My first comic to be published in an actual, physical magazine! This one-pager appeared in Kuti #68, a free comics magazine distributed in about 250 places, 12 cities across Finland, and also abroad.

The summer issue #68 was an open call, with the theme of witchcraft, magic, pagan, and occult. With my comic, I wanted to express the problem of any ”secret” knowledge, that it is always a tool for power plays. Someone is in control over others, creating hierarchies. Who gets to determine who is worthy? What about those insiders, who realize the emptiness of the hierarchy? They become the gatekeeperes, with the decision to either open the gates for everyone and bring the system down, or close the gates for good… but then there’s always someone outside, who sees that as a sign of there being something of high value inside. What do you think?

This comic is a collage. I drew the faces with coloured pencils on A4 size, starting with the uppermost, then taking a copy of that and continuing drawing over the copy. Repeat, repeat, et voilà, four faces with the flesh graduately covering the skull. The background is an inkwash painting, originally black and white, tinted digitally. Texts are hand-written. The whole thing was put together in Krita. This is the first coloured comic on this page, it definitely added a lot of work! Hmm… how would it look B&W? Not bad!