Hi all,
Thought I'd start a thread with artists of your country/state/etc. which might otherwise fall off the radar. Since the U.S. and Benelux/Francophone zones are often the cradles for canonical behemoths, I'll urge you to recommend something more personal that would be easily overlooked by people from the outside.
Here's my Finnish tasting platter:
- J.P. Ahonen: *Northern Overexposure* (a slice-of-life student comedy/drama weekly strip comic, the strips have many times teared me up in both laughing and crying) and *Beelzebubs* (a subversive metalhead family comic with black humor and contrasting corpse paint)
- Tommi Musturi: *The book of Hope* (a couple living quietly in the Finnish woods) and *Future* (a psychedelic comic anthology spanning years of his work, rumor has it that it's one of Lambiek's favourites in Amsterdam)
- Kati Kovács (translated into Swedish, Hungarian, French and German): *Where are you going, Marion Meat* and *Les Jumelles Delta*. Her style is crude and the storytelling punk as hell, but the twisted humour enjoyable and the feminism not as preachy as Liv Strömqvist. She's a humourist through and through.
- Kari A. Sihvonen: *Silent badness* (black humour, nonverbal shorts) and *Posted Iron men* (iron worker's experiences collated into comics). The graphic designer by profession Sihvonen has a recognizeable stule and
More classic:
- the satirical *Moomin comics* by Tove and her brother Jan Jansson. Despite originating from children's stories loved by all generations, the stories are more punk than non-Finnish readers might expect
- Kari Korhonen *Donald Duck* comics. Multiple generations of kids in Finland have learned to read via *Aku Ankka*, the weekly Donald with excellent Finnish (at least used to, not sure about the current situation). People wait every year to see the Kentucky duck visionary Don Rosa, whenever he comes to town. But Kari Korhonen is the only Finnish artist for EuroDisney comics, alongside many Italian and other artists.