Saturday, January 10, 2009

I met Karstein Volle!

woot!! :-D

Remember a few days ago, um, let's see - the week before last, when I posted about an online comic whose creator had asked for a shoutout, so I gave him one? And I posted some samples of his work (click here to see that post). The artist, Mr Volle of this post's title, was grateful for the shoutout and not at all miffed that I'd posted his artwork without asking permission. I know, shame on me, in principle. I was pretty sure he wouldn't mind. ;-) Anyway ...

He lives in Helsinki, for some mysterious reason, but right now he's in the old country for a few days, couple of weeks, or whatever it is. This weekend he's in Oslo and, get this, he wanted to meet up with me. :-o He's going to some major comics fair in Angouleme at the end of this month, and he's translated some of his comics into English so he can present the strip to anyone & everyone he'll come across there. :-) And he wanted me to look at his translations and 'give him some pointers'. :-o It would be 'enormously cool' if I'd be willing to do that. o_O Willing!! He must be nuts. Of course I emailed him back and said that it would be an honor for me to help. I mean, seriously. Wow. :-)

So this afternoon we met at the Library Bar at Hotel Bristol downtown for some hot chocolate (mmm, chocolate ...) and looked at his translated pieces on his MacBook (I think it was a MacBook, but maybe it wasn't, I don't really know about these things) and just basically had a really nice and fun conversation. At least I thought it was. :-) We were there for almost five and a half hours. I had a really good time. And before we parted ways he asked me to - get this, again! - maybe, if I wanted to and I had the time, if I'd be willing, etc - to help translate the 57 In the Future strips that don't have translations yet. o_O Yeah, OK, I'll glance through them, whatever. 'If I'd be willing'. Yeah, he's gotta be nuts.

But apart from that he was - as far as I could tell in five hours ;-) - a really nice guy. Funny and smart. Pretty hungover, but not that slow on the uptake, even so. ;-) And he was even polite to the Coat Nazi. (But then again he'd never been to Bristol before, this was his first time, so I guess that explains it.) And - as expected - he was just happy to indulge me when I, before we left, went all fangirl on him and brought out my copies of his three books for him to sign. Thanks, the value just went up on those babies, I think. ;-)

A good time was hopefully had by all. :-)

Signing one of my books ... writing cryptic messages ...

I met Karstein Volle! woot! :-D

10 comments:

Paz said...

Yay you

volle said...

Yay indeed! Thanks for a lovely afternoon, Leisha. I had a lovely time.

Paz said...

May I make a suggestion, could one of ye post some of the translated artwork, would be interesting to see more of it
checked out Karsteins profile impressed that his favourite book is Flan O'Brien, pity that a great writer like him should be remembered for a poem that he wrote to win the most banal poem in college

Leisha Camden said...

Totally yay. :-D

Takk for sist, Mr Volle. ;-)

Paz, funny you should mention O'Brien, because we actually talked about him on Saturday. I haven't read anything by him yet but I have The Third Policeman on my TBR pile. Maybe I should move it up a bit. :-)

As for translations, all the strips in the original Norwegian are on Karstein's site www.rivalskeleton.com ... and he has about 190 of them translated now, 50-60 still to go, maybe when they're all done he'll add them to the archives as well? Karstein?

I'll definitely post some more though. Hopefully the finished products. Watch this space ... :-)

Paz said...

remember when reading that he liked to show off his reading on subjects such as psychics etc when he wrote the book people were only begining to publish quantum psychics theories, he used some of these ideas to great comic effect in a piece about a bicycle and its owners bottoms

Leisha Camden said...

That's interesting, I'll remember that!

volle said...

I´m in the process of putting the english translations online, I just gotta do my dayjob as well. One place I urge you guys to check out is eurotastic www.electrocomics.com

Proud online publishers of my other strip, Facts from the World

Leisha Camden said...

Cool, thanks for letting us know.

Paz, there's your reading material for tonight. :-)

Paz said...

have to work tonight damnit, looking foward to checking it out thks

Leisha Camden said...

Looking forward to hearing what you think. :-)