Pääkaupunki is a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 political satire

Political satire

Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly...

 comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 drawn by Tarmo Koivisto

Tarmo Koivisto

Tarmo Koivisto is a Finnish comics artist and writer, cartoonist, and graphic artist. He is best known for his ongoing comic strip Mämmilä. Koivisto is also known by his artist name Tape.-Biography:...

. It is published on the back page of the Helsingin Sanomat

Helsingin Sanomat

Helsingin Sanomat is the largest subscription newspaper in Finland and the Nordic countries, owned by Sanoma. Except after certain holidays, it is published daily. In 2008, its daily circulation was 412,421 on weekdays and 468,505 on Sundays...

monthly supplement.

Koivisto is more famous for Mämmilä

Mämmilä

Mämmilä is a full-page comic strip by Finnish cartoonist Tarmo Koivisto and co-written by Hannu Virtanen.Mämmilä is a fictional small country municipality, supposedly in the Häme region, and was originally modeled on the municipality of Orivesi...

, an ongoing tale about a fictional Finnish village, but during a multi-year hiatus in the series, he started drawing Pääkaupunki on the side.

The comic satirises current Finnish politics very sharply. Unlike traditional political satire comics, Pääkaupunki extrapolates

Extrapolation

In mathematics, extrapolation is the process of constructing new data points. It is similar to the process of interpolation, which constructs new points between known points, but the results of extrapolations are often less meaningful, and are subject to greater uncertainty. It may also mean...

 possible future outcomes of today's politics, and takes them to the extreme, creating farcical

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

 visions. Most Finnish politicians, particularly Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen

Matti Vanhanen

Matti Taneli Vanhanen is a Finnish politician. He is a former Prime Minister of Finland and a former Chairman of the Centre Party. In the second half of 2006 he was President of the European Council. In his earlier career he was a journalist...

, are recognisable straight from their face, but the strip sometimes mentions the names of less-known politicians to help readers recognise them. Most of the comic happens in Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

(hence the name), but some strips are set in other places.