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.

If you missed it…

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.

Opening hours!

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.

Piracy013 RELEASE event & exhibition

When: June 14 at 18-21 (the exhibition lasts until Jun 28)
Where: Rum för Serier (Friisgatan 12, Malmö)
What: Book release with comics exhibition
Opening hours:
Thursday (Jun 20): 17-20
Tuesday (Jun 25): 17-20
Thursday (Jun 27): 17-20

This was supposed to happen on June 7, but had to be postponed due to illness…

Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis is the latest part of my cyberpunk postapocalypse epic.

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.
Piracy is Liberation is a mix of classic cyberpunk elements in a dystopian future with a glimmer of postapocalyptic hope and a pinch of metamagic.

The story, which started in book 012, is a comment on the increasingly war-hungry media climate. It takes place far into the future, in a city where Capitalism is the only remaining religion, where the people don’t know that anything exists outside the City (until now) or that things have ever been different.

We invite you to an exhibition with material from the book along with some more stuff, new and old.
Haven’t read the earlier books in the series? Don’t worry, they’ll all be available at a special price.
Come and hang out, look at the pretty pictures, buy the pretty book and have some wine, it’ll be great!
We’ll keep going until 21 unless we decide to stay longer…


The exhibition is presented by Wormgod & CBK in cooperation with the Swedish Comics Association. This is the final(?) step on my release tour.

Feel free to share and invite people to the Facebook event.

Piracy013 release tour 2024

My new book just came from the printer the other day, and I’ve just confirmed that there will be a release exhibition! So the 2024 release tour will be as follows:

Jönköping, April 26: The Old World Is Dying
Stockholm, May 25-26: SIS
Malmö, June 7: Release exhibition @ Rum för Serier

The Old World Is Dying (Insikten, Kulturhuset, Jönköping)
This is a noise event where I will have a Wormgod table along side Dice Dominion, Vertigo förlag.
Performing acts:
IDIOT CHILD (MALMÖ)
Violent sludgy noise rock from the dirty south.
TRAUMA COMMAND (MALMÖ)
Radical Feminist Power Electronics with a straight razor from Crime City.
FACTORY FARMING (GÖTEBORG)
Red Power electronics from the foggy Volvograd.
Both TRAUMA COMMAND and FACTORY FARMING are familiar faces from earlier events (and soundtracks) from Wormgod, and TRAUMA COMMAND is of course the other half of Wormgod and the cover artist for most of the Piracy books, including the new one.
If there’s space, I may bring a couple of books from CBK and Tusen Serier as well…
Check the facebook event for times, address and more updated info.

SIS 2024 (Kulturhuset, Stockholm)
The new edition of Stockholms Internationella Seriefestival. We will be there as usual with Wormgod, CBK and Tusen Serier, this time in the company of Dice Dominion. There’s not stage appearance by me planned this time, as I did that last year, but we’ll be there with a whole lot of books, prints and dice. See you there!
Facebook event

Release exhibition (Rum för Serier, Malmö)
And finally, there will be an official release party with en exhibition in Malmö.

A mix of classic cyberpunk elements in a dystopian future with a glimmer of postapocalyptic hope and a pinch of metamagic.

I haven’t made all the plans for this yet, but I will have all three rooms so I’ll probably also put up some of my older stuff as well as pages from the new book.
Maybe I’ll talk about the book, maybe I’ll discuss it with someone? Maybe there will just be a pile of books, some prints on the wall and a bunch of wine? Who knows?
In any case, I’m sure it’ll be great!
Event and stuff will come later.


I may also be going to the CRACK! festival again this year, since I haven’t been there for a few years and I miss it, but it’s not yet decided so we’ll see if the tour will be extended to include a trip to Rome and Forte Prenestino

I recently made an Arg Kanin comic about/against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza for an exhibition by Seriefraämjandet, also at Rum för Serier. I’m trying to get it published somewhere as well, but nothing confirmed yet. I’m not even sure exactly when the exhibition will be shown, just that it’ll happen soon, but I’ll post some info on that when I know more.

And I was invited to have some art in the exhibition at Balkanska Smotra Mladih Strip Autora (The Balkans Festival of Young Comics Creators) (June 28-30), so that’s another place where I’ll be showing some Piracy works.

Some CBA short stories…

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

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

Getting closer…

I just drew the first page of the last chapter of Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis.

In total, this book is going to be about 228 pages and I haven’t checked, but I think that during this book I’ve passed the 1000 page mark of Piracy is Liberation as a whole!

I just re-read what I’ve done so far, to check that I’m on the right track, and the book’s shaping up to be pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the page, sans text to avoid spoiling anything, but at least you get to see the chapter title:

Inktober Piracy…

For the first time, I actually managed to stay disciplined enough to post a new drawing each day during October. I cheated of course, posting stuff I didn’t make for that day, but who can stay interested enough in Instagram for that long unless you cheat (I know people like it and that’s ok, I just can’t make myself do the same)?

Anyway, here are some of the pics:

And one that I never used:

Seriefest i Väst & Fijuk + Tank Girl

There are a few things happening this week…

Tonight, starting at 1930, I’ll be at Hypnos Theatre in Malmö (Norra Grängesbergsgatan 15). I was invited by the Swedish Comics Association to talk about the postapocalypse of Piracy is Liberation, and probably a bit about After the Ends of the World and The Troll as well, as an introduction to Film i Malmö‘s screening of the 1995 Tank Girl movie.
Facebook event (it’s free but you need to become a member of Film i Malmö, see info in the event)

And this weekend I’ll be in Gothenburg for Seriefest i Väst and Fijuk @ Longest Night. It’ll be me and Leviathan from CBK and we’ll also have books from Tusen Serier and Wormgod. Here’s the schedule:

Friday (Oct 27)
17-23 at Frilagret (Heurlins plats 1, near Järntorget): the Seriefest i Väst market. Facebook event

Saturday (Oct 28)
11-18 at Frilagret (Heurlins plats 1, near Järntorget): the Seriefest i Väst market. Facebook event
15-23 at Longest Night (Dagjämningsgatan 14, Kortedala industriområde): Fijuk market + live music: Facenag (Sthlm) and Kadonnut Manner (Rovaniemi). Facebook event

See you there!

Edit: I missed the Fijuk because I finally got Covid and had to go home. 2 weeks later I’m almost all right again, just tired…