Kommissarie Kvadrat by Joakim Pirinen

Kommissarie Kvadrat Reviews

• 
  Gurra

  En av Sveriges märkligaste skrivarhjärnor.
• 
  Fredrik Strömberg

  This is the first new comics collection in six years from the pen of the grandfather of alternative comics in Sweden, Joakim Pirinen; a collection of short to middle-length comics, combining surrealism with autobiography and postapokalyps like only Pirinen can.
  
  Story:
  The book contains a number of comics, from one page to over 30 pages, the latter being some of the longest comics Pirinen has done since his acclaimed graphic novel
  Socker-Conny, in 1985. Initially, these stories seem more or less disconnected, but after a while it becomes apparent that they interconnect in forming an idea of Pirinen's fictitious country Perineum (a word that not only sound a bit like the artist's name but also is latin for the area between genitalia and anus, typical Pirinen...). The stories also connect in that they are full of references to older comics by Pirinen and to various stages of his life, making the whole book a surreal autobiography of sorts.
  
  One of the longest story is that of the title, a surreal detective story about a country where everyone and everything is made up of classical shapes, such as squares, rectangles and octagons. But there are also one-pagers with huge numbers of small panels of equal size with a bear playing some sort of associations game with acronyms or numbers, encyclopeida-like presentations of various inhabitants of this postapokalyptic world, including the God of Perineum, Joakim Pirinen himself, and so on - in a seemingly endless stream of consciousness.
  
  Art:
  Pirinen's art has looked more or less the same all throughout his career. He seems impervious to trends, living in an art bubble all of his own. Pirinen's scratchy black and white style has been influenced by the American Underground movement of the 1960s, with an added dollop of abstract art. Even though you can trace some of the influences, the end results is always 100 percent Pirinen, and you can tell an image, even a single line by Pirinen, by his unique style.
  
  Critique:
  Reading such a hefty volume (almost 200 pages, album size with intense, intricate comics; comics that tries to expand the media in both words and images, is actually quite exhausting. I needed to put down the book several times, in order not to loose concentration/interest, which would have been a shame. When you do get through the book, it is a rewarding read. Pirinen is at the same time one of the most literary and most artistic comics artist I know of and even though his themes are rather pessimistic, it's impossible not to be impressed by the sheer audacity of it all. There are comics that are better and comics that are less good, but there aren't any duds in this collection, and as a whole, this feels more like a unified book than several of Pirinen's other comic collections.
  
  That I award this book four and not five stars, is due to the above mentioned fact that I as a reader, get almost exhausted by reading these comics, but also that that I would preferred for Pirinen to write and draw one unified graphic novel length story again. These shorter comics are interesting, but not as fulfilling a read as a unified story would be. At least that what I think, having read almost the complete oeuvre of Pirinen.
  
  So, do get this book if you can handle surreal, post apocalyptic autobiography, and can read and understand Swedish... If not, just get the book of the gorgeous art and make up your own stories. I know that Pirinen would love that.
  
  Comments:
  When reading Pirinen, and reviewing him in English, I am struck by two things: one is that it's unbelievable that he's not widely recognised all over the world as the comics genius/master that he is. Being confined to work in a small language zone has hampered his career, obviously, and had he been born in the US he would have been up there with
  Robert Crumb and
  Chris Ware (he is, by the way, something of a mix between theses two gigants...) right now, but that he's almost completely unknown outside of the Nordic countries seems nigh impossible.
  
  The other reflection is that to really understand and appreciate Pirinen's art, you probably need to have experienced it in real-time, reading his books in sequence, as they were created starting in the early 1980s. Reading them now, for the first time, might be like listening to the albums of The Beatles for the first time and trying to understand just how groundbreaking they were when they were released in the 1960s. I hope I'm wrong, and there is a hefty French compilation in the works from l´Association, but I fear that the possibility to launch Pirinen's star on a massive scale abroad has passed, sadly.
  
  Finally, I can't help comment on the fact that Pirinen, with this book, is back with his original publisher extraordinaire, Rolf Classon, who helped launch his career in the 1980s, but with whom there was a schism for many years. Bringing these two powerhouses together again can only be for the good of Swedish comics, so it's something I applaud.
• 
  Leo Horovitz

  Pirinen har länge varit en av mina favoriter bland svenska serietecknare, hans speciella och extremt varierade teckningsstil tillsammans med de otroligt förvirrande, surrealistiska händelseförloppen (och ibland kan de knappt ens kallas för det) gör honom helt unik. På senare år har han inte levt upp till samma fruktansvärt höga standard som han gjorde i sina tidiga alster
  Socker-Conny och
  Split Vision men han presterar icke desto mindre unika verk gång på gång och testar fortfarande nya stilar. Kommisarie Kvadrat når inte heller riktigt hela vägen fram till de tidigaste alstrens genialitet, men är fortfarande det bästa han har gjort på länge om vi håller oss till seriealbumen (
  100 noveller är någonting helt annat och precis lika fantastisk som hans bästa seriealbum, om de nu går att jämföra). Vi bjuds visserligen inte på samma extrema variation av stilar som i Split Vision (jag kanske borde upphöra att jämföra allt Pirinen producerar med detta mästerverk) men det gör inte så mycket när innehållet är så här bra. Precis som vanligt varierar det mellan något längre berättelser fulla av abrupta miljöombyten och drömlika scenarier, ensidesserier, och enstaka illustrationer (ibland ackompanjerade av långa och mycket underliga beskrivningar).
  
  Inledningsvis kände jag inte mycket mer än att det var bra, men efter ett tag stegrade förvirringen och jag började skratta högt åt de ständigt nya formerna av psykedelia. Det är sällan rumsrent, säkert ett resultat av arbetsmetoden, om vilken jag tar för givet att den består i att (möjligen under inflytande av någon form av "sinnesförstärkare") låta det undermedvetnas tillfälliga nycker diktera vad som ska hamna på pappret.
  
  Rekommenderas starkt till alla som tycker att verkligheten är alldeles för regelbunden och lättbegriplig för att fånga ens intresse i längden.
• 
  Aapo

  Tolkutonta ja synkkää, mutta on näissä Pirisen jutuissa jotain kiehtovaa ja välillä ihan naurattaakin, ei ehkä ääneen mutta kuitenkin. Kirjan aloittava Atomobiili on ehkä paras tarina, tosin tarinat liittyvät toisiinsa enemmän ja vähemmän kiinteästi. Osa tarinoista tuntuu olevan vapaan assosiaation tuotoksia.