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Comic Book Confidential

Writing scripts for comics is a very specialized occupation, so how did I end up there? I'll let comic legend Lee Falk answer that question (Lee Falk, by the way, was the creator and script writer of The Phantom, one of the world's classic and most successful newspaper strips.) Mr. Falk often told this story: Once, early in his carrier, he spent a few vacation days at a sea-side resort along with Ray Moore, his artist at the time. But a daily newspaper strip is a hungry beast requiring constant feeding, so despite vacation and bathing beauties at the beach, a new strip had to be created every day. Lee's part of the job was done in a matter of minutes, however, leaving him free to stroll down to the beach, while Ray had to stay locked up in his hotel room with pen and ink for most of the day. At that time, Lee later said, he knew he had done the right thing by leaving the actual drawing of the strip to somebody else.

So, I have followed Lee Falk's footsteps down to the beach through the years. And not just to the beach, by the way, for strangely enough I ended up befriending Mr. Lee, and even wrote a few stories for the Phantom comic book.

And The Phantom is not the only comic on which I have been a hired gun. James Bond is on that list, as well as Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck (no, I never met Walt Disney, but I did see Carl Barks).

I also worked with a number of Scandinavian properties, like Kaptein Sabeltann, that terrible pirate from Norway, and the classic 91 Stomperud - a military-themed strip at first glance much like Beetle Bailey, but in reality an antiwar comic in the tradition of The Good Solder Svejk by the novelist Jaroslav Hasek.

Was it hard coming up with stories for these characters? Yes and no. I have to admit my worst job ever was creating a script for the official Olympic Comic Book for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, 1994. The Olympic committee wanted something funny based on their two mascots: Kristin and Haakon. The problem, however, was that these two kids were as boring as their names; they had no personality, and how do you create fiction around characters that are totally bland - not to mention funny stories?

Given free reign, I would have liked to come up with something along the lines of the Katzenjammer Kids – a girl and a boy full of fun in a winter wonderland. Not as naughty, of course, just carefree and happy kids. But no, I was told that Olympic mascots did no wrong, they were one hundred percent good and well-behaved all the time. So much for that. So how do you write funny scripts about flawless and perfect kids without a personality? The answer is of course that you can't. In the end, the Olympic Committee got its comic book, however, beautifully illustrated by Werner Grossmann, but the writing shortened my life by years.

Much of my other work has been centered on furnishing the ever eager artist Arild Midthun with something to draw. Mr. Midthun never rests, his pen always dances across his drawing board, and collaborating with him means little time at the beach. From his pen came Sirkus, Reodor og Teodor, Truls & Trine, Fjøsnissen, Troll, and of course Donald Duck in an endless stream. And last and not least, cowriting with Eirik Ildahl, Dad & Dorothy, a daily strip syndicalized in Scandinavia for a number of years.

But you won't find any of these comics here, only stuff I've been doodling with by myself, giving up my beach time, so to speak.

Lee Falk's The Phantom, here as drawn by Kari Lappänen in the story U-118. © 2012 King Features Syndicate Inc.

91 Stomperud – idiot, idiot savant, or savant? Who knows. Tegner: Magne Taraldsen. © 2019 Egmont Kids Media Nordic AS.