After going trough so many shitty femcomics which only revolve around wombs and tits, it is a good time to dissect a comic which was done by a woman but has nothing to do with actual femcomics. I doubt many would’ve guessed that the author of this one was a woman unless I mentioned it, and that’s great. It’s great when comics don’t rely on who or what the author is, or what the message is, but just on pure skill.. or sometimes, just pure lack of skill. Which category does Wurr belong to? We’ll find out.

The comic is about mutated wolfaboos living in a crater. I’ve noticed that any story about wild animals is nearly always about a group of animals who are migrating somewhere. Balto, Brother Bear, Silver Fang, Pride od Baghdad.. it’s always about going to a new area. It’s the same with Wurr. The dogs in this comic are all sparkleanimals and have some sort of superpowers or.. are terribly crippled. Eh? Okay, that doesn’t sound very sparkly after all. What kind of a sparkledog artist would draw actually, terribly crippled and ugly dogs?

Well, let me tell you, Wurr is drawn by E. Jokinen aka Wolfpearl, the biggest animal and creature bioloy nerd you’ll ever meet in your life. She’s practically obsessed with anything related to the subject, and it fucking shows. Every creature is drawn and designed with great understanding for anatomy and biology. She also uses it in her advantage in the plot and the world.

So, observe. Here is a few specimens of your regular sparkledogs.

Horrible colours, horrible anatomy, absoltely no regard to any sort of aesthetics which would be universally (or even locally) viewed as pleasant or well done. And they’re fucking everywhere. More info at: http://community.livejournal.com/anti_sparkledog/

But miss Jokinen?

No eye-raping colour, no stupid-ass designs, sometimes the trait of the character dawns on the reader after they think “Hey.. what’s wrong with this thing? It doesn’t quite make se.. ohgodithasnoeyesandthety’reonitstoung” Their mutations still seem awfully random. What kind of an animal would ever have eyes on toung, heat vision even if they’re mammal or in the case of one of the characters – a skill to shoot electricity? But then again – it’s fantasy, and  I think this comic makes even the craziest stuff work by finding just that fine line between fantasy and reality. I like especially how Iralbe works.

Some of the mutations actually mimic real-life mutations

Now how neat is that? Also, some who have unrealistic mutations have been made more believable by adding some real ones.

The “normal” anatomy is also stupendous, everyone looks just awesome.

Everything works. And you have no idea how rare it is that everything works this well. This comic is just a galore and party of awesome poses, movement, foreshortening and creative anatomy. Gladly, it doesn’t end to just everything looking good, there’s many points in this comic where the cripplement or special abilities of the characters become important or useful in a non-melodramatic way and bring the plot forward.

Speaking of which..

I feel like the plot didn’t really get to start with it’s full force yet. And I really love how it started.

Yeah, at first I was reminded of Watership Down and cringed at the ligth vs. dark theme, but then the perspective came on and.. I am intriqued. This is promising. And did it fullfill it’s promise?

As I mentioned, the story didn’t really get to even start properly yet, this issue was a mere introduction to the world they live in and to the characters. The story started nicely by rounding up one character at a time, so that we have properly time to get known to their special abilities, appearance and get used to their names.

Yeah, their names are your basic set of fantasy names, Iacar, Pyramos, Iralbe, Badjaw, Hafmar, Surama, Morri.. er.. okay, Morri probaby doesn’t count and the character with the corniest name – Nightclaw doesn’t even show up, ever. Goddammit, I don’t think I can complain about that, either. There must be something I can complain about!

Aha!

The characters act like your basic, silly teenagers. None of them seem somehow.. mature. There’s something slapstick-y about their behaviour. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s just some weird, melodramatic tomfoolery going on with how they react to things.

Reacting with “NOOOOOOOOO!” to bad news when others are calm, saying “I am calm” really angrily and then going on with a tangent of angry complaints in the background, korny “You belong to me now, strange pack! Aroo!” battle talk.. this is way too korny behaviour for critters who have been drawn this well and put to live on this well made world! Though I dunno, maybe there has to be this underlying comedic tone so it would not be too depressing to watch malformed dogs live in a dry canyon with almost no food? Oh god, I can see it now…

Eh.. yeah, maybe it’s good it’s not so excessive after all. But I am still a bit peeved.

Oh, and the main character, has a bad lisp and it can be read whenever he speaks main character, people!

This is bad karma, folks. It comes from whenever someone has complained that vampires speak too clearly to have such big fangs or that those aliens couldn’t make words with those tiny/humongous mouths. So now we have a main character who realistically has a lisp because he has way too big fangs. When I first read it in english, I was struggling to understand him and I doubted that it was a good idea to give him such a speech imparement. But then I bought the book with finnish speech bubbles and I could now understand every word without a problem. I wonder if english people have problems understanding his english. I can’t really think of Iacar without his problem, though. It really has become such a big part of his design that even if it’s a problem, it would not serve any purpose to change it.

I also cringed when this convo happened:

Again with the goddamn “I can just snap any minute and kill everything around me arooo! yiff!” cliche! It’s like Blackblood Alliance all over again!

God I hate stupid shit like that. But to be honest, in Wurr, it was not rubbed on your face and the guy with the madness did not snap and kill someone’s puppies or something equally retarded. In fact, Wurr manages to avoid three of my biggest dog comic pet peeves 1# “I am last of my kind and so special and pretty baww” 2# “YIFFYIFFYIFFMURRRR I AM PRETTY!” 3# God-awful puppies which look like fucking midgets, like in BBA. I was really glad to see Wolfpearl draw puppies. They weren’t particularly young, but it doesn’t really matter.

My last grievance is with the fight scene.

It doesn’t make much sense why it began. It would’ve been much better for the plot if it had begun in some other way than just someone snapping for no apparent reason. And somehow the fight scene wasn’t as dramatic as it could’ve been. It was almost comical in it’s chaos and randomness.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite THAT silly, but it was near!

I think the problem with that scene was actually just the “camera shots” as everything was pictured from quite far away and so that every body part was visible. There also wasn’t any full-page screens. It might’ve needed something like this:

Extreme closeups, extreme angles, you know the deal. But the action was really good anyway. The movement lines were awesome and things just went swoosh! swish! bang! I think she went for clarity rather than drama.

Wolfpearl really has the technique and skill for an awesome adventure. Somehow, I feel like this is not quite yet her masterpiece, but it won’t be long until the story kicks in full force. At least I have high hopes and expectations for this comic. What really impressed me in this comic was the real media, BITCHES! The whole comic is made with ink and pencils. Suck on that! Also, somehow I am left feeling like the comic has not enough detail. Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing, it is incredible to read, everything is so detailed and fine. But, I feel like she could do even better with A3 sized canvas rather than A4. But then again, it would take much more time and the comic is really so great right now that it would not be worth it to slow it down.

Eh, well that wasn’t so bad at all.

This is so fucking weird, I actually read a dog comic and loved it. The good sides it has overpower the bad sides, which really aren’t quite that bad to begin with. I think this would be what indians would call a “good day to die” because if there’s a good dog comic in this world, I probably am not needed anymore. Unless I can convince Wolfpearl to start drawing huge dog pecks and turn all the dogs into huskies and akita inus. Still, I am not sure if she has managed to make the korny moments into anti-korniness because of the good world and top-notch art or are the korny moments dragging them down, instead.

All in all.. this was a great read and I recommend it for everyone who loves animals or good art.

Sources:

http://wolfpearl.deviantart.com/ – you can read the whole comic here! Go read it and give her money.

http://www.theblackbloodalliance.com/

Sparkledogs found trough http://community.livejournal.com/anti_sparkledog/

Ps. The greatest picture I’ve ever seen:

http://wolfpearl.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d32zhhn

I look exactly the same when nerding around B) NERDS UNITE!

Sssooo.. let’s get it on.

I wish I had taken courses in feminism or been a bit more interested in women’s rights because I feel rather lost in some of these. But then again I never expected to become a fuck-ass of a critic who writes a stupid-ass blog about how much comics suck and thus happen to find a bunch of comics made by angry feminists and idealists who are much more educated in women’s right issues than I am. Goddammit. I honestly don’t know how to analyze some of these because I feel like I should make a header about how women have risen from the cold hand of oppression and how it affects our comic culture made by our beloved mothers, sisters and girlfriends.. But to my advantage allot of these comics are not femcomics but merely comics made by women. And belive me, there is a difference. And I will concentrate on that side.

So, what is a femcomic?

Comic drawn by a very crude artstyle, and the subject matter is usually so personal that you will always be met with the angriest response if you dare to critisize it, like you said “Your baby is ugly” instead of “You don’t draw very good”. The subject matter is usually either some sort of human rights issue or..

..having your first baby OH GODDAMMIT! If people would just learn to draw BEFORE drawing their babies!

Oh god I am so inconsiderate..

But seriously sometimes The Thing about a comic is honestly the story and not the art. That is unfortunately not the case when a baby is born, because that happens at least 490,000 times per day. It’s baffling if you think of the statistics and what it means in comics, so many new mommies but the ones with the crudest art styles actually want to draw about this? Why!?

So yeah. These comics are made for people who make babies. I love kids, I really do. I find kids adorable even if they are screaming and complaining, I want to be a great father some day, allright. But I just don’t fucking get these comics. All I can gather from this one is that it’s drawn like it was made by the artist’s newborn and not the artist herself. And all the while I feel like a bad person. God I hate this..

All comics by Katja Tukiainen are about her life and things close to her. She got quite allot of praise when she published a comic about her childhood and the.. sex life of her grandma. Yeah, you read me right.

And the games she used to play when she was a kid

..yyyeah. Um. Eh.

Her comics contain incredible amount of pee and sex stories, and when told with that kind of style.. it’s horrible. But then again I just happen to have a personal hatred for art styles like these. They burn right into my soul and ignite a burning flame of hatred and no amount of babies will help me to calm down. So in all fairness her comics really strike into certain issues very well – she shows to her readers that people start being ashamed when they are taught into it by adults and learn there’s nothing to be ashamed of only when they are senior citizens.

Or that’s at least how I’d like to interpreter it. With her artistic skill she just might’ve tried to say that she likes sprinkles on her icecream or something. I can’t really even read her horrible handwriting. Her travel diary comic really appealed to me, though. It was hard to read, messy, ugly.. but travel diaries are my personal favourite things to read so eh.

So yes, she only draws about things that will surely get an audience. Cheap, ingenious or accidental? I vote on accidental. Still, even though she might not be the most amazing artist, I would let her adopt me any day.

One of the similar artists is Kati Kovács. Crude art style and lots of piss, bodily functions and swearing.

And I fucking love all her work. Her artstyle is crude and awful but she makes it work and uses it for her advantage! Vihreä Rapsodia was incredibly interesting reading experience.

But her true masterpiece is (imo) Karu Selli – Carou Cell, though in finnish it is a word play as “karu” means deserted, abandoned, rough “selli” is a prison cell but “karuselli” is a borrowed word, a carousel. And it was incredible how she made the comic follow it’s  name so cleverly, it was a very creative play with abstract concepts. The story is about an overweight woman in a childless marriage who needs to find herself. Sounds boring and only for fat, old ladies but damnit, it was so clever and interestig that even I got something from it.

Unlike most femcomics which can only be understood if you are a woman, Karu Selli is a masterpiece which will open the way the main character thinks for everyone who reads it. In fact, the reason why it is so is probably because Kati is not a femcomic artist but just a woman who happens to draw comics about women’s issues and is a woman. Though she really fits the description of a femcomic artist – wheter she likes it or not.

There’s also some femcomics made by people who are educated by artschools. Or there’s at least one “proper artist” around the circles.

This comic seemed at first like a collection of teenage whine.

Yeah, listen to your father. Go to school. What’s the big deal?

She also drew a comic of how the father tells her how she looks horrible with the piercings and weird hairstyle, and.. eh. My father has told me the same things. “Cut your hair, hippiecommie”, “Don’t pierce your ears, you look gay”, “If you’re going out with those on you’ll get your ass kicked” And he was absolutely right. He just warned me because he loves me. Stop getting traumas when your parents warn you, people That’s their job, that’s what they do. They love you! Sheesh..

Then there’s some feminist rage and blah blah blah good god. She also claimed that women never yell nasty suggestions at young men and other weird shit. Or am I really the only guy who’s been hit on  by drunk cougars? Nevermind..

The best thing I got out of this comic was the striking “you should not judge until you have met” kind of random meetings the artist (or her friends??) has encountered. A meeting with a young, drunken and broken man is my favourite. I don’t want to spoil it for you, if you want to see it, read it.

You’ll just have to read trough pages and pages of general and feminist whinage to get these jewels. And please for the sake of all llamas and kittens in the world don’t get me wrong here. I think she speaks the truth, but the way she does it is wrong. The manner she brings all this into the readers knowledge is angry and bitter. There’s just anger, yelling, bitterness, hate.. we’d do with much less of that. And yeah, I.. er.. sense the irony of me saying that in this character and why, yes it does burn and sting quite alot thanks for asking.

But if you think Jää is an angry comic..

Oh good god.

When the action starts I feel like I am watching a summer play by a local suckass actor’s group. I can just hear by my mind’s ears how they mumble half the words, or overact and have this high-pitched, nervous voice of a first-time actor. I can’t put my finger on it, but something makes this scene look uncanny and unnatural. Maybe it’s their lines, I mean.. just read them.

Why is it that whenever finnish people do comics or movies in particular there’s always this unnecessarily angry person? Who behaves this way? Augh!

But the real downer is the subject matter. Oh my what will a feminist comic’s subject matter be?

…

Oh fuck. Seriously? Rape? I can see where this is going, we will be introduced to all sorts of forms of female empowerment!!

Female empowerment with public shaming!!

Female empowerment with mob justice!!!

Female empowerment with even MORE MOB JUSTICE and PUBLIC SHAMING!!!

YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH! EMPOWERMEEEEENT!

That’s right girls, don’t call the police. Blackmail, shame and let the mob do the rest. We got the police and justice system just for show anyways. They’re there just eating donuts with mämmi and putting on silly wigs, the good old-fashioned mob justice is the right way for all your justice needs.

What the fuck.

Oh, Ps.  we just changed the law and made the rape sentences longer, tougher and being drunk is no longer an excuse for the rapist to get a free ticket out of jail. Maybe the law peeps read this comic hah.

And as a side notice..

Public park = public toilet

Stealing someone else’s copymachine for use by pretending you’re the new cleaner = AWWRIGHT!

Oh, and men can’t be feminists. Or okay, they can but they probably just want to dominate the conversation and have all kinds of wrong ideas and opinions.

I don’t think I have ever hated the whole cast of a comic this much. They are a bunch of thieving, aggressive drunktards with no manners. Or rapists. What a bunch of weiners. But, surprisingly, this was not a bad comic. Not bad at all. It was drawn well, it went smoothly, the text was clear and neat.. but oh god the story, characters, lines and content. It was nothing more than a wet daydream of a revenge-filled mind.

All feminist or human rights issue comics are not as dark and immature as Tuuli ja Myrsky, though. Some actually  use humour for their advantage, but unfortunately they do it so that only the target audience understands the jokes or even finds it funny.

Though, I’ll admit, it was pretty funny when one of the characters imagines what kind of a senile horndog she will be when she’s old and hospitalized.

Haha! Fucking horrible.. I love it. And to be honest, I’d rather feel like an outsider when reading a comic made by lesbian to lesbian or from gay to gay than feel like a fucking idiot while reading yaoi made by stupid teenage girls or idiotic lesbian fantasy fanfics by way too horny males. I can’t get into them properly when I feel so embarraced for the author. I know, there’s something seriously wrong with me.

I also just realised that even the straight ones draw comics where I feel like an outsider. And I just have to mention one good example of this – Anne Muhonen. She used to do this comic “Ada” which was about this metahead girl who lived pretty mundane girl’s life. But somehow those comics were not bad at all. I got them, and at times they kinda spoke to me. She did not draw bad, even that her style is a bit naivistic but it doesn’t matter when she is such a good storyteller.

Ada is very slice-of-life kind of comic, and I’ll admit, I love slice-of-life as long as it is not mumblecore or shit like that. And Ada is not shit like that. And I guess I can relate to it because I’m quite a metalhead myself. All of the characters are nice, realistic and.. quite normal like they “should” in this genre of comics. I can forgive the clumsy art style for that, and it is not really even near as bad as Katja Tukainen’s style. At best slice-of-life shows how incredibly interesting creatures human beings and our strange social behaviour and interaction is. Ada gets a bit too personal and main-character-centered to get into that depth, but it was still lovely.

But then.. she had a baby

dun dun DUNNN

All the characters are still very real and likeable, they are real people after all. The art style is still the same, but.. what used to be an artist who did long stories with a plot and character development has now downgraded into a cartoonist who makes one strip per one page, characters floating in white void.

Damn you babies.. damn you.

But not all comics are about babies and feminism. Some are about actual, normal life of everyday people. Thanks to Vuodatus we got plenty of those and some have even got published, like Jupu.

She’s pretty fucking hilarious. I nearly died when I read this book and got to the part where she theorizes if a dog-like man would be the best boyfriend ever, and this image comes up:

I’ve seen this joke made many times before but this is the first time I ever laugh to it.

You can find her comic here: http://jupu.vuodatus.net/ so I won’t dwell into it any more

Another good one who did a self-publish is Noora Kivisilta

She writes a comic diary about her life, just like Jupu and she is just as hilarious. Maybe even more hilarious? She also writes more about the sad and silent but happy moments of her life unlike Jupu. She draws about her depression, stress but also  moments she found striking, like seeing a wild mouse climb a straw and some moments with her girlfriend. All this doesn’t take away from the fact that her style is more like a comedy, and only makes it more entertaining.

I’d totally fall for that, too.

You can find her here: http://moskiittoradio.vuodatus.net/

All of these comic diary things are not comedy. Some are actually trying to get a point across or something.. but.. eh.. why is it always the eco-hippies who got something to say? And do it by being annoying?

Classy.

This comic has some pretty retarded and overused imagery which tries to cleverly play with abstract concepts. And fails. I’ve seen the metaphor of driving a car being like living your life to fullest at least million times before, and done much better.

There’s also some idiotic comic about a poor person and a rich person arguing. Which, again, I have seen a million times before and done much better.

Good god blah blah blaaaah. But I have to admit, I really liked the one where she misses her dead rat and realises she just has to let it be because dead cannot be brought back.

This has been done a million times before also, but I quess I’m just biased.

OH! I think I finally found my soft spot! Maybe I can use this to understand Katja Tukiainen’s work!

This totally works! I totally get the comic now! ..kinda ..except for all that “You were inside me”, “Cut the perineum” and “Breastfeeding has become part of my identity”

Okay, I’m totally fucking lost and it’s still drawn horribly. But I made a new discovery just now.

She really draws her baby well. That’s deep. She really goes up in skill when she draws with love <3

Good god I speak like a pansy already. And I totally got de-railed. Back to Hanna!

She is proven to be a vegan, so I don’t really get the point of this comic she had in her older self-publish.

A child complains that he wants meat. The parents are vegan. What will the parents do?

Yyyeah..

Is this comic for veganism or against veganism? I thought vegans like to promote their diet and not.. whatever she is doing here? Maybe she’s trying to wake up vegans and make them see what kind of monsters and asses they are when they go insane about it and only scare and quilt-trip people around them. I can just hope it is so.

But not all femcomic artists are annoying hippies, or draw only about women’s rights and babies. I was really surprised when I read the comic by Reetta Niemensivu. It is very girly, allright and it is a love story, but it was rather nicely done. I can’t really complain.

Yeah, she can draw allright. She can also tell a story, and use frames and space to her advantage.

The story is really sad and in it’s own way, very dramatic. It is also about very regular people, without any nonsense.

My first thoughts after reading it were: Why are women so fucking obsessed with the old centuries? Why does every goddamn love story have to happen somewhere between 1800 and 1900? Is no proper dental hygiene so fucking awesome or what?! What’s wrong with running water and, you know.. good life? Also, it really struck to me how it was so ridicilously finnish every time I see a finnish love story, it’s something really fucking depressing. Why won’t finnish people love happily? sheesh, cheer up.. Then I read the back of the comic. The comic is actually based on the life of her grandmother. And oh boy did I feel fucking stupid.

This comic would probably be a really good read for people who like romance. It didn’t really work for me because it just left me feeling sad and I don’t particularly like feeling sad. Of course a really good romance story probably works even for people like me, and I know I’ve cried like a baby when I’ve watched some movies and actually felt a little flutter of a heart, but they were never for movies where people would usually feel those feeligs so.. eh.

Snivel.. oh Willard and Ratatouille. You masterpieces..

As a side note; why are nearly all of these comic covers either pink, yellow or orange?

Ridicilous.

There’s still one woman who I’d like to mention here as a great fucking artist. Seriously, she is the reason Finland was once a great comic country. She was an incredible success and I love her work.

Tove Janson and her Moomins

She was really only half finnish as she were sweden-finnish, so some might complain she is not a “real” finnish comic artist but I have never understood this mentality. Also, the Muumi-Yhtiö resides in finland and her grandchildren still live in Finland. At least one of them, I quess. I’m really bad at gossip, sorry

But truly, we all should aim to be such artists as Tove was. She was absolutely amazing, her work was stupendous and no one doesn’t even seem to try and be like her. We need someone who is like Tove, we need good comics with vast, imaginative worlds, creatures and loveable characters who still seem so real to the readers. I feel the finnish femcomic or really the global femcomic scene is keeping some people down. It’s all about babies, human rights, blaming others and drawing bad. Where did all the Toves go?

I promise I will make an entry about Tove one day, the comics are just so pricy that I absolutely cannot buy them all fast enough, and they are incredibly wanted in here. I have hard time getting my hands on all of them fast enough.

But once upon a time Finland’s whole cartoon world was supported by one woman. I wonder where all that inventive, imaginative power got lost to. And this applies to all genders.

Sources:

http://jupu.vuodatus.net/

http://moskiittoradio.vuodatus.net/

Ps. Happy holidays. I usually make an entry in one day, only sleeping, eating and going to the loo untill the entry is ready but now I was so busy I had to make this in 3-4 days. Appreciate it. Also, I have no time to send this to my “editor” so  please enjoy all the spelling errors.

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Or to be honest, this should be “At it for the first time” as this is apparently her oldest published work, which I should have dissected years ago,  but I was not able to get my grubby hands on it at the time.

Totally not Ginga Nagareboshi Gin

Phew.. so after not being able to kill myself despite all my effort (oh the effort..) I seem unable to not update my blog. Besides I’ve been having these angry and impatient e-mails and comments.. thanks guys, you have given me the love my mom never gave to me :’| snivel..

So. Long, long ago, when Vartijat was only a mere script rejected by all capable artists (capable to run away and hide, that is) Elli was drawing Shunkaashuutou, and when she published it and won some colouring contest which Tammi cleverly put up to lure unsuspecting victims to draw some precious money making finnmanga for them. She “got” the job. But really Shunkaashuutou was what caught the attention of the publishers. Elli was able to do manga-like comic and hundreds of pages of it. Perfect victim. The horror had begun.

So what is it that caught the eyes of publishers so well?

Dog pecks.

Hundreds of them.

They even show trough thick fur! I’ve heard about giant eyes that show trough multi-coloured hair but this right here is ridicilous! Screw the anime eyes and magically transparent hair we got some doggy moobs here, people! Doggy moobs!

This is honestly The Ultimate Ginga Fantard Test. If you see someone who draws dogs with huge manboobs, that dude is a Ginga fan. I should know this, I used to draw like that when I was like.. nine and Ginga was the most awesome thing since Turtles and Swamp Thing. There’s also more signs to look for when determining how fantardish and affected by this style someone is and for our luck.. this comic has ALL the signs! Let’s educate!

Body type with curled up tail and pointy ears

Those goddamn expressions and WHY ARE THEIR MOUTHS ALWAYS OPEN?!

And my personal favourite.. tree-jumping dogs

She even uses the exact same phrases they use in the show! I remember this line

If someone could please tell me what episode it was on I would be grateful. I remembered it was on the episodes where the pack arrives to the homelands of Iga and Koga dogs, but I watched all those episodes, didn’t find it and wasted some precious time.

I also loled when I noticed the main character gets very similar scars to the main character of Ginga Nagareboshi Gin

As you can probably see, I’m a Gin fantard, too. I fucking love that show. To be honest,  I feel like it is the only dog comic/show which was actually good. I have honestly waited all my life to see another dog story like this one and re-watching these episodes make me feel sad because I know I will never see anything that good again. It’s like wathcing Monty Pyton and then trying to laugh at other jokes, it’s just not the same, nothing will top that genious. So yes, I do understand why some people are so influenced by this. In my opinion, the only movies or books which had been able to rise to the same level as Ginga, are Watership Down (the first book I cried for like a little, frilly-pantied fag) and Happy Feet. They don’t even have any dogs in them!

Every kid who tries to copy Balto, Ginga or Lion King lies flat like Ben squashed by a rock, like Steele falling off from a cliff, or Timon sat on by Pumba and I think it’s incredibly weird. Let me tell you why by making a point.

When Simba’s father dies, when the penguins all dance together in a group scene that rivals LOTR, when there’s a death of a comrade in Ginga and.. goddammit this scene from Watership Down!

I don’t know about you, but I’m in chills and goosebumps and on the verge of tears.. even that I know he will be fine! And the only thing keeping me from bawling like an infant with a wet diaper is that I’ve already done it about fifty times during the time frame of what.. fifteen years?! And I know this to be the case of any influenced artist. They fucking love their influence and even after years and eras they still feel the same attachement and could drive their fuel and inspiration from these movies and books forever.

So how come they end up making such shit!? I mean.. goddammit if I see one more fucking comic with Dogs vs Cats theme I will go insane. There’s one comic which shows perfectly the influence of Lion King and Balto together and I’m sure most of you have already quessed what I’m talking about.

Source: http://www.theblackbloodalliance.com

The fucking Blackblood Alliance – epitome of all Balto and TLK comics that ever existed. Everything looks like Balto and everything sounds like Lion King, it even has the Cats vs Dogs theme which TLK started*

It does what every other hugely influenced comic does, it relies entirely of clichés, character stereotypes, mumbo jumbo magic/beliefs which don’t bring anything to the story and it starts by assuming we will immediately side with the “good guys” without telling us anything about them. Or telling us only that they are peaceful and persecuted, thinking it will be eough to make us decide that we care about the characters when they die on the first fucking scene.

I think it does actually work sometimes, but you know why it works? Because the audience has seen the same movies or read the same books that the artist was influenced by, so they have a ready consensus or a ready audience who are drawn to the comic for it’s similar story, similar style or other superficial similarities. This of course falls flat when the general audience is found and the ones who actually want more than mental masturbation over the artist’s muses are lured in. Unfortunately by this point it’s too late as the fan-audience has already bloated the artists ego and no matter how much talent they have, they cannot escape from their influences to become something greater.

This comic has already been torn to shreds by other snarkers and critics a million times so I won’t go into excessive detail. If you want to read more snark about BBA you can read it here: http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Kay_Fedewa even that I really don’t agree with everything in that article, it is funny, especially the parody comic with renewed dialogue. Though it is funny only after you read the whole original story first.

So, artists cannot become anything greater than copycats unless they are able to take off their blindfolds and surpass their “masters”.

Shunkaashuutou is actually so unoriginal that it rips off stuff without probably even meaning to do so, but the effect of Naruto is especially noticable.. besides Ginga, of course.

Oh, there’s some Keyblade and WoW  in there, too. All of those are not rips imho, but just screamingly generic.

Now this would not be so bad if she had grown out of these already, but she has not. I’ve seen some not-great ginga ripping artists overcome their idols and start researching on anatomy, wildlife and colour theory (for example DA artists like Yoruko, even that she seems to only be able to draw side profiles, Sashatiainen even that everyone she draws is so angry and IsisMasshiro.. lol look up “Battoga Fail”) but nowadays Elli.. or Erwil as the DAtards know her, has been doing more comics on her free and not so free time. One of them I absolutely loathe because.. well, just look at it!

COLOR THEORY! FOR GOD’S SAKE THINK OF THE POOR COLOR THEORY! I promise to think of my poor capslock when people stop doing this kind of horrors to the poor, poor color theory. What has she ever done to you?! Huh?! HUH?! This comic also was nearly impossible to follow and.. ugh. Just a mess. Elli doesn’t seem to have enough patience or interest to complete one whole story, even that she clearly loves her characters and can’t stop telling stories about them. All of her comics what I have showcased here actually have the same main characters, but in vastly different settings.

Shunka is her Most Precious story at the moment, and it is apparently a vastly bettered Shunkashuutou. It starts out just like any other wolfdogcomic

Dogs are fighting cats and you are just brought into the middle of the situation and you should immediately root for the wolves. Goddammit. If someone would make a comic about bland gray sabre tooth cats with mange who kill off colourful and dumb wolves, I would pay 100 euros for one copy of it, just out of spite. The story has to be compelling so that the sabre tooths actually have a reason to kill the wolves and art up to the quality of passable but.. you get my point. I would pay for that.

Here’s the recipe for the ultimate dog comic: It starts with a fight, then someone important dies and one dog has to tell the alpha about the losses but the alpha is way too elegant and noble to be angry, then they go in search for the ultimate warrior who is too awesome for his own good and everyone persecutes him because he’s too pretty and powerful :’( Then they journey trough massloads of ridicilously fast changing enviroment – they walk trough desert to rainforest (with dragons!) to mountains to snowfields to a pretty forest where everyone has the final battle. Oh, and everyone must be super-random and silly. And this comic would never get completed. It’s visual image should be like this:

But after a clumsy start this comic is not actually that bad. Elli has progressed immensely since Shunkaashuutou and oh god Vartijat. This time the characters are much less cookie-cutter and she seems to have actual story going on. Even Shunkaashuutou in it’s lengthyness (about 100 pages? 130??) was just a collaboration of nonsensical comics which had the same characters but didn’t seem to connect to eachother very well or at all. But now I was actually so into the fight scenes of Shunka that I couldn’t go to the loo untill I had read how the battle enfolds. And damn, just check out this scene!

Those buildings are fucking great! That old guy has a great expression! I never would’ve expected to see this great scenery after what was in Vartijat. I’m starting to get confident that it was the project of Vartijat which killed every ounce of Elli’s creative forces. When she’s doing something she loves to do, it looks good. But I also suspect she relied heavily on references on this page – which is good and I hope she keeps it up in regards of animal anatomy.

But not trough these tutorials..

http://erwil.deviantart.com/art/Canine-Teeth-Tutorial-1-43139768

http://erwil.deviantart.com/gallery/#/dppr04

EDIT// Baaawwwwwwwwleeeeteed

Backup files:

http://i467.photobucket.com/albums/rr34/finnishcomicsdissected/Canine_Growl_Tutorial_2_by_erwil.jpg

http://i467.photobucket.com/albums/rr34/finnishcomicsdissected/Canine_Teeth_Tutorial_1_by_erwil.jpg

That’s absolutely.. wha.. you should not be giving out advice on this!! Oh god my pet peeve – bad tutorials! Lemme fix a few things..

I know in Ginga and Disney movies they bring out the impression of snarly expression by drawing lumps and bumps, but that’s not how it works in real life! This is prime example of what happens when you learn your anatomy from cartoons. Cartoon taxonomists.. pshah! What next? Cartoon physicist? “Hey, let’s give this rabbit an anvil, it should give us enough momentum to investigate the Higgs particle!” But on Elli’s defense.. these tutorials are rather old.

The characters and story still feel empty and the influence of Naruto is overpowering the influence of Ginga, but it is very apparent that she has matured as a person as well as an artist. This is not bad. She also seems to have become very.. self-aware.

Aerodynamics haha! Great!

But this was absolutely the best part for me:

This expression says so much! Anger, confusion, fear, alertness. Absolutely great. She has gone far from those canned, basic anime expressions, these start to look like living beings and not puppets that get smilies drawn on them.

Also, while browsing Erwil’s gallery today I wondered for the longest time why she has disabled commenting.

Oh my~ I know I’m scary and all but blocking me when I have never commented or even watched her? I.. am so flattered. But seriously now folks,  I am rather nice at the DA because I’m not able to pull off my gimmick when doing something as social as Deviantart’s system is. This tickles me pink.

Also, I got this peculiar link from one generous commentor not long ago:

For you non-finns: Sangatsu Manga is searching for a new artist for the Vartijat-comic. I have no idea why the fuck are they still trying to revive that piece of scrap paper, if I were them, I would start a whole new comic project or at least re-write that comic and start over. So they will change the comic’s style for the third time?? Unbelievable! I hope they have learned something from working with poor Elli. She’s doing so much better without this project.

So? Who wants to sell their soul for Sangatsu Manga? Maybe I should apply for shits and giggles? Nevertheless, this will be very interesting no matter what the outcome. I will wait with great interest but no anticipation.

I’d also like to give some advice.. Take an experienced artist! Or if the artist is young, give them more time! See what Elli could do when she had some time? It’s much better! I’m tempted to even say it is even marvelous! Manga as a style has not integrated to our comic culture yet. American style and French style has already integrated so that this generation right now can do really good comics with it, take for example Sarasvatin Hiekkaa (french style) or Saniaislehdon Salaisuudet (imo american style). To “integrate” manga style, you will need a big group of people who have assistants and talent. This is not easy and fast money, this is evolving, this takes time and I hope there will be chanses for the artists to do just this.

To wrap this up..

We have a sort of consensus, a memepool of ideas, comics, movies and books which we are supposed to be influenced by! But the meaning of this influencing is to enrich the memepool with even better stories, think of it as an evolution of culture or ideas. I don’t suggest there’s some sort of Ultimate Story which we will achieve at some point, I’m saying that the memepool is alive as long as we make good, original stories and continuosly surpass our influences so that our culture and it’s stories become something greater, something to be remembered and re-told for centuries.

Sources:

http://www.theblackbloodalliance.com/

http://www.fruitless.eu/manga/shunkashuutou/shunkashuutou.html

http://erwil.deviantart.com/

http://www.sangatsumanga.fi/uutiset/37

Thanks:

Miisa for all your trouble and anime expertism.

Also thank you, who is not amused, you know who you are. I am so sorry <3

Notes:

*Even that I said TLK started the Dogs vs Cats trend as we know it, most people fail to realise that hyenas are actually not related to dogs more than cats are related to bears, but hyenas looking like dogs in the movies was enough to start this. They also acted exactly like dogs do in Disney movies. Hyenas are their own order, hyaenidae which is much closer to civets than anything else, but if we would have to choose, they would be much closer to felidae than canidae.

Ps. WTF is that “like” button? Apparently even I can press it. I feel awkward now.

]]> http://finnishcomicsdissected.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/shunkaashuutou-ms-puukangas-and-influences/feed/ 86 Comic Dissector kansi 1shroos copy 2dawgboobs 2dawgboobs2 2dawgmoobs3 3signs_tail 3signs_faces 3sings_trees 3birds 3signs_scar bba_promo_cover_poster_by_kayfedewa erwil_naruto erwil_sessh kitsune_markings figaro_kai 4shunkarips naruto_kyuubi2 lepardi Loquenahak Other_Side_04_by_erwil Shunka_01_by_erwil pg1web_smaller 6wolfsangst Shunka_31_by_erwil caninetut 5tut Shunka_56_by_erwil face oopsies magga copy gbye copy http://finnishcomicsdissected.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/selling-your-soul/ http://finnishcomicsdissected.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/selling-your-soul/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 17:17:38 +0000 Comic Dissector http://finnishcomicsdissected.wordpress.com/?p=283 ]]> Hello there.

Let’s have a little talk..

This is a subject that that is very close to my heart, but which I have never seen discussed properly in the comic world. I think it’s weird, comics are very closely tied to commercialism and thus they are always products. Only recently webcomics have changed this.. kinda. People sell even those or promote the finished product trough that media, or use their web project to learn more so they can later publish and sell their stuff, but generally comics are made to be sold and paintings are made when someone is happy, sad, drunk, high, in psychosis or whatnot then later shown in galleries and someone might even buy them.

Because of this “true art” aka not comics has allot more space to be a pretentious fuckwad, so when you don’t get money from your paintings because you suck, you can always say you don’t actually do it for the money, but because of the art itself and you fucking LOVE being poor, sitting in the cold and eating from the garbage.

I don’t have to lie, tho. I fucking love dupster diving.

All artists are still pretty much the same, we’re poor, we’re hungry, we’re eccentric, we are bohemian and we’re absolutely entangled by our own way to depict reality. But I have a serious problem with the “Art is my soul”-attitude. Don’t get me wrong, I draw from my soul, heart and sometimes butt and nose but there’s one thing seriously wrong with this attitude.

I’m not even talking about constructive criticism and people who flip a lid whenever you tell them their sparkledog looks fucking horrible

My problem is completely different.

There is a whole art style dedicated to not doing research, being lazy and fighting the power. Often this style actually requires the artist to get rid of their knowledge so they could draw poorly aka “not commercially”. I used to have an art teacher like this and he was honestly the shittiest fucking teacher I ever had. I didn’t learn anything else from him than how to drink as irresponsibly as possible, we could even bring alcohol to class if we just hid it fast enough when others came into our classroom. Sure, he was our best friend and we had fun but it was a complete waste of my life to be in his class.

Of course if I would teach I wouldn’t force my ideals on others, if you want to do shit, you can do shit but you can’t sell shit.. unless you sell fertilizer and comics are mostly really poor fertilizers. And don’t get me wrong, world would be a boring place if everyone would draw the same and shit does serve a purpose – it gives a different experience.

You could make your audience feel by drawing so shittily that they feel cheated,yes.  But using gruff style as a method is completely different and will bring a better result. This of course requires allot of work, reseach, feedback and thought but it will be worth it. If you just decide to do as much comics as you can with minimal effort and hope one of them will break trough will you really be proud of yourself? Why would you be proud of yourself when you haven’t even shown anyone what you can really do and your fame is only because of a lucky strike. No one can ride on the wave of fame forever after all, you’ll have to do work to stay on top of that wave.

So how to create just the feeling YOU want to a comic? Research. Hard work. Of course you could break trough with no effort by doing something so shit that someone makes fun of you and it becomes a meme, but then it is not actually you doing the work, it is the work of one bright individual who caught you on your shit and made it gold. You’ll always need your audience and you better motivate it with the real feeling you want to create rather than a lucky strike which is impossible to steer to the direction you want it to go. An artist is always a slave to the audience and you can’t really decide who your audience will be, but you can create a good product that meets nearly the audience you want to meet (young people, old people, people of certain minority..) and does what intended.

Now that we have gone trough the basics, let’s go to the big question: how exactly do you sell your soul? In other words, how do you make a good comic.

I can already hear the whiny little voice that says “But art is the reflection of your soul! you can’t put a price tag on that! Art is invaluable expression of the most abstract matters in our reality!”

And I agree. Yes it is. But it is for sale. And it is NOT the exact feeling or abstract matter you speak of, it is a material thing materialised in our material universe and the only way to sell the exact thing you want to capture is to go to a spiritual plane with meditation or on a robot rainbow unicorn, I dunno. You are indeed making a material thing that can be touched and even if it can create the exact feeling you wanted to capture on the audience, it is still a tool and a marketable thing. If you wish to keep those feelings and abstract beings as sacred as you say YOU WOULDN’T BE MATERIALIZING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!

It’s as if a man found out how to bring unicorns to our world so everyone can see how amazing they are, but then started cloning them, selling them and then was really surprised that they got used as draft horses and fucked in the bum like they were five dollar whores. People are people. And I won’t even go on to the whole debate about dualism, anyone can have their own idea of that.

Unicorns are best kept far away from people and our material universe, but comics and art is a good material thing. We need it. We need experiences, and we need professionals to bring that for us.

No one should ever be afraid of failing, you should avoid it, yes but if you have tried your best you can always say “Fuck you, I tried my best and if it’s not enough for you.. fuck you!” and this is actually the reaction I wish people to have when I catch them up on their fail. Come on, show me how to do even better, give me and everyone else your best shot untill we can’t say that you haven’t at least tried! There will always be someone or something you can reach and get your prize.

..I’ll get you one day, Lambi..

So if you want to do good work and make the best comic for people for money – go for it! If you are a human being who epresses themselves trough their art and the expression of your immortal, beautiful soul are too great to measure in money..

I hope we’re clear now and I got my point across.

But hey, I am finally free from Boss McBitcherson! I worked hard for so many weeks, I lived in a trailer with Birdgirl with no privacy except “Get out you fucking creep I know you want to oogle at me when I change WHY AREN’T YOU OUT YET GET THE FUCK OUT!” I had to use a toilet where was this bigass window with no curtains and I was really fucking busy working my ass for for rednecks who have lived in a barrel and can’t do things in ways that work because “We’ve done it this way for decades so it must work”

So quess what I’m going to do now?

FUCK YEAH! I’ve been waiting for this for WEEKS! You cannot imagine the anguish I have gone trough…

See ya next time! It will come soon, very, very soon.. unless the people in white jackets from rehab catch me.

Sources:

Lambi picture s-kankaanpaa.fi ‘cus I know you all wanted to know where I found a picture of a Lambi-toilet paper package

Thank you:

Birdgirl who kept me reasonably sane for the time we were working together and who had to suffer from my indecent behavior, flatulence and smell of old booze and sweat. I have no idea how you survived. And we’re totes gonna fight like an old couple and people will throw strange looks at us for that. Sorry

Miisa for the delicious drama which I cooked up into even more delicious copypasta. I will use your links in the future, too. Keep on being awesome. Skviik skviikiti skvii svkiik! Skviikin.

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OH! I forgot to mention! BLAW is back!

I took this entry down because I wasn’t sure about the morality of it anymore. It was done by a sweet little girl who tired her hardest but.. it really was the worst shit I’ve ever seen. I don’t belive anyone over the age of 15 who is selling their comics cannot take what publicity will bring them. When you make a product and go to the public to ask money for it, you should know what you’re getting into. And I don’t think that kicking 6-year old child’s yard sale spot to smithereens and giving honest critique while being funny are particularly hard to distinguish from eachother.

At least the person who made BLAW didn’t ask 20 euros for a printing that she got for free from her daddy’s work place printer (which her dad probably had to use in secret anyway) and lie the price was so high because of the “high printing expenses” because she thought the product of her immortal, beautiful soul deserves to rip off other people’s money.

If you wonder what the hell I’m talking about.. here, I’m talking about this comic:

Yeah, that seriously happened. I hope that lass has learned some proper work ethics by now. I have no idea how she didn’t feel ashamed of selling that piece of crap for 20 euros with that kind of background. It was few years ago, though and I really hope she has grown up and become a bit smarter, she indeed was quite young.

But the lass who did BLAW sold it for the exact price you should ask for, and she was very professional in every other sense than the art itself. You become a professional cartoonist when even a one person buys something from you, but professing a skill is a whole other thing and it doesn’t require selling a thing.

So, BLAW is back up so STOP E-MAILING ME ABOUT IT! lol! No, seriously it’s nice to notice that people really do come back to my old entries and start missing the lost ones. Weird. And people really loved BLAW.

So, what should I do from now on? I didn’t get any complaints, the maker of that comic didn’t make a squeak, it was only my inner turmoil that made me hide that entry untill I think it trough once more. Do you think n00bs deserve the same amount of criticism and harsh truth than pros? Why so? I thought it would be more degrading to go “Oh you’re just a widdle little girlie so I’ll go gentle for you so that your pretty, frilly little panties won’t get in a bunch” than just let myself go wild.

..that sounded strangely sexual.

SO! I thought about making a whole new category or whatnot for self-publishers. I’d only dissect them in groups of three instead of putting all the strain on one person so that all noobs can fail, win and blah together!

Tell me what you think

You cannot even imagine how bad mood I am in right now.

I have dissected the first issue of Oblivion High (I will put a fancy link here when I figure out HOW FUCKING HELL) and it was a wonkfest.  Nina Von Rüdinger has started to be rather frequent quest at my blog.

In a good weeaboo manner, Nina works under collective nicknames. First one she shared with Karim Muammar and it was Infamy with Vesi oli Mustaa finnamanga, now she has hybridized with Johanna Koljonen under Ms Mandu. This confuses the fuck out of every decent human being, especially because she keeps a blog with Ms Mandu nickname and I have no idea if it’s only her drawing and writing there or is she collaborating with the blog, too.

All the themes she’s had at every single comic this far still continue and it has started to grow pretty damn old. When the comic starts with an old Kalevela-poem or something I yawned instantly.

If you’re curious what the poem is about, there’s some old geezer who sees a pretty lady and is all like “You should do your hair WOO you make me wild!” and the girl is like “Dude, you’re like 800 years old, fuck you”

I don’t know what she went for with that poem but I’m getting really fed up with this fancy-ass shit.

This time the comic actually starts by introducing the characters! Great! All the characters look identical and I have been able to just tell young girls from old men and that’s only because of the beard so this is great improvement!

OH MY GOD I CAN TELL THEM FROM EACHOTHER!

..almost ..I think

AND OHHH GOLLY THEY EVEN EXPLAIN THE PLOT OF THE LAST ISSUE AMAZING!

This starts well! ..though I am giving them benefit of the doubt in the fashion of a special ed teacher who noticed that little Kalle has stopped eating glue for ten minutes, but ehh, this is an improvement. I love it. I eat it. I breathe it. I need it. Part of my sanity has been repaired.

My job has been made easier.

The story begins when..

Um.. okay, I think it’s the guy who looks like this in the first issue

And now, this.. I think?

Yay! It’s either Max or Juha! Thanks for the introduction! ..though I’m still unsure which guy was Juha and which Max but it doesn’t matter, they’re pals, they’re always together in the same picture so you won’t even notice if I mix them up. Plus, their personalities are exactly identical so who cares.

Seriously now, I like… Max with more values to his hair, it makes him stand out more. Good that he wore a collar or else this small detail would’ve been so dramatic I would have not realised it was the same character anymore. She should give everyone a collar with their name on it to avoid further confusion.

But ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING JAPANESE SOUND EFFECTS!

Why in the name of a flying, pogo-stick riding fuck!? Haven’t she been listening to the complaints of confused people long enough? Kanas as sound effects outside of Japan do three things 1# confuse the fuck out of everyone 2# show the level of pretentiousness of the artist and 3# confuse the living shit out of everyone. None of these things are good for the dramaturgy or storytelling. I have no idea what just happened in that page! And out of context it looks like that dark-haired dude flashed the light-haired dude and he got a horniness-nosebleed and.. wait.. who are those guys? Does that guy have that many brothers? New characters? I hope not.

Okay, the storytelling is confusing even if there wasn’t important info about the situation in foreing language!

SO!

Last episode ended with the main characters getting a small gig at a fashion shoot, and Jorge and Manx or whatevertheirnamesare act super-gay and baww because “Ooh noooo Nix is like soooper-hawt in this mag, now we’ll never get poon!”

God, why don’t they just boink eachother, they even look like those guys who I pay five euros at the back alleys of Pasila for..

Well, it works for the targeted audience. But it’s hilarious how you can almost smell the weeaboo trough this kind of stuff – of course finnmanga artists will be friggin’ yaoi-fans. I’d like to find even one lady who’s for yuri or.. wait..! I just thought of something better – D.I.L.Fs! Now  that would be a surprise! And I mean those chubby, hairy and bearded ones.

Whoa, vodka really makes me de-rail alot..

So, everyone’s all mean to the protagonists for being all slutty in a magazine. Then.. suddenly.. an awkward band practise scene.

With KANAS yayyy!

At least the japanese works in this scene. It works just as well as pretty pictures of notes who no one can read in the first place. But what’s up with those lyrics!? “Getting born in the..”, “..born in the”, “show your teeth”, “Love my baby to death”, “she’s my priestess”, “I’m your priest”, “yeah yeah” I can just imagine what the full lyrics are like.

Getting born in the Upplands Väsby, the surströmming smells so inviting

Show your teeth, and take a bite, it’s okay neighbors eat it too, they won’t notice the smell!

Love my baby to death, it’s awwwwwwright! It’s awwwright!

She’s my priestess, I’m your priest, these lyrics make no sense what-so-ever

YEAH YEAH!

The storytelling was especially horrible in this scene. First of all, Jokke or Maximillian or whatevertheirnameswhere are apparently part of the band (didn’t the main character knee him on the stomach on the last issue?) and then suddenly.. a chibi scene.

She did this with Vesi oli Mustaa, too. Throwing a random chibi scene to fasten up the story didn’t work then and it didn’t work now and Nina won’t get it to work, ever. She should really pay attention to the way she tells the story, she jumps over the important stuff, spends a lot of time on mediocre plot and even then leaves out vital parts.

I totally missed the whole band practise scene because I couldn’t tell the chartacters from eachother and I thought Joppe and Marx or whatever weren’t there at all. A scene with the whole cast interacting with eachother would’ve been great. Something like this:

In fact, I feel like I have nailed the problem with this comic. There’s no single frame where the characters interact as a mass. There’s absolutely no groups interacting with eachother, or if there is such an image, it will miss one character and that is enough to create confusion. The people just.. come out of nowhere, all the time!

Oblivion High – close ups of faces talking to close ups of faces!

The main plot of this issue revolves around the modeling gig and the magazine that was produced by it. The magazine spreads over the school and everyone’s soooo meeeaaaan to the protagonists because they dressed all slutty and the headmaster is furious and orders a new dress code.

What’s really funny is that the most important plotline.. you know – the one with that kid who’s being shackled up underwater by malicious water spirits – has full six pages of the 80~ page long comic, and the first page of that plotline is actually two-page scene so it counts as one. Yeah, there’s a kid being tortured in the realm of kid-drowning water spirits but ohmigaaaawd did you hear about our school’s new dress code? It’s like soooo unfair!

Just look at the poor little kid!

But noooo, right after that scene they jump back to the dress code and modelling gig stuff. Just… asfasdghfgdfad!

It’s not like I care about that kid anyway because like everyone else he doesn’t have a personality and he haven’t even had screentime except for what was vital for the “plot” and I had completely forgotten about him anyway but come on!

This comic jumps from mindless scene that happens too fast to another scene that happened even faster and made less sense. It took me three times to read this thing trough before I understood what was going on and even while I am doing this entry I had to double-check things or learned only now what really happened with the plot. It was the same with the first issue, but this one is surprisingly even worse. I didn’t know it was possible to confuse your audience any more.

There’s one scene where the protagonists are in the school, talking about the dress code, then suddenly it jumps into “seven years earlier” and there’s.. one of the main character’s father yelling at some of the main character’s big sister, then we have an intermission and then it jumps into a school party.

This sort of jumping and mindless switches in time and place continue trough the whole of the comic, even worse than this. At least here the place B got “seven years earlier” and place C  “Later that night” frame to explain what just happened, but after switching places from different time and place four times.. you bet I feel alienated. I’m not in touch with the story at all, I’m just watching a random collaboration of places with stuff happening in them.

This comic has way too many themes to work with, and too little time page-wise. It’s a clusterfuck.

All the other technical mistakes we are used to are still repeated. Perspective hasn’t got better, but Nina is avoiding doing any drastic angles. Maybe it is a good solution after all. Still, we don’t get to see the underside of any of the character’s chins, their faces just slide down and no matter what angle they are at their faces point straight forward.

But it’s not really that bad compared to the anatomical mistakes.

Two things stick out especially hard, first of all.. the giant fucking head of the main character!

Why is her head so big!?

But what really gets to me is the boobies. Oh the boobies.

Levitating, vacuum-sucked jigglies – the third issue!

I was going to make a small “how to draw boobies tutortial” and add it here, but this comic is for underage people and they might google this comic, find this entry and then – BAM! Boobies! I don’t want to be that big of a jerk so.. I’ll make a separate tutorial entry about comic book clichés I have bumped into with proper warnings some day. I care just that much tee hee <3

To be honest, this comic has allot of rather suspicious innuendo. I might be giving them way too much benefit of the doubt.

It’s kinda funny how this comic tries to make a statement about the too revealing way young girls dress nowadays, but it makes jokes about older men wanting to boink fifteen-year old boys.

Speaking of innuendos..

For all you foreign (non-finnish) people: a näkki is pretty much like a kappa. This is the reason they are so fucking popular within finnish weeaboos, but to be honest, kappa is more like näkki’s retarded little brother. Näkki is a cunning shape-shifter who maliciously drowns little children. Whenever I was a little child I was warned not to go near water or näkki will get me and drag me underwater. Then I learned to swim. But they apparently also lived in wells.

I’LL GET YOU SOME DAY NÄKKI!

Oh, and funfact!

Näkki is a brand of condoms where I live. You can just imagine what kind of a sex addict this näkki-character is. Even Clinton didn’t get a condom brand named after him! And you wouldn’t belive the hilarity that ensued in elementary school when we were studying finnish folklore and got to näkki. Kids..

But now, a word of praise.

Nina has really improved with colour. When I dissected the first comic she did I couldn’t resist re-doing the colouring of the hair of Nix because frankly, it was horrible and didn’t look anything like hair. It still doesn’t look like hair, but it works! I can’t belive she’s actually improving. This is awesome. Shame it won’t shine on the comic on anywhere else than on the covers and she already did calendars, cards, the covers of three other comics with mediocre skills but.. ehh. She improved. This is awesome.

I really hope she’ll work on anatomy next, Nix really doesn’t have any shoulders in this piece, his neck is huge. Working on anatomy would fix even her perspective issues.

Her blog is actually rather interesting..

HERE’S SOME YAOI PAIRINGS! 8D

Hmm.. this blog is starting to get a bit too gay. Let’s add some yuri pairings!

Oohkay.. now it’s way too lezzie. Let’s add some bara.

Okay, now I just hate myself. I think that means my day’s work here is done. Please try not to couge your eyes out, I’ll make up to this I swear!

Next time!

Sources:

http://msmandu.blogspot.com

Sorry for your tattered book Local Library!

http://www.sinunapteekki.fi/catalog/

Google is awesome. You can like.. find png. pictures of pedobear and shotacat. God, I’m so fucking lazy.

After being too busy with school and being my usual “what month is it again?”-self I turned to my friend for help. It went something like this

She's one though chick

She of course wouldn’t call her own production “holy grail” and it took a lot longer to get the comic but.. eh, you get the picture. We’ve known eachother for few years now, she has listened to me whine and goddammit I am the most emotional and whiny ball of hurt you’ll ever see so it must’ve been hard for such a personality as she is. She won’t take any unneccesary bullshit, just does her job and avoids whiny bitches.. unless it is me, and I am pretty hard to just brush off when I need a listener.

So..

TIME TO RIP HER COMIC TO SHREDS YAYYY!

Thanks, friend!

Aalto is a collaboration between 4 art school friends, Miisa Lopperi, Olli Hietala, Noora Kivisilta and Sonja Kivivuori. The legendary comic school in Finland, Liminka always has a table at some comic meeting to get their students taste what it is like to sell their comics.. or actually just MAKE the comic first time in their life. It’s just magical, folks! And this was one of those projects.

Let’s start with Noora

I don’t really have much bad things to say about her comic. This is very rare for self-published little projects. Her comic is about brothers who have a quarrel over drugs.

"You want to know if there is any left for your own use, eh?"

Her style is very natural, smooth and swirly. She can draw her characters from every angle, and the storytelling is smooth. She grows the tension with frames and dialogue. It works very well

I especially liked the fight scene because.. just look at his face!

They got slight “anime disease” with their expressions – they are so beautiful and stylished that their expressions can’t show enough emotion trough the core, but this works. He looks fucking upset here. When it ended and even though no one died and it was settled down, I was left waiting for more. I’d want to know more about these guys.

It’s kinda hard to dissect 10 pages properly. All I can say is that Noora has her style very well together. Quick look at her Deviantart gallery showed me that her stuff nowadays is really pleasing to eye, she has progressed allot. I wish she would make a longer comic so I can pick on it better some day.

Sonja ain’t bad, either.

Her style is more fuzzy, but it holds together, especially with her story which is.. absolutely surreal.

Little boy who has panda ears loses his rubber duckie in his bathtub and then a submarine raises from the water and.. I just don’t know. In the end when he doesn’t go help the ducklins to fight for their “War-scarred land” he is transported to a sea.

All this in 10 pages! It was very interesting, but I am not sure how that kind of style would work with a longer story. This was very much like Alice in the Wonderland. I checked her Deviantart, too and she is still into some freaky fucking shit.

Full image at http://sulphurspoon.deviantart.com/art/looks-painful-and-is-150744024

When she’s not doing stuff like that, she’s making these moomin-like creatures. Her head must be interesting place to be in. I fucking love it. Still, a look at her gallery tells me that the comic she did for this collaboration wasn’t the full extent of her talent. I can’t see any other trait of hers in this comic than the surrealism that is within her. I really want to see her start a serious project, it WILL be interesting.

Let’s move on to Olli. His style is very naivistic.

Every frame is the same size, there’s only 3 different colours, text is placed in almost randomly wherever it just happens to fit best.. this ladies and gentlemen is what I hate. I hate naivism. I HATE IT. I just have personal distaste to it – it killed my mother, burned down my house and kicked my dog, and since that moment I promised I would hate it forever because my name is Inigo Montoya and he killed my mother, prepare to die!

I promise to rant more about that in some other entry, because we’re getting into the main part here. The 18-page long comic that is enough for somewhat proper dissection. Miisa.

Besides, I really liked his more personal diary, it made me feel nice and sad feelings. You were saved this time, Olli.. but I’ll be watching you. I’ll go all Inigo Montoya on you some day. Some day..

Every character in Miisa’s comic is someone who I knew beforehand. I just had never seen them interact with eachother in comic form so reading this was very enlightening. She has somewhat well-thought world full of monsters where she placed this story in. I know what it’s all about, so I can see she didn’t try to tell the whole history of that world in either the story or some korny “Long time ago, light and dark were fighting..”-prelude. Many beginners do it when they have a well-thought world full of different monsters, values and characters, even if their comic would be just five pages long.  Miisa starts this briefly with the main character getting a mission from her acquaintance.

Her style is very clean and bullshit-less, but she has a weakness against perspective

It's super effective!

I think it’s because she has investigated her characters so troughfully in design that she’ll get stuck when they have to change in perspective. It’s kinda common with artists with very stylished characters, they don’t exist in real life, so it’s near impossible to imagine them moving in dimension.

She moves the story very smoothly. From the main character’s house to the street with “meanwhile”

..from the street back to the main character, with blackening frames

But there was a major wtf-part when the protagonist walks on the shady street corners.

When I paid more attention I realised the “bookshelf” was a brick wall with failshading, and that shop proved to be a deli/meatstore-thing later on. Some actual meat on the window would’ve helped allot.

This part was also a bit fuzzy, and by this point I notice the problem: texture. Miisa can do the best and smoothest line you’ll see, but texture seems to be weak.

….and does anyone else see “egs” written on the water? Is it just me? It’s just me. Okay..

The action is very clear, and she has managed to try many different effects succesfully in this short time

And I love the character interaction, it’s so casual and smooth.

Yes, I left empty space and covered it up with a cute, purple animal sftu

And I have to give her my personal thumbs-up and Super Special Gold Star for knowing her biology. She based the big meanie monster on trematodes/heartworms (trematoda and dirofilaria immitis) and it is not only awesome, but proves she does research.. or she just happened to randomly know about those. BUT STILL! GOLD STAR!

Stop screaming! It's pretty!

Her monsters have always been really nifty, I can’t help loving pretty much every design she comes up with

Nifty fucking shit. I feel incredibly lazy now.. it happens every time I visit her galler..

..wait

I lost a friend but at least I got a restraint order!

..I’m sooo going to regret this joke. DON’T KILL ME PLEASE!

To be safe, I’ll end this now. Aalto was honestly good collaboration full of people with ambition and skill, and I would definately want to see a serious full-length project from all the girls involved in this, they have some interesting ideas.

Also, from knowing Miisa and reading trough the diary comics of the other people involved in this project, I have one friendly advice for all of you:

Love yourself and your art a bit more. Seriously. I’d love me if I’d be you.

Good night~

Sources:

http://nightmarehound.deviantart.com/ -Miisa Lopperi

http://sulphurspoon.deviantart.com/ -Sonja Kivivuori

http://onnenruikku.deviantart.com/ -Noora Kivisilta

http://hillo.sarjakuvablogit.com/ -Olli Hietala

Ps. Anteeksi että joululahja on yhä myöhässä

There’s apparently 3 parts of this comic so I won’t be off the hook after this, which is the second part of the Lordi-series. This is rather unpleasant for me to dissect because 1# Lordi 1 was my first dissection and the art on it is already so old and cruddy that I want to die – I didn’t learn how to use tablet properly until now and 2# That comic was bad enough, I don’t think this will be nice to my mental health, either.

The cover image for the first issue was dark and ugly, but this one is even worse. I made a small edit to show how it treated my eyes, and what path my sight took to make sense of the cover.

If you remember the first entry.. you know what that fist means.

How can that fist be twice the size of HIS HEAD!

Hoo boy we will surely be on our way to a shittily drawn, magical adventure of fail and gore. Mostly gore. Oh god the gore.

Last time there were 3 cartoonists collaborating with this comic, but now there’s fourth. Original cast was Mr. Lordi himself, the amazing and awesome Petri Hiltunen and rather less amazing Mattipekka Ratia who pretty much ruined the whole comic with his scribbles. Now they also got Sami Kivelä and Ratia’s daughters Ria and Nadja seem to have played a great part in coloring of this comic.

They got a big group working on this, let’s see if this soup has too many cooks or just enough!

Sami starts the comic with this

Homnomnomnom

I kinda like this style..

But what’s with Amon’s face??

Facelift?

I get it, he’s a monster, he’s fucking ugly but.. all that flappy skin! WHY!? Wasn’t he supposed to have a scarred face, not a melted skin?!

God, I'm handsome

Now he reminds me of Vesa-Matti Loiri

AIII! MONSTER!

oh shudder..

This part is kinda adorable, just look at how friendly little fellow Mr. Lordi is

D'aww feeding his fwiends coocie coo!

Lordi has pretty awesome accent in finnish, too. I didn’t dare to emulate it in english as I really am not that good with language, but he speaks like the old people from the very north of Finland. It’s really adorable and refreshing for a monster.

For additional humorous moments, look at that guy’s expressions who is being eaten. I can hear Agapio Racing Team dubbing him with the most boring voice ever

“Oh no, my arm is being ripped off..! I am mildly interested..! aah..” just look at the guy’s face! I’m pretty sure that is not the face of someone who’s in pain. Holy cow what a poker face.

And what’s with this part and the inceribly huge space of white??

I think you forgot something

I know! It’s the white space reseved for THE FILLER BLOB SHOW!

Now it all makes sense.

IT DOES! SHUT UP!

Next we get to a part drawn and written by Mr. Lordi

In all seriousness, I kinda fancy Mr. Lordi’s style. It’s not really that bad. He just seems to have a weakness in storytelling and anatomy, especially shoulders like you can see from that hunchback up there.

I was very confused about this scene particular, a kid is being levitated by evil spirits

And the very next frame shows the father saying “rest here darling” and the wife is on a bed.. in her own bedroom. What the fuck happened to the kid?! Is he still floating?! Things are going way too fast.

But he has some good grasp on how to make things visual and interesting

He makes some decent comic, allright but he’s still mostly a musician. I have a hunch that this might be “my childhood dream”-kind of thing for him. I mean, yeah, he’s world-famous rock star, but now he’s also making the kind of comics he read when he was younger.

But that’s just my hunch – or more like a wish. The band has already gone over their most famous and epic moment, so now we can only hope they had fun along the way.

Okay, enough pitying rich and famous rock stars – choke on your money pigs!

We’ll move on to a part drawn by Petri Hiltunen

Oh.

Hitler.

In all seriousness, I hate when people use Hitler in their stories because everyone and their grandmothers and their grandmother’s DOGS have made a comic or a movie about the goddamn Hitler!

I’m so unbeliveably bored of Hitler. Didn’t they have satanist nazis in Hellboy, too? What is this nonesense? I’m so bored of this.

The story wasn’t particularly interesting and Perti drew it without any things that might need my annotations so I can skip this boring pile of beated horse with a pure concience.

Poink owns Hitler

After the demon-calling Adolf Hitler Mattipekka Ratia takes the lead and we face the epitome of fail.

A gay couple is spending their wedding trip romantically in the middle of woods, without guide. HAVE FUN GETTING LOST IN THE WOODS, PANSIES! I bet you break your ankles the very second you-

Oh GODDAMMIT!

I sure hope you don’t also go talk to dangerous strangers who think of you as “dumb city people” and point at you with a gu-

How come these people have survived to adulthood if they’re that dense!? God what a couple of prissy and dumb little princesses! Just stay in the town you dimwits! They’ll probably die horribly very soon anywa-

..whaa!? They survive to the end? What’s this? This is a comic about heartless monsters who eat people mindlessly and for fun, these guys are the comical relief, they are near Kita for chrissakes and they survive and have the last words which is a silly line of  “We should’ve gone to San Fransisco instead!” Why break THIS chiche if you used every goddamn other one, right down into the straining of ankles!? Does this guy have something for gays or what?

Oh. He’s done a comic about a gay couple called.. Sausage and Plug are you fucking serious!? This seems to be his most known work, to boot. Is he seriously tooting his own horn in a Lordi comic!? Or is he just very fond of gays? I mean, I am very fond of gays, too but what is this!?

And about that last picture.. what’s with all this fail gore!?

Seems like some idiot didn’t realise that horror and gore is actually not about just scattering random body parts all over, especially when you don’t know jack shit about anatomy! Just look at that guy’s mangled “face” there’s not even empty eye sockets there! Never mind any other feature, but not even eye sockets!

Oh, great. Now I also really crave for these

They’re not even sold where I live.. not in the whole country. See what you did to me you cruel monster!! I want candy!

And what’s with all these cameos of the Vesa-Matti Loiri!?

They must really like him. In case you non-finns forgot already, here’s a picture of him

red text: sooo good bone!

This is where this comic gets all freaky. They abandon the plot this far, which was that Lordi is collecting monsters for some sort of army, he already got Amon

Awa

Ox… oh goddamn Hitler

and Kita

Petri Hiltunen takes the lead again and greets us with awesomeness

Amon is chomping on his favourite part: the heart, Awa is being gruesome with Kita, Ox is looking fucking awesome and cool and Lordi himself has very focused look in his eyes – the brain of the group. I like it. It was also amusing little mini-story even that I’m not sure what it got to do with the plot. Monsters took a train because their little feetsies got tired from all the walking? Oh well..

But here we get to the part where the plot is completely assasinated – from this point on it’s DEAD.

I was waiting what plan does Lordi have. After all, he used so much energy into collecting all those monsters, he must have something great in mind like.. like..

..going to the nearest town just to feast and have a blast. I think? It was never explained why he collected himself an army. Also, they pay ridicilous amounts of attention to the cleaning problem of dead bodies all over, it’s hilarious! They have formed a new kind of sanitation system for cities and they hire poor people with no other choise to clean up the corpses of monster feeding frenzy.

Then the story goes to follow an artist who makes molds of people, causing them to die by suffocation. Like this hot babe.

This seems more like a bizarre fetish than a horror comic. It might just be me, though. Tee hee.

Oh, and then a zombie attack

No reason. Just because.

I’m really enjoying Sami Kivelä’s style, though. It’s really clean and neat, also a bit ruffled and dirty and that’s just the kind I personally like.

All the main characters seem to be scattered around the town.. doing.. stuff

Lordi, Amon and Kita are – for some reason unkown to me – wrecking a movie theatre. I think they saw Dark Floors and flipped out.

Awa is playing with a dead seer and wondering where Ox is. YOU JUST GOT TOGETHER! How hard it is to keep as a one group! After all that trouble Lordi went trough and they’re scattered again and the audience has no idea why.

And Ox is..

What a handsome BDSM beast! I knew this from the moment I saw that hunk!

Come on, admit it. Can’t you see? Even zombies can’t keep their hands off him when he strikes a pose.

…okay, I MIGHT have edited that blushing zombie there, alright, but the original is already pretty bad.

See?! Totally swooning over him.

After that ordeal Awa possesses a young woman, and she goes to the woman’s boyfriend to complain that he spends more time spanking bulltaurs in his dungeon than he does with her and, you know, throws a itsy bitsy feminine rage-fit.

She must do that often, even when she’s not possessed because her boyfriend doesn’t look even mildly interested in what is happening. He’s all like “Honey, stop eating your unborn baby straight from your womb – again. I’m just gonna pour me some wine, so don’t spill any blood in it like last time, okay? Great.”

This comic is absolutely bonkers. That man who’s only mildly amused at his bloody girlfriend has apparently time-travelled just to spank Ox, that’s the only thing I got from the useless text wall. I quess they are all in that town to catch him or something but why did they just randomly eat and kill people so long and so much that they had to create a special sanitation group to gather all the corpses. I quess they just.. forgot along the way, and just started to stray off to do random monster activities.

Ugghh.. my head. This script sucks ass. I liked the script Mr. Lordi did the best. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, either

Oh, and the comic ends to Awa forming a special bubble around the baby.

I’m glad it’s over. I have no idea what that all was about, the plot was nonexistant and despite the cool moments, it wasn’t anything special for anyone else than the hardcore fans, and Mattipekka Ratia should seriously stay doing sunday strips, his style is way too naive for work like this.

I got only one thing to say anymore.

That sure was a lot of gore.

Sources:

Poink aka Poinkraven aka Herrwolf  aka ZePoink for the Hitler-image

http://www.isihei.fi/nakkijatappi/

Candy: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/

A little afterword:

When I started year ago, the first part of this comic was my first post ever. I can’t even look at that shit now, I should probably re-do my images altogether, I only now got the hang of this whole “drawing with a tablet”-thing even that I’ve been using it for years.

Which gives me an idea.. would anyone want to critique me? I would re-do the entry’s images based on those suggestions, redlines and advices. If there’s no interest, I’ll just fix them anyway.

So after Elli Puukangas failed pretty hard with Vartijat issue 1# she was granted the help of her friend Pauliina Högman. We’ll see where this will lead us.

Just like the last time the fail starts right from the covers itself.

That lady is one big tube with arms, geez. Her neck starts straight from the chest! You know what that means?

GET IN THE CAR!

It still is thousand times better than the last cover. In fact, I feel like Pauliina Högman could’ve done better with it if her friend hadn’t fucked up so bad with the last cover, so she had to give her some benefit of the doubt and not be so amazing so her friend wouldn’t be ashamed of her utter lack of skills. Those washed-out edges, lensflare, and fucking ugly green frames were on the first issue because Elli could only draw on A4-size printer paper and did the cover on that, and didn’t think how it would fit properly on the finished product.

I recieved a comment about this comic where I was told Pauliina would be taking part, and I winced because she did a shittastic comic called “Shakkimatti” a few years back. She won a prize for it, but it failed to impress me because it won only because it was the least shitty of the shitpile.

And then I found her newer production

That’s.. not half bad, you know. I actually have high hopes for this comic now.

You better not dissapoint me

First page greets me with Elli’s shit, and for the next few pages it keeps raping my eyes with crap like this:

She didn’t even bother erasing the pencil sketches underneath!

We're all seeing in double because one person was lazy

HOW FUCKING LAZY CAN YOU GET!?

I can’t do this.. I want to die. I don’t want to live in a world where we have something this shitty. Or I at least need a drink.

AHH I think that’ll do for a while..

Kerri still looks like el chubacabra and Elli has clearly stopped even trying to make him look like a fox rather than a failed Ginga trace.

Would it really be too hard to google “fox”?? Or no, wait! She certainly has fererenced a real fox. Kerri has split pupils, and many don’t know foxes have those. How can you know such a detail and still fail to make a fox even the right size! And we’re not even on the page ten yet..

So the comic goes on..

..like last time..

..just as shittily

..no ..wait

what was that?

I can’t belive it! Vartijat actually has good art in it! Soon the galxies will explode, hell will freeze and Lordi will take over the world! Who would’ve expected this to happen! Not me.

I have never seen the main character – Seiya this clean and consistent. I love his looks! This girl has one steady hand and clean linework skills. How come I never saw her potential before?

Oh yeah.. because she wasn’t being compared to Elli Puukangas. But I’ll give her a chanse. Let’s read in deeper.

A new character is introduced. Not only do we have, Aino, Seiya and Kerri

I mean this sorry lot. Yes, I didn't bother scanning them all again, this is from the first issue. I'm lazy, ok?!

but we also got Noki now

He’s supposed to be quirky and energetic trollthing but like the rest of the cast, he doesn’t have any kind of personality. We just got another goddamn character that the cartoonists don’t even remember to draw in the background and mess up the consistensy of the story even worse than ever.

So when they have acquired Noki they meet a moose.

And it’s the most adorable thing since Moomin! Just look at it!

I love you Moose!

Why is Elli still drawing this when we got actual skill here!? Why do they let her to maul, ruin and destroy this comic like this? What kind of a sick, horrible human being gives comic readers hope and then takes it away with horrors like these?!

Let’s compare a bit. I’ll give y’all a good taste of how inconsistent this comic really is.

The style really jumps that much, and all of a sudden. When it’s from Elli’s style to Pauliina’s it’s like being blessed by god, and when it’s inverted.. you can just imagine.

The plot is just as bland and un-mentionworthy as ever.

That stupid amulet is stolen and retireved. Dunno why or what it does. Maybe it will glow if someone with a brave heart touches it or some stupid, korny shit like that.

Noki isn’t true arya.. er.. goblin even that he lives with them. His father was a dirty nig.. um.. troll so he’s not pure of blood and he’s all emo and different for it.

Though I have to admit, this was the best scene in the whole comic – when the parents of Noki were shown. I actually was sympathetic for them and formed a deeper bond to them than to any of the main characters during both of the issues.

In the very end it halts to a cliffhanger when Aino is injured seriously. Shame that I don’t really care about her.. or any of the main characters to begin with, so the whole cliffhanger is pretty moot.

Do you really think one of the most central characters would die in this comic? Especially after flashing some thigh for the main character

In other words: you can see all the plot twists coming from miles away. I don’t really recommend reading this for the script. Read it for the Pauliina, who is clearly a new, rising talent.

But even Pauliina Högman is not safe from mistakes. She seems to suffer from terrible inconsistensy problems just like Elli Puukangas.

Chameleon sword

Chameleon hair:

Chameleon fox:

I will have to give her benefit of the doubt, though. Ihave no idea how much of her mistakes are because she tried to keep up with Elli’s terrible drawings (I’m quite sure Kerri’s weird appearance is because of that) and trying to stay in deadline.

To be honest, when all that is taken in consideration, she was really good with this. Elli couldn’t do half of what she could do or do so clean and neat art while under pressure. I feel like one of these two girls is nearly ready professional cartoonist, and I don’t think I need to tell you which one it is.

Though, this is absolutely unforgivable

It’s a fox, not a horse! Those legs are broken and mangled!

Hm. I quess that is it.

OH NO! ..I'll have to dissect it

I’ll see you soon.. very soon

Sources:

http://www.fruitless.us/milou/blog.php

Ps.

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)

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/