M (comic strip)
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M is a semi-auto-biographical, surreal, Norwegian comic strip, written by Mads Eriksen. It can be read Mondays through Saturdays in Dagbladet, as well as in its own monthly magazine M. It used to be a strip in the Pondus-magazine, but moved into its own magazine at the end of 2006. The strip has gained a large fan-base in Norway, much due to its quirky humour and numerous pop-cultural references. The strip's nucleus is Mads Eriksen himself and The Madam, his live-in girlfriend. One characteristic of the comic is the unique t-shirts the characters wear for every single strip, these also often containing pop-cultural references. The Madam is always drawn with crosses over her eyes, this is because Eriksen claims it is impossible to know what is on her mind. In the end of 2006 M got its own comic magazine.
[edit] Allegations of blasphemy
In November 2006, a 94 year old woman from Selbu brought blasphemy charges against Adresseavisen, a Trondheim-based newspaper that publishes M, over the content of two of the M-strips published in the newspaper. In both strips, Jesus Christ is seen doing advertising for different products, such as "Pilate's crucifiction cream for manly men". The woman who pressed charges because of the perceived blasphemic content said that "this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is much worse than the Muhammad cartoons." Eriksen, the strip's artist, responded by saying that M is a strip that pokes fun at all sorts of myths, both old and new. A few days later, Dagbladet printed an M strip in which Mads wins a boxing match against God on walkover. The last time something was stopped in Norway over charges of blasphemic content was when Life of Brian was banned from cinemas in 1979 (And was in fact marketed in Sweden as "The movie which was so funny, Norway banned it". The movie did not open in Norway until 1981.) [1]
[edit] Examples of pop-cultural references
- Star Wars - Mads Eriksen is a big fan of the movie series, and the strip is usually full of references, some so special that only a true fan of the movies would get the joke. The strip's slogan is "Mye morsommere enn Jar-Jar" (a lot funnier than Jar-Jar). However, he is only satisfied with the original trilogy.
- The Lord of the Rings - The Madam is especially fond of Viggo Mortensen and Aragorn.
- Ninjas - In one storyline, Øyvind, a friend of Eriksen, enters a secret ninja academy and fights evil ninjas that tries to eradicate cartoonists.
- Hunter S. Thompson - Following the demise of Eriksen's coffee pot, it was blown out of a cannon, while Eriksen was wearing a t-shirt that read gonzo. The episode was similar to Hunter S. Thompson's burial.
- Twin Peaks - At one point, Eriksen uses the voice recording feature on his mobile phone to record a message to "Diane" in the exact same fashion as Agent Cooper and his tape recorder in Twin Peaks.
- Douglas Adams and his The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy science fiction novel and radio show.
- Fred Durst - Eriksen himself looks quite similar to Fred Durst, which have been used in some strips.
- Linkin Park - He has, both in strips and in an interview with a national newspaper said that he rather would have his pubic hairs removed one at a time instead of listening to Linkin Park.
- Pondus and Frode Øverli - In an ongoing "strip war" the two comics have regularly made friendly stabs at each other. It started with Eriksen doing a strip about Øverli sending text messages to all comics artists in Norway, parodizing the style of John Arne Riise. Øverli retorted with an attack on M, and everything escalated from there.
- The Phantom was seen intimately embracing a member of The Singh Brotherhood, his arch-enemies, in an M-strip.
- Yuggoth - Eriksen finds a homeless creature and takes it home. The creature turns out to be Cthulhu from H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu". At one point Eriksen says "Cthulhu Fhtagn" - "Cthulhu Dreams" - while the creature is napping.
- Firefly - Eriksen's character refuses to breathe before the cancelled TV-show is brought back on the air. However, the character of Mal is incorrectly referred to as Mel in one strip.
- Marvel Comics - Galactus has appeared in the M comic on some occasions.
- The Transformers (animated series) - have been referenced several times
- Stephen King's The Shining
- Collectible card games
- Wikipedia - A door-to-door salesman attempts to sell Mads an encyclopedia, something which causes Mads to go into a laughing fit. The Madam remarks "What are we? The Flintstones", commenting that encyclopedias in books are obsolete. Throughout the strip, Mads is wearing a t-shirt showing a puzzle-bit with a W on it, similar to the one in Wikipedia's logo.
- Linux - In one strip, Mads' brother gives advise to people asking how to get rid of trojans, malware, etc, which always ends up with "install linux". One also asks which Linux distribution he should, use, Mads says "Gentoo for you, Ubuntu for grandma, HA-HA-HA!!!"
