Category: Work

Contradictory views

Another illustration I made for Magasinet Konkret a while ago.

The text is about how the far right in the US has two images of Sweden that serve to present us as both a role model and an example of how bad things can get. None of which are true. We’re neither the heroes who successfully ignored COVID nor overrun by queers and foreign criminals. We’re not even a Socialist paradise. Which any thinking person could figure out, but truth went out the window a long time ago in this stupid propaganda war…

We’re just as Capitalist as any other country, complete with racist migration policies and everything, even if we don’t currently shoot queers in the streets and we still have some sensible things like public health care etc, but who knows how long that’ll last…

Anyway, here’s the article, by Lisa Bjurvald (it’s in Swedish and you need to subscribe, but if you know the language, this is a subscription you should get anyway).

Comic in Portal #5

I have a comic in the new issue of Portal, an anthology comic book from The Swedish Comics Association.

There’s a release event for it tomorrow (June 30), with an exhibition of risoprinted pages from the issue, at Rum för Serier (Friisgatan 12, Malmö) between 17-20.

My comic, I förhörsrummet, is an excerpt from Piracy is Liberation 012, but rewritten into a self-contained new story, colored and translated to Swedish (a B/W version in English was published in CBA vol 58 last year). I liked how the colors turned out.

Here are some of the panels from the comic:

See you at the release!

Magasinet Konkret

There’s a new web-based Swedish news/culture mag: Magasinet Konkret

Remember when alternative media used to mean news and articles written from more of a leftist perspective compared to the mainly liberal mainstream news channels? When “liberal” meant center-leaning right-wing (which it still is even though the rest of the right are now trying to paint liberal as some kind of extreme left, inspired by the political climate in the US which is a two-party/one-ideology system)? Before alternative media as a concept was taken over and almost dominated by the far right (nationalist/conservative/racist etc) who are doing their best to paint the mainstream as dominated by extreme leftism, even though it’s still dominated by the same liberalism as before?

Anyway. Magasinet Konkret is trying to compensate by being a space for a bit more of those leftist perspectives that are so rare these days.

And I’m part of it! Just one illustration/text so far, but there will be more. Follow this link to see my contributions!

Here’s the illustration:

CBA vol 60 is here!

CBA vol 60: Stories just came from the printer!

This volume of CBA has no theme, it’s just stories:

Stories are a way to escape reality, but also a way to communicate and to help us understand the world around us. These are stories on different subjects, told with different voices in different ways by 13 creators from 7 countries.

Comics by: Leviathan [SE], Oasis of Hate [PL], Daniela Filippin [IT], Eugenio Belgrado [IT], Hroge Cancelhaus [UK], Ivana Geček [HR], Joseph Hughes [US] & João Fraga Netto [US], Oskar Aspman [SE], Tom Mortimer [UK], Korina Hunjak [HR], Marcel Ruijters [NL].
Cover, text, illustrations & main editor: Mattias Elftorp [SE].

96 pages of international comics!

Get it from the Hybriden webshop!
This is also a good time to start a subscription.

Being main editor of this issue, I made a selection of lots of good stuff, both comics that were submitted for this issue and things that couldn’t fit into earlier volumes but was too good to not publish.

I’ve also written a text piece about various stories and myths that shape our lives, from religion to politics.

The cover was an experiment from a workshop (part of the workshops leading to the Paper Echoes exhibition) where we were supposed to put drawings into a pre-prepared non-linear panel grid. As a basis for the coloring I used a failed gelli-print from another of those workshops. It felt like a fitting image to use as a cover for this issue, with its storytelling theme.

Here’s one of the illustrations I made for my text piece:

Arg Kanin in Brand #1/2023

Arg Kanin om Kulturkanon (Angry Animal about the Cultural Canon), the same comic I had (still have for a couple more weeks) in the (Anti)rasism exhibition, is also published in the new issue of the anarchist magazine Brand!

This issue was printed in 3 separate colors, so I hade to modify it a bit. It felt similar to preparing files for risoprinting and I wasn’t exactly sure how it would turn out, but in the end it looked just as I had hoped.

You can buy it here.

The comic itself was heavily inspired by Sven Lindqvist‘s books Exterminate all the brutes and The Skull Measurer’s Mistake: And Other Portraits of Men and Women Who Spoke Out Against Racism, which I’ve written a bit about before. And also the recent debate in Sweden about the conservative nationalists wanting to impose an official cultural canon. Which is an idea not to be taken seriously as anything other than a way to make everything a bit more racist, nationalist and right-leaning.

Unused illustration

This is from a book project I was potentially going to be involved with. That never happened in the end because they went with an artist who could give them a better price (that happens sometimes, no big deal), so since I don’t like wasting my efforts, I thought I’d show it here instead.

I was aiming for a more androgynous look, but since I made this mainly as a sample, I never corrected it. In any case I was pretty happy with how it turned out. So here you go:

RELEASE EVENT: Piracy is Liberation 012 & Vårdfällan

It’s finally out!

On February 25 at 18-21 (or whenever we’re finished), at Poeten på hörnet (Södra Förstadsgatan 65B, Malmö), CBK, Wormgod and Tusen Serier invite you to a one day release event for Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy & Vårdfällan! A double book release with exhibition and book talks!

You can read about both books here.

There will be a small exhibition of prints from Piracy is Liberation. There will be wine. The books will be presented, with a reading from Vårdfällan. The books will be there, the authors will be signing, it’ll be great!
Welcome!

Both books are available for order now, from Hybriden and other places (Adlibris, Bokus, etc).

ORDER Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy
ORDER Vårdfällan

Piracy 012 is something I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It ended up as a 212 page examination of a City gearing up for war. It’s the 12th book of the series but don’t worry if you haven’t read the first 11. There’s a story so far section, and the entire series is also available from Hybriden.

Vårdfällan was written by Raquel Lozano, with cover and editing by me. Set in Malmö, it’s a scathing depiction of life as a worker in the health care business.

Here are a couple of sample pages from Piracy, which may or may not be part of the exhibition:




It’s getting harder and harder to be visible in social media, so feel free to help us by inviting anyone you know who might be interested! Thanks!

 

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).

Vårdfällan

I made the cover for Vårdfällan, the debut novel by Raquel Lozano, published by Tusen Serier.

The official release will be in early 2023, but it’ll be available in a special pre-release deal at Hybriden already now in December. Stay tuned!

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 är Raquel Lozanos debutroman. Med Malmö som bakgrund skildrar hon en ung arbetares vardag och hennes kamp för att överleva ett allt kallare arbetsklimat.

CBA vol 58!

I plan to write something longer about this, like I did with CBA vol 47, but until then, let’s just celebrate the release of CBA vol 58: Modern Glossolalia or the Erosion of Meaning!

Buy it here.

How do we talk when words that used to mean certain things have become so vague that they can be freely appropriated by anyone, for any purpose? And what’s up with the currently so prevalent flirting with war, fascism and the dehumanization of anyone who doesn’t fit into the unspoken and conveniently unspecified national identity?
Objective truth (if there ever was such a thing) and even language itself seems to be sacrificed on the altar of rhetoric and propaganda.
What are the consequences when you can string any random, misspelled words together and people will make their own connections and decide to aggressively either agree or disagree, wholeheartedly even though the sentence actually makes no sense?

Comics by: Tom Mortimer [UK], Daniela Filippin [IT], Jesper Hellvik [DK], Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE/SE], Radovan Popović [RS], Aleksandar Opačić [RS], Jelle Kindt [BE], Gareth A Hopkins [UK], Mattias Elftorp [SE], Jean Jacques Tachdjian [FR], Helga Gorshe [RU], Miguel Santos [AO/PT], Leviathan [SE], Aiden Kvarnström [SE].
Texts by: Ainur Elmgren [SE/FI], Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Illustrations by: Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Cover & main editor: Mattias Elftorp [SE].

Until I give you something meatier, here’s a page from my comic for this issue, Interrogation:

For this one, I used pages from my upcoming Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy and changed the dialogue to work as a stand-alone comic.