Calls for submissions (ParaVox + CBA)!

So there’s a lot going on in the editorial end of my life at the moment.

ParaVox #2 is being printed right now (more on that after it’s released) and we’re soon in the process of making the selection for #3, but we extended the deadline until Jun 9, so there’s still time to send us something on the SNITCH SOCIETY theme. Things are looking good so far, but we still have some empty pages that need filling. And we got a cover for it by Danijel Žeželj, which we’ll announce soon!

See the call for submissions for info on that, and for the next issue (deadline Jul 5): MISINFORMATION.

The illustrations for both of these calls for submissions were made by Layal Safieddine (Urjuen), who is also one of the editors.

So that’s what’s going on right now with ParaVox.

Meanwhile, CBA also has two calls for submissions. The first one is CBA vol 74|75: APATHY, which is another sign of the times just like the two ParaVox themes are.

The illustration for this one is by Marie Tillman, who is also the main editor of the issue.

See the call for submissions and send us comics, deadline Sep 15.

We also just announced the issue after that, where I’m the main editor, and for which I didn’t do the illustration:

CBA vol 76: WORLD WITHOUT PICTURES – ART ON STRIKE, which will be an entire issue without any pictures:

Both comics artists and illustrators are heavily underpaid. Yet illustrations of all kind, from instruction manuals and pictographs to logotypes and deeply involving visual storytelling, surround us constantly. With this theme, we imagine a world where illustrations are on strike, where what remains is a collection of stories completely devoid of pictures. Let’s see what their absence has to say about our forgotten need, our neglected dependence, for the visual arts.

I’m pretty excited about this one, both as creator and as editor. How do you make a comic with no pictures, without turning it into something other than a comic, where the absence of art is a part of the experience? We’ll see.

Check the call for submissions to see the list of rules for it. Deadline Feb 15, so you have a lot of time to not draw something for it, if you’re so inclined.

And to tie this all together, here’s the cover for ParaVox #2, by Sajan Rai:

NEW RELEASES: ParaVox & CBA

Two new anthologies were officially released this weekend.

The one I’ve worked on the most is ParaVox #1: PALESTINE from Tusen Serier. Last fall we put together an editorial group and sent out a call for submissions for the first 4 issues at once (we’re still open for submissions to #3 and 4), and now the first one is finally here!

The plan is to release all four over the summer, so it’s a lot of work but also feels really good. Not least because they all deal with very relevant topics. Far too relevant, even, with Palestine, Snitch Society, Misinformation and the ever-present (Anti)racism.

You can subscribe and you can order the first issue.

I just showed off a page from my comic in a previous blog post, so I’m not going to post that again here, but have a look at the cover, by Anuj Shrestha:

All the money from sales of this first issue go to Senabil Society to support the people of Gaza.

You can read more and see sample of the content here.

I’m now in the process of putting together the second issue, which should be out in time for the CRACK! festival in June.

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Also just released: CBA vol 73: BUGS

As with ParaVox, you can also subscribe to CBA, and/or just order the issue.

Cover, by Aiden Kvarnström, a new addition to the editorial crew and the main editor of this issue:

You’ll find samples here.

Here’s a page from my comic:

I’ve been having a problem with my right wrist lately, so I decided to draw this one with my left. Due to poor self-preservation skills, I ended up doing it with both, but the one used here is the lefthanded version, which I think gave the linework a nice unhingedness.

Hopefully you’ll be able to also see the righthanded version at some point in the future…

Palestine-related comics

Several of my comics are being published these days, all related to Palestine. Because Israel just can’t stop making the world a worse place…

This is the first page of Angry Animal on Antisemanticism, which will be in the first issue of the upcoming anthology magazine ParaVox. I’ll write more about that soon, but you can see samples from all of the contents here, and you can pre-order it and/or subscribe at Hybriden.

Also, the first part of my Angry Animal about a Genocide and a Ceasefire (from 2024 and 2025) is now up at Cálice Magazine.

And I made a thing for the Pennor för Palestina weekly newsletter. Not sure when it goes out, but you can check out their Instagram… The concept for their call for submissions was that entries should be made as footnotes, inspired by Fady Joudah‘s poetry collection “[…]”. The title is Arg Kanin om ett raderande (Angry Animal about an erasing). I may make an English version of this as well for future publication.

This is one of my 4 pages:

För en human migrationspolitik

This weekend is national action days for more humane migration policies in Sweden. It’s been downhill for a long time, men especially now with the current right-wing government.

Today, in a few hours, there’s a manifestation in Malmö, at Trianeln:

(someone made a graffiti based on my logo for För En Human Migrationspolitik)

Also, last Monday, the LIBE Committee, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, passed a bill that takes the hunt for undocumented migrants to a whole new level.

If this bill passes, we will basically have ICE in Europe as well, and I don’t know about other countries, but I’m pretty sure our government will be very enthusiastic about it.

The Parliament will vote on the proposal this week. If it passes, methods will be adopted such as raids in private homes (and offices, shelters) and in public places (train stations, buses, airports, roads) in the hunt for undocumented migrants

The proposal also includes increased surveillance and collection/sharing of personal/biometric data, report obligation for public agencies (like Sweden’s snitch law from 2024) and racial profiling.

We’ve seen where this leads. ICE has been around for decades, but this proposal feels more like their recent escalation under Trump, where they’ve shot and killed many more than just the few white people who made the biggest headlines, and others have simply disappered after being sent to the US concentration camps.

We already have Frontex and the detention centres. That’s bad enough, we should go in the opposite direction, not take after the nation that was the inspiration for the Nazi segregation policies.

The above information about LIBE’s proposal comes from Civil Rights Defenders.

The guitar project

As you know, in 2024 I published a short sci fi story called Probability Drive (in Swedish, from CBK in 2025, as Sannolikhetsdrift).

What you may not know is that it’s connected to a project I did with Ruokangas Guitars, where I made a painting on a guitar body for their Art Infused guitar collection. They then added some details and built the actual guitar.

The comic actually came from the painting rather than the other way around, in combination with an old idea I had about a spaceship going faster than light using the probability energy of a Schrödinger box with a cat that’s either dead or alive. It’s a complete distortion of the concept of course, and has nothing to do with any real quantum mechanics, but that’s what sci fi and comics are for, right? To play around with ideas and see where they lead you.

The story was also inspired by Sven Linqvist‘s Utrota Varenda Jävel (Exterminate All the Brutes) and Ursula K LeGuin‘s The Word for World is Forest in that it deals with colonialism, but in space. Read the book (mine or theirs) to find out what that means…

Anyway, I must say that the guitar ended up fucking awesome and I would want it for myself except I’d much more prefer if it ended up with someone who can acually play it 🙂

(some of the photos were taken by me during the painting process, the rest are from the Ruokangas website where you can see them in better quality)

 

ParaVox #2 call for submissions: (ANTI)RACISM

We’re now in the process of finishing the selection for ParaVox #1: PALESTINE (the new anthology magazine from Tusen Serier), but we also want comics and texts for the next issue!

ParaVox #2: (ANTI)RACISM

Long ago, European countries propagated the notion of white supremacy, of how other races would inevitably perish to make room for the (Western) European peoples. Today, race is mostly not talked about openly in that way, but the same notions live on and thrive in many circles, even if expressed in other ways. These days there’s talk of culture, religion and criminality, but there is always an implied image of who has an obvious right to a space and who must always justify our existence, be grateful, obedient and assimilated. Racism is not just about how we look at each other on the streets or at work, but also about how our lives are concretely affected by legislation around migration, discrimination, behavior and culture. 

We want comics and texts looking at the phenomena of racism and antiracism from different angles, bringing personal experiences, theoretical reasoning, and visual interpretations.
Deadline: Apr 5, 2026

About the image:
An activist in Sweden recently left a basket or apples painted with the face of Hitler outside the home of Johan Forssell, the Swedish minister of migration, as a protest against Sweden’s support for the Syrian government (with ties to Al Qaida), which in practice financially supports their current attack on the Kurdish areas. The deal was made to facilitate deportations of asylum seekers from Sweden to Syria. The apples were a symbol for the apple not falling far from the tree, since it was revealed that Forssell’s son was active in a Nazi orgnaisation.

Submission guidelines with all the info you need is available in our call for submissions for #1-4.

About ParaVox / Statement of Purpose 

WEIRD FOREST

CBA vol 72: WEIRD FOREST is out soon! This is the latest issue I’ve done work on as main editor, and it’s a good one if I may say so. And who’s going to stop me?

So we didn’t make an open call for this issue, because we had some material from earlier that hadn’t fit into previous issues. So WEIRD FOREST is actually a theme constructed to work for those comics. And then I headhunted a couple more artists I liked that I thought would fit for the issue.

And I made a comic myself, because a story came to me and I had these photos of the woods just next to Angered from an earlier project, and I thought it all fit together.

Here’s a small sample:

It’s set up as a dialogue between three persons (does that make it a trialogue?) but you don’t see any of them, you just hear them talking. So it’s the opposite of the talking head-comic I’ve made for CBA vol 73 (more about that later because I don’t even know if it’ll be accepted). Maybe influenced by me currently writing a (non-comics) book (more on that later as well)?

I also wrote a text, which deals with the Dark Forest theory of why aliens haven’t contacted us (as far as we know), as presented by Cixin Liu in his 3 Body book series, and why I think he may be wrong.

And I made the cover, which is a photoI took in the woods just next to the school where I studied art, outside Skellefteå in the winter of 1998 (possibly 1997). I developed it myself in the school’s phot lab and I’ve always liked it but never used it for anything until now. It’s of course modified and mixed with some ink splotches and a scanned circuitboard (also found around that time, in a dump in Skellefteå, but this one I’ve used for a lot of things since then).

Here’s a scan of the original photo:

The official release date is March 3, when it’ll be available at hybriden.se and the usual retailers and online bookstores. If you order it now from Hybriden, you will get the book around the release date.

CBA vol 72: WEIRD FOREST
116 color pages
ISBN: 978-91-87825-45-3

You have entered into the weird forest. You are one of its creatures now. Welcome. You will never leave. The only path laid out before you, your only choice, is to go deeper, deeper, until you are completely and utterly lost. Not until then can you find who you are and where you’re going.

If you’re lucky.

Comics by: Tomasz Kontny [PL] & Tomxyz [PL], Mattias Elftorp [SE], Michael Elton Crye [US], Athanasía Aarniosuo [FI], Knut Larsson [SE], Susanne Johansson [SE], Svalan Sörblom [SE], Xico Santos [PT/SE]. Text & illustration by: Mattias Elftorp [SE]. Cover & main editors: Mattias Elftorp [SE].

Go to the CBK website to see sample images from all the comics at the .

För En Human Migrationspolitik

I recently made a logo for a new project/group/movement:
För En Human Migrationspolitik

Check them out at humanmigrationspolitik.blogspot.com
And sign their petition here!

They came out of the campaign Rör Inte Det Permanenta Uppehållstillståndet (if I understand the connections correctly).
Sign their petition here!

It’s all about working to put an end to Sweden’s ongoing downwards slide in the direction of what the US is currently doing. We’ve been on this ride for too long. Even if we’re not on that level yet, we’ve had (or have) our own version of ICE, and even if we don’t have the same kind of concentration camps that the US has, we still have the detention centres that are the gentler version of the same thing. And it’s constantly getting worse, since our right-wing government AND the Social democrat part of the opposition are all trying their best to impress Sverigedemokraterna by being harsh on immigration. Which, to be honest, is just a show of spinelessness towards what they for some reason see as an attractive voter base consisting of nationalists and racists.

So yes, enough is enough and we need more movements like this.

Just Lying in Cálice

I have a comic in Cálice Magazine‘s first issue of 2026!

It’s an old one, previously published in the sold-out CBA #1 and in my short story collection A Subtle Fuck You, but still relevant, and I’m still happy with it.

Cálice is a web-based magazine. Here’s their About text:

Cálice Magazine is rooted in the perspective that knowledge is not universal and its transmission is not monolithic. We seek to find creative ways to produce and share knowledge and to break boundaries to contribute to a beautiful diversity of perspectives, knowledges, and stories. We publish content ranging from articles, photo stories, and podcasts over short fiction and poetry to art and comics. Through these formats, we explore different subjects: some political, some social or cultural, others personal.​​

Want a sample before clicking the link? Here’s the first page of Just Lying: