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Hugleikur Dagsson is a master of writing, drawing and stand up comedy. He’s published “about 20 books” (according to his website), written 3 plays and 1 animated TV show and tours around performing comedy to audiences who can’t get enough of his dark humor and wit. Although some of these cartoons might make you raise your eyebrows, they are undeniably smart. And we think they’re pretty funny too. (Don't worry, we won't tell anyone you laughed at them too.) Earlier this year, my colleague Ieva wrote an article featuring Dagsson and was able to get in touch with him to discuss his work.
One thing he mentioned was how the personalities of Icelanders are informed and shaped by their country’s landscape, weather and language. “Therefore, we are harsh, unpredictable, and weird. As is our sense of humor,” he said. “Also, we’ve always been a bit desperate as a nation. We are constantly looking for validation from the rest of the world and I feel like that seeps into our comedy,” he explained. “I use comedy to cope with my own problems and the world’s problems alike. It’s very therapeutic to point at the horrors of life and laugh.”
Dagsson also told Bored Panda that a lot of his work comes from the necessity to keep creating. “If I don’t get ideas, I have to get a real job. Luckily, when you’ve been working as an artist for a long time, everything you think about becomes a potential project,” he explained. He noted that often he’ll get inspiration from the most everyday occurrences, like hearing a popular song or seeing a movie poster.
And despite all of the negatives that came from the Covid-19 pandemic, Dagsson was able to use this time to delve deeper into his work. “During the pandemic, I embraced my inner introvert and just started writing and drawing more than usual,” he said. “The timelessness of the lockdown made me think of all sorts of fun things. The one I’m most proud of is a card game called FCK CDL KLL which I created in a cabin in north Iceland. It sounds silly but is actually a very smart game. A real thinker.”
Dagsson is also currently planning a short stand up comedy tour to visit fellow Nordic country Finland. Many artists who enjoy drawing aren’t necessarily eager to get up on a stage in front of people, but Dagsson does it all. In an interview for the Italian website Lo Spazio Bianco (or The White Space), he told Andrea Turel Caccese that the difference between drawing cartoons and doing stand up is that he can do whatever he wants in his drawings. “Because I’m not dependent on an audience reaction like I am on stage,” he explained. “In the cartoons, my characters do the talking. On stage I’m the one doing the talking. I can hide behind my cartoons, but on stage all eyes are on me. So I can’t become as dark on stage. But I try to be as dark as I can get away with up there.”
Dagsson was also asked if he had received many complaints about his work, due to the nature of his subject matter. “Yes, but not nearly as many as I’d like,” he shared. “My British publishers removed three jokes from one of my books. One was about McDonald’s, one was about Scientology and one was about Muslims. The Muslim one wasn’t Islamophobic at all. It was actually a joke about the stupidity of Islamophobia, but the publishers didn’t want to take any chances. It was pretty soon after the whole Danish cartoonist death threat thingy.” Perhaps Dagsson won't be satisfied until he starts receiving death threats of his own! (Please, don't send him any. That was my own lame attempt at a joke.)
Dagsson also shared what he likes the most and the least about his job with Lo Spazio Bianco. When it comes to the positives, he said, “That I can do what I want. I can basically go for any idea I have as long as it doesn’t cost too much. And doing things cheap has always been my favorite challenge.” And when it comes to what he hates? “Hate is a strong word, but I dislike the attention sometimes. I live in a small country and being recognized in the streets sometimes makes me anxious. But that’s a minor complaint.”
When you first see these cartoons, they might be shocking, as they are a far cry from the comics found in the newspaper on Saturday mornings. But dark humor is extremely popular in many different vessels, so why not use it for drawings too? According to Peter McGraw, co-author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, people tend to laugh at things that are “wrong yet okay,” “threatening yet safe,” or what he refers to at his Humor Research Lab, “benign violations”. He also says that dark humor is often used as a coping mechanism. “As for why people pursue dark comedy: there’s what I call the ‘thermostat approach’, in which you’re using a joke to change the temperature in the room (i.e., that you are using comedy to cope).”
