MOSCOW REVISITED

Last autumn, I wrote about the Polish release of the Norwegian graphic novel (okay, more like a graphic novella) "Moskva" (Moscow), co-created by Norwegian writer/artist Øystein Runde and up-and-coming cartoonist Ida Neverdahl a.k.a. JellyVampire, the latter of which is already gaining an international audience.

"Moskva" was originally published in Norwegian in December 2013. Runde and Neverdahl were guests at KomMissia in Moscow, Russia’s main comic festival, in May the same year. The comic is based on their fairly subjective impressions of the festival and of Moscow and modern Russia in general.

It makes sense in context (art by Ida Neverdahl)

The book is now getting an English translation, courtesy of international publishing house Centrala. To commemorate this event, I was planning on translating and publishing my own review of the comic from December 2013, only to discover that Centrala had already done the job for me! You can find the translated text here

Read more about the release of the Polish edition of Moscow here

Read more about co-creator, the talented Ida Neverdahl here 

SALVAGED BY DISNEY

Just to add some comic perspective: Big Hero 6 was supposed to debut in an issue of Alpha Flight, but instead they premiered in their own miniseries, Sunfire & Big Hero 6 in 1998. The premise of the series was that Silver Samurai (a character who would be familiar to longtime X-Men / Wolverine fans) had been  given the task of forming a national superhero group for Japan, similar to Alpha Flight of Canada. However, the main characters of the series were the child prodigy Hiro Takachiho and his home-made robot Baymax. These two also happen to be the main characters of the movie. In the next miniseries, Big Hero 6 (2008), Sunfire and Silver Samurai were out, and the group had gotten the same roster that was later used in the movie.

I don’t know exactly how much power Disney has over Marvel as the parent company, but I imagine that they can’t just take any concept they like and do as they please. If Disney was allowed to make a movie out of a Marvel concept, it was probably because Marvel felt that they had no more use for it themselves anyway. Marvel Comics didn’t even bother to print a new edition of the BH6 trade paperback in time for the premiere of the movie.

On the whole, there are few traces of Marvel in the movie, not even their film logo is included. The "Man of Action" studio is credited are the creators of Big Hero 6, and sure enough; Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau, who created Big Hero 6, are members of Man of Action. They also created the characters Hiro, Baymax, Honey Lemon and Gogo Tomago. Wasabi No Ginger and Fredzilla, who are also in the movie, were created by Chris Claremont and David Nakayama for the second BH6 series, but they are not credited.

That said,, the movie Big Hero 6 only loosely based on comics. The names are the same, and the character designs have at least a little resemblance, but besides that, Disney stood very freely. The story has been moved to the fictional town of San Fransokyo, an obvious fusion of San Francisco and Tokyo. The superheroes have become engineering students, and Baymax has become a doctoring robot that Hiro took over from his brother. And while the heroes were all Japanese in the comics, they have become multi-ethnical in the movie

I won’t go into detail on how each character has changed, since most of them aren’t that well developed anyway. They all get some funny and charming moments (except Gogo Tomago, who comes across as rather uninteresting), but once again Hiro and Baymax are the real stars. Hiro’s an orphan - Not that it’s important to the story, in fact it’s almost as if he was made an orphan just because it’s a Disney tradition. Baymax has become more family friendly and iconic. He looks like a cross between the Michelin Man and a teddy bear, and has a classic "good-natured and naive robot" personality. Even after Hiro has given him battle experience and armor, he looks kind of cute and cuddly. It seems inevitanle that Baymax will be the most memorable thing about this movie.

BH6 is Disney Studios’ first own superhero movie; you might remember Brad Bird’s The Incredibles (2004), but that was made by Pixar. Compared with the latter, BH6 is definitely more kid friendly: the violence is less brutal, and the whole atmosphere is brighter and lighter. For many superhero fans who liked The Incredibles, BH6 will probably seem a little unsophisticated; the story is simpler, the details are fewer and the surprises are few. Disney needs to realize that it's difficult to conceal who’s the villain, and that the longer you keep them waiting, the easier they will see through the it. Furthermore, the villain of this movie gets too little time and space to become interesting, and his motivations are also shaky.

The film's strength, apart from Hiro and Baymax’ charms, lies primarily in visuals; San Fransokyo is a radiant, multifaceted, and exciting city. I cannot imagine any fictional Disney location I've ever wanted to visit more. Although the city has its share of destruction during the movie, BH6 is something as original as a superhero movie where the setting does not look like a permanent war zone or a coherent, criminal slum. It’s a movie that celebrates progress, and it does so in a far more convincing and heartful way than one of Disney Studios’ earliest experiments with digital animation, Meet the Robinsons (2007)

I mentioned that there are few traces of Marvel in this movie, but there are two. First, a cameo by Stan Lee. Even when the rest of Marvel have packed their bags and left a movie project, Stan still sticks to it with teeth and claw, it seems. Secondly, the film does have a stinger scene, something which has become the hallmark of Marvel's own movies. Is this worth to stay behind in the theater for? If you’re a stressed parent or grandparent who went to this movie just because you needed entertainment for the kids, no. But if you have any interest in comics in general and Marvel in particular, then yes.

LET'S TALK RAINBOWS, LET'S TALK PUPPIES

In 1977, when George Lucas was told that Star Wars did great in its first week, he replied “Science fiction moves always do well in their first week. Let’s talk again next week.” While breakout successes still happens from time to time, this is not how the entertainment industry is working anymore. The probability of a new franchise being a success can, and will be, calculated well in advance, often with surprising accuracy.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil was deemed a success more than six months prior to the debut of its first episode.

Based on almost no official information, and a small handful of unofficial information (a cam copy of the title sequence, filmed at San Diego Comic Con and a few leaked storyboards), it rapidly gained a fandom.  A very enthusiastic and devoted fandom even, despite not having as much as a single episode to back up their devotion yet.

What it did have pretty early on, was a high concept:  Star Butterfly, the crown princess of an extradimensional kingdom, receives a powerful, magic wand on her 14^th birthday. After failing to use it responsibly, she is shipped off to Earth to live with a suburban family in California. However, rather than living a normal life, Star continues to battle villains throughout the universe and in her high school, with the family’s teenage son Marco Diaz as her sidekick.

Comparisons have already been done left and right.  Comparing it to Sailor Moon seemed inevitable, but so far Cartoon Network’s StevenUniverse is mentioned the most. Both shows deals with a kid superhero of alien origin living in our world, and both shows are also created by women. Many animation fans think it was greenlighted because Disney wanted a rival to the popularity of Steven Universe (though creator Daron Nefcy had had the concept in her head since elementary school). Marvel’s Thor has also been brought up: Both Star and Thor are heirs to the throne of a magical, otherworldly kingdom, both possess a very powerful, magical handweapon, and both end up on Earth with a human sidekick. It’s even been accused of ripping off Fresh Prince of Bel Air because both shows are about a teen who gets shipped off to California after getting into a fight at home. If you ask me, the similarities to Thor are a little more obvious.

SVTFOE fans have already had their share of disappointments; the premiere was postponed from September 2014 to 2015. The pilot preview was then postponed from December 2014 to January 2015. Now everyone are so psyched for the pilot that for the moment they chose not to be disappointed by the possibility that the show will not be up and running for real for a couple of months yet. What’s a few months more between friends?  It feels like we know Star already.

But do we, really?     

Yes, I think we do. There’s been some complaints that the show, and Star in particular, is too loud, too in your face. But that was exactly the personality she displayed in all of the preview material, so it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise. Star is bubbly, enthusiastic and hammy. It’s a personality we know very well from dozens of cartoons, one that works very well in the media, and one that I myself am weak for. Not surprisingly, her attitude rubs off on the show as a whole. It’s colorful, fast-paced and joke-heavy. The humor balances nicely between wild slapstick and the more clever moments. “Fish out of water” jokes, which is inevitable in any setting featuring an alien of sorts coming to earth, can be tricky, but this show handles them successfully. I was particularly pleased with Star commenting that she would never have guessed that Marco is related to her host family Mr. and Mrs. Diaz – She just figured that all earthlings were named “Diaz”.     

So yes, I did enjoy it, and I did laugh several times. But to be honest, it’s still easy to see a few faults, most importantly the pacing. It uses the 2x11 minutes format, which in itself doesn’t have to be an obstacle for smart writing and epic storytelling. Adventure Time and the aforementioned Steven Universe mostly use the 2x11 minutes format, and those shows can be both smart and epic. But Star vs. the Forces of Evil could use a little more time.

To be fair, this is mostly a problem in the first of the two 11 minute episodes, “Star comes to Earth”. As you can probably guess from the title, this is the episode that sets up the premise, but it feels like it’s cutting way too many corners to do so. We hardly get time to learn anything about Star’s native kingdom. We don’t get to see how she ended up living with the Diazes. We get to know very little about neither Marco nor Star’s social life before they me each other, or about Marco’s relationship with his parents. We don’t get to see him having any conflict with his parents about Star staying with them, and the conflict between Marco and Star feels forced and hurried.  There’s potential for a good story here, but it would’ve needed twice the running time.

That said, the second episode “Party with a pony” is much better paced. It’s pretty random, and just like the first episode it’s based on a sitcom cliché (in this case the ”jealous best friend” motive) but it works better because it’s not getting too ambitious, and still has a sense of continuity.  So it would appear that already now, the writers are learning how to structure and pace the episodes better. I don’t see how “Star vs. the Forces of Evil” could ever become an epic on the level of Gravity Falls based on a starting point like this. Even comparing it to Gravity Falls (which a lot of people has already done) doesn’t make much sense to me. Both in comedy and pacing, it has much more in common with, say, Wander Over Yonder. It has potential to become its own thing, but it only remains to see if it will be used. We’ll see in the spring, when the Star saga starts for real, if it can turn into a real saga.   

2015, NOW WHAT?

The website www.serienett.no had a good year. We increased the number of festival visits, field stories and interviews, and I established an English language blog for Serienett, after having wanted to make something like that for a few good years now.

After leaving this blog to wither for roughly for a month, it’s time to get back into action, and I start by making a few New Year’s resolutions.

As I was writing these, cartoons suddenly became major world news in a most tragic way. So I put this text and began writing a piece on Charlie Hebdo for Serienett’s main site instead. I considered translating it into English and post it here, but decided it would be redundant. There is nothing I can tell an international audience about Charlie Hebdo magazine and the killing of the four comic creators that haven’t already been covered in every possible way by world media already. Until I can find an entirely new angle – like Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoons being translated into Norwegian, for instance – I will leave the matter be.  

That leaves me then, with my plans for this site in 2015:

1.      This blog will continue to post information about comic news from Norway, especially when I think it might be relevant and interesting to an international audience.

2.     However, I also want to see the bigger picture, and think of comics in a worldwide perspective. The record-high numbers from Diamond Comics distributors suggest that comics is far from dead in the market, maybe not even dying.

Star vs the Forces of Evil

3.      The blog won’t be exclusively and purely about comics, but also about related media. In fact, I have specific plans for that, including a review of the Star vs the Forces of Evil pilot episode and Big Hero 6 this month. American readers might wonder, if I wanted to review Big Hero 6, why didn’t I do it sooner?  Because it doesn’t actually premiere in Norway until late January.

4.      I will try and update this site at least once a week. I’m not going to lie, this resolution will be difficult to keep, but it’s a goal I really want to work towards.

THE ANNUAL COMICS LANDSLIDE

Pretty much anything can be turned into a Christmas tradition if you’re clever or cheeky enough. Given the periodical nature of the medium, it’s no surprise that comics can easily be associated with the holidays.

In Norway, however, comics and Christmas are tied together by a special phenomenon called julehefte.

The world “julehefte” directly translates at “Christmas booklet”, but that doesn’t really tell you much. I could translate it as “Christmas comic” or “Christmas special”, but that’s still a bit vague. For the purpose of the article, I’ve chosen to call these publications “Christmas annuals” (or just annuals) in English. An annual publications is a periodical publication appearing regularly once per year. In the U.S., and the U.K. in particular, the word is often used to describe yearly, special edition comic books. The first time I went to the U.K. and looked for comics for my collection, pretty much all I could find were annuals. It just seems like a natural choice of words. 

Very early (1914) Katzenjammer Kids annual

Norwegian Christmas annuals originally contained short stories and poetry, but in the 1910’s , the first comics annuals began to turn up. Fittingly, the annuals featured the world’s (arguably) oldest comic strip, The Katzenjammer Kids, and it was soon followed by Norwegian imitators. Later, other classic American strips debuted as Christmas annuals, like Bringing Up Father (debuting in 1930) and Blondie (debuting in 1941).

In the early days of the comics medium, Norwegian publishers were afraid that readers would be confused by these odd speech bubbles, and had the comics edited so that the dialogue would show up under the panels instead. Original Norwegian comics, in accordance, were made with this format in mind. A few of the annuals still feature comics that are being told in this archaic manner, although most of these are old reprints.

Apart from the three American titles, the market was dominated by Norwegian titles for the longest time. After television was introduced in Norway, however, American characters and titles grew in numbers. Only the most established Norwegian titles were able to survive the competition.

Smørbukk is one of the arch-Norwegian long runners.

Because annuals are considered a good old Christmas tradition, even people who don’t read comics the rest of the year still pick them up during the holidays. This has made annuals an important source of income for the publishers, who keep trying to come up with new titles that might become a must-have for the casual Christmas shopper. The number of titles seems to have reached its peak in 2011, with a total of 75. This year, it’s down to 58.

Advertisement presenting this year's selection

While there have been plenty of exceptions, the majority of the annuals every year belong in one of five main categories:

Classic American – In addition to the three titles mentioned earlier, a couple of other 80+ year old comic strips are still running, though they became Christmas annuals much later Popeye and Barney Google & Snuffy Smith (only Snuffy’s name is ever used in the title of the annual; when was the last time this Barney Google appeared in the strip, anyway?)

Modern American – Okay, I’m really stretching the definition of “modern” here, to include all American postwar strips. A huge number of popular strips have been made into Christmas annuals at least once or twice, including Peanuts, Zits and Dilbert. What remain to this day is Beetle Bailey, Hägar The Horrible, Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes.

Hägar in Norwegian

Classic Norwegian – Like I said, the market was dominated by Norwegian titles for the longest time. From the twenties to the late fifties, Norwegian artists and writers produced a large variety of comics for Christmas annuals (even including one space opera, Ingeniør Knut Berg) though the most prevalent genres were adventure and fairy tale comics for kids, and slice of life comedies for an all-ages audience. A few of these remain as reprints only, but most of the surviving titles are still being produced to this day. Artist/writer Håkon Aasnes have almost single-handedly been keeping many of these alive. He’s currently making three annuals a year based on classic Norwegian titles: 91 Stomperud (a military comedy), Smørbukk (a slice of life comedy for kids) and Tuss & Troll (a fairy tale anthology comic for kids).     

91 Stomperud, one of very few comics still made in the traditional, Norwegian format.

Modern Norwegian – In the eighties, Norwegian publishers began experimenting with new Christmas-themed titles by Norwegian creators, usually aimed at kids. While many these were praised by the press and by comic book aficionados, none of them became a new Christmas tradition the way the classic annuals and certain movies and tv specials had become. With the rise of Norwegian comic strips’ popularity in the nineties, however, a whole new branch in the Christmas annual market was created, and they have a stronghold in the market to this very day. The most popular ones are, quite naturally, those based on the most popular strips like Pondus and Nemi, but pretty much any Norwegian newspaper strip with a certain following have gotten a try. As a general rule, the cartoonist will often make new material for the first few annuals, then sadly, he or she will often decide that it’s too time-consuming and just use regular daily strips. 

Disney – Disney, and especially Disney Ducks, is definitely in a class of its own on the Norwegian market. And unlike the other four categories, the comics might have originated from anywhere, as Norwegian Duck comics are produced all over the world, including in Norway.  Donald Duck alone gets his name on several of the annuals, which includes an annual dedicated to Carl Barks’ stories, one to Al Taliaferro’s Sunday strips, one to Norway’s premiere Donald Duck artist Arild Midthun and four or five anthologies featuring various artists. Mickey Mouse used to have his own annual, but it was cancelled as of last year. He just couldn’t compete. For as we say in Norway: What mouse? It all started with a duck. 

Arild Midthun's Donald Duck annual has a distinct Norwegian flavor this year.

IS SPIDER-MAN JEWISH?

During the comics festival in Lodz, Poland this year, I had the opportunity to speak with comedian and writer Arie Kaplan, author of the book From Krakow To Krypton: Jews and Comic Books.

Arie Kaplan displays his cartoons in the Lodz festival press room.

Arie Kaplan is a bit of everything: comedian, cartoonist, journalist, lecturer and comic book writer. As a lecturer, he also visited Norway once, during the Jewish Culture Festival in Trondheim in 2011.

But comic books have a special place in his heart. He has written two books on comics history: Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed! (2006) and the aforementioned From Krakow To Krypton: Jews and Comic Books (2008). The latter book in particular, was the basis for this interview. Jewish comic creators are so numerous (even if one disregards the European ones, such as René Goscinny) that even this fairly voluminous book could not cover them all. Is there anyone he would have liked to interview, but didn’t get around to?

"Arnold Drake, who co-created the Guardians of the Galaxy (the first team) in 1969 and Doom Patrol. I wanted to interview him, but I didn’t get to it, and now he’s no longer with us", Kaplan replies after a bit of hesitation. Will Elder was also mentioned.

What would he added if he was asked to publish a new edition now of the book now?

"There’s certainly been other Jewish graphic novels that have come out since then" He also thinks maybe he'd spend more of the material that he got when interviewing Will Eisner. "There are a few characters that have emerged from DC and Marvel since 2008, Jewish characters that I would’ve liked to talk about. Like Batwoman;  in the current DC comics Universe, she is Jewish."

I mention another DC superhero, the Atom. But many people have had the identity of the Atom, he’s a legacy character, and the current one is apparently Asian - Ryan Choi. Kaplan admits that he’s not sure which Atom was Jewish. He also admits that while he knows there have been made new Graphic novels about Jews since 2008, he's can’t name any at the moment.

In From Krakow To Krypton he tries also to analyze Spider-Man to find out if there’s something Jewish about the figure.

"A little bit, but since then I have reconsidered my position, because I was hired by Slate Magazine earlier this year to do an article on that. They said: As you know, Andrew Garfield, star of The Amazing Spider-Man movies is himself Jewish, and in interviews he did for to promote [The Amazing Spider-Man 2], he’s been saying that Spider-Man is Jewish. This hadn’t happened when I wrote the book, and I could certainly have talked about that. And also that the producer Avi Arad had gone on record saying the same thing. Avi Arad is himself Jewish too, he’s from Israel. That made me think: Maybe there’s something to it. They got me into a screening of the movie, I saw it, I enjoyed it, and I took copious notes, and one thing screaming out to me as being subtextually Jewish, and I was surprised that more people hadn’t spoken about this, was the use of traditional Jewish humor in Spider-Man. Peter Parker / Spider-Man is one of those characters that always jokes about everything, as a way of relieving tension."

I have to agree. That was one of the things that really got me into Spider-Man as a kid.

"And I think that's one of the reasons why he survives as such a popular character. The children love it, and it's also why adults love him so much. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, it makes him more human. Not that Jews have a monopoly on humor, but the type of humor that Spider-Man uses is very much this sort of old school Borscht Belt one-liners that wouldn’t be out of place in a Don Rickles comedy routine from the 50's or 60's. I find it interesting that those are the kind of lines that every writer gives Spider-Man. And it’s something that was very much started by Stan Lee, who is also Jewish. I’ve interviewed Stan Lee, but I’ve never spoken to him about this, because it’s just something that I thought of recently. If I ever get a chance to interview him again I’ll probably ask him about it. We write what we know. Lee probably grew up around Borscht Belt humor and Jewish humor in general."

Would it be possible to make Spider-Man Jewish after the character has been around for so many years, I ask myself. It’s been done before, anyway. Chris Claremont made Magneto Jewish more than ten years after the character first appeared. As "From Krakow two Krypton" informed me, Claremont half Jewish, and he spent two months on a kibbutz in Israel after his first apprentice period at Marvel.

But perhaps the biggest "celebrity" among Jewish super heroes is Ben Grimm, aka Thing of the Fantastic Four, whose ethnicity was established nearly 40 years after his first appearance! In a 2002 Fantastic Four story that Kaplan describes in the book, Ben is identified as Jewish for the first time when he meets Mr. Sheckerberg, a mentor figure from his old congregation in the Bronx. Ben’s explanation is that he was previously afraid to speak out about his ethnic background because he was afraid that his peculiar appearance would be used in anti-semitic propaganda.

"When Ben Grimm was created, it really was uncommon to give characters a set ethnicity or a set religion", Kaplan explains. "In the early 60's, TV was just starting to explore multiculturalism and diversity, and comics were just starting to as well. When Ben Grimm was first created, he had no set ethnicity. but it’s hard to look at the character, the way he’s usually written, and not see him as Jewish, because he’s this though guy from the lower east side, he talks a lot like Jack Kirby,  and both smoked cigars. The character really seems a lot like Jack Kirby" (who, as everyone knows, was also Jewish).

Getting back to Back to the X-Men and Claremont for a moment: I used to think that Kitty Pryde (one of Claremonts creations, supposedly based on a military woman he saw in Israel) was the first Jewish superhero who was meant to be Jewish to begin with. But Kaplan’s book suggests that it may have been Ragman from DC. Once and for all, who was the first?

Kaplan thinks back on an interview he did with Joe Kubert (who helped create Ragman). "It's tricky", he says. "I think [Ragman] was [meant to be Jewish], but Kubert didn’t talk about it a lot. It wasn’t till later, when other writers and artists explored it more, his Jewish lineage, and worked it more into the origin story. I think he was the first character who was originally set out to be Jewish. He was created in the seventies, and in the seventies you started having a little more free rein to do that. There were certain supporting characters who were Jewish. But there were so many comic book companies out there, and a lot of them no longer run today, but at that point there was just so many of them, and it's hard to go through everything. The first one that I can  find is probably Ragman, but was he the first one? That’s hard to say."

Arie Kaplan knows a lot about comics, but what has he made of comics? First and foremost, he works in MAD, something for which he got a good response when he visited Norway. He’s described working for MAD as "a dream", but does he have any unfulfilled ambitions in the comics field?

"Oh yeah, a few. I would love to write a Conan the Barbarian story, a Spider-Man story, a Batman story, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman ... there’s a lot of characters I that I would love to tackle. Writing a Catwoman story would be a lot of fun. I’d love to tackle the X-Men, Teen Titans…there’s a lot of characters out there."

A lot of super heroes on the wish list, then. We've talked a lot about comic books. The reason why comic strips are not really discussed in From Krakow To Krypton is simple: There are far fewer Jewish comic creators in strip format. This is because the comic book industry, like Hollywood, was founded by Jews, so Jewish creators were not being discriminated there. Kaplan admits that it gets a bit more complicated than that, but that's the main reason. However, the book starts off with an interesting piece of information about the use of newspaper comic strips, one that is also extremely relevant to the Scandinavian market: The Max Gaines (father of William Gaines) was the first publisher to collect newspaper strips and sell them in magazine form. It was "Famous Funnies" # 1 in 1933.  This way of filling up comic books is mostly obsolete in the US, but still very much alive in Scandinavia.

Returning to the comic book format one more time, I dare Arie Kaplan to tell me, once and for all: Who is the most important Jewish comics creator of all time, Will Eisner or Jack Kirby? 

Kaplan is not really in any doubt:

"Not to undermine what Will Eisner has done. Eisner added a lot to the vocabulary and the grammar, and the storytelling and everything. But just the sheer number of characters, concepts and storytelling devices that Jack Kirby pioneered in, is just overwhelming. I can’t put it into words. Michael Chabon said he’s the Shakespeare or Cervantes of comics, and I agree."

THE NEARLY(?) COMPLETE HISTORY OF MARVEL HEROES IN NORWAY

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Italian Marvel editor Marvel Comic Book Luca “Dolce” Dolcini, who is trying to collect information about when and how Marvel Superhero comic book have been published around the world. I promised I’d provide him with the information he’d need about the Norwegian publishing history. I tried to limit myself as best I could, but still ended up with a fairly detailed overview, which I’d now like to share with the rest of you as well.

Roughly speaking, there have been three waves of Marvel superheroes in Norwegian comics publishing history.

The first one was in 1968, when prominent comic publisher SE-Bladene decided to push Marvel with four titles: Edderkoppen (Spider-Man), Fantastiske Fire (Fantastic Four), Koloss (Hulk), Demonen (Daredevil) Fakkelen og Jernmannen (The Human Torch and Iron Man). Most of these titles failed to make any sort of impact on the Norwegian market, and only lasted one year. Daredevil’s title was the only one that didn’t get cancelled by the end of the year. It lasted until the end of 1970. It wasn't Daredevil's book alone, though. It also featured the characters whose books had been cancelled - Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Hulk. In fact, Hulk became a backup feature in Daredevil's book as early as in late 1968, and from 1969 on, the other heroes were featured on the cover just as much as Daredevil himself.

For most of the seventies, Marvel was dead in the Norwegian market (DC, on the other hand had its golden age in Norway in the seventies, but that’s another story).

The second wave began in 1978, when Spider-Man and Fantastic Four was reintroduced in Norway, both with the same names as used in the 1968. The comics were published by Atlantic, and the release schedule was coordinated in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Atlantic also introduced Atlantic Spesial featuring stand-alone stories with various Marvel heroes, and in 1979 they began publishing albums and double digests featuring Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and the Hulk. The Hulk had his original name this time, possibly to take advantage of the synergy effect from the TV series. The next year, Hulk got his own monthly comic, which went on to be a cornerstone in Atlantic’s Marvel line. For the next five years, Spider-Man and Hulk were the only consistent Marvel titles on the Norwegian market, but a whole lot of other titles came and went.

Atlantic Spesial became an anthology magazine, mostly featuring X-Men, Iron Man, Daredevil and Ghost Rider. Then Daredevil got his own book for a couple of years, and so did She-Hulk, of all things (still more proof of the Hulk’s popularity). Fantastic Four stayed monthly up until 1982, and there were a ton of albums and double digests featuring Spider-Man and the Hulk. Atlantic even got a couple of year’s run out of comics that weren’t technically superhero comics, but was still considered part of the Marvel universe, such as Ka-Zar and Tomb of Dracula. A competing company even published a Moon Knight comic book for three years, aiming it at an older audience. All things considered, the early eighties was a great time to be a Marvel fan in Norway.

Then, in late 1984, Norway’s biggest comic publisher Semic (later bought up by Egmont) got the rights to Marvel in Scandinavia, which changed the game completely. Semic made some important changes in the Marvel line, some for the better, others for worse.

The good thing first: Semic encouraged fandom activity and contact between readers and editors in a way that Atlantic had never done. They introduced pages for reader’s letters and provided their readers with good and proper information, rather than just spewing out the comics blindly, like Atlantic had been doing. Also, they brought the X-Men (under the name Prosjekt X) back into the Norwegian market as a new, monthly comic book. X-Men was a comic that Atlantic had never treated with much respect or attention.

The bad: for some reason, Semic began reprinting Hulk stories that had Atlantic had already put out five years ago, messing up the continuity that Scandinavian readers had gotten used to. Semic hardly put out any new albums or digests, and the few digests they offered were single and in black and white. Semic’s Norwegian editor admitted that he had no idea how Atlantic was able to publish several double digests in color every year.

By the end of 1985, Semic’s great plan for the Marvel universe in Norway was falling apart. X-Men was cancelled before the end of the year. Hulk was as good as cancelled by the end of the year. In the following year, only a few Hulk issues came out. Spider-Man continued as before, though, and to make some amends, Semic began publishing the Miller/Janson run on Daredevil as a monthly comic book (called “Demonen”, a name which has not been used for the character since 1970). It actually did quite well, mostly because Miller’s writing appealed to more mature readers. Daredevil was considered proof that the comics medium was growing up, so to speak.  

Encouraged by the Daredevil success, Semic began publishing new bi-monthly comic books in 1987 under the vignettes Marvel Spesial and Marvel Superheltene.  Through these books, the X-Men made their return to the Norwegian market and, perhaps more surprisingly, so did the Fantastic Four. Semic must have had great confidence in John Byrne’s ability to deliver quality comics at this time, as they published everything they could find of Byrne in the period 1987-1989: Fantastic Four, Hulk and even Alpha Flight - In addition to John Byrne’s Superman, which they also had the rights to.

Hulk and X-Men got their own comic books back 1990 (bi-monthly for the Hulk and monthly for the X-Men). But alas, this turned out to be tempting fate. X-Men was cancelled within a year, Hulk was cancelled within two years. Only Spider-Man stayed afloat, but was cancelled by the end of 1993. And that was the end of the second wave, after what seemed like a constant and defiant struggle to remain in the Norwegian comic market ever since 1985.

Technically, it wasn't over until the Punisher's comic book ended in 1995, after being published in Norway for five years. But the Punisher's Norwegian publisher was trying to avoid making a book that would have appeal to fans of Marvel superheroes. And probably for good reason - The reader's letter pages suggested that the typical Punisher reader detested superheroes.The Punisher was publised by Bladkompaniet.

The third wave began, once again with Spider-Man. In 1999, he made his surprising return to the Norwegian market, probably encouraged by the character’s increased mass media presence. It was perfectly timed: Media’s interest in Spider-Man was about to explode, thanks to Sam Raimi’s movie.

One important detail changed with the third wave: All the characters kept their original names from now on. In Norway (and in many other countries) there’s a tradition of translating superhero names.

Spider-Man was now published by Egmont. Encouraged by its success, Egmont also relaunched the comic book Gigant in 2000. Gigant was originally for DC superheroes only, but this time it was used to print both DC and Marvel heroes, especially Ultimate Marvel.

Egmont also tried a Wolverine comic book for two years. When it got cancelled, they replaced it with an X-Men comic in 2003. This was actually the X-Men’s most successful run in Norway; it was bi-monthly with double-sized issues every time, and ran for four years. At the same time, the fan-driven company Seriehuset reintroduced Daredevil and the title Marvel Superheltene with the aid of the old publishing house Aller. They also added another title, Marvel Universet, for Iron Man and Captain America stories. It lasted two years. Daredevil also lasted two years, new Marvel Superheltene lasted for four years including a year-long sabbatical, and was made up mostly by Fantastic Four and Thor stories. It’s worth noticing that despite the character’s roots in Scandinavian mythology, this was the first time ever that Marvel’s Thor had been prolific in a Norwegian comic book.

In 2007, the Norwegian rights to Marvel were taken over by the important publishing company Schibsted, who tried their best to keep the heroes in circulation. Spider-Man continued as before, and the vignette “Marvel Spesial” was reintroduced. It was mostly made up by X-Men and Wolverine material, so the X-Men stayed around for a little while longer. Schibsted also published Marvel color single digests for a couple of years. From 2009, the issues became less irregular, but they also became thicker and had a greater diversity of characters. The content was to some degree based on whatever Marvel hero had a movie out at the time, but the editors were free to use any story they wanted with that particular hero. Yet also in 2009, Spider-Man was cancelled, which was obviously a bad sign. Gradually, the new special became fewer, and for the last couple of years, they’ve only featured reprints of material formerly released in Norway.

This year, nothing has been published save for the “Spider-Man Kids” book produced by Panini. So I think it’s safe to say the third wave is over, and I don’t think there’ll ever be a fourth one. The kids in Norway are content with Marvel superheroes on TV and cinemas, while the adult fans know English well enough to read the originals.  The translated material just isn’t selling anymore.