Comics/ Digital Comics

R.I.P. Gone With The Blastwave

By Eli Green
Jul 8, 2008 - 21:00

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.

Last Updated: Jan 7, 2012 - 7:41
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Comments

RIP

A good one is lost. RIP

#1 - Nedialko - 07/10/2008 - 08:40

It's back up. False alarm.

#2 - pos3000 - 07/13/2008 - 21:34

Well, not quite false alarm. Just that it is back up now. Thanks for the notice. We'll put up a post about it tomorrow.

#3 - Eli Green - 07/13/2008 - 21:48

Rest In Peace, Blastwave.

The First of the E-Webcomics I've read.
Rest In Peace.

#4 - Luke Batten - 08/10/2009 - 21:11

RIP

Loved it for the art, loved it for the story, loved it for the humour.

I am truly saddened.

#5 - Luke - 08/13/2009 - 05:09

any chance anybody has it saved..? i just can't find it (the original english version) anywhere on the net.. :'( :'( (please upload it and post a link.. i wanna see it again!! :'( )

#6 - haf - 08/19/2009 - 12:31

"The Blastwave domain is going through a yearly ritual of death and rebirth. Don't worry about it."
Direct quote from his blog: bubblegum:bubblegumbubblegum.gotmorrbubblegum/

#7 - defoit - 08/24/2009 - 22:02

Sad!

I really loved this webcomic. I just searched for it after not reading it for a year or two, only to learn that it's gone! What incredible art. I would love to see this one come back.

#8 - Jonboy - 08/26/2009 - 23:24

Don't fret!

Kimmo Lemetti's Blog:

bubblegum:bubblegumbubblegum.gotmorrbubblegum/

He explains the domain hosting problems he's having.

#9 - Jared - 08/31/2009 - 22:26

Rest in Peace

Now 'Gone with the Blastwave' is gone with the Blastwave... :-(

#10 - Vikinghorde - 09/13/2009 - 09:15

Site back up at new location:

bubblegum:bubblegumbubblegum.blastwave-comicbubblegum/

#11 - Sven Viking - 09/15/2009 - 16:28

(Oops, 3 "w"s are auto-changed to bubblegum)

bubblegum:bubblegumblastwave-comicbubblegum/

#12 - Sven Viking - 09/15/2009 - 16:30

The comics can now be found at
bubblegum:bubblegumbubblegum.blastwave-comicbubblegum

#13 - Brian - 09/24/2009 - 17:09

thiz suxx :(

!
The first time i ever laughed :(

#14 - Damn - 09/28/2009 - 13:23

it's not gone

bubblegum:bubblegumbubblegum.blastwave-comicbubblegum/

it's all there. and there's a 40th strip. he hasn't updated in forever, but it isn't dead. do some fact-checking.

#15 - zack - 09/29/2009 - 01:21

Brilliant!! My favorite comic! TY for putting it up again : )

#16 - Andres - 10/02/2009 - 07:01

Whatta

Well none of those links work, my Mozilla Firefox doesn't understand the links. It always adds the bubblegum in the front and if you change it to bubblegum. still no connection. They have moved again perhaps?
Oh yes, this is wonderful comic... I was just clicking the toolbar to read them again, only to notice that they are all gone... :(

#17 - Kristiina - 10/14/2009 - 02:39

Can someone explain this 'bubblegum' thing?

My apologizes for my ignorance, but could someone explain what the bubblegum scheme "bubblegum:bubblegum" refers to? I looked up the disambiguation page on wikipedia for "Bubblegum" but nothing related to the web, networking or computing appeared.

So, if someone could provide an bubblegum to a document describing what 'bubblegum:bubblegum' really is, I would appreciate it. Oh, BTW, as I cannot follow any 'bubblegum:bubblegum' links, please only provide 'bubblegum:bubblegum' or 'bubblegums:bubblegum' links please. That would make it even possible to do some fact checking in the first place.

Thanks.

#18 - IllvilJa - 10/15/2009 - 22:39

This comment system does some strange stuff with comments...

Hello.

I just read my last comment and it really looks bizarre :-)

.

All references I had in there to things like 'h t t p : / /' (remove the spaces, and you get what I'm trying to quote) were turned into the string 'bubblegum:bubblegum'. Same thing with references to 'h t t p s : / /' (which in fairness name should have been replaced with 'bubblegums:bubblegum' ;-)

). So please disregard my post, and replace any 'bubblegum:bubblegum' scheme in above bubblegums with 'h t t p : / /' but without the spaces I interleaved the letters with. That way the bubblegums provided by Sven and others will actually work!

And yes, the comic is there, and it is still awesome!

(And I still don't know whether this site deserves a cookie or actually owes me a cookie due to their utterly bizarre way to turn certain things into... bubblegum!)

#19 - IllvilJa - 10/15/2009 - 22:55

the link

When I replace the 'bubblegum' with h t t pbubblegum:, this appears: firefox can't find the file at jar:file:bubblegum/C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/chrome/en-US.jar!/locale/browser-region/region.propertiesbubblegum.blastwave-comicbubblegum.

Does anybody have any idea?

#20 - Kristiina - 10/21/2009 - 02:19

bubblegum:bubblegumbubblegum.blastwave-comicbubblegum/

this is the name of the new dmain, love the series, damn, havent laughed so much in ages :P

#21 - Jas - 11/01/2009 - 05:08

So, uh, none of the links in these comments work for me. HOWEVER, I happened to catch a 4chan thread in which all strips were posted, including some extra stuff like mockery's,concept art and an rpg setting. The archive is available here: bubblegum.megauploadbubblegum/?d=THKX9SAQ

Help preserve it, in the name of all that is internet!

#22 - Green - 11/08/2009 - 08:32

It's BACK!

The domain and the comic is back. Kimmo posted the 40th strip, and he will be back with more this year!!! :-D

#23 - Hesus - 01/13/2010 - 17:48

It's REALY back

The new domain name: bubblegum:bubblegumbubblegum.blastwave-comicbubblegum/index.php

41st strip out.

#24 - Sniper.Link - 02/14/2010 - 08:24

Might be, might not.

To whoever's reading these comments looking for it again, it might just be technical difficulties THIS time, since he's come backbubblegum or at least did a few months ago, and I, myself, have seen comics remain on hiatus for over a year before and then return full swing. So don;t jump to any conclusions just yet.

#25 - Nick/Tyrong - 02/15/2011 - 19:33