Tommi Musturi is one of the masterminds behind Finnish comics. He is a co-founder of the KUTI collective and the publisher HUUDA HUUDA. On top of that he is a comic artist himself. We are more than happy to welcome Tommi at the Millionaires Club! He is going to show his amazing artwork in an exhibition at the TMC. Also check out Tommis books that have been published in Germany: "Unterwegs mit Samuel" 2010 (Reprodukt) "Comic Atlas Finnland" 2014 (Reprodukt) „Das Handbuch der Hoffnung" 2015 (Avant-Verlag) NEW @ the TMC!!! Obviously you are a man of many talents! You are a comic artist, publisher, editor and translator in one person which means you must be working 24/7. How do you handle all these things? And where are your priorities? Well, it's pretty much endless struggle against time and frustration as I mostly of course would like to just draw my own material. However, I've done this for so long time already that I've developed some kind of multitasking capacities. When it comes to publishing and editing, I do very fast decision and base everything on intuition. On the other hand I do not make much of compromises which often means book productions can be real time-eaters - doing all the letterings by hand, going through multiple book designs and so on. I don't make money with publishing so my rewards are in actual good books that I put out. I want to make timeless publications that are produced well. In general my workday consists always of many different tasks and also ways of doing. I usually wake around 7am and start working at eight by answering emails and taking care of the questions and tasks that appear. That takes usually two hours after which I do spend couple of more on working digitally some of the layouts, images and such. That was the boring part of the day and around midday I usually go to some cafe to sketch or work on ideas. Around 2pm I get to my studio I share with four others and start on the actual drawing or painting. We decided our studio is an 'internet-free-zone' which I've found perfect for my work. There's nothing that can interrupt and I already know I step into that when I close the studio door. When it comes to actual work, I usually have 2-3 book projects going on at the same time, few illustrations as well and then some plans and free skethching I do every day. I like to keep it that way so I can jump from a project to another in case I get stucked or get frustrated. I also use very different ways of drawing and somedays it's much better to use wilder and more expressive technique instead of something very focused and detailed. It's good to listen to yourself and then release the energy in right direction. Anyway, I get back home usually around 7pm. Indeed it's very difficult to priorize my work. I kind of feel that all the publishing and editing I do is really important for the development of the Finnish comic scene. On the other hand my head is bursting with ideas and I currently have book ideas already for the next ten years. I feel there's yet lots to discover when it comes to comics. For some reason my projects seem to always be so epic they take several years to get finished. This is also a good thing, I've noticed, as they get processed a lot before I actually put the final stage on paper. So the real content kind of gets chewed out. Your work offers a great variety of styles and topics. It goes from wild psychedelic pictures to clear, almost silent lines with a good amount of horror, tragedy and humor. What's your process of drawing like? There are several processes. My comics are the most troublesome of everything I've ever done. I assume there's bit of perfectionist inside me and when you combine this with all the dozens of elements that comic narration has it leads to a pile of things to take care of. Like the mute comics that I've done around character 'Samuel' - they look very simple indeed, mathematic even… but still they actually take more time than any other thing I do. The work with Samuel is mostly thinking - how to do this - how to express that - what is important and so on. Next to this kind of painful work I've always got sketchbook that's just a place for jamming on paper, not really sketching actually. In there I try new things, new equipment, new techniques. It's simply a place nothing can go wrong, a place without 'undo' or eraser. As I use many different styles in the actual work I do, most of them got developed inside my sketchbooks. So, I'd call them laboratories. It's important to play and what's most nice is that a 'treasure' I find in some other style can be also used with the other styles. My aim is still to work on a comic that actually combines all this into one coherent wholesome. While the equipment (which includes also materials) define your work, so do also the sizes you use and the places you draw in. I work mostly in our studio, but also in cafes and restaurants, home, my parents' place (which still has the desk I used to start drawing) and so on. It's important to understand how you work, which ways are the best ways to do this and that. I for example NEVER sketch something that requires thinking in the morning - that'd be very painful and slow and most likely would give me bad mood and ruin rest of the day. Instead I can easily ink sketches ready in the morning - I've done that so much it's kind of 'off-mood' for my brains and the sketch usually already contains 95% of the thinking-job. I think this kind of way of working keeps me also active, aware and focused all through the day. Getting bored can be always seen in the result when it comes to creative work. Basic stuff. Do you listen to music while drawing? if yes, what kind of? Yes I do, I always did. I try follow the news and current  political programmes via radio but have to shut it when they start to play some music. I work half home and half in our studio couple of km away. Back home I've got my records which I still prefer in lieu of Spotify, Ipod or such. Back at the studio we're dependent on tapes and CDs, which is also kind of good as back home I usually play just vinyls. Anyway, I listen to almost anything these days - just try to find out the best things from each genre. When I was a kid every boy here listened to metal. That's how we also ended up doing fanzines. The first one (called 'Sickness') we released when 15yo with my friend. While we started with thrash, death and black metal the last fifth issue already had some punk and experimental stuff (Finnish band 'Circle' for example) interviewed. After I went to all this crazy shit one can find, through which I found noisy free jazz and psychedelic & folky stuff. Some of the artists I've listened to for a long time are Michael Hurley, John Fahey, Magma, Michael Yonkers Band, The Seeds, Jonathan Richman, Os Mutantes, Tangerine Dream, Robbie Basho, Jandek, The Fall, Jackson C. Frank, Slayer, Sonny Sharrock, Guided by Voices, Death, Yo La Tengo, Sun City Girls, Chester Burnett… just to name a few. My all time favourite Finnish band is Radiopuhelimet though lately I've listened a lot to Sur-rur. You are living and working in Tampere. Can you give us a little insight into the comic scene there? And what's the benefit for you living in a smaller city? Well, Tampere is a small town yet big in Finnish scale. The center is really packed so one can go by feet to any place. It's also much cheaper to live here than in Helsinki where I'd pay double for a flat we have now. I did live here during 90s several few-month-long periods so I had some friends living in when we moved back here five years ago. Also, ten years in Helsinki was enough for me. Even though I got used to stand the city I never really found it much my home. Like every capital it's a place filled with a lot of nonsense you get surrounded with - all the scenes and small circles that you have to go through to be something and in the end you've lost the most essential of yourself. A lot of creative talents move to Helsinki and turn into something boring and disappear. When my fiancee Tiina got a place to do another degree here in Tampere it was not really a hard decision to move. I haven't really missed Helsinki a single moment since I moved here. However, I'm not sure if this is the place I will stay. It's not very important for me really. The pace here is much slower compared to Helsinki. People have more time. The town is filled with cafes and there's actually more live music than in Helsinki. The punk scene is active and actually the only pure punk club in Finland exists here with gigs at least five nights a week. The history of Tampere is very leftish as well, which gives a sort of flavour these days still. However, I'm not really a fan of the politics of the city goverment these days, especially how they treat culture. It does not effect my work much as what I do is mostly international projects but it of course effects on the mood you have - the artists start to feel that their work is not appreciated. However, Tampere has always had a strong underground in many different scenes and this kind of actions from above only strengthen it. In general I'd say this is town that most likely produces something 'new' compared to Helsinki. I'm not complaining. When it comes to local comic scene I'd say there are lots of artists that work on high level but the scene is not as connected as the one in Helsinki. Mostly because Helsinki has their Comics Center that works as a meeting point for it all. Tampere has a festival that's kind of commercial and not that interesting to me. There are few small publishers here, Suuri Kurpitsa (The Great Pumpkin) being the most important - they started already early 80s and have inspired many artists, myself as well. With what kind of comics or children books did you grow up with in Finland? I had lots of books and comics when I was a kid. It was mostly the usual stuff everyone read and I read everything I got in my hands. The first comic my parents ordered me was the Finnish version of Woody Woodpecker when I was 5 yo. I didn't really like it that much and read Donald instead that my friend had. You know, Finland is THE land of Donald Duck in the world and we also had our 'Fan Club' which included all the boys from the small village I grew up in. We had a wooden cottage as our club house and it still exists - there are even some drawings on the walls though squirrels have eaten bits of them. Anyway, I later traded those three volumes of Woody magazines (that is 'Nakke' in Finnish btw) in a second hand store to a couple of other comics. I had thought they were worth something. Anyway, I think there are few important comic publications that I got hold of before turning twelve and going to upper comprehensive school where I started to dive into the world UG and artsy stuff. The first one was Jacovitti's 'Cocco Bill' that was released here as few albums during 70s. I was really amused by it's details and wild twists in the story. On the other hand my aunt accidentally bought me the 1st Finnish issue of Judge Dredd magazine that came out '84. I was never really a big fan of American superhero stuff though I of course had my share of it BUT Judge Dredd was something different. It was damn violent and much more 'dirty' in many ways. I lated also recognized that the dystopias Dredd offers were often very accurate and many of them have become at least partly true these days. I later regretted I drew a 'KISS' logo on the back of that first JD magazine. Yet to mention one more comic is actually from DDR. I got pretty early age all the Finnish albums of Hannes Hegen's 'The Digedags'. This was because my parents were members to some 'Soviet Union Club' that had as well a book mailorder for small selection of translations into Finnish. It was mostly books about Soviet Union and communism but they had some children books as well, The Digedags being the only comic-like release among. Anyway, though these days I'd say The Digedags is in many ways crappy comic, back then I liked it's detailed drawing and long adventurous stories. When it comes to books, real literature, I started read more around 9 yo - first from our school's small library (that actually had a lot of the same books my father had read when he went to same school 25 years before) and later from our regional library that already had a pretty nice selection of stuff. What I first read as a kid was detective stories (I finished the whole shelf of the library) and adventures like 'The Hardy Boys'. When I had consumed that part of the library I went through (back then short) selection of fantasy books and then started with science fiction. I don't recall much of the material I read, it was mainly for entertainment as living in a forest village with just couple of friends around got sometimes lonely. Anyway, I liked Isaac Asimov, Stanislaw Lem, Arthur C. Clarke and Tove Jansson… and I still do like all these writers a lot. And what where your biggest artistic influences when you decided to become a comic artist? Well, I started really work with comics relatively late, around 22yo, when I went to art school in the Northern part of Finland. There were some people who had already made comics even fanzines and we started together the anthologies Glömp and Pole. Of course I had been drawing a lot before that but it was just mostly illustrations and free drawings sent to some mail art fanzines. Anyway, I ended up being the editor for Glömp that kind of worked as a playground for me and later Kutikuti bunch for twelve years. I had read before that a lot of stuff, main source being a very good comic store Kukunor that existed back those days in Tampere. They also had a good mailorder with monthly catalogue that I used to order from. So, all the Fantagraphics and D&Q stuff was already in front of me when I was 18yo but Kukunor also provided some more artsy stuff from France and Belgium such as books from L'Association, Freon and Amok. Basicly the whole my 'born on 70s' generation got their influence to start with comics from that store. I really liked Dan Clowes and Chales Burns, before them I digged Joakim Pirinen and Didier Comes that I found from Library. Still I don't feel that any of these really effected on my comics that much. It was merely the fact that they showed that I could deal with ordinary things and do simply 'anything' with comics. Also the freedom by doing also the publishing myself was kind of rewarding. From the new stuff Olivier Schrauwen and Ruppert & Mulot have proved that there's new things and ways in comics that haven't yet been revealed. Of course besides comics I've followed fine arts, music and literature. Later especially literature became really important inspiration, writers like Sandemose, Musil and Céline to name a few. The real content to my work still comes from just daily life notes I do, things abstract to me, things I do not understand or things that annoy me. As I've been publishing so much for so long already there's so much stuff going through my hands all the time that I somehow feel I need to empty my head before I start with my own work. That's the appeal in the game as well - to do something from nothing, to think and challenge myself with it. How do you like to spend your free time away from comics? When Tiina & I have spare time we usually escape to countryside. Our both parents live on the country so it's quite easy to spend a week or two there. I like the nature and how countrylife expands your time and space. It simply keeps you more focused. Doing ordinary things somehow also puts the difficulties with your work in right measures. The panic settles down. We try to eat organic food so we also spend time collecting berries and mushrooms. I do fish the fish we eat and usually go on the lake once a week. We even have a small rowing boat close by our flat in Tampere. Besides that my spare time usually goes with friends, seeing some bands and playing some basketball - a thing we started last summer among friends. No one of us had really played since school but it's been fun.

Thank you a ton, Tommi! See you at the Millionaires Club!