February 18 2006
Meeting in Kristinehamn in Brians home, Founder #1 and clubpage-editor for Fantomen
With visit to Reprostugan in Avelsbol
Kristinehamn, February 18th 2006
Attending Members: Brian Jensen, Jan-Ola Sjöberg, Magnus Eriksson, Patrik Axelsson, Hans-Erik Hansson
Guest: Kristina Larsson
With: Lasse Gärdt at Reprostugan in Avelsbol
The so well planned timeschedule was busted already from the beginning. The train to Kristinehamn was half an hour delayed. When finally arriving the train travellers Magnus, Patrik and Jan-Ola was met by Brian and Hans-Erik. After a short stop for lunch at a famous hamburger restaurant we all jumped into Hans-Erik’s car for going to “Reprostugan”, the company that puts colours to most of the Swedish comics, including The Phantom. In the beginning it all went smooth but the big adventure started when we went further and further into the dark woods of Värmland. “If we get out of the car here we will be eaten by wolfs” somebody said. And we didn’t feel any safer when we saw a car turned upside down in the ditch, all covered by snow, when driving on one of these endless forest roads that also turned out to go in the wrong direction. After a number of phonecalls to Lars at the “Reprostugan” we were finally on the right track again and after a 130 km long journey by car we arrived to the former school-building that now accomodates “Reprostugan”. Lasse Gärdt, the boss, met us on the stairway. He is a man that seems to enjoy life and laughs all the time. That’s maybe why he has become a cartoon figure in Ernie.Lasse guided us among the mac-computors and scanners and told us how the work with The Phantom is being done. The original pages is sent over from Stockholm and the staff at “Reprostugan” scans them and put colours to them in Photoshop. One colourer can manage two or three Phantom pages a day. The Phantom is one of the most difficult comics to colour because it has so many tones and shadows. The jungle is extra difficult due to all leaf. The colourer can manage 4 pages a day for a comic like Jerome K Bloche and Garfield is the easiest one to colour. In total fourteen people work at “Reprostugan” and four of them work with The Phantom.
After the tour it was coffee and cream bun in the cafe, where the coffee machine has a large variety of both coffe and hot chocolate. As many as the coffee alternatives were the numbers of amusing stories that Lasse told us about the history of the company and his meetings with Bud Grace. We learned that the archive where they store all films from the reprowork they’ve done is called the “svalskits”-archive and that patience and a feeling for colours is a must if you want to work as a colourer. What you have done earlier in your life is of less importance. Lasse himself is a civil engineer from the beginning and one of the employees has previous worked with plastic bags. There seems to be many ways of careers if you want to work with comics.
All to early it was time to go back to Kristinehamn. The journey back went of course faster since we didn’t get lost in the wilderness. Back in Kristinehamn Kristina met us in Brians flat before we all went to a chinese restaurant nearby. Satisfied of food and milk we all went back to Brians. The Pressbyrå was unfortunately closed so we could’nt buy the 91:an comic that for celebrating the 70 years of The Phantom contains a story where staff sergeant Revär meets our hero dressed in blue.
Back at Brians we looked at his collection and the drooling objects that we had brought. The toughest one was, probably, Hans-Erik’s leather jacket with a Phantom print together with some soft refrigerator magnets that nowadays decorate a fridge in Kristinehamn.
Brian also showed us how the new Scandinavian Chapter website will look like. The old one needs a facelift after 5 years.
There was no goodiebag for this meeting but Brian had put together a “garbagebag” for us that amongst others contained unedited club material for Fantomen 6/2006 and an issue of Kristinehamnsposten that had a large interview with Brian.
As usual when you are talking about The Phantom time flies. Hans-Erik had left us earlier during the evening but it felt as if he just had left when it was time for the rest of us to go to the bus that would take us to Stockholm. Jan-Ola stayed at a hotel since the bus no longer wants to make a stop in Örebro. The bus that we should take was delayed so we, two stockholmers, had a freezing half an hour at the travelcenter of Kristinehamn but who cares when having so many new Phantom memories in the luggage.
Magnus Eriksson #14
Translated by: Björn Harnby