HALL OF THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

Playwright David Zane Mairowitz has a history of mixing the literary classics with the comic book format. He was the author of Kafka For Beginners, famously illustrated by Robert Crumb, and also adapted two Kafka novellas for the comic book format: The Trial (with Chantal Montellier) and The Castle (with Jaromir99). In addition to this, he has adapted Crime and Punishment and Heart of Darkness. With the exception of The Castle, all of these publications have been translated into Norwegian, so it the Norwegian audience had ample opportunity to get familiar with his works by the time he decided to adapt one of Norwegian literature’s greatest classics - Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.

Penned by Ibsen as a “dramatic poem”, Peer Gynt was originally intended to be read rather than performed on stage, but was later reworked for the stage and has become one of our most famous plays ever.

The most important task – to illustrate the adaptation - went to Geir Moen, a Norwegian artist who’s neither a stranger to Ibsen, big drama nor 18th century imagery. One of his previous works was illustrating De Fire Store ("The Four Great Ones") based on scripts by Øystein Runde;  a steampunk/proto-superhero comic starring four of Norway’s greatest 19th century writers (including Henrik Ibsen) as secret agents. Both conceptually and art-wise, the premise was somewhat similar to Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  

This background serves him well when illustrating Peer Gynt.  As previously mentioned, the work was originally meant to be read, not performed on stage, but in retrospect it comes across as a visually strong story with many burlesque and imaginative ideas. So Moen has a committed to tradition, while at the same time he and Mairowitz have a commitment to try and renew it.

Geir Moen has a somewhat rigid art style, and his characters are often lacking in animation. On the other hand, he also has a detailed and expressive line, which looks great in this story. His creativity is considerable, and his respect and enthusiasm for the original is very transparent. In his own statement he has "taken a million reference images" from the text.

A pattern becomes evident as soon as you begin reading: The images that are (probably) only in Peer’s head are brightly colored, while the images from reality are dimly colored. But just as you have gotten accustomed to this pattern, it becomes more unpredictable again. The scene with Anitra and from the madhouse, for example, are both dim, while the homecoming scenes (which admittedly include some surreal images) are in color. The distinction between fantasy and reality, and what symbolizes what, are becoming more ambiguous, and the reader is being challenged. This makes for a more interesting read.

The comic also has an international flavor. Some of it is probably due to Mairowitz' contributions, but Moen has a certain international artistic flair himself. Many of his Gynt characters are reminiscent of Vertigo Comics boogeymen, including the Strange Passenger and the Button-Molder. The trolls in the hall of the Mountain King look more like demons from medieval art than traditional Norwegian folk-art. The Mountain King himself is obviously Ibsen, and he resembles the playwright more the further out in the story we get.

If you know the original well*, you'll appreciate that relatively little is cut from this version, all in all. Every scene of some importance is included and the flow of the original story is retained. Mairowitz has done a very good job of keeping that. The spelling is cautiously modernized, and for the sake of the format some rhythm and rhymes had to be broken down, but are mostly kept very recognizable.

Comics Norway in general are breathing a sigh of relief well these days, even though we did have faith in Geir Moen all along: One of Norway's foremost literary works have made a successful transition into comics.  

* Translations of Peer Gynt are widely available on the net. Here are a few links:

http://archive.org/stream/peergyntdramatic00ibseuoft/peergyntdramatic00ibseuoft_djvu.txt

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Peer_Gynt

http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/peer-gynt-1716/1 (German translation)

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k54702240 (French translation)

SINISTER MINISTER

        

To explain what this comic is about, here’s some very brief encyclopedic information that will help you along the way:  Petter Dass (ca. 1647 – 18 September 1707) was a Lutheran clergyman and the foremost Norwegian poet of his generation, writing both baroque hymns and topographical poetry (source: Wikipedia)

But there’s another aspect to Dass; he was a so-called grimoire minister, and according to legends he actively fought the dark powers and outwitted the devil himself on more than one occasion.

Art: John S. Jamtli 

With this starting point, comic book creators John S. Jamtli and Vegard A. Skogmo has turned ​​the poet clergyman into a mythic action hero who fights trolls, demons and witchcraft in the county of Nordland, northern Norway. Jamtli and Skogmo themselves are native to this county.

So far, four comics of varying length has been made, all of which are only available digitally for the time being. Notably, all of them have now been translated into English, by John Erik Andersen. To translate a comic that is related so specifically to Norwegian cultural history could easily have become awkward, but it works thanks to two aspects:

First, while sticking firmly to Norwegian folklore, there is an international flavor to this comic. TV has turned supernatural investigation into a popular subgenre (Buffy, Supernatural, Grimm), and Dass relates to this, while the action sequences and the fictional Petter Dass’ own mannerisms seem to owe a lot to the superhero genre.    

Art: John S. Jamtli 

Second, the translation reflects the difference between the academic Dass and the “subjects” of his parish. In the original text, the locals speak the Northern dialect while Petter Dass speaks High Danish (he was educated in Copenhagen). In the English translation, the locals speak something faintly resembling Scottish and northern English dialects, while Dass speaks the King James Bible’s English, which fits perfectly with his dramatic manner (and makes sense for a strict, 17^th century Protestant clergyman). The translator wisely downplays the locals’ dialects in favor of Dass’ speaking patterns, since they make him stand out well enough as it is. 

The premise is well executed. Jamtli’s drawings are exquisitely detailed and caricatured enough that the humor shines through, but not so stylized that it seems like pure comedy. His Petter Dass is a towering figure, looking every bit as hammy as he acts. Jamtli and Skogmo succeed in giving us a Petter Dass who is a convincing badass.

Art: Vegard A. Skogmo

John S,. Jamtli draws the first full story, Dass and the Træna Ogre as well as the Christmas special, while Vegard A. Skogmo draws the second full story Dass Meets the Shaman in Mo. Jamtli is easily the best artist; he is noticeably more detailed, the shading and the use of perspectives are more dynamic, and there is an intensity to his artwork that Skogmo is missing. The fourth comic is a short piece, just like the Christmas special, drawn by guest artist Øyvind Lauvdahl (another Nordland native). He also lacks the hardline action style of Jamtli, but being a more experienced artist, he delivers rounded artwork that looks good.

Art: Øyvind Lauvdahl 

The first collection on paper is due in 2016. In the meantime, the collection so far can be bought online both in Norwegian (here), in English (here or on iTunes, here) for 3 USD 

A GIRL AND HER UNICORN

I’m a subscriber to gocomics.com. And while most of that website’s prime content are newspaper comic strips that are several decades past their glory days, there’s some exciting (or at least funny) new stuff to be found as well, including Dana Simpson’s Heavenly Nostrils.

Dana Simpson is a cartoonist I’ve been following since the beginning of her career. She had a breakthrough of sorts with the popular furry comic Ozy & Millie (1998-2008) under the name D.C. [Dana Claire] Simpson. Debuting in 2012 and running steadily since then, Heavenly Nostrils is her first syndicated comic. Now the first collected edition has just been published with a foreword by none other than Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn. The book itself is published Andrews McMeel, the company behind pretty much every collection of American newspaper comic strips since Calvin & Hobbes.

And while Heavenly Nostrils is hardly a rip-off, it has some obvious similarities with Watterson’s modern classic. Like Hobbes, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils the unicorn has a gigantic ego, not as much on behalf of herself as on behalf of her species. Like Hobbes, she regards her kind as the pinnacle of creation, while her human Phoebe – like Calvin – regard her non-human friend with a mix of indulgence and admiration. And like Calvin, Phoebe can be both weird, sassy and self-centered. Though not quite as badly as the spiky-haired blond; Simpson clearly wants us to side her, after all.  

One important difference, however, is that while Calvin’s interaction with Hobbes appears to be only in his own head (though I know this is widely debated) , it’s quite obvious that Marigold is supposed to be a real live unicorn walking amongst us. So why isn’t her presence getting more attention? Because of a deus ex machina known as the Shield of Boringness, a spell that makes humans indifferent to the fact that they are looking at a unicorn. Conveniently, this also explains why Phoebe doesn’t become more popular by riding to school on a unicorn every day. Not surprisingly, Phoebe is an outsider, the one who is too weird to be liked by the popular girls. Dana Simpson’s sympathy for the unpopular kids that don’t follow the crowd is well known to those who have read Ozy & Millie.

While Marigold boasts more about the supremacy of her species than she can show proof of (again, not unlike Hobbes), she does have magical abilities and she is a beautiful, elegant creature. Simpson modelled her after medieval illustrations of unicorns, so she doesn’t look just like a horse with horns. Her biggest flaw is her ego and narcissism; the first time Phoebe met Marigold, she accidentally saved her from being stuck admiring her own reflection.

The strip’s biggest flaw is that it’s a bit too dependent on jokes based around Marigold’s character traits (funny though they may very often be). She’s arrogant and narcissistic (yet overall quite friendly) and takes things too literally – Innocently arrogant, as Peter S. Beagle so aptly describes her in the foreword. Ozy & Millie used to have a little more varied characterization. What saves the strip is the combination of heart and clever verbal comedy. Simpson combines the snappy dialogue – often emphasized through use of fonts – with simple, yet effective facial expressions.

You may read the entire archive of Heavenly Nostrils here (you can also order the book from the same place) but I bought this collection because sometimes it’s nice to have the strips collected and handy. Also, the strips have been colored for this edition*. However, I have a faint suspicion that Simpson can’t have been 100 % happy with the design of the book. Most likely someone in the publishing company thought “Ah, so this is about girls and unicorns. Then the cover must be pink and glittery”. But Phoebe is not a particularly “girly” girl, and certainly no “little princess” type. Her parents are hipsters and geeks, and she is clearly taking after them (I’m guessing that Simpson is seeing something of herself in Phoebe’s artistic mom). The comic as a whole is not all that feminine, either. Like all the best comic strips, it breaks down the borders of gender and age.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A Heavenly Nostrils Chronicle by Dana Simpson

ISBN: 978-1-4491-4620

224 pages

USD 10

Andrews McMeel Publishing

*For practical purposes, most of the illustrations in this review are pasted from the website, where the daily strips are in black and white. However, the book is entirely in color. 

NORWEGIAN AVENGERS

Last week, one of the most anticipated, Norwegian comic books for years debuted. The album (or graphic novel) Krüger & Krogh – Brennpunkt: Oslo (“Ignition Point: Oslo”) had already been in the planning stage for years when animators Ronald Kabicek and Endre Skandfer presented the project at Oslo Comics Expo in 2011. Following a massive hype in the wake of their presentation, Kabicek and Skandfer has been working on the comic ever since, though the lion’s share was done by main artist, Bjarte Agdestein. Returning to the OCX this year, all three co-creators were happy to announce that the first story was ready at last, all written, drawn, and colored.

Krüger & Krogh is a milestone in Norwegian comics. While funnypage strips like Pondus and Nemi has a huge audience and many “artsy” Norwegian graphic novels like Munch and the works of Jason has won great critical acclaim both home and abroad, the market for action and suspense comics is small, and it keeps shrinking. Krüger & Krogh is rather unique in the sense that it’s a good old-fashioned album comic and an action comic with humorous undertones. The art style is continental and can easily be compared with Spirou Et Fantasio when it comes to both art and storytelling. However, in an interview I did with artist Agdestein, he informed me that the comic is heavily inspired by The Avengers – the sixties British spy tv series, not Marvel’s superhero comics and movies.

Like all proper fiction detectives, Krüger & Krogh has to be taken off the case before they can solve it.

Like John Steed and company of The Avengers, Krüger & Krogh are secret agents. They are the classical odd couple: One young, the other old, one impulsive, the other by the book, one skinny and tall, the other short and stout, etc. But they are partners, working for Norwegian intelligence’s AFMA: Avdelingen for Mellemliggende Anliggender  - «the Department of  Intermediate Affairs».  «Intermediate» in this case is a discreet word for «anything we need to keep secret from the public because it’s too dangerous and in some cases inexplicable”. Also, like “The Avengers”, “Krüger & Krogh” takes place in the sixties. This is apparently much due to Agdestein’s fascination with the decade (he’s even in a retro sixties rock band). That also makes it easier to take historical events into the context – For instance, in “Brennpunkt Oslo”, the takes place against the backdrop of Martin Luther King jr’s visit to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

                                                                  Otto Krogh just finished a tough interrigation..

It’s hard to say for sure where this comic goes in the long run, but in “Brennpunkt Oslo”, the genre they’re going for is clearly secret agent action with some sci-fi elements. It looks great, the dialogue is clever, and it has some quite satisfying action sequences. While there are no plans to do it yet, I’m wondering if it would be possible to export this comic. I can see it being difficult, considering how it has a provincial focus. While it’s well enough known that Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize, every other aspect is tied very specifically to Norwegian history and to Oslo in particular. 

And unless it’s U.K. or the U.S., it’s hard to convince foreign readers that the affairs of any country’s intelligence service matters, or even makes for interesting entertainment. But there are exceptions. Martin Lodewijk’s comic book Agent 327, which is basically a Dutch James Bond with some comedy and supernatural elements thrown in, has been around since 1975. It consists of 20 volumes, and is still in production. Despite being very specifically set in Amsterdam, with the title character working for Dutch intelligence (though he also travels around the world) , the comic has been translated to several languages. It was even published in Norwegian for a while in the late eighties. And no offense to any Dutch readers, but Norwegians do not care about your affairs - Unless you are Olympic skaters competing against Norwegian ones. The Spanish Mortadelo y Filemon may also qualify, although that comics’ appeal is its surreal, whacky humor rather than its paper-thin, token spy plots.

So it can be done, if only the quality and commitment is there.  For the moment, the creators and publishers have enough of a job establishing Krüger & Krogh in Norway. But I think this comic has potential to go beyond that eventually.  

The whole gang is here! Krogh (from the left) and Krüger with their creators Endre Skandfer, Bjarte Agdestein and Ronald Kabicek.

To read more in English, check out Endre Skandfer's home page (admittedly, the information is a bit dated) and the Tv Tropes page I made on Krüger & Krogh)

MARK OF THE JELLYVAMPIRE

When I write about Norwegian comic artists and cartoonists on this blog, I prefer to focus on artists that can easily be presented to an international audience, thanks to translations being available online. That’s why I’ve been writing these articles on Nemi, for instance.

One of the new, young artists who are currently published in Nemi’s comic magazine, while being internationally available at the same time, is Ida Eva Margrethe Neverdahl (sometimes she signs her comics as Ida Neverdahl, sometimes Ida Margrethe Neverdahl, sometimes Ida Eva Neverdahl...take your pick. For now, let’s just call her Ida).  That is to say, she is not so new anymore, but certainly still very young. She’s 20 now, turning 21 in September, and has been in this business for five years already. It started when she won the third place in a Norwegian newspaper’s annual cartoonist contest. Two years later she got fifth place in the same contest. By now, she’s already made a bigger name for herself than most runner-ups can realistically hope for.

It's important not to lose the sense of wonder

The reason for this is of course that she has a truly original and creative expression. Naivistic and slightly mangaesque, Ida’s art is simple yet expressive. Her narrative style can best be described as taking hallucinogenic drugs that tastes like cotton candy and chocolate-covered caramels. Her comics, especially her strip gags tend to be macabre, surreal and sweet – Often all three in the same strip! Her art is cute, deceivingly cute considering what the punchline or the message can very often be.

Ida’s first work to be published nationwide was Klone og Jeg (Clone and I), the comic that earned her the aforementioned third place. It’s about a young girl named - yes - Ida who clones herself successfully, only to have the clones go horribly wrong, of course. It never got off the ground, but effectively displayed Ida’s sense of weirdness.

Scene from Klone Og Jeg (not translated). "Ida" asks her mom what most closely resembles human flesh of what they have in the fridge. You'd think  that would be enough to make her mom worried, but apparently, she still needs a special alarm watch to tell her something is wrong. 

Since then, the main outlet if Ida’s creativity has been the comic Gelé, or JellyVampire in English. To begin with, the strip would be used to express any idea she might have, including the beautiful and poetic Like An Artist section which was praised by Scott McCloud himself (you can read the section here).

But after a little while, a new heroine, cute, short and raven-haired, began to emerge. Lulu is Ida’s most frequently recurring character. You might have read a few of the strips on her Deviant Art page, which can be accessed here. But there are plenty more, including some short stories in addition to the regular strips, all of which I hope will be made translated into English eventually. Lulu is sweet and adorable, and loves things like unicorns, rainbows and romance but also has a dark side. In short, she’s like the essence of Ida’s comics. Sometimes she’s a princess, sometimes she’s a regular girl. Occasionally, she’s even a reality warper but more often she seems to be a victim of the forces of fate. She has her ways of dealing with those forces, however, and is rarely helpless.  

There seems to be a distinct possibility that more of Lulu’s adventures will be made available to the international audience in the near future. At least if she can find the time to adjust them to the format she prefers. In her latest DA post, she announces:

"I want to post more strips. Because I produce so many of them and all they ever see is Norwegian daylight which is unfair SO I'll start posting them here as well in English. I've decided to transform them all into the neat vertical format that I love so much."

WHAT DOES THE RACOON SAY?

When you look at the comic book publishing schedule, it’s easy to get the impression that Marvel to oversell the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie. This last week, they published both the debut issues of two ongoing solo titles featuring members of the group. The first one of these, Legendary Star-Lord, is apparently decent enough, but I personally have no interest in picking it up. But the second one, Rocket Racoon, has the advantage of being made by Skottie Young.

Young is not a typical Marvel comic artist. His style is breezy and light and has an innocent feel to it. Which explains why he is best known for illustrating children’s books as well as a series of Land of Oz books adaptations.

That doesn’t mean that his version of Rocket Racoon is particularly child-friendly. Rocket is a gun-toting womanizer, and there’s a lot of innuendo here as well as some tough guy-talking gratuitous violence. It’s very cartoony violence, though, played for laughs, and the cursing is censored. Despite the violence, the comic also maintains Skottie Young’s elegance. This scene is an excellent example of that:

Rocket, an alien humanoid racoon, has a confusing history in comic books, but the premise in this book is that he’s an adventurer from the Guardians of the Galaxy group who sometimes go on adventures as a freelancer. Very often, it seems, his solo freelance adventures consist in rescuing alien princesses, which he then seduces. The book starts off with a scene that goes like that, then we fast forward to Rocket taking another girl on a date. The date is going disastrous enough before it turns into a disaster for real when space cops finds him and starts chasing him for murders that he, despite his track record, can’t remember having committed.    

The story is quite simple, but Young writes this comic as a humor book, and it works very well in regard. I can’t remember Young being much of a writer before, but in this book has some suave and clever comedy dialogue. He knows exactly what kind of character Rocket Racoon is supposed to be – sarcastic, witty and full of himself - and seems to have a great time writing his lines. So far, that seems to be the comic’s strongest suit – Second, of course, to Young’s beautiful art. It has the right ambition level, and is entertaining enough to make me want to come back for more.     

Rocket Racoon # 1 (Marvel Comics)

By Skottie Young. Inked by Jean-Francois Beaulieu

Digital copy

Price $ 3.99 / NOK 28

WHY I HATE AND LOVE NEMI

I’ve been following Nemi on and off for several years. Technically, ever since the strip began. However, I’ve been following her more closely (mostly through her magazine and Christmas specials) for the last few years. She’s become somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me, as she is not exactly considered cool anymore, at least not in Norway.  Ironically, the comic strip that embraces countercultures and “being different” is now considered to be very mainstream. Then again, that happens to a lot of properties that started out as countercultural, doesn’t it?

There are two main reasons why Nemi har warmed up to me, both as a character and as a comic. The first is that Nemi, as a character, has gotten more multi-faceted as time goes by. In the early days of the comic, Nemi was quite frankly a bitch. She had a point when she complained about people stereotyping her because of her Goth look, but then again she had no qualms about stereotyping and judging other people because she thought they looked too “straight”. In one strip that I have always found to be particularly offensive, Nemi wears a blonde wig and fancy clothes when going to a café renowned for their great cocoa. Why? Because she assumes that the clerk would call the cops on her if she entered the café wearing her usual outfit. She even has the nerve to curse the clerk (silently) based on this assumption.

Even then however, Nemi always had another side to her. She was also a creative, mischievous prankster, a movie geek, a fun drunk and a woman-child who cried during Disney cartoons. Over the years, the comic has been focusing more on these more entertaining and likable aspects of her personality. She hasn’t lost her edge, but has gotten more fun as a character, and nowadays she tends to get the better of people, not thorugh her attitude but by being clever and witty.

The other reason that I began enjoying Nemi more recently is that it’s getting less preachy. And this is tied to the bitchy side of Nemi’s personality. For a period, Nemi’s Sunday strip would typically be built up like this:

A casual friend or acquaintance of Nemi’s – usually one who’s unnamed and only appears in this particular strip – has a conversation with our heroine. He or she makes a statement that Nemi thinks is wrong or at least poorly informed. Nemi starts by picking her conversation partner’s argument apart, then delivers a long speech explaining in further detail, not only why the argument is wrong, but also why people and the world in general sucks. If the strips takes place during the period when Nemi was smoking, Nemi will occasionally take a puff of the cigarette she was smoking to further illustrate that she’s a dame with an attitude who doesn’t take sh*t from anyone. In the last panel, Nemi’s friend will try and make a counter-argument that Nemi brushes off with a sarcastic remark.  

Occasionally there would be a twist to these Sunday strips (in one where Nemi throws a fit over allegedly fanatical non-mokers, she gets her well-deserved humiliation in the last panel), but most of the time we were never left in any doubt that Nemi was absolutely right and that people who disagreed were idiots or jerks. Thankfully, Lise Myhre gave up on these soapbox speeches a while ago, though I don’t know if it was because she got tired of them herself or if she was getting too much negative feedback on them. On occasion, Myhre will still deliver preachy strips, but at least she’s getting more subtle and creative with them. Rather than putting the lessons she wants to teach people in Nemi’s mouth, she prefers to phrase them in the narrative nowadays. I can live with that.