Arild Midthun

Born in Bergen on 6 May 1964, Arild Midthun is a Norwegian illustrator, cartoonist, and comics artist whose career spans nearly five decades of work across humor magazines, newspapers, and Disney publications.

He broke into print remarkably early, contributing the comics strip Patrick & Co — a spy series scripted by Tormod Løkling — to the Bergen newspaper Bergens Tidende in 1977, while still a teenager. His artistic breakthrough came with the strip Sirkus, which ran from 1980 to 1982 and was written by Terje Nordberg, Eirik Ildahl, and Dag Kolstad. Throughout the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, Midthun became a central figure in Norwegian humor comics, working extensively on Norsk MAD from 1981 onward and contributing to Pyton from 1986 to 1995 — the title that would become one of his most-credited across a catalog now exceeding 170 issues.

His collaboration with Terje Nordberg earned him the Sproing Award in 1988 for the album Troll: Sølvskatten, Norway's principal recognition in the comics field. In 1995 he joined the staff of the national newspaper Aftenposten as an illustrator, and from 2004 he turned his attention to Disney comics, drawing regularly for Donald Duck & Co and related publications such as Donald Julealbum and Bilag til Donald Duck & Co — work that continues into the present day.