Fritte and the Evolution of Topical Filler Comics: Styles, Aesthetics, and Genre Conventions

Traditional comics research has focused mainly on American, Japanese, and Franco-Belgian mainstream comics as well as experimental and independent comics. What has not garnered much attention, however, are what we call ‘topical filler comics’, i.e. comics published in newsletters, trade journals, and similar media. In this talk we investigate how the Swedish topical filler comic 'Fritte' emerged in the trade journal 'Skogsägaren' in the late 1940’s. Using interviews, archival studies, media historical contextualisation, and Barthean visual analysis, we argue that this comic viewed as an archive affords a unique opportunity to study the evolution of styles, aesthetics, and emerging genre conventions.