Eva

Q: Eva often uses her teeth in combat situations. How come she can bite so hard and long?
A: See this 4-panel strip ...

Q: What has inspired the comics about Eva?
A: The main influences are film and music. Some of the films that have provided inspiration are Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express, Mika Kaurismäki’s Helsinki-Napoli All Night Long, the Jet Li flick Kiss of the Dragon and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. As for music, it's mostly Sahara Hotnights, Soundgarden, Garbage and Faye Wong.

Q: Is it cool to smoke?
A: I have to say that I think it’s much cooler to smoke excessively than to drink excessively, but smoking is still rather uncool.
Eva’s smoking is part of her pretty self-destructive lifestyle (to which she won’t admit).

Q: Is it cool to work as a prostitute?
A: It’s not like I have any first-hand experience, but basically, I wouldn’t really recommend working as a prostitute if you feel like your sexuality is something private, or if you can’t handle the social stigma.
There is a lot of glorifying of prostitution, and the "happy hooker" myth is still quite alive. There are surely some people who don’t really "suffer" much from being a sex worker, but whatever you do, there is serious social stigmatising of these lines of work. Even if it’s "just another job" for you, it’s NOT for most other people.
So, even if you actually have decent working conditions and are able to handle it mentally (like Eva, but unlike the great majority of all the prostitutes in the world), it can be tough on you.
Of course, I wouldn’t be drawing comics about prostitutes if I didn’t find it a fascinating profession, just like I find, say, professional killers, criminals, sailors, revolutionaries and mailmen fascinating. I’ve tried to keep my comics from glorifying prostitution, though I guess there have been times when I’ve failed at that … With a character like Eva, who would never show weakness if she can help it, it's perhaps kind of hard to avoid.

Q: What do you think about people who buy the services of prostitutes?
A: In my perception, some people go to prostitutes because they are the only available women who will agree to what they want. A few of them could be classified as mentally ill. A lot of them just have crappy relationships with their wives. Others just can’t find anyone besides prostitutes to have even "normal" sex with, because of shyness, insecurity, cultural circumstances etc. - or the wish to have "strictly sex" with no strings attached. Due to social and cultural circumstances - and also supply - most people who buy the services of prostitutes are men. So, to return to the question: if anything, I mostly just feel sorry for these people.

Q: Does Eva have long hair in some kind of knot, or short hair that’s just longer in the front?
A: It’s short. (In some older comics, it’s clearly in a knot, but that’s just WRONG! If you see it, ignore it!!) It’s more convenient that way, since Eva has to shower several times a day, which can be tough on your hair sometimes.

Q: Why are Eva’s hands so big?
A: She was born like that. And all the other female characters in my comics were also born like that … Well, actually, I just like big, strong hands, especially on women. Maybe it’s because of my mother’s big, strong worker’s hands.

Q: Where did Eva learn to fight and shoot like that?
A: She grew up on the streets ... what do you expect?

Q: What model is Eva’s gun? Where did she get it?
A: It’s a 9x18M PM (Пистолет Макарова – 'Makarov’s pistol'). She got it from a certain friend, for self-defence, back in the port town in her country of origin where she first started to work as a prostitute. (Read more about this model!)
At this point I should perhaps also mention that my own knowledge about handguns is highly limited. I never did any military service, so all I know about guns is basically from comics like Kenichi Sonoda's Gunsmith Cats ...

Q: Gunsmith Cats, eh? That's SO lame ... So that's why it's a PM?
A: Hmm, PM's aren't mentioned at all in the couple of Gunsmith Cats books that I've read. (If I was entirely brainwashed by that comic, I'd of course have given her an 'early version' CZ75.)
Okay, for all you wannabe "REAL gun experts", here is the explanation. If you have a *basic* handgun in the Soviet Union or, to some extent, post-Soviet Russia/SNG, it's most likely a PM or a TT (Тульский Токарев, 'Tokarev from Tula', the main Soviet army gun before the PM was introduced in the 50's). The emphasis is on *basic*, because it wasn't any *special* gun that Eva got from her friend back then. He wasn't a gun freak, but a normal soldier or criminal (or both, I haven't decided yet).
For example, Anna Politkovskaya was killed with a PM (left at the site, as any professional killer would do). Which shows that this model is sufficiently cheap, 'anonymous' and easy to get to be disposable, but reliable enough to get the job done.
And why not a TT? Well, I've read (on websites by Russian gun freaks, for your information) that TT's aren't quite as reliable and, for instance, tend to misfire a bit more easily than PM's. Besides, the PM's form is a bit more esthetically appealing ...

Q: I'm a language nerd, and I understand that the people in this comic obviously aren’t speaking English (or Swedish, as in the original). What language are they speaking?
A: The country where these stories are set has found some inspiration in PRC, though it’s certainly for the most part a product of my imagination. As you might have seen at the end of each episode, "The End" is written there in Cantonese. (I copied it from the Hong Kong movies, and I do hope I’ve spelled it right ...) So, yeah, they speak Cantonese. Although she is a foreigner, Eva speaks almost without accent.

Q: So, Eva is a foreigner. Where does she come from?
A: She’s from this universe’s equivalent for Russia. She came to this China-like country when she was about sixteen. (Presently she’s 23.)

Q: What do you think should be "done" about prostitution?
A: Criminalizing one or the other party (traditionally the seller, recently in Sweden the buyer, recently in Latvia both) is pretty useless by itself – cutting off just the top of the weed doesn’t make it die. Legalisation, on the other hand, is also useless unless it's paired with great efforts to reduce the demand for prostitution from a different end. In Victoria, Australia, for instance, where prostitution was legalised in the 1980's, illegal prostitution has strongly increased along with the legalisation (read more about this).
One should realise that prostitution is a male problem. If there is a way to earn some money by doing something, some people will do it if they have to. It's not something in the people who sell sex that makes them prostitutes, but it's something in the people who buy their services. Generally, men buy sex from women and men - the number of women who do the same is very small. In the relationship between the buyer and seller in prostitution, there is always a considerable power imbalance: the seller has very little possibilities to refuse a buyer. The seller will do what the buyer wants. Our culture is one of male dominance, where sexual power and sexual performance is an essential part of the male identity. As long as relationships between the sexes continue to be seen as a struggle for power, there will be prostitution. Change that, and there will be no demand for it.

Q: What does Eva do when she gets her period?
A: She usually takes the week off. When she doesn’t have her period, she often works seven days a week. Of course, there are customers who specifically want a menstruating girl, so sometimes she also works when she’s on her period ... Basically, Eva and her colleagues at La Siréne earn a quite decent living, so a week off doesn’t hurt. Some of them use birth control that makes them menstruate much less frequently, though.

Q: At least Lead Lips has so far been described by reviewers as "feminist glorifying of violence á la Dirty Weekend or Baise-moi". What do you think about that?
I haven’t seen either of the two films mentioned, so I can’t say anything about the assumed resemblance. (I like what I’ve read about Baise-moi, though, so I’ll see it as soon as I get the chance.)
As a woman and a human being, it’s self-evident for me to be a feminist. Unfortunately, a lot of people have forgotten that feminism is about equal rights for the sexes, and not "hating all men".
I’ve used a lot of physical violence in Lead Lips, because on one hand it’s fun, and on the other hand, if I should start talking about symbolism - something that usually creeps into my stories without any too great intention - it’s a symbol for mental struggle: conquering obstacles etc.

Q: Where do you come up with these stories?!
A: Oh, they just pop up in my head. To be more specific:
Asphalt Mirrors was drawn completely ex tempora - I just started drawing the first page, while having no idea what the story would be about, except that there would be a corpse in Eva’s room on the next page.
Lead Lips was inspired by a story I heard about a friend of my mum’s Russian teacher, who lived in Moscow. In the wild early 90’s, she was once pulled into a car when she came out from a restaurant, and found herself under the eyes of a bunch of gangsters. After looking more closely, they realised they had gotten the wrong woman, and threw her out of the car again.
Odd Tuesday was probably the most 'planned' of the stories. I wanted to show the obligatory health inspections. So I did.
Glass Rain was based on an idea for a story that had been floating around in the back of my mind for a dozen years or more. It was about a woman who disguised herself as a prostitute in order to kill a man, a gang of men or just men, generally, who tortured and killed women she knew (or didn’t know).

Q: Ting Yay is so nice. Why isn’t there more of him in these comics? (In Odd Tuesday he never even shows up!!)
A: I ask myself that question, too. Maybe it’s because Asphalt Mirrors was really the essence of Ting Yay’s story, and after that I just didn’t know how to express him in any new and different way. Another reason could be that I’m too lazy - it’s very easy for me to make up stories where people kick each other’s asses or kill each other in interesting ways, but it’s much more difficult to write about love in an honest and 'real' way.
Well, all rejoice: I've finally figured out how Eva and Ting Yay met. But so far you can only read about it in Swedish.

Q: Is Kim lesbian?
A: I think so.

Q: What kind of birth control does Eva use?
A: Condoms (obviously, because they are the only things that also protect against diseases). Eva once tried the pill and got really fat, so she has since then refused to touch it in any form and under any label. She also doesn’t like anything messing with her body and its "natural functions". And if the condom breaks, there’s always the 'day after pill', though that, of course, doesn’t do anything about STD's ...

Q: What would Eva do if she would get pregnant?
A: You can read about that in my other comic Driftwood.

Q: What is the relation between Eva in these stories and Eva in Driftwood?
A: The two comics kind of happen in parallel universes. Eva, Kim and Bijou are the same people in both comics, but the surroundings and the people around them are a little bit different. The tones of the comics are different, so they need to happen in slightly different worlds.

Q: Will there be a book or something where one can read these comics on paper and in English?
Yes, there will be a book, at least in Swedish. After that one gets published, who knows what might happen ...

Got a question? Ask me it!!!

Support this comic at OnlineComics.net!