About

What's Phantomland?

An independent comic project written and drawn by yours truly. For the moment I'm doing this mostly as a hobby; I want to take my time with it so the finished work can be as high quality as possible.

Phantomland is available in self-published issue format. Issues 1 and 2 are currently available for mail order, and you can read preview pages here.

What's the story about?

Set in the fictional city of Santa Luison, Phantomland is the story of a bunch of subhumans serving at a local crime fighting agency. It's mostly told from the viewpoint of Chie, a fresh trainee in the organization. While there's a wide variety of themes I want to explore with the story, I guess I'd call this something of an action/adventure comic overall.

Why not make this a webcomic instead?

I personally like my comics physical, so Phantomland was designed for the book format right from the beginning. It simply looks and works best on paper. Putting it online is a possibility I guess, but since I work on full chapters at a time, regular weekly updates could be difficult to manage.

Why not send your comic to a publisher?

A publisher would get me more money and readers, but more stress and compromises as well. At the moment I prefer this project as my precious hobby thing with complete control over every aspect; I'm a stubborn perfectionist so I believe I can achieve the best quality this way. Besides, I plan to study for a few more years so a full-time comic job on top would be impossible.

Who are you?

Maaria Laurinen; a twenty-something year old geek currently studying graphic design in Vantaa, Finland. Besides drawing I have a passion for visual media such as comics, animation and videogames. I've had a dream of drawing comics of my own since discovering manga in my early teens.


Phantomland & all related material © Maaria Laurinen