Comic book: 10 € (Sold out)
I believe that this has been so far the biggest selling comic book in my mailorder, although mostly because i have sold many copies in belgium.
By pure coincidence, it is also a belgian publishing company that has put out this book in french. Tommi Musturi, the author, is the editor of the Glömp magazine (a yearly anthology that actually looks more like a book).
This is a solowork, his graduation final work and pictures the mindstate of a middleaged man in finland. He occupies himself with the pleasures of the outdoor life on the countryside (eating, fixing a bird's nest, sauna, walking in the forest) and mentally with remeniscing about childhood and contemplating about life.
The main character is however not romaticised or idealised and resembles in more than one way my own father in law. This is the first book in what appears to be a series of more books of hope.
This comic book could easily be mistaken for a religious pamphlet: the cover, a red little booklet with a golden imprint of sunbeams shining through the clouds, and the name itself (The First Book of Hope) could cause amused confusion. However, one quick look at the back reveals the mushroom image of a nuclear blast, so we can safely carry on reading. Fittingly, the first words of the book are "30 people died in a nuclear explosion", a message on the radio.
The images, however, tell a different story. Nicely drawn scenes from idyllic countryside life flow from one page to the next: a wooden house near a lake, a scarecrow, swallows in the sky, a hidden bottle of vodka under the porch.
The main character in The First Book of Hope is seemingly an ordinary Finnish middle-aged man: a little bit overweight and slightly balding. His name is never mentioned and we do not know where this story takes place.
Now, here's where finnish skills come in handy: Hope is in Finnish Toivo, which is at the same time also a regular (albeit oldfashioned) name for men. This wonderful wordplay makes the reader aware to fact that this comic is actually an allegory. Normally in allegories (yes, i have studied literature and was forced to read mediaeval literature and now it's payback time) characters in these plays are abstract ideas, such as Death, Good Deeds, Knowledge who are then humanized and have philosophical discussions with eachother.
Now it would be difficult to see our main character Toivo as the Hope of humankind. Actually, it seems more fitting that our main character (actually the only person in this book) embodies the Finnish Everyman. He ponders about the life he has led and lost friendships. Throughout the work a melancholic feeling permeates, as voiced in the monologues of our Everyman: "you hope you become wiser as you try to avoid the bitterness life so often offers. "
This book was the graduation work of Tommi Musturi and was featured in the Masters of Arts 05 exhibition at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. It is not, however, a stand-alone-work: just recently The Second Book of Hope was published (in English) and there will be 6 Books of Hope in total. Like has published The First book of Hope in Finnish; the English version is already available in well stocked comic stores.
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