Introduction

A few years ago, I got a book with blank pages from my eldest daughter. The title was Tell Me, Grandpa. Some questions should bring Grandpa on the right track. They say that everyone has at least one book hidden inside. My daughter would like something written down, so my grandchild in due time could see where she came from. And as a pensioner I could kick the bucket at any time. It is she who has a feeling for the family history.

Dutifully I filled the book with capital letters and I didn’t always follow the questions. I also pasted copies of family photos into the book. I had gotten those because I, together with my brother, had cleared our childhood home after the last of our parents had passed on.

I then thought that it would be enough. There was no reason that I, like many others, should write my memoirs. After all, I had not experienced anything special. Staying mostly at home, I had led a secluded life, and I had been comfortable with that. My life had not been dissolute or risky, and these matters are sometimes the spicy elements in other people’s memories.

I don’t know what other comic book artists have written something autobiographical, but I had the great pleasure of seeing the illustrator Ib Spang Olsen’s It Was Back Then, where he visits his childhood neighborhood.

I am concerned with history, and in several of my books there are passages based on my own memories, but surely that is common among writers. My uncle Jens Petersen aged 95 has a dazzling memory, and he has just published his memoirs about growing up in the Silkeborg area, where my parents are also mentioned. I am very pleased with that book.

Then in the fall of 2016 I had an accident where I just as well could have died. Otherwise I’d expect to be 99 as my role model Carl Barks. But that hope may be too optimistic.

I started to write some things down. It need hardly be so dramatic. The exotic parts I could leave to quotes from Carl Barks. And I knew only a few colleagues who had written something autobiographical. Will Eisner had done it as graphic novels, but I did not intend to draw my way through my previous lifespan. I had switched to writing books, so it was now my ball game. At the same time, I could tell something about the development within my field of work, which might interest some readers.

I did not know if it would turn into an entire book, but I started…