It took Jouko Nuora from Forssa ten years to complete a four-part autobiographical comic. The artist does not embellish the truth, but he is not proud of everything.
The young man is Nuora himself.
– I’m not terribly proud of some of the events, but I don’t want to be ashamed or hide anymore. Next year I will be 60 years old, so maybe at this age I can tell some wilder stories.
The album series was started by an age crisis
Spanish Bar Blues has no fewer than 180 pages. Jouko Nuora drew a total of 420 sheets of A3 size.
– I drew two sheets per page. For a year I drew with a pencil, then for a couple of years I drew. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to finish this in three years, so I pushed for a fourth year as well. In addition, half a year was still spent texting. Then this was ready, explains Nuora.
At the same time, there was a point for the autobiographical album series. Making four albums took the artist a total of ten years. The first part of the series was awarded at the 100th anniversary of Suomi cartoons.
The album series started with the crisis of Jouko Nuora’s fifties.
– At the same time, one of my friends got cancer. I thought it might be good to tell my own life story. Enough had already happened, and enough time had passed that the past could be dealt with without great emotional upheaval.
Not everyone wanted to be recognized by the cartoon
In the Golden Youth series, Nuora goes through her wild and difficult youth from a 14-year-old teenager to a 24-year-old youth. The pages show a difficult relationship with parents and a manic thirst for life experiences. There is a lot of sex and various drugs.
– I decided that everything in the albums must be true. Of course, things have also been left out, and some people’s names have been changed. Many names have been left out completely, because I received criticism for the use of names after the first album. Not everyone wanted to be recognizable.
The ten-year project has been like a long therapy session for its creator.
– As a draftsman, I found it very therapeutic, but it was fun to return to old events. I have taken a lot of weight off my neck. Some people have had very different and even false ideas about my youth. I also wanted to tell how things really went. Of course, this is my view.
The Nani character beat the mark of a porn cartoonist
Jouko Nuora, who lives in Forssa, has been using a pen professionally for 30 years. In cartoonist circles, the man is also known for his erotic pictures, where naked women are often taken from sex magazines of the 1980s.
Jouko Nuora also has its own erotic heroine, Nani, whose sex adventures are known as far away as Japan. Nani’s drawing also marked its author.
– I got the eternal stamp of a porn cartoonist. When the publisher suggested making a sex comic, I thought about it for a while, but then I agreed. I was a stupid youth and I needed money, Nuora smiles.
When Nani’s album still featured the man’s own name, some customers decided to stop using Nuora’s illustrations. However, the man is not giving up on Nani, and there is still a fifth album coming, under the working title .
There is still something left unsaid about the childhood years, so maybe Jouko Nuora will return to them with a pen as well.