Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics

The Swedish Invasion Of Comics Continues

Published Sun, 02 Dec 2012 10:00:32 -0600

The American comics industry is very aware of the British invasion of comics that began in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s saw the greatest qualification to write a comic as having an English accent. There was also a South American invasion, initially because of lower prices, with teams of artists imitating and improving upon American styles. There was even a mini-Canadian boom at one point.

But what about the Swedish invasion of the American comics industry?

The three separate adaptations of The Millenium Trilogy in the US, France and Japan might be an easy way in – even though not one Swede will be working on it.

Batman saw its first Swedish artist this year, Henrik Jonsson, in Detective Comics #0.

I've played my part, with Simon Rohrmuller drawing my Watchmensch comic for Brain Scan, and The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne in Dark Horse Presents (new series next year folks!)

There's the Swedish Invasion at Top Shelf, who have really spearheaded this approach.

The alliance between the Swedish and American alternative comics scenes will reach historic levels this year with our campaign to introduce several talented Swedish cartoonists and their unique graphic novels (including Mats Jonsson's Hey Princess, Simon Gardenfors' The 120 Days Of Simon, Kolbeinn Karlsson's The Troll King, and Niklas Asker's Second Thoughts), as well as a terrific Swedish anthology, From the Shadow of the Northern Lights, and Swedish Comics History by international comics scholar Fredrik Strömberg! Check out all the titles below, and let's be sure to welcome all of these great creators into our community. … Also, we should send out a special thanks to Johannes Klenell, the Publisher of Galago, in Sweden, who's helped facilitate the start of this long-term relationship. Thanks, Johannes!

At 215INK, there's Blue Moth by Rolf Lejdegård

The Portent at Image was drawn by Peter Bergting, who is continuing that project in Sweden.

Mikael Bergkvist's Shadow Falls is being published by Ardden.

The Swedish superhero-project "Svenska superserier" is also creating comics for the USA.

There's the giant-sized Wolalina project for Ape, created by Daniel Karhunen. There are TWO comic book versions of it, one French and one American – but none from Sweden.

And of course, not forgetting…