Tales of Unsurpassed Vanity (Ιστορίες Ατελείωτης Ματαιοδοξίας) #3
August 2001. Athens: Self-published. 24 pages.

In the late 1990s I migrated to Athens, Greece, and began self-publishing my personal comic book anthology, Tales of Unsurpassed Vanity (Gr: Ιστορίες Ατελείωτης Ματαιοδοξίας), which became one of Greece’s longest-running self-published independent comics. I had been preparing the stories for the first three issues since 1998 whilst undertaking my mandatory military service.

The anthology featured some continuing stories, like Jazz & Maria, about vampire club kids who get entangled in a massive science fantasy adventure, and Three Kings, in which Elvis, Bruce Lee and Jim Morrison team up to fight evil.
It also featured self-contained stories, mostly about the dark corners of Athens, as well as comedic strips starring my characters Louvre De Buff, a weed-smoking stray dog, and Punky Smurf, an anarchopunk smurf that hates his brainwashed smurf collective.

Being one of a handful of comics that were being created at the time —in the entire country— for this issue I even wrote a two-page feature on how to self-publish one’s own comics, hoping that I would inspire more creators to self-publish their work. After seeing this guide, a creator called Zenia contacted me and I helped her design, publish and distribute her own anthology Red Dot Comix. Not long after, I formed the group anthology SubArt Comics, whose original publication format was based on the Tales of Unsurpassed Vanity model.

Tales of Unsurpassed Vanity lasted ten issues, ending in 2004.