October 26th, 2017

Feature Spotlight: Carpe Diem

by Tea

This week, we’re reading Carpe Diem by Niklas Eriksson.

 

Niklas brought his award-winning comics from Sweden to the United States in 2015, though he’s been cartooning in Europe for much longer.

One of the latest additions to Comics Kingdom, Carpe Diem is a single panel gag strip, following in the great tradition of cartoons like Bizarro and Rhymes with Orange. Niklas’ humor is wry, intelligent, and always up-to-the-moment– with jokes about the latest trends, fads, and current events, Carpe Diem often feels like pop culture’s answer to the political cartoon.

 

One of the great things about Carpe Diem is how very joyous it is– while it would be easy to take the cynical route, there’s a sense of optimism in Niklas’ work. True, he creates cartoons about world-ending cataclysms with unsettling regularity, but there’s always something about Carpe Diem that makes us feel reassured, whether it’s the perserverance of a viking undertaking a Sisyphean task, or an alien bouncing with childish glee as it invades earth.

Carpe Diem is always a surefire way to give yourself a great pick-me-up, a little chuckle, and maybe a new thought or two about the state of the world.