Topelius i serieformat : Interikonicitet som visuell berättarstrategi i Bovils Fältskärns berättelser

Bo “Bovil” Vilson (1910-1949) belonged to the graphic artists who in the 1940s created a Swedish tradition of adventure comics drawn in the realistic style of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond. Between 1942 and 1944 Bovil published a serialised graphic novel adaptation of the late 19th-century bestseller Fältskärns berättelser (The Surgeon’s Stories), a historical novel written in the manner of Sir Walter Scott by the Finland-Swedish author Zacharias Topelius (1818-1898). Revolving around the role of the Swedish troops in the Thirty Years’ War and The Great Northern War, The Surgeon’s Stories was crucial (both in Finland and in Sweden) to building and redefining the nation in the late 19th century. My assumption is that the revisitation of the novel in the popular comics format in the early 1940s depended on the demand for national solidarity and heroic role models which arose during the years of the Second World War. This essay explores the visual glossary in Bovil’s adaptation which incorporates and paraphrases Carl Larsson’s famous illustrations to The Surgeon’s Stories as well as classic history paintings celebrating the king, the nation and the sacrificing soldier. I attempt to find answers to why the creators of the comics returned to Topelius’s tales of historical conflicts during WWII, how the inter-iconic dialogue between comic art and the fine arts works and what its ambitions may have been.