New Swedish Books, Spring 2018 1
New Swedish Books 72 Out There the World is Endin
g Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's X-Men comics already demonstrated in the sixties how super-powers can be used as a metaphor for those turbulent teenage years when your body is developing and changing beyond your control. In his on-going series of comics SH3 Daniel Ahlgren continues this legacy. At the end of the 1990’s he established himself on the Swedish comics scene as one of the best interpreters of teenage angst with a series of books of everyday realism. Each book describes, with rugged humour and psychological clarity, the difficult step into an adult world. Now the same theme is given a fantastical framework as Ahlgren tells the story of a group of young Swedish superheroes trying to come to terms with their extraordinary abilities at the same time as struggling with relationship trouble, unrequited love, and feeling like outsiders. The fast approaching apocalypse is here contrasted with, for example, the pressing quest not to wet yourself when in the queue for the loo, and deals with the problem of where to keep your house keys when you’re dressed in a figure-hugging spandex costume. Daniel Ahlgren (b. 1971) Out There the World is Ending SH3 Vol. 5 Selected Works Livet är en fest 1999 Ropa på Ulrik 2006 SH 3 vol 4: Passio 2015 Publisher Bakhåll www.bakhall.se Rights Bakhåll info@bakhall.se Selected Literary Prizes Urhunden 1991 and 1999 Svenska Serieakademins diplom 1995 Galagos Fula Hund 1997 Photo: Johanna Akujärvi