Lille Rikard

Spent the morning scanning and restoring old sunday pages. Got a batch of original "Lille Rikard" pages by Rune Andréasson on loan and prepared them for coloring by converting them to bitmap. However, lots of the gray areas will be missing when these pages are printed. No proofs has survived and the dot pattern has faded on the original boards.
Here's a sample of what the artwork looks like before it was converted.
(The inserted image is naturally not part of the page, but added in photoshop. )

BTW: The originals are fairly small. Less than A4 size!

The final, colored, pages will appear in Bamses äventyr #32 this spring.

Rosetta Teddy

Swedish comics historian Fredrik Strömberg is currently working on a new edition of the book Swedish Comics History. (Published soon and distributed by Top Shelf in the US.) That book will feature a list of Swedish comics that at one time or another was published in German, English or French.

Trying to help out I was going through my files at work today. And I found some early samples of Rune Andréasson's strip Teddy from 1951.
In English and German! However I have no idea if they really were published in Germany or England or if these samples were just strips prepared by the syndicate. (If anyone have seen these in print in those countries, please let me know.)
Here are the first three strips for those of you who are interested in seeing them.



As a bonus for the Swedish readers, here's a presentation from the early 50's:

And while I'm at it.
Here's a strip from the adventure of Teddy and the little donkey. (A storyline that Rune used over and over again through the years.) What makes it interesting, to researchers of the history of Rune Andréasson's comics, is that this might be the very first appearence of the Krösus Sork (Croesus Vole) prototype Sork-Sam, even if he's not named here.

Brum at Seriegalleriet

Don't miss the Brum exhibition at Seriegalleriet in Stockholm later this month!
Loads of rare original art will be for sale including watercolors, drawings made for Göteborgs-Posten and unpublished stuff. These items have never been for sale before so I expect that collectors will have to be there early on October 17 to get the good stuff.

Teddy by Andréasson

Following yesterdays Terry – here's Teddy!

Teddy was a comic about a bear and his two friends Skalman and Lasse Skutt, a turtle and a rabbit. It was written and drawn by Rune Andréasson in the 50's and early 60's.
Teddy appeared in a few albums, in the comic book "Tuff och Tuss" and in his own comic book 1959-1960.
All of that is common knowledge for fans of Rune Andréasson here in Sweden.

But...
Very few knows that Teddy also had his own daily strip! I had never seen any examples until I ran into a stack of originals in the Andréasson archive.
I guess that the strip ran in just a few papers, so it's hard, if not impossible, to find any tearsheets of it at all. I have no start or end dates. Further research needs to be done.
Just to show you something here are five strips that I found among some papers and tearsheets that I have on loan. Enjoy!

Too much Bamse stuff...

I mentioned that I was going through my closet, sorting through all of my Bamse stuff. Well, I took some photos that probably will make some hardcore Bamse collectors go drooling for hours. The rest of you will probably think I'm a lunatic that should get a life. ;)
Well, now that all of my extras has been packaged down and storaged most of this will go back into my closet and my apartment will look normal again. :)

Here we go...
First we have some photos of mixed Bamse comic books and albums. Some rare items and some common.




Then some foregin editions. Notice that these sometimes have variations of the Swedish covers or covers not used in Sweden.

Some promotional editions and giveaways. Some for a travel company, one for a stuttering association, a styleguide only available to licence partners etc. Good luck finding them. :)


Some odd and rare stuff.

Some mixed paper lots. The stuff you keep...



Back in the 90's, before web approval and digital printing we had to approve black/blue and white preview copies like these. I kinda miss them. They smelled so heavy of chemicals that you could get a headache though. I guess these are the only surviving copies.

To finish this post some Rune Andréasson (The creator of Bamse) oddities that I've bought over the years.


If you see something in these pictures you want to ask about, please do. I'll only be happy to answer. (If I can.)

Now, enough of this "archive porn". :)

Brum

I've been researching the Swedish comic strip Brum and just thought I'd share a few samples of the strip.
It was created in 1943 by Runé Andréasson, the man behind Bamse. And here we can see the very first strip. It was published early 1944, but the version seen here is a slightly altered reprint from a later date.
Then a big jump to the 1960's when the strip was at it's peak.

The strip ended in the late 60's and here we have a strip from the last adventure: Brum i gottlandet (Brum in candyland). Some of you might recognise Lakritstrollet from Rune Andréassons other comic Pellefant.He actually made this story in 1948 but shelved it and re drew it as the last adventure. The original unpublished version will be printed in Bamse-biblioteket volume 30. (Hardcover book collecting old Bamse comics and rare stuff by Rune.)
The Candyland strip is followed by the very last strip.


Please check out both Bamse-biblioteket vol 29 and 30 for large bonus sections with lots of rare Brum material. I think 29 is out any day now and 30 in a few months.