Category: Reviews

Skuggfärd by Magnus Engström My rating: 3 of 5 stars Magnus Engström made his debut in 2011 with the graphic novel Luftspår (Air Track), an experimental detective story with existential dimensions. Skuggfärd (Shadow Road) is a kind of sequel, in the sense that it once again contains a detective/thriller story used as a tool to…

Spirou – Den kompletta samlingen 1972-1975 by Jean-Claude Fournier My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is the tenth chronological collection of the classic Belgian adventure comic Spirou and Fantasio, and includes three albums from the early 1970s. The creator of this epoch, Fournier, inherited the comic from André Franquin, whom most view as the…

Spirou – Den kompletta samlingen 1988-1991 by Tome My rating: 4 of 5 stars The classic Belgian album series Spirou and Fantasia was created in the 1930s and since then a number of different comics artists have shouldered the responsibility of creating this humorous adventure comic. After a number of years when the series was…

Breve til Satan by Tome My rating: 3 of 5 stars The second volume of the Spirou writer and artist Tome’s crime comic Soda. This is an improvement compared to the first volume, both in terms of the script and the art. The story mostly comprises of a flashback, a so-called origin story, in which…

The Walking Dead, Vol. 14: Ingen utväg b y Robert Kirkman My rating: 4 of 5 stars The fourteens volume, and still an adrenaline rush… You’d think that Kirkman would have milked this post apocalyptic zombie concept for all its worth by now, but he still manages to get me involved in the lives of the…

Den tavse engel by Tome My rating: 3 of 5 stars The first volume of the Spriou artist and writer Tome’s “other” album series, Soda. In France, there are so far thirteen albums since the debut in the late 1980s and the comic is on its third artist by now. Soda is based on the…

Arne Anka: Mentala selfies by Charlie Christensen My rating: 4 of 5 stars Charlie Christensen is back with the twelfth collection of the cult comic Arne Anka. These volumes are nowadays only partly collections of the short comics that Christensen makes for a Swedish newspaper, which as always contain satirical comments about our time, presented…

Sockerärter by Tinet Elmgren My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a little gem of a graphic novel. Set in Russia after a world war in the near future that seems to have wiped out most of humanity (here made up of anthropomorphic pigs…) and most of the technology. A small group of survivors…

Helt enkelt Samuel by Tommi Musturi My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Finnish artist Tommi Musturi creates wordless, symbolic comics, often with four square panels per page and images brimming over with imaginative details and richness of color. Inspiration can be discerned from Hergé and Joost Swartes ligne claire, but also from Jim Woodring’s…

Lönnmördaren by Raoul Cauvin My rating: 3 of 5 stars Yet another volume in the album series Les Tuniques Bleues (The Blue Tunics), and as per usual, it´s a traditional, well-made comic in the classical French-Belgian album tradition. The plot is pretty thin – someone within their own ranks is trying to assassinate General Ulysses S.…

Jag håller tiden by Åsa Grennvall My rating: 5 of 5 stars Åsa Grennvall is back with a sequel to the critically acclaimed Deras ryggar luktade så gott (Their backs smelled so good). In a sense, this book starts right where the previous one ended and deals with how Grennvall starts her own family and…

Blå blues by Raoul Cauvin My rating: 2 of 5 stars Yet another album with Les Tuniques Bleues (or Blåfrakkerne as they are called in Danish). There are 59 albums so far, and even if the creators are aged by now it seems they are not about to quit producing an album a year, like…

En blårock saknas by Raoul Cauvin My rating: 3 of 5 stars A story that begins promising and has great potential, which unfortunately is sorely misspent by scriptwriter Cauvin at the end. The idea of alternative, subjective versions of the chaotic reality during a battle is inspired, although no one who reads this long-running series…

Gömstället by Raoul Cauvin My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the 38th album of the Les Tuniques Bleues and the artist Lambil is as good as ever in his somewhat more realistic version of the dynamic Marcinelle-style. Sometimes I feel, however, that the script writer Cauvin has lost some of his edge thorough…

Världens bästa morfar by Tome My rating: 3 of 5 stars Le Petit Spirou is a spinoff of the classic Belgian comic Spirou and Fantasio, about the protagonist as a child, probably set somewhere during the 1950s and actually more successful than the main series. Le Petit Spirou is made by the duo Tome (Philippe…

Spirou 1984-1987 by Tome My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Danish-Swedish publisher Mooz continues the publication of hardcover collections with the classic French children’s comic Spirou. This volume contains three albums from the 1980s by Tome and Janry. This creative team was clearly the heirs to the undisputed master among Spirou artists, André Franquin,…

Ljusförgörerskan by Li Österberg My rating: 4 of 5 stars The second graphic novel with Li Österberg’s contemporary take on the Greek gods, and a much better, more coherent story than that in the first, Nekyia. We here follow the young woman Persefone, a minor goddess who is the daughter (and granddaughter…) of the god…

Spirou 1969-1972 by Jean-Claude Fournier My rating: 3 of 5 stars The Danish/Swedish publisher Mooz continues the publication of hardcover collections with the classical French album comic Spirou and Fantasio. This volume contains the first three albums by Franquin’s successor, the then young and inexperienced Jean-Claude Fournier. Taking over after the recognized master was surely…

Nekyia by Li Österberg My rating: 3 of 5 stars Re-reading this book in preparation for taking on Ljusförgörerslan (The Light Destroyer), the second graphic novel by Li Österberg set in her version of the Greek mythological world.

Superhästen by Emmanuel Guibert My rating: 4 of 5 stars Ariol is quickly becoming my favourite children’s comic. Guibert constantly delivers scripts that really feel like they depicts the reality of children, as opposed to all those stories about children, written by adults from a safe distance. In this volume, for instance, I loved the…

W obcej skórze by Anna Andruchowicz My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a weird and wonderful original Polish graphic novel, which title loosely translates to “In a foreign skin”. It’s an eerie, silent story of a wolf in a forest populated with a combination of traditional animals and what looks like huge fantasy…

Den svarta undulaten by Lars Sjunnesson My rating: 4 of 5 stars Lars Sjunnesson is one of Sweden’s most internationally well-known and respected comics artists, which is not surprising. Since his debut in the 80s, he has consistently created provocative and distinctive comics with high artistic integrity. Sjunnesson’s most famous characters are the permanently agitated…

Palimpsest by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom My rating: 5 of 5 stars Palimpsest is an autobiographical graphic novel about a Swede who was adopted from Korea searching for her origins. Sjöblom has previously made shorter comics and illustrated children’s books, but this is her first full-length graphic novel.

Partydrottningen by Patrik Rochling My rating: 4 of 5 stars Scriptwriter Patrick Rochling and comics artist Li Österberg keep adding to their low-key but extensive book series about a fictional Sweden. First out was Johannasviten (the Johanna series), five graphic novels which were later collected in one volume. Right now they are in the midst…

Jamilti and Other Stories by Rutu Modan My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a great collection of early stories by Rutu Modan. I read most of them in the anthologies that her collective Actus Tragicus put out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but rereading them in one go puts them all…

Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan My rating: 4 of 5 stars Re-reading this book in preparation for an artist talk with Modan in a few day, and actually enjoying it more than the first time around. Modan has a way of writing real people doing real things, having real relationships, and you sense that outside…

Henriettas monsterbok by Liniers My rating: 4 of 5 stars The second book by the Argentinian comics artist artist Liniers in Swedish and just like the previous one, Regnballongen, a wonderful, compassionate, thoughtful little book that is suitable both for those who recently learned to read, and for reading aloud.

Benny Björn tänker utanför ramarna by Philippe Coudray My rating: 4 of 5 stars The second collection of the French children’s comics Benjamin Bear/L´ours Barnabé, which is just as strange and at the same time pedagogical as the previous volume. In my review of the first collection Benny Björn på rätt spår I compared this…

Mannen som sköt Lucky Luke by Matthieu Bonhomme My rating: 5 of 5 stars The first album in what is likely to be a series of “extraordinary adventure” with Lucky Luke, probably inspired by the successful book series with independent, more experimental comics with Spirou and Fantasio. The latter are often enjoyable, albeit of varying…

Leopardkvinnan by Yann My rating: 3 of 5 stars A new album in the specials series with Spirou and Fantasio. One again, the script is by Olivier Schwartz and the drawings by Yann, who together previously created Operation Bat in the same series. These albums, which were originally intended as stand-alone stories in which various…

Linda & Valentin: Samlade äventyr 5 by Pierre Christin My rating: 4 of 5 stars The fifth collection of the classic French science fiction comic Valerian, with comics from the late 1980s and early 1990s. The stories in this volume follows the two space-time agents during a period where the future Earth from which they came…

Lilla Berlin – Leva life by Ellen Ekman My rating: 4 of 5 stars The third collection with Ellen Ekman’s comic strip Little Berlin (Little Berlin), and it is evident that Ekman has developed the strip, making it more diverse and allowing for more development of the various characters. It is still biting satire of…

Conquistador 1 by Jean Dufaux My rating: 2 of 5 stars The first part of an album series in the historical adventure genre, set in the early 1500s, during the Spanish conquest of South America. The main character is part of a group of mercenaries who are assigned the task of stealing the fabled treasure…

Osynliga händer by Ville Tietäväinen My rating: 4 of 5 stars An extremely strong reading experience about a young Moroccan who is forced away from his little family to try to earn money in Europe. The Finn Tietäväinen takes his time to let us get to know the main character and his reality so that…

Passio by Daniel Ahlgren My rating: 3 of 5 stars The fourth volume of Daniel Ahlgren’s Swedish pastiche of the decidedly American superhero genre. The story picks up where the last volume ended, with a cosmic threat in the form of giant “passion leeches” which the heroes have to stop, on all parallel worlds.

Den sommaren by Mariko Tamaki My rating: 5 of 5 stars A beautiful graphic novel, with lavish blue-tinted images. But even if I can lose myself in the pictures for ever, it´s the story that captivates.

Lektioner i mord by Henrik Lange My rating: 3 of 5 stars An entertaining book for those of us who have read a Swedish crime novels, or seen a version on TV, which should by now include most of the world’s population … This is a variation on Lange’s winning concept to summarise novels and…

När David tappade rösten by Judith Vanistendael My rating: 4 of 5 stars A beautiful graphic novel about dying of cancer, not a heroic fight and win over the decease, but actually dying from it. We follow David who learns that he has throat cancer, his adult daughter who recently had a baby, his new…

Vandrande stjärnor del 2 by Lars Krantz My rating: 5 of 5 stars Lars Krantz is likely THE most different and artistically interesting Swedish comics artist working right now. This second and final part of his epic Vandrande stjärnor (Wandering stars) is incredibly beautiful with its well-composed images, pages and spreads with black and white…

Find Me In This City by Mari Ahokoivu My rating: 5 of 5 stars Mari Ahokoivu is fast becoming one of my favourite Nordic comics artists. No sooner had I reviewed her beautiful children’s comic Sanni & Jonas: Vinternatt, than this book pops up; published almost simultaneously, which is a feat as there are not that many Finnish comics…

Tack och förlåt by Fanny Agazzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars Fanny Agazzi makes her book debut with a graphic novel of how it is to have a close friend dying abruptly and way too early in life. The story is autobiographical and woven into the story of how her friend Nabil passed away…

Frisörbesöket by Claes Jurander My rating: 3 of 5 stars Claes Jurander is an unusual fish in the Swedish comics pond. Art Professor, sculptor, animator and creator of what is probably the first Swedish graphic novel (Nilsson, 1974). That Jurander is a fine artist is also reflected in the comic books he creates (which, incidentally,…

Det kunde varit jag by Sara Olausson My rating: 4 of 5 stars This really is a book that touches it’s reader. No-one in Sweden at least will have missed out on the fact that comics artist Sara Olausson has a burning commitment to changing the fate of an EU migrant/beggar that she has befriended.…

Det är inte meningen att man ska vara här by Thomas Olsson My rating: 4 of 5 stars Thomas Olsson made his debut in the mid noughts with the satirical strip Rogert. 2013 came the graphic novel Församlingen (The Congregation), about growing up in a fundamentalist Christian environment. Olsson’s latest graphic novel, Det är inte meningen…

Blå är den varmaste färgen by Julie Maroh My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a book that I looked forward to reading, not least after it won the Audience award in Angoulême a few years ago. And maybe I had set my hopes too high, for I was not as smitten as I…

Var ska jag lägga mitt huvud? by Rakhsha Razani My rating: 3 of 5 stars A poignant autobiographical tale of escaping from your home country and trying to build a new reality in another part of the world altogether. The main character moves from Iran to England to study in the 1970s, but moves back…