God dag / Hyvää päivää! !
Please allow me to introduce myself.
I go by Prof Marvel; I am a certified card-carrying Grumpy Old Phart, nearly as old as Trond Anderson.
I have been interested in SF, good comic art, and well-told stories since I could read. Mrs Marvel and I both enjoy
good anime, especially historical or supernatural, as long as the story drives the work, not just mecha's or fighting or other teen boy oriented trivia ( examples we like: Inuyasha; Natsume Yuujinchou [Natsume's Book of Friends]; Ghost In The Shell; Cowboy BeBop; Samurai Champloo ) . I am pleased to have found SSSS !!!!
I like to hike in the local mountains, raise vegetables, study history, play with electronics, build damn near anything ( especially furniture, traditional longbows, clocks, knives, axes ) and have done way too many martial arts. Mrs Marvel and I have been Cat Slaves for almost 30 years, currently to two incredibly intelligent black and white feral cats who were rescued as kittens and adopted by us at ~ 6 weeks of age.
We are great believers in That Which Cannot Be Seen, and we talk to birds and other critters . and trees. and rocks.
Whilst down sick with the flu after the New Year I found SSSS on the Hive, and I was so entranced I read it one sitting. Then re-read it. Then found RTD and read it in two evenings. Then I began scouring the web for Minna Sundberg's works, being enthralled by her art and stories. I am working diligently to refrain from becoming a stalker !
I was first impressed by Ms Sundberg's artistic style, then by her use of historic Nordic costumes and settings,
then by her scholarly approach to the languages!
We can see from Minna's other works, that she is fully capable of exquisite photo-realistic depictions. As her own style developed, first in RTD then in SSSS we see she achieved a beautiful "softer" water-color inspired artistic rendition that is far more expressive of motion and emotion. Thus when certain visual details ( which she is clearly capable of rendering ) are not critical to the story, artistic style, and progression such details can be readily diminshed, especially when details of this nature are considerably less important to the overall work. I find this refreshing and compelling!
The facts that Ms Sundberg has worked out so much background detail essential to the storyline, the character's backstory, and character development and maintains the consistency speaks volumes of her professionalism in the art.
Further, we can see that Ms Sundberg has put an incredible amount of study and effort into the historic, geographic, and linguisitic background to this epic Nordic saga - even to the point that her Language Tree has become a reference and resource to quite a number of educational institutions!
I am looking forward to re-reading RTD; re-re-reading and following SSSS, and I hope to find ways to throw money at Ms Sundberg to help her continue her works.
your humble servant
prof marvel
