Funny / Arne Anka

• Many of Arne's quotable one-liners:
  • "Thinking before you talk is like wiping your ass before you shit."
  • "Nothing makes women beautiful like alcohol and closing hour."
  • "Sometimes you wonder if women have breasts just to annoy you."
  • "Beautiful women are like radioactive waste - they make their surroundings break down."
  • "It is when you feel the smell of your own faeces, you start to wonder who you really are."
• One time a confused Arne wakes up after a drinking spree, and doesn't recognize his surroundings. Turns out he's somehow ended up in Finland.
• Drooling over a lad's magazine in a bookstore, Arne is approached by the shopkeeper, a matronly older woman, who asks him if she can be of any assistance. Arne shoots her a death glare and asks: "What do you mean? You gonna hold the magazine while I jerk off?"
• Arne spots an incredibly gorgeous woman in a bar. He runs through several options for striking up a conversation in his head, but rejects them all as hopeless. Deciding that he might as well burn his bridges before he does something stupid, he walks over and pours his beer down her cleavage while screaming the word "MUCK!!" (rough slang for sex). The next panel shows him walking home hand in hand with the woman, thinking "Jeez..", absolutely flabbergasted that it worked.
  • In the authors notes for this page in the 90's Anniversery Collection, Christensen talks about the creation of the page. In the early days of Arne Anka, he'd write the comic at a cafe in Stockholm, where he had gotten noticed as a regular, even though he always looked pissed off and never talked to anyone, to the point that he got nicknamed "The Man Who Never Smiles". The day he was writing that page, the MUCK panel popped into his head, and he fell out of his seat laughing like an idiot.
• Arne listens in on a woman at the next table, who is telling her friend a story about a drunken loser who tried to get lucky with her at a party by telling her that he was a misunderstood poet. He thinks it is hilarious... until:
  Did the creep tell you his name?
  I don't know ... Something Duck ... Arne perhaps.
• Arne is on the subway with Krille's little nephew Willie, when the kid notices a rather Gonkish woman.
  Willie: Uncle Arne, why is that woman so ugly?
  Arne: (nervously) What are you talking about, she's beautiful!
  Willie: No, she's not, and you always say that there should be a death penalty for "middle-aged bitches with sagging tits who loiter around town in tracksuits".
  (Arne is wincing in pain with a notable dent in his head while the woman flips him off from outside the subway)
• One early comic has a bored Arne take part of the May 1st labor marches, but quickly gets frustrated because they go way too smoothly and doesnt feel very revolutionary. He even tries picking a fight with a cop, but just gets a condescending pat on the head, even when he pleads for some police brutality.
  Arne: It's no fun protesting anymore, it's way too legal.
• After a failed evening at a nightclub, a frustrated Arne wanders around Stockholm wanting to vent his bitterness at society. He runs into what appears to be a student riot, and happily joins in... only to be informed by one of the yuppie participants that they're just rioting for more rock concerts. Walking away, he sees two teens beating up a cop, and thinks that finally he's found a few likeminded radicals... only to discover when he gets close enough that it's actually a pair of neo-nazi skinheads (fittingly drawn as pigs).
  Nazi: Look, a communist! (the next panel shows Arne beaten senseless)
• The My Stockholm Testament, Or Vita Stockholmia trilogy, created in 1988 shortly after Christensen moved to Spain, which satirized the stifled and labyrinthian bar and nightclub scene of Sweden, and Stockholm especially, which was plagued by idiots from all over the country who flocked to the capital in a desperate attempt to become part of the jet set. Christensen himself noted how much contrast there was to the draconian laws about alcohol in Sweden, and the far more friendly ones in Spain, despite Sweden's liberalism and Spain's conservatism.
  Arne: (narrating while standing by a blackboard) The problem: There's too few clubs for too many people. There's too few clubs because the government are reluctant to allow more places to open because there's too many fights at the places that are already there. There's a lot of fights because there's too many people for too few clubs. So you hire bouncers.
  Narrator: An American filmmaker went to Moscow to film the breadlines and left emptyhanded, only to arrive on stopover in Sweden on an average Saturday night, and see lines stretching around the block!
  American: Jesus, these people must be starving!
• One strip begins with Arne trying to make his way home from a party hosted by a publisher where they had an open bar.
  Punk: Hey, check out that duck!
  'Punk 2': That's a duck?! I thought it was 857's second crash! (857 was a Soviet submarine that ran itself aground in southern Sweden in 1986)
  • In the same strip, Arne then encounters two police officers:
  Cop: Alright, now, who are you?
  Arne: When I write, I'm a god...
  Cop: Where do you live?
  Arne: Valhalla...
  
• Arne's half-hearted attempt to cheer up a depressed Krille :
  Krille: Bloody Hell, Arne... Have you ever thought about killing yourself...?
  Arne: Well... Erm... When I feel like that, I usually think about killing other people...
  Krille: I am finished, Arne. Finished as an artist. For three weeks I have been working on a script about Guy de Maupassant's syphilitic fever dreams, and I haven't made a single millimeter of progress...
  Arne: Then write about something a little closer to home. How about "Krille Corcodile's contemplations over the difference between champagne puke and Spanish plonk puke"?
• Horribly hungover Arne and Krille after a party:
  Krille: So, what happened with you and that chick you were talking to?
  Arne: Oh well, had she been more drunk and I more sober, then it might have worked out...
  Krille: Good God, we did some drinking last night!
  Arne: Some! There's a Chinese student riot going on in my liver..!
  Krille: Liver, yeah... You know, sometimes I feel sorry for my internal organs when I drink...
  Arne: I feel more sorry for your environment...
  Krille: How disgusting can one be! It's like some inner pig surfaces every time I'm drunk!
  Arne: In your case we're talking a whole pigsty...
  Krille: Yesterday somebody claimed that I whip the women that I drag over to my place.
  Arne: Well, do you?
  Krille: I don't remember...
  
• The strip where Arne becomes a celebrity and ends up on the smarmy gossip reporter Tom Sönderkokt's list of who is hot at the moment:
  Tom: How does it feel to be number two on my list?
  Arne: Awesome! How does it feel to be number two on my list?
  Tom: What list is that?
  Arne: People I want to kill!
  Tom: Who's number one, then?
  Arne: Your employer!
  • Even funnier, this was the last page made before Christensen originally cancelled the comic in 1995, and reflected his feelings on his creation becoming so mainstream he was considered a celebrity, which he absolutely hated.
• One strip set in Zeke's Bar has Arne go into a long rant about the bleak existance of the average working man, and how all his toil will result in a divorce from a bored wife, a ruined family, and an utterly pointless life which is so depressing that it drives every person sitting at the bar with him to suicide.
  Zeke: (surrounded by corpses) Arne, you're my best customer and a dear friend, and you'll always be welcome here, but the truth and business dont mix, so please keep your damn mouth shut!
  • Another strip with a similar theme featured a one-shot character who was The Woobie on the level of Black Comedy, having lived a miserable life so horrifically awful that a weeping Arne gives him a loaded gun at the end, and the guy happily blows his brains out (when he was born, his mother thought he was so ugly she tried to sell him in the classifieds, and it just went downhill from there). In the Authors Notes, Christensen talks about how he wanted to see how bad things could get before you should actually recommend someone to commit suicide.
• One of the earliest pages has Arne going on a walk and musing on some poetry, then stopping by Zeke's for a drink. There, he's so distracted by a Gonkish woman he spends most of the evening just gazing at her in abject shock, thinking about her dull looks and ridiculously outdated clothes (60's fashion in 1987). However, then closing time rolls around, and the two just look at eachother. Cue the two walking home together.
  Arne: Nothing makes women more attractive than booze and last call.
• One strip has Arne discover that he's got a new neighbor who's making noises his old neighbor, a disgraced, retired army colonel, couldn't possibly have made. He quickly becomes obsessed with finding out who this woman is, and after catching a glimpse of her leaving the apartment and discovering she's "one of God's fullbloods, the kind of woman put on Earth to make life miserable for us mortals", turns into a voyeour, constantly spying on her and the parade of men leaving her apartment. Until one day, after an unusually long night of bumps and moans, spots KRILLE leaving her apartment.
  Narrator: And to this day, Arne's friends talk about the time Krille got assaulted from behind by an unknown attacker in Arne's building. Unknown to everyone but us, that is. Us, and maybe one other person...

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