Sten Hedenhös

Straight from the pages of postwar Scandinavian comics comes Sten Hedenhös, a Golden Age creation who debuted in 1951 courtesy of creator Bertil Almqvist in the festive pages of Barnens stora julkalender, published by Åhlén & Åkerlunds. That holiday annual setting gives Sten a wonderfully cozy, seasonal charm that's hard to resist, and he shares his adventures with the fellow Hedenhös character Flisa — suggesting a richly imagined world unto itself. Though his catalog footprint is small, spanning only a handful of years through the 1950s, Sten represents exactly the kind of hidden gem that makes digging into Golden Age comics from outside the American mainstream so rewarding.