On the Outside Looking In by Kaisa Leka
You ever wonder why Finnish comics are irrepressibly awesome? Well, here’s another reason to ponder that question: Kaisa Leka. On the Outside Looking In is like no other comic I’ve seen before. From the book design to the autobio content, it’s proof positive that there’s something magical in the water over there.
This story is like a fairy tale about an insecure mouse-girl who was born with malformed feet, and a post-punk duck-boy who take a road trip together and swap stories about how they came to Krishna Consciousness, and into their love relationship with each other. She explains that as a teenager she often felt estranged from herself, that she was looking at her own body from the outside. And he talks about trying skateboarding, vegetarianism and Buddhism before settling on Krishna. Later on, she recounts how her malformed feet had to be amputated, and how she adjusted to prosthetic ones.
Favorite quote:
“I think you can see how relevant a religious movement is in the world by examining the position of women in the movement. An oppressive religion will be marginalized sooner or later.”
Leka’s comics vocabulary is wonderfully simple: girls are mice; boys are ducks; Blue and red indicate past and present as the characters recount past events. Text mistakes are blotted out with ink, not edited out in Photoshop. The dialogue between the two is expansive and meditative. It takes on the big issues of life through the kind of individual storytelling and sharing that often only happens while driving or traveling.
- Monica Johnson