Category: CBK

Coming very soon: Piracy is Liberation 013 + CBA vol 62|63

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.

Cover by Oskar Aspman, who was also the main editor of this issue

Seriefest 2023

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!

Coming soon(ish)

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 🙂

CBA vol 60 is here!

CBA vol 60: Stories just came from the printer!

This volume of CBA has no theme, it’s just stories:

Stories are a way to escape reality, but also a way to communicate and to help us understand the world around us. These are stories on different subjects, told with different voices in different ways by 13 creators from 7 countries.

Comics by: Leviathan [SE], Oasis of Hate [PL], Daniela Filippin [IT], Eugenio Belgrado [IT], Hroge Cancelhaus [UK], Ivana Geček [HR], Joseph Hughes [US] & João Fraga Netto [US], Oskar Aspman [SE], Tom Mortimer [UK], Korin(a) Hunjak [HR], Marcel Ruijters [NL].
Cover, text, illustrations & main editor: Mattias Elftorp [SE].

96 pages of international comics!

Get it from the Hybriden webshop!
This is also a good time to start a subscription.

Being main editor of this issue, I made a selection of lots of good stuff, both comics that were submitted for this issue and things that couldn’t fit into earlier volumes but was too good to not publish.

I’ve also written a text piece about various stories and myths that shape our lives, from religion to politics.

The cover was an experiment from a workshop (part of the workshops leading to the Paper Echoes exhibition) where we were supposed to put drawings into a pre-prepared non-linear panel grid. As a basis for the coloring I used a failed gelli-print from another of those workshops. It felt like a fitting image to use as a cover for this issue, with its storytelling theme.

Here’s one of the illustrations I made for my text piece:

Paper Echoes exhibition

My next exhibition:
PAPER ECHOES

Where: Ateljé XX (Industrigatan 20B – entrance from the yard, Malmö)
When: March 4 (one day only) 15-22 (fika until 18, then wine)

During the fall of 2022, we invited a group of comic creators to join a number of workshops, where we took turns to introduce each other to new techniques or ways of making art and/or comics.

This exhibition is the result. From gelli printing to painting with razor blades to a non-chronological jam comic, we’ll be showing the best results of these workshops.

ARTISTS: Eileen Laurie, Saskia Gullstrand, Oskar Aspman, Caroline Ulvros, Henrik Rogowski, Kinga Dukaj, Mattias Elftorp

 

This project has support from Malmö Kulturnämnd.

RELEASE EVENT: Piracy is Liberation 012 & Vårdfällan

It’s finally out!

On February 25 at 18-21 (or whenever we’re finished), at Poeten på hörnet (Södra Förstadsgatan 65B, Malmö), CBK, Wormgod and Tusen Serier invite you to a one day release event for Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy & Vårdfällan! A double book release with exhibition and book talks!

You can read about both books here.

There will be a small exhibition of prints from Piracy is Liberation. There will be wine. The books will be presented, with a reading from Vårdfällan. The books will be there, the authors will be signing, it’ll be great!
Welcome!

Both books are available for order now, from Hybriden and other places (Adlibris, Bokus, etc).

ORDER Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy
ORDER Vårdfällan

Piracy 012 is something I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It ended up as a 212 page examination of a City gearing up for war. It’s the 12th book of the series but don’t worry if you haven’t read the first 11. There’s a story so far section, and the entire series is also available from Hybriden.

Vårdfällan was written by Raquel Lozano, with cover and editing by me. Set in Malmö, it’s a scathing depiction of life as a worker in the health care business.

Here are a couple of sample pages from Piracy, which may or may not be part of the exhibition:




It’s getting harder and harder to be visible in social media, so feel free to help us by inviting anyone you know who might be interested! Thanks!

 

Coming soon: Piracy is Liberation 012!

It’s been 10 years in the making, but now it’s finally (soon) here:

Piracy is Liberation book 012: Outer Enemy

Terror strikes the City, and Pirate seems to be the terrorist! Or is this finally the start of the revolution?
As the City is gearing up for war, two girls walk its streets looking for action and trying to figure out what actually happened.
How will our anarchist heroes deal with this situation as the equivalent to nationalist tendencies grip the population?
What happens in a City where war has been an unknown concept, as its billboards are filling up with WANTED posters and military propaganda and the army recruitment centers are opening up for business?
Who is the enemy?

This is also the return to CBK, who published the first 6 books in the series. From book 012, Piracy is Liberation will be published as a cooperation between CBK and Wormgod.

And don’t worry if you haven’t read the first books. Book 012 is a good place to jump into it, with a story so far section that tells you in short what you need to know. And if you want to get into the back story to get the full experience, we have all the back issues and collections at Hybriden for a good price!

The official release will be early in 2023, but we’ll figure out some excuse to offer a sneaky pre-release sale of it already in December of 2022. Both so that all your friends and family won’t have to miss getting it for christmas and because I’m just too excited to have piles of books lying everywhere with no one else being able to get them. We’ve all waited a long time for this, haven’t we? Book 011 came all the way back in 2012.

I’ll write more about this later, just wanted to let you see the cover (by Susanne Johansson) and start preparing for its arrival…

CBA vol 58!

I plan to write something longer about this, like I did with CBA vol 47, but until then, let’s just celebrate the release of CBA vol 58: Modern Glossolalia or the Erosion of Meaning!

Buy it here.

How do we talk when words that used to mean certain things have become so vague that they can be freely appropriated by anyone, for any purpose? And what’s up with the currently so prevalent flirting with war, fascism and the dehumanization of anyone who doesn’t fit into the unspoken and conveniently unspecified national identity?
Objective truth (if there ever was such a thing) and even language itself seems to be sacrificed on the altar of rhetoric and propaganda.
What are the consequences when you can string any random, misspelled words together and people will make their own connections and decide to aggressively either agree or disagree, wholeheartedly even though the sentence actually makes no sense?

Comics by: Tom Mortimer [UK], Daniela Filippin [IT], Jesper Hellvik [DK], Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE/SE], Radovan Popović [RS], Aleksandar Opačić [RS], Jelle Kindt [BE], Gareth A Hopkins [UK], Mattias Elftorp [SE], Jean Jacques Tachdjian [FR], Helga Gorshe [RU], Miguel Santos [AO/PT], Leviathan [SE], Aiden Kvarnström [SE].
Texts by: Ainur Elmgren [SE/FI], Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Illustrations by: Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Cover & main editor: Mattias Elftorp [SE].

Until I give you something meatier, here’s a page from my comic for this issue, Interrogation:

For this one, I used pages from my upcoming Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy and changed the dialogue to work as a stand-alone comic.

CBA vol 60 – call for submissions

I’ll be the main editor of CBA vol 60, which is now open for submissions!

Deadline: Feb 1, 2023

For this volume of CBA, we have no theme planned, we just want stories. Maybe we’ll set a theme after the deadline if we can find words to describe the comics we get, maybe we’ll leave it with no title. In any case, send us your comics and we’ll see what happens!

And don’t forget, we also want text articles (with or without illustrations)! If you’ve followed CBA the last few years (which of course you have, why wouldn’t you?), you can probably figure out what kind of material we’re after, even if it’s for an open theme this time.

Go to CBK for more, including submission guidelines.

Good luck, and we look forward to your submissions!

 

One exhibition ends, another begins!

Today is the opening for the digital exhibition WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW at Hybriden.se!

Go see it! I have a piece in it and Kinga Dukaj who is the main editor of the issue and who also made the exhibition did a great job of aligning the exhibition with the dream-like theme of the book. Just try to see it on a computer rather than a phobe or pad or it won’t work properly.

I also have a couple of artworks in the UNCOMICS & [PLACEHOLDER] exhibition at Panora/Fish Tank Gallery, which closes tomorrow with a finissage starting at 18.00!

All these books are of course also available in the shop at Hybriden.se.
Recommended for everyone who prefer readin comics in books rather than on walls/screens: