Viivi & Wagner

Viivi & Wagner is a Finnish comic strip drawn by Jussi "Juba" Tuomola.

The main characters in Viivi & Wagner are Viivi, a Finnish woman in her early twenties, and Wagner, a mature male pig. Wagner is fully antropomorphic and sentient, yet still considers himself a pig instead of a human. Viivi and Wagner are married to each other.

The comic originally appeared in Kultapossu, a promotional children's magazine by a Finnish bank. In the original version of the comic, Viivi was a small girl and Wagner was her animate piggy bank. When the Kultapossu magazine was discontinued, Tuomola changed the comic from a promotional comic to a normal one, also changing the characters to adults in the process.

Viivi & Wagner is extremely popular in Finland, because of its quirky humour. Most of the strips concern either arguments between Viivi and Wagner, or Wagner getting into totally absurd situations, either in everyday life or in a fantasy world. Some of the strips break the classic comic strip format by not having a definite punchline at the end.

Some readers, who have been unaware of the strip's history in a bank's promotional magazine for children, have taken Wagner's porcine appearance as a statement of feminism, specifically implying that "men are pigs". Some have even thought Tuomola was a woman, because he drew Viivi's husband as a pig.

While Viivi does not appear in every strip, Wagner does.

Albums

As of 2005, there have been seven Viivi & Wagner albums:

1. Sikspäkki ja salmiakkia ("A six pack and salmiakki), 1998
2. Apua, sängyssäni on sika! ("Help, there's a pig in my bed!"), 1999
3. Ei banaaninkuoria paperikoriin! ("No banana peels in the paper bin!"), 2000
4. Oi, mikä karju! ("Oh, what a hog!"), 2001
5. Kuumaa hiekkaa ("Hot sand"), 2002
6. Viriili vesipeto ("The virile water beast"), 2003
7. Sohvaperunoiden kuningas ("The king of the couch potatoes), 2004

External links

• Viivi & Wagner home page