Welcome to my special Science Fiction-page.
My interest of the Science Fiction goes to very far to my childhood. I remember seeing Alex Raymond´s Flash Gordon-drawings even before
I started my first years in the school. That original Flash Gordon was published in a Finnish novel magazine and it was called "Iskevä Salama",
a stupid name meaning "The Striking Lightning". In that time many foreign comic heroes had a Finnish name - Johnny Hazard was "Jonni Hui-
mapää" and Tim Tyler "Timo Terävä" etc. Even The Phantom was "Urja" in a Finnish newspaper (could still be). But my interest was really
aroused during the first years of -50s when the British comic-magazine Super Detective Library started also in Finland. At the same time I
did read many science fiction-books which were written for younger people. There were several Finnish writers who wrote many books taking
place in space and future, but the most important was Osmo Ilmari whose best book was "Planeetta Logos" (The Planet Logos).
The best three books of the Finnish writer Osmo Ilmari Lampinen.
Of course I did read also translated scifi books which were written American or British writers. There was a publisher called Nide that printed
the best adventurous scifi books written by Bryan Berry, Herbert J. Campbell, Robert A. Heinlein and John Wyndham. My favorite from those
was Heinlein´s "Seitsemän miehen sota" (The Day after Tomorrow) and also Wyndham´s famous "The Day of the Triffids", that has been fil-
med at least three times. Later on my reading list were Ray Bradbury, Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov, but the latest was the only one of them
who wrote the stories to my taste. These later readings have not influenced my science fiction-works at all.
Heinlein´s book in a Finnish version. The best science fiction movie that I saw in my childhood was The Forbidden Planet.
Later in the -50s came the movies to support my great interest of the adventures in space and on other planets. There were many of those be-
fore that sort of movies sudddenly disappeared from the movie theaters in Finland, same time when the books disappeared for a long time. Ac-
tually it was so late than at the time of Star Wars and Alien when science fiction returned to Finland in movies. Almost the only source of them
seemed to be the comic magazines. For me just comic magazines were the most important source of inspiration to start draw my own comics ta-
king place outside the Earth. And the most important for me was the Finnish version of the British Super Detective Library with its science fic-
tion stories. They really fascinated me. They were skilfully and interesting drawn and told a complete long story in every issue. Beside the spa-
ce adventures there was plenty of detective stories, many adapted from the books like Bulldog Drummond and The Saint. The covers of this ma-
gazine were also tempting and beautifully done.
Here are English and Finnish covers of few of the scifi-issues of Super Detective Library :
Many of these scifi-stories were illustrated by Ron Turner, whose excellent graphic style made a strong influence on me. It was actually these
space-stories that made me to draw my own comics when I was a schoolboy. He is still the best artist in the spatial comic-business to my opinion
because of his vivid imagination and drawing style.
The stylish pages of Ron Turner. The two on the right are from the story "Kidnappers from Space" and that story was my greatest
favorite of them all and has been the ideal examplar of my Xellana-serie.
The English and Finnish covers of the issue. In Finland the magazine was named: "High Voltage serie".
Even when I admired the drawing-style of Ron Turner´s Rick Random-adventures, I still liked more those S-D-L-stories which were published
in the older issues. They were illustrated more natural way by artists who worked also with the other stories of the magazine. Below are two
examples of my favourites:
Two pages from the story: The Men from the Stars. Two pages from the story Crime rides the Spaceways
My earliest comics were merely Tarzan, Wild West and Science Fiction . They were very childish and simple of course. I have no examples
of them, but below are some of my childhood pictures of Science Fiction from the time when I was 17 years old.
With a typewriter in late 50´s. Examples of my humble scifi from 1962. On of my characters, this one is called William Todd.
My own scifi-comics were made in the various handmade magazines that I made during my childhood till early -70s. There was other comics and
typewriter-written detective-and adventure-stories also in the contents of those rather rough magazines. I made also one resembling my favourite
"Korkeajännityssarja" ( Super Detective Library). Here are the covers of those having a complete scifi-comic stories.
Pantteri-sarja magazine-covers resembled Finnish version of Super Detective Library-
covers. My Kobra-magazine contained also other material and its comics were con-
tinuing and had often a complete written stories.
This hobby that was seen only by my own family came to its end when I had a chance to do comics to a real published magazine in 1971. It
was a Finnish comic-magazine SARJIS (Comics in Finnish city-slang). I did choose science fiction as my subject because the page limit was
only 8 and it was easier to create a short story to a comic so short. My first published science fiction comic was The Sol Ship and after that
I made 8 other short stories for that magazine until it was suddenly suspended.
A page from The Sol Ship 1972.
Since then I have made various scifi-comics of which the Achilles Wiggen-serial is the most important having 22 episodes and more than
600 pages. It has been published only in Scandinavia. It´s mainly meant for younger readers as almost all my comics. Other science fic-
tion comics from my own manuscripts are Raiden, Trellos, Xellana and two short ones. There is also an ambition work of John Carter of
Mars adopted from E.R.Burroughs´ famous first Martian book published in Finnish Science Fiction magazine PORTTI.
The picture on the left is from my story Sigma Draconis III. The other on the right is from Xellana.
The Photoshop-coloured half-page from Trellos - The Forbidden Planet.
Beside the comic-work I started to illustrated science fiction novels and covers for books and magazines in -80s. Some of those can be seen
on my website galleria. Before I´ll close this science fiction web page I insert here the three of my best book covers of the subject...
