Hugleikur Dagsson and Pieter de Poortere @Copenhagen Comics

To af Europas måske største humorister indenfor sort humor fandt sammen for et par år siden og ud af det kom der udstillingen “Tree of Life”, som debuterede på Copenhagen Comics tidligere i år.

Der fik jeg mulighed for at tage en snak med to af mine gode venner - Hugleikur Dagsson, som i de 20 år jeg har kendt ham kun er blevet mørkere i sine striber, selvom udtrykket ikke har ændret sig - og Pieter de Poortere, hvis bog “Dickie - Taber på afveje” jeg udgav i Danmark med støtte fra Statens Kunstfond og Flanders Literature.

Vi fik os en god snak om hvad der der driver dem og det samarbejde der er opstået efter de mødtes på en af mine yndlingsfestivaler i udlandet - LICAF i Nordengland.

Hvis vores snak her efterfølgende gør, at du bare skal læse noget Dickie, så tryk her på linket DICKIE-TABER PÅ AFVEJE, hvor du kan købe den nemt og hurtigt.

Har du lyst til at se noget af udstillingen skal du forbi Copenhagen Comics: Word balloon i video, hvor du kan se illustrationer fra udstillingen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:06

Well, welcome to Copenhagen Comics, guys. Uh my name is Arnie. I'm the host of a podcast named Time to Say Us Knock. And today I'm going to be interviewing two very sick people. I know they don't look ill, but but they are. At least we're gonna get him into it. So straight away let me introduce uh from Iceland, Hugle Gurdaxon. Hey, hey everybody, how's it going? And from Belgium, Peter Deporter. Very good. Thank you. So uh during our talk, we're gonna run a small slideshow. And we can see it on the screen here as well. We're not gonna talk specifically about the slideshow, but it is the exhibit exhibition, sorry, which is over on the black walls over there, and you can go look at it closer afterwards. So are you ready to get into it?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I was born ready.

SPEAKER_05 1:05

You're born ready.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Are you sure? Yeah, this is not a self-portrait. No, no, no. It's not. Okay. That wasn't me.

SPEAKER_05 1:15

So for people who don't know your respective works, how would you sell them your work? How would you describe what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Ethan, you want to start?

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Well, I start uh with uh myself. I I've been making comics for the last 25 years. Uh major one is uh Dickey, it's called Dicky, and it's about uh giant loser. And the thing I try to do is always imagine the worst thing possible that could happen to a person and put it in a comic. And it looks really innocent, but it's not uh the stories are not so innocent. So often people uh get messed up a bit in the head, so that that's what I like most doing is like we told about it uh messing a bit with people's heads.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah, and I a very similar answer actually. I do uh well I my style would be stick figures, and I kind of go uh in the darkest well I kind of draw jokes about the sickest things I can imagine, but it's not really done on purpose. I'm not I don't like try to be disgusting, but that's just what what my brain wants to do. I have I have no control, but yeah, I've been doing this for 25 years as well. So And what do you think it is about your work that attracts people to it? Um yeah, I that's a good question because when when uh when you introduced us as two very sick people, uh we can also throw that you know word or that blame on our our followers because they are they are the reason we keep doing it. If if they wouldn't buy this the sick stuff, we would probably try to do more children-friendly stuff, but they are buying it, so that's why we're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

I also try to do other stuff, but it's so much harder, it's so much easier to uh destroy innocence in a way. It's like uh uh uh something in in your brain that makes it impossible to create happy stories because every in every occasion I see like the worst thing that could happen. So if I try to write a fairy tale, it will never be a fairy tale, it will never end well. Uh they will never live happily ever after. So it's just impossible for me to write other stories.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I once wrote uh uh drew uh uh actually a family-oriented book, uh Children's. It was for the phone book in Iceland, which is not very thick. Uh but uh uh they asked me to illustrate the phone book, so I just drew a comic with one panel in every page, and it was supposed to be family-friendly, uh, but I it still I couldn't contain myself. So in the first scene, there's uh like uh Icelandic Santa Claus murdering a sheep. But he ate it, and it was made of uh it was made of candy. But that's not not the worst thing that Icelandic Santa's eat. No, and that's not the worst thing we do to sheep either.

SPEAKER_05 4:43

Yeah, I actually remember having that phone book, but it was very hard to get a hold of because well, we don't have phone books anymore. Yeah, yeah. So when you you have two respective styles, so one of you draws uh a very simplistic uh kind of style, that's what we're seeing right now, and the other uh is very I'm not gonna say detailed, but it's very uh controlled.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Well, it's uh still really really simple because another thing about my work is I I work without dialogue.

SPEAKER_05 5:19

So I was gonna get into that.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

But uh so it has to be uh clean and uh simple and easy to read. So because if I I put more details in it, it just confuses and distracts from the from the joke.

SPEAKER_05 5:34

And what do you feel is the the most difficult part of creating a story without dialogue?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Well, just uh coming up with a joke is the the hardest part. So uh I kind of as a cartoonist, I I have like a nine to five job where my kids leave at school and then you sit behind your desk, and now you have to be funny, and then even if somebody is sick or even somebody has died, you still have to uh catch your deadlines and say, Okay, today I have to be funny. So I kind of think that's the the hardest part of the the job.

SPEAKER_05 6:09

So the and what about you and the dialogue? What do what do you feel that the dialogue adds to a single drawing that a longer story without dialogue does?

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Um yeah, well, I I am totally dependent on my on the dialogue and my pictures because I well uh probably 99% of them have dialogue in them. Uh and it really helped because the pictures are so simple that uh a lot of it a lot of those jokes wouldn't even be you know disgusting if it wasn't for the things that people were saying, you know, in them. But uh I think also I do I do uh the reason I do it in stick figures is not only because it's easy, but also because it's a really good contrast against you know the subject matter. So if I'm really d talking about you know murder or uh on cannibalism or whatever I'm talking about, it's somehow works better as a joke if it's really simple.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

I I agree because if you would draw the things the stories we do in a realistic style, they're horror show. They they would be horror, they would not be funny. It's just uh in the contrast between the the innocence where where you play with the the expectations of your spectators or the the readers. So I think uh in other in another way it would be really disgusting. So that's true. It maybe is already disgusting, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Even more. Yeah, but it's true. If it would be more realistically drawn, it would be uh just very disturbing.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

But the interesting part is now with AI, you can you can just ask to to turn your stick figures into uh realistic. You can have the tests uh later today.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

I think most AIs have filters that you know, you know, we can't do that. It's it's uh it breaks our moral code, something like that.

SPEAKER_05 8:14

So you actually think AI wouldn't want to convert your drawings into proper proper art?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

I hope not. Uh no, stay away, AI. Yeah, for for me as well.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

But we you can have some fun with it as uh as you as you wish, but uh it's uh that's a whole uh other conversation, I think. Uh the importance of AI and uh what it does to artists. I think that's a completely other conversation, maybe for uh next panel.

SPEAKER_05 8:45

Yeah, that's fair. But so the two of you have been doing work for for over 20 years, each of you running some sort of parallel line. Did you guys know about each other's work before you met?

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, I I had seen so I seen uh I seen Dickie pop up on my and my my algorithm seemed to think that I would like Dickie. Uh so I was very I was very nice to meet Peter.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

I had uh one cartoon of you that I thought was hilarious. That's the Anarchy in the UK one. Yes, that's an old one, I think.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

That's that's my hit.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yeah, that's your hit. So I I I only knew you from the hits. But then uh we met at a festival in England uh two years ago, I think, or three. Yeah, two years ago. Uh and we saw a lot of similarities in the way we work, the way we approach our audience and like uh uh the the stories we want to tell. So it was like natural to do something together.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Absolutely. I think like this exhibition we're doing here when we saw it on when I saw it on the walls, I was like, yeah, this works in a real very fun way because you know his things are very colorful and and totally you know silent, not without words, and mine are with no color, but a lot of horrible words. Really? Yeah, are those horrible words? Kill, kill, murder, kill, kill, murder, kill, kill, hate fuck. Yes, fuck is not that horrible, but the other ones very negative.

SPEAKER_05 10:26

Okay, okay. So of course you just mentioned the exhibit, but what went into choosing this these uh pieces for the exhibition?

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Uh take that. Well, um I did uh uh similar exhibition uh a few years ago with uh more artists, and the same uh idea was to create uh the the life circles to start with birth and to end with death. And actually, every joke you ever made you can place somewhere in between there. So it was uh an easy structure to to use for this this one as well. Um it's well, I don't know how we we ended up with uh the chapters.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Uh well uh yeah, but we we're we're talking about you know just taking life as a whole, you know, and covering that because that's that's because both of uh uh both of us really just kind of cover somewhat of a human experience. And uh as you know, because we're both uh humorists, we try to we make fun of being human, so it would be obvious to kind of kind of put that, frame that somehow. So just the uh a timeline of your life would that just was kind of on the table when we started. Uh for me it was most easy to find jokes about childhood and old age and death. The middle was hardest, I felt. Yeah, there was about jobs and and working. So I don't know too much about working. Don't do not a lot of things about working, but mainly just uh uh relationships between you know parents and children and old people and stuff, uh uh toxic relationships.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

But I think it uh works well. And we did uh a set of postcards as well, and they're like greeting cards. And if you think of it, you have greeting cards for being born, you have greeting cards uh for having a new job, you have uh when you marry, when you they're like all transitional moments uh that we well that we use as a structure for and uh yeah apparently that's uh that's the subject of our our work.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

So it's true, and if you know someone who is getting married or having a child, you can buy those greeting cards at our booths. If if you sp if you don't like those people, that's a perfect gift. For if for example, this one. Is this for a for a hate-hate relationship? This is if if somebody got engaged or something, you can give them that. And just then then watch their face.

SPEAKER_05 13:22

Now obviously, now that the slideshow has started running again and we're seeing a lot of the imagery from the um from the exhibit. Do you pick out anything from your own lives and put into the stories, or do you try to avoid having your own life told me?

SPEAKER_02 13:38

You mean if it's for autobiographical?

SPEAKER_05 13:41

Is that that's uh No, because they're they're too short to be autobiographical. But I see there were uh teletubbies before, and and I have kids who used to be young and used to watch teletubbies, and I know how much I would hate them. Yeah, is that why you brought them into the story, for example?

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Well, I think the that particular one is because they're so annoying the teletubbies, and also they are so innocent that they ask for it, you know, they they really ask to be uh abused.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

There is nothing no, I don't really use my life for uh for any of it. No, really? No, my I'm I guess I'm just too happy, maybe. But uh uh I would say though, but that if I wouldn't be drawing these things, I would probably be less happy. So I guess it's better, you know. These are like you say, these are this one maybe, maybe I said something like this one time. But uh but I think that uh the fact that I've been doing this uh for 25 years has been kind of a therapy. So if I wouldn't have been drawing these kind of bad thoughts on paper, then they would have just stayed inside me and I would be more miserable. So that's that's one thing I learned. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

It's uh it's uh some sort of therapy. Uh yes. And for me, it I think uh it doesn't work in a uh uh direct way. But if there's something I I don't like, and if uh there's something uh that really bothers me or I see in the news or I cannot make a joke immediately, but somewhere in my mind it starts boiling, and then after two or three weeks there's an idea that pops out, and it just that's the way to get it out of your system, uh I think.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yeah, that's the best way to do it. I I I I ex uh work the exact same way. Uh if something is bothering me, I try to find a way to just put it into my art. I don't want to I don't want to go write uh like a Facebook status where I'm complaining about politics or something, or if I'm angry about something. I feel like the best way as an artist to do something with it is to just put it in your art. And always try to make take something that you are you hate about the world and make it into a joke. That's that's the perfect therapy, I think. If we wouldn't be doing this, we would probably both be serial killers or be dead, or be dead.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Well, I was I was gonna ask. When people find it uh shocking, because in a way we're all always commenting on reality. It's not like we do these things ourselves, it's just things that happen in the real world that we use as inspiration. So that's sometimes the thing that's confusing for people who look at it and they say, What a sick mind they have, but it's actually what a sick world it is that we live in. And we just give uh comments on all those events.

SPEAKER_05 17:06

And and when you say that you feel it's uh a sick world, do either of you feel that there are jokes that you feel you wouldn't tell? Is there anything you've deliberately left out? I'll get to another question related to that later, but but but is there anything you won't do?

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Well, um no. I've never done self-uh censorship, but there's uh a thing called timing. Yes, that's so you cannot uh make a joke at a certain point in history. Sometimes you have to wait 80 years to make a joke. Uh sometimes you can wait uh five minutes to make a joke uh of something. It's just uh called intelligence, uh I think, or empathy. Yeah, uh and I I believe uh like you know the joke we see now uh is uh Amy Winehouse. I think uh we could not have made I could not have written that joke the day after she died, but I think uh I made it a year later or something like that, and then it's well I think it's the first uh sadness was a bit gone, so it was yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, I actually was talking about Amy Weinhouse. I actually I wrote a joke about her before she died, and it was just the lyrics uh they tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no. I just wrote that and then I drew a funeral, and then when she died, uh people were like uh like the ISTA media was calling me and saying, Well, how could you predict Amy Winehouse's death? I was like, I didn't. It was well it was an educated guess. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

What were you what were you saying about yeah, yeah, the the thing about um something self-censorship or what something we wouldn't joke about? I think no, no, I wouldn't uh there is you can joke about everything, but you just have to find a way to do it. There are some things that are so volatile, so flammable, so uh sensitive that it's not maybe not a good idea to make a joke about it. But if your job is making jokes, then you should be able to find a way to do it. So that's kind of the you know, that's kind of the job. That's the that's the challenge.

SPEAKER_05 19:34

And you Hulu, you've gone into you you just mentioned Amy Winehouse, and I know you've done a book where you took popular hits, popular songs, and created jokes out of the the song titles.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 19:46

Why why did you want to go that way?

SPEAKER_01 19:48

It was uh so stupid. Um I I I was listening to a song by Alton John called Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me. And I thought, well, that's funny. It's like a sun going down on someone. That would be funny. I would draw a picture of the actual sun going down on a man and giving him a bee job. Uh and uh so I did, and that's the reason. Okay, so I started that one. I should be able to do some more, and therefore I just I just googled all the song titles and song lyrics I could find. And for example, I did the Anarchy in the UK one where there's uh uh someone offering someone tea. Would you like some tea? No, that would be anarchy in the UK. So I just did that for a while in three books. It was that was basically just a game I made for myself, just to find the most silly or horrible ways to take musical lyrics and make something else of them than they were meant to mean.

SPEAKER_05 20:55

Yeah, and music isn't a stranger to your work either, as you've done dicky versions of famous covers and you've involved all sorts of musicians in the Dicky stories. Is that because you love the music or because you hate it?

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Well, it's always easier to make fun of things that you find ridiculous. So some uh some things are are harder to to make jokes about because uh if people look too normal or to it's it's it's harder. It's easier if they look like kiss and get all dressed up on stage, things like that. But I think just be uh you can as a as an author, you try to stay close to the things you like or the things you know. Uh for me well, the story about Dicky, Dickie started as a farmer, but I because I grew up at the countryside. So I made uh a lot of uh books that have themes in them. Like we I have a fairy tale book, I have uh a book about movies, and then the book about movies. uh they're not always uh necessarily my favorite movies there's uh it's much more fun to make fun of movies that's that you you you hate so it's more interesting to uh to work on that but uh it's more satisfying if you can make something out of something you really really like like I'm uh I have a I'm a big fan of the roads uh the the movie uh the post apocalyptic uh one and when I made a joke about that I it was like my favorite joke ever uh my favorite dicky joke ever so and that was in uh in the exhibit as well I believe it's in the exhibit yeah yeah now I lost my train of thought there but but there is uh there are there is a lot of uh as you said the music the films and everything else in it and you have all of these um different themes but I heard at at some stage that we're supposed to imagine Dickie either dying or doing something horrible in every story and every start of a new story is a reset for Dickie so is it always the same Dickey in different universes timelines is it always the same one? I think so I think it's like uh Roadrunner movie or the the the old cartoons where they die at the end and then the next uh episode they they just start all over again so that's uh never never knowing what they've done if he would have died I think uh there's one magazine in Belgium who who counted the times he committed suicide it was it was a lot so didn't you say they counted? They counted well they they counted how many times he died and it was uh 73 times and it was uh 15 years ago so and he's died a lot more since he died a lot a lot more since but I try to avoid the dying uh these days I try to why well because it's such an easy way to end the story because uh it asks for more creativity to find something else than just to hang him at the end well what about yourself or Daxon um do you do you uh feel that you're revisiting the same characters in different situations or is it always just that one moment of terrible something in every person's life it is yeah I kind of think of it that way that it's just uh different characters all the time and the main character is just humanity but there is one character that comes up regularly which is Satan the devil and he is kind of he is kind of the kindest like he he's not evil in my world because humanity is evil there he's just kind of there being adorable but I once actually just uh I once was uh had to do a uh stage play based on my cartoons so what I did was I just took maybe 30 or 50 jokes and I just uh lined them up and I saw like this and this and this this could all happen to the same family and this and this could happen to another so it was basically just a stage play about three families which had horrible things happen to them in a storyline that was made out of like one-liner punchlines and so in that way it could happen it could be you know the same characters but but in the books it's just it's just humanity in general that it's happening too uh so you've had your work into play have you had any Dickey into plays as well uh I I started with a a play I started my career with a a play about refugees hiding in the the luggage of a family uh on a vacation and it ended up really well uh with the audience uh getting really mad at us uh it was it was fun it it's fun to to uh transform uh illustration on stage it kind of gets people angry in a yeah uh more angry than in a book uh yes it's worse when actually people are doing it you know well and the other thing is I have an animated series of uh of Dicky we had uh we have made over uh 200 minutes of animation out of the the comics so that's also a different way to to approach an audience and of course you you don't get reactions in real life but sometimes the the these are shown on uh conventions or in uh on the big screen and then it's really fun to be in the in a seat in the room with people actually uh laughing at at your jokes because that's one thing you never get as a as an author you never know if somebody thinks your work is funny you you just they buy you the books and you think that oh that's okay but you never get a real uh a laugh a loud uh out loud laugh so that's the rewarding thing to do things on stage maybe why you are a stand up comedian is as well yeah absolutely yeah that's the reason well one thing that that happened was when this book uh the Dicky book came out was that a reviewer questioned whether or not she was the audience uh a young woman who felt that this was more for her uh misogynistic uncle uh at uh well in in america at a Thanksgiving dinner well do you do you work towards an audience or do you what what is the what is the the target demographic to get to do a business word that you want to go for is there one or well myself I suppose uh I never work towards an audience with uh Dicky I just do whatever I like to write or want to write about on that day but uh I think it's wrong to to imagine now I'm gonna do something for uh 27 to 29 year olds uh uh I don't know uh uh nurses what it doesn't work that that way so sometimes you get you get commissions that that's so like I did uh sometimes I work for museums and then they ask can you do something about alcohol or you can you do something about history or or and then and then that's fun to do but usually I just uh I write for myself and of course 25 years ago I was younger and I worked for a younger audience and now I'm becoming 50 so now apparently you still you become the the old uncle at the at the party so it just happens it's life yeah I I agree uh there there is only one look as an artist there should be only one focus group and that's yourself so if you are laugh if whenever I that's the way I think about it if I draw a thing and it makes me laugh and it must make at least one other person laugh somewhere out there.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

So that's just that's how that's I think that's the only way you should work as an artist. If you try to kind of please someone else and it's not really you. It's not really your stuff and you mentioned the the um the cartoon and I know there's something happening in your cartoon world and you've done cartoons as well but not over the stick figures right no not the stick I did a uh animated series in Iceland that was um that was based on my life actually it was just uh it was called Hulli which is what I'm called by my friends and it was just about uh an artist uh who doesn't have a driver's license and lives in downtown Reykjavik and has pretentious friends can you repeat this it was about a pretentious loser named in Reykjavik I'm gonna give it a moment and then we're gonna go to some audience questions but I'm gonna invite the audience to do something more as well because there is a rumor that somewhere in the exhibit there is a piece that was uh well challenged by meta and when I say challenged I mean it was removed by meta so censored by others and I don't want you to tell anybody what piece it is but I will say that if you guys go to the exhibit and you think oh I think it's this piece and you go back to their tables afterwards if you can guess the right piece we're gonna give you a couple of prints one from each of them okay but you have to go to the exhibit to see it and then you have to figure it out and you have to guess correctly but what is the challenge for you guys even knowing that things are changing as you said you're growing older the society is becoming less politically correct or more politically correct or more censoring more outwards um are you feeling that on your work or or on the way that you want to work um I think that's always I think whatever it's called political correctness or vogue culture or whatever it's called it's it's always been there in some way or another so uh as long as people have been insulted by art it has this this has existed so like I said before that that's just part of the challenge that's part of the game I I love it that that that that's the part of it because uh whenever they move the goal or move the line I go like okay so how can I now tell a joke about about eating your child or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

How will I I So that's just as a you know dark comic artist that's just makes it more fun I guess and also I never kind of try to my goal is not to insult anyone my goal is always just to make a good joke and if you're told that you shouldn't make fun of a thing you will you just find a way it's like it's like to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in uh Jurassic Park uh art uh uh uh finds a way how about you Peter do you feel that there are restraints being put on you as we go more more puritanical in our worldview uh well I I didn't get uh cancelled the way you get uh yeah get banned for uh from uh Facebook or something but I do write for some magazines and they are more strict these days about jokes though so I got two or three pages uh cancelled the last two years which is not so many but still uh but I think we evolve a bit in a uh that people are scared before uh to to publish things to to let it out into to the world to to offend people uh that's definitely the case we're definitely much we're living in a much more sensitive society and at the main uh the same time we're living in a really brutal society where the things that are really happening are so horrible that it just makes you it's it's just a joke to get offended about a cartoon when you see what what is happening in the the real world I think that's well why we don't care because that's like the the bottom line of of everything we do we comment on the the real world and it's the real world that's has a problem so if you want to uh cancel something stop stop well stop poverty or stop inequality or stuff you know that's the I think that's the point we're trying to make in our comics in a in a manner that like that we would do like uh we're naughty little boys just uh kicking yeah look look what uh look what I do but there's uh something um underneath and that's like a sensitivity and a concern about the world and that's the contrast that's uh sometimes confusing so and that's what they try to hit when you as an as an artist and that's why it sometimes hurts you uh because when they cancel uh your stuff because uh those things are not made to hurt uh people mostly uh it's just to sometimes to make people think I think yeah yeah and now if we have any questions from the audience oh there is one already we'll get a mic to you I think we'll see if it works um both of you did a joke about Amy Winehouse about uh her alcohol abuse and her death and um if someone from Amy Winehouse family came up to you in real life and said that they were really hurt about that joke what would your response be I would apologize but uh what can I do the the joke is out there so I say sorry for your loss and then uh yeah I once got uh I made a joke about uh Arton Senna who crashed with a Formula 1 car and it upset a lot a lot of people in his home uh country uh that's a joke that would pass in in uh in Europe easily but there he is a god so that was really but that's no excuse for not making the joke it's it's it's a sad thing that happen what happened to Amy Winehouse but it's the the way she got it's it's like all also a comment on on the things that happened to her she was put on the stage like a monkey when everybody saw she was crashing so you kind of point that out and kind of point out the hypocrisy of people in a way or at least that's that's the goal and when people only see oh you want to make fun of me winehouse that's not really what we tried to do so you didn't really get the joke I think that's well maybe an answer to your question.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Yeah I actually uh once uh got uh a letter from a woman who was who was yeah wanted to talk to me about that particular joke about Amy Winehouse that I did and she said that uh told me that her daughter had died from an overdose and she didn't think it was funny that I would make uh fun of someone that have died of an overdose as well and uh my answer was of course that uh yeah I told her like I actually did this before she died of an overdose but then again I don't know how that would matter because I don't know how that would fix your pain I told her because I would never understand her pain. But I did say that the whenever I do jokes or cartoons it's just me kind of con making a conversation about the thing I'm joking about. And sometimes it's horrible and unsensitive but it does as long as you know it makes you feel something it's it's there. But I did tell her that also that anything I'm saying in that answer didn't really matter because it doesn't even equate at all with her you know experience in pain.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

And she was very pleased with that answer and said okay good thanks we're good okay I'll follow up on that slightly what sort of role do you feel that dark humor plays in in the way that we look at society where does it have a of course you make it so you think it has a place but but what is the importance of being able to do jokes like this in our time I think it's uh well humor is essential it's the way as a a human being how you cope or how we cope with uh loss or problems or it's just a way where when something goes wrong you giggle or you it's just a natural thing for people to smile to to cope with stuff so well it's that's not funny to to explain it that way but that's actually what what we're doing it's it's a human reaction to uneasiness or or yeah so it's a it's a really big thing a society that has no humor uh must be the most terrible place to to live yeah I mean it's just uh exactly it's just the way humor uh especially dark humor is uh just a way to point out how ridiculous things are it's it's it's pretty much just a way to protest it's a kind of a protest you know just to say I don't like this this is stupid and the fact that I'm making a joke about it and the fact that everyone who reads it gets the joke means that we are all living in a ridiculous society you know do we have more questions from the audience? So if you were to do a joke about what's going on in here where maybe you already have one where you're gonna wait a couple of weeks and then it's gonna come out and it's gonna slay everybody putting them on the spot now obviously You're asking what what kind of joke we would make about about something like this about something like this I mean I'd probably I've I've yeah I've You think it's that easy to come up with it I'm gonna see how long this is going to be I did a uh a copy I did a joke uh about uh well a a whole drawing which was one of those you know where swaldo drawings which was about a convention but it was uh sometimes but jokes are not deep by the way this was a poop convention so I just did a convention where people were selling poop and showing their poop and eating poop and bathing in poop I think that is kind of what this is kind of if you think about it it's all just shit with all due respect I love it yeah yeah well I love it too I would never make a joke on uh on a convention like this no no so we live for this I'm almost afraid to I don't I don't think it's poop but you know it's not cool Arnie to make fun of it's not cool to make fun of what well of uh comic conventions it's not cool to make fun of comics conventions okay fair enough fair enough so if we if we were to to try to wrap it up where do you see both your own respective works going uh in the future where do you see the the future of black humor is there any inspiration that you want to give to people who want to delve into further into that world either by drawing themselves uh no not autobiographical drawings well but I think uh one of the the things after this uh collaboration is we're kind of gonna try and set up uh black humor convention sort of thing where we unite not only comics but also uh series and movies and writers ask writers stand up comedians I think there's a whole community who likes uh dark humor but uh that exists on so many different in so many different art forms so it would be great to unite this so that's one big plan for the future to create something like that and that can travel around uh festivals so this is just a little start maybe of uh the the black humor taking over the the industry but do you feel that black humor has to be malicious no not not at all I mean you you you can do dark humor without trying you know with with your kindest heart uh which is kindest thoughts in mind uh I think uh sometimes uh you can you can also mix being totally cute and adorable with something dark and disgusting and I think that mix is a really good mix actually you know it's like strawberries and licorice kind of kind of works you know I think we're running out of time is that correct Mr.

SPEAKER_05 44:38

Stagehand how much time we have left one minute okay so one minute for one last question if anybody has one doesn't look like it going once twice no well I want to thank Hulago Taxon oh Peter deporter for coming give him a big hand you thank you if you want to meet them they are going to be signing in a few minutes right on the tables here and you'll be able to buy their books you can come look at them here if you want for a moment and then the exhibit is right over there Tree of Life open today and tomorrow and then it's gone from Denmark forever Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 45:21

Det var det for den gang og om to uger vender jeg tilbage med et nyt afsnit for Copenhagen Comic. Husk at smide en like på podcasten, skriv en kommentar, smt for nogle af de andre gode danske podcast som Tangser, Radio Rakum, Super snakk, Hærden i Frankrig seremaset og Mak. Måske tak ikke dansk men produceret i Danmark. Og så altid læs nogensker.