The origin of the author
The author, Erno Pickee, is best described as an entrepreneurial teacher. Too much entrepreneur for being a teacher and too much teacher to be an entrepreneur. Which resulted in having a part time job as a lecturer and the rest of the time he is busy with executing projects. This project is very strong to his heart since his father is Dutch and his mother is (orang) Maluku. At a young age he heard the wonderful stories of the VOC back in the day, when they sailed the seas and showed amazing entrepreneurial skills. Later in his life he heard the other side of the story, the Maluku version, which is far from wonderful.
Bridging the Gap
This perspective gap resulted in a conflict, to which side does he belong? “Who am I and what is my true identity?”. He had to figure that out himself. Although the answer is rather simple: “I am me.” It is never about the end result, but always about the process (which became his teaching philosophy number 1). Understanding the answer is what took the real effort. Erno understood the answer once he realized he is a product of love and not hate. Which forced him to look beyond the experienced pain of his family, of Maluku people. His conclusion: “The only true task we have is to make our world a better place, the rest is secondary”.
Conflict resolved and now what?
Now as a teacher and entrepreneur, he had this bold idea: “What if I use my storytelling skills to construct an epic story about what happened?” Transform that story into an awesome Anime (often violent animation movie for adults) maybe that will inspire others to learn from our history and making sure that it won't happen again. In short, spreading this story could aspire others into making our world a better place too. Unfortunately directing an Anime is rather costly, so he switched to this comic book / graphic novel. The next step is to spread this story and inspire others and maybe attract the right people to make this Anime happen.
To summarize
This story is based on real events and real people. Although the story does not provide all the answers, it may inspire you to ask the right questions: “what really happened and why?” Reality is a lot more bloodier and violent than fiction. But if we do not learn from our history we are condemned to repeat it.
FAQ
Why just black and white? Because it is an old school story and works as a reference to a black page in our history
Why does it need to be so violent? Because back in the day things were very violent
What does Molo Uku mean? It means Maluku or the Moluccas.
Which names are non-fiction? Good question, look it up yourself
Why do you use fictitious names? This story is not about names, but about events.
Why English? Since this is an international co-creation activity the language used was English.
Will it be available in other languages. Probably yes, but most likely not that soon