Goldenbird

I recently had a look at the visitor statistics of my website between May 2009 and April 2010. Last year was the 200th anniversary of the Russian conquest of Finland (until then a part of the Kingdom of Sweden), which was commemorated with a specially minted 1 SEK coin in Sweden. The obscure inscription on the coin invited many visitors looking for an explanation.
The most popular searches in 2009 remained “erlking” and “bravo”, including variations. The Erlking is my unfinished comic about an orc and a foxy Scandinavian forest creature, but it’s also a possible translation for Goethe’s poem Der Erlkönig. “Bravo” could either refer to the fact that I have had some crazy scans from the German teen magazine Bravo on my site, or … see below.
In December 2009, people suddenly started to search for “noli me tangere comics”, which turns out to be an adaptation (or maybe this one?) of José Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere, a classic in the history of the Filipino independence movement. In the Philippines, the novel is part of the national curriculum, which would explain why many kids (?) might be looking for a comic version. Unfortunately, a Goldenbird chapter named “Noli Me Tangere” tops Google Image Search…
A lot of people who search for so-called great men of history land on my site. Some notable names include St. Ignatius, Urho Kekkonen, Per Albin Hansson, Bertel Gripenberg and Gösta Ekman Sr. Some search strings only appear once or twice, never to be seen again. These are some of my favourites:
“commedia dell arte comics” (July 2009)
“comic strips about science” (12 times in Oct 2009!)
“finnish swastika”, “honda bravo modified” (Dec 2009)
“horoscope of dog” (Jan 2010)