Norwegian cartoonist and illustrator Jens K. Styve is returning to the beginning of Dunce.

Starting October 5, Styve will publish the comic strip in English on his website, beginning with the first Dunce strip and adding a new translation each day. He describes the project as a way of marking almost ten years with the series while going back through work that has changed considerably since its early days.

Styve told The Daily Cartoonist that revisiting those first strips has been both enjoyable and slightly daunting. As he works through the archive, he also plans to write occasional notes about what he was thinking and learning when the strips were originally made.

Not every “Dunce” works in English

Translation is already presenting some problems.

Styve says there are strips that simply cannot be translated successfully into English. He plans to skip those rather than force an English version, although he may use his blog to discuss some of them and explain why the original does not carry over into another language.

Styve also wants the new run to create more direct contact with readers. He plans to follow and answer comments and use occasional diary entries to discuss the making of the strip.

Nearly ten years of “Dunce”

Styve is based in Tromsø in northern Norway and works as a cartoonist, illustrator and author. On his website, he describes Dunce as a daily strip he has been producing for nearly a decade, with the series appearing in newspapers and collected editions in several languages.

The strip has also built an audience outside Norway.

According to Styve’s official site, Dunce collections have appeared in Norwegian, French, Spanish, Finnish and English. Two English collections, Arctic Tails and Ungrounded, have already been published, while the Spanish-language edition Bobo, La Mala Vida, released by Océano in Mexico, was distributed in more than 20 Spanish-speaking countries.

The new project is therefore not the first time Dunce has appeared in English. What changes on October 5 is the format: Styve will go back to the first strip and publish the series again in English, one strip at a time.

Dunce has also received several awards in Norway. It won the Pondus Prize in 2017 and later the Sproing Prize, one of Norway’s established comics awards. The series has been published in a number of Norwegian newspapers and collected in multiple book editions.

Back to the first strip

For Styve, the anniversary project is also an opportunity to look again at how the strip developed over the years.

In his comments to The Daily Cartoonist, he noted how much Dunce had changed during that period. The new English run will make that development visible from the beginning, with readers able to follow the series in its original sequence.