Chernobyl in popular culture - Part III

My first outspoken Chernobyl inspired artwork. It's not a mutant.

This blog isn't only related to facts and features concerning Chernobyl, but as the title reveals, it's my Chernobyl project, which has the main purpose of educating and telling people about the Zone, but also to give my own personal views on the subject in order to prepare for the exhibition in August. 

I have already given a brief introduction of myself in this post, but else to be said is that I'm also an illustrator and author of graphic novels, and as I currently run the side project of finding out about how Chernobyl  appears in popular culture, this is a good moment to sneak in some more of my own stuff.

What can I tell with images, that hasn't already been told a hundred times before in other images as well as written words? Of Chernobyl in fiction we have a lot already, so why do I keep on depicturing the elements  that I relate to this subject? Perhaps because it's still in many ways a great mystery to me - a puzzle waiting to be solved. In many ways. And until I've solved this mystery, the images will keep coming to me.

Of this image to the left, you've seen the prequel. I posted it a few days ago. This may or may not be included in my exhibition, and if it will, you will not see it like this, but rather more like the four A3 original drawings.

Once, whilst still in the Zone, and at a few occasions after that, I have been asked if I intend to make a graphic novel about Chernobyl. The answer at this point is still no, and I can't see anything changing that in a near future. However, when I was still doing research concerning my article about the first Chernobyl firefighters, I had a few more images, and things became a little more visual than usually, and thus the idea of this  image was born, based on the words of Grigoriy Khmel, one of the first 28 deceased.

It stays there.