Trolls...in space! This comic needs to done!

Not 40K related, but...

Do you have a moment to talk about a huge troll woman? No? Too bad.

Thurinn is a troll berserker living in Alwoerin, a fantasy world of my creation. She’s a pretty important character in my on-going web comic God-Killer, and it can be found behind this link: https://godkiller.alwoerin.com/

She was originally created to be a minor character in the first comic I made about Alwoerin, but her straightforward way of dealing with life captivated both me and many of my readers, and she is now one of my best known creations. She’s a mercenary who quite often ends up in the middle of big events and it usually leads to a pretty violent showdown. The reasons behind her creation were that I had (and still have) a mighty need to create adventure comics with shamelessly powerful woman as their leads.Thurinn does not exist for the male gaze and although she’s a very sexual person, she’s not sexualized, it’s more the opposite. She takes what she wants and kills what she doesn’t like.

About she being a troll: My view of these hairy and lovely creatures comes from Finnish folklore. In those stories trolls are not the lumbering idiots of Tolkien’s books, but intelligent and partly feral creatures who are part of the forest folk (metsän väki).

I love grimdark as a genre, and I’m known in Finland as the sole artist who oes it in here, but I just never understood the amount of sexism in a big part of the fiction surrounding it. Therefore I have been doing the thing that led me to creating comics in the first place: If I want to see and read something, it’s better just to do it myself.

I would love to see more strong women in sci-fi and fantasy stories, and I would happily see and hear about other people’s creations as well. Show me your barbarian queens, space mercenaries and the women who kick ass.

Being a mercenary is a hard job, so when you have some leisure and a chance to spend all that hard-earned blood money, the cities of the Silari empire offer many ways to do it.Thurinn, being who she is, is not one to do things half-heartedly.

Now, since I’m making posts about warrior women, I can’t do it without mentioning Thurinn. The troll berserker, who is probably the only female character in my comics who does actually fight without proper armor, but that is only because she doesn’t really need them. I also wanted to make a woman character who could be partly nude without it being sexual at the same time... unless Thurinn wants it to be so. She was meant to be a side-character without much significance, but then she just...claimed her place like a fierce and unpredictable thing she is. Now she is one of the main characters in my God-killer webcomic and she has an important part to play in future stories about the fantasy world of my creation: Alwoerin.

A friend once said that Thurinn is the closest thing to Conan the barbarian that he knows, and I must say he’s not wrong. The same vitality and simplistic view of the world can be found in both characters, and that probably makes her such an important character to myself.

Also big strong lady with horns: what’s there not to like

Her adventures can be found in my webcomic as well as from a Finnish comic book Alhaiset.

Here’s the link to the web-comic: https://godkiller.alwoerin.com/

Thurinn might be big, hairy and a nasty troll-woman, but she also knows how to ask a permission before entering a lady’s bed-chamber. Be like Thurinn!

Still practicing the colors. Our favorite troll Thurinn the berserk in her natural habitat.

Do you have a moment to talk about a huge troll woman? No? Too bad.

Thurinn is a troll berserker living in Alwoerin, a fantasy world of my creation. She’s a pretty important character in my on-going web comic God-Killer, and it can be found behind this link: https://godkiller.alwoerin.com/

She was originally created to be a minor character in the first comic I made about Alwoerin, but her straightforward way of dealing with life captivated both me and many of my readers, and she is now one of my best known creations. She’s a mercenary who quite often ends up in the middle of big events and it usually leads to a pretty violent showdown. The reasons behind her creation were that I had (and still have) a mighty need to create adventure comics with shamelessly powerful woman as their leads.Thurinn does not exist for the male gaze and although she’s a very sexual person, she’s not sexualized, it’s more the opposite. She takes what she wants and kills what she doesn’t like.

I love grimdark as a genre, and I’m known in Finland as the sole artist who oes it in here, but I just never understood the amount of sexism in a big part of the fiction surrounding it. Therefore I have been doing the thing that led me to creating comics in the first place: If I want to see and read something, it’s better just to do it myself.

I would love to see more strong women in sci-fi and fantasy stories, and I would happily see and hear about other people’s creations as well. Show me your barbarian queens, space mercenaries and the women who kick ass.

For those who love Grimdark in a fantasy setting, I would suggest you go and check out my web-comic: God-killer. There’s already almost 160 pages to read, and it’s a story which is heavily inspired by Finnish and Scandinavian mythology and viking age. The story is brutal, bloody and full of dark humor, so it’s surely not for everyone’s tastes, but I recommend you give it a go! If there happens to be any Finns reading this, the comic is also published as a series of albums in Finnish. he second book will be coming out this Autumn.

One special mention: Even though the main character is the classic angry white man, he has a friend whom I have learned to love dearly: Meet Thurinn, a she-troll berserker with grand appetites. She’s a huge pile of muscle accompanied with a down-to-earth attitude and incredible skills in the art of violence.

Here’s the link!

https://godkiller.alwoerin.com/

The legendary comic-artist Moebius told in in some interview his advice for the aspiring artists that one can take some liberties with male characters, but the women should always be perfect. I must say that I disagree with that particular advice, but I must say that with characters like Alli Halikko and Thurinn I have actually managed to touch some level of perfection.

And by perfection I mean that I'm really pleased for them both as real characters. I make comics which, by definition, are considered something made by men for men. Gritty and dark stories with violence and hard people. In other words, I make comics I would personally want to read :D I just don't think that these kind of themes and stories are something that interests just men, I think the reason for women not liking grim-dark in general is that they're really poorly represented. For men it's often a power-fantasy: Invincible and harsh man wins the day and usually that means that he wins the woman protagonist for himself as well, and that's exactly the problem. Who wants to be a trophy? It's always these skinny little women in skimpy outfits who must be rescued and then they have to play mother for the male protagonists, who can never express feelings for anyone else. Sounds kinda crappy, and it's also poor writing and boring as fuck. So at some point I just decided that I'm going to put a female leads for my stories, and I'll make them just like the men are usually portrayed: Strong, usually wearing believable armor, scarred, gritty and having muscles as well as fat tissue. If you're living a harsh life, it should show. I want that female readers can relate to heroes as well, I want them to win the day against the odds and if they are being mentally scarred it's for whole other reasons than the usual: getting raped. For fuck's sake, I'm so tired and disgusted for that trope.

So as a result, we have characters like Thurinn and the Varangian warrior, Alli. If someone feels attacked or insulted by the existence of these hardy women, I have good news for them as well: Probably about 90% of these kind of grim action comics are still just like they want it: Soaked with testosterone. But things are changing, mark my words. And it's a good thing.

“Alhaiset” is a comic book coming out next March here in Finland. It takes a place in a Fantasy world called Alwoerin. The two stories present the main characters of the comic, which are a so-called freecompany of three: An elven mage, a barbarian woman and a male troll, who all are also living in a romantic relationship with each others, and the lone troll maiden Thurinn, who is a berserker.

While building the Alwoerin world, I tried to do my best including heroes and heroines who don’t usually get represented in Fantasy fiction: Including the Berserker-trolls, who are almost exclusively women, since the old troll patriarchy is slowly crumbling and the female-trolls who have enlisted to the imperial army have decided to show that they are the toughest bastards of the whole army -and they are! It also have the cult of warrior-mages, the Gensari, who only choose transgender people to join their cult etc.

Here is a bunch of female-warriors from the world of Alwoerin!

Just got home from Tampere Comic con, which was great, and for a change I actually had a whole pile of comics getting published there! Most notable is the Pakanat (pagans) trilogy. Three hundred pages of comic taking place in the Viking-age Finland and the eastern river-roads. It’s a revenge story, but more than that a picture of the living in these areas around the year 900. FInishing this comic took me five years and I’m really happy to finally see the finished book in my hands.

Alhaiset (lowborns) is a fantasy comic taking place in a world of my own creation: Alwoerin. It’s a story about a pansexual, polyamoric triad of a human barbarian, a troll and an elvish mage with serious narcotic problem. And then there is Thurinn, a half-naked troll she-berserker with an kick-ass attitude. She doesn’t really like anyone, though.

Foederati is a short comic I was paid to draw. The script and the coloring were not mine, just the line art. It’s a spin-off to the original Foederati comic made by Toni Karonen and Juuso Laasonen (It’s going to be published in English this year) taking place in the 5th century Rome and Germania, telling a story of a young warrior during the invasions of Attila the Hun.

Now the process is done, the final books printed and it’s time to move towards the next projects!