ALL OVER

I have placed this file under my international partition, since it is a pantomime strip, you will understand right away, despite the few text plates.

I have known the Finnish comics artist Tarmo Koivisto for many years, and I came to admire him for writing and drawing the continued Sunday page strip, Mämmilä depicting life in a fictional provincial town by that name somewhere in Finland. It ran for decades and thereby gave a varied picture of society changing over the years. The strip was financed by a pre-publication in Helsinkin Sanomat, the leading Finnish daily newspaper, with a good many albums published compiling these continued Sunday pages.

I thought Tarmo Koivisto had retired by now, but then a completely new album landed in my mailbox. It is a satirical contemporary comic about a right wing nationalistic Finnish political party, written by two journalists, and since Tarmo is also excellent on caricature all the characters have recognizable living counterparts.

The strip on this page is a one shot from his younger years when I came to know Tarmo. It was also included in a comics’ anthology I issued with short comics by different Scandinavian artists.