Nine years ago my favourite magazine was cancelled. I haven’t really paid my respects to it in proper way, so here, have an entry. When I was just a wee little critic, I spent my days reading this legendary magazine.

This magazine was called:

Pahkasika started as a kind of an inside joke between students, even it’s name (warthog) was chosen just because it sounded funny. The creators didn’t really plan to do more than one episode of it, but they noticed how people actually wanted to read it and it grew bigger and bigger. It established itself fast as a quirky humor-ridden and Finland’s only humor magazine. It was like Finland’s own Mad, only that Mad sucked when compared to this as they were not able to be so incredibly politically incorrect than what Pahkasika could be.

How politically incorrect were they? Well, how about dead baby jokes:

The "understanding the world"-one is my favourite

Or how about picking on people’s disabilities?

Super disablo!

This goes on for several frames, so let's jump straight to the conclusion

Translation note: the finnish word "vammainen" clumps mental and physical disabilities into the same term, so to keep the intended mood of the story I use the word "retard"

Even Lassie wasn’t spared!

Not even Lassie, people!

And as the last example of the incorrectness.. nazi jokes.

They even have tiny little swastika flags!

What’s strange about these nazi jokes is that they are thrown in so lightheartedly. They call Hitler “onkel Adi” and it’s apparently a children’s show or something and they just casually watch it on TV and then it is not mentioned ever again in the comic.

The comic those jokes come up is “Hemmo Paskiainen” (Dude Bastard) a series that ran with the Pahkasika for the majority of the magazine’s life and now that Pahkasika is no more, Hemmo Paskiainen still goes on. The comic goes around Hemmo and his father Armas Paskiainen (Darling Bastard) getting into trouble with various different characters. I fucking loved that comic, and still do. Some of the strips don’t even tell a joke, they are just dark and I’m left with this awkward feeling in the pit of my stomach.

This isn't even the worst. This just was the easiest to translate.

But mostly it made me feel all dirty and bad for laughing. And I loved it.

Anyone who says I was a bad person even before I laughed at this joke will die.

If it’s something finns know how to do, it’s dark humor. The dark overtones were overwhelming in the whole history of this magazine.

I always wanted to see Tom kill Jerry but.. oh my god not like this! Not like this!!

This one is probably the worst:

Oh, and I read both of these stories when I was in elementary school, so if anyone wonders why I’m this fucked up..

Shut up, I was a pretty baby

Though, they really managed to deliver dark jokes that made you laugh more than they made you feel bad. Like “Big Sleep” tablets “for the whole family” because “Every human has a right to avoid slow and painful nuclear death!”

Or this article about “How to be a good person”

You can just imagine what they suggest..

And here’s Pahkasika’s prediction about the future of our porn magazines. They have noticed a trend for harder and harder stuff so they think this is inevitable:

Necrotica - corpse porn's special magazine!

..but then again, I find this band absolutely hilarious:

Small note: DO NOT GOOGLE PICTURES FOR THIS CD I SWEAR IT’S NOT WORTH IT, google Goblin Cock instead, that band’s cover for “Bagged and Boarded” is hilarious!

But back to Pahkasika. And especially to the comics that ran with the magazine. Hemmo Paskiainen was just my personal favourite but they had others like..

Jurpo – a strip comic that relied on the punchline

Vanhat Herrat (The Old Gentlemen) – a few-pager that usually carried on an obnoxiously stupid plotline when these two men thought they were being rightous and charming.

Miihkali – it relied entirely on text. It read like a children’s book but would often tell a rather dark story, even that it was never nearly as bad as the other comics and skits on this magazine.

Pahkeinen (Dammit)- A bland and boring strip comic about an old man with a funny name.

And last but not the least

Peräsmies (Fartman) – strip comics of alternative lengths and every joke was a fart joke. Made me giggle as a kid.

It was a comic entirely revolving around a pun. You see, Superman is “Teräsmies” (fun fact! Superman is Steelman in finnish teräs = steel mies = man) so this guy is Peräsmies. The comic was still surprisingly long-lived. It “died” with Pahkasika.

Not all of the comics revolved around farts, sex and other variants of low humour. Some of them were honestly clever or had an actual message.

Like the comic where a little kid is born who can do ANYTHING from the very start of his life, he gets cloned and humanity turns into slobs who can’t even tie their own shoelaces.

Or this

You are the papers

Or this:

These kind of things kinda take you by surprise after all the joking and darkness. Or okay, these are dark too, and they’ve not prevented any wars or brought humanity closer to world peace, but this kind of thoughful things broke the mindless browsing of the book and created this certain kind of atmosphere.

They were a great tool in constructing the magazine, and made Pahkasika even quirkier.

There’s no other like Pahkasika. Only thing that goes kinda near this sort of humor is Myrkky, but they can’t bring the funny bodily function jokes with style! They just make things so obnoxious that you can’t help but smile just so it would go away, but Pahkasika brought the potty humor to almost intellectual level and broke actual taboos, unlike others. Come on, what other magazine YOU know that made jokes about necrophilia becoming mainstream? Vampires and zombies don’t count.

Many people remember Pahkasika in different ways and I remember how it made me laugh at things that I thought were impossible to laugh at. It was dark, it was funny, it created it’s own branch of humor and it must’ve been one of my greatest influences.

I will miss you for the rest of my life, Pahkasika

Rest in peace. I loved you.

Sources:

Pahkasika – Kymmenen kirjainta johon voit luottaa

Hemmo – Iskän poika

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahkasika_(lehti)

In this status update we will cover the subjects of:

Layout, drama, blogroll, scedule, e-mail problems and my general stupidity.

So, first of all if anyone has sent me mail in the length of few weeks, I probably have not got it. I have an alternative e-mail besides finnishcomics@gmail.com and it is erkkipaju@hotmail.com, it probably works better. I have had problems with gmail before so I don’t trust it very much.

You have all probably noticed how my layout sucks ass. Even jinx.fi mentioned this problem as following:

“FCD’s layout sucks ass hardcore, only retards use the default layout this long.”

..okay, just kidding what she really said was:

“In my opinion the author should work on some layout issues and image resizing but it’s the content that counts.”

And it is way too true. I hate this layout with burning passion, but I am absolutely impotent, handicapped and retarded when it comes to any sort of computer problems. I can fix a computer if the problem is physical but IT’S NEVER PHYSICAL AUGH!

So I am contacting my tech support tonight and there will be some minor annoyances going on this blog. I will fail so hard ohmygod.

But I still got a seal of awesomeness!

Nova also said something in him entry that I wasn’t aware of – I have apparently stirred up some drama. I have been absolutely oblivious of this! All the drama has happened in IRC-channels, and I never frequent those. Still, I feel so loved and noticed now.

As I seem to have few readers (OMG!! liek three! I counted them myself!) I should become a bit more regular with this blog. I will never be dead-set regular, but I will do an entry at least once per month.

Two entries in two weeks, one entry in one-and-a-half month.. something like that. One entry takes me one whole day to do. If I want to make an entry, I have to sit in front of a computer for solid 12 hours, not counting bathroom- and food breaks, so when I am able to write and scan, I will do it. And when I can’t I just fucking can’t because I need so many different gadgets to my reach.

And least, but not last..

IF YOU HAVE ADDED ME TO YOUR BLOGROLL/LINKS TELL ME! I’d love to add you back if your own site has similar theme to this blog, like different types of comics, finland, or critique.

I am absolutely lost on how to use wordpress even that I have been here at least for a year, so if I seem rude my handicap towards anything digital is to be blamed. I simply just suck.

But now.. off I go! I spent way too much time even on this short and cruddy little status update. Expect an entry in about a month, and after that look forward a theme month which I will announce appropriately.

Sources:

http://jinx.fi/

http://jinx.fi/2009/10/17/novas-blog-discoveries-finnish-comics-dissected/

Are you ready?

You better be fucking ready because this is

“Mystic and a story-teller? Diviner? Northern witch? Or maybe a metaphor for something greater and darker in nature which no mortal should dwell in without risking their sanity? What or who Ester Pärberg really was – or god help us, still is – has to be one of the biggest mysteries of our lifetime which we will never get an answer to.”

I think even this dissection will start well with those words.

This comic has to have one of the most blown-out and hilarious intros I have ever seen in my life. After going on about the mystery of Ester Pärberg and how her stories were written on leather which was torn to shreds in the year 1155 by crusaders and then patched together by our four heroes at the year 1237 and then we get this hilarious page that introduces us to the cartoonists in a way that is rich with quirky inside-jokes.

I don’t know about you but I love these guys already.

So what is this really about?

Few years ago four teenage boys were incredibly bored at upper secondary school’s psychology class, so they started scribbling comics. One guy did one frame, the other made the next frame etc.. and this went on until they grew bored of that or the bell rang. The results made the whole of humanity weep. Later on the boys grew up (but not enough) and they decided to ink those comics again  and publish those horrendous creations. This made the Cthulhu weep.

When thinking of a theme for this collaboration of bored teenage boy randomness, they came up with Ester Pärberg – a crazy old goof who told the most obnoxious and weird stories imaginable. Hilarity ensued.

As you can see, the intro goes on with the animals of Eternaleather woods seeking safety in Ester’s house because their homes are being flooded. Even Bream-Andy had to seek safety in the house, despite being a fish. He couldn’t use toilet in those crazy whirlpools underwater, anyway.

So, Ester starts reading stories to the flock of wet animals who poop, piss and fart everywhere..

..and the comic itself finally shows its main content.

…

..I got nothing.

There’s also one funny thing about the last page’s sound effects. For some reason the pile of poo is onomatopoetically repeating the lyrics of Juice Leskinen – Jyrki Boy “Jyrki Jyrki älä tyrki, älä sanojasi syö” or in english “Oh Jyrki, Jyrki, don’t push me, don’t eat your words” ..and before you ask, no the words don’t make sense even in finnish.

The next story is just as demented and weird. It’s about siamese twins, Heinrich the human and Hurbon the “cüclopsmonkey”.

They’re siamese because they share a toe that has magical laser powers

But being siamese is not the least of their problems as they have other weird bodyparts, like the face of Alfred Bittenwurst growing out of Heinrich’s bum and a whale head pointing out of Hurbon’s back

So they are tormented by Whalecatchers and Bittenwurst-fans

Uh.. and they.. also have the “Brothers of Radish, Arne und Perttu” living in their throats and they like to escape, which is bad because their lives would feel like nothing without them.

But then Heinrich eats Hurbon thus eating himself and that’s the end for this story

…

I.. can’t go on. Sorry. This comic is way too crazy to go trough in some sort of “order” because it’s more random than Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Invader Zim put together

But it seems to have a theme of crazy siamese twins

Haha.. oh wow

And.. uh.. JUST LOOK AT THIS!

This is too crazy and random to just explain, this needs to be experienced.

Yeah, alright, this comic is very, very, VERY random

But surprisingly it also has some stories with perfectly comphrehensive plotlines.. or at least plotlines. Like the story of exterminator who fights against a satanic cult of rodents who are about to summon a turnip demon.

Or the story about the captain of a carp-shaped spaceship and his underling

Who get in trouble about interspecies-bestiality-relationship because of a misunderstanding when the subordinate tries to give CPR to the karp-captain.

This comic is absolutely out of it’s mind. This is what boredom does to human brain, and it is not a beautiful sight, but it is nevertheless amusing.

The boys also have a habit of using the language in weird and inventive ways. The puns they make are not even puns anymore (TURBO-PUNS!) they get insanely mangled and out of shape when they try to amuse themselves in the pits of boredom. This takes form both in special effects and dialogue. Here’s few examples

And because most of the dialogue is quite stricktly riddled with finnish puns that cannot be translated, I’ll give you only one example of this branch of weird use of language

BA-DUM-DISSH!

The one story that got me dry-heaving from laughter is really short one, and it strats perfectly normal at first, but ascends into insanity before you can say “I am bored at a psychology class”

Why am I laughing this hard?! That made no sense! Gahh! I’ve seen this random piggy jokes only in Invader Zim

Despite it’s extreme randomness Ester Pärbergin Tarinoita holds itself together really well trough all of it’s 143 pages! It’s no wonder, though as these guys are all somewhat professional cartoonists and KP Alare has the title of graphic designer under his belt and JP Ahonen has an actual career of a cartoonist with his strip comic Villimpi Pohjola (Northern Overexposure). The other guys who took part in this project don’t have anything on web that google could find for me, but they are not teenagers anymore, either. The gang is experienced and know how to work as a team and put out a good comic.

Which brings me to wonder.. WHY THE FUCK DOESN’T THIS COMIC HAVE ANY AWARDS!? When I met the guys at the festival I could swear they mentioned that they won something over their book, but I can’t find anything. The award “Taivaallisin Pienlehti” (Most Heavenly Small-Publishing) didn’t go to them this year and I can’t belive my fucking eyes. There’s something seriously wrong with Helsinki Comic Festival staff if they really have not awarded even a wooden spoon to these guys.

Who the fuck won the award if it was not them?

Oh.

shit.

I’m sorry for being so judgemental and biased but-

No, wait. I am certainly not sorry, it’s the cruel truth that finnish female sarjakuva is absolute and utter shit. If you don’t belive me, listen to what I got to say – I bought “BLAW” but Circus Femme Fatale didn’t even pique my interest in the slightest.

Now BLAW and Phantomland are both drawn by females, but it is still not official femsarjakuva-brand of finnish comics. You actually have to somehow admit being a part of it and do nothing else but comics in which only theme ever is The Vagina. I’m not even kidding. And I know without looking that Circus Femme Fatale is not worth any attention it got and definately not worth any money.

I’ll go deeper into the theme of finnish female cartoonists once I do few more positive dissections. I’ll announde a theme month when I do.

EDIT: apparently this wasn’t even a small publishing “pienlehti” so it wouln’t have counted. Silly me. But all my statements still stand. The winner sucks, this deserves some sort of award, and female sarjakuva sucks.

But now, back to Ester.

This comic was the best I saw in the whole Helsinki Comic Festival, no other publishing came even near this one. Ester Pärbergin Tarinoita is funny, light-hearted, silly, professional and high-quality mash-up that truly put a smile on my face and left me with a giddy and good mood. Where Kane failed and didn’t bring the humor crazy enough, these guys succeed and throw it over the edge.

I can see the boys were somewhat influenced by a very popular, dirty humor sarjakuva we have here called “Myrkky” (Poison) but the influence is not overwhelming and they have plenty of insane originality that only they can put out as a team.

This left me feeling AWESOME

Ps. Flash warning

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEAH!

SEE YA LATER <3

Sources:

http://www.jpahonen.com/

http://www.kpalare.com/

http://www.sarjakuvafestivaalit.fi/

Gir “Let’s go to my room, pig!” from Invader Zim created by Jhonen Vasquez

Cameo:

http://www.dandeacon.com/

I will admit it, I bought this comic just so I could see how badly it sucks.

Welcome to the eye-searing dissection of

I think you noticed that I edited the real name of the creator out of this comic. It’s because I am being nice. I don’t want this fuck-up to come haunt this poor girl when she’s all grown up and just tries to forget she actually did this and tried selling it. If she comes to my blog and says she can take the heat, I will not hide it anymore but untill then – she shall remain a mystery.

This comic is made by a  girl I presume is 16 years old or older. This comic has overblown plot with oh-so-exploitable name.

BLAW

BLOW

BLAH

She really didn’t think anything trough with this scribblemess. It just screams “BEGINNER!”, everything about it is silly and hardly even sub-par. The fail starts right from the covers, which have not been cropped. See that scan of the cover? I left all that white space on purpose because it’s the inner pages just spewing out of the covers, and I wanted to point it out. This was the only self-published book that had this bad cropping in the whole Helsinki Comic Festival.

Now I want to play a little game with you called “Try to get the text on the cover because the placing sucks ass hardcore”. Honestly, scroll up to that atrocious placing and try to understand what reads there. When your brain starts to hemorrhage and you just can’t take that picture anymore, here’s the answer

It actually took me and two of my friends to figure this out. It was like one of those mind-fucking puzzles that you’re not really supposed to even break. It’s like she didn’t plan beforehand at all! And I think it’s because SHE DIDN’T PLAN ANYTHING BEFOREHAND. She just threw shit together on the fly.

She apparently first drew some pretti doggies and pretti animu on the cover, then the BLAW, then she went like “Oh shit, the BLACK doesn’t quite fit, oh well, I’ll use that “B” on the “BLAW” for this” and only then realised she can’t use the “A” and “W” for the “AND” and “WHITE” because there was drawings on the way, and she ain’t gonna do all that work again! It’s only the cover for her first comic anyway.

But what’s up with that random “L”?

Oh.

It would otherwise spell “BAW”

Merely the back cover has so much stupid stuff on it that it deserves its own spotlight in this entry. Let’s also play another game, this one is easier and it’s called “Spot the weeaboo!”

Oh, and I didn’t parodise this in any other place than the credits. That overblown “Two brothers! Dark and light! Only once in a lifetime!”-stuff is word to word translated from what she actually wrote there. She seriously just did it -  the most cliché plot for a fantasy-themed story.

It was also nice that for once I could write as badly as I wanted. My handwriting is really atrocious, but hers isn’t any better than that so.. ahhh.. no pressure. This will look authentic no matter how much I slack.

Despite the “PEE ESS. READ BACKWARDS, WE’RE IN PLAY-JAPAN NOW” I read it backwards the first time and wondered why the comic made no sense. Then I forced myself to read the unappealing text, realised it was backwards(after reading the whole thing!!) and it didn’t make any more sense reading it on the intended order.

That is a bad sign.

So, let’s dwell inside this comic.

“My inner wolf”

Uhh.. oh fuck. No. This comic is not only done by a weeaboo but a weeaboo furry! And in Finland it can mean only one thing.

Ginga Nagareboshi Gin or as we know it here – Hopeanuoli.

Hopeanuoli was published here as VHS videos in the 90’s even that it was really old-ass animation. Finland is amazing like that, we get everything about 20 years later, but the ridicilous and rather terrifying thing about this is that it’s still popular here. Really fucking popular. I think I would not be wrong if I said it’s the major reason why kids in Finland adapt anime styles.

It also got another, new series Ginga Densetsu Wiido so that goddamn shit will keep on sticking to the shoes of Finland’s new comic artists.

Honestly if anyone can bring me even one finnmanga artist who is clearly not influenced by Ginga in any level when drawing dogs, I will draw you a pretty picture of anything you want and admit I was wrong. I swear and promise, this is my written word, I will do it for the person who finds an artist like that, and to avoid cheating the picture presented has to be older than this entry.

Unsurprisingly the comic has some very crudely drawn Gin ripoffs

What’s up with those markings!?

Oh yeah.. the NOTDISNEY!-syndrome. This syndrome drives its name from the fans of The Lion King who are rather notorious for this nonsense. They trace a lion from TLK and to make it not look like simba, they put on incredibly obnoxious markings on it and sometimes even clothes. Markings are same as originality in the minds of stupid.

So, this comic starts with an old story of two badly drawn animu brothers who look constipated and fiddle their swords while looking into the distance for no apparent reason.

They have been taught all their lives to hate eachother(wow, good parenting right there) and to kill eachother and they do so

YAY! The comic is over, I can go pop open a bottle of-

..oh fuck it was just a stupid backstory, the comic jumps into the present day and shows us a young student in a badly drawn school building doing the roadrunner-effect. He looks exactly like the two dead brothers. They even do their hair the same way! What is this nonsense?

Now his hair changed colour!? At least I think it is him. He has the same clothes and is saying “sorry for being late” which implies he might be the guy from the previous frame who ran home from school. Why did his hair change colour!? And oh god no his name is Link

Then Link goes for a walk with Gi.. er.. Arra(what the fucking name is fucking Arra what the fuck) and it’s suddenly night and they come across a monument in his hometown, which makes him extremely surprised.

Did he just move there or is he retarded?! Or maybe he never goes out, his parents named him after a video game character anyway so he must be at least second generation of basement trolls we call gamers.

And his hair changes colour again!! What is wrong with this dude!?

Arra seems to get really excited about the place, and as the main character has no personality or life he just follows the dog around aimlessly, surrounded by bunnies. And they bump into.. uh..

Link’s identical twin crawling out from a grave??

But that doesn’t bother him the least, nor does the fact that the guy who just crawled out of the grave sliced his dog open.

In fact, he brings his identical, grave-dwelling, dog-slicing twin into his home because he looked aww so poor when he fainted convienently.

Uh, why is he thinking of  She-Ra??

We will never know.

I also just realised something. When I first eyed trough this comic I thought it happened in a wasteland because the background was full of something what I’d call giant trash heaps, but now I finally got it. They are trees.

At this point I seriously doubted the mental capacity of the cartoonist. I even checked the website of her art school and there was no mention of “special” classes. I presume she’s in art school because she got on the cartoonist line. Cartoon lines in art schools aren’t very popular in Finland, so basically anyone can get on one. I mean.. they let me on a class like that! You can only imagine.

She can’t draw and she can’t tell a story in a comphrehensive way. I had really hard time keeping up with the story when it was told like this

In what order should we be reading this mental fart!?

She also has to write what she means at some parts when she realises she’s not making any sense or her skills are lacking.

You have the power of the pen, youngin’! USE IT! But not like that! Would facial expression chart been just too much to do or what??

The dog-hating, undead twin brother of Link introduces himself as Light and then they have extremely gay moment. And I don’t mean like “that’s gay!” but like.. really gay moment.

I have no idea why that was needed because in the next moment we are in Light’s flashback where he and his brother, Dark are being attacked by a dog.

This apparently happened 300 years ago so.. why is there modern floor tiles?? And what happened to their staircaise!? Do they use it as a toilet?

The evil Ginga-trace.. er.. dog shape-shifts into a dark haired animu person who is surprisingly not identical with every other character in this whole comic..

.. and we get probably the most hilarious scene in this whole comic.

First, someone gets a veiny boner

..and this organ gets smacked into the dog-man’s face

But don’t worry, the wolfaboo got his revenge

This whole flashback wasn’t only oddly placed, but doesn’t make any sense with the plot. Wasn’t Light and Dark taught to hate eachother from the very start!? Why the fuck was Dark then protecting his brother, Light?! And he died by getting yiffed to death by a traced wolfaboo, not dead from the battle between the brothers like it reads in the BACK COVER and FIRST PAGE of the comic! In fact, why is Light alive at all anyway? They should both be dead!

Lass Lassie, what the fuck where you thinking when you wrote this piece of shit?!

She can’t keep the plot consistent even for one page, look at this!

First Link tells Light he forgot his jacket while holding his scarf, not jacket!

Then Link offers Dark his jacket while being randomly very angry while wearing his scarf

And Light puts the jacket on. And I have no idea why that scene was needed.

Oh, but something falls out, let’s see it a bit clo- AIIIIII!!!!

EEEEEUUUUURRRRRGGHHH!!

WHY WAS THIS NECESSARY!?

Does that capsule smell REALLY BAD or something!? What the fuck!?

Ohhhh now I get it! It had a three-headed Kirara-sperm genie inside! Now it all makes sense!

EXCEPT IT DOESN’T WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!?

..and good god Lassie stop drawing trees please!

And suddenly we are flooded with new characters that didn’t have even one mention in the comic before the six last pages of this 68 pages long trainwreck

She had fucking 68 pages time to tell us some backstory but no! She used all those 62 pages to fucking around with unnessecary scenes of forgetting scarfs and jackets and just.. dicking around doing nothing else but changing awkward looks. There was all in all only one action scene and it lasted for only two frames.

Can you even tell all these people from eachother!?

And for some reason Light’s brother Dark is still alive and has turned into Sepiroth from Final Fantasy 7

hrngh…

I HATE THIS COMIC

This was absolutely ridicilous. I drew like this when I was in third grade! Every normal person drew like this when they were in third grade! I actually get flashbacks from this image

Lass Lassie has no talent whatsoever. She cannot draw, she cannot tell a story, she can’t make the characters look unique. I don’t understand how it is possible she is apparently an artschool student, I see absolutely no potential in this. She needs to do ALOT work to get even to the sub-par level in art and storytelling.

This was actually my third entry this week, all made in the day after each other. I hope that settled my drunken, and lazy scedule. I’ll do a status update and hopefully an entry next week with the details about the future of this blog. I will try and get more regular with this thing.

But now.. I need sleep and some.. time alone after this bunch of toilet paper.

Sources:

http://www.sarjakuvafestivaalit.fi/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginga:_Nagareboshi_Gin

Sparklelions:

http://mitarashianko7077.deviantart.com/

http://ladylugia.deviantart.com/

http://sakasagami.deviantart.com/

http://soruna.deviantart.com/

BAWWW-bunny:

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Incontinent_Student_Bodies

The Helsinki Comic Festival was truly a success. I bought a pig pile of comics form there and I am on the roll now.

Because I have dissected basically nothing else but finnmanga, I’m going to dissect a basic, usual to Finland “sarjakuva” now. Unfortunately I got more finnmanga for you after this but.. I don’t think Kane will be very pleasing either.

So.. ladies and gentlemen and sheep. This is the first time I have ever had to warn you of the content before and I am sad this stack of toilet paper had to take my warning virginity.

If extreme and un-needed nakedness and violence isn’t your thing, I have plenty of work safe dissections beside this one. But if you’re ready to bear this abomination..

Here is my dissection of

Okay, this one is a real piece of underground publishing shit. This is just the kind of stuff people do when they cannot get a publisher because their stories are honestly complete shit and then they go and claim that their comic was not worthy of publishing in big press because “it has too much nudity and violence”

Tank Girl got too much nudity and violence, The Preacher got too much violence and nudity(and bestiality), Sin City got WAY too much ass, tits and gore but they were really fucking good comics.

But maybe this will be amusing? Maybe it will be sexy? Maybe it will accidently deliver an important message? Maybe it’s nothing of the previous, but it’s a fun brains-to-the-hangar type of entertainment?

Let’s see about that.

Kane is a collaboration between a bunch of teenage boys called Hannu Kesola(story, parts of the art), Ville Vuorinen(art), Mikko Sarainen(art), Jho(toaster) and Henri Jokela(art) and they have put out three of these abominations. In this comic they say there will be five of these albums, but the website(see sources) says the third one is the last one. Projects like these, with alot of people are rather quirky and unstable so we might probably never know because I ain’t buying the rest of these.

The main character’s name is Bruce Kane. And he is an ex satanist..

..wait.

Oh great.

We haven’t even started and they have already probed the skeletons in my closet and I have a huge bias towards this pile of satan’s horn shavings. Will any good come out of this?

Now before we go on I want to make few things clear. First of all, I am over that shit. I’m not reading this as some high authority in satanism, but.. it PAINS me so much to see incredibly stupid representations of satanists. I bet the main character is not running away as an ex-satanist but as some sort of practising priest who knows ~**MAGIC**~ and..

..why did you have to do the biggest damn cliché ever in comics that represent satanism!? Why does everyone make their satanist chacters have magic powers!? I don’t get it!

Is it like, they can’t make the main character completely silly and unrealistic so they have to base their magic skills on something that’s “real”, and because wiccans are all sissy girls the only option that is even half-way cool is satanists. So we have this painfully stereotypical breed of anti-hero that I despise to the core of my very being.

The cult of satanism(not to be mixed with philosophical satanists) is interesting enough on it’s own without any mumbo jumbo. These people boil living cats, drink their own blood and hallucinate from the stress and horror they go trough! That’s fascinating and interesting and a comic that would show that intimate side of that sick fucking cult would be million times more needed and interesting than Yet Another Magig Satanist from the capitol of the comic universe – New York.

I’m not even anrgy because I have to go trough some fucked up memories when I see this comic, I mean.. I joined the cult as 13-years old too, which is pretty fucking eerie. I can handle my past already and everyone who has gotten away from the clutch of this cult should be able to laugh at it. This is something we NEED humor about, we NEED to laugh at it, but it’s so painfully stupid and romantisized that my head hurts.

Goddamn teenage boys. What fixation do you have for satanism anyway? I swear every teenage boy has had a satanist character.

Okay, rant over. Let’s get deeper into this shit.

So, the comic starts with a pedophile joke.

A creepy teacher gets angry to a little kid because she didn’t draw him into her picture, but instead her brother. Okay.. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be funny or not. It WOULD have been if his expressions would’ve been a bit more different or if they would’ve been more subtle. Now it just looks like they just wanted to say to audience “this guy is a pedophile” . Though knowing teenage boys, they probably think pedophiles at themselves are absolutely hilarious.

Though he might not be a pedo at all, he might just be into goblins. I mean.. just look at this “child”!!

The mere existence of that horrible thing rapes the fabric of time and space and violates every living beings soul! Oh god please someone throw it into boiling water alive!

I also love how Kane spontaneously gets down’s syndrome

It would’ve actually been hilarious if he’d actually just become retarded for no apparent reason, but no. The jokes in this comic try to be all edgy and you’d actually have to be on 15-year old’s level to laugh at them more than once, and they also fail to be edgy enough.

Like how the main plot of this album goes around Kane turning an ugly lady into a hermafrodite midget when he was supposed to turn her more beautiful.

Oh, and get this; SHE’S ALSO FAT OHOHOHOHO FAT HERMAFRODITE MIDGET! I bet she’s also a pedophile!

..oh, so she’s a zoophile.

Ha. ha.

I have heard all of these jokes when I was in junior high and sex was SO FUNNY OMG DID YOU KNOW GIRLS HAVE.. VAGINAS!! so I am left unimpressed. They clearly want to go beyond and over with their jokes but the problem is.. they are not going far beyond enough.

Like, if Kane would’ve accidently transformed her into a tentacle monster that has vaginas all over and can only fuck itself.. now that would’ve been quite of a mess. Or if she would at least feel attraction towards some exotic and bizarre animal like giraffe but no. The jokes would be edgy and funny if this was done at 1930’s but not at this age of internet with furries and Deviantart’s “artistic nude”-section.

Though, I gotta admit I got a giggle out of Miriam’s(that herm midgit) butler being all cool and normal even that his master is sheep-fucking-herm-midget.

Well, yeah, that’s pretty funny. A normal butler just doing his job-

Why is everyone pedophile in this comic!? Freud would probably have something to say about this.. Oh, and it’s okay to make demons fry pedophiles brains. Pedophiles are pure evilness and satanworshipping serial killers are heroes. I don’t think this comic has any good guys so why are they even trying? Or was this also a joke?

I just might think too much.

But.. but.. but..

What kind of of a BDSM gear is this!?

Oh come ooooooon!! Haven’t you ever had sex with a fat herm midget in a dungeon before?!

..okay I just made a FAIL! whip.. but my statement still stands!

After being held captive by Miriam and melting the butler’s brain by his super-awesome satanist magig, Kane escapes the dungeon. This wasn’t a big surprise, it would’ve been more suprising and funny if Kane would’ve got it up the bum from Miriam and liked it and.. become pregnant with demons or something! This comic is not going far enough!

But after escaping Miriam he has something that I would call my basic weekend

He gets wasted

Whines and moans and begs for pussy but has to resort to whores

And ends up not getting it up at all and fainting at the sight of boobies

..fun times, fun times.

After that nonsense Kane is reunited with his old friends

..retarded

..satanists

…

……

……ahaha ..ahahaha

BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER! THIS IS THE MOST PRECISE DEPICTION OF SATANISTS EVER! NOTHING TOPS THIS ONE!

Oh how I was wrong! These guys have certainly been around satan worshippers! The resemblance is just striking! I could have never shown it better.

To be honest satanists aren’t even retarded. Retards are nice, calm and they love everything, but satan worshippers are like retards but without the calm and loving part. I am a great example of this!

So, the retardosatanists capture Kane and tie him up on a table for a dark ritual that requires butchering him and feeding him to a legless, armless, insane man who can’t say anything else than “ZUM TEUFEL!”

Apparently a hamster is not good and powerful enough for this, and belive me the Retardosatanist 1# has tried it

But then Miriam appears

Which leads to badly drawn gore

And FINALLY this damn thing ends

Goddammit this comic was all over the place. It can’t decide if it has a serious plot or not and the style jumps from this..

..to this..

..to this

But it was the first published comic for most of the cast, and I can see some promise in this. Gladly the boys will grow up and hopefully grow out of this kind of idiocy. Now there’s nothing wrong with dirty jokes or violence, there just honestly is a right way to do these kind of jokes. You know, a way that makes them funny.

Lordi sarjakuva was really funny even that it had more gore than this one, but it was so over-the-top and ridicilous that I didn’t even bother with warnings. Kane is a different  story, the jokes it tries to make end up flat and unamusing, and the “funny” images end up being just blatant offensive to the eye, causing maybe a forced smirk at best.

So.. now, if you’ll excuse me, I will go and have a manly sad moment. I am in desperate need of one after this comic. Besides I want to see if I can still use markers and ink.

Untill next time!

Sources:

http://www.elisanet.fi/timo.joela/satelliitit/julkaisut.html

As the Helsinki Comic Festival was just last week I..

Wait.

Oh.

It was at LEAST four weeks ago!

But nevermind that! I bought a shitload of good, bad and ugly comics for y’all to laugh, gasp and awe at and one of them is

..I can’t belive it’s been so many weeks. I seriously thought I could make a report RIGHT after the con, but.. THE BOOZE IS JUST TOO GOOD OKAY!?

But enough of my trademarked, drunken self-pity! I got a real treasure for you from the depths of the hell we call “finnmanga”

This comic is done by Maaria Laurinen and I have dissected her comics before(Shadow World) so I got quite high expectations for her next comic.. which is this here and now! Phantomland! And I have to admit, I was not let down by her talent.

But.

Let’s dwell deeper in this. Deeper than the seventh level of finnmanga hell! Let’s start this journey with the main characters.

The Tough Guy

And The Clumsy Apprentice

Those images were from the very first pages, and the characters already fell into their cliché niché’s. This can be bad or good depending on the length of the comic. For a short story stereotypical “bad guy”, “good guy”  type of cast is easy to get into and requires no lenghty explanations. Long journey to the depth of the character will force the story to get longer or off-focus. You cannot get known to a person in a week, hardly in a year and you cannot get into a character in one chapter or a short, action filled short story.

I heard Maaria planned this story to get rather long, the first chapter is just about 55 pages, and there is apparently more to come and she seems to be full of ideas. I mean.. look at this!

She seems genuinely excited about her own ideas, and that’s always a positive thing. If everything else fails, at least people will see how much effort the artist put into their work and how they gave it so much love.

So why so two-dimensional characters? Instead of them gaining more persona their two-dimensionality comes only clearer as you get to “know them better”. I hope their personality gets deeper in the later parts, but to be honest I highly doubt it, they seem to be based on the Generic Anime Stereotypes, and I am yet to see a person who has fought that off. When you draw with a certain style, you are also in danger of telling the story with a certain style.

At least she doesn’t have that “annoying, cutesy, big-eyed fluffy thing”-syndrome.

Or the watered down version of this syndrome “silly, young little girl who never shuts up”. The Apprentice might be quite close but not really. She is barely saved by the stereotype of a clumsy apprentice who is trying too hard.

And the Tough Guy is always drunk. Always. With drunk blush on his face, hiccups and all.

Oh yeah, and..

..sedatives

THIS GUY IS SUCH AN ADDICT! Why is he still on his job?? And why did they give this drunk an incompetent little girl to drag around!? Probably so they can stand back and laugh how they have driven their friend to mix pills with alcohol again because human misery is heeeee-laaarious~ and this guy is clearly not deep enough for their amusement. Damn! I’d be mixing drugs with alcohol too if I’d be one eyed, gene manipulated, mole-faced gangster who has to babysit a whiny, little, trying-too-hard kid while trying to kick ass.

The story didn’t really have much time to kick into a start in mere 58 pages. There’s not much time for any in-depth plotting as this comic has ALOT of action. Sweet, awesomely drawn and enjoyable action.

Honestly, this professional and steady use of line is so good that she could easily fake being a “real manga artist” from Japan, and she is damn straight real manga artist.  None of the other finnmanga artists even compare to her level of technical skill, and even that her characters are cliché and plot doesn’t seem to be anything unseen, she beats them at that too. You can follow the “finnmanga” tag so you can see this for yourself.

So what is the plot, exactly?

Apparently Tough Guy and Overenthusiastic Apprentice are part of some law enforcement gang called “Ghosts”. I have no idea why they are called that or what makes them different from any other guy in this comic except their title but..

No.. wait a minute..

Let me compare a bit

..Got it yet?

Well, ladies and gentlemen the difference between a “Ghost”, special, virus-carrying, superpowerful human and a regular human is..

..a mole on the either side of the eye.

DON’T ASK ME! I just.. what.. If these moles don’t shoot laser beams, open portals to terrifying realities or even store electricity like pikachu’s cheeks – what’s the point!? Why moles!? Are ugly, mole-faced people just considered dead in this universe or what’s up with that. I need some answers, this is too silly and random just to accept. Do they tattoo those on newly created “Ghosts”? Are they some sort of identification microchips? gahh!

At least that’s rather.. original. Though, I don’t really watch enough anime to come to any conclusions about that. I can pick up some of the major “movie clichés” and that’s it.

Like how the Tough Guy only gets pretty bruises that bleed prettily.

And at one point he goes all Alucard on bad guys, or for you non-anime folks, he goes all Joker on bad guys. You know.. that korny “FIGHTING IS SO MUCH FUN MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”-frenzy

..that scene was full of action and kinda cool BUT STILL! Korny. Yes.

And holey moley is that Maes Hughes!?

Gah! It’s like the evil twin brother of Hughes!! In fact, this whole comic is like some sort of evil twin of the Fullmetal Alchemist, she even has the same style to draw bristling, cracking or breaking objects than what Fullmetal Alchemist does.

But the ultimate korny thing that I just can’t forgive is one joke that was made during this comic. So.. here’s like this real tough, shade wearing big boss.

But he like.. hides something behind those shades!!

TEE HEE HEE THE BAD GUY HAS PRETTY EYES! Wow, you just did the most cliché joke ever being told in a..

…

Well.. that was rather.. awkward.

ONWARD!

Dispite all of the kornyness and the Fullmetal Alchemist – influence shining trough, this comic is a good read. I enjoyed the whole of it and stayed amazed and amused by the good halftones..

..cityskapes..

..and exaggerated perspective.

The plot and depth of characters wasn’t anything we’ve not seen before, but dammit the girl can draw and tell a story. There wasn’t a single “wait.. what just happened?”-moment, which is what killed the previous finnmangas dead. Every other finnmanga has failed to make a comphrehensive story, even that they had writers, inkers and the artist to fold it out as a team. I highly recommend you go read at least the first 18 pages at Phantomland’s own web page I will list on the sources under this post.

So.. as we near the end of this post..

..I should be nice and reveal that, yes indeed the Tough Guy and Overenthusiastic Fail Apprentice have real names.

And now, I’m out! I have to run fast before I draw more slash about Hawke

Sources:

http://amph.nipponfever.net/phantomland/

http://sarjakuvafestivaalit.fi/

Thanks:

My friends who could spot the anime clichés. I owe you a beer.

Wanna know where I've been?

Regardless of that.. I have a new post for you.

My life.

Hello! It is me, the Comic Dissector and I’m baa~aack!

I had a super-fun summer as a some sort of Odd-job Man working wherever I just got even one cent per hour and as you can belive I was very busy. So busy, in fact that I had no time for anything else than eating, sleeping and visiting toilet for various bodily functions.

Some people say that sitting in the toilet will give them the best ideas for whatever artistry they might practise and I find this to be true! Unfortunately I am just a pitiful, poor blogger so it might just be that I came up with the worst idea I ever had for a blog entry.

I will blog to you about finnish toilet paper mascots.

Let’s start with the lamest one

Flowers for your butt

Yeah, that’s.. pretty tasteful. A logo-like flower that completely avoids the idea of the intended use. People will love that. But they have one other product that bothers me.

An.. elephant?

..why is there an elephant!?

..um, okay I guess elephants are water-absorbent? But still – WHAT!?

At least Lotus is not using every single tactic awailable to avoid telling people that.. GASP! Toilet paper is used in toilet to wipe your butt! Who would’ve known?! Because the next mascots will be all about trying to hide the intended use. No matter what.

Or what would you say about this:

BUY TOILET PAPER! BAAH.

Yes, it seriously is the mascot for Lambi brand of toilet paper. They even named it to sound like a baby sheep! Oh my god it’s almost like Bambi! First Bambi’s mother dies, then he has downgraded to dress up as a sheep to sell toilet paper! Oh the world! The times!

If this doesn’t offend your delicate sensibilities then nothing will! Just look at it!

Could you?

Seriously. Who could. What kind of a monster could..

:(

..sigh

Okay, that was kinda sad. Let me tell you a rather appropriate joke.

I belive this joke to have russian origins by the way

Oh, by the way, try to guess what the next mascot is.

Go on.

…

Do you shed?

I’m not sure if this shows incredibly bad sense of humour or if it’s completely unintentional but it’s still incredibly hilarious. A squirrel!? Haven’t they ever heard any jokes? And why do people insist on using cute animals as toilet paper mascots WHY!?

To quote The Amazing Atheist:

“..in these(toilet paper) ads no one ever uses it in it’s intended purpose! Every time I see a toilet paper ad, it’s always with some idiot with this BIG fake smile on their big, dumb face, rubbing the toilet paper against them like “OH it’s so soft ahahaha!” like all we need toilet paper for is softness! We just have deficiency of softness in our house, we just need some sort of paper to rub on our faces to remind us how pleasant softness is. ..Personally, I use the stuff to wipe my ass!”

To be honest.. I’m really glad at least America doesn’t have the creepy mental image of using cute, fluffy animals as toilet paper. But it doesn’t end to that, oh no. That Serla-squirrel has to put up with much worse stuff than just being toilet paper.

Someone call PETA!

Who thought it was a good idea to use a fluffy animal as their mascot!? What is wrong with these people? At least they didn’t make the tissues SHAPED like squirrels and sheep, gotta give them that.. EDIT: oh no, sorry I was too hasty. Lambi toilet paper actually has pictures of sheep in it. I feel so violated.

But elephant is still not the first thing in my mind when I think of  “water absorbent”

Usually I see them in pink

Sources:

http://www.lambi.com/portal/fi/

http://www.serla.com/portal/suomi/

http://www.lotusfamily.net/fi/frontpage.aspx

The video “Hypocritical Mass” by TheAmazingAtheist on Youtube

Ps. Don’t you just love the “possibly related posts”?

Hi, I promised this post a bit earlier than how long it has taken now, but I have a reason for that

I only hit her once! that bitch! and "being drunk is not an excuse" oh please..

So it will be quite fitting for me to dissect a comic about the dark sides of alcohol right now. Sit back and learn people, this is important.

Even not drinking makes you see unicorns

Varjomaailma is this far the only finnmanga I’ve read that I actually like. It is drawn by Maaria Laurinen, written by Tomi Kontio and funded by Mannerheimin Lastensuojeluliitto(a child protection union founded by Marshal Mannerheim) A-klinikkasäätiö(Provides help to drug and alcohol-addicted people) and Elämä On Parasta Huumetta ry.(Also helps with drugs, as their name “Life Is The Best Drug” indicates)

Now what I really like about this is that it’s completely free, non-profit comic and you can read it in 3 different languages here:

http://www.varjomaailma.fi/luesarjakuva

English is in the bottom, and I encourage you all to read it and e-mail the link to your friends. Even if this wouldn’t be a delighteful “Please think about the chiwldruun!”-comic, it would still be a great read. In this dissection I try not to post alot of pictures from the comic because I’m doing my darnderst to make people go and read it.

Aren’t I such a bleeding heart human rights hippie?

I LOVE CHIWLDREN

In this comic a good cause has found a good writer AND a good cartoonist. Why the obvious wapanese style of the artist didn’t throw me into a frothing, insane dispise and utter disgust is because her style actually fits where it is used, and she can use it well.

You see, the previous cartoonists who’s work I’ve dissected were some nobodies who FINALLY got their chance to get on top because of their style. The publishers are thirsty for the bloo.. er.. money of the stupid teenage masses who spend all their pocket money like rabid monkeys to every anime-styled thing that might pop up, but all those anime-style things come from foreign publishers so the finnish ones had to take the first losers who just could poop out 100-pagers for their money-making machines.

Anime rabies is a scary sight to behold

Varjomaailma uses the style in a bit different manner. Yes, they chose an artist who has an appropriate “popular” style to appeal to the kids, but this time they hit an actual growing talent, because this artist does something what others just don’t do.

Research.

I mean, holy moley! She’s actually studying horses instead of tracing Sailor Moon! look!

Source: http://pencilmind.blogspot.com/2009/01/horse-and-i-were-dancers-in-dark.html

And THAT if something is remarkable and deserves million asskisses and not this “BAWWW! Someone commented to me on deviantart and said my style is copied! Give me pity and praise, not critique because I don’t want to grow as an artist!”-bullshit that I keep seeing around ALL manga and comic artists alike. It’s like cancer that’s killing the comics.

Oh god why is he naked oh my god why

I see alot of potential with Maaria, and what I read from her blog she seems very eager to draw a published comic of her own. She has started a project called Phantomland(finnish only, I’m afraid) and it looks pretty good this far. you can check it out at this link: http://amph.nipponfever.net/phantomland/

I first saw her comics at Finnmanga vol. 2  and because her storytelling is down-to-earth and there’s no fighting and big explosions and muscular men kissing their slave women I found it to be pretty disinteresting. It relied heavily on human relationships and mystery. But it was pretty.

..but I really can't forgive the anatomy and angle of that boy on the ground. Is he crushed by a steamroller or mangled by a bear??

Which brings us back to the topic I have hardly touched and what this entry SHOULD be about – the Varjomaailma comic. The story for it was written by a person who seems to have quite similar style to her so everything seems to click. It seems like the style that comes from her naturally.

Aww

Relationship drama or relationships anyway don’t really interest me in comics or movies, but this does not take away from the message. The comic is about how children could talk to reliable adults about their parent’s drug problems.. unless you didn’t already catch that from “Mannerheim’s child protection” and “Life Is The Best Drug”-sponsors and didn’t already read this and send to all your friends even that I told you dammit! No one listens to me here!

The visual image of her style also reminded me of my old teacher’s words about comic art “The most important thing is the character, then the plot, you don’t even need dialogue for a good comic and THEN comes the background. You don’t really need the background for anything else than showing where the characters are and what is happening with the plot, but someone who really wants to go trough some trouble to make the comic look good will draw alot background.. but not too much, and sit straight you fucking slouch! You will never be a cartoonist! NEVERRRRRR!!” so with my old, dear teacher’s wise words I can say that Maaria does alot idle background and it actually looks good!

Look all that shit and stuff! whoa man!

The background really sets the tone and makes this thing realistic and almost touchable. I don’t think anyone else could’ve done this project any better. It just works.

Also her use of expressions is remarkable and out of the range of cookie-cutter. They are really fitting and I didn’t see her using any of the stupidest clisches that the weeaboos usually do like animesweatdrop or the angryvein.

Never draw real expressions again!

But yes indeed I really need to applaud her for the expressions. They are very lively and realistic. Usually people make their “anime” characters have this one basic face, like their face cannot be drawn without the expression they are known for and my god is it annoying.

I just love the face of the hungover mother. Her face just screams "I don't care"

I don’t really have any gripes about the anatomy. The previous hideous jokes of comics had EVERY PAGE full of dislocated joints and broken bones but quess what the worst frames of this comic looked like?

They might be a bit awkward.. I think. Maybe.

Not bad.

The half-tones used don’t cause dot-disease either

Compare these two and you'll see what dot-disease means.

She reminds me a bit of a friend I have. She has set great standards to her art and is determined to meet them. It’s something that will burn artists out and usually make them especially vulnerable to critique – they tried their best after all and met their quality starndards so why is it not enough for others? I do not know this person at all but all artists who have put this much effort to something and I’ve known them have been exactly like I explained, so I could imagine that the greatest problem Maaria may have is her self-critique. This will cause alot of lag and wait for her audience and that will always cause problems.

But I’m eagerly waiting for her next projects and she’ll definately get my money.  Apparently she is on her way of making 50 pages of Phantomland for desucon. I will be there.

No pressure

I think that’s it. Don’t let your drinking go overboard, take care of your kids and read good comics. This will be the end of my finnmanga-theme and I’ll go pick something fitting for my mood for the next entry.

Booga booga

More of the previous artist, who did the “Vesi Oli Mustaa”(Water Was Black) I was told by a mysterious anonymous person that she has improved! So I went on my happy quest of snark and cynicism and opened the book that has a cover like this:

My hair is matted. And oh crap my belt's open again.

I have to say first.. I am on a very very mellow mood today. Let’s see if it affects the level of snark, shall we?

I was also singing along. Is that bad?

SO! This comic was done last year by Nina Von rüdiger and Johanna Koljonen.. but I have no idea what Johanna did. I quess she did the plot. Go figure. They did the comic under the collective name of Ms Mandu because.. you know, all big japanese mangakas do that too like Clamp. I think I have found the secret formula of instant mangaka and it is; halftones and nicknames.

I see Nina repeating the same mistakes she used to do in her previous comic like foreshortening

What just happened!?

General anatomy

GIANT HEADS! OH MY GOD!

Perspective

Now I understand why she does so much faces with no background.

..that chair there reminds me of this

Source: http://cnymagic.com/fun/Optical_Illusions/

And let’s not forget the rather bland expressions

You would never quess what situation these people are in.

Maybe the crying one starts to be a bit better but.. there’s no soul in those empty eyes. Nothing but the empty shell of a one-dimensional animu character who has never felt anything.. *sheds a single tear*

She has learned a whole new trick to show emotion though and it’s sparkle-eyes

All hail the hypno-animu!

Ahaha, oh they look adorable.. fragile and precious thing- wait no! Snap out of it! You can do this! HURNG!

She has also adapted one really damn weird thing.

You see, some people, when doing animu – try to adapt japanese habits no matter how stupid they may be, considering it makes no sense outside Japan to have them. Like drawing their comics “backwards” aka right to left unlike the western way of left to right.

But sometimes it just goes too goddamn far. Like when you live in Finland and you write ALL THE SOUND EFFECTS IN KANAS!

I don't have the slightest idea of what these are supposed to say. Not a slightest clue. And I'm not going to learn a new writing system just to read one badly drawn comic book.

To make you understand just how bizarre and pretentious this is, imagine this. Finland is a small country where a good knowledge about different languages is vital. Everyone knows english here(which is part of the reason I decided to use english with this blog) and we all are FORCED to learn swedish even that only 5% of Finnish people speak it and… that 5% all understand finnish because they were born here!

But japan? HAHAHA! You have to have a BIG junior high or internationally-aware university OR go to a special course to learn even the basics. Even russian writing system is used more here, this is ridicilous!

But what does the artist herself say about this?

She's not arrogant at all. Nope.

Really? I thought the whole idea of comics is to convey a message to the people in as simple and clear means as possible. Like.. extremely stylished characters, clear frame-order or understandable text! As a person who’s always struggling to write clearly I cannot possibly understand why someone would go trough such means to confuse their audience.

Also, her comment uses the “emperor’s new clothes”-analogy. If you cannot see it or fathom it, you’re stupid so everyone will try to go “well, yeah of course, I understood it without the text” to not look stupid even that it’s really not their fault that the comic sucks.

Of course at some parts it’s very apparent of what they are saying or what onomatopoetics are used

..I think

But because her dramaturgy and storytelling skills really are medicore, it becomes absolutely non-fathomable due to using marks totally obscure to the majority of Finland’s and the world’s population.

I have no idea what that thing in the first box is and I had to double-take before I realised that he slams the door. Wat. There's not even a panel of him running towards it! And the door doesn't even show in the background!

Why is it so hard to introduce the situation first and then go with it? Speaking of introduction.. she doesn’t do that. At least not with her characters. When I started reading this thing I was utterly confused because everyone looks the same and no one is introduced. Just try and fathom these!

Let me clear it up:

I'm not even sure myself

Who IS that black-haired guy!? Not once do they say his name during this whole comic!

..and great face for someone who’s being kicked on the stomach by knee. It’s not like a person would be.. you know.. horrified or scared or maybe even hurt in that kind of situation? That guy’s more like “IT’S OKAY, MY POWER LEVEL IS OVER NINE THOUSAND ANYWAY!”

I’m even quite sure that she has recycled the characters from her previous comic.

Recycling will save the earth! ..but you're doing it kinda wrong.

Unbelievable..

They have probably been recycling some half-tones too or is that.. dot disease I’m seeing!?

There's even stripes! You should get that checked, girl.

Nooooot smooth.

And should we talk more about the dramaturgy and storytelling? Oh yes, let’s talk more about that!

This page has to be one of the best her storytelling is capable of producing

A naked water spirit of kid-drowning sits on a tree, with the bag he stole from some kids because it had some lunch in it(drowned children taste kinda bland after few decades) and in it is a letter what gives him an idea to pose as a japanese student and move in with the Svenson family.

It would’ve been really nice if they would’ve shown that this letter is FROM THE JAPANESE KID or something, I got the idea that he just found her address. And why would a drowner-spirit want to pose as a japanese transfer student anyway.

The plot is so one-dimensional! It’s about junior high kids(13 years) and the bad guys are the ones who hate Japan(LOL) I’ve heard this being described to be a “Strikingly realistic portrayal of how cruel kids are in that age, running behind the latest fashions and mocking those who are not ‘in’.” but it’s just very bland. It only appeals to people because it’s so general they can relate. Relating is pretty much the cheapest way to sell a comic or a  movie.

The main characters are not very interesting and because they are not introduced properly it’s hard to attach to them, so when they get teased by the kids who hate Japan I felt very indifferent. And the white-haired boy main character is just an angry, “cool” bishie. Some sort of anti-hero.

Which reminds me of my prediction here

This is what I said in my last entry

And oh yes.. yes he did.

Oh my god! I’m better at predicting stuff than Nostradamus! On your FACE beard-guy!

neener-neener-neeeeener!

..to return to that comic page with the letter;

The main character’s surename is Svensson. And it’s pretty fucking corny in here.. it’s kinda like if a black person’s surename was Brown or Black or I might almost say Nigga(if someone wants to generalize and speak down about swedish people they will call them svensons.. we finns are finski in there in speaking-as-lower-terms)

But oh! Her first names are Soon Mi which translates straight as Ees Me. No wonder she gets picked at school, I’d fucking beat a kid calleed Ees Me Svensson into a bloody, pulsating pulp! How goddamn swedish can you get if your name means I’m swedish oh for god’s sake..

ba-dum-dissssh!

But it might be true she has improved a bit.. maybe. I mean, look! She didn’t miserably fail at perspective!

Not very extreme angle but hey! great job!

And I gotta say, despite the dot-disease I kinda like this face

It even fits with it's emotion into the scene it's taken from!

Also, she is starting to learn this “cool scenes”-thing. I think she understood that special effects are a good thing for people to stay interested.

I need to pee now

There’s even dramatic jumping!

Like a cat

But it doesn’t last very long untill our dear friend Wonky Anatomy comes visiting again

What is that pose supposed to be?

It’s like she referenced a picture of herself posing to the mirror, but because it was not full-body mirror and she couldn’t run towards it while taking dramatic pose-picture, she failed with the pose. That arm looks painful.

Also, because the eyes show under the hair she gets alot “stuck lines” in her work. Especially if there’s a guy with glasses she has to draw

Stuck line means two lines that go so near eachother that they obscure eachother. They don't even have to touch, just be badly placed. It's deemed to be a professional mistake, though.

Even someone as awesome as I am can do this mistake

See?

Aaaand for some reason the comic has these walls of text. I read the first of them but I am very anti-social and not much of a “snoop”(I have to make a friend of mine to dig out information about the people I talk about here. Bless him.) so reading something trying to imitate a diary of a 13-year old girl just made my brain hemorrage, eyes to bleed and decide I will not read any of those text walls from now on.

NOT gonna read those pieces of "fine literature" thanks.

Besides anything that strays from the plot is BAD for this comic. It’s barely comprehensible anyway!  I read these trying to find if they have anything to do with the plot and when they didn’t and I wasted all that time on them, got even more confused about the bad plot, and finally ended up just frusthrated.

What made me really angry was that when I had read this thing trough and got the very last pages, I find this

NOW YOU TELL ME WHO THEY ARE!?

There’s even their friggin blood type!(Just like reel animu gaiz!) why wasn’t this in the beginning of the comic!? Were they afraid of spoiling it!? Because everyone knows that the white-haired boy “Nix” is a friggin water spirit because 1# he looks just like the previous guy from her previous comic who was also a näkki-waterspirit! 2# “Nix” is Näkki aka drowning water spirit in swedish.

Please for the love of puppies and everything that’s fragile and precious, introduce your characters! I swear my hand on manga bible that it’s actually really important to do as the very first thing!

Looks like it’s time for the summary now. Here, let me condense that comic into one page for you

Now you know what it's like

In other words: if you want to be utterly confused and troughly frustrated while trying to read a badly drawn comic, buy this. But even then, get it second-hand, just to ease the pain of the poor person who bought this for 15€ Only well-done thing in this is the hands.

My next entry will be the first finnmanga I have ever read and LIKED it afterwards. I actually read it before most of these and I’ll finish my finnmanga-theme “month” with that one.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

SO! After getting lost into the woods in a drunken haze, my friend forgot to give me the comic I was going to dissect next. I HATE YOU! WE’RE NOT FRIENDS ANYMORE!

..just kidding I love you please come back dude <3

My plan was to take two Nina Von Rüdinger’s comics and snark them as a one chunk but.. this ended up better this way because every single page deserved their own dissection and redline. Honestly. Every page is absolutely terrible. Let’s start from the cover like always

"I'm either drunk or seductive"-look

So, this comic is about a näkki – a finnish mythologic creature who eats people by drowning them(think of a kappa, but with shape-shifting abilities and none of that pansy waterbowl-on-head-stuff) and a milf.. er.. a mother who loses her child to a näkki and they make a deal – she’ll give the näkki some *winkwink* if he helps to bring her child back. The näkki is delighted and they go on their merry way of badly drawn animu.

Now, there’s one silly thing about this.. other than it being “manga” that is made in northern Europe. This comic was said to be the “first finnish manga!” but.. the person who drew this, and the dude who did the script(Karin Muammar, apparently) both live in Sweden. Nina hasn’t set a foot on Finland’s ground in five solid years. I’m not really that strict if the comics I dissect are 100 kilomeres here or there but.. yeah. FINLAAAAAND! FUCK YEAH! Besides, this comic is based on a finnish poem so meh.

Let’s get on with this..

She went quite creative on the covers:

So mysterious and stuff

ghh.. khh.. hrrrrrrnnnnggghhh… I’m sorry, but I just have to..

ahh~

There. Re-did his terrible hair. I also wanted to do the skin but I don’t have the time to go trough this whole thing, because to be honest, this is so bad it needs to be completely re-done to the core. But honestly! Why doesn’t she understand that the top of the head should not be the part that is the most dark in shade! And the shadows on the skin make the guy look like he has a hole on his left chest muscle. The light source is all over the place!

Gladly the rest of the comic is b&w with half-tones because apparently half-tones equal instant mangaka. Instant mangaka! Just add water! And we got PLENTY in this comic here!

The “action” starts from Helsinki.. again. Just like in the previous finnmanga I dissected(Vartijat – Guardians)

HELSINKI. All there is to Finland! There is nothing else but Helsinki! ..and hobos shooting up heroin.

Hey! More hobos! And I don't mean those happy drunks in the background, just LOOK at that woman! She's on a pretty damn bad trip.

So what are they shooting up? Tears. I need to remember this when I run out of Smirnoff.

From the very start this comic makes no sense because of the bad storytelling.

The last 3 frames: "Taste - don't swallow.", "It's just water...", "And..."

Apparently this should show some deep and dark emotion but all I see is a woman who stares into the emptiness, sheds a single tear and then the artist got an epileptic seizure.

..and ..wait ..what!? Is her shirt wacuum-sucked to grab her breasts or something!?

OH MY GOD

Look at this!

lolboobs

How can a female artist not know how to draw breasts!? How is it possible!! Can’t she just.. look into a mirror!? Or maybe she did? Oh god the mental images.

This isn’t some little girl by the way, this lady should know better. The previous comic was made by some underage kid but try to quess the age of this one. Come on, I dare you.

She’s over 30 years old. At least 32. Female. And she doesn’t know hot to draw breasts.

There’s in fact quite a lot of things that she should just.. know better. Like perspective:

We're too cool to have perspective in our lives. Everything's black and white.

This is what no perspective did to this poor man.

And foreshortening:

There's just.. no excuse.

Oh, and take a look at this head:

"uhhh... I can barely lift it"

Oh great. The main character is a giant-headed, neanderthal midget with vacuum-sucked breasts.

Kinda adorable though.

She occasionally does something right. Her line is really clear and not shaky in the least(oh how I wish to have a hand that steady) and.. just take a look at this caaaaaar!

I looooooove this car!

Loooooooooove that car, man!

Also, this is pretty neat

That's kinda neat, dude.

That bird skeleton is so good that I wonder how on earth does she do screaming mistakes in human anatomy like this

her spine! HER SPINE!

I suspect the reason is the lack of research. She was forced to do the skeleton for this one scene, but I doubt she can build a bird on it(crow or magpie, I presume). She has copied herself a style, not studied herself a style, and this is a common mistake by all “manga” artists or artists in general. Like you can only become manga/cartoon/comic/animator artist if you draw only in one style and don’t study realism or colour theory. Kids nowdays. When I was young..

But yes, also this horse is a bit better than what I thought it could be

Is that kid stoned or scared? Come on, put some emotion in it dude!

The horse looks a bit like a llama, though. But I don’t care because llamas are fucking awesome.

Fucking Awesome!

See? We must appreciate the llama.

When she does things murky and dark enough to hide detail, she can do pretty snazzy stuff, but then again who can’t? Though this frame/half of a page really did an impression on me because everything is so white and suddenly.. this.

oooh

Shame it was unintentional. Everything is so white because the artist doesn’t shade for shit and uses the half-tones when she feels like it, apparently.

And MAN! This comic is hard to comprehend, try to tell me what happens here:

...

.....................

..because it really looks like everyone is just angry at this guy for playing violin. So angry that they strangle snakes. And there’s a giant fish.

In the middle of the comic, this appears without a warning:

yayyy

and it lasted for several pages. See that dumb, barely readable font up there with number “5″ in it? It’s supposed to tell you that a new chapter has begun. There’s a section in the beginning of this comic where’s page numbers for each chapter and the chapter names but.. THERE’S NO FRIGGIN’ PAGE NUMBERS ON THE PAGES! I’d have to count them myself to find that tiny “find Waldo’s chapter”-text. The first time I read this I didn’t realise this even had chapters, so when this chibi-comic suddenly started I thought the comic ended or something. It was so out of place.

achondroplasia - almost like chibi's anyway

One of the things I really can’t forgive the author for is doing the smirk

Oh great, a smirking Thogh Guy in "manga". How original. Will he also lick blood off his claws?

But at least she doesn’t make the nipples non-existent like most real manga does. Though I almost wish she did.

"You make my nipples hard, baby. Oh yeah!"

PFFFFT! Oh man.. now that's what I'd call a.. manboob.

By the way, here’s another quiz! Try to tell me what’s supposed to happen here

durp? derp? erk? huh?

Honestly, try to quess what happens.

…

That old dude is supposed to be a näkki in other form, and that young lad with manboob is him again, trying to lure that little boy to him but the boy ran away(Hmm… previously that same epilepsy-effect was used to convey emotion but now movement? Or was it also movement in the first time? Or is it emotion again!?). Why they don’t even show one morph is beyond me, it would be pretty damn awesome visually and also help to get the readers like “Ohh! He’s a shape-shifter” so you don’t have to make him shift in front of the audience again, they know what is happening after that.

There IS text telling that he shape-shifts but.. it’s an old finnish poem. Like hundred and over so it’s hard to follow. I can’t get my head around cartoon astists who rely on text and cut out all the cool stuff, like the morphing here. It makes no  sense, write a book if you’re not visual, sheesh!

Despite all the mistakes, the boobs, anatomy, perspective, bad storytelling, it really got to me that she Just Can’t draw facial expressions. It’s all the same “:o”-face.

Express yourself, woman!

Oh for frog’s sake! Are you even trying?! That looks like she put her hands together to look cute and is going “meowww” when in reality, she’s actually seeing a dead body hanging from a noose. Even that little white “blib” doesn’t add to her emotion because it’s barely noticable, and the eyes don’t match with the mouth in their “emotion”. Those are the basics of cartoon expressions, too! It’s not like the super-seekrit technique, it’s very widely known.

Remember, these are not just hand-picked scenes, all the pages are this bad. Every single one of them. Every frame. And the artist is over 30 years old. There’s just no excuse whatsoever!

At least this was read from left to right

the water was.. pee?

When my dear friend finds her way out of the woods, and into my cottage again, I will have Nina Rüdiger’s newest creation. I haven’t read it yet myself, so I have no idea what to expect.

What do you think? Has she.. improved? Or got worse?

To be continued..

jiggle jiggle

PS. Photobucket thought the man-boob was blatant porn:

lol