My books (the only 30 books you need?)

The new issue of CBA is out, where I made the cover and a comic and was main editor. It looks very good in print, if I may say so myself (more about it at the CBK site). I also have a short comic in the next issue, which will also be out soon (Nov 25, with a few sneaky pre-release appearances).

And since we’re talking new releases, maybe it’s time to take stock of the older ones, so I took them out of my shelf and had a little self-celebratory photo session. Remember when Marie Kondo said you only need 30 books? Well, these could be 175 of them (more or less)…

Starting with the main thing: Piracy is Liberation in its various editions, collections and bonus zines:

Other books I’ve written and drawn or, in a few cases, written for someone else to draw, or made as collaborations:

A bunch of smaller scale publications and/or recent(-ish) zines:

Going on with some loose mix of theme/chronology, here’s the early issues of C’est Bon, with some side publications.

Continuing with the early issues after we turned the zine C’est Bon into the international anthology C’est Bon Anthology, and the restart when we got US distribution and started calling them volumes:

More volumes av CBA:

So far I’ve only included issues of CBA where I’m participating with comics, so here are those where I was just part of the editorial crew:

Same category, editorial only but (mostly) for Tusen Serier, though in some cases that includes translations and I also made the over-all design for almost all of these:

As you may have noticed if you looked closely enough at the CBA pics, there was a period when I wasn’t as involved (vols 8-27). It was during that time I started Wormgod and Tusen Serier with other collaborators, and I also edited and sometimes participated in a series called Dystopia:

It was also during that time I started doing the bi-annual AltCom festival, with these accompanying anthologies, until the pandemic put a temporary(?) but long-lasting stop to such social events:

Going back to CBA for an instant, these are the issues where I was main editor. We started doing that starting with vol 35 if I remember right, since it turned out our tastes differed too much within the group. So instead of staying in a situation where someone would always be a little unhappy with the selection (what was included or what was excluded), now we’d take turns setting the theme and having final say about the contents. I think it’s worked pretty well and it’s still how we do it (vol 64 should have been in this pic as well, but it wasn’t out yet when I took the photos). I didn’t make comics for all of these, but I made the covers, except the first one which is a drawing by Radovan Popović, printed only in spot gloss lamination:

Speaking of covers, here are some book covers I’ve made for books I didn’t have much else to do with (except I made a bunch of interior illustrations for two of them and edited one):

And for this trilogy, my main involvement was doing the design:

…in contrast to the following anthologies from different countries, where I only participated with comics (or illustrations, in three or four of them):

This list isn’t 100% complete since I didn’t includes magazines, older zines etc, but other than some things like that, this is pretty much it… I have some more, still uncomfirmed, possible publications that may come out before this year is over, so check this space for more news in the near future.

Oh, and if you’re interested, you can get most of these at Hybriden.

AltCom 2018

Welcome to the big AltCom 2018 post!

Only a week left now until it all starts, so I thought it was time to post a bunch of related stuff.

First, you should check out the program. There will be exhibitions, a workshop at Fanzineverkstaden, a comics fair, several really interesting talks, from a panel about the dictatorship in Chile, to thoughts about the future of Sweden, to an analysis of the social/cultural climate in Iraq under Saddam to presentations of various comics projects and a Balkans panel that could lead anywhere…

Here’s my introduction to the theme:

HOW TO SURVIVE A DICTATORSHIP

Sweden is normally seen as a true democracy, but we’ve only had universal suffrage for about 100 years and the right to vote can’t be taken for granted in the long run. Even now, there are sections of society not covered by democracy, and there are parts of our lives that we have no direct influence over when we vote every four years. For example, corporations are not democratically structured, even though work takes up so much of our lifetimes. If you are undocumented or homeless, it’s easy to see how you’re not really included in the democratic process. Furthermore, the decisions are made by people who can earn more in a month than many of us get in a whole year.

Sometimes, people are even coming here from other countries to escape dictatorships, but we close the door in their faces as if they were contagious. Loud voices are talking about the dangers of foreigners, especially refugees. As if being born outside Sweden automatically turned you into a scary psycho rapist or terrorist.

This is of course bullshit, perpetuated by the kind of politicians whose goals are to make our democracy even less inclusive and less democratic. It’s important to judge both people and politicians by their actions rather than their rhetoric and nice words. When they claim to love their nation, it’s usually code for something much darker.

Several of the guests at AltCom were born outside Sweden, yet they are hardly scary at all. Rather, they may have valuable experiences to share.

What would happen if, after the election, these loud voices would have enough power to actually abolish democracy for all or parts of the population? How would we handle such a situation? What are our strategies for surviving a dictatorship?

AltCom is not only a comics festival but also a forum for discussing these and similar issues.

As always, there will be a festival anthology given out for free during all of the festival

And because we don’t know when to stop, we took the opportunity to also organise a new edition of the Wormgod noise festival TRAUMA, this time in collaboration with Noise Against Fascism. At Plan B:

 

AltCom 2018 is organised by Tusen Serier in collaboration with CBKKoshk, Wormgod, Noise Against Fascism, Fanzineverkstaden, PanoraPlan B etc, with support from Region Skåne, Malmö Kulturstöd & Kulturrådet.

Update: Fanzineverkstaden + AltCom

Just realised I haven’t posted here for a while, so maybe it’s time for an update.

Illustration by me & Kinga Dukaj

Fanzineverkstaden is now officially open! During the summer, our hours are Tue-Thu between 15-21, so just drop by and/or become a member at the website in order to use the space and equipment.

We’ve also started having workshops. Check the website to keep track of what’s happening.

In other news, the AltCom anthology has arrived from the printer and the program is taking shape. I’m also very excited about the TRAUMA noisefest that will happen as part of the comics festival. Read all about it at the website

Check the websites for more, and I will also share more here soon…

New stuff

To begin with, I tried Detroit: Become Human (PS4) last night and it feels new and exciting. So far, it’s more about storytelling than gameplay, but that’s fine and the story is interesting, and storytelling is usually my main interest in games anyway. So yeah, give it a try!

I also look forward to trying out the newly released Coolpaintr VR

Right now, I’m at Fanzineverkstaden, making plans for when we open to the public, which will hapen soon…

The upcoming CBA vol 40|41: Worst Case Scenario is being prepared for the printer as I write this, and it’s going to be a great volume. Black/white to fit the theme, which it really does. I made a comic for it, called Why you (maybe) shouldn’t kill Hitler, a time travel story about a worst case scenario and about misconceptions about historical events.Here’s the cover by Kinga Dukaj:

Today (starting an hour ago), there’s an exhibition at Hybriden, featuring the comics students from Fridhems folkhögskola.

Next weekend (June 2), we’ll open the second part of the Best of CBK exhibition (also at Hybriden). So see you there, maybe, one of these days.

Speaking of exhibitions, right now I’m part of the exhibition Pow – Historier i kvadrat at Det gamla tryckeriet in Eskilstuna. My contribution is the artist book I made a while ago: A Subtle Fuck You 2: Antidote.

I would have liked to make something new for the next volume of CBA as well: CBA vol 42: Subversive Superhero Stories, but I doubt I’ll have the time for it, so I’ll probably just write a text I’ve been wanting to do, and if I participate with a comic, it’ll be something old but relevant.

Also planning to make a short ranting comic för the AltCom 2018: HOW TO SURVIVE A DICTATORSHIP anthology. Probably an Angry Animal story, which I haven’t done for some time now. They don’t take me a lot of time and I think it’ll fit the theme.

This is an old one, used in the exhibition MUS, MOUSE, MAUS, shown at the Holocaust Museum in Paris a bunch of years ago, and possibly in other places after that (Click for bigger version)…

In general, the political climate in Sweden is rapidly deteriorating it seems, since it’s an election year and all the big parties compete in who can be the best at copying the neonationalists to prevent them from getting too strong. With the result, obviously, that the neonationalist part gets stronger and can push their politics even further. Now they’re even talking about throwing out people who are already Swedish citizens on the grounds that they or their parents weren’t born here (most of my closest friends) or that they don’t have the “correct” Swedish values (me and most of the people I know, I assume). No one will be safe unless something turns around soon.

I’m calling them neonationalists now because it seems that they’re in the forefront of a new(ish) nationalist movement. They could also be called “neofascists” or “racist” or “islamophobic rightwing” or “kind of normal party but with lots of nazis in their not-so-distant past”. But those words seem to make people uncomfortable, so I’ll stick with “neonationalist”, at least for this blogpost..

 

Call for submissions: AltCom 2018

Join the anthology for AltCom 2018: HOW TO SURVIVE A DICTATORSHIP!
Send us comics about your thoughts, experiences, strategy tips and tricks on the subject.

As always in AltCom, we will hand the book out for free during and after the festival.

WHAT we want:
Pages: 1-5, black/white
Language: English
Format: 140x182mm (a little bit smaller than A5) +5mm bleed on all sides
Files: High-resolution, preferably .TIFF
If you are unsure what we mean by “high-resolution” or “bleed”, please ask. Lots of artists don’t know, and it’s better to ask than to send us files that we can’t use.

WHEN we want it:
Deadline: May 15

WHERE we want it:
Send submissions to:
submissions [at] altcomfestival [dot] se

Please help share this invitation to anyone who might be interested! Here’s the Facebook event.

As usual, no one gets paid for participating. But on the other hand, no one pays to get it either. Everything is voluntary.

And yes, we do accept comics that have already been published elsewhere, as long as we like them and they fit into the theme.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL:
AltCom 2018 will take place August 23-26, in Malmö, Sweden (venues & program will be released during the coming months), with exhibitions, international guests, a comics fair, etc.
This year we combine the comics festival with the TRAUMA noise festival.
More information will be found at
altcomfestival.se
Table reservations etc will be available later

AltCom 2018 is organised by Tusen Serier in collaboration with CBK, Wormgod, Panora, Noise Against Fascism etc, with support from Malmö Kulturstöd & Kulturrådet.

Death to 2016…

2016 ends and it’s time for a summation. I could comment on the new migration laws, on the ongoing/invigorated persecution of undocumented as well as beggars, the seeming rise of general stupidity, the steady decline of hope as species are going extinct at a rate we haven’t seen since the last ice age, various mad-people in power, abuses perpetrated by various states etc etc (I could also talk about celebrity deaths but why?). But I’m probably going to keep this personal and up-beat(?).

So here are some things I made/was involved in during the year. Mostly unpaid work as usual, which I’m getting increasingly tired of, but what are you going to do? Up-beat, was it? Right. Ok. This is me when I’m unemployed:

COMICS:
The Troll actually came out in the end of 2015, but it was still new when this year started, and it was also my only solo book, so I still feel that it counts.
I had some other plans for upcoming solo books, but none of them have turned into reality. Yet…

wormgodbook027thetroll

Publication-wise when it comes to my own comics, this has been more of an anthology year, with some comics being published in several places:
Viral was drawn in 2015 but published this year in CBAvol30.
Medication, published in CBAvol35: BLEED, Komikaze #42 (web) and #15 (paper) and possibly Alkom’x #9
Idle hands & recreation in CBAvol34: Re: Creation and idleness  and possibly Alkom’x #9
Fragments will be in CBAvol37 and possibly Alkom’x #9
Arg Kanin om Samma gamla visa in Asylkalendern 2017.

viralv2-2 medication-1xrpt idlehands01smpl vasta-aine-2

I sent some of these stories to some other places as well so they may turn up in more places in the future…

ASSOCIATIONS:
Some big steps forward were taken for both Tusen Serier and CBK. Both associations broke some ties with the Swedish Comics Association this year, which feels nice for various reasons that shall remain untold for now. It meant that CBK left the Comics Centre in the Mazetti building where we had been since 2005. Tusen Serier also finished the last project period that was run through the Comics Association. Both of these things lead up to both groups moving together and starting our new exhibition/store/studio/library/storage space Hybriden. We officially opened in March but it definitely feels like we’ve been there for more than a year… The new space also brought a brand-new webshop with it into existence.

cbk_logo 1000logo hybriden-logo

CBK also started to get its shit together with the release of CBAvol30: A new hope, which was the first volume made/compiled completely by the new editorial crew. We also published our last graphic novel issue, CBAvol33: Repeat Offenders by Julia Scott, and 3 more anthologies.

cbavol30covercbavol32cvr cbavol33cvr cbavol34cvrcbavol35cvr

FESTIVALS:
There was of course the AltCom 2016 festival, themed WORK. In many ways it felt like it was the best AltCom so far. We managed to create our own pocket universe during those few days in the end of July.

altcom2016zombies

Also visited some other festivals/events (not as many as planned, but enough):
SIS, CRACK!, Oulu art night, Novo Doba, Örebro.

EXHIBITIONS:
Vasta-Aine was an exhibition at the Oulu Comics Centre, featuring 3 of my recent comics, Medication, Fragments and Happiness.
-I had an exhibition at the CUK Imago in Belgrade during Novo Doba, with some of my old Wormgod prints and some original paintings.
-And, also during Novo Doba, I painted a mural at the Zemun-based cultural centre Matrijaršija.
-The BLEED group exhibition at Hybriden, organized by CBK and Kinga Dukaj, was the coolest exhibition I’ve been a part of for a long while. I made three paintings for this exhibition that took place in the midst of a seriel killer’s murder scene, walls and ceiling covered with plastic sheets, blood (most of it fake) spattered everywhere, special music by Feberdröm

vasta-aine-posterfb_img_1478720950157 nuskull

matrijarsija-wall2

MORE BOOKS:
Tusen Serier released a batch of new books this year:
Fem historier om prostituerande by Amalia Alvarez
Myling by Amanda Casanellas & Yossra El Said
Mapuche by Jorge Varas Varilla
Void by Susanne Johansson (published in cooperation with Wormgod)
Cool Cykel by Tanja Komadina

prostituerande-1 mapuchecvr voidcover myling-1coolcykelcvr

THE ANGERED THING:
In November I took over from Amanda Casanellas who was there in October as the Tusen Serier residence artist at Konstepidemin in Gothenburg, a special residency that they had in cooperation with Blå Stället in Angered. During one month I could (mostly) concentrate on one thing instead of a hundred, which was probably quite healthy. I took some breaks to be at the BLEED exhibition and the Örebro festival, but still managed to draw 55 pages based on Amanda’s ideas, which were based on stories from Angered. Urban legends, folk tales, local mythology which we will work into a story to be published at some point during 2017…

screenshot_2016-11-22-01-45-2101

LIKE TEARS IN RAIN:
There were probably some more things that might be worth mentioning, some short comics, illustrations, book covers, maybe some project or other, but I simply can’t remember everything and I’m too lazy to look it up.

hdjul201601 crackland_fulbaileys strejkomslag

So I’m going to leave you with a (surprisingly long) list of stuff I’ve watched/played/read in the sessions of downtime squeezed in between all the rest. It’s not all from this year, because only idiots think that there’s no past. And yes, these are just from the top of my head, things I recommend that happened to not slip my mind:

PS3/4:
DMC | Beyond: Two Souls | Enslaved | Alice 2 | The Last Guardian (finally!) | Shadow of the Beast (worthy remake of childhood nostalgia) | Life is strange (just started but seems promising)

TV SERIES (the most noteworthy new discoveries / steady classics):
South ParkRick & MortyWestworld | Crazy Head | The OA | Orphan Black | Preacher | Daredevil | Jessica Jones | Luke Cage | Doctor Who (even if there was only one new episodes)

FILMS:
Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen (Kitano is back!) | Sausage Party(!) | Maps to the stars | Lamerica | He never died | Extracted | Mr Six | Batman v Superman (Martha?!) | May Allah bless France | M. Butterfly | Borgman | The Lobster | High-Rise | Schizopolis | Kontroll | The Witch | Urge | Upstream Color | GhostbustersVanishing Waves (ok, I saw this in 2015, but still worth mentioning) | + of course the MCU stuff…

COMICS:
Low | The Wicked + the Divine | Supreme Blue Rose | Starve | Punk Rock Jesus | Empty Zone | Monstress | (all of) Hellblazer | Deadenders | Bitch Planet | Velvet | New Lone Wolf & Cub | Lazarus | Saga | Nameless | Injection | Caliban | Blackgas | Stormwatch (Ellis) | Animal Man (finally caught up on Morrison’s run)| Trees | Deadly Class | Miracleman | Annihilator | + caught up on the X-books up until Secret Wars

BOOKS:
Woman on the edge of time by Marge Piercy | The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin

Yeah, regular books take me a long time, so 2 in one year is unusually good.

LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH:
Hope you found something interesting that you might have otherwise missed in these lists, and enjoy the last few hours of the year…

AltCom 2016: afterword

The AltCom experience of 2016 is over, as much as something like this is ever over, because when a festival like this is at its best, it lingers in your soul/mind/5D construct.

We actually managed to create this separate plane of existence. A space that is its own thing and when it’s over it’s like you’re going back home, even if you already live in the same city. And when I say “we”, I don’t mean me, I don’t mean the organizers or volonteers, I mean all of us who took part in it. The guests/exhibitors/musicians/visitors. The smokers and drinkers. The ones who woke up, went to the festival and stayed until they passed out or went home (sometimes when the morning sun had come out and the birds started singing, sometimes when the wine was over, sometimes when it was just the right time to go). The ones who arrived late at night, the ones who left early. This international family that’s made up of people you almost only meet in these liminal existences. These special relationships with people you meet a few times a year, in different parts of the world, that you consider to be friends even if you hardly know most of them in any deeper sense.

It started with the preparty sessions where a few of us sat down with some wine after putting up exhibitions, discussing anything from printing techniques to working conditions to drug culture to Pokémon Go to the effect the internet has on communication and on underground and zine culture. Then it all grew as the actual festival started. People meeting, inspiring each other, giving birth to new collaborations, extending invitations to future events, other worlds to visit in the future. An intersection of pasts, present and futures.

lostpiece
The lost/found piece, by Alkbazz…

Many of us will meet again, because this part of the comics culture is borderless by nature and part of a network of recurring aquaintances, but we may never meet again in this exact same constellation of people.

And then there’s the story of the lost luggage that arrived just in time for the Saturday afterparty so we could complete the exhibition a few hours before it closed, the stolen items, the missed flight, the missing guest, like an offering to the god of Branquignole. Maybe the price to pay for everything else running more or less smoothly. Sleep was another casualty, but what are you gonna do?

So thank you to everyone who came, who let people stay in their homes, who participated, volunteered, carried tables, held talks/performances/workshops, who brought their art or simply their presence. For an AltCom festival that became something beyond the sum of its parts. Not unlike the language/artform of comics itself.

altcom2016rasa01
Check this comics interpretation of the festival, by Radovan Popović

AltCom!

As you may have noticed, a lot of my life has circulated around AltCom this last time.

I would like to tell you all about it in an engaging way that really makes you understand why you should come, like all the exhibitions, parties, filmprogram, talks & workshops and the comics market and the free book that you can find all over the festival. But I simply don’t have time, so instead I’ll just send you to the festival’s website, which by now is almost completed with all the information you might need:

www.altcomfestival.se

Hope to see you there!

altcom2016poster_anthology
Poster based on the anthology cover art by Kinga Dukaj.

The AltCom 2016 WORK anthology

The AltCom festival anthology arrived from the printer yesterday!

anthology_arrived

It’s a 100 page book with comics relating to WORK by an assortment of international artists and it will be given away for free before, during and after the festival. Some of the featured artists will also be present at the festival.

Read more about it here.

The festival takes place July 28-31 in Malmö. See you there!