Rolf Gohs: Ett Tecknarliv (which translates to Rolf Gohs: A Cartoonist’s Life) is a book published by Cobolt Förlag in Sweden, released on the 6th of October 2017. It serves as both a detailed biography and an expansive art book celebrating the rich, multi-decade career of the legendary Swedish comic creator and illustrator Rolf Gohs, who passed away in 2017 just around the time of the book’s publication.

The core of the book is structured around an extensive, translated biographical interview conducted by long-time Fantomen editor and close friend Ulf Granberg. Through this dialogue, Gohs reflects on his life story, from his childhood as a Baltic-German refugee arriving in Sweden via the White Buses in 1946, to his hiring as a 17-year-old studio artist for Seriemagasinet in 1951. It covers his early work on Kilroy, his cinematic storytelling influences (such as Alfred Hitchcock and Ray Bradbury), and the creation of his own critically acclaimed suspense series Mystiska 2:an. The narrative is richly augmented with rare behind-the-scenes production details, explaining his early technical processes, color guides, and the transition from traditional retouching to watercolor painting.

Rolf Gohs: Ett Tecknarliv is published with a hardcover containing 176 pages printed in a mix of color and black and white print measuring 22.8cm x 31.7cm. The book is designed in a premium half-cloth binding (halvklotband) with a gloss finish seen on both the front and back covers.

Crucial to the publication and prominently spotlighted by the golden circular inset on the cover is Gohs’ monumental legacy as the definitive cover artist for the Swedish Fantomen comic book. Having published his very first Phantom cover in issue 7/1957, Gohs went on to craft an astonishing 911 covers over a career spanning seven decades, shaping the visual identity of the Phantom for generations of Scandinavian readers. The book provides an invaluable retrospective of this massive body of work, making it a vital historical archive for international comic art historians and dedicated collectors of global Phantom memorabilia.

A sample of internal pages can be seen below.

The outside back cover provides us with a small description of what’s published within the book, translated to English, it reads:

ROLF GOHS was born in Estonia in 1933, spent the war years in Lodz, Poland, and eventually came with his family as a refugee to Sweden in 1946. At just 17 years old, he was hired in the early 1950s as a house artist at Seriemagasinet, one of Sweden’s first comic magazines. This was the start of a lifelong career as a comic creator and illustrator.

Several generations of Swedish comic book readers have been fascinated by and admired Rolf Goh’s comics and cover art. Here we have collected some of his best works, such as The Bird of Death from 1958 and two classic adventures with Mystiska 2:an, The Mystery of the Rosenkammaren and The Eye of the Stone Horse. The book also contains Goh’s last long series, the medieval tale The Children’s Crusade. A graphic masterpiece that is now published in a collected form for the first time.

Throughout his career, Rolf Gohs has been active as a cover illustrator and the book contains a representative selection of magazine covers, with emphasis on his rich production for Fantomen, which lasted for 55 years. Rolf also talks extensively about his life as a cartoonist in an interview with Ulf Granberg, who himself has a long history in the world of comics, not least as an editor for many years at Fantomen.

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