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Dass
Petter Dass er kjent som handelsmann, dikter og prest. I denne tegneseriefortellingen møter vi for første gang svartebokpresten Petter Dass, som kjemper mot hekser, troll og annet skrømt i vakre Helgeland.
- GenresComicsGraphic Novels
269 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2016
10 people want to read
About the author
John S. Jamtli
15 books9 followersJohn Sigvart Jamtli (f. 1982) er fra Mo i Rana. Han er en norsk illustratør, serieskaper og konseptdesigner. Har tidligere utgitt seriealbumene Annunaki og DASS. Jamtli fikk sitt gjennombrudd med Sabotør (2018), en tegneserieroman fra krigens dager, basert på om Osvaldgruppen og deres katt- og mus lek med Gestapos verste agenter. Sabotør - Operasjon Muskedunder (2019) forteller historien om Sverre Granlund og sabotasjeaksjonen mot kraftverket i Glomfjord i 1942.
Sammen med forfatter Aleksander Kirkwood Brown har han utgitt Norges Ninjakommandør - den sanne historien om Arne Treholt (2019) og tegnerseriekrimmen Magnus Carlsen og sjakkmorderen (2020).
Sammen med forfatter Aleksander Kirkwood Brown har han utgitt Norges Ninjakommandør - den sanne historien om Arne Treholt (2019) og tegnerseriekrimmen Magnus Carlsen og sjakkmorderen (2020).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 21, 2024
The illustrated tales of an unsavoury yet quick-witted priest from renaissance Norway who battles trolls, ghosts, and other beings that belong to mythology.
Petter Pedersen Dass (ca. 1647 to 1707) was the legendary vicar of Alstadhaug, which resides on an island in the northern parts of Norway. He is one of the handful most important Norwegian religious figures, and his authorship of psalms remains a pillar in the Church of Norway. But this is nothing compared to the tales people spun around his being: In some tales he hunts trolls and goblins. In others he bests witches, puts ghosts to rest, and battles the Black Plague herself. He even defeats a pagan god on a whim. Petter Dass was nothing less than the superhero of 17th-century Northern-Norway. And his powers? The tales say he was a priest of the Black Book, carrying with him that very tome in which Satan himself penned his secrets, and with these in his possession he also held total power over the Devil and all his minions. Dass, the tome that I now review (incidentally also black of colour), is not a mere collection of these folktales, as it goes beyond this and honors them by having them captured within the prime superhero medium of our time: The legendary Petter Dass has become a comic book.
The illustrations, as well as much of the concept of the comic in general, leans heavily on the style which Peter Madsen created for his Valhalla series. In Madsen's hands it was highly effective in portraying the fantastical legends of the Norse gods as well as their utterly idiomatic personalities, while retaining an imagery that truly pleases the eye and a sense of comedy that is both rich and deep. In the hands of Jamtli, Skogmo, and their many collaborators, the experience is repeated masterfully, giving Dass the opportunity to express his unparalleled person within a vivid and enticing world.
As for what kind of person the original Dass was, I couldn't tell you as I do not know. Surely he wasn't much alike the comic character we find in Dass, that one was, after all, made to entertain his readers. Let us the very least hope they were quite dissimilar since the fictive Dass can be quite an unsavoury one. He travels with his boy servant Peer, who has to haul everything the lazy vicar cannot be bothered to carry himself, while Dass generously pours his pompous, Danish-Norwegian verbal abuse onto the kid. The remaining peasantry is also subject to Dass' general lack of appreciation for those beneath his stature. He brews his own moonshine, readily submits to adultery, and flings derogatory remarks at the local Sami. Yet his villainy is balanced with his insistence on saving the Christians from the dangerous creatures that hold the Dark One as their lord. Accompanied with his sharp wit and even sharper tongue, both laced with his incredibly arrogant sensibilities and puffed-up ego, he accomplishes his adventures in a manner worthy of the very best of story tellers, presenting the reader with excitement as well as high comedy.
Jamtli and Skogmo gathered nine other illustrators to finish this epos, which, as far as I know, is the only one of its kind in Norway. And it bodes well. For if this is the kind of masterpiece which we can expect from future releases then we are in for a golden era of graphic novels. At least it has everything that I myself could possibly want from this kind of book and I proudly shelve it beside Bone, the Valhalla collection, of course, and even the famous Gauls of Goscinny and Uderzo. With my praises sung so high, it should come as no surprise that I also think Dass deserves an international release as well, though I realise how difficult that would be. Much of the humor is dependent on the dialects of the different characters – Dass' flatulent Danish-Norwegian conflicts with the Northern-Norwegian of the peasants in a truly entertaining way; and lets not forget the German-Norwegian that Satan uses to great effect, (when on the subject of that goaty fellow, notice that he, as the only one who does so, pronounces the vicars last name as 'Dazz' and that the book's homepage is www.dazz.no) – and therefore it would be quite a challenge to find an interaction among subsets of English which will keep the humour intact. Nevertheless, I have some measure of hope that Dass will indeed one day be translated – after all I did present this review in English, didn't I?
PS. There are certain parts of the book which are not Norwegian at all. I have added the translation of these in a reply to the main review, just in case anyone else finds it of interest.
Petter Pedersen Dass (ca. 1647 to 1707) was the legendary vicar of Alstadhaug, which resides on an island in the northern parts of Norway. He is one of the handful most important Norwegian religious figures, and his authorship of psalms remains a pillar in the Church of Norway. But this is nothing compared to the tales people spun around his being: In some tales he hunts trolls and goblins. In others he bests witches, puts ghosts to rest, and battles the Black Plague herself. He even defeats a pagan god on a whim. Petter Dass was nothing less than the superhero of 17th-century Northern-Norway. And his powers? The tales say he was a priest of the Black Book, carrying with him that very tome in which Satan himself penned his secrets, and with these in his possession he also held total power over the Devil and all his minions. Dass, the tome that I now review (incidentally also black of colour), is not a mere collection of these folktales, as it goes beyond this and honors them by having them captured within the prime superhero medium of our time: The legendary Petter Dass has become a comic book.
The illustrations, as well as much of the concept of the comic in general, leans heavily on the style which Peter Madsen created for his Valhalla series. In Madsen's hands it was highly effective in portraying the fantastical legends of the Norse gods as well as their utterly idiomatic personalities, while retaining an imagery that truly pleases the eye and a sense of comedy that is both rich and deep. In the hands of Jamtli, Skogmo, and their many collaborators, the experience is repeated masterfully, giving Dass the opportunity to express his unparalleled person within a vivid and enticing world.
As for what kind of person the original Dass was, I couldn't tell you as I do not know. Surely he wasn't much alike the comic character we find in Dass, that one was, after all, made to entertain his readers. Let us the very least hope they were quite dissimilar since the fictive Dass can be quite an unsavoury one. He travels with his boy servant Peer, who has to haul everything the lazy vicar cannot be bothered to carry himself, while Dass generously pours his pompous, Danish-Norwegian verbal abuse onto the kid. The remaining peasantry is also subject to Dass' general lack of appreciation for those beneath his stature. He brews his own moonshine, readily submits to adultery, and flings derogatory remarks at the local Sami. Yet his villainy is balanced with his insistence on saving the Christians from the dangerous creatures that hold the Dark One as their lord. Accompanied with his sharp wit and even sharper tongue, both laced with his incredibly arrogant sensibilities and puffed-up ego, he accomplishes his adventures in a manner worthy of the very best of story tellers, presenting the reader with excitement as well as high comedy.
Jamtli and Skogmo gathered nine other illustrators to finish this epos, which, as far as I know, is the only one of its kind in Norway. And it bodes well. For if this is the kind of masterpiece which we can expect from future releases then we are in for a golden era of graphic novels. At least it has everything that I myself could possibly want from this kind of book and I proudly shelve it beside Bone, the Valhalla collection, of course, and even the famous Gauls of Goscinny and Uderzo. With my praises sung so high, it should come as no surprise that I also think Dass deserves an international release as well, though I realise how difficult that would be. Much of the humor is dependent on the dialects of the different characters – Dass' flatulent Danish-Norwegian conflicts with the Northern-Norwegian of the peasants in a truly entertaining way; and lets not forget the German-Norwegian that Satan uses to great effect, (when on the subject of that goaty fellow, notice that he, as the only one who does so, pronounces the vicars last name as 'Dazz' and that the book's homepage is www.dazz.no) – and therefore it would be quite a challenge to find an interaction among subsets of English which will keep the humour intact. Nevertheless, I have some measure of hope that Dass will indeed one day be translated – after all I did present this review in English, didn't I?
PS. There are certain parts of the book which are not Norwegian at all. I have added the translation of these in a reply to the main review, just in case anyone else finds it of interest.
December 4, 2016
Nok en bok i bølgen av (ny)nasjonalromantiske tegneserier. Jeg følgte de første utgavene av Dass da de ble publisert på nett, historie for historie. Jeg synes da at historiene var litt for korte, og at de ikke fungerte så bra på egenhånd. I bokform fungerte det hele en del bedre. Særlig gøy er det at de har fått en rekke ulike illustratører til å bidra, noe som gjør at flere av de små fortellingene særlig fremstår som friske pust. Noen er selvsagt bedre enn andre, men langt på vei vil jeg påstå at nettopp tegningene er det sterkeste elementet i denne samlingen.
Når det gjelder historiene, er det litt så som så. Noen er ganske morsomme, og noen tar utgangspunkt i gøye sider av Dass sitt liv, og tiden han levde på. Her er karakteren og settingen først og fremst brukt som en unnskyldning til å leke seg, og ikke til å presentere noe som helst slags fakta om Petter Dass sitt liv. De har også gjort Dass-karakteren til fullstendig sin egen, og jeg må innrømme at jeg ikke helt likte alle sidene ved denne Petter Dass (han er ikke alltid like sympatisk). Men om man ser bort fra dette, og leser boka som det den er (en fri lek med folketro, gudetro og norsk historie), er det ganske fornøyelig lesning.
Når det gjelder historiene, er det litt så som så. Noen er ganske morsomme, og noen tar utgangspunkt i gøye sider av Dass sitt liv, og tiden han levde på. Her er karakteren og settingen først og fremst brukt som en unnskyldning til å leke seg, og ikke til å presentere noe som helst slags fakta om Petter Dass sitt liv. De har også gjort Dass-karakteren til fullstendig sin egen, og jeg må innrømme at jeg ikke helt likte alle sidene ved denne Petter Dass (han er ikke alltid like sympatisk). Men om man ser bort fra dette, og leser boka som det den er (en fri lek med folketro, gudetro og norsk historie), er det ganske fornøyelig lesning.
January 10, 2017
Meh! Her hadde jeg altfor høye forventninger. Idéen er nydelig, men utførelsen ble for vulgær for meg. Jeg har ikke lest kildematerialet/hørt legendene som skal ha inspirert verket, men bæsj, vold og bannskap er ikke min humor. Glad jeg lånte den på biblioteket, siden jeg lenge hadde tenkt på å kjøpe den.
August 22, 2017
Pros: The cover looks gorgeous, and the art inside the book isn't too bad either! I got curious and read up a bit about Petter Dass before I read the comic, so I learnt something new.
Cons: The humor is sometimes way too crude, and there are like two stories with rape jokes in them :/ I was hoping for better in a book from my neighbors in the west published in 2016, it really put me off!
Cons: The humor is sometimes way too crude, and there are like two stories with rape jokes in them :/ I was hoping for better in a book from my neighbors in the west published in 2016, it really put me off!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews