1. What initially drew you to comics?
It was because of the visual storytelling and reading "Donald Duck" comics as a kid helped me learn to read, because I was very curious about what the characters were saying in the word balloons.
2. Please tell us about Lauxor and any other titles/characters you’d like to share about.
"Lauxor" is my tribute to transforming robots where the private detective robot Lauxor and few other robots try to solve the mystery of billions of robots losing their ability to transform into vehicles and other things at the same time on their Teras planet. It was a dream come true to finally get to work with a Japanase artist when Tomoko Honda drew & colored the first chapter, while the Italian dynamic duo Daniele Danbrenus Spezzani & Si Mo drew & colored the other chapters.
This book got lettered by Chris Piers, who is famous for his "ComicTropes" Youtube channel and I discovered his channel during the early days, because of our mutual interest in Larry Hama's "G.I. Joe" comics which led us to becoming friends. Livio Ramondelli has done a "Transformers: The Movie" Blu-ray cover and he also did the front cover for this book. The 3 chapter covers got done by Hendry Prasetya ("Mighty Morphin Power Rangers") & Priscilla Tramontano ("Transformers"), Ryan Odagawa ("Iron Man") & Joshua Perez ("Transformers"), David Marquez, the Inkwell Awards winner Walden Wong and the Eisner Awards winner Laura Martin.
It's interesting that you mentioned "Lauxor", since people usually associate me with the "Snowmanilas" graphic novel, but there are some people, who wanted to contact me, because they liked reading the "Lauxor" graphic novel and they wanted me to answer their questions about the book. "Snowmanilas" was my response to "Wolalina," another graphic novel that I wrote, but I couldn't give that book to little kids.
"Wolalina" is a sci-fi & fantasy book that is my tribute to cartoons & comics from the 1980s where the private detective Wolalina DiTillio is a former secret agent for M.Y.T.H. (Mythological & Young Terran Heroes). She gets access to time travel to find people, who disappeared mysteriously in the past. This book gave me the opportunity to work with about 100 people that includes my favorite comic book artist from my childhood Andrew Wildman, because of his "Transformers" work, Ronilson Freire, who drew 80 pages, Mahmud Asrar ("Uncanny X-Men"), Elena Casagrande ("The Incredible Hulk"), Ale Garza ("Teen Titans"), Allan Goldman ("Justice League of America"), Randy Green ("Star Wars"), Daniel HDR ("Legion of Super-Heroes"), Drew Johnson ("Supergirl"), Jonathan Lau ("Battlestar Galactica"), Emanuela Lupacchino ("Wonder Woman"), Adriana Melo ("Amazing Spider-Man"), Cliff Richards ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Marco Santucci ("Green Lantern"), E.J. Su ("Godzilla"), Koi Turnbull ("Black Panther"), J.K. Woodward ("Star Trek"), the Eisner Awards winners Lan Medina ("Fables"), Sean Phillips ("Criminal"), Fiona Staples ("Saga") and many others.
"Snowmanilas" became a spin-off of "Wolalina", since that is where I wrote about these 4 treasure-hunting snowman brothers for the first time. I thought that these characters looked cool and I thought about what kind of stories would I have wanted to read when I was 7. I liked "DuckTales" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" back then, so I deciced to write treasure-hunting stories that are filled with anthropomorphic characters and fantasy creatures like dragons and a mermaid. I discovered the artists Cynthia Sousa and Andrea Meneghin at the same time, so that they could draw the first 2 chapters simultaneously to save time and then the last chapter got drawn by Cynthia. The Swedish artists Lisa Medin ("Medley"), Åsa Ekström ("Sayonara September"), Hedvig Häggman-Sund ("Bamse") and Frida Larsson drew the front cover and the chapter covers, since it was a cold Swedish winter that inspired me to create these 4 snowman brothers. I still get warm messages from parents, who thank me, because I was able to make them and their kids laugh with my sense of humor.
3. What do comics allow you to do as a storyteller?
I get to see my words magically transform into beautiful art thanks to fantastic artists. I wanted to become a comedian before I started writing graphic novels, so I get to explore my comedy skills to see what kind of jokes that I can make when I write dialogues or when I describe visual jokes that get to be drawn by artists. While I write graphic novels to entertain readers then I also get the chance to have important messages about the consequences of wars in "Wolalina" and the consequences of greed in "Snowmanilas".
4. Where can we find more information about your work?
These books got published by Markosia Enterprises, so you can find more info about them over at their individual pages: https://markosia.com/lauxor/, https://markosia.com/books/worlds-of-heroes-2/wolalina/, & https://markosia.com/books/worlds-of-wonder/snowmanilas/. People can also follow my Instagram & Twitter accounts where my handle is @daniel_karhunen.