Pyton

Pyton
Cover of Pyton № 5, 1990, with several of the magazine's main characters being targeted.
Format	Limited series
Genre	Humor/comedy
Publication date	1988 – 1990
Creative team
Artist(s)	Bjørn Ousland Arnold Milten Frode Øverli
Editor(s)	Dag Kolstad

Pyton was a Norwegian comic book series which was produced by the company Gevion, and afterwards Bladkompaniet, between the years 1986 until 1996. An anthology magazine with no major main character, its style of humor focused mostly on satiric and toilet humour, including sexual, toilet, and farting jokes. Most of Pyton's material was produced by the magazine's own staff, but a handful of foreign comics also appeared in the magazine, including Gary Larson's The Far Side, and the German comic Werner.

The name is Norwegian for python, a term which in Scandinavia also has gained a slang adjective meaning of "disgusting" or "sick". The magazine also adopted a python snake as mascot (after discarding their original polar bear), who occasionally featured in his own comics.

The magazine reached its peak around 1990 when it sold around 35,000 copies per month.

The Essential Guide to World Comics by Tim Pilcher and Brad Brooks says that the anthology and its sister series MegaPyton had "short-lived but important MAD-style humour anthologies with an underground comix edge."^[1]

The magazine's editor was Dag Kolstad, who prior had been the editor for Norsk MAD, the Norwegian edition of MAD Magazine. Kolstad was also a writer for many of the series (under the pen name Dick Kolby), and was also featured in the actual series as the sadistic and overweight character Redaktøren (The Editor). Another prominent writer was Rolf Håndstad (pen name: Rhesus Minus, Balle Brock).

Some of Pyton's most prominent artists were Tommy Sydsæter, Bjørn Ousland, Arild Midthun (pen name: Arnold Milten), Kristian B. Walters and Frode Øverli who a few years later created the successful and popular comic strip Pondus. Martin Kellerman, who later went on to create Rocky, also made a few contributions to Pyton in the mid-1990s.

In 2009, the old magazine had gained a large nostalgic appeal, and it was decided to launch the massive collector box MegaPyton (not to be confused with the Swedish magazine Mega-Pyton, see below), featuring classics from the magazine collected in hardcover books.