As Halloween creeps closer, I felt inspired to draw scary stuff… Not that I’m afraid of the advances in the field of reproductive health during the 20th century. I’m quite grateful for them.

Sometimes people ask what historical period I would like to live in. Well, the last 30 years have been pretty okay. Antibiotics and developed contraception methods guarantee that I can live my life without many of the worries that Mayann and her friends would have to deal with in reality. In biographies of people living in the 1910’s and 1920’s, it’s striking how many suffered and even died because of sexual health issues, even well-to-do people. Others were victims of psychiatric issues, and we still haven’t found solutions for many of those. And then there were countless quacks wreaking havoc on people’s savings and sanity.

Goldie is not a quack, of course. She represents the cutting edge of science with a feminist goal. Just look through her bookshelves for inspiration! The book right behind Falco’s ear is titled Idéologie d’hier: Dieu, la morale, la patrie (“Ideology of Yesterday: God, morals, fatherland”), by Dr Madeleine Pelletier, a famous French feminist doctor and social activist. No wonder our dear deacon recoils in horror. So what might Goldie be concocting? What makes even convinced animal rights activist Mayann beam with glee?

By the way, the word Guinea Pig in the sense of ‘object for experiments’ was first recorded in the English language precisely in the year 1920.

Continuing the horror theme, today it’s Father Pietro’s turn to face his worst nightmare – a garden full of pests*) such as a wild sow and her farrow, a raven, sparrows, a mole, and three unruly seminarians. Falco is playing Saint Francis to a young raven, Nino is feeding his feathered friends instead of sowing, and I don’t want to know what Zeppe is going to do with his little spade.

I got the idea from studying Parisian argot, the famous slang of the underworld, which contains many imaginative, rude but sometimes poetical synonyms to the regular vocabulary. A priest, for example, could be called sanglier (wild boar), marcassin (wild piglet), corbeau (raven), or taupe (mole); all animals could be described as black like the priest’s cassock. In the days of Victor Hugo, seminary students were called mômes noirs (black kids: see also la môme Piaf).

There is an even more interesting explanation to the term sanglier. According to the Dictionnaire Du Jargon Parisien by Lucien Rigaud from 1878, “Le sanglier est sauvage ; le prêtre vit retiré du monde comme le sanglier au fond des forèts”. The wild boar prefers the deep forests, the priest must keep away from worldly life – being “in the world, but not of it”. From the point of view of the urban proletariat, the clerical class seemed as removed from their world as the wild boar in the forest.

*) N.B.: Pigs can be very useful helpmates in the garden. Our potbellied pig Sergei kept the lawn neat and free from weeds, trimmed and fertilised the rose bushes, and kept the ant and slug population in check.

Since I started studying Paris argot, it was only logical to continue with the Apaches of Montmartre. Looks like Mayann is ready to give them a taste of their own dance.

… And that was how I came to know Julot and Gigolette,
And we would talk and drink a bock, and smoke a cigarette.
And I would meditate upon the artistry of crime,
And he would tell of cracking cribs and cops and doing time;
Or else when he was flush of funds he’d carelessly explain
He’d biffed some bloated bourgeois on the border of the Seine.
So gentle and polite he was, just like a man of peace,
And not a desperado and the terror of the police.
(Robert Service, 1921)

Lord knows what Falco thinks he can do with his umbrella. Perhaps it’s something he learned as a missionary in Japan, or maybe he is familiar with the Cunningham system.

Studying popular imagery of the clerical class over the centuries, one is struck by the ubiquitous umbrella, if you pardon the pun. Here some Jesuits chase away a secular scientist from a Bavarian university in the German satirical magazine Jugend (1913).

Inspired by “Dulcy, the Beautiful”, a comic strip in the British movie magazine Picture Show 1924. It’s not very funny but rather cute anyway, and supposedly written by silent star Constance Talmadge… Both Connie and her sister Norma were a bit dog-crazy.

Name the characters whose eyes you see above! It’s nice how humans (and dogs!) belong to a small gene pool but still manage to show beautiful variation in their phenotype. Dog eyes, by the way, differ from human eyes in interesting ways – the tapetum lucidum, which reflects light, gives a dog’s eye colour an iridescent effect which can be seen up close. I was always fascinated by the irises of our Akita Mitsu, which were dark brown but softly scintillating in rainbow colours. I’ve tried to imitate that effect to give Mochi’s eye an ominous glow.

Colouring is fun, but so time-consuming… I guess I just need more practice.

The “roaring” Twenties didn’t start very cheerfully in France (where our heroes live, when they’re not vacationing on disputed territory at the Adriatic Sea). Everything was scarce after the devastating war, and prices were on the rise. For Lou and Mayann, this is not a problem – the US dollar is strong, and the bulk of their Paris audience consists of North and South American tourists, war profiteers and “goulash barons”.

But for Falco… Even before the war, a decent cassock would cost 65 Fr., and his meager scholarship has certainly not been updated to catch up with the rising costs of living. No wonder he needs a part-time job or two. (Those kid gloves and that silk cincture… not exactly standard equipment for a simple deacon!)

Observe, too, how expensive the ladies’ shoes are in comparison. The worth of their undergarments must remain a mystery, but I would guess that Mayann wears the skimpiest and most expensive ones…

Inspired by this front page of Le Petit Journal, July 4th, 1920.

My search of a so-called life has brought me to the capital of Finland, where I’m enjoying the prodigal snowdrifts and the generous library services. In the future, the Goldenbird gang must experience 1920’s Finland – so much crazy stuff going on here.

After a strenuous day, I wanted to document my adventures in a comic, but the tablet still makes me frustrated so here’s just one pic… a self-portrait somewhere in Sörnäinen.

I was playing around with a self-portrait like this.

Orcs are probably my favourite fantasy creatures. Since I’m not a gamer as such, but more of an academic scholar, I see things in them that many hardcore gamers or fans of particular fantasy authors do not see. For example, myself…

Tolkien’s Orcs were the minions of Evil, and it’s easy to fall in the opposite trap and “redeem” them as misunderstood noble savages. I would like to avoid that, but who knows? You can read some of my really old Orc comics online.

Orcs fascinate me for pretty much the same reasons as all stereotypical images of “the Other” or “the Enemy”. We are all somebody’s Other. As a child of emigrants and multiple immigrant myself, I have grown up with a sense of doubt towards those images every time they are presented as fact as well as fiction. Here is an inspirational cartoon from the 1910’s, depicting the two major linguistic groups of Finland from the point of view of the smaller one. As you can see, the threatening majority (the Finnish-speaker) is dressed like a peasant and looks more “Eastern” (cheekbones, slanted eyes, brushy hair – note also the full lips and broad nose, visual cues for “un-European”), pretty Orcish in spite of his blond hair (the ears!), while the small and desperately waving Finland-Swede has parted his hair neatly and wears a civilized western jacket.