Garage Honcho

Tallipiällikkö

A delightfully absurd story about a ménage-à-trois and working life!

This imaginative tale begins when Hans meets a little man in a funny hat living in his garage, who tells him that his name is Garage Honcho – and refuses to be called a gnome. There follows a series of events in which the relationships among Hans, his wife Birgitta, and his friend Ilpo are turned topsy-turvy, an elephant moves out of their living room and gets a job in a china shop, a group of egg-laying garden gnomes start a liberation movement, and Kusti, a snail mailman, is laid off when Snail Mail is sold to France.

Garage Honcho is Kasper Strömman’s first full-length graphic novel.

Material

Finnish PDF
English sample translation

Reviews

“A pleasingly seamless whole … the style is carefully harnessed to serve the target of Strömman’s greatest interest: the story. It is carried both by the touchingly formless figures, which in all their simplicity are also extremely expressive, and the abundant but concise dialogue.” – Helsingin Sanomat newspaper

“Garage Honcho combines themes familiar from elsewhere in wonderfully surprising ways. … Strömman’s drawing style is fun, his lines vibrant. And yet his frames are surprisingly text-oriented. Rather than narrating visually, the artist trusts the power of dialogue. Fortunately, he has the collateral to back that trust up… Strömman also has fun concretizing figures of speech and visualizing puns. Despite the abundant speech bubbles, I constantly felt I was reading a comic strip. That is what makes Garage Honcho so pleasurable.” – Aamulehti newspaper

“There isn’t a shred of rational sense in the whole story, and that is exactly how it should be.” – Kirjasieppo, Kodin Kuvalehti magazine

“A matchless explosion of absurd humor… a surprisingly good and refreshing surprise in the bleakness of late winter.” – Kvaak.fi