Face Control - A Moscow Travelogue
November 3, 2014 11:06 AM   Subscribe

Face Control - A Moscow Travelogue
A 30-page hand-drawn comic book about Moscow in 2014. Contains stories about mysterious women bikers, dark chocolate with cheese curds, avant-garde Russian poetry, the 'Moscow Face', anti-cafes and the music of Viktor Tsoi.

I'm an Indian-Singaporean comic book bloke, and I visited Moscow in September 2014.

You can also read this on Gumroad or Issuu if you prefer. Edward Snowden makes a cameo.

This is my second mini-comic, after one on Singapore psychedelic music in the 1960s, so feedback is much appreciated!

Contains sections on:

The Moscow Metro
Viktor Tsoi
The Ziferblat 'Anti-Cafe'
The "Moscowl"
Role: writer and illustrator
posted by beijingbrown (5 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
This project was posted to MetaFilter by daisyk on December 7, 2014: Face Control - A Moscow Travelogue

Oh, this is fantastic. I'm gonna have to show it to my Russian relatives right away.

Did you have a chance to actually listen to Tsoi? I really love Gruppa Krovi, Kino's most famous album. The Soviet Union had a fascinating musical counter-culture in the 80's — it's a shame few in the West know about it, especially since it was so heavily inspired by Western culture.

Incidentally, London also has a Ziferblat! Not something you would ever expect to become a "chain", but there you go...
posted by archagon at 3:39 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


Thanks, archagon!

Tsoi was the constant background music while I was drawing this. I love Gruppa Krovi's minimalist guitar solo. My other Tsoi favourites were Pachka Cigaret, Pechal and Zakroy Za Mnoy... I also found an interesting connection between Tsoi and one of my favourite Chinese rock musicians, Cui Jian. They both share the same last name, and reportedly met at a French music festival in 1986. I can hear Tsoi and Kino in a lot of the first wave of 90s Beijing alternative bands - I'm hoping I can do more research on that.

New York is getting a Ziferblat soon, too!
posted by beijingbrown at 5:05 PM on November 3, 2014


This is great. I'm impressed you managed to get it done so quickly.
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:40 PM on November 4, 2014


that's really nice yes! Is there paging other than clicking the pointy arrow? (looking for the arrow distracts from the comic).
posted by anadem at 10:07 PM on November 21, 2014


Anadem: thank you, and yes! There's an Issuu version, or you can grab a free pdf via Gumroad.
posted by beijingbrown at 10:09 PM on November 22, 2014


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