Interview in Bild & Bubbla

”Joanna Rubin Drangers bilder är ett veritabelt fyrverkeri som rinner ut över hela sidorna…”

Joanna Rubin Dranger
Interview by Lawen Mohtadi

I’m not going to publish this. Not as it is. No, he’s in a meeting. But later.

There are people I’ve known both before and after.

Nineteen years and already so wise.

It seems like you use offended feelings a lot. It’s about a happy day.

You are not all in one piece.

No, things aren’t going too well for me. Would be good to have a daddy with a yacht in Sandhamn. You can’t make out an aggressive expression in their faces.

It was less shameful. Illustration is to illustrate another person’s text. It was blameless.

When I was little I made books. Now we celebrate Chanukha, Christmas, Lucia day, we celebrate everything we get the chance to celebrate. The Bible – a book by Joanna Rubin Dranger.

No… I can’t even go on with this, it is too juvenile… Okay…

She is so clear to herself. Don’t believe it, don’t believe them. I get carried along.

I look like a really good-looking guy. Stone lion.

As a watcher you don’t know that the person is insane.

What was the most crucial decision of your life?

Probably the decision, when I had been really depressed for a long time, truly depressed that is, that I wanted to live, in spite of everything I had accused myself of for a very long time and all the defects that were overwhelming and impossible to get along with. It isn’t really possible to imagine anything more crucial than that decision. I do see a lot of other decisions that have meant more concrete choices, as when I decided to drop out of Konstfack, as when I decided to get a divorce, as having a child.

Why did you drop out of Konstfack?

My dreams or pictures of what I would do after graduating from Konstfack, University College of Arts Crafts and Design, didn’t correspond to any specific training. I divide my life into before and after that decision about wanting to live. I went to therapy for seven years, more than once a week. I had no contact with my feelings. It feels like two different lives, since the decisions I took before quitting Konstfack were not founded in my feelings. There was no channel open, all my feelings were a mystery. All decisions were made up in my head and another person inside of me protested in all kinds of scary ways. Like when people describe when they are burnt out, how they suddenly can’t walk or use their legs. That never happened to me, but I understand the description of how you lose contact so radically with what happens inside of you that you need to push it outside yourself.

What were the dreams you couldn’t find your way to through Konstfack?

When I was deciding what to become I had already made the first book, which is called Angry! But there was neither any training to be an author nor to be an illustrator at Konstfack. I had such a vague notion of what things meant. To me an illustrator was someone who sat in their chamber fiddling with little pictures. I thought it felt small and grey and unattractive. And when I went to Konstfack there was no profession called illustrator, unlike today. However, I still don’t know what training would have been right for me. I would probably not have trained to be an author, because that’s not what I do. And I’m not doing illustration, because that is illustrating someone else’s text, which has never interested me as much.

I went to the Metal Design Department at Konstfack. I had this idea that I would be an Alessi designer, making neat jugs and cutlery and such things. As I saw it, everything that had to do with feelings was the negative part, that it was my weakness.

After two years I dropped out of Metal Design and applied for the Industrial Design Training at Konstfack. What I idealized was somebody designing high-speed trains, because I thought it gave such a high status. It was the opposite of shameful. It was blameless.

I was there for half a year. It was absurd. Part of me just protested, I was terrified by that part: it is prohibited for me to be anxiety-ridden, I can’t drop out, I can’t feel that this is wrong. It was a monster threatening me all the time. And what happened was that it became impossible for me to stay because the anxiety was so strong. I didn’t want to work with that stuff but I thought I had to, that I had to become the kind of person who wanted to. For some people Industrial Design at Konstfack would probably mean a free and artistic choice. I mean, from outside there might not seem to be any substantial difference between these two creative professions, but for me what I thought I had to want then, and what I am doing today constitute two entirely different lives.

Has the keynote been the same in your books as in your life?

It is not a coincidence that the last book is called Happy! and is about Io. It’s about a happy day. It was made fifteen years after the first book. Many have asked when there would be a happy book, and I always thought: god how uninteresting a happy book would be. Happy is an imposed feeling, happy doesn’t leave room for any conflict. Then I had Io and felt that of course happy is a story, happiness is vital to the lust for life and the strength to do difficult things.

When I published Miss Remarkable and her Career I was really preoccupied. I was scared I would be ashamed. But when it was actually released I wasn’t ashamed a single moment. I think that book is my best because it’s about the most difficult thing of all: not having what it takes.

Do you have any ideals?

Frida Kahlo. Tove Jansson. Margaret Atwood.

If you think of ideals more like how you would like to work or how you would like to see your creative production?

I would like to be able to express as much in one picture as Frida Kahlo does. But I’ve never been able to express myself in pictures alone. It has made me feel mute. And the writing; earlier I wrote a lot but I had a hard time with the huge amount of words. It was like thinking: where does universe end? There were too many possibilities of moving the words around all kinds of ways, I couldn’t harbor all those options. This form I work in, word combined with picture, is what comes out of me.

What was the environment you grew up in?

An environment where everybody had a real profession and whatever the profession it was obviously successful. All my relatives are architects, my mother is an architect of houses, my father does interiors. One could be misled to think that what I do is close to their professions, or even that their environment would be a gateway to art. But the worst thing my mother knows is psychologists and the worst thing my father knows is artists.

Did you look for anything in particular when you grew up?

I lived in the same apartment from the time I was born till the time I moved out from home. I went to playschool at the same place where I went to school. Then Konstfack was next door to my old school. The world I moved in was incredibly small. I had hardly been to the south part of the city when I was a teenager. What I did do was go for confirmation classes at the Church of Adolf Fredrik. One day I had a conversation with my maternal grandfather who spoke about me being a Jewess, and he asked me not to go through with a Christian confirmation.

In my confirmation class I was probably the one who was most interested in Jesus, I liked everything about Christianity and Jesus was very interesting. After talking to my grandpa I told the priest that I didn’t want to be confirmed but I would like really like to continue with the classes, and I told him what my grandpa had said. The priest got quite agitated and said: “You Jews, you are not supposed to missionize. Who is your grandpa? Is he going to start…” and this was in front of all the other students, so I was very upset and ran out of the room. I came home crying to my mother, who is completely assimilated and has never cared either way. Both my parents are atheists and have left the Swedish Church as well as the Jewish community; they are really contrary to both religions and traditions. The same evening I phoned my grandpa and told him what had happened with the priest. I didn’t know then that my grandpa was the chairman of the Jewish community. My grandpa called the priest and then he called me back, saying:

“the priest says it was a misunderstanding, you are most welcome back”. After that I didn’t want to go back at all. Then I thought: well, if I’m going to get something negative for being a Jew – something I’m not even part of – then at least I want to know what Jewishness is. So I started going with my grandpa to the synagogue. I went to religious classes and worked at the Jewish holiday camp. I tried what it was like keeping kosher. That made my grandparents worried that I would become too orthodox. That was more disturbing than me becoming assimilated, which wouldn’t really have bothered them.

I’d like to talk about the press pictures of you, the ones where you are wearing waistcoat and a tie. How did that idea come up?

Anna Widoff, who had taken the press photos for the two previous books, had been giving some thought to the fact that many people she photographed turned out so pretty. My photos from the previous books looked very good. When I published Cinderella’s Sister I wanted Anna Widoff to take the pictures, but both Anna and I felt it would be awfully misplaced to have beautifying press pictures for a book that questions gender roles and beauty fixation so strongly. I had in mind a few pictures of Strindberg, he is so funny when he poses. Or rather, he isn’t funny at all, he’s un-funny. Male authors in general, well, firstly they never smile, secondly they never try to look ingratiating. It’s about adaptability, to be so adaptable is something I’m still ashamed of. Generally that’s what women do in all pictures: smile and look friendly. I wanted to make a picture when I don’t look ingratiating and good-looking, my best side sort of.

But the way the photos turned out, don’t you think you’re good-looking? What is the eye that doesn’t find you good-looking?

I definitely don’t find myself good-looking in the photo in the book. There are some press pictures where I look like a good-looking guy, but I didn’t want to use them for the book, somehow it would be the same thing in a different way.

What did you feel when people thought you looked like a good-looking guy?

I was flattered. One person said: I saw those pictures of you in fancy dress. That really annoyed me. I didn’t see it as wearing fancy dress. I was wearing a tie and pants and a jacket. These high-heeled shoes and dress that can slip open feels more like fancy dress to me. Nobody would think of calling this fancy dress, because that would be offensive.

What eye do you think meets those pictures?

Since I’m a woman people think my books are directed to female readers. Since people think so, mainly female readers buy my books. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the way it ought to be. I think it’s a girl looking at me. And if I try to look pretty, I signal something to that girl. I haven’t thought of a guy looking at me. Then again, I don’t think I’ve reflected over who looks at these pictures.

I think your narrative voice is strong. It feels like you are aware of narrating. I say that based on what you have told me now and what

I know of your work.

I thought of something now that really means everything, why it’s important. It connects with what I said in the beginning about the time when I was depressed, and it also connects with my being so adaptable as a child. It is about the fact that my idea of whose narrative it is, has always been incredibly changeable. Or as you say today: who has the preferential right of interpretation, but obviously I didn’t have that kind of vocabulary as a child. All the stories shown on TV and out in the world that are about women who are considered insane, and are locked in and put into asylums – as a watcher you know that the woman isn’t crazy but has only been locked up by her husband who wants to get to her money, or by the doctors who think she is crazy. There are many versions to that story – that story has always been the scariest and at the same time the most captivating. I think it’s extremely unpleasant, because that’s the way I’ve always felt. If I recounted something the grown-up world would say: no, that thing you’ve experienced never happened, or what you are saying was not like that. That has followed me around. That has been the most important thing about making these books. I have been able to tell my story without having anyone interrupt me saying that my narrative is untruthful. And in these books the very form I use is unique, I hazard to say. Because to write fiction you need to settle for who is telling the story; is it a first person narrator or an omniscient narrator? Whatever you choose you will encounter various difficulties. The first person narrator can’t tell things about herself that she doesn’t know about. But in the picture form I can precisely tell a subjective story without ever saying that it’s a first person story. There is no omniscient voice but neither is there a first person narrator. Things happen to the main character, and as a reader you sometimes see so much more than she herself sees. And as a reader you also see stuff you don’t know for sure really happens, or whether the main character is misinterpreting and imagining things. This happens to be the ultimate form for me, since my stories are so much about doubting your own experiences – about main characters who don’t know themselves if what is going on is really happening or whether it’s all imagination, fantasies, over-sensitivity. That uncertainty has always been part of my world.

Lawen Mohtadi

Journalist and editor for the periodical Slut

Interview by Fredrik Strömberg.
Published in the Swedish periodical Bild & Bubbla 2001 (Picture&Bubble)

Love and Career - a chat with JRD

She came from nowhere, or so it seemed, and she created one of the 90's biggest graphic novel successes; Miss Scardy Cat & Love. She came from another direction than most createurs, and therefore she chose a new form and a new kind of storytelling. The result didn't fail her. The book stayed on the booksellers' top-ten lists for an eternity and reached a lot of people who wouldn't ordinarily read this genre. The follow-up Miss Remarkable and her Career has arrived and Bild&Bubbla has knocked on Joannas door for an audience with the Swedish graphic novel's uncrowned queen.

-When was the idea to Miss Scardy-Cat born?

-The plot in Miss Scardy-Cat & Love was actually born more than five years before the book was published. After I had quit Konstfack (School of Fine Arts) I felt a deep urge to write. I bought a lap-top and for a couple of months I tried to find a direction and a language for my writing. On the one hand I remember this period as if driven by an extraordinary force, a kind of creative electricity, on the other hand I had the feeling that the whole idea of me writing was totally insane.
I had no experience of writing whatsoever. There are so many people dreaming about becoming writers and I hadn't even done any writing for my closet. And my writing didn't really come out very well. I couldn't make it work. When I got a summer job for the tabloid Expressen, I felt a kind of relief, since I let myself off the hook. The job at Expressen turned out to be a surprisingly useful experience. I stayed there for almost a year.
Even when I became a full-time freelance illustrator the dream and the urge to write was still there. I hate clichés about artistry but I actually do think that my writing, or rather my storytelling, was more of a necessity than a choice.

-Okay. But how come you chose the form of the graphic novel, to tell your story?

-I had still kept the dream to write this novel in the back of my head. One morning when I was on my way to my studio, I suddenly got the idea that I could draw the novel instead of writing it. What I saw before me in that moment was a kind of translation of prose into pictures. I really thought it a brilliant idea, since it seemed totally original and new to me. I went to my studio and started working with it right away and I immediately felt that it could work. It was so inspiring! Later I learned that the genre graphic novel is well-known in the USA, and that Will Eisner coined it in the seventies. So, the phrase graphic novel wasn't new at all, as I had believed. But that wasn't important, the important thing was that I had found a language, a form, that suited me so well. However, I do think that my books created something new, even if this new thing about them was only to evolve a small part of an already existing form.

-Yes, when I read your first book, I immediately felt that you managed to create something unique, and I have read quite a lot over the years. But this issue regarding the graphic novel; when you created Miss Scardy-Cat weren't you aware of the longer, more serious graphic novels that had already been published during the last two decades?

-No, I wasn't. On the cover of Miss Scardy-Cat & Love I wrote A graphic novel, as a kind of description of the form. I chose to subtitle the book in this way since my primus motor was the very idea of translating a novel into pictures - to do a graphic novel. Nevertheless, I still think it a good description since the term isn't loaded in the way the word cartoon or comics is, at least not here in Sweden.

-No, that is probably true. You also chose a rather odd format for your book; square, with one picture on each page. It felt like a fresh breeze, as I see so many createurs working in the same format as everybody else, without even questioning it. How did you come up with that idea?

-I think that all pictures become a lot better - more interesting - when they are given more space. Pictures that are blown up over a whole newspaper page become very effective. Hence, the exact same picture can be totally harmless and uninteresting when its scaled down to a small size. That is why the H&Ms lingerie ads are as horrible as they are effective.
Using one picture on each page in my books, gives the pictures a fair chance to play an important role in the story, they are given their own value. But this isn't anything that makes me unique. Both Tove Jansson and Anna Höglund have been doing picture-books for adults inspired by children's books' format - one picture per page. Anna Höglund's Cyborgs' Curse (Syborgs förbannelse) has been a very important book for me and Tove Jansson is an easy-to-read role model for my books, especially thematically and psychologically. Her stories revolve around wide spaces of darkness and dangers but they always have a safety anchor to supply hope. But to get back to your question; what I regard as new with my books is that I use this format in combination with the length of the stories. That creates a slower tempo, which suits me well.

-Yes, I can imagine that. What has the form meant for your storytelling?

-Text and pictures in symbiosis feel like my backyard now, which I am very grateful to have found. There was a time when I didn't have a clue what to do with my disparate wishes - on the one hand to write - on the other to draw. Hopefully, I can evolve from this backyard and find new adventures. Work with other forms of storytelling in the future. That is something I am really keen on.

-Somewhere you've said that you don't like the ordinary format of graphic novels, and comic books, with a lot of pictures on the same page, since you can't avoid looking ahead.

-Yes, that is true, but I want to take the opportunity to point out that I really do like to read a lot of mainstream comics too, but that I wouldn't like to work that way myself. When I was in my country house the other day I read all my old Tintin-albums, and yes, I couldn't help glancing ahead...

-I have to admit that after reading Miss Scardy Cat and after noticing how successful it became I thought that other Swedish createurs would use your format and that we would be able to enjoy a whole bunch of Swedish graphic novels, but there hasn't even been one. Why do you think that is?

-No idea. But it is a time-consuming format to work with, so maybe they just haven't been ready to publish anything yet. The other day I saw an ad for a Children's Books competition where they wanted a manuscript that could be in the form of a comic as well. That's great. I haven't seen that before.

-Is there anyone in particular that you would like to see create a graphic novel?

-...Eh...no. I have never even thought of that. There are people whom I admire for their way of telling a story, though. One of those are Pytte Ravn who makes the Children's TV show Anki at SvT. She is extraordinary when it comes to storytelling.

-Let's talk about storytelling, how do you work when you create these long stories? Do you write manuscripts first, do you plan the lengths of the stories, do you sketch a lot or do you just work from the first page to the end of the book?

-When I started to work with Miss Scardy-Cat I had my unfinished novel, the one I had written years earlier, to work from. Therefore I had a rather strong idea of how the story would evolve, even if that sounds a lot more structured and easy than it really was. The work with Miss Remarkable & her Career was almost absurd in its complexity. I didn't have any story at all; I hadn't even a thread to follow. I only had the subject; work, performance-anxiety, human value. I just started, did sketches and made a lot of notes of thoughts that I had about these issues. I collected everything I could think of that related to it; newspaper articles, quotations from books, radio and television. I wrote down stories that people told me and I did many more or less independent scenes for the book. During one period of time I had more than 800 pages in my Miss Remarkable-portfolio on my computer. At times it was really chaotic. The story came together very late in the process.

-A really exciting way of working and probably rather unusual in this field. The American James Kochalka, whom I interviewed in the first issue, has a similar way of working. If you think about it, the themes you bring up in you books aren't easy. Both books feel like a kind of developing novels in which the main character goes through a series of problems which form the individual and her identity. Is that a kind of basic idea in your books?

-I've always liked books that give the reader some kind of hope, a reconciliation. I don't mind darkness, anxiety and irony, but I want something else too. It's a difficult balance. When I tried to write my novel, I think one of my main problems was that I didn't have any solutions to the issues I wrote about. I think that had to do with my lack of trust.

-You seem to have an ambivalent attitude towards love. I can, even as a man, with no doubt, recognize myself in the feelings that your main-character goes through in your first book. Have you noticed any differences in the reaction of male or female readers?

-By the reactions on Miss Scardy-Cat I understood that some female readers think that men don't have these kind of feelings. As if females would have some sort of patent on feelings of insecurity, fear, loneliness, crushes and love, well, I guess all feelings. If that were true it would be very sad. Luckily I didn't get that impression by the reactions of the male readers - on the contrary, they seemed to identify with Miss Scardy-Cat in a rather unproblematic way. Maybe without regarding her sex as an obstacle to the same degree.

-That's how it was for me, no doubt. OK, and now over to the obligatory question; you've said in an interview that your books are, one third autobiographical, one third inspired by things you've read or heard and one third made up. Is that so, and if it is, how did you use your own experiences in your books?

-Yes, I do think that's a possible answer. When one talks about autobiographies one should keep in mind that the word autobiography is a kind of promise. A promise that you actually are telling the truth. The truth about yourself and your own and other people's lives. As if you are telling it exactly as it really was, or is. I don't have that ambition, actually it doesn't interest me at all. What does interest me is to try to capture the diffuse and unclear pictures of what's going on inside and around us all, and to try to make new pictures that make it clear and comprehensible. I exaggerate, if not only to show a point. I do hope that that is what I do, I mean that I succeed in that ambition. I use this almost surreal subjective perspective because the caricature makes some things clearer. The main characters are the only ones in the books whom it is possible to identify with, they are the ones who feel like a three-dimensional person. The other ones are as flat as paper-dolls. Clichés. It can feel that way to exist. I don't mean that's how it is, I only mean that one can feel that way.

-Your publisher chose to not mention the word comics in the publicity of your books, but you don't seem to be afraid of the fact that you are a part of the comics media. How do you regard your own work, is it comics or not?

-Oops. It wasn't ever about what Bonnier Publishers or I chose to say, or not say. I do regard my books as a cross between comics, children's books for adults and novels. Therefore, I also regard the term graphic novel as a good description, even though I know that it was an eyesore for some people in the comics media in Sweden. As I look at it, I wasn't distancing myself from the comics as much as I was attempting to explain an affiliation with something else.

-I guess I have to admit that I was one of those who didn't like the term. A graphic short story could perhaps have been more suitable. But since I really liked the book that wasn't a big issue. By the way, do you read comics yourself?

-I like to read mainstream comics like Tintin. My friend Alexander Skantze, a writer who is very interested in comics and graphic novels, gave me the album Ghost world, which I really liked. I have also read Debbie Dreschler who has written/drawn very strong stories. However, Maus is overwhelming, in a different way. Especially the technique in Maus II, where Art Spiegelman not only tells us the story about his father's current heart-problems and his experiences of the concentration-camps in the past, he also tell us the story about himself writing the book and what problems the writing of it creates.

-Yes, but it seems to me that you read many of the really important artists. To go back to your own work; your pictures are so wonderfully straggling and expressive. Did you have any role-model who inspired you when you started working with Miss Scardy-Cat?

-The way I graphically visualize strong feelings and their nuances - is the one thing I haven't thought about that much, that part of the process comes easy to me. Since it doesn't take that much effort I guess I haven't reflected much on that very part of my work.

-What I find most fascinating with your books is the way you visualize emotions. How did that develop?

-I often feel like a total stranger towards my own and other people's feelings and I guess that is why I find feelings so extremely interesting. It is a big challenge for me to try to understand, explain and dig deeply into these mysterious issues. It was also interesting when I realized that the books Anna Karin Cullberg and I made ten years ago are so very much like the books I do today.

-OK, sometimes one shouldn't analyze good things to much. But Miss Scardy-Cat was a success, how many copies did it sell?

-So far each book sold about 50.000 copies in Sweden. They've been translated into Norwegian, German and Finnish, but I don't know how many copies or editions there have been in each country. Albert Bonnier Publishers and I made an English translation and even if the chances are very small, I do hope that some English speaking country will be interested. I know that at least one American publisher is looking at the books right now.
(After this interview was published the book Miss Remarkable & her Career was translated into English by Penguin books and into Japanese by Wani books Co.)

-Your books should be easy to launch in America since your format and your subjects agrees with the trends in the USA right now. What have the reactions on your books been? Is there anyone who's been negative?

-When Miss Scardy-Cat & Love was published I had a lot of fine, rave reviews and one really bad review. That one hurt me a lot, but it was an important experience. Miss Remarkable & her Career got a lot of overwhelming reviews - which of-course made me very happy - and I don't think anyone has been critical. It seems as if a lot of people understand what I want to achieve with this book.

-Did you feel any performance anxiety after the success of your first book?

-Performance anxiety doesn't work that way with me. I would have felt it, if no one had thought me capable of anything, but I don't feel it from expectations. On the contrary, I like expectations.

-Then I guess I have to admit that I expect grand things from you in the future...(laugh). I like book number two better (Miss Remarkable & her Career). It felt as if you were more thought-out, when it came to graphics. You seemed more relaxed with the form and how it worked.

-Yes, but Hello!...the first book was my first book, so everything was new to me. The format, to tell a story, the whole way of working. But I am glad you like the new one since I worked so much with it.

-Yes, that was exactly what I meant, it is obvious that you learned a lot while creating the first book. The main character in the new book is quite similar to the main character in the first book, but am I right if I say they are not the same person? Why did you choose to change the main character?

-I thought a lot about different alternatives. For a while I even experimented with the idea of changing the main character's sex, but I gave up on that idea since I wanted to make a feminist statement. It isn't clear whether the main characters in the books are the same or not. Maybe it isn't important.

-Why did you chose to make your second book about career?

-Career, work, performance anxiety and human value are issues that I have thought about for many years. When I worked with Miss Scardy-Cat & Love I already knew that I wanted to do this other book. The obsession to become Someone by becoming something career-wise, the urge to be successful, our contempt for weakness... In Miss Scardy-Cat & Love I made the choice of not bringing up the subject of career or work, at all. A person's job and career are so important in our society, that it isn't enough just to mention the subject in passing. If we get to know someone's profession then we immediately create such a strong picture of that person. Of course, that works the same way with made up characters. It would have been a different story if the reader was told that Miss Scardy-Cat, for example, was a sales-woman.

-No, I agree that we are obsessed with career in our society. That makes it difficult when people ask me what I am doing... I always ask them How long do you have? (laugh). In the book you mediate a rather negative picture of the ego-society where success is regarded as the same thing as happiness. Is it perhaps more Joanna's ideas, than her own life, that we can read out of the book?

-I'm not sure that I understand your question. However, you have to identify with the subject you write about, whatever it may be about. I think that the fact that I am a part of the very same society and have the same values that I am criticizing isn't a contradiction, rather a necessity.

-What I meant was that the main characters in your books obviously aren't copies of yourself, but one can probably understand a lot about who you are by reading your books.
-I like the fact that you don't present an easy solution to the problems that the main character is struggling with. While reading your book I feared an obvious solution ending, inspired by New-Age or Managment-litterature.

-I worked for a long time with the ending. To find a balance in the end of the story was probably the most difficult part of the whole book. Both my books have the characteristics of developing novels. Hence, there is a huge risk that the endings turn out as messy smorgasbords of easy-peasy solutions to deep existential problems. As if the books were some kind of this-is-the-right-way-to-live-and-feel-and-think-and-do-keys.

-Yes, that is something one has seen too many times already.
You were an illustrator initially, what kind of education do you have?

-I went to Nyckelvikskolan and to Konstfack (School of Fine Arts). To do illustrations or to tell a story in pictures are two very different ways of working. As I see it, it is almost two different jobs. When I do an illustration, I work with ideas, form, color and decoration. In my graphic novels the pictures have to work in a very different way. Since it would be far too expensive to use color, the pictures in my books are black and white. More importantly, the pictures must propel the story and blend with the words and the dialogue, the feelings and the atmosphere.

-When I wanted you to do a picture for the front-page of this issue of Bild&bubbla you asked if you could do the whole front-page with the logotype and everything. I guess that you also design your own books?

-Yes, I do.

-Then I must compliment you on having created two very good-looking books. They felt solid the minute I got them in my hand.

-Thanks. Since I sometimes design book covers for other writers, it seemed natural to do my own covers too.

-Sure, the design and the cover of a book add a lot to the reading of the book, or at least that is how it works for me. Both your Miss-books had that plus. Your pictures are also on stamps now. That must have been an interesting experience.

-Yeah, that was real fun. When the Nobel Prize Stamps were released in Belgium I went to Brussels with the world-famous, ninety-year old engraver Cecslav Slania. We were guests at a huge Stamp Exhibition and there were crowds of people standing in winding lines to have their stamps signed by Cecslav. He was the king!

-You started your career by doing children's books with your friend Anna-Karin Cullberg. How did that happen?

-Anna-Karin and I were in the same class in high school and we did a lot of schoolwork together, for example a paper about Existentialism. We really had fun doing it. After graduating from High School I went to Art School, Basis, and Anna-Karin started to work in a hospital. At the Art School I saw a poster about a Children's Books Competition. I talked to Anna-Karin about it and we decided to do something together. We got together in a pizza restaurant a couple of days before the deadline for the competition. In the pizzeria we wrote our first children's book, it only took a couple of hours. We called it Angry. The angriest book of the nineties.. We sent the manuscript and all the pictures, which we had made the same evening, by mail to the Publisher. We won the competition, which meant we got some prize money and that our book was published. That was so cool! It has never been that easy to write a book since.

-Will there be any more Miss books, or do you have other plans?

-There will absolutely be new books, but I don't know what kind of books they will be. Right now I am working with the illustrations for a children's book written by another writer. It is very enjoyable since I really love the story. I will definitely create new books of my own in the future. I have some ideas, but nothing I want to talk about right now...