In recent years Scandinavia has become a hotbed of cartooning activity, from the internationally acclaimed funny-animal stylings of Norway’s Jason to the hilarious slacker romps of Sweden’s Martin Kellerman and Dane Nikoline Werdelin’s Eisner-Award-nominated urban slice-of-life stories. This anthology of comics — many of them created especially for this book — offers an intoxicating and compelling sampling of current works from these countries. Skaal!
Jenni Rope [Finland] tells a minimalist tale of heartbreak in “The Island”; Peter Kielland’s [Denmark] Mr. Pig has an eventful day; Joanna Rubin Drang- er [Sweden] is “Always Prepared to Die for My Child”; Crumb-esque satirist Christopher Nielsen [Norway] boils down all of life to an eternal journey up the “Escalator”; Tommi Musturi [Finland] provides two full-color Jim Woodring-esque romps featuring his “Samuel” character; Johan F. Krarup [Denmark] visits a compulsive comics collector in “Nostalgia”; plus Bendik Kaltenborn’s [Norway] “The Great Underneath,” a dazzling wordless piece from Mardøn Smet [Denmark], the legendary Swedish cartoonist Joakim Pirinen’s ultra-virtuoso “My Life,” Drawn & Quarterly-published Amanda Vähämäki’s [Finland] pencil-smudged stylings, and much more.
