In July of 2005, Finnish high-school student Kimmo Lemetti began writing and illustrating a comic about a post-apocalyptic world in which three rival factions – Red, Yellow and Blue – are in constant battle with no end, or goal in sight. Lemetti called this Web comic (Webcomic) Gone with the Blastwave , and it particularly follows the antics of two soldiers from the Red army – a flamethrower operator and a sniper – as they make their way through the war zone often in search of food, fighting their way through areas occupied by members of the rival factions, trying to locate other members of their army, looking for a way out of the city or just plain trying to overcome boredom.

The amazing thing about Gone with the Blastwave is that it takes war, and the common fear of a possible nuclear apocalypse and makes them funny. The Web comic even took stabs at the ethics and reasoning behind war right from the first strip, entitled “Why Do We Fight?”, in which the sniper asks the flamethrower operator what the whole point of the war is.

Lemetti's art itself is stunning. Each of the strips has been digitally painted in full colour, and he produces a world and characters that not only complements each other perfectly, but also creates the type of atmosphere one might picture when thinking of soldiers in a post-apocalyptic war zone. His writing is well executed too, as each strip both starts and finishes a particular train of thought, without requiring the reader to wait for the next strip. This is especially important for the frequency with which Lemetti updated the Web comic – rarely.

Unfortunately, as of July 1 ^st , 2008, the Gone with the Blastwave website became inaccessible to viewers, as the domain expired, and Gone with the Blastwave is now gone. Over three years of running the site, Lemetti only produced a total of 39 strips. Updates became so infrequent that the time between the publishing of strips could sometimes be counted in months. However, within those three years, his strips, and his art in particular, became so popular that he was able to sell a trade paperback containing the first 32 strips. Gone with the Blastwave , Vol. 1 is still available from Amazon.com today. Will we ever see a Vol. 2? Who knows?

Lemetti is still around, updating his blog from time to time, and working on his skills, studying 3D Visualization at the EVTEK Institute of Art and Design, in Finland. In a recent post, he did make mention of another domain that could be used for the Webcomic if he is unable to recover the original domain. From the sound of things though, even if the Webcomic does go back online, it doesn't look like Lemetti will be adding new strips any time soon as he mentioned that he is currently in the process of drawing a lot of random thing to improve his technical skills, but nothing to do with Blastwave . In fact, he has requested to be left alone on that issue.