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Under 80-talet förändrades den svenska seriekulturen i grunden. Ingen symboliserar denna förändring mer än den excentriske Horst Schröder och hans förlag Epix. I Epix, Pox, Tung Metall och en rad andra tidningar introducerade Schröder svenska läsare till tidens mest betydelsefulla serier från hela världen. Allt tydligt märkt med ”Serier för vuxna” i ena hörnet på omslagen för att markera att det rörde sig om ett innehåll väsensskilt från Kalle Anka eller Fantomen. Under en period på tio år fick Epix uppleva både triumfer och skandaler. Nu berättar alla inblandade för första gången hela historien om det mytomspunna förlaget som var en adrenalinspruta rätt i hjärtat på serie-Sverige. Robert Aman – kulturskribent och serieforskare – har inte bara intervjuat Schröder och Epix-redaktionens mångtaliga medarbetare, utan även svenska och internationella seriestjärnor som publicerat sig i Epix tidningar, konkurrenter som gått i klinch med Schröder (eller tvärtom), journalister som rapporterat om förlagets förehavanden, kritiker och aktivister som helst av allt önskade att tidningar som Epix och Pox inte existerade. Och många fler. Serier för vuxna berättar ett stycke vild och lätt osannolik litteraturhistoria. Kokain gömt i kopieringsmaskinen, åtal för olaga våldspornografi och en kidnappning av en femåring är endast några av de ämnen som berörs. Men framför allt är det en berättelse om en grupp unga eldsjälar, övertygade om att seriekonsten är ämnad för något större. Denna bok slungar läsaren tillbaka till 80-talet och innanför väggarna hos redaktionen på Frejgatan 19 i Stockholm, där luften var tjock av stora förhoppningar, brinnande entusiasm, gnisslande konflikter – och svart rök från Horsts pipa. Boken är rikt illustrerad med omslagsbilder, utdrag från serier, pressklipp och fotografier, varav flera aldrig tidigare har publicerats.

Empathy is generally fostered within education, through a variety of materials. Here, we explore how students can use a comic text in upper secondary school to construct empathy towards ‘the other’. The study builds on observations of 91 Swedish students discussing the comic story “Report from Ukraine”. Results show that students construct empathy through ‘otherness’ as being both similar and different to themselves, and how imagery is used to construct this, related to students’ previous knowledge. This is indicative of how comics can engage students in discussions on empathy, relating current global events and issues of ethnicity and otherness., Trikåklädda hjältar i klassrummet - Att använda serietidningar för normkritiska diskussioner i klassrummet

Research topic/aim Ambitions to promote empathy has been discussed from different angles and contexts, and empathy is generally seen to be fostered within the realm of education, achieved through a variety of materials. Researchers have analyzed the ways in which empathy can be enhanced through art (Phillips, 2003), literature (Rydén Gramner, 2022), and photography (Lorenz, 2011). This article sets to contribute to this research by including comics; a medium that has been granted sparse academic attention in education (see Wallner & Eriksson Barajas, 2020). Theoretical framework Identity construction can be seen as establishing a border between the self and the other by articulating who we are not; while fiction enables us to see ourselves through others (Felski, 2008). Therefore, the purpose of this article is to explore how students can use a comic text in upper secondary school to construct empathy towards ‘the other’. Methodological design This article builds on data from five Swedish upper secondary classes in Year 10 (16 years old), with 91 students and 4 teachers. The students read a comic story in Swedish called “Report from Ukraine”, a freely accessible online comic from Swedish publisher Galago. Students read the comic and discussed it in small groups during a one-hour lesson. Some group discussions lasted only about 15 minutes, while others talked for almost the whole hour. Video and audio were recorded, resulting in a total of 13 hours and 18 minutes of data. This was then analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), focusing on students’ verbal and non-verbal actions, in order to explore how students construct empathy. The category of ‘them and us’ turned out to be the most common (n=38 out of 218), wherein students compared, e.g., Swedes and Ukrainians. Expected conclusions/findings The results can be summarized through three themes: 1) Portrayal of the other, wherein students construct otherness as being both similar and different

Jean-Christophe Menu is a cartoonist, an editor, a critic, but is best known as co-founder of the seminal alternative publishing house L'Association in 1990. Formed by Menu, Lewis Trondheim, David B., Mattt Konture, Patrice Killoffer, Stanislas Barthélémy & Frédéric "Mokeït" Van Linden, L'Association not only breathed new life into a moribund French comics culture, but has been credited with redefining the very medium of comics. And the combative ideologue Menu is often described as the primary driving force - to a certain extent, the captain who steered the ship.

Ville Ranta’s homepage offers links to two distinct comics blogs: one in Finnish, one in French. These choices are logical. Few other Nordic cartoonists have embraced the French comics scene with the same persistence as Ranta. In the autobiographical wing of his body of work, three books from a catalog of many more, Ranta expresses a constant longing for France. In the first two memoirs—2006's Papa est un peu fatigué ("Daddy’s a Little Bit Tired") and 2014's La Jérusalem du pauvre ("The Poor Man’s Jerusalem")—which focus on his struggles to balance an artistic career with family life, this theme serves predominately as a sidetrack. Ranta satisfies his yearning for France with the familiar accoutrements of a young Francophile: red wine, Serge Gainsbourg records and Breton striped shirts. But he also visits French comics festivals and attends drawing retreats in Paris. The third book, published in French by Edition Rackham in 2021, is fully devoted to his dream of making a name on the French comics scene. Succès, mode d’emploi ("Success: A User Manual"), known in Finnish by the even bolder title “How I Conquered France,” documents a challenging journey from humiliating experiences courting arrogant publishers and their broken promises to collaborating with Lewis Trondheim and having a book accepted into the Official Selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2011.

This article scrutinises the ways in which pupils who have experienced transnational migration construct ‘home’ and the unmaking of ‘home’. Researchers have argued that migrants’ perspectives on belonging are seldom granted scholarly attention. Here, we seek to redress this oversight by inquiring about the ways in which newly arrived migrants define their (un)homeliness in Sweden in the context of astate-sponsored introductory language programme. The focus is on how these pupils themselves define the notion of home, their sense of belonging, and what they envision as necessary to achieve in order to become part of the national community. What emerges in these stories is aconstant negotiation to fill the idea of ‘home’ with content. These negotiations take place in apresent, but always in relation to both apast and an imagined future– in which homeliness appears in different ways, with different meanings.

Sveriges mest älskade björn har blivit medelålders. I femtio år har Rune Andréassons lille nalle i blå hängselbyxor och toppluva predikat vänlighet och vikten att stå upp mot orättvisor. Inte sällan med det prestationshöjande preparatet ”Dunderhonung” innanför pälsen. Serien har varit en framgångssaga från det första strecket.

Som en Bruce Springsteen-låt. Serieforskare Robert Aman skriver om Frank Santoros hyllade "Pittsburgh" som i veckan släpps i svensk översättning.

Med champagne i glasen utväxlade den tidigare och nya ägaren en skål. Seriebörsen i Tannefors var under fredagskvällen full av besökare som ville ta avsked av butikens grundare Peter Andersson.

Imagine George H. W. Bush referring to Bill Clinton as the White House’s own Fritz the Cat, or Jimmy Carter calling Ronald Reagan the fourth Freak Brother. This highly unlikely scenario came true during a debate on energy politics in the Swedish parliament in 1990. Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, a state bureaucrat with the charisma of a rock, called Carl Bildt, the leader of the Conservative Party, the opposition’s own Socker-Conny ["Sugar-Conny"], after the alternative cartoonist Joakim Pirinen’s brusque antihero. Given that Carlsson, close to 60 years old at the time, was not known for his deep knowledge of popular culture in general and alternative comics in particular, it seems fair to say that his choice of insult was rather surprising. At the same time, it speaks volumes of how deeply Pirinen’s character had established itself in the public consciousness only a few years after its debut. The album Socker-Conny, published in 1985 under the auspices of the magazine Galago, was not only Pirinen’s breakthrough, it was something rarer: a commercially successful alternative comic.

”Provokatör”, ”snuskgubbe”, ”geni” – ja, författaren och förläggaren Horst Schröder har genom åren blivit kallad många saker. Som excentrisk och kompromisslös har han varit avskydd av vissa men omhuldad av andra. Mindre osäkerhet råder det kring Horst Schröders och hans förlag Epix betydelse för den svenska seriescenen. Under 1980-talet introducerade han svenska läsare till tidens mest betydelsefulla alternativa serier från hela världen. Robert Aman har träffat mannen som gjorde serietidningen vuxen för den svenska publiken.

“Provocateur,” “pervert,” “genius,” “pioneer” - indeed, writer and publisher Horst Schröder has throughout the years been subject to a variety of labels, some more flattering than others. However, opinions are less fractured when it comes to defining Schröder’s importance, and that of his publishing company, Epix Förlag, for the comics scene in Sweden. The eccentric and often uncompromising Schröder is in large part responsible for introducing comics aimed at an adult audience to a Swedish readership during the 1980s.

The eponymous protagonist of Tumac, a comic book published monthly in Sweden between 1978 and 1980, is a young indigenous boy who in contemporary times becomes emperor of a hidden Inca empire. After attempting to create a society where all social hierarchies have ceased to exist, Tumac leaves this hidden location in the jungle to help bring about a revolution in Latin America. This essay argues that Tumac is a prime example of what can be classified in broad terms as a wave of international solidarity in Sweden infused with New Left politics. During this period, colourblindness was elevated to a governing norm and antiracist vision, symbolised here by an indigenous hero fighting for social justice in a part of the world that increasingly took centre stage in the national political debate. In short, Tumac is a leading example of how Sweden wanted to be seen and saw others.

This article analyses the works of Olivier Schrauwen with a particular focus on his comic Arsène Schrauwen, which plays out in the colonial context of the Congo. It argues that Schrauwen’s comics exploit the formal qualities of the colonial adventure genre that is frequent in traditional European comics as a way of subverting and satirising them. It further argues that through a constant reliance on meta-references to other works and tropes recognisable from adventure tales, in combination with the adoption of a strict colonialist world view, Schrauwen humorously ridicules the asymmetrical binaries between coloniser and colonised.