Veckans äventyr / Jules Verne-magasinet #37/1945
Veckans äventyr / Jules Verne-magasinet #37/1945 is a snapshot of wartime Sweden's most popular hybrid pulp-comics magazine at its creative peak — a weekly Nordpress publication that, during the 1940–1947 run, reached up to 80,000 readers and served as the primary conduit through which Swedish audiences encountered Golden Age American superhero strips. Issues across the 1945 volume brought Batman (rendered in Swedish as 'Läderlappen,' literally 'the leather patch') and Superman ('Stålmannen,' 'the steel man') to a Scandinavian readership that had no dedicated DC title of its own, making this run collectively significant as the earliest sustained Swedish-language home for those characters. The magazine's editorial mix of American comic strips, science fiction prose, adventure pulp stories, and translated newspaper strips — all under one cover — modeled a format of cultural cross-pollination that shaped Swedish comics publishing for decades.
"Amazonen vid ungdomens källa" is a gripping tale from the 1945 issue of *Veckans äventyr / Jules Verne-magasinet* #37, featuring a tense underwater escape as Barney, Gopher Gus, and a Japanese companion survive a sinking submarine—only to surface near a suspiciously approaching vessel, likely German. Written, drawn, and inked by Frank Miller, this story captures the high-stakes drama of wartime survival with a distinctly cinematic flair.
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Jules Verne-magasinet launched in 1940 under Nordpress, initially focused on science fiction prose, then broadened its scope under the running subtitle 'Veckans Äventyr' ('Adventure of the Week') as SF content gradually gave way to translated American strips and genre fiction. By 1945 the magazine appeared weekly, ran approximately 68 pages, and drew heavily on American pulp and syndicated newspaper-strip sources — including Golden Age DC comics material — translated or adapted for a Swedish audience. A scholarly bibliography (Bertil Falk, published in the Nordpress era documentation) confirms that up to and including 1945 the prose fiction contributors were predominantly American pulp writers, after which the sourcing shifted toward Scandinavian authors; the 1945 issues thus represent the last full year of that transatlantic editorial pipeline.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Nordpress, Stockholm, as issue #37 of the 1945 annual volume of the weekly magazine known by the dual title Jules Verne-magasinet / Veckans äventyr.
- The magazine ran weekly during its first period (1940–1947) and reached a peak readership of 80,000 copies — an extraordinary circulation for a Swedish periodical of the era.
- Batman appears under his Swedish localization 'Läderlappen' (literally 'the leather patch') and Superman under 'Stålmannen' ('the steel man'), with supporting characters Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Dick Grayson, and Robin also indexed — confirming the issue carried Golden Age DC superhero strip material.
- Karl-Alfred is the Swedish localization of Popeye the Sailor, E.C. Segar's character; contemporary 1945 issues of Veckans äventyr are documented across multiple surviving copies as regularly featuring Popeye/Karl-Alfred strips alongside Jungle Jim and other syndicated American newspaper features.
- The character 'Olivia' indexed in this issue is almost certainly Olive Oyl, Popeye's companion, rendered in Swedish-language editions as 'Olivia.'
- By 1945, the editorial content was shifting: a scholarly study of the run confirms that essentially all prose fiction contributors through 1945 can be matched to American pulp-magazine writers, after which the sourcing pivoted to Scandinavian authors — placing #37/1945 at the tail end of the magazine's primarily American-sourced phase.
- The format was a combination of comics strips and pulp prose fiction — an unusual hybrid for the period that exposed Swedish readers simultaneously to American superhero comics, adventure strips, science fiction novelettes, and Western stories within a single issue.
- No dedicated Swedish-language Superman or Batman title existed until Stålmannen launched (Centerförlaget, 1949) and later Läderlappen titles appeared; this Nordpress run therefore represents the primary pre-1949 Swedish venue for DC superhero content.
Cast · 8 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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Den ubåt, som Barney, Gopher Gus och en japan färdats med, sjunker, men de räddar sig ut, då den luftfyllda aktern flyter upp till ytan. En troligtvis tysk båt närmar sig.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).