Gone With The Blastwave is a post-apocalyptic war comic by Kimmo Lemetti that appears written for the gamers. Setting of the comic is a ruined city, and the comic itself swings from pondering serious questions to making fun of behavior of the players in online first-person shooters. As a result, characters can feel vaguely psychopathic while at the same time being utterly funny, with suicidal ideas being refused only because they wouldn’t work.

This commentary covers anything from plans impractical in real life, impossible-to-pull-off stunts, game design, player psychology, obsession with scores, morality and so on. Characters themselves are completely impersonal, with their helmets, gas masks and trenchcoats making them completely indistinguishable from one another. The only way to tell the characters apart are the symbols on their helmets. Black humor is frequent, with soldiers acting more like psychopaths for hire than actual soldiers, and occasionally being completely clueless – much like players in games. They throw tanks at enemies for fun, are more concerned with looting gear than helping “comrades” and will beat each other up for keys of a truck. And much like players, common sense is frequently in short supply – a fact that is occasionally even lampshaded. Characters even have personality stereotypes of the online gamers, such as the Leeroy Jenkins “chaarge” type.

At times, events in the comic can even become surreal. Characters will “break the fourth wall” or act even crazier than usual. Other times, comic takes a break from normal “near futuristic apocalypse” setting and become instead medieval, fantasy, sci-fi, a porn parody, even more obvious game parody or a Journey to the Center of the Earth parody. Comic even has fake endings.

Art style itself is very detailed, reminiscent more of the oil paintings than of the typical comic or video game appearance. The world itself is entirely in gray and brown hues, creating a depressing visage – the only bits of color being faction identifiers on soldiers’ uniforms.

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