Category: Piracy is Liberation

Now we’re talking. Cover art for Piracy is Liberation 008: Spiders pt 2 by Susanne Johansson:

Review of Piracy is Liberation at Sekventiellt.se…

It’s a very nice review by Fredrik Strömberg. Took him a while to get around to it, but when he did it, he did a thorough job with it. Some of my favorite passages:

The story behind the making of Mattias Elftorp’s magnum opus Piracy is Liberation is quite unlike anything in Sweden. Elftorp has worked on this project since the beginning of the 21st century, handling the production, publishing and marketing parts mostly by himself (first through C’est Bon now through Wormgod), never making much money out of it (and the little there is, is always put into the next printing) and, most importantly, never compromising with his artistic integrity. And this he has. Lots of it. I know, I have been involved in the making of several of these stories, reading them through, giving advice knowing that most of it will be ignored…

Oh, what the hell. I’ll just publish the whole thing here (high-lighting the important stuff)… Still worth the trip to his blog. Frequently updated and lots of interesting comics-related stuff.

Then there’s Elftorp’s penchant for mixing in several different influences into his genre crossing comics. He himself describes them on the project’s website as: “Political theory, filtered through autobiography, masked as fiction in the form of cyberpunk postapocalypse…” Well, for the postapocalyptic part, The Matrix is a quite obvious influence, with a lot of cyberpunk thrown in for good measure. Then there’s the political part, where already the title indicates the anarchistic tendencies. And the autobiographical parts… Well, the main character is quite obviously based on the artist himself, at least visually. And that the political part of these stories are a real and genuine part of Elftorp can be seen by the fact that he himself has uploaded the first volumes of the series as torrents on The Pirate Bay.

Anyway, I have read most of these comics in various stages, but never all in one go, which I just did. An interesting experience.

The art is expressive, sometimes to the point of being unintelligible. Elftorp has an uncompromising attitude towards his art, where the initial feeling of a drawing is more important than making a certain character look exactly the same, panel after panel. When reading Piracy is Liberation I can never really decide whether this is good or bad, or both. After a while I get really into it though and as with other good auteur comics, the story and the art meshes together to a unity where one could not exist without the other.

The story line is a bit complicated, but never for the sake of being complicated. Sometimes it is very straightforward action, sometimes it messes with the mind of the reader and jumps backwards and forwards in time, playing with the whole cyberpunk theme of being able to upload your consciousness to the net. As a voracious comics reader I of course like the part in volume four, where Elftorp plays with the form of comics and mixes metahumor with cyberpunk and lets the characters actually travel across the comics pages, aware of being part of a comics and able to walk backwards and forwards in time – echoing the creation process of the comic in itself.

Very shortly put, the story in Piracy is Liberation takes place in a post-apocalyptic world which resembles ours in many ways, but where the whole world is made up of a city where the population is kept in a state of subdued subordination through indoctrination mainly via TV (and yes, V for Vendetta does spring to mind, as does Alan Moore’s own inspiration, 1984 by George Orwell, of course). Fighting against the corrupt corporate system is a small group of pirates using the internet to access iformation, attacking the authority, orgnanising rebellion. It’s all on one level a political metafor for the lives we live today, but never to the point of killing the story, which is engaging, sometimes fast paced and often very clever, with the main characters having to copy themselves into reality due to being locked up in a virtual prison, and the ramifications this entails when there are several version of them walking around. Here Elftorp actually does several things I haven’t read or seen before, which is inpressive as the whole post-apocalyptic/cyberpunk genre has been flogged to death many times over, as far as I’m concerned.

But it’s the genuine feeling of the political convictions pulsating thorugh Piracy is Liberation that keeps my interest going and that is what will make me keep reading in the future. Knowing that Elftorp has this series planned to at least 20 volumes I’d be surprised if there isn’t a film made somewhere along the way. I just hope the whole idea of Piracy is Liberation won’t be lost in a Hollywood production (which in itself is the negation of the message of the story). Anyway, until then, do read this strange combination of action and political philosophy and make up your own mind. That’s the main message Elftorp is trying to convey.

Ok, ok. Long time no blogging. I’ll try to make it up in the days to come.

So. What’s new?

Today, I’ve made the translation of Dystopia04: Reclaimed into Swedish. Everything except the title, which I will have to figure out during the evening. Something that retains the double meaning of the English one, if possible. But the best I’ve come up with so far is “Dagen då vi spöade snuten“. I’m not sure if that’s good enough.

Check this out: Article about me by Hannah Oredsson at the You, Me & Tommy Lee blog.

This bit about Piracy is Liberation, CBK and Wormgod. In Swedish:

Think outside the city

Vecka 43
Mattias Elftorp är helt rätt i tiden. Och han har något som inte alls beror på timing eller trend; hängivelse.
Han har gått alla tre steg (år 1, år 2 och kreativt friår) på Serieskolan i Malmö med några års mellanrum. Han startade upp C’est Bon Kultur tillsammans med Oskar Aspman, Jacob Kindstedt och Daniel Novakovic. Denna alternativa seriekulturförening kan med sina antologier numera konkurrera med klassiker som Galago. Mattias är också mottagare av en rad stipendier, bistånd som utan undantag går rakt in i hans konst igen.
Mattias kombination av konst, populärkultur och politik skapar ett unikt stilgrepp som hittills främst fått sitt uttryck i hans mastodontprojekt cyberpunkserien Piracy is Liberation. Den 7:e delen kom ut nyligen och hans mål är 20 stycken. Med tanke på hans ovan nämnda engagemang tvivlar jag inte en sekund på att han kommer att nå dit. Det som framförallt övertygar mig om att Piracy is Liberation är en serie att hålla ögonen på är att den inte liknar något som jag vanligtvis gillar i bildberättarväg. Men jag kan inte lägga ner den när jag börjat läsa och ser fram emot att läsa varenda del. Den är mörk och dystopisk, queer och radikal. Det politiska perspektivet är konstant närvarande utan att väga tyngre än intrigen. Som läsare sugs man in en liten bit till för varje sida som vänds.
Mattias håller sig konstant på fronten. Han är inte rädd för nya grepp. Han lämnade nyss C’est Bon Kultur för konstprojektet Wormgod som han driver tillsammans med Susanne Johansson. Wormgod har redan hunnit med en handfull utställningar och utgivningen av 007 Spiders ur Piracy-serien. Ni kan vänta er att se Wormgod poppa upp lite varstans inom kort, och var inte rädda för att leta i ett mörkt skrymsle nära er… Det är därifrån bilderna, musiken och berättelserna kommer. Alla potentiella portaler till en dystopisk och otrolig framtid eller parallell värld.

Hemsida: http://www.elftorp.com/

Piracy is Liberation: www.elftorp.com/freeinformation

Wormgod: http://www.wormgod.net/

Blogg: http://www.elftorp.wordpress.com/

/Hannah

The new Piracy is Liberation book is almost finished. Just a little bit of postproduction left to do, then it’s off to the printer.

It will be out as planned in time for the Helsinki comics festival, September 12-13. And it’s just been decided that the publisher will be Wormgod, which I’m very happy with. It means keeping the book all in our own hands (me and Suss who makes the covers and is the other half of Wormgod).

Sample pages will be up at the site soon. Until then, here’s Suss’ cover:

The gods are real, but most of them are dead. Pirate learns this and many more secrets from the anarchists in the desert as he gets his new assignment. Something is moving on the net. Some kind of entities seem to be interfering with its users. Are these signs of the birth of a new god, or is it something else entirely? And how does it affect the plans for the Information Upgrade that the anarchists are planning? We also get some insight into everyday religious life in the City through the surveillance cameras of a Shopping Temple…

There are also some other upcoming projects, not the least of which coming from Wormgod. Stay tuned…