Belated Helsinki Comics Festival photodump

Suomen Islam-seurakunta House behind trees

The Islamic congregation of Helsinki and some old villa behind the trees

Fluffy doggie paparazzi Very fluffy red doggie paparazzi

Doggie paparazzi photos

Essential artist's supplies

Essential artist’s supplies: loads of sketchbooks, Russian and Chinese watercolours, and also Aspirin. :3

Piggy window painting, Helsingfors (Heringsdorf)

Piggy window painting

My piggy doodle on the doodling table in Sarjakuvakeskus V^(oo)^V

At Sarjakuvakeskus (the comics centre) in Helsinki they had a table on which you could try out the pens they sell at their cafe. So I drew some proletarian piggies …

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Stef Gaines was our super special guest and made lots of photos:

* Me sewing zines in the last second (Ainur and Stef were awesomepants and helped me fold them, for which they were rewarded with copies of Electric Tsunamis)

* Ainur and I being cool at our table, as always (with Nicola in the background, doing something indeterminable)

* Coffee and the Mochi dummy (Mochi is a character in Ainur’s extraordinary comic Goldenbird!)

* Finnish pirogue and the Mochi dummy

* Me at Sarjakuvakeskus, wearing extremely Finnish, Mymlan-style clothes that Ainur gave me after having grown out of them (the pattern persists even in adulthood!), yet drinking German lemonade

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… Anyway, back in Berlin I saw this fluffy white doggie at Frankfurter Tor:

Fluffy white doggie at Frankfurter Tor

Helsinki Comics Festival piggy drawings

The highlight of the festival was probably when a slightly inebriated Russian showed up, distraught that he had lost his tour bus and had to figure out how to get home to Vyborg somehow, in this hostile city where nobody spoke Russian and police officers gave him the finger when he tried to ask them for help. Luckily I actually did speak Russian, so I showed him the way to the central train station, from where he was hopefully able to catch a taxi to the port. :-/

On Saturday I sold 34 piggy postcards and some books and zines, and I painted some watercolour piggies (and some kind of disproportional/non-euclidic shiba):

On Sunday my comics business was totally dead, so I painted “desolate piggies in melancholy landscapes”, as Ainur dubbed them:

Back from Helsinki Comics Festival

I’d actually applied to be in the “International Exhibitors” section this year, but since I spoke Finnish nobody took me seriously. Which was just as well, because now I got to have a table next to Ainur and Kaarina in the small press area!

So then I also got to hear about 5000 comments about how the massive book Driftwood wasn’t really a “pienlehti” (‘small magazine’, the Finnish word for small press). Yay! V^(oo)^V

Compared to last year when all three of us had been placed at one single table, and it was really cold and there were floods in the small press tent, it was really nice this year when we all got our own tables and the weather was warm and sunny. Somehow magically it didn’t even seem like any drunk men pissed on the tent the night between Saturday and Sunday, so the small press tent had a pleasant odour all weekend! Amazing!

I sold some books and zines and met some nice, fun or ‘interesting’ people, and I bought these:

* Nyarlathotep, Ainur’s latest zine – a Lovecraftian side story from Goldenbird.

* Laivakoirat (The Shipperkes/The boat doggies) by Syssy Hiitteenkallio – epic maritime doggie comic.

* >> by Oleg Tischenkov – one of the books with his philosophical and cute “Cat” comics, detailing a bit about the background of the comic and how it came to be.

P.S. I also photographed some doggies:

Shiba and my comics at #sarjakuvafestivaalit Shiba closeup :3 Sheltie doggie at #sarjakuvafestivaalit :3 Fuzzy doggie tail behind Ainur Evil Mochi mini-watercolour by Ainur Epic pommi fail (but you can see its evil tail) Pug at #sarjakuvafestivaalit Pug on the floor at #sarjakuvafestivaalit

It’s Helsinki Comics Festival tomorrow!

At Lasipalatsi Square in central Helsinki, the 28th edition of the festival has once more set up its tents. Now on Saturday and Sunday we will brave the Finnish September temperatures again … Luckily the weather seems a bit milder and less prone to floods than last year!

I’ve been so busy with boring dayjobs that I haven’t had time to do any press work at all for Driftwood. This is the only photo I’ve made of the books so far (right after opening the first boxes upon delivery):

Whee, the books arrived! Me and my super awesome friend Claudia carried all the 25 boxes up to the 5th floor ... phew!

They are really awesomepants. I’ll be selling Driftwood at the festival for 20 € each, and 10 € for Flotsam and Jetsam, the short story and behind the scenes info book.

Of course it’s not enough for me to present only the big fat Driftwood book as a new thing at the festival. I also made a zine with (my apparently totally innovative e-book comic) Electric Tsunamis (in English), mainly because I want to see if I can sell more printed copies than Bonniers can sell electronic copies! 😀

Of course it's not enough for me to present only the big fat Driftwood book as a new thing at the festival. I also made a zine with Electric Tsunamis, mainly because I want to see if I can sell more printed copies than Bonniers can sell electronic copies!

I will of course also have all other English-language books and zines that I have currently in print …

See you this weekend – Saturday the 7th from 11:00 to 20:00, and Sunday the 8th from 12:00 to 18:00!

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Bonus doggie etc. chalk drawings from the festival grounds:

Fuzzy necked doggie - chalk drawings at #helsinkicomicsfestival "Doggies are nice" - chalk drawings at #sarjakuvafestivaalit Heroic looking doggie - chalk drawings at #sarjakuvafestivaalit Obligatory piggy and occult symbols - chalk drawings at #sarjakuvafestivaalit Ainur's octopus (but she did not write "David is stupid") - chalk drawings at #sarjakuvafestivaalit

Zines for the Finns

In preparation for Helsinki Comics Festival this weekend, I expanded my arsenal with three more English language zines!

I’ve been a bit lazy with the English paper comics. Previously I only had my two most recent 24 h comics as zines in English, White Nights and The Muggers.

Hourly Comics Day 2012 is obviously my hourly comic from this year. It was so epic and porcine that it had to be made into a zine.
16 pages, A6. V^(oo)^V

The Compass Rose is the long-awaited English translation of this (very) short spinoff story from Driftwood, about Aeron back when he was more confused. In spite of my “enormous nose” artistic phase at the time I drew it, it’s one of my prettier comics. Though when I look at it now I’m confounded that his ex-girlfriend looks so “Caucasian”, when she’s supposed to be of clearly African descent (but has albinism) … x_X White-washing my own characters, eh …
In any case I would really like to draw a much longer comic about her (as herself, not as his girlfriend).
12 pages, A5.

Yess, the latest and longest Eva story is now also in English! One night Eva is assaulted by some Nazi-Darwinists. She beats them to pulp and doesn’t think much of it, but what if it did lead to some disastrous consequences, after all? In this story, Eva – who normally prefers to be a “one woman army” – actually teams up with the hot gangster The Leopard, who collects the debts off Eva’s toyboy Ting Yay and his sister. But what will Ting Yay think about that??!!!
44 pages, A5.

I’ll be sharing a table with my eminent sister Ainur. We will also be selling Swedish Comic Sin 2 and 3 (I participated in #3, Ainur in both :3 ), and Ainur will have fabulous zines with her comic Goldenbird! And I guess we’ll also have some pins and maybe other little things.

We’ll be in the Small Press Heaven (Pienlehtitaivas). See you there …? V^(oo)^V