The 40th gathering with Scandinavian Schapter took place at the holy caves of the Phantom editorial office in Stockholm. The gathering started at 14:00 hours with a tour lead by "gammelredax" himself with a helping hand from Peter Friman. It was a little sad to hear that the editorial staff had been minimized to only 6 people and the number of comics to only 8 in Stockholm. The last time I visited the editorial office there were a lot more comics and a lot more staff handling them. Despite the minimal space it was a cozy and well furnitured office. One of the walls where cluttered up with a historic set of front-page comic prints from 1950 up to present time.
Just before the coffee break we ended up in Ulfs office (Gammelredax) listening to anecdotes regarding our friend The Phantom. Ulf told us about Janne Lundströms new story regarding the years before The Phantom became The Phantom and it was going to be a three part story that would land in the stores this autumn. That sounded really exciting. Lars just had to have his yearly doze of that special Heiner Bade's not so children friendly drawing of The Phantom and Diana. But that drawing didn't have its place on the wall yet. So we started pulling out the framed drawings that laid on top of a bookshelf. Finally we found it and Lars could breathe out again.
At 15:30 we had a little break, Brian and Magnus had baked some sweet buns and a lot of cookies that we had with some coffee and soda water. This was an excellent time to welcome our new members Rasmus and Anders. The welcome followed by a mix of questions and more anecdotes from Ulf and discussions regarding the 60th anniversary of The Phantom. We discussed the idea about having a Phantom index baked in to a tribute book from Scandinavian Schapter to celebrate our Hero. Brian then ended up with questions from those members that could not be present at the 40th gathering. Mostly the questions was from Andreas and Dick sent by mail.
Well, around 17:30 CET we started to break up, most of us was going to continue to the restaurant Brasserie Stuket but I was going home to my children that craved some dinner from me.
Until we meet again,
Christer Borg member 23