Tommi Musturi's keeping comics alive for the people of Finland

You’d think in the homeland of Tove Jansson that comic book artists would be ten a penny and the market flooded with all manner of graphic novels from across the globe. But there’s an awful lot of world-class titles that are never translated into Finnish, leaving the country’s comics lovers hungry for stories they’re desperate to consume. Luckily for Finland they’ve got champions of comics and illustration like Tommi Musturi translating titles by the likes of Dan Clowes and Edward Gorey into Finnish and producing their own incredible works on the side.

Tommi’s own comics are a joy to read; well-paced and exuberantly surreal. His characters range from the large and grotesque to, more recently, a little anthropomorphic guy called Samuel who gets into all sorts of scrapes as he pursues his own single-minded adventure. Clearly aware of the dangers of language barriers on comics sales, Samuel’s adventures are wordlessly executed, meaning you can enjoy them whether you’re a master of Scandinavian dialects or not.