and project manager of Tusen serier). We all gave talks about our roles and ongoing projects within the Swedish Comics Association and discussed the possibility of integrating things more with what the Finnish Comics Society is doing.

Ville Hänninen talks about Finnish Comics Annual 2011.

Present for the Finnish Comics Society were, among others, Otto Sinisalo (Chairman and responsible for the Comics Festival in Helsinki), Kalle Hakkola (CEO), Maria Ahokoivu (project manager for NordiComics and Editor of Sarjainfo) and Ville Hänninen (Editor of the anthology Finnish Comics Annual 2011).

This was a very inspiring two days, with a lot of insights into how our two organisations have handled growing rapidly the last decade. What I learned was just how similar the Finnish Comics Society and the Swedish Comics Association are and how much we have to learn from each other. Hopefully this will be an annual event, where we can get the possibility to exchange ideas and grow together.

My heartfelt thanks to the Finnish Comics Society for organising this seminar and for taking so good care of everything.