SPX13
I år delade jag bord med Ainur och vår kamrat Kaarina Uimonen, också från Helsingfors. Kaarina gör bl.a. serier om ekorrar, pingviner och fabeldjurshipsters, samt örhängen med Tintinmotiv. Ainur gör som bekant Goldenbird …
Eftersom ingen nånsin köper de gamla numren av Tunguska, tog jag inte med dem i år, och självfallet var det minst ett halvdussin personer som absolut hade velat köpa #0-5.
Men #11 gick i alla fall hem hos massorna, och jag fick t.o.m. förvägra en person ett exemplar, eftersom jag gärna ville behålla ett själv från denna första upplaga med de delvis handmålade omslagen (se förra inlägget) …
Ainur målade fantastiskt vackra signeringar i sina Goldenbird-tidningar. (Fler bilder här!)
Jag hade ibland ont om växelpengar, så jag använde det som den perfekta ursäkten att handla böcker på SPX. Lite svårt dock med tanke på att många av dem kostade exakt 100 kr … Jag lyckades få ihop en femtiolapp en gång, men sen hittade Mattias Elftorp och jag en hundralapp på golvet som vi delade på, och jag blev av med femtiolappen igen …
Vad jag köpte:
1. Medley av Lisa Medin
Den köpte jag under signeringen på Staffars. Alla före mig ville också att Lisa skulle teckna Axel, och jag funderade på att bryta monotonin genom att be henne teckna någon annan. Dock kunde jag i slutändan inte motstå frestelsen att uttala orden “Jag vill ha Axel …!” *rodna* X3
2. Klistermärke med en serie om en rund liten pingvin som vill flyga av Kaarina Uimonen.
3. Skönheten av Kerascoët och Hubert
Väldigt vackert tecknad serie med en obehaglig men ändå på nåt sätt förtjusande story, så som dessa upphovspersoner brukar åstadkomma. Hoppas Kolik ger ut fler band i serien snart …
4. Gris- och Mochi-vykort av Ainur :3
5. Aomanjuskogen del 1 av Hisae Iwaoka
Mysig och kuslig på en gång, med en teckningsstil som jag gillar väldigt mycket. Jag ångrar nästan att jag inte köpte fler än en bok i serien, men nåt ska man väl ändå få se fram emot här i livet, när man inte ens har barn eller barnbarn …
6. Tryck med pingvinunge som säger: “Ta mig seriöst, för bövelen!”, av Emma Hjelm
Story of my life.
7. Med eller utan dig av Jenny Berggrund
Vardagsrealistisk, vinjettartad story om vänskaps- och kärleksrelationer i ett kompisgäng. Sånt brukar jag kanske inte alltid tycka är så spännande, men den här är riktigt bra, elegant och opretentiöst berättad. Jag älskar också att den uppenbart utspelar sig i Göteborg. :3
8. Kaninen besöker någon annans lilla värld av Stina Lövkvist
En väldigt fin berättelse med jättevackra akvarellbilder i fyrfärg. Jag fantiserar om att kunna läsa den i bättre tryck och lite större format. :3
9. Slåss som en tjej av Tiitu Takalo
Slumpades bort för 25 spänn. ;__;
Eftersom jag även visade Porco Rosso på bio i samband med seriefestivalen, kom jag lite tidigare än vanligt och fick lite fler tillfällen att umgås med mina underbara svenska seriekamrater. I år var dessutom Valentin och Stina så jättesnälla och gästvänliga att jag, Ainur och Kaarina fick bo hemma hos dem och deras katter och höns under festivalen. <3
Jag fotade även konstiga hundar på kafeer:
Jag kom på att jag egentligen alltid har tyckt att Stockholm är jobbigt, men nuförtiden förknippar jag det med alla fina seriemänniskor som jag känner där och träffar där varje år, så jag kan ju inte hata Stockholm längre! Argh!
Jag ser redan fram emot SPX14 … :3
Tunguska #11
Det tolfte numret på fjorton år är ute lagom till SPX i Stockholm nu i helgen! V`(oo)´V
(Där ligger de och torkar. Jag var en blind jävel och hade missat att maskera biten av flaggan under Willies arm, och märkte inte att den biten fortfarande var skinande vit förrän jag hade tryckt allt redan, så jag fick korrigera varje omslag för hand!)
68 sidor, A4.
Innehåller följande:
- Sidan tre-killen – Albert Chisholm: Sjöman, skämttecknare och Spanienfrivillig.
- Nästsista scenen i Drivgods kapitel 9, director’s cut! Tre extra sidor actionspäckad handling.
- Hundön del 1. Fortsättningen till Drivgods: Willie har återvänt till Sha-Guo i hopp om att kunna hitta tillbaks till sina kamrater på skeppet Örnrockan. Under tiden får hon ett jobb på fiskfabriken, hoppas kunna hänga med någon fiskebåt för att komma vidare mot sitt mål, och har lite ångest rent allmänt.
- Alla mina små grannar – serien om alla små insekter och andra rara djur som lever i min trädgård. :3
- Anarki i Seriesverige: Det finns en hel del serietecknare i Seriesverige som kallar sig och/eller beter sig som anarkister, identifierar sig med olika anarkistiska strömningar och är till varierande grad posers och trüe. Jag presenterar kort ett par stycken.
COMICINVASIONBERLIN2013
In the previous years the local comics convention COMIC INVASION BERLIN has always happened on the same weekend as SPX/SIS Stockholm, but not so this year! So I will have a table at the comics market and sell all my German and English zines and books.
I also printed a couple of new zines:
* She’s a Killing Machine records a normal date with Eva. It was my first 24h comic, and another step in my endeavour to make all the Eva comics available in English.
* Driftwood chapter 7 and 8 are special zines with these two chapters. Later this year I’m going to do a pre-order/crowdfunding campaign for the English edition of the big Driftwood book and also a book collecting short stories and extra material. But since it’s a bit frustrating to sit around for months on all this unpublished material until all the practical details are worked out, I made zines with these two chapters in the meantime!
I will share my table with special secret guest Ilan Katin and his two little strange zines. Looking forward to Sunday, 12:00-20:00 at Urban Spree (Revaler Str. 99)!
SHu SHu SHu SHu SHu SHu SHu SHu
In one of the women’s toilet booths at Badehaus:
What I think happened there:
* * *
(Shu is from the comics about Eva …)
Guest cock at the Chicks on Comics exhibition
Chicks on Comics is an ongoing collaboration and comic dialogue by a bunch of women artists from all over the world. I was invited to do some guest art for their exhibition in Berlin on the theme “Spring & Feminism”, and of course I agreed to this great honour. (Even if I’m slightly disturbed by the header graphic they have on the blog … That looks somehow painful! But I guess that’s what art is …?) V^(oo)^;V
Here’s my guest drawing:
True story. I didn’t have time to beat up the guy because I had to get off at the next stop, and I was also still working on managing my anger and violence issues after a long relationship with an abusive man (I hit back before I was able to leave him).
A funnier story is that once I did, on pure reflex, strangle a guy who randomly came up to me at a club and started groping my ass. I kept strangling him until he let go of my ass. V^(oo)^V
Anyway, there were many other very nice pieces of guest art:
Since I myself didn’t draw any piggies this time, I was a bit worried that there might not be any piggies at all in the exhibition! But to my great relief and joy, there were *two* piggy comics!!!! V^(oo)^V
A take on Little Red Riding Hood, with a piggy bus driver. I’m a pervert (and I like fuzzy animals), so I always want to feel sympathetic to the wolf. The wolf wasn’t nice in this comic, but it did omit the stupid Huntsman – good riddance!
I forgot to note the artist, so I’m only 99% sure, but I think it’s by Sole Otero! V^(oo)^V
Piggy comic #2 – guest art by Amadeo González. Yeah …
It’s a very nice exhibition, and everybody who can should go see it! It’ll be up at alphanova in Berlin-Friedrichshain until April 26th. And in any case you have to check out the Chicks on Comics project blog and read all their awesome comics!
* * *
P.S. There were two very nice doggies at the opening:
(Photo by Ilan)
A piece of Tungus ASSR zine history
In October 2006 (when I was “kind of” living in Berlin, before finally moving here permanently in January) I brought some copies of my zine Die Kompassrose (first German language zine I’ve made, yay) to the comics library Renate.
I remember being terribly nervous and embarrassed, and it wasn’t made easier by the fact that the cute Russian guy Vadim was working at Renate that day and insisted on speaking Russian with me … V#^(oo)^#V
A while ago the current Renate crew came to the conclusion that in the more than six years since then, Renate had sold 15 of the 20 copies (!!!), so I got some money for them. :3 I also got the receipt and Vadim’s note from 2006:
P.S. That email address is not in use anymore.
They still have 5 copies or so at Renate, and those are the only copies still for sale that have the brown paper covers that look kind of like skin, with birthmarks and everything. That paper was in fact my initial inspiration for this comic about a tattoo! :3
My garden and some of those I share it with
Last year’s 24 h comic. Actually it’s mainly about those I share it with.
This Saturday!
Opening party for the 24h Comics Marathon exhibition (featuring comics by atari_elle, Auge Lorenz, Clémentine Guichard, Darkam, Ilan Katin, Javier Lozano Jaén, Lilli Loge, Tinet Elmgren and maybe more!) + concert with Bananarchie and JFG und die Irregulären, at Panke, Berlin-Wedding!
- Details -
(Flyer by Clémentine Guichard!)
2012! The year of extremes?
The year started with crazy hard work drawing as much comics as possible. I had two comics that were supposed to go to print in March. So I slept very little, abused a lot of coffeine, and lost myself in the higher purpose of creating the most awesome comics I could in this insanely short time frame.
One was my contribution to Swedish Comic Sin 3 – the first comic I have ever drawn with grey shading. It was also a bit challenging to draw in smaller format, and it certainly was challenging to draw sex scenes that would really do justice to the characters and their feelings. (But fun!!! :3)
Even more challenging was the other comic I had to finish – Driftwood, which I’d been working on since I was 15. V`(oo)´;V
Even if there were a couple of stupid errors in it (such as an unfinished retouch job on one page, ugh), and I’ve now decided to extend one of the last scenes a bit for the English book version, the book as it was published in Swedish is already incredible. V*(oo)*V
Those crazy months were not made easier by the fact that somebody gave me lots of psychological abuse, but I endured it and just kept drawing one page after the other and drowning out my brain. (And, by all means, it gave me some useful inspiration for Willie’s dad in Driftwood.) As for personal relationships, I figured they could go to hell for all I cared, because I had more important things to do …
(Frida Ulvegren reads my porn at SPX12 – photo by Ilan)
Then I went to SPX12 (or Stockholm International Comics Festival). On one hand it was a really positive experience since I got to meet many of my wonderful friends in the Swedish comics scene, and met some new friends as well. It was exciting to present the Driftwood book and see that people actually wanted to have it. :3 To top it off, my zine Tunguska #9 was awarded the prize for best zine of 2011 by the Swedish Comics Association.
On the other hand I also had to interact with some annoying and insane people. But Ilan was by my side and made it perhaps not quite as bad.
Otherwise, Driftwood got practically no reviews or media attention. I can only speculate about the reasons. Because the press release sucked? Or because a book “doesn’t exist” in Sweden unless it’s on Adlibris, which is too bad since Epix has a policy to delay release to the commercial internet bookstores? Or because nobody wants to read almost 400 pages just for a review? Or because it’s too weird and Swedish people don’t even know where to start categorizing it …?
However, it was surprisingly and heartwarmingly well-received in the libraries. It got a very nice review in the main library catalogue, a mention in the yearly catalogue for the best new children’s and young adult books for libraries, and has been acquired by many libraries across the country. The vast majority of the truckloads of comics I devoured in my youth were borrowed from libraries (Gothenburg city library especially in my heart forever ♥), so that means a lot to me.
Anyway, after I got home from Stockholm, I had to compensate for the fact that I’d taken 3 months off from dayjobs by working my ass off. Since my solar panel was busted and it wasn’t very powerful anyway, I had to spend most of my time in the city to work. So my gardening really suffered this year. But I was still able to grow some cucumbers and other nice things.
At one point early in the year I had to “blackmail” a client (a local comics publisher, and not the awesome one that I’ve been working for since 2006) because they were holding my payments. I’d agreed to do two jobs for them, and I’d had no previous experience with them.
They were 15 days late with the payment for the first job, and after several reminders to which they just replied “yes, we will pay soon”, I stated that I wouldn’t start the second job until they’d paid me for the first … at which they paid immediately. This made them extremely untrustworthy, so to make sure I did get paid for the second job, I demanded the money before I delivered the files. After that was settled, I will of course never work for them again.
Oh the joys of freelancing.
So anyway, during May-December I mostly did lots of dayjob work. I also completed the nearly superhuman feat of teaching my mum to work with InDesign and Photoshop so she could create and publish her first book all by herself!
But I did make some time to enjoy the finer things in life, too. (Hairy men, etc. :3)
I started drawing Dog Island – the sequel to Driftwood. But overall I drew very little comics. Of course, anything would seem pathetic compared to the first three months of the year … ;__;
In other art forms, I am teaching myself to play dombra (slowly but steadily). But it’s extremely embarrassing to play in front of other humans so that’s all I’ll say about that.
In October, a strange thing happened: the Memorial to Romani victims of the Holocaust in Berlin was finally opened after 20 years of delay(!).
In the fall I moved to my winter residence in the city again, and continued working my ass off with dayjobs. But this meant that in the end I got the means to finally end a very strained professional relationship.
I went to some more festivals – Helsinki comics festival, Zinefest Berlin and AltCom Malmö – where I disseminated my comics and met lovely friends, old and new. ♥
Then Ilan and I organized a 24h comics marathon in Berlin, since there hadn’t been any this year at all. This Saturday we will have the opening party for the exhibition with the comics!
As mentioned, because of dayjob overload and other problems, my comics making had been suffering for most of the year, in stark contrast to how it started out. But it seems to have picked up again just before the year ended … :3
* * *
I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do about all the insanity in the world, with the rise of fascism, the disastrous self-destructive capitalism, and the lack of awareness about what we could actually do to make the future better. Just the other day I read a quite thought-provoking text on these issues, written by Malcom Tamale Kyeyune (in Swedish).
I met the new year on a rooftop with fireworks going off all over town around us, and an annoying drunk middle aged fancy sculptor person shouting into Ilan’s ear, “Berlin is the last place on earth!” (he must be new?) and “You aren’t Muslim, are you?” and “It’s just a joke!” …
Bodes well for the new year!
