April 25 - 2003
Meeting in Oslo at Egmont/Fantomet
With Knut Westad, Dag Frognes, Ingebjørg Borg Holm, Kjell Steen & Hege Høiby
Twelfth Event
Oslo, April 25 2003
With Honorary Member Knut Westad, Dag Frognes,
Ingebjørg Borg Holm, Kjell Steen & Hege Høiby
Oslo, April 25 2003
With Honorary Member Knut Westad, Dag Frognes,
Ingebjørg Borg Holm, Kjell Steen & Hege Høiby
Attending Members: Brian Jensen, Jan-Ola Sjöberg, Kristian Kamben, Ulf Bennetter, Magnus Eriksson, Martin Dahlström, Per-Åke Sjögren & Øyvind Nesland
Guest: Mari Tangen
On my return to the Deep Woods after yet another successful heroic deed, I was met by Diana. She smiled demurely at me and said:
-Next stop Hallsberg!
I woke up from my dream all of a sudden and looked around me in confusion. Next to me sat Jan-Ola Sjöberg – not Diana, and I realised quickly that I was on my way to the 12th meeting of the very eminent club: Scandinavian Chapter. The meeting was to take place in Oslo and beside myself and Jan-Ola, Chairman Brian Jensen and Magnus Eriksson had also chosen this excellent – although somewhat expensive – means of travel, called a train. Bosse Engberg should also have been with us but his employer had inconveniently had other plans and Bosse – who had worked very hard with preparations for the meeting – instead had to spend the weekend in front of, behind and under a large amount of computers.
Most part of the trip was spent talking about the Phantom. A few days earlier Fantomen no 9/2003 had reached us containing an adventure titled Giovanna very nicely drawn by veteran Dick Giordano. However, our main attention was not towards him but directed towards the young Norwegian lady Ingebjörg Berg Holm who had written the adventure, and this lady would be one of the guests of honour at the meeting! We were four keenly expectant gentlemen who stepped off the train at Oslo Central.
We strolled along Karl Johan, Oslo’s main shopping street, teased the guards outside the Royal Palace, inspected an elegant cab for sale by Bertel O. Steen and finally arrived in the part of town, called Majorstuen, where our goal, The Egmont Publishing Company was situated.
The company is located in a modern office building and has the old cinema-theatre
Colosseum with its dome-shaped building as it’s nearest neighbour.
We announced ourselves at the reception, were given passes, and were piloted up to the 5th floor where a meeting room already housed those SC-members who had made their own way there. There were Ulf Bennetter, Martin Dahlström and our Norwegian friends Kristian Kamben, Karl-Johan Lien and Öyvind Nesland.
We were also welcomed by the publisher of Fantomet, Hege Höiby and by the “Boss” himself, Kjell Steen.
Two very able Norwegian creators of Fantomen, invited by SC, Dag Frognes and veteran Knut Westad with wife had also joined the gang.
After having been offered coffee, sodas and sandwiches of gigantic proportions – very tasty after our long trip – we heard tittle-tattle in the corridor and suddenly she stood in the door, our guest of honour, Ingebjörg Berg Holm!
Ingebjörg is 22 years old, from Larvik but now studies art in Bergen. She revealed that she has been reading Fantomet since her teens (and it goes without saying that she is a member of the Norwegian Fantomet Club). Like many other young Norwegian comic creators she started at the Raptus festival by attending a course in scriptwriting and thus came to write a script for Fantomet. The story, Giovanna, is built on a legend of a female pope. This is a story that fits well with the mysticism surrounding the Phantom.
Present to interview Ingebjörg, apart from us inquisitive SC members, was also a representative from the daily Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet It goes without saying that the occasion was used to advertise SC in the Norwegian press.
When the newspaper representatives had left us, Kjell Steen mentioned casually: “TV will soon be here”.
Confused SC-members looked at one another: Did we hear correctly? Was there a TV-team arriving then and there? Yes, for sure! Within short, two journalists from NRK arrived. Interviews were made not only with Ingebjörg but also with Kjell Steen, the two Norwegian artists – and with Brian, who totally unprepared still managed to talk about SC in a very exemplary way. NRK also promised to let SC have a copy of the videotape.
During these interviews Martin unpacked his video camera! His daily work is with Swedish Radio P1, but he now took the opportunity to make a short feature for Swedish Television Cultural News. Still more PR for SC!
After this, there was time to get to know Ingebjörg, Kjell, Dag and Knut. Both Dag and Knut have had magazine covers of Fantomen which have been voted “The Year’s Best” in Sweden. (Dag for no. 15/2001 and Knut for no. 17/1982. They were able to tell us much of interest about Fantomen and their own future projects. Dag gave each member of SC a very fine gift: An original drawing made for the occasion.
Kjell Steen talked captivatingly about the publishing history of Fantomen in Scandinavia. Denmark was actually first in 1938 when Allers Publishing Co. started publishing Fantomen in the first number of “Skipper Skræk” (in Sweden known as Karl-Alfred and elsewhere as Pop-Eye).
In Sweden Åhlén och Åkerlund Publishing Co. started publishing Fantomen, at first in the weekly magazine Vecko-Revyn 1940 and then in its own Fantomen Comic in 1950.
Also Norway and Denmark published a Fantomen Comic in the early fifties (1952-1954 to be exact) but this was not the same comic as in Sweden. The Danish/Norwegian version came from Allers and was in reality a special issue of Skipper Skræk. (This edition also existed in Sweden under the name “Stjärnbragder” but without Fantomen)
The present Norwegian edition is from 1964 and shares appearance and most contents with the Swedish and Finnish editions.
In our meeting room, Kjell Steen had also spread the table with a large amount of Fantomet Comics and books of “The Chronicles of the Phantom. These were freely given out to the SC-members! Each volume of the Norwegian ‘Chronicles’ is devoted to one member of the Phantom lineage and 10 volumes have so far been published.
The ‘Chronicles’ are also published in a numbered collectors’ edition in beautiful half-bound leather.
We also made an interesting tour of the premises. We saw the showcase of Phantom collectibles and saw how work was done with other comics, such as Donald Duck.
The offices are light and elegant and offer a beautiful view of Oslo and Holmenkollen.
As all members of SC know, the high peak of our meetings is the distribution of ‘goodie bags’. Jan-Ola now gave these out with great elegance. The bags are always highly coveted and always contain items connected with the meeting and with the Phantom.
And then the “slobbering show” began. Most members bring with them an object or an item to show and to let the others slobber over it with envy or with esteem. Magnus had come across an Indian Phantom Magazine, which was very interesting to look at, even if we did not understand much of the text. Magnus also showed us a program from the Phantom Musical and a comic, “The man from Uncle” which contained a Phantom adventure by Lignante. Jan-Ola told us that he collects comics where the Phantom makes a guest appearance, such as “The man from Uncle”, “Agent X-9”, “Mandrake” and “Blixt Gordon” (Flash Gordon). Martin showed us interesting pins and Ulf mentioned that he had bought the very first Fantomen comic in 1950 at a price of 50 öre. Sighs from the audience indicated that the buying price today is a little higher…
After that, Chairman Brian, started groping for something in his bag. Out came a real titbit - “Big little book” with the Phantom from 1936 published by the American company Whitmans Publishing. This is the oldest printing known of the Phantom comic outside of newspapers.
Brian also produced an Australian diary, illustrated with different Phantom motifs and themes, which we all signed for him. This was a most suitable end to the “slobbering show”.
At the end of the meeting, the whole gang went to a very nice restaurant and ate, drank, talked and discussed into the small hours.
Everybody agreed that the meeting had been extremely successful and we all took out hats off to the ones who had arranged and made preparations for the success – and gave them a warm ‘thank you’.
I took a tinkling tram – no. 19 – back to the centre of town. The next day the trip home by train went via Göteborg. In Herrljunga a man boarded the train, dressed in a coat, a hat and sun-glasses.
The guard said:
“You cannot have your dog on the train!”
“It’s not a dog, it’s a wolf…”
Written by:
Per-Åke Sjöberg – Member 53
Translated (and very lightly adapted) by:
Ulf Bennetter – Member 13