Sometimes coming home to your mail is just pure, unadulterated fun. Today, I recieved this strange tome: a Japanese collection of the comic “Ove, den 34-årige hårdrockaren” (Ove, the 34 year old heavy metal fan) by Swedish artist Daniel Ahlgren. Considering that these comics have not been collected in Sweden, I find this little gem of a book fascinating.

Fredrik Strömberg is a journalist, author and historian, who has studied comics since the early 1990’s. He is one of the editors of Bild & Bubbla, Scandinavia’s largest as well as the world’s second oldest magazine about comics, and the Chairman of the Swedish Comics Association. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines about comics, heads the Comic Art School of Sweden and sits on the editorial board for the International Journal of Comic Art. Among the books he has written are the English language Swedish Comics History, Black Images in the Comics, The Comics Go to Hell and Comic Art Propaganda. Strömberg lives in Sweden and is currently working on a number of new books about comics.