Call for submissions: CBA vols 52 + 53

CBK just announced a call for submissions for two new upcoming volumes the other day. I’ll be main editor of one of them.

Here are theme descriptions and deadlines for both of them. You can find submission guidelines here. We’re looking for comics as well as text articles.

CBA vol 52: BURNOUT
Main Editor: Mattias Elftorp
DEADLINE: Feb 15
Burnout has become an increasingly normal part of everyday life for many of us since the term was getting widespread use in the late 1900s. From hospital staff to comic creators to basically any job in the gig economy. Anyone who doesn’t have a steady income, or who is expected to do more work in less time than is reasonable, can feel this. So who is to blame? Could we create a situation, a systemic change, to avoid the conditions that cause burnout?
What we’re looking for aren’t necessarily stories of depressing social realism, but artistic expressions of that feeling, suggestions for solutions, wishful thinking and visual abreactions. Expressions of rage rather than apathy, insurrection rather than complicity. Something to read for strength in times of austerity.

CBA vol 53: PLACEHOLDER
Main Editor: Leviathan
DEADLINE: Mar 31
The pandemic paused the world for an indefinite time. What does that mean practically? What does it do to our consciousness and how we experience our existence? Some places see recovering wildlife and cleaner air. Which other phenomena appear to replace our old routines? We’re waiting, and in our wait, we imitate the “real” we hope will soon return. We are like placeholders in our own lives.

All Cats Are Beautiful – exhibited now

Right now, two digital CBK exhibitions, Nedjem and Origin of Life, are going on at Hybriden. This is my contribution to one of them:

It comes from CBA vol 48: Nedjem, which you can buy here.

Here’s the text that accompanies it in the book. I wrote it earlier this year, but it’s of course still current since some change comes reeeaaally slow, if at all.

ALL CATS ARE BEAUTIFUL (or ACAB)

So it happened again, on May 25 of 2020. Another name added to the list of people who were murdered by Police. I won’t mention his name here because I won’t mention any names because there are too many. I won’t mention his skin color because he was a human being first and foremost, but also because you already know. We still remember him and his last moments.

I should perhaps mention here that I am White and I live in a segregated little country called Sweden. I may not be completely segregated personally, not completely socially unconnected to the groups of people who are usually the victims of Police violence, but I don’t think I personally know anyone who has been killed by cops.

Abused in some way by police? Sure, lots of people, including friends, friends of friends, family, loose aquaintances and myself at one point. Most of it political, some of it in enforcement of what I’d call racist legislation concerning migration (which is also political) and some for other reasons.

But murdered by Swedish Police? Not as much. I think the closest one was a relative of an ex of mine. They don’t do that as much in Sweden as in some other countries, even though it’s not unheard of. But the thing is that US culture is also our culture in many ways. The current US president may wage an internal culture war against anything left of the Republicans at the moment, but internationally, they won years ago. We in the rest of the world watch US TV and movies, eat food from US food chains, play US games, read US books and comics, it’s everywhere. I even use mostly US English even though the one I learned in school was the British one. Sure we miss a lot of nuance and we only get the surface of it. Most of us don’t know what it’s like to live in the US, we haven’t felt it in our bodies. But we identify with US culture, and part of that comes in the form of transferred race relations.

I’m not saying this to exonerate us in any way. We have contributed lots to the ingrained racism ourselves, we can’t blame Hollywood for that. But when we see cops murder Black people in the US in the news and social networks, we feel kind of like it’s happening here. In part because the same things are also happening here on a smaller scale, but also because we’re all affected by US politics. Through wars and the tentacles of their capitalist practices and reproduction of the class system they’re so good at maintaining (even though we at least still have comparatively free health care).

So it happened again. And again. And again. And it felt like it happened to us, because Sweden isn’t all White, you know, just largely segregated, and our history classes probably taught us more about slavery in the US than US children learn in school. And this time the name and the reactions got bigger. This time it was the drop that made the glass spill over, just like it was those other times. The name and the reaction got so big this time that maybe. Just maybe. Maybe this time was going to be different. Maybe something would actually change. Even though it didn’t in any of those other cases.

But even after that last big name, there were more people killed. Some of it was political, people getting shot to death at protests. Some of it were traffic stops or other misdemeanors. Driving while Black. Breathing while Black. The names kept piling up and for each one the newsworthiness diminished and most of them probably went completely under the radar for the people whose local communities weren’t directly affected.

Because All Cops Are Bastards. And by that I mean that they largely get away with whatever they do. They can use excessive force with no repercussions. They can harass innocent people with no repercussions. They can kill with no repercussions. The exceptions to this rule are too few to make a difference.

As I started writing this text there was an incident in Sweden where some truck driver got a cop’s baton shoved up his ass, and it was ruled that it had to have been either an accident or a warranted police action. The court didn’t determine which one it was but it didn’t matter as long as the cop and his commanding officer were innocent. Which only seems likely in a world where anything a cop does is automatically defensible. Too bad that’s the world we live in.

All Cops Are Bastards. It may sound like a harsh statement, but let me explain:

Even if the bad ones really are just a number of individual cops, that means that the rest of them are either quietly approving or, in at least a few cases I hope, actively resisting. And the ones that are approving of racist or violent behavior, or even quietly disagreeing, are part of the problem. The ones that are resisting (though I hear that’s really hard to do from within the corps) will be aware enough that it’s a systemic problem that they will know what we mean when we say that All Cops Are Bastards. As the saying goes: a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

Because it is a systemic problem, which means that it’s not enough to punish a couple of cops who went too far. No amount of measures are enough until Black people don’t need to be afraid of being killed by cops for existing on the streets, at work or even in their homes. It’s not enough until some nedlessly upset White people can no longer use a 911 call as a potential murder weapon. Which goes for both the US and for Sweden.

Some people seem to believe that there is no racism anymore, because slavery was officially abolished in the US, because the Nazis lost the second world war or because most countries (looking at you, Israel) don’t have any official laws demanding racial segregation. But it’s only possible to still believe that while looking at, for example, the statistics for incarceration and police killings in the US if you see those numbers through a lens that says that Black people by nature are more likely to commit crimes. Same goes for the unequal distribution of wealth. And I’m sorry to break it to you, but that is by definition a racist lens.

Combine racism, a disdain for the poor and widespread misogyny with a police force that not only is immune to repercussions but in many ways has the same mentality as a criminal gang or a bunch of bullies, and what do you get? A situation where All Cops Are Bastards and where Black Lives don’t Matter. Which means that All Lives don’t Matter. Which is something that everyone should care about, even those who aren’t personally directly affected in their daily lives.

White people aren’t of course immune to violence from the police. White people are just not subjected to violence or suspicion BECAUSE they are White. Which is an important distinction that does not contradict that we all have everything to gain from joining forces to make changes, because maybe another world is possible. One without class differences, without racism and without police brutality. One where that list of names doesn’t keep growing.

The Word – exhibited now

Right now, two digital CBK exhibitions, Nedjem and Origin of Life, are going on at Hybriden. These are my contributions to one of them (click images for bigger size):

They are two pages from a longer story. If you want to read the rest of it, you can get CBA vol 49: Origin of Life here!

Check back here tomorrow for another exhibition sample and a complete text I wrote for CBA vol 48 (All Cats Are Beautiful).

Algorhythm – first Piracy story in years

It’s been 13 years since I last published anything in the Piracy is Liberation series. I made the two collections of books 1-11 in 2013. Since then, it’s always been my intention to continue the story directly in a third volume rather than conrinue with book 12. The problem is that, as it turns out, making one 400+ page book is much more difficult than making 5 smaller books. So now I’m going back to what I used to do; publish a chapter as a self-contained story, for example in an anthology such as CBA. Fittingly, this will be my contribution to CBA vol 50, a volume dedicated to comics by members of the past and current editorial collective of CBA. Especially since the first two stories connected to Piracy is Liberation were published back in C’est Bon #1 and 2 (in 2001).

It’s a bit like coming home now when I return to this world I haven’t visited for so long. Rumor has it that every cell in my body will have been exchanged by new ones during that time. Does that mean that I’m a copy of myself? And if so, what does that mean, since the structure of my brain or whatever it is that forms my consciousness is more or less the same?

This one will be a story of Purple, set during the fight for copy rights, probably a few chapters into vol 3. It should be no problem to read it as a stand-alone comic, but if you have read the old ones, you’ll have a much greater grasp of the context surrounding the events in this one. I think that’s all I can say about it at this point. The story is called ALGORHYTHM and CBA vol 50 is planned for release by the end of this year.

If you haven’t yet read the old ones, here’s where you’ll find them. Books 001 and 002 should also still be available for download via The Pirate Bay.

CBA vol 47 release: Jan 24

January 24 (17-22) is the opening of the release exhibition for CBA vol 47: Science/Fiction at Hybriden (Mitt Möllan, Bangatan 5, Malmö).

The latest volume of CBA where I am the main editor, and one that I am extra proud of.

A while ago I was updating the list of creators who have been published in CBA over the years, and there are some truly great creators in that list. Some of which are also participating in this issue, which is probably my last as main editor of CBA, because I’m tired and need to focus on other things for the forseeable future.

So if you’re in the vicinity, drop by the exhibition opening at Hybriden and I’ll see you there for an evening of comics and drunk in celebration of the Future and the ongoing fictionalization of our reality. Check out comic samples on the walls, featuring these great artists:

Danijel Žeželj [HR/US], Radovan Popović [RS], Korina Hunjak [HR], Ivana Filipović [RS/CA], Avi Heikkinen [FI], Francisco Sousa Lobo [PT], Oskar Aspman [SE], Kinga Dukaj [SE] and me

About CBA vol 47:
Science/Fiction

Science and fiction rule our lives. The laws of physics seem set in stone while the laws of man are arbitrary mirrors of the morality of the times. Gods and spirits are creations of the mind but also the explanation when comprehension fails. What lies beyond our understanding? Is it more science or something else? What dark forces lurk outside our field of vision? What machineries of death and destruction are we yet to invent in the name of money (which used to be metal and paper but is now to a great extent nothing but speculation and expectations)? What (or who) else meet in the intersection between science fiction and real science? What came first? The egg or the hatching machine?

If you can’t make it to Hybriden, you can order the book at the Hybriden webshop.

Feel free to invite people to the Facebook event.

2019 pt2/3: collectives

First, here’s a reminder that our big winter sale is still going on at Hybriden, where you can get lots of my stuff really cheap until Jan 1.

Fanzineverkstaden is still going strong. Lots of workshops, members using it for their own self-publishing (you can do it too), lots of administration, planning, meetings, day-to-day work and an ongoing exhibition at Hybriden which will soon be updated with some new stuff.

Managed to squeeze in some time to actually use the equipment myself a few times, as you can see in my last post.

 

Tusen Serier is still in a low-activity period if you don’t count Fanzineverkstaden. Mostly trying to get by, gearing up for some new projects in the future. But we managed to have an exhibition at the Gothenburg City Library in November, and some other stuff. No new books, though, which I know is what we all really want. But we have a few coming up as soon as we find some money for it, and we have a few exciting international exhibitions in the winter/spring of 2020 that we just got funding for. More on that in the post about the future, coming soon.

CBK is an interesting animal. It makes me tired because I can’t give it as much attention as I think it deserves. At the same time, I’m immensely proud of, and excited about, the upcoming CBA vol 47: Science / Fiction. It’s the last volume of 2019 but will be officially released in January.

I’m the main editor, probably for the last time, and it’s a mix of some returning classic CBA creators, along with some we haven’t published before. All great art, interesting stories etc.

More on this in a separate post, coming soon, but you read more about it and pre-order it here.

I also had some comics published in vol 44 and 46 and drew part of the cover for vol 45.

And we did some exhibitions: Lore, Qtopia and Deep.

Wormgod published one book this year, but it has some great stuff in it. After the ends of the world 2 is a stand-alone follow-up to the first book of the same name. This time, Susanne Johansson made 3 stories about women who were brutally murdered. She wanted to focus on the victims, try to imagine how they ended up where they did, what they might have been thinking. Gruesome stuff, but everything can’t be shallow and well-behaved all the time. This is also a big inspiration for her music as TRAUMA COMMAND.

My stuff in the book is a bit more up-beat. One-image short stories about the different ways the world might end, told from a future perspective after it’s too late. Like I said; up-beat. Because you can read them and remember that it’s not too late yet, as long as we get our shit together. So good luck, us! yaay.

There’s a magnificent soundtrack by SYSTEMET, NIMAM SPREGLEDA, FACTORY FARMING, TRAUMA COMMAND, FEBERDRÖM, KOEFF. If any of these names ring a noisy bell, you’ll have some idea of what to expect.

I also included my time machine story: Why you (maybe) shouldn’t kill Hitler. That’s also a fun story.

You’ve seen some of mine before, so here’s one of Suss‘ pages:

You can order it here.

Speaking of Wormgod and SYSTEMET, we were interviewd in COdA #15. Check it out!

No AltCom this year. No AltCom next year. AltCom the year after that. You’ll see.

I made a map of the whole Hybriden complex, which is where most of my life has taken place creatively for as long as I can remember. Because burn-out affects your memory, haha.

But I’ve also managed to have some time to play/read/watch stuff, as you’ll see in pt3 of my 2019 story. Coming right up…

CBAvol47 – Science/fiction: call for submissions

It’s time for me to be main editor of CBA again (last time was CBA vol 36|37: In the Pits of Madness). So send us your most interesting comics and/or texts on the following theme:

CBA vol 47 – Science/Fiction

Science and fiction rule our lives. The laws of physics seem set in stone while the laws of man are arbitrary mirrors of the morality of the times. Gods and spirits are creations of the mind but also the explanation when comprehension fails. What lies beyond our understanding? Is it more science or something else? What dark forces lurk outside our field of vision? What machineries of death and destruction are we yet to invent in the name of money (which used to be metal and paper but is now to a great extent nothing but speculation and expectations)? What (or who) else meet in the intersection between science fiction and real science? What came first? The egg or the hatching machine?

In CBA vol 47 – Science/Fiction, we explore the borderlands between science and fiction, in comics and text articles.

Main Editor: Mattias Elftorp
Deadline: November 1
—SUBMISSION GUIDELINES—
Please read and follow these guidelines:
Number of pages: We prefer comics that are about 5-30 pages, but any number is welcome.
Format: 20x26cm
Color: Color / Black and white
Language: English
File format: .TIF
Resolution: 1200 dpi line art or 300 dpi CMYK
Length (texts): A good size for a text is ca 7500 characters (including spaces), but it can also be longer or shorter.
Bleed: 5mm. Think you know how to handle bleed? Read this to make sure you know what we mean.
Within this space, there are no limits.

Delivery: We prefer download links that do NOT require us to login anywhere (wetransfer usually works fine, for example).
Request: Please don’t use Comic Sans. We don’t like it and will ask you to change to another font.
And again; Please check our guidelines for bleed.

Please send us high-resolution files from the start.
Include a short presentation text about yourself, with one URL (if you have a website or similar).
Please ask us if you are unsure about formats, resolution, bleed, etc. We prefer stupid questions to bad files. And there are no stupid questions!

Unfortunately we cannot offer you any payment for participating. If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can offer at this time. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material stays with you.

–ARTICLES AND COMICS GENERAL GUIDELINES–
What we are looking for is comics which rely on artistic ambitions and a will to experiment rather than what has been done a thousand times before. We want to expand the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in the comics medium. We are looking for the same thing in texts; articles, essays, exploratory texts, etc. Use your imagination, and have fun! : – )

Send your comics to: submissions [at] cbkcomics [dot] com

CBK: Qtopia

Right now, Hybriden is showing an exhibition of the latest volume of CBA.

The theme is Qtopia:

So many LGBTQ narratives end in tragedy as a consequence of the LGBTQ-hood of the characters. Those stories are important because LGBTQ people are still being targeted by prejudice, discrimination and violence, but in this volume of CBA we encouraged artists to do something different. To tell queer stories where the queerness isn’t a narrative catalyst for bad things, but rathera source for joy or love or just one characteristic among others.

Queer tales about situations involving LGBTQ characters. Utopian queer tales in the sense that everything might not be perfect, but at least the horrible things that happen don’t have anything to do with the characters’ sexual orientation.

My contribution to this volume is the left-hand side of the cover spread, which was a collaboration by a bunch of us in the CBK crew: Kinga Dukaj (idea + coloring), Luddvig Melin, Lisa Örtlund, Henrik Rogowski and me.

Go check out the exhibition at Hybriden, and/or buy the book at our webshop!

CRACK! 2019 + some recent stuff

I’m soon going on vacation, this weird concept that you get when you have employment, where you spend some time not working at all. Employment is rare for me, so it still feels like some kind of novelty. And it won’t be completely without work since we have a CBA release/exhibition on July19 (work being defined as when you do things with a purpose other than pleasure/relaxation, not to be confused with employment where you also get paid).

So I thought I should make some small summation of what I’ve beem doing lately. I should say ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ since most of what I do is done in the context of one or more of the collectives I’m part of within the Hybriden constellation…

Let’s start at the chronological end, with this year’s CRACK! festival (June 20-23) where I was with Kinga Dukaj and Luddvig Melin to represent AltCom/Hybriden/Wormgod/CBK/Tusen Serier and ourselves as artists. If you don’t know, this is one that I’ve been going to every year for the last decade or so, except last year. Which was probably good, because this time it felt better than it has for a while. Less people than usual, but I got some of that magic back, where you meet new people who do interesting stuff, old friends that you only see once or a few times a year (depending on which festivals you go to) who also do interesting stuff, you see lots of cool art, you make some yourself, you’re in this small piece of a possible future/squat paradise on earth called Forte Prenestino to share in the evolution of the comics/printed art underground. It’s a source of inspiration for AltCom and for a lot of what I do and how I do it.

Idyllic breakfast with background reminder…

Our cell:

The theme for this year was APERTO (OPEN), similar to the NO BORDERS theme of AltCom 2012, so that fit us well considering what we’re usually publishing.

One of our neighboring cells

On June 22 there was also a huge demonstration against evictions of squats as well as against raised rents in general. CRACK! has a natural connection to this since Forte Prenestino is a squat since 1986. I didn’t go to the demo myself because I can’t handle being out in the Italian heat for that long, but rumor says it was a manifestation of around 100 000 people.

I was asked to make a sticker or something for the demo, but I found this and couldn’t imagine doing it any better.

I also have to say, without going into details, that the crisis management from the festival organizers is very commendable. They managed to turn an incident into an assembly of around a hundred artists to discuss what had happened. In the end some people disrupted the meeting and I’m not sure where they will go from where it ended, but I fully trust them to handle it in an intelligent way that is respectful to many different aspects of the whole situation.

A while ago, we opened a new permanent exhibition at Hybriden, with works that have been produced at Fanzineverkstaden by its members and/or workshop participants. It was also, finally, the official release event for Fosfor, our zine distribution system.

The Lore exhibition is still up, with material related to the theme of the latest issue of CBA. The best bet if you still haven’t seen it is to go this week (Wed-Fri 11-15 + Sun 12-15). After that, Hybriden will close for the summer except for the opening of the Qtopia exhibition on July 19 (at Hybriden). As I write this, we’re actually in the final stages of finishing to files for CBA vol 45: Qtopia to send off to the printer.

We’ll be back in August at Fanzineverkstaden, open weekdays between 15-21, with lots of new workshops coming up during the fall, so keep an eye open for that. And do use the place, because it’s a great opportunity to print stuff and try some new ways for self-publishing, and you never know how long it’ll last (except we know we’ll be here for at least another year). We also brought home some examples from CRACK! to use for inspiration.

And speaking of things that are being printed as we speak… My contributions to the upcoming Wormgod book, After the ends of the world 2 by me and Susanne Johansson, have largely been produced at Fanzineverkstaden in between my regular working hours. More on that later, but here are a few of the pages from the book that I also showed as prints at CRACK!