Tuesday 20 May 2008

Semic archive Pt. I

[Edit: the entire post is now in English.]
Finally! It's time to show you some photos from the almost legendary "Semic archive".
It's located in Stockholm, Sweden and is in reality the storage room for almost all of Egmonts comic books and production materials. This is were you go when you are looking for stuff to reprint.

Last Wednesday myself and my colleauge Germund made a business trip to Stockholm to move a small part of the Egmont archives to Malmö. But during a break in the packaging we explored the treasures hidden on the other shelves.
As you can see in these photos every shelf is jam-packed from top to bottom with folders. Each folder contains originals or reproduction copies for a specific comic book published by Åhlen & Åkerlund, Semic, Williams etc. during the past 60 years.
I don't know hom many thousands of folders there are but there sure are plenty...

On the second photo you see folders for old (and new) x-mas albums. The wall to the left contains stuff for Swedish comics like 91:an, Åsa-Nisse and Kronblom.

Besides original art there are a huge amount of bound volumes a´nd stacks of comic books. Some 10 copies deep.
What about a Mint-set of 1970's Lajban? No? ;)

What follows are some random photos just to show the wide range of material found.

Old original art. Don't remember the name of the comic but it looks like 1940's stuff.

Original artwork for the covers to Musse Piggs Julbok. The artwork is rather crude and copied from interior art but I'm still glad that they has survived. Disney comic book art from this time period is pretty rare.


The boxes with Pellefant has besides reproduction material also comic books in different languages. Hesre is one issue in four different versions.


There are an incredible amount of Pelle Svanslös material from the late 60's and 70's. Did you know that besides the comic book there were a daily strip and a sunday? Note that the dot pattern is on a separate layer.


A pasted up repro copy of a Swamp Thing cover used in Gigant 4/85.


The original cover for Toppserien 8/78. Painted by?

Let's take a break here and return in a day or two with some Funny Animal stuff and then a huge post on the Swedish Phantom comic book. Lots of interesting stuff to come. :)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just wish the text were in English so everybody could understand the details...

Ainur Elmgren said...

The Shadow knows!
Trevligt...

Anonymous said...

Hmm... I just felt it was easier for me to write in Swedish. Maybe I should add some desc. to the photos in English.

Anonymous said...

Haha, "Pellefant" is called "Trompie" in Dutch! Wonderful! I must add that to the Swedish comic wiki, immediately!

mintcollector said...

Wow !
What a great treasure..!
Joakim - Please contact me on :
marsnermail@adr.dk
I have some questions for you about this amazing article.

Kind Regards

S.M. / Denmark.