Amanda Vahamaki « Optical Sloth

Vahamaki, Amanda – Pixie Lice

July 30, 2026

Can you have a slice of life comic about a made-up world? I mean, sure. One of the main reasons why this comic was such a joy was because there was no need to have every little thing explained; this was a world of magic and odd creatures, and since both of those things were a given, we got to see some of them go about their daily lives. Things start off with a couple of vampires riding a scooter (which we only know because the first panel of the comic is a close-up of their fangs), followed by three kids hanging out and discussing their upcoming class schedules. Then they break out their hexes for the year, each surprised (and some disappointed) at what pops out of them. We shift to a school administrator trying to go about their day before hearing a crash, which leads to counseling a student who’s hanging out in a tree stump (who also happens to be a talking monkey). Another family appears next, which is where we get our first sighting of the creatures in the title in this comic. There’s no big quest or dramatic emotional reveal to be had in here, but it’s a world I’d like to experience again. It’s a hoot, is what I’m saying, and I’d thoroughly recommend this to anybody who loves a casually weird story. And it’s cheap! $5

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Posted by Kevin

Vahamaki, Amanda – It’s Tuesday

April 17, 2015

Website

It’s Tuesday

Sometimes a title really nails the tone of a book, even when it’s a seemingly
nonsense title like “It’s Tuesday.” And, well, that’s what happens here. This is the
story of a typical Tuesday in (according to the back of the comic) “a small town
somewhere in southern Finland.” Once you get past that eye-catching explosion of
color on the front cover, things start off slowly and more or less stay that way,
much like it would in a typical small town on a random day. There’s a cat watching
some people gather apples from the ground, the apples being put out by the side of
the road for anybody who wants them, and we move to a flea market. A gentleman has
just dropped off five garbage bags filled with clothes, and the shopkeeper quickly
realizes that it would make more sense for her to wait until the day when her helper
works to start going through the bags. If all this sounds dull as can be, you’re
probably looking for another book entirely, one with explosions and robots, or
exploding robots. There’s nothing wrong with that, in moderation, but this one is
for the more contemplative moods. Anyway, there’s no sense in me going through this
beat by beat, but other bits I thoroughly enjoyed include the appraisal of a
painting by a moody teenager (and the scene later when this teenager reads over some
of her old diary entries and cringes in embarrassment), a babysitter trying to find
a polite way out of buying some clothes that she doesn’t want, and the creep who
tends to wander through the woods naked and is still on the loose. Translations are
always tricky in books like this, but I really appreciated the fact that Amanda went
through and put the English in for certain signs and locations around town, as it
really helped flesh this tiny world out. I thoroughly enjoyed this, in other words,
and bonus points to whoever did the coloring for this book, as it was stellar
throughout.