KIEV Slava Ukraini is a comic artist Heikki Paakkanen78, the seventh comic album from the Sissi and Civil Serviceman series.
In the series, a disparate couple, a pacifist and a militarist, travel around different countries to study their military history.
This time, the main characters are caught up in an ongoing war for the first time.
– I didn’t wish for war, but now it happened that I get to operate in a real war, Paakkanen says.
The artist is known as an enthusiastic and even manic enthusiast of history and especially military history.
In the cartoon album series “Guerrilla and civil servant”, he has contrasted two completely opposite personalities: the idealistic and passionate civil servant is a vegetarian and a sworn pacifist, the guerilla who drinks everything but water is a looser thirsting for adventure.
Ukraine and the war in its territory brought a twist to the mutual relations of cartoon characters.
A civil servant now picks up a gun for the first time and wonders if it’s time to put pacifism on the shelf. The background of the decision is also the traumatic war experiences of Finns, from which the guerrillas have always drawn inspiration.
– All lamps exude the spirit of the lamp, in this case it was the spirit of the winter war.
Military history is not just a hobby for Paakkan, but also part of his family history. His family comes from Vyborg.
Speeding to Ukraine
Paakkanen was about to send the main characters of the series Sissi and a civil servant to Estonia, and for that he made a trip to the neighboring country in January of this year.
There he realized that the war in Ukraine might be over soon and he would not have time to witness it with his own eyes.
In record time, the artist built and drew the story and prepared the trip to Ukraine.
Now we are sitting on a park bench in the center of Kyiv, and Paakkanen is drawing a man sleeping next to him in his notebook.
The purpose of the trip is to gather observations about war and everyday life in a country at war. The observations are to be turned into documentary drawings, which will be attached to the album’s future supplement.
However, Kyiv was a surprise for the artist. In the city – despite the constant airstrikes – everyday life is almost normal, even friendly to tourists.
However, Paakkanen does not go to Bahmut, a land devastated by heavy fighting, or other similar areas, because safety was the most important condition for him and his family to go on the trip.
Paakkanen plans to make war observations in Irpin, which suffered from occupation, or in a military hospital.
– I know the misery brought by war. I’m not just talking about guts or mass grave destruction, but about the grief and sorrow that is caused to relatives, says Paakkanen.
– The deceased’s worries are over, but they will be a problem and a nightmare for the relatives for the rest of their lives, he continues.
The paradoxes of war are interesting
Paakkanen says that he is particularly interested and inspired by the paradoxical nature and contradictions of war. In a country at war, the proximity of the signs of war and everyday things can seem contradictory.
The artist came across this type of surprising observations on the very first day after arriving in Kyiv.
Paakkanen witnessed the shooting of a porn film on a busy street in Kyiv, and later attention was drawn to the black men who had passed out on the bench and were dressed in terrain-patterned clothes.
– I tried to establish a contact so that I could ask him for permission to draw. We didn’t find a common language, but it turned out that he is so drunk that a common language might not have helped.
Paradoxes help Paakkas to look at war as something other than just horror.
– I’m afraid of mass ecstasy. I’d rather be an inquisitive observer than a blasphemer, says Paakkanen.