This place is based a bit on Big Major Cay in the Bahamas. Which it is my innermost dream to one day visit. V*(oo)*V

(And there are of course plenty of other islands in the world that are inhabited by feral piggies but not humans. Yeeaah …)

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And, as promised last week …

(Like I mentioned in the notes after White Nights, Samona makes her skirts a bit lighter and more manageable than the traditional Finnish Roma skirts, which are made of meters upon meters of heavy velvet and can weigh around 10 kg.)

In a minute I’m going to a party/exhibition for the 24 h comics that we did last year, whee …

We prepared the exhibition yesterday. I also brought my other zines in German and English in case somebody should wish to acquire them. One of the other artists checked out my comics. First she read The Muggers, and then she recognised The Compass Rose, because the comics library Renate sells it. And then she looked at White Nights, and asked excitedly, “And what’s this about? Gender politics, transsexuality …?” I said, “Uuh …”, and she said, “It’s the same character, right?”
So I had to explain that White Nights is not about Aeron crossdressing, but it’s about a whole other, female, person …

Aeron’s comment: “…”
Samona’s comment: “Bwa hah haa! Learn to draw better, dammit!!! ”

Coincidentally, I had recently been thinking about how Aeron perhaps has a rather unusually relaxed attitude towards women, in general, for somebody with his background. Probably because he grew up with only women around him. So maybe he wouldn’t mind trying on Samona’s clothes, after all? :3
Maybe it would be like in some Japanese girls’ comics (one example that comes to mind is Miriam by Kyoko Hikawa) where the heroine’s love interest has to disguise himself as a woman, and everybody thinks he looks even better like that … heh. Okay, now I know what my next warm-up sketch will be.

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By the way, regarding last week’s topic – today I came across this fitting Che Guevara quote, too:

“The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller—whether or not it is true—about the possibilities of success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”

themarxistmind explains it quite eloquently.

The two next pages will be kind of fun. :3

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I came across an interesting article at Transport International Magazine about prejudice against women seafarers: Waves of resistance …

The captains in Deadliest Catch once discussed women on fishing boats, and the main reason they cited for why it isn’t very popular is that the wives of the fishermen would be very uncomfortable about having their husbands living so closely with some other woman. :o/ (Yeah yeah, it’s always some woman’s fault …)

They mentioned a crab fishing boat that once operated with an all-women crew. Also, there have been two boats on the show where the wife of the captain came along as a cook, and one where the daughter of the captain worked as a deckhand and seemed to kick ass in general.

And here’s another article from Transport International Magazine, about Ann Jorunn Olsen, who works on a Norwegian fishing trawler and thinks international trade union solidarity is very important. <3 ;_;

(Read more about Children North East.)

I used to do that with the money my dad’s parents sent me for Christmas and birthdays. When they found out I gave their money to charities they stopped sending it … Oh well, charity as such is but a band aid on existing injustices, not a tool against their actual causes.

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Swedish peoples, tentatively rejoice! As it turns out I’m 85% sure that there will be a Driftwood book in Swedish printed and ready for the masses at the Stockholm Comics Festival (SPX) at the end of this coming April! In one form or another. :3

An English version will follow this summer. Whee!

Edit, January 17th:
Yeah, now I can announce it publicly – there will definitely be a Swedish Driftwood book out at the end of April, in time for SPX! And it will be published by Epix. :3
We still have to decide exactly how fat it’s going to be, and you can help in the new poll on the left!
As mentioned, there will be an English version out next summer, published by yours truly, so even if you don’t read Swedish you are welcome to answer the poll.

With the English book I can do pretty much what I want, so I will release both physical copies and a digital PDF version. You’ll be able to order the physical book either from me in Germany, or directly from the printer (ComiXpress) in the USA, which might be handy for all you North Americans. :o)

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93 (not 97 as I wrote just now … I really worked my ass off today) years ago today Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered. Sadly I couldn’t visit their graves today, because I have to work my ass off. This photo is from the same date in 2009:

Okay, guess why “a couple of days” of delay turned into a week … Somehow bizarrely I drew the Davy Roll works, across the street to the north of the Chandless estate, much too small (or maybe I drew the flats on Hopper Street and the Trinity Square car park too big), but otherwise I guess I can live with the first panel. X_x