If you missed it…

I took down the Piracy013 release exhibition a while ago, but I did take photos this time! So for those who missed it during its limited opening hours, here are photos, including the trivia signs that accompanied some of the prints.

Wall #1

Close-ups:

Translaton text 1:
I tried to turn the chapter with the artificially intelligent missiles into a sort of life cycle, where they go through different stages, including one where they have a love relationship with each other and one where they start doubting their purpose. In the end they decide to continue on the path they started, accepting that it can only end in one way.

Translation text 2:
Inspired by eye witness descriptions from a comic creator in New York City, talking about how in the start of the US war against Iraq and Afghanistan, recruitment drives were specifically aimed at neighborhoods mostly populated by poor and/or non-white people.

Wall #2:

Close-ups:

Translaton text 1:
A terrorist camp out in the Desert. But who are the terrorists and why are they so miserable?

Translation text 2:
Metamagic: based on the practitioner being aware that they are actually characters in a comic, which means they can use this magic to travel in time by moving outside the comic pages. Among other things…

Translation text 3:
Metamagic can also be used to learn how to fly.

Translation text 4:
Erica’s daughter and her friend, Emily and Tomorrow, tried out the Lemonade the grown-ups are drinking. It’s a hallucinogen extracted from the blood of dead gods. It’s also a dramaturgic aid that facilitates the understanding and learning of Metamagic. It’s just not really meant to be taken by kids…

Translation text 5: I like when characters who are actually enemies are put in a situation where open conflict isn’t necessarily an option. During a bomb raid, I had four of the main (and not so main) characters end up in a bomb shelter together. Mostly to see what would happen:
-Erica, wounded after events in the Desert.
-Rain. who is more of a hangaround in the anarchist social circles.
-Jowe, who switched unions because he felt that the anarchosyndicalists were too critical against the war effort, and that they didn’t condemn the accused (bu unconfirmed) terrorists harshly enough.
-Fist, part of the fascist group, but not as enthusiastic as his friends when it comes to actually entering the war.
This was also inspired by real stories about how people who wouldn’t normally hang out can be forced together by circumstances created by the war.

Wanna know what happens next? You’re gonna have to read the book for that.

Wall #3:

This one is the bonus material, with various prints I’ve made. Not really connected to Piracy is Liberation.

Livets Låga Slocknar, finally!

Yesterday, I got a package I’d ordered through Discogs. It’s a vinyl 7″ EP I made a cover illustration for, a little over 20 years ago, that I’d never seen irl before.

Actually, I didn’t make the image for them, but I offered that they could use something I’d already made. I suggested this for the cover:

but in the end they used this (not made by me):

They did, however, use one of mine for the inside cover. This one, which I originally made for the 2002 CBK exhibition »ACETON (CH3COCH3)«:

I’m pretty sure they sent me a copy back when, but I never managed to get it, for some confused reason. So this, 20+ years later, is the first time I actually see it and finally have it among my other records.

EDIT: Actually, it seems I made some more suggestions for the cover, which I just found while looking through some old files. So here are three cover suggestions, of which I already showed one, and I think two had potential, but none of them were used:

Angry Animal about a Genocide

Since Israel’s genocide never seems to end, and they keep rhetorically blaming the victims, and the rest of the world seems determined to let it continue (by which I mean especially one nation (and its allies) with huge influence over world politics, you know the one, who views international law as only applicable when it suits them), it felt like it was time to make an English translation of this comic. The Swedish version was made for the Rum för Frihet exhibition in Malmö during Eurovision week. It was later published in Proletären #24/2024. I don’t have a lot of influence over world politics, but I can at least do what I’m good at to try to help counteract the pro-genocide propaganda…

Feel free to share this to anyone who needs to read it.

 

Opening hours!

If you’re in Malmö and couldn’t make it to the Piracy 013 exhibition opening, you still have the chance to see it. I will keep the exhibition open on these times:

Thursday (Jun 20): 17-20
Tuesday (Jun 25): 17-20
Thursday (Jun 27): 17-20

Drop by and hang out for a while! Take the opportunity to get the whole set of the first 13 Piracy is Liberation books (or the books you’re missing).
Both the single issues and the thick collected editions will be available.You can follow this trip of 20 years of my life as a comics creator (ok, there was a 10 year break between books 011 and 012, but I hope you can see some evolution in my writing/drawing skills during that gap anyway).

There will also be some classic Wormgod prints available in varying sizes, in case you have some empty wall space you need filling.

Or just come and see some pages from the latest book, printed in large format, with some trivia/behind the scenes comments added.

The Finkelstein/Rabbani/Morris/Destiny debate…

 

So I watched this debate last night and I just have a couple of things to comment on it (my comments will be clear if you watch the video first, so you should do that. It’s just 5 hours):

-When the ”it’s not a genocide” side says that international law doesn’t matter, they of course mean that it doesn’t matter to Israel, because it doesn’t matter to the US, because they’re both already criminals and until they can be held accountable they will continue to be. By which it logically follows that if Hamas had only claimed on Oct 7th that the IDF was hiding behind civilians, they could have murdered at least 35 times as many civilians and it would have counted as self defense.

-You can’t be a super efficient and exact army and murder that many civilians, especially that many children, and not be genocidal. So if you’re not intentionally genocidal, you have to admit that you’re fucking up real bad, and you need to cease fire to find another solution to your problem. It was ”funny” when Morris used the word ”proportionality”, because it’s a lot of bodies since Israel had any credibility in saying that their response is proportional. Of course, that’d require that you care about civilian deaths, which you obviously don’t, which takes us back to an intentional genocide being the most probable answer. And if it’s a genocide, it needs to stop immediately, because it’s a genocide and you’re not supposed to do those.

-And yes, Finkelstein was a bit harsh on Destiny, but he was also right: that moron shouldn’t have been there yapping his motomouth while the grown-ups were talking. And I generally don’t have anything against people being harsh on genocide apologists…

By the way, I do appreciate that they let this discussion take the time it did instead of forcing it into a shorter format. It could have been even longer to make room for decades of checkpoints, incarcerations, demolished homes, stolen homes and other abuses to give more context, but still… It’s a pretty good, if frustrating, debate.

Piracy013 RELEASE event & exhibition

When: June 14 at 18-21 (the exhibition lasts until Jun 28)
Where: Rum för Serier (Friisgatan 12, Malmö)
What: Book release with comics exhibition
Opening hours:
Thursday (Jun 20): 17-20
Tuesday (Jun 25): 17-20
Thursday (Jun 27): 17-20

This was supposed to happen on June 7, but had to be postponed due to illness…

Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis is the latest part of my cyberpunk postapocalypse epic.

The City is firing sentient smart-missiles against terrorists hiding in the previously unknown desert. But who is this outer enemy?
Using metamagic, Purple learns how to fly and takes Information and Erica on an expedition to find out, but the truth comes with unexpected dangers.
Piracy is Liberation is a mix of classic cyberpunk elements in a dystopian future with a glimmer of postapocalyptic hope and a pinch of metamagic.

The story, which started in book 012, is a comment on the increasingly war-hungry media climate. It takes place far into the future, in a city where Capitalism is the only remaining religion, where the people don’t know that anything exists outside the City (until now) or that things have ever been different.

We invite you to an exhibition with material from the book along with some more stuff, new and old.
Haven’t read the earlier books in the series? Don’t worry, they’ll all be available at a special price.
Come and hang out, look at the pretty pictures, buy the pretty book and have some wine, it’ll be great!
We’ll keep going until 21 unless we decide to stay longer…

The exhibition is presented by Wormgod & CBK in cooperation with the Swedish Comics Association. This is the final(?) step on my release tour.

Feel free to share and invite people to the Facebook event.

SIS 2024

This weekend in Stockholm: SIS (Stockholm International Comics Festival), the second step on my release tour for Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis!

I’ll bring all the Piracy is Liberation books to the Wormgod table, some Angry Animals, including a brand new zine I made of my Arg Kanin om ett folkmord that I made for the Rum för Frihet exhibition, and a bunch of prints/posters.

I’ll be sharing a group of tables with CBK, Tusen Serier and Dice Dominion, so there’ll be a whole lot of stuff (books, prints, dice).

See you there!

Rum för Frihet

Yesterday was the opening of the exhibition Rum för Frihet – serier om Palestina, at Rum för Serier (Friisgatan 12, Malmö). I have a comic in the exhibition (Arg Kanin om ett Folkmord) and so do Joe Sacco, Layal Safieddin and Seyda.

Here’s a bit of context:
-Malmö is host to Eurovision this year.
-Eurovision has not thrown Israel out of the competition, thereby siding with their ongoing genocide. People are angry at this.
-Actually, their participation in the event is only secondarily what people are angry about. If they’d end the occupation they can join whatever music things they want. Which is good to keep in mind when confronted with the official rhetoric…
-Malmö, in cooperation with Israeli security personnel, tries to remedy the situation in the usual, normal way: they’ve called in cops from all over Sweden + some from Denmark and Norway. And given them new, more powerful guns. And probably psyched them up for the biggest police event since Gothenburg 2001…
-They’ve prohibited Palestinian flags in the Eurovision venues.
-Friisgatan has been proclaimed as the festival street, so since Rum för Serier is on that street, they decided to do a pro-Palestine exhibition.
-Panora/Folkets Bio, a movie theatre on the same street, also have lote of pro-Palestine programming.
-Lots of windows on the street (and in the rest of Malmö) have Palestinian flags hanging from their windows.
-There are cops everywhere now. Cops with automatic weapons. Also snipers.
-The hospital now has armed guards. Unclear what threat they’re under…
-None of this is normal or sensible. And it’s all in defence of a state guilty of genocidal war crimes and a decades-long colonial occupation.

The watermelon in the exhibition poster is a symbol for Palestine, from the time (1967-1993) when the Palestinian flag was prohibited in the occupied areas so people used watermelons instead since the colors are similar.

Here’s a few panels from my comic (I may do an English translation in the future):

Piracy013 release tour 2024

My new book just came from the printer the other day, and I’ve just confirmed that there will be a release exhibition! So the 2024 release tour will be as follows:

Jönköping, April 26: The Old World Is Dying
Stockholm, May 25-26: SIS
Malmö, June 7: Release exhibition @ Rum för Serier

The Old World Is Dying (Insikten, Kulturhuset, Jönköping)
This is a noise event where I will have a Wormgod table along side Dice Dominion, Vertigo förlag.
Performing acts:
IDIOT CHILD (MALMÖ)
Violent sludgy noise rock from the dirty south.
TRAUMA COMMAND (MALMÖ)
Radical Feminist Power Electronics with a straight razor from Crime City.
FACTORY FARMING (GÖTEBORG)
Red Power electronics from the foggy Volvograd.
Both TRAUMA COMMAND and FACTORY FARMING are familiar faces from earlier events (and soundtracks) from Wormgod, and TRAUMA COMMAND is of course the other half of Wormgod and the cover artist for most of the Piracy books, including the new one.
If there’s space, I may bring a couple of books from CBK and Tusen Serier as well…
Check the facebook event for times, address and more updated info.

SIS 2024 (Kulturhuset, Stockholm)
The new edition of Stockholms Internationella Seriefestival. We will be there as usual with Wormgod, CBK and Tusen Serier, this time in the company of Dice Dominion. There’s not stage appearance by me planned this time, as I did that last year, but we’ll be there with a whole lot of books, prints and dice. See you there!
Facebook event

Release exhibition (Rum för Serier, Malmö)
And finally, there will be an official release party with en exhibition in Malmö.

A mix of classic cyberpunk elements in a dystopian future with a glimmer of postapocalyptic hope and a pinch of metamagic.

I haven’t made all the plans for this yet, but I will have all three rooms so I’ll probably also put up some of my older stuff as well as pages from the new book.
Maybe I’ll talk about the book, maybe I’ll discuss it with someone? Maybe there will just be a pile of books, some prints on the wall and a bunch of wine? Who knows?
In any case, I’m sure it’ll be great!
Event and stuff will come later.

I may also be going to the CRACK! festival again this year, since I haven’t been there for a few years and I miss it, but it’s not yet decided so we’ll see if the tour will be extended to include a trip to Rome and Forte Prenestino…

I recently made an Arg Kanin comic about/against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza for an exhibition by Seriefraämjandet, also at Rum för Serier. I’m trying to get it published somewhere as well, but nothing confirmed yet. I’m not even sure exactly when the exhibition will be shown, just that it’ll happen soon, but I’ll post some info on that when I know more.

And I was invited to have some art in the exhibition at Balkanska Smotra Mladih Strip Autora (The Balkans Festival of Young Comics Creators) (June 28-30), so that’s another place where I’ll be showing some Piracy works.

Some CBA short stories…

Sometimes I submit comics for CBA (the international comics anthology from CBK) or other anthologies that are actually chapters from Piracy is Liberation. Usually, I rewrite or otherwise modify them a bit to make sure they can stand on their own, without the context they were originally made for. Right now, I have two such stories, in the latest and in the upcoming issues of CBA.

CBA vol 61: SPYWARE
This one is pretty old. I made it originally for the Morning International comics competition in Japan in 2010, where it actually came in among the top 8. Which is super cool and better than I had expected. It also somehow validates my manga-esque storytelling even though my visuals don’t really fit into what is regularly seen as the manga style…

Since it was set in the world of Piracy is Liberation, I included it in book 009 and actually built the rest of that book around this story, at least in part.

Then, when Caroline Ulvros (main editor of CBA vol 61) chose the theme FINGERS AND TEETH, I realized that this story would fit. There’s a scene in the story where the main character takes a rock and bashes out her own teeth, which was in turn inspired by a scene in 12 Monkeys, where Bruce Willis’ character locks himself in a bathroom with a hammer to take care of surveillance equipment he believes have been planted in his teeth. As I recall, he looks happy and satisfied more than anything else when he comes out with the bloody smile of a successful operation.

CBA vol 62|63: UNTIL DEATH
Oskar Aspman‘s theme for this issue was LIMINAL SPACE. I had just written a chapter for the new Piracy book where I tried to get into the mind of an AI smart-missile and follow it on its short lifespan from being fired to its final detonation. Which made perfect sense for a cyberpunk concept, but I also tried to model it after phases in a human life, from birth/youth to self-discovery, through a philosophical phase, interpersonal interactions and so on, until death.

For the version in the Piracy book, I had to make some tiny adjustments in the text as well as adding a few pages to integrate it into the story in rest of the book. I also changed the title to DEATHDRIVE SENTIENCE.

Ignoring any parallels to real life (Sweden joining NATO, Israel bombing Gaza again), there were some external inspirations behind this story as well. In Karin Boye‘s Kallocain, a Swedish sci fi novel from 1940 (same era and dystopian subgenre as George Orwell‘s 1984 and Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World), the main character lives in one of a few megastates that seem to have divided the world amongst each other and who wage endless war against each other. It’s actually much the same setting as in 1984 and in Katsuhiro Otomo‘s short story CANNON FODDER (not included in the manga collection Memories as I first misremembered, but it’s in the anime of the same name).

That image stuck with me since reading these stories some 20-30 years ago, of a nation waging a never-ending war, routinely and perpetually firing rockets from cannons operated by peoplo who don’t really know who the enemy is, they just know that they’re at war and have a job to do. And since the current storyline, started in Piracy book 012, is about the City going to war against an unknown enemy, it was something I couldn’t help but include. Both as a reference to those great works of dystopian sci fi from the mid-1900s and to the feeling of living in a world where there’s always some war going on, performed by people who have no say in how the war is waged, or why, or when it might end.

CBA vol 61 came a couple of month ago and CBA vol 62|63 will arrive a few weeks from now, together with Piracy 013. They can all be found at Hybriden.se…