Oh dear, The Swedish Invasion turned into The Swedish Occupation due to that Icelandic volcano you might have heard of, but now me (Mats) and Kolbeinn are back in our subarctic abode. Simon will stay stateside a couple of more weeks, but that's according to plan.
We'll soon post a report of our US tour, but for now I'll leave you with links to some of the reviews of our books that turned up the last few weeks. Enjoy:
Comics Alliance reviews all three books
here.
The Portland Mercury reviews
120 Days of Simon and
Hey Princess here.
Worcester Magazine reviews
Hey Princess and
The Troll King here.
And here are the
Booklist reviews of
120 Days of Simon and
Hey Princess:
"In art as in burlesque, ya gotta have a gimmick. The one Swedish comics creator Gärdenfors dreamed up was, as a friend drily put it, Simon sublets his place . . . travels around and stays with people for 120 days. To get some ass. He scrupulously kept a road diary and, after darkening his own doorway again, drew it up. Boiled it down, too, skipping whole days (too drab? embarrassing?), to produce a latter-day On the Road, via commuter-train rather than auto wheels, as full of kicks loud music, drugs, and ass as any trip Sal and Dean ever took. He even had some alternative religious experience (so there, dharma bums!) while putting on a TV crew. He was mugged, lost the sublet payments, risked losing his new love back home. But then the grant he d applied for came through. Moralists should hate Gärdenfors as their forebears hated Kerouac, except that he renders himself, friends, and assailants as highly geometric, early-video game figures, so cute that they couldn t be doing that, could they? Some gimmick!"
"Like Simon Gärdenfors 120 Days of Simon, Jonsson's American debut is a youthful autobiography focused on sex and drugs and rock n roll; well, OK, sex against a backdrop of the other two. Named after a 1990s Swedish indie hit, it records Jonsson s randy early twenties, from February 93 to June 99 that is, from the middle of college to the world of full-time work. When he hasn t got a girl, he s miserable; when he does, he s only fleetingly happy. He hooks up quick; not much dating (as opposed to flirting/hitting-on) before scoring for him, though he does accept just sleeping together as relatively lengthy prelude/foreplay. Clubs and indie festivals are his stalking grounds, though meeting the next lady is usually accomplished through friends. Although he can seem depraved, especially as drawn in the brutal-but-cute style he practices, which resembles those of such American women cartoonists as Lynda Barry, Jonsson s no worse than most of his mates, better than some. His is an oddly refreshing story of raffish youth, pretty thoroughly amusing."
