The event, organized by us at Rackham to mark 25 (or rather 26) years in comics is a symposium at the highest level, a forum in which to debate with peers and all comers the state of the art fomr of comics. The event is organized around a number of lectures, interviews and a roundtable to get at the pressing questions of where comics once were. where they are today and where they’re headed.

Other participants include Gary Groth, the co-founder and -publisher of Fantagraphics, Dan Nadel of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Benoît Mouchart of Casterman, and Xavier Guilbert of du9.org. More will be announced in the coming weeks!

I can’t overstate how excited I am about this event, which I very much hope you will consider attending. Get your tickets here — they won’t be available for long!

For those of you who understand Danish, we recorded a short podcast episode introducing the event and providing a look behind the scenes.

Photo taken by the author at SPX in 2004

Although I’ve written a proper obituary in Danish over at Nummer9, so much has been written about him online in English over the weekend that I won’t bore you with a translated version and instead merely refer you to the obituary up at the website of the magazine he helped shape, The Comics Journal, as well as to Tom Spurgeon’s helpful collection of links and selected works. Here are a few short personal reminiscences instead:

I didn’t know Kim well, but met him three or four times over the last ten to twelve years. I guess our common Danish heritage had some say, if nothing else in the projects we ended up collaborating on. In any case, it was a joy to hear him speak the language in his melodious, nineteen-fifties accent, preserved since his childhood as if in amber. Anyway, we collaborated on a few bits and pieces. He accepted (and even translated!) my first interview — with David B. — for The Comics Journal #275 back in 2005 and two years ago he accepted for publication at Fantagraphics the Nordic anthology I was editing, Kolor Klimax.

The book was financed by the Finnish Comics Society, but Kim’s swift acceptance of the project was a deciding factor in its success. I of course sent him samples of the content in advance, but he clearly trusted that I would put together a book that met his standards and not only took it on, but didn’t interfere with its production. The descriptions I’m now reading all over about his hands-off editorial style therefore ring true. It seems to me that his quality control lay in the initial selection of projects to take on — something he was clearly skilled at — after which he let people do their own thing, getting involved only in the copy editing, for which he had a unfailing eye. One thing he reminded me of with Kolor Klimax was the difference between English and continental European separation of numbers: the former employs full stops whereas the latter uses commas. Confusing the two is a common error with Nordic people otherwise proficient in English, he wrote to me.

We discussed a number of other projects, including ones on two of his favorite artists: Storm P. and Franquin. Whether these will ever see the light of day is now doubtful, of course. I would assume better chances for the former, however. Franquin, as Kim would often point out, simply does not seem to click with American readers, much to his bafflement. As things happened, our last ‘collaboration’, was on the Tardi feature in the latest Comics Journal (#302), for which I was given space to write about the masterwork 120 Rue de la Gare as a kind of coda to his career-spanning, revelatory and very human interview with Tardi. It was an honor, just as it has been a honor to know, however superficially, this kind, intelligent and hard-working man whose spark was a vital one in comics.

The week in review

Not much to report from this angle this week, apart from the fact that the Jewish new year reminds me that I’ve been back in the ole home country for over a year now. Last year’s Rosh Hashannah kind of marked a fresh return to new beginnings here and it’s been a great ride since then, one of the best years I’ve had. Thanks to everybody taking part.

Links!

Jon Gorga and Palle Schmidt dipping underground at Bergen Street

I particularly enjoyed it as an opportunity immediately to get acquainted with the New York comics scene and meet in person a number of people whose work I’ve been appreciating, and some of whom I’ve been corresponding with, over the last half decade or more. I enjoyed attending the Strandicon event and meeting for the first time the whole Comics Journal crew, old and new (videos of panel here); it was great to drop in for a reception at the fine Bergen Street Comics, where I’d never been before, and chat to Tucker Stone. I was great finally to meet comics critics and scholars such as Bill Kartalopoulos, Joe McCulloch, Marc Sobel, Chris Mautner, Alex Dueben, Heidi McDonald and others, and it was cool to sit down and chat with my good internet spirit Derik Badman (read his MoCCA report here). I also got to catch up with a bunch of my Danish friends and colleagues, who were over here in force, as well as some of our Nordic brethren, plus several New York cartoonists I haven’t talked to much since I last lived here.

All good times, but it really overshadowed what seemed to me a somewhat unremarkable festival. The programming was largely unremarkable, lacking in both marquee names or particularly worthwhile themes, so it came down to the offerings in the main hall. I like the democratic aspect of MoCCA, with tables being sufficiently cheap that a lot of DIY and underground stuff is on display, but at the same time I saw very little remarkable work outside the rosters of the show’s few “big” publishers. The impression it left of the American grass roots scene was one of slight stagnation after many years of redoubtable creative growth.

Søren Mosdal, Cav Bøgelund and Rikke Bakman at the Danish table

Yes, a new book by Lisa Hanawalt is not to be scoffed at, Austin English is always interesting, and that Warren Craghead piece in the Sundays antho is gorgeous, but these are still slim pickings. Joseph Lambert’s hyped I Will Bite You is a pretty book, but seems to me slight… I dunno, maybe I’m just grouching or I possibly missed a lot of good work.

Of course, a lot of the high-profile books released or teased at the show seems remarkable — I cannot wait to get my hands on Chester Brown’s Paying for It (D&Q, in a smart marketing move, only brought 25 copies selling out almost instantly); Jim Woodring’s Congress of the Animals predictably looks great, if also perhaps plain predictable (the new Dave McKean porn book is the opposite: unpredictably kitschy, even for him…); it is fantastic to see Lewis Trondheim’s Approximate Continuum Comics finally out in English (after all these years); Shigeru Mizuki’s Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is a fascinating if flawed work that I’m glad to see released in English; and the collection of Bagge/Hernandez’ Yeah! and the latest Hate! Annual are welcome distractions; Winshluss’ Pinocchio is an impressive if somewhat shallow book, but worth a read; and that fat-ass 301st issue of The Comics Journal (the Éprouvette version) packs a great critical punch.

Perhaps it was just the historical surroundings (noblesse oblige!) or the awareness that across the ocean, in Luzern, another awesome-sounding installment of Fumetto is taking place right now. Anyway, it was great meeting everyone!