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Arnold is a snail who lives in the village of Slowmania. Driven by an unwavering faith in his forward-thinking ideas, Arnold decides to work on an educational comic for both adults and children.
His children offer to help him with the illustrations. One slimy day, Arnold decides to encourage the villagers to adopt a shell as their home. Nothing unusual—except that later, he invites them to “make a hole in their homes,” claiming that this will make them “much happier, just like him.”





Soon, the entire village of Slowmania will be inhabited only by snails with holed shells.
A comic within a comic, Arnold is the protagonist of stories illustrated by the Dutch artist Eveline Lucia van Dijk, published by the Foundation for Independent Thinking (F.I.T.).

It is 1978, and Van Dijk’s comics are, in terms of content, among the most bizarre ever drawn. The titles include: Arnold Slak & the Slow Sisters op weg (Arnold the Snail & the Slow Sisters on the Road); Licht uit de put (Light from the Well); Een wetenscha-ppelijke sekte…? (A Scientific Sect…?); Gnothi seauton / Ken uzelf erken uw oude engrammen (Know Yourself / Recognize Your Old Engrams)

Engram: In biology, a mnemonic trace of organic nature, not yet fully understood, carrying certain informational content and preserved within nervous tissue.

No one before her had ever depicted trepanation in comic form, and there is no doubt that the intention was to pay homage to the procedure. Indeed, her partner and co-author of the comics is Bart Huges.