Elvis - Enskilda samtalBy: Maria & Tony Cronstam
Langauge: Swedish
96 pages, color, softcover
Egmont Kärnan, 2008
ISBN: 978-91-7269-9
The strip Elvis has been around for almost ten years now, and has become somewhat of an institution in Sweden, with big yearly collections, a monthly comic book and of course daily publications in a lot of newspapers. Some things have changed over the years: the characters have become more and more openly a reflection of the creators' own lives, Maria has been added as a co-creator of the strip and nowadays they also do comics which are a bit longer than just a single strip, which has opened up for other kinds of stories.
The title of this collection really says it all: Enskilda samtal (Private conversations). It's all about the close relationship between the two characters Elvis and Hedvig and it's often about things which are normally kept private and not commonly disclosed to others. In an age of "reality" TV, it is not surprising that such a revealing strip has become popular. Anyway, compared with Martin Kellerman's Rocky, the other really big Swedish strip right now - which deals with the life of a (mostly) single guy (published in English by Fantagraphics), this is all about being a couple and dealing with the daily life of sharing everything with someone else, and this is probabaly why so many can identify with the characters.
The strip Elvis has been around for almost ten years now, and has become somewhat of an institution in Sweden, with big yearly collections, a monthly comic book and of course daily publications in a lot of newspapers. Some things have changed over the years: the characters have become more and more openly a reflection of the creators' own lives, Maria has been added as a co-creator of the strip and nowadays they also do comics which are a bit longer than just a single strip, which has opened up for other kinds of stories.
The title of this collection really says it all: Enskilda samtal (Private conversations). It's all about the close relationship between the two characters Elvis and Hedvig and it's often about things which are normally kept private and not commonly disclosed to others. In an age of "reality" TV, it is not surprising that such a revealing strip has become popular. Anyway, compared with Martin Kellerman's Rocky, the other really big Swedish strip right now - which deals with the life of a (mostly) single guy (published in English by Fantagraphics), this is all about being a couple and dealing with the daily life of sharing everything with someone else, and this is probabaly why so many can identify with the characters.
