Here at Sequential Planet, we focus on the newest and biggest comic book releases the market has on offer. But what about the comics you don’t hear about? That was my mission while in Copenhagen, Denmark, last summer.
This idea didn’t occur to me until I was on the streets of Copenhagen, in the heart of the city, the Indre By district, just a block or so from Ørsteds Park. That’s when I saw a comic book shop. Comics. Danish Comics. What would I find on those shelves? Inside the shop, Fantask, were the standard releases. Marvel, DC, etc. There wasn’t anything uniquely Danish that I could see on the main shelves. That being said, the variety was impressive for such a small shop. Not only did they have comics, but a healthy display of fantasy and science fiction novels, as well as a manga section, and D&D/Pathfinder corner. A well-curated shop, to be sure–but almost everything was in English. I approach the woman behind the register, tentatively.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m visiting and love comics and would love a Danish comic as a souvenir, do you have any suggestions?”
She did. She guides me to a small section of Danish graphic novels and floppies. “But you don’t speak Danish, do you?” she asks me. I do not, I tell her. “This one,” she picks up a wide thin book, “this one has no words in it, but it is beautiful and he is local. This shop is even in the book.” I take it and flip through it. It is beautiful. It’s not a comic, but it’s not just a picture book either. It’s inks and watercolor and each couple of pages is its own story. The artist’s name is on the back. Adam O.
“He’s local?” I ask the woman. She tells me he is.
That night, I look up Adam O. and his book Kakofonia on Google. I find his email and ask him, politely, for an interview. I explain I’m trying to find the pulse of the Danish comics scene. Within the hour he emails me back. He doesn’t live in Denmark, but in Sweden, and he doesn’t make comics much anymore–though he knows someone I should talk to. Halfdan Pisket. He tells me this is the man I should see. This is the most famous Danish cartoonist/comic creator. He includes Halfdan’s email. I am thankful.
Halfdan Pisket’s graphic novel trilogy is not translated into English yet. It presents me with a difficult task. How do I interview someone about their writing and story when I can’t read it? But also, this is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to hear about what I didn’t already know about. Isn’t this perfect?
On the morning we meet, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, it’s mid-August–the people of Copenhagen are beautiful. Halfdan lives a mere 10-minute bike ride from where I’m staying and he comes down to let me into his building. His apartment is nice and modest and clearly an artist lives here. He has some bookshelves lined with comics and graphic novels. Some are ones I recognize. Elf Quest, Black Hole, but there are others I don’t know. He pours me a cup of coffee and we sit on his balcony overlooking the street. Every once in awhile a car drives by, but there is little traffic here. Most people ride bicycles.
When I tell him my idea, this concept of bringing the Danish Comic scene back with me, in a way, to the United States, he cracks a half-smile on his thin, lightly stubbled face.
“But it is funny,” he says, “because I grew up reading translated American comics. And when you are a kid, it’s superhero comics, it was X-Men and Spawn and later I read Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and after that, I thought, I could read more of something like this. . . It wasn’t until I started making comics, myself, in Danish, that I realized there were other people doing it. That was when I started reading Danish Comics.”
Before I go any further, I should note the profound impact Pisket’s work has had in the realm of Danish Literature, but also on a continental stage. Dansker (Translated Dane, in Danish), won the Politics Literature Prize in 2016, the Ping Prize in 2017, and in 2019, just before I met with him, the Dansker trilogy won Best Series at the third-largest comic book festival in the world, the French Angouleme Festival. Back in 2015, Pisket was also awarded the largest art grant in Denmark worth 850,000 Danish Krone (around 130,000 USD), the first graphic novelist ever to be awarded the grant.
These are some extraordinary achievements considering that the Danish comic scene in its current form, is “…Kind of like poetry,” Pisket says. He sips his coffee slow, puts his mug down with a little click. “In [Denmark], a country of five million people, a best seller is, maybe, three thousand copies.”
With so much acclaim it might seem strange that most in the English speaking world will have never heard of Halfdan Pisket, and hardly any will have read is books–there is yet to be an English translation (though it has been translated into Spanish). It’s a pointed and shocking reminder of our own ethnocentricity. Especially when the story of the Dansker trilogy is considered.
“It’s based on the story of my father… but I don’t think it’s important for the story that it’s fictional or real. It starts out with torture scenes and him being in a jail in a country I have never been in; a time in which I didn’t live,” he says.
The Dansker trilogy is about a man, based or not, on Halfdan’s father. A Turkish immigrant who comes to Denmark for a better, safer life than the one afforded to him in his home country. However, Pisket pushes back against the perception of his work.
“When you read reviews, it sounds like it’s a historical comic or more of social critique–but I am from an art background, it’s way more flimsy than that.”
While this may seem to dampen the authenticity of his work, it’s clear Pisket understands his process and goal better than reviews or even award panels do. He leaves me on the balcony overlooking the street while he retrieves a copy of his book. He puts the book down on the table and shows me the first couple of pages, trying to translate the Danish for me.
“Here is the first scene,” he says, pointing to a panel of a man in a prison cell. “The language is like, I’ve been waiting for the window to shine. . . how do you say it…to brighten up by the sun, that the door will open and the sun will come through the door, but I am here in isolation The language is fragmented; it leans more toward poetry.”
It is a difficult concept to articulate, what Halfdan is speaking about. While reviewers might deem Dansker historical and/or social critique, Halfdan is more interested in the emotional truths of his story than the factual ones. The story is true, and based on his father, but only in so far as his father’s story gave Pisket the inspiration needed to tell a story that is emotionally impactful as much as historically accurate. This question is one of the deepest found in fiction: What is true? the facts or the emotion? Surely, the historical accuracy is important in any piece of realism, but facts do no stir the soul, do no explain away the pain of human suffering, and do not delve into the truths of what it means to be human. Only the emotional aspects of a story, the poetic aspects, so to speak, can do that.
“It is a historical comic, and it is a biography comic, but that is also losing a lot of it,” say’s Halfdan. “I don’t really see it as creating my father’s story, because I know the story and I knew my father and how nuanced he was and I can’t create that. The moment someone takes someone else’s story, I think it is cheating themselves to say that it has anything to do with reality. It is just a story.”
We sit in thought for a moment and then. “I have no idea what people are reading when they read this thing,” says Halfdan, pressing one finger to the cover of the book that has won him so much praise.
We laugh and finish our coffee, but what Halfdan has touched on is the ownership of art. Who defines it? Who owns its meaning? The author, in this case, surely owns part of it–but it is a small piece now that others have shared their opinions and perceptions. In the end, Halfdan Pisket, and all authors and artists, must give their work up to the masses if they want it to be enjoyed.
Ironically, you can find many academic papers that describe Dansker in these terms, “A significant contribution to the social history of immigration in the Nordic countries, Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker trilogy (2014–2016) is also a resonant visual-verbal reflection on the relationship between the face and the mask and its impact on the formation of individual and cultural identity,” writes Øyvind Vågnes in their paper An Anatomy of Facelessness: On Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker Trilogy, while studying at the University of Bergen, Norway.
This may be the type of language that has Halfdan so baffled. However, it’s a wonderful reminder of the power of art when done with intent and authenticity. People find what they will in art, regardless of the artist’s intent. Halfdan Pisket and the Dansker trilogy are a wonderful example of the power of art to connect with people on a variety of levels; emotionally, philosophically, historically–and the list could go on. I’m just left here, wishing I could read it.
