Lena Sundström’s book Världens Lyckligaste Folk, which has been serialised in Helsingborgs Dagblad has now been finished. These are my last illustrations:
This episode was about a muslim family behaving in a very unsettling and un-Danish way, having a barbecue on their lawn fr several hours…
Translation:
-But this is frightening! On Strandvej!
-Yes, where is Denmark headed?
Translation:
-But I don’t want t take off my veil.
-Don’t you understand that you’re oppressing me and the Danish people and threaten our care-free culture?
And the last one:
About not recognising a development towards a more racist society and then suddenly living in it. Translation:
July 30 in Malmö at the Sing Sang Studio: Concrete Threat: HARSH NOISE DEATH release + live gig / Wormgod: LOVEHATE exhibition
Start time: 22:00.
Entrance fee: 40 SEK
Wormgod exhibition at the release of HARSH NOISE DEATH, the all-new 6-cassette box collection from Concrete Threat, legendary harsh noise band from Helsingborg (still talked-about since the gig at Stapelbädden in February 2009).
The HARSH NOISE DEATH box collects most of Conctrete Theat’s production since they started, almost 5 years ago:
Noise-In-A-Box
In Cold Blood
Death Trap
Blood Red / Stone Dead
Thrusts Of Passion
The Pine Grove Killings
Black Omen
+ tracks from splits with Vomir, Werewolf Jerusalem and Ichorous
—At this event— Concrete Threat – LIVE GIG
CT delivers the harshest and most brutal in the harsh/wall noise genre, as usual. Prepare for head trauma.
Wormgod: LOVEHATE exhibition
Two images from Wormgod’s exhibition at the CRACK! festival website in Rome recently + one new collaboration, created specifically for this event.
Johan+Johan DJ-set
Techno/inudstrial all night when the band isn’t playing.
How come everytime you decide to take a night off, it’s to survive rather than relax? At least in this line of work (precarious illustrator, pro-bono graphic designer, cyberpunk comics artist)…
Anyway. This is what’s going on this year, past and future, as far as I can see right now. I may skip some of it to take a night off, and I may end up in places I haven’t yet thought of.
February 27 – Con-Dom/Pestdemon / Metal Pip! (featuring Susanne Johansson as DJ Wormgod), Malmö March 25 – C’est Bon Black Box 4 – Wormgod: Spiders (featuring Vampirebarbie & Mari Jansson), Malmö April 23-25 – Small Press eXpo, Stockholm May 15-16 – Kemi comics festival, Kemi May 22-23 – Komiks.dk, Copenhagen June 12-13 – Punk Illegal, Munkedal June 17-20 – Crack! conics festival, Rome July 23-24 – Möllevångsfestivalen, Malmö August ?? – Malmöfestivalen, Malmö September 10-12 – Wormgod: konSEKVENS @ Helsinki Comics Festival September ?? – Bok- och Biblioteksmässan, Göteborg October ?? – Anarchist Book Fair, London October 30-31 – Wormgod: konSEKVENS @ Örebro [comics &] book fair November 5 – Wormgod: ZOMBIES @ AltCom 2010, Malmö November 5-7 – AltCom 2010 first weekend: animated films, Malmö November 12-14 – AltCom 2010 main weekend: SEX & WAR comics festival, Malmö
And of course, yesterday was Sunday, which meant another illustration forHelsingborgs Dagblad‘s publishing of Lena Sundström’s Världens Lyckligaste Folk:
Translation:
Why of course, everyone is welcome in Sweden! Where did you say you’re coming from?
Eritrea? Oh no. You can come back when you’re from Holland…
Just printed the first copies of the new Dystopia, which is a plit between Rocco Lombardi and Amanda Casanellas:
They will both be officially released at the Small Press eXpo in Stockholm in one and a half week.
Presentation in Swedish:
Italienske Rocco Lombardi möter svenska Amanda Casanellas i en split som på olika sätt berör nationalitet och internationella relationer. Lombardi sätter inre klassmotsättningar i relation till internationella konflikter medan Casanellas sätter fingret på hur det är att växa upp som invandrare i Sverige och hur den situationen hänger ihop med globala relationer.
Sida A:
Pappa höll på att förlora jobbet så både jag och mamma gick med i protesterna för att behålla fabriken. Jag kan fortfarande känna av gasen som polisen använde och TVn pratar nu mest om kriget, men pappa fick åtminstone behålla jobbet.
Sida B:
Casanellas beskriver en verklighet som kan te sig främmande för många svenskar som som för andra är en daglig realitet. De slutsatser som dras i denna serie förklarar varför bilar brinner i förorten genom att visa på konflikter som inte påverkar bara det svenska samhället utan rör sig på en global nivå. Hon pekar också ut boven i dramat…
Dystopia är ett samarbete mellan Seriefrämjandet och Wormgod där olika serieskapare presenterar visioner av den mörka framtid som går oss till mötes (eller som redan är här?).
Very nice portrait. Check out more of Max’s stuff at Deviant Art…
I believe he used an old photo of me as model for this. It’s from an old C’est Bon meeting, where we did something important while playing boule in the park. Something like deciding on the name C’est Bon, or planning our first website. I don’t remember…
rama is currently working at her Oblivion High series of books, which is a mix of high school drama and classic Finnish mythology. Also losely(?) connected to OH is Vesi Oli Mustaa.
Sadly, so far these books are only available in Finnish, so I haven’t been able to read them. Yet.
This is a bit older than the other fan art I’ve been showing lately. I don’t remember exactly how old, but in time to inspire one of the chapters of Piracy is Liberation 007: Spiders pt 1 (and I wrote that specific chapter ages ago). It was published in book 007.
Oskar was one of the founders of C’est Bon Kultur, back in the day. He’s been quiet for a while now, but has started producing art again, which is really nice. Especially since he does things like this one.
It also looks like there’s a Dystopia coming from him in the near future. Something to look forward to…
In the news today they were talking about new research results that said that humanity (at least us in the rich parts) are living above our natural resources and because of that we’re basically fucked. And they presented this as news.
I could have told them that when I was seven. They could have come to me 23 years ago and asked. Then maybe we wouldn’t have been as fucked.
But seriously, how can this be presented as news? I’m sure they must have mentioned it on TV in the 80s. Of course, that’s beyond the limit of how far ago people(?) remember things. But they said it again just a couple of years ago.
It is not news. We are fucked. And not in any good way. Stupid TV news.
–
In other news, there are some films coming out soon. Michael Moore is using the C-word, pointing out what the big problem is: Capitalism.
And there’s another film called The End of Poverty that says that the poor parts of the world are paying for the rich parts of the world. Because we are living above our rexources. Man, I could have told them that too when I was seven.
These two films are connected, to each other and to the first item I mentioned, in case that wasn’t already clear. I’m pretty sure I made that connection too when I was seven. It’s really not that hard to get.
And it kind of made me think that we deserve whatever we get in terms of being fucked. When I was seven.
–
Did the old Indians see this? Is that why they didn’t bother to count longer than to 2012? Because they fugured we’d get ourselves fucked right around now?
–
Oh, and maybe I should also mention that I’ll be at the Gothenburg Bookfair this week (Thursday to Sunday) and that my new book (and the old ones of course) will be there as well. Booth number
A02:39. Come check it out.
Piracy is Liberation 008: Spiders pt 1 -cover by Susanne Johansson
I can’t get rid of the question: “Why isn’t it always like this?” The Crack festival takes place at a squatted fortress in Rome and it’s the most creative and energetic comics festival I’ve ever been to. The organizers keep it open for (more or less) anyone who feel that they belong there to contribute and it’s more about creating exhibitions than just selling books.
This year I was there with Johan Jergner-Ekervik for CBK and we didn’t really know what to expect. We also had no time to prepare anything, what with the trip to New York and everything, so we simply brought books to sell and improvised an exhibition by sacrificing a copy of CBAvol7. Next time will be different. I’m sure CBK will be better prepared, and hopefully I’ll be able to come with Suss and make a Wormgod exhibition.
Anyway. While I was there, I got the feeling that this is how it should be done. Don’t get me wrong. I liked the MoCCA fextival and the others I go to, but they are all totally different from this. This is more like a music festval. You get up, sit in the grass for some hours with your breakfast beers and then everything starts at 18 and keeps going until late in the night, or sometimes the next day. Intoxicated people looking at art and comics. Loads of punk dogs. And good company from different places that aren’t sweden, which is always nice. Only setback was the lack of people speaking english (hence not being able to read our books). I always kind of interpret that as a sort of racism. An uninterest in being able to communicate with people outside your own language zone.
And so it got me thinking. Why isn’t it always like this? Why am I more and more losing interest in swedish comics culture, even as things are starting to change? And why is it that some interesting comics artists that I know here have lost interest in the medium, mainly because thay don’t feel at home in the dominant social culture of the swedish alternative comics scene? A scene where I’ve been hoping to have a home, but for some time now I’ve been losing that hope. Which may be just as well. I guess I’ll just have to move to Portugal or something.
Until then, I’ll settle for concentrating on Wormgod and Piracy is Liberation. Finding new audiences, doing new things. This morning I started planning for the Wormgod exhibition at next year’s Crack! festival. I look forward to it already.
And before the end of July I plan to have made another Piracy is Liberation book, a short comic for C’est Bon Anthology and at least one more image (after the one I’m working on right now) for an upcoming Wormgod exhibition (at Panora in August).
Translation:
About not recognising a development towards a more racist society and then suddenly living in it. Translation:
