The Gottenburg Book Fair is one of the biggest comic (and book) conventions in Sweden and to coincide with the convention Egmont Fantomen have created a relativity new tradition of releasing an annual softcover album each year.
The first softcover album was released in 2015 and for the first two years they had no official theme. 2017 we saw the first themed softcover album celebrating the Phantoms 40th Wedding Anniversary. 2018 we saw a pirate theme which also featured the first non-retro looking cover and now in 2019 we have the Noir theme.
It could be argued that 2016 had a theme for the 80th Anniversary.
Both the 2018 and 2019 covers are designed by Luca Erbetta, an Italian artist living in France who is fast becoming a phan phavourite among Swedish but also many Australian readers.
Noir is French for black and represents a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity. Noir is not new to the Phantom with Moonstone producing their own Noir series back in 2010. You can view the comics and background information on that series by clicking here to go to the Phantomwiki website.
There are no details as of yet on the contents of this book with the stories but they usually feature newspaper reprint stories. All softcover album series are in black and white, roughly 21cm x 26.8cm in size and around 130-150 pages and feature interesting articles either about the stories or their creators. The album series in the past have been published in Finnish along with Sweden.
You can now pre order the book via various Swedish websites or wait for a Swedish buddy to pick up a copy for you. As we learn more details, we will inform you.
