Category: Hybriden

CUTZINEfest & Asylkalendern 2026

I will be with the rest of Hybriden (Tusen Serier & CBK) at CUTZINEfest which is at Tomrummet (Kopparbergsgatan 15, Malmö) next Saturday (13/12) between 12-17!

You’ll find all the info about the event at their website: CUTZINE.org
or:
Mastodon
Pixelfed
Facebook-event
Instagram #cutzine

Here’s the full list of participants!

Important: you need to become a member of Tomrummet to get in at CUTZINEfest. You can do that (for free) before Dec 11 here: tomrummet.xyz/register

This will also be an opportunity to get Asylkalendern 2026 where I have an illustration.

AND the brand new, risoprinted, Kulturkanonen from CBK, a 2026 calendar in opposition to the official Swedish cultural canon (I’ll post image later)…

New prints (Brand & Galago)

I have new prints for sale!

Sizes vary from ca A3 to 110cm height.

The zombie images, by me and Susanne Johansson, were originally made for the exhibition Wormgod: ZOMBIES at AltCom 2010

I recently remastered and color-separated them to be published in Brand #1.2025, so that’s the version I used for these prints, though they don’t look at all like they did in the actual magazine.

And then there’s The Sun, a comic I made a long time ago for a publication where it wasn’t used, then I published it myself in A Subtle Fuck You v01, re-arranged it for a 6-page version in CBA vol 17 and now re-arranged it again as 7 pages with a Swedish title for its most recent reincarnation in Galago #166.

It’s a compact love story about fucking around and finding out.

All these prints (and more) are available at Hybriden.

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.

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!

Piracy 005-008 digital comics!

I recently put up another batch of digital Piracy is Liberation books for download at Hybriden.

Sometime within a year I plan to also make book 009-011 available like this, and a year after that books 012-013. In other updates, I’ve finished the first few pages of Piracy is Liberation 013: War and Pieces, which will hopefully be out by the end of this year, possibly beginning of 2024. But more on that later…

What happens when the rules have suddenly changed and the police can do nothing but watch as people party in the streets? What happens when even the rules of reality can be broken? One section of the City where Capitalism is the only religion has been freed from the influence of landlords and indoctrinating television, but when the authorities come back with a vengeance to evict the Free Section, expect violence.
Meanwhile, something is moving on the net. Some kind of entities seem to be interfering with its users. What are these Spiders and how will they affect the plans for the Information Upgrade that the anarchists are planning?
Also in this collection:
Can Technograph change the past through timetravel?
And introducing Ming, the open source web-based sentient being.
Political theory, filtered through autobiography masked as fiction, in the form of cyberpunk postapocalypse.
320 pgs
Name your price (minimum 72 sek)

This is a collection of four more books of the Piracy is Liberation series, in digital versions based on the original publications. They are downloadable as a CBR file, a classic format for filesharing comics. You can open it in various comics reader apps, or just a regular unZIP or unRAR app.
Digital comics should be much cheaper than paper books, so it’s a “name your price” deal, with a minimum price based on page count.

Digital download bundle of books 001-004 is of course also still available:

Cyberpunk stories in a future where Capitalism is the only religion, where only sinners disobey and nobody loves a sinner. Pirate is one of those sinners, downloading illegal information straight into his mind to get high. When he gets caught while trying to free Information, he has to use all his skills as a 4-dimensional hacker to break them out of digital prison.
One year later, he’s part of a group trying to free sections of the City from the clutches of brainwashing television, riot cops and the Priests and Masters who control everything.
Meanwhile, Erica toils away as a Slave in the factory. But what’s the dark secret behind the cogs and wheels and levers of her machine? What hides in the desert that no one knows exists? And what of the Drivers and their upcoming strike?
Political theory, filtered through autobiography masked as fiction, in the form of cyberpunk postapocalypse.
266 pgs
Name your price (minimum 60 sek)

 

 

PRE-RELEASE: Piracy is Liberation 012 & Vårdfällan

PRE-RELEASE of 2 new books from Tusen Serier and CBK/Wormgod! These books are only available at Hybriden until Jan 1, 2023. After that they will be taken down from the site until the official release in early 2023 (Jan/Feb)!!!
So take this chance to be among the first to get Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy and Vårdfällan (Raquel Lozano)!

Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy by Mattias Elftorp

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?

10 year in the making, this 12th book in the Piracy is Liberation series finally takes us back to the City for 212 pages of a brand new story about a society on the brink of war.

Language: English
Page count: 212
Book type: graphic novel, softcover
Price: 150:- sek
ORDER (contact CBK about review copies!)

Vårdfällan by Raquel Lozano

Alejandra vill egentligen wallraffa, men efter en tids uppehåll är hon nu tillbaka som vårdbiträde inom hemtjänsten. För att klara av sin vardag med duschar, blöjbyten och läggningar varvar hon jobbet med en ny hobby, även om den kanske inte är helt laglig.

Vårdfällan is Raquel Lozano’s debut novel. With Malmö as backdrop, she depicts the life of a young worker, and her struggle to survive an increasingly cold work climate.

Language: Swedish
Page count: 176
Book type: novel, pocket/softcover
Price: 100:- sek
ORDER (contact Tusen Serier about review copies!)

Also new in the webshop:

CBA vol 58: Modern Glossolalia or the Erosion of Meaning (which I edited) and CBA vol 59: Aloneliness (which I only proofread), the latest issues of our international comics anthology!

Mapuche by Jorge Varas Varilla is now available in a new, quadrilingual edition (Mapudungun/Spanish, with subtitles in English/Swedish) (which I translated).

Five Stories About Undocumented Women by Amalia Alvarez has been hard to find for a while, but is now here in a 3rd edition, with new paper stock and still in 3 languages (Spanish/Swedish/English) (which I translated).

Release: Digital Piracy!

I just put up a bundle of Piracy is Liberation books 001-004 for digital download at Hybriden!

If you’re new to the world of Piracy is Liberation, here’s a short description of what you get in these four books:

Cyberpunk stories in a future where Capitalism is the only religion, where only sinners disobey and nobody loves a sinner. Pirate is one of those sinners, downloading illegal information straight into his mind to get high. When he gets caught while trying to free Information, he has to use all his skills as a 4-dimensional hacker to break them out of digital prison.
One year later, he’s part of a group trying to free sections of the City from the clutches of brainwashing television, riot cops and the Priests and Masters who control everything.
Meanwhile, Erica toils away as a Slave in the factory. But what’s the dark secret behind the cogs and wheels and levers of her machine? What hides in the desert that no one knows exists? And what of the Drivers and their upcoming strike?
Political theory, filtered through autobiography masked as fiction, in the form of cyberpunk postapocalypse.

It’s a great way to get a substantial sample (266 pages) if you want to try it out before buying the books, or if you just want to read it for its own sake. Or if you prefer to read on a tablet (if this proves popular enough I’ll probably do digital versions of the rest of the books as well).

Digital comics often cost much more than I think is reasonable, so I set the price for this at 60 sek (about 6€/$6.35), which is what one and a half book would cost on paper, and now you get four! There’s also the option to pay more if you think my price is too low.

If you want it for free, books 001 and 002 are still available at ThePirateBay, so that’s also an option. Just don’t forget to share!

BUY IT HERE

Arg Kanin & Hybriden

Yesterday, an exhibition opened that features a bunch of local comics creators in order to highlight Malmö as a comics city. Including me and Kinga Dukaj, as representing Hybriden and Fanzineverkstaden. You can find the exhibition at Norra Parkgatan, along Folkets Park in Malmö.

The description I got for my entry was that it should both represent me as a comics creator and the part of the comics culture that I’m part of, in this case CBK and Tusen Serier. So I made a collage creature out of cut-up cover images from CBA and various Tusen Serier books, and gave it a dialogue with my recurring character, the Angry Animal, called Arg Kanin (Angry Rabbit) in Swedish.

The theme of my comic was provoked by some of the latest outbursts of stupid neonationalism from the politically brown part of Swedish politics, where they thought that busdrivers should only be allowed to play purely Swedish music. Not because they normally play music on buses but because it was an opportunity to make a point designed to appeal to anyone who feels uneasy when they see a busdriver that is anything other than super White, or when they happen to hear music that was made in another country than Sweden (or USA, UK, Denmark or whatever else they count as Swedish/familiar/safe).

And also the general tendency nowadays for politicians and people to want to illegalize anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow tastes. Nationalism really doesn’t promote any kind of intellectual growth. It’s truly a culture of inbreeding.

Here’s my contribution to the exhibition:

Title: Anrgy Animal & Hybriden on Cultural Inbreeding
Animal: If they get things the way they want, I guess the only music that’ll be allowed will be Ultima Thule* and folk music.
Hybrid: As if they even like folk music.
Animal: It’s all such obvious bullshit. The only thing they like about it is that it’s mostly made by white people.
Hybrid: Look at my face! It contains traces of Poland, Bosnia, Chile, Chine, Croatia, Mexoico and Sweden.
And there’s even more in my body! How is that supposed to be wrong?

*Ultima Thule is an old Swedish band from the white power movement with connections to the Sweden Democrats…
Animal: It’s such a trend these days with politicians who want to use laws to get rid of everything they don’t personally like.
And by that I don’t mean trans people who stopped liking Harry Potter. I mean politicians who want to ban not only clothes and art but also people.
Hybrid: The kind of people who want to solve social problems by adding more cops and security guards on every street corner, and cameras in every apartment building and probably every home as well…
Hybrid: …when everyone actually knows that what’s needed is better schools, social safety nets and economic equalization.
Animal: But some people don’t give a shit because they just want to be able to get rich and not have to see anyone who doesn’t look like them.
Inbreeding politics is what it is!
Hybrid: Yeah, their talk about “culture” is so obviously not about cultural expression at all, they just want to get rid of some people.
Animal: All according to the principle: “No one can call you a racist as long as you pretend to just talk about culture or religion”.
Hybrid: As if we’d fall for that? As if we didn’t recognize that they talk about Muslims now in the same way the Nazis used to talk about Jews. And we already saw how that went.
Animal: Fucking racists.
Mine and Kinga’s contributions in their natural(?) habitat…

Don’t forget to visit Hybriden, check out the exhibitions, webshop etc!

The project that this exhibition is part of is called Seriestaden Malmö (Malmö, the comics city). Seriestaden is a concept that’s been around since the late 90s, just before the comic school was started, and we who are active in the Malmö comics scene have used it now and then as a way to highlight the great variety of comics, cretors and comics-related projects, collectives, associations, publishers and activities that are around. So this is the latest in that line, this time organized by BID. BID is an association of landlords in the area and is a concept borrowed from other countries. Their purpose is to make our streets ”safer”. In many cases that has meant a combination of repression, gentrification and cultural work. So let’s hope the Malmö variant focuses more on the cultural projects rather than the repressive gentrification stuff and that they understand that making an area more expensive doesn’t help the people living there, only the owners of the buildings. This exhibition is a good start by supporting the local comics culture.