I deliberately went into 'Sunflowers Follow the Moon' blind, because I knew that Iryna Stroganova was Ukrainian and that this first issue in her new comic book series was likely to rely massively on the culture of that country. I wanted to see how much I'd get out of it without knowing any of the things it would probably be beneficial to have grown up with, as I'm sure she did. Then I went back to it with Google at my beck and call, what with my old work colleague Halyna six thousand miles away where I can't easily pick her brain.

What I found was that it absolutely relies on Ukrainian culture, introducing me to a couple of new monsters to me, to use the term loosely. One is absolutely a monster, which I was interested to find that Google doesn't seem to want to tell me about. It's a weird one too, a hulking mass with a pair of viciously clawed hands, mouths all over its body sporting long sharp teeth and what looks much like a porthole where its face ought to be. The other may or may not be a monster and is given an overtly sympathetic treatment here.

The former is either a htoňe or a htoñe—both accents are used at different points—and it's seen as a monstrous representation of Russia, not that it was needed given how some actual Russians behave early in the story. The latter is a mavka or spirit, which Google suggests is a creature given to drawing young men into forests and never letting them leave again. Strogonova is keen to play up the origin story more than their threat in this issue, being souls of girls who died in unnatural ways, as our lead character clearly does.

The good news is that it wasn't difficult to understand what was going on, even without those bits of knowledge to bring to bear. The early scenes are impressionistic and universal. Someone blows up a dam and floods a city. A woman is lost in the water but escapes it only to be found by a trio of Russian soldiers, two eager rapists and one decent soul. She kills the two in a highly weird fashion and the third calls her a mavka, a word she's apparently never heard before. What we realise but she doesn't is that she's dead, meaning that her quest to survive is meaningless.

It doesn't surprise me that this story is framed within the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which sadly isn't given much attention on this side of the pond except to worry about how much it's costing us in military assistance. Back home in England, it has a much higher priority in general thinking, as evidenced by the profusion of Ukrainian flags wherever I went on my research trip to England two years ago. After all, it's a lot closer—a straight line from my old house in Yorkshire to Kyiv is about the same distance as Phoenix to Wisconsin. Europe is not as big as we think it is.

What surprised me was how well Strogonova handled that framing, because there's a telling line that shows us that this young lady didn't even know that there was a war on. Now she does and it can't hurt that she can apparently control seaweed by thought. Is she a superhero? I don't know, but Ukraine could do with one right now and the mavki seem like pretty good choices. We do see one showdown between the lead mavka and a htoñe (the htoñe?) but this is just a beginning and there's surely a lot more to come in future issues, even if I don't know how long Strogonova aims to let this one run.

Given that Vladimir Putin—who is very recognisable not just in artwork but through that insanely long conference room table he likes to hide behind—sends a htoñe into Ukraine, I'm all for mavki making the return trip and taking him down in Moscow, all dressed in flower wreaths with no skin on their backs. That ought to end the war, even if nothing else at this point seems likely to. Clearly Strogonova wants to underline that this is his doing as the Supreme Leader and that not all those fighting under his flag either want to be there in the slightest or harbour ill will to Ukrainians.

What's weird is that I've talked a lot about the story here and where the characters came from in Ukrainian mythology, but what struck me more than anything from this comic book is how vibrant it is. The biggest success for me has to be Strogonova's use of colour. Her art isn't going to please everyone and her lettering is primitive, making this undeniably an indie comic, but these colours are glorious. We all know how bright the Ukrainian flag is nowadays, with its sky over huge fields of wheat, but the bright colours here aren't reserved for fire and water and I adored them all.

Thank you, Iryna and Joey, for sending this comic book over to me to read and review. I love diving into new mythologies and seeing this one framed in a very recognisable contemporary setting is a joy. May the mavki tickle the Supreme Leader to death and do it slowly. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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