The KOLAŻ | THE BOX exhibition is over, but here are some photos of my entries. Go to CBK to see pics from the rest of the exhibition.
Speaking of CBK, a call for submissions for the next issue of CBA was just activated. Go check it out, maybe send us some comics?
So, starting tomorrow, I’m in 3 different exhibitions in Malmö simultaneously:
The first one, Tusen Serier’s Angiverisamhällets Baksidor, was just posted so you can read all the comics in their entirety at the Tusen Serier website, so I recommend you go do that, especially if you can’t see the actual exhibition at Fish tank Gallery/Panora in Malmö.
The third one (chronologically), CBK’s KOLAŻ | THE BOX, opens tomorrow (nov 12) at Malmö Stadsbibliotek (we’re going there to put it up basically right after I’ve posted this) between 17-20. It’s the release exhibition for the two lates issues of CBA. You can read more about it at the CBK site, and also order the books: CBAvol64 & CBAvol65.
And the second one, which started a few weeks ago and will go on a while longer, I believe, is at Rum för Serier, where I’m spotlighted as comic artist of the month.
I also just got confirmation that I will have a comic in the new Asylkalendern and the upcoming issue of Portal, but more on those later…
Busy weeks coming up…
Seriefest i Väst @ Litteraturhuset (Lagerhuset, Heurlins plats 1B, Gothenburg)
During the entire festival, I believe I will have a comic in the official exhibition at Litteraturhuset. I can’t show it here yet because I also entered it into the festival’s competition.
Oct 24, 11:15-12: I’ll be part of a panel discussing the importance of cultural magazines for comics. I’ll be there because I’m one of the editors of the cultural magazine/international comics anthology CBA. We’re in a situation now where all the public culture budgets are being cut, because the current government hates culture because they think the voting population will lean more towards the right wing if the cultural supply is made more narrowly mainstream, profit-oriented and/or nationalist. They may be partially correct, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea in the long run.
Oct 26, 10-18: Comics market where I’ll be selling books from Wormgod, CBK and Tusen Serier.
Which will overlap a bit with:
FIJUK @ Longest Night (Dagjämningsgatan 14 i Kortedala Industriområde)
Oct 26, 15-23: Fijuk with market & concerts, where I’ll be selling books from Wormgod, CBK and Tusen Serier, possibly with prints and more books than at Seriefest i Väst since the tables are usually bigger. We’ll see how we’ll solve the overlap between the two markets, but there’ll be two of us in Gothenburg so we’ll find a way.
Tusen Serier exhibition: Angiverisamhällets Baksidor
@ Panora/Fish Tank Gallery (Friisgatan 19D, Malmö)
Nov 1, 18-21: Comics exhibition with artists invited by Tusen Serier: Bekim Gaši, Julia Nascimento, Shko Askari, Jayal Safieddine, Alexis Bågenholm, Kinga Dukaj and me. It’s about the proposed new snitch law in Sweden, which is meant to force public employees to snitch on anyone they come in contact with who they suspect to be undocumented. Anyone could figure out it’s a really bad idea for a law, but the government seems to choose not to.
Here’s a sneak peek at two panels from my contribution:
And the poster:
CBK exhibition: KOLAŻ | THE BOX @ Malmö Stadsbibliotek
Release exhibition for the new CBA vol 64: THE BOX & CBA vol 65: KOLAŻ. I was main editor and made the cover for THE BOX. I have comics in both of them. The exhibition will showcase samples of everything that’s in the books.
Here are samples:
And the poster:
Comic Artist of the Month @ Rum för Serier
I’m comic artist of the month in October/November (starting Oct 17) at Rum för Serier, Which happens because I’m part of Serieförmedlingen, the portfolio site of the Swedish Comics Association. So not as fancy as it may sound, but it’s a small solo exhibition of some of my stuff. A selection of sample snippets:
Comic Artists of the Year @ Rum för Serier
I will also be in a group exhibition of everyone who was comic artist of the month during 2024. Later in November(?), I think…
New issues of CBA
CBAvol64 is already out.
CBAvol65 will be officially out Nov 25, but will also be sneakily available as a pre-release at both Seriefest i Väst + Fijuk and of course at the exhibition.
CBAvol66|67 is being produced as you read this. We’re busy making the selection and I’ll be putting it together for a release in December (if possible). Since last year’s issues were so late (half of them released this year), we’re compensating by concentrating all the 2024 issues during the final quarter of the year. Is it healthy? I don’t know. Will it be good? I’m pretty sure it will…
Mitt Möllans julmarknad @ Mitt Möllan, Malmö
Nov 30 + Dec 1: We will hopefully have a table at Mitt Möllan’s christmas market, where we will squeeze in books by Wormgod, CBK and Tusen Serier along with some dice by Dice Dominion and a bunch of prints.
We didn’t get a table, but you can shop your christmas presents online instead.
Tusen Serier exhibition: Fanzineverkstaden @ Rum för Serier
Dec 13: Members of Fanzineverkstaden will exhibit zines and prints and maybe more at Rum för Serier. More details on this later…
I’m sure there will be more happening before the year is over. For example, I just wrote a review of a really boring book, I’m waiting for confirmation on a few publications etc, but this is what I know about so far when it comes to official appearances, exhibitions etc.
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.
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.
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.
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…
Last week, I finally managed to send my new book, Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis to print, and it’ll arrive around April 20.
You can order it now, from Hybriden and it’ll be shipped as soon as we have it from the printer!
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.
At 236 pages, this is my thickest book yet (not counting the massive collections) and, if I dare say so myself, the best one so far!
I will also have it for sale at a noise event in Jönköping, April 26: The Old World Is Dying. As you can see, not only will the music be great but it will also be the first official appearance by Dice Dominion! And if you didn’t know, TRAUMA COMMAND is Susanne Johansson who made most of the Piracy covers, including the new one. FACTORY FARMING also contributed to the soundtrack for After the Ends of the World 2 (and a bunch of Wormgod events, sometimes under different names). This is not to be missed!
Coming from print at the same time is also the new CBA vol 62|63: Liminal Space, where I also have a comic. It’s actually the first chapter from Piracy 013, but a slightly different version. It’s rewritten to work as a stand-alone story, but I’ve also handled post-production of the images differently…
You can pre-order CBA vol 62|63 from Hybriden.
This weekend (Sep 2-3) it’s Seriefest in Malmö (in Ridhuset, Folkts Park).
We’ll be there with a selection of books, along with Tusen Serier/Wormgod/Hybriden (the policy is to only sell things made by creators who is present. Luckily, Mattias Elftorp will be there and he’s been involved in lots of books)…
There will also be 2 Hybriden-related items in the program:
Tusen Serier: Jorge Varas Varilla
(Saturday 1630-1650)
Jorge Varas Varilla from Tusen Serier talks about his career as a satire illustrator and how graphic humor was used as a tool for wishing for social change in the 1960s Chile. He tells about Allende’s government, about the military coup and also about his own arrest and exile.
www.varilla.se
CBK/Wormgod: Mattias Elftorp
(Sunday 1300-1320)
Talk with Mattias Elftorp about the international comics anthology CBA and about the cyberpunk postapocalypse of his Piracy is Liberation. War mania in a future where Capitalism is the only religion.
www.elftorp.com
See you there!
I’m now 53 pages into the story, so still a bit left but it feels good!
EDIT (a week or so later): I’m now thinking of maybe moving some chapters around, which would basically dividing this book into two. But we’ll see.
This is the exciting part of writing things more or less on the fly, especially when each book is part of a larger story. You’re never completely sure what’s going to happen. I mean it’ll all fit together and make sense in the end, but what script I do have isn’t so strict that there’s no room for changes depending on what will, in the end, be the best reading experience (I guess you’ll be the final judge on that when you read it). Anyway, nothing set in stone yet. I had some interesting ideas yesterday, so I’ll try to fot them into the over all plotline. I’m sure it’ll be fine 🙂
