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So I worked on it for years, several years, like with my left hand, and finally, I decided to start, and it was published in this magazine called NEMI, serialized in eight episodes. Not that I owed them, but I liked them, and I wanted to give them something more than a dark humor, scary comic, but a proper piece of work. I wanted to make a graphic novel, and I wanted to make something for my fans.
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I’ve always done exactly the kind of comics I want to read, so I guess I’m a goth girl at heart. The best kind of fans you can have: so cool, so dedicated. Through that comic book, I had gathered a bit of a following of readers, and they were almost exclusively teenage girls. I had done them for a few years, I had mad one collection, one book, and it was time for my new to level up and have a new challenge, a graphic novel. KA: The book came out of a bunch of comics in a monthly comic book magazine called NEMI and every issue I did like a short comic called Love Hurts. And superheroes are such an American thing… Swedes all speak English if you’re a comic book nerd, you read American comics. The superhero comics scene… I don’t think there is one in Sweden. What I do, is like genre comics, a lot of horror and now sci-fi, that is the alternative. What you would consider alternative comics, black and white, a bit more crudely drawn, is the mainstream. ZL: That’s pretty different from this country. It started out punk, it still looks punk, but the highbrow cultural establishment likes that. Some of those creators have made a place for themselves that way. The alternative scene in Sweden really exploded, and the feminist comics got really big in Sweden, like outside the comics scene. At least 50/50, but it could be more women than men. Kim Andersson: Funny thing about Swedish comic scene is that it is more women than men…dun dun dun (laughs). I have to confess that I’m very unfamiliar with the scene. Zeb Larson: Tell me a bit about making comics in Sweden. Kim is going to be at New York Comic-Con. I chatted with Kim Andersson about Alena, making comics in Sweden, and his upcoming book for Dark Horse, Astrid. Knowing as little as I do about Swedish comics and the Swedish scene, having this incredibly nuanced and disturbing horror story seemingly burst on the scene really stuck with me. Kim Andersson’s Alena really took me by surprise.