Celebrated Danish Teddy Kristiansen was already in childhood inspired to be one of the world’s greatest illustrators. When he came across an article about a comic book artist, he made his career choice. He studied for half a year at Ulrik Hoff’s School of Drawing and Painting, but otherwise he is self-taught. The Danish comic book illustrator has cooperated with celebrated artists.
He made his debut in 1986, with a comic in the magazine Kulørte Sider (Pulp Pages). His first album was ‘Superman og Fredsbomben’ (‘Superman and the Peace Bomb’), the first official ‘Superman’ story produced entirely outside the USA, in 1990.
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The Danish Comic Book Illustrator is telling rich stories
Then he started to read other types of literature that was a little more challenging and started to think that he should do a comic book telling a rich story like when you are reading a novel, and that’s exactly what he has been doing.
In 1992 he produced in collaboration with Peter Snejbjerg an 18-page painted story for Tarzan: Love, Lies and the Lost City. Collaborating with celebrated writers like Steven T. Seagle, James Robinson and Neil Gaiman, Teddy consistently produced books that are both beautiful and thought-provoking. He went on to paint the Eisner Award-winning Superman graphic novel, It’s a Bird (2004), a poignant, personal tale masterfully rendered in the artist’s watercolors.
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Award-winning books
Teddy Kristiansen was nominated for the American Eisner Award (The Oscar of the comic book world) for his book Red Diary, which was an English translation of his originally Danish graphic novel, that was published by Image Comics as a flip-novel in 2012.
Though Kristiansen’s style is often characterized by angular, elongated characters, he possesses an amazingly broad range, perhaps best illustrated in his work for Sandman Midnight Theatre.
For the Danish market, Kristiansen has produced graphic novels, such as ‘Olafur Kjartanson’s Journals of the Secret Scriptures’ (2010) and ‘Heisenberg Revisted’ (2011) with writer Oscar K.
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The Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are prizes given for creative achievement in American. They are named in honor of the pioneering writer and artist Will Eisner, who was a regular participant in the award ceremony until his death in 2005. The Eisner Awards include the Comic Industry’s Hall of Fame.
The Danish Comic Book Illustrator, written by Tor Kjolberg