Debuted as a 19-year-old with winning a competition in Norway's biggest youth magazine, Spirit, with a 3-page comic in rhyme. Broke through as a 21-year-old as co-writer and artist on Margarin, a family saga that was compared to David Cronenberg, David Lynch and Dave Cooper. Margarin ran in the magazineSmult and marked the co-writing debut of Norwegian comedian and musician Kristopher Schau, who later created the TV seriesDag When collected, Margarin was considered a cult comic and got generally favorable reviews, with the exception of Norway's then-leading comics critic Morten Harper, who called Smult "Norway's most important comics magazine", but also noted that the main course, Margarin, was "disgusting" and "what happens in it could hardly be called sex". Runde abandoned the detailed drawings of Margarin to create a strip of stick figures. The stick figure strips got collected in 2008.
Writing
Runde then turned completely to writing: Futen with Knut Solberg and two graphic novels for artist Geir Moen, De Fire Store. The steampunk action comedy took advantage of the fact that four of Norway's 18th century writers, Henrik Ibsen, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Alexander Kielland and Jonas Lie are collectively called "the grand four". Runde and Moen reimagined them as a reluctantly assembled team of special agents, forced to cooperate because of a zombie invasion in the Frogner Park. De Fire Store book 1 got all over favourable reviews, while book 2 was considered well drawn and full of ideas. 2009 saw the publication of Runde's biggest project after Margarin, the Saga of Olav Sleggja. Sleggja was drawn in a more realistic style than any of his other works. Sleggja got a sequel in 2018, Berserk. Berserk got enthusiastic reviews. In 2017, Øystein also published his first fact book, Stamceller, kroppens superheltar. Among other things, it follows stem cell researcher Cecilie Gjerde on her quest to regenerate jawbone. Dagbladet called it "A book that makes your kid smarter than you." English versions of his work are sometimes made available for supporters on his page.
Projects
For Sleggja, co-director Lars-Petter Iversen and Runde created a live-action trailer. Sleggja was praised for its intense and touching story. In 2015, Øystein Runde and Ida Neverdahl published a travelogue comic, MOSCOW, in English. Also the book FUTEN, about a mythological tax collector, was finally published after 8 years of work by artist Knut André Solberg. Futen was well received. Together with co-director and producer Torstein Jacobsen and co-director Johanna Raita, Runde released a horror comedy, Last Christmas.
