Category: Work

Just Lying in Cálice

I have a comic in Cálice Magazine‘s first issue of 2026!

It’s an old one, previously published in the sold-out CBA #1 and in my short story collection A Subtle Fuck You, but still relevant, and I’m still happy with it.

Cálice is a web-based magazine. Here’s their About text:

Cálice Magazine is rooted in the perspective that knowledge is not universal and its transmission is not monolithic. We seek to find creative ways to produce and share knowledge and to break boundaries to contribute to a beautiful diversity of perspectives, knowledges, and stories. We publish content ranging from articles, photo stories, and podcasts over short fiction and poetry to art and comics. Through these formats, we explore different subjects: some political, some social or cultural, others personal.​​

Want a sample before clicking the link? Here’s the first page of Just Lying:

2025

So, 2025. What a fucking year.
This is my creative summation of the year, I just have some things to get off my chest first…

Even after more and more people, and countries, and international courts confirm what most of us already knew, that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, because they’re no longer satisfied by taking one piece of land at a time through their settler colonialism, now they want it all, and their racism towards and dehumanization of Palestinians have gone far enough that they don’t even pretend to care anymore. Anyone who is against it is an antisemite, so that word has lost all relevance. If being anti genocide is antisemitic, then you’re saying that committing genocide is part of Jewish culture, which makes it either bullshit or an actual justification for being antisemitic. But it’s Israel who says this, and a lot of Jews don’t agree, so it has to be counted as bullshit or Israel is right. And Israel is committing genocide, so why should we pretend they’re right about anything? They’ve even drained the word “ceasefire” of meaning, because since the latest (still officially ongoing, I think?) ceasefire began, they haven’t ceased fire for even a moment. Their business as usual is apartheid and bombs and weaponized starvation and murdering children and we just can’t let them get away with that. Or with defining it as a part of Jewish culture that is beyond reproach.

Then there’s the US, where ICE death squads are roaming the streets, vanishing people to merch-selling concentration camps. They’re dismantling democracy, pretending that the president can do whatever he wants, and the (also nationalist right-wing but sometimes a little bit liberal right-wing) “opposition” is proving them right by letting them do it. Their democracy wasn’t much to be proud of even before Trump took over, but now it’s completely over.

And the Swedish right-wing, fascist-collaborating government seems to want nothing more than to copy the US in both rhetoric and practical politics. While our (liberal) socialdemocratic “opposition” also wants to attract racist voters and be hard on both crime and immigration (even pretending they’re the same thing).

And here I am trying to write dystopian sci fi and I just don’t have the imagination to make it worse than reality. So I guess I’m just making sci fi, with a utopian twist because there’s a pretty strong anarchist resistance movement in my Piracy is Liberation books.

And I know there are things I didn’t mention here that are also bad (Sudan, Ukraine, growing fascism/homophobia/racism and the fact that we decided to skip the climate goals and started doing AI instead etc)…

I’m [not] sorry for that rant. This is the end of the year post and I’m supposed to summarize what I’ve been up to. It’s supposed to be creative and fun and help me remember that I’m not as worthless as my level of income, my monthly lack of salary, would suggest. And also to just remember what I’ve done because I tend to forget. So here we go!

COMICS:
I got him! –CBA vol 69 (CBK)

My lesbian/feminist erotica/time travel/assassination story…

Spärrarna -Vi har gjort ett zine om köpcentret Entré (zine, Siri Nuottaniemi)

Shopping dystopia…

Angry Animal about a genocide and a ceasefire zine (Tusen Serier)

Zine collection of 4 stories commenting on the Israel/Palestine situation. Also in Swedish…

Angry Animal about a Cease-fire –Cartoonists for Palestine + Proletären #20/2025

Angry Animal about a Genocide –Cartoonists for Palestine + Proletären #24/2024

Let’s go to the stars –CBA vol 68 (CBK)

A series of full-page illustrations, including the cover, that sort of form a story…

Solen -Galago #166 (Ordfront)

This old story (CBA vol 17, A Subtle Fuck You) became my debut in Galago. Does this finally make me a Swedish comics creator?

Sannolikhetsdrift: en rymdoperett (CBK & Ruokangas Guitars)

Originally from CBA vol 64, but with a few pages redrawn, available in Swedish & English version…

ILLUSTRATIONS:
Kulturkanonen 2026 (CBK)

One of three illustrations for a calendar made as protest against the official Swedish culture canon…

Asylkalendern 2026 (Asylgruppen Malmö)

CBA vol 68 cover

CBA vol 68 illustrations

Brand #1.2025

This is one of four 2-color remakes of old painting I made with Susanne Johansson

TEXTS:
11 Stories About the Ends of the World (CBA vol 68)

Sexy Women with Big Guns: Feminist Evolution of Female Characters in the Sausage Party of Superhero Comics (CBA vol 69)

EDITORIAL WORK:
I was main editor of CBA vol 68 (see above) and co-editor of:
CBA vol 69

Cover by Kinga Dukaj

Kulturkanonen

Cover by Oskar Aspman

A Perfect Place to Call Home by Julia Nascimento

EXHIBITIONS:
69 Rum för Serier, Malmö 2025 (Oct/Nov)

Vi har gjort ett Zine om Köpcentret entré (release exhibition) Rum för Serier, Malmö 2025 (Oct)

Release för Portal #8 & #9 Rum för Serier, Malmö 2025 (Jan)

For 2026, my plans include:

Finishing a novelization of Piracy is Liberation that I’ve been working on for about a year but with long breaks inbetween, because I believe in the story but I have a feeling that a lot of people have a problem with my art style. I’ve also been reading a lot more books lately (the kind where all the pictures are in your head) and it seemed interesting so I wanted to try it out.

Starting book 014 in the comic version of Piracy is Liberation, because I still love making comics and I can’t help myself. At least if I get the grant I’ve applied for to do it, because then I can afford printing it. It’ll tie up the story I started in books 012 and 013 and I’m looking forward to it. Would it be wrong to change the format to a bigger size med-series? I know some of my readers’s eyes aren’t what they used to be, and I’m starting to get that myself as well. The current format is a bit small…

We’re starting a new anthology magazine with Tusen Serier, called ParaVox. The first round of calls for submissions is out now and we’re planning to release the first issue in a few months.

Fanzineverkstaden will keep existing as a space for selfpublishing comic creators and artists in Malmö.

And we have a couple of exhibitions coming up this year: group exhibitions from both CBK and Tusen Serier, but more on those later…

And CBA is going strong, with a couple of editorial additions (Marie Tillman and Aiden Kvarnström). I’m editing the first issue of the year (CBA vol 72: Weird Forest) and we have a call for submissions for Aiden’s first issue (CBA vol 73: Bugs).

Not sure what else, but maybe those things are enough, for now?

I haven’t managed to do the Things I’ve read/watched/played lists, with short reviews/thoughts etc, for the past few years and I don’t think I will be able to do that properly this year either, so I’ll simply give you a couple of lists of uncommented recommendations. If you like some of them, chances are you’d like whatever you haven’t tried, so check them out? And if you want more than this you can always go back and check the ones I’ve done before, because art is actually timeless and those lists are mostly still valid. So here you go, some of the things I’ve enjoyed for escapism since 2022 when I did this last time:

COMICS
War on Gaza (Joe Sacco)
World War 3 Illustrated: The Right to Live in Peace
Palestinaboken
Cartoonists for Palestine
Berlin (Jason Lutes)
Friday (Ed Brubaker & Marcos Martín)
Reckless (Ed Brubaker & Sean Phiilips)
Houses of the Unholy (Ed Brubaker & Sean Phiilips)
Icon & Rocket (Reginald Hudlin & Doug Braithwaite, Andrew Currie)
Blood Syndicate (Geoffrey Thorne & ChrisCross, Juan Castro)
X-men & related titles: Krakoa era (long story)
Deer Chief (Danijel Žeželj)
Time Before Time (Declan Shalvey & Rory McConville, Joe Palmer etc)
Partiets Själ (Max Gustafsson & Lars Krantz)
Den Svarta Jorden (Lars Krantz)
Hundra År i Samma Klass (Mats Källblad)
Polly (Mats Källblad)
Scarlet (Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev)
Night Eaters (Marjorie Liu)
Monstress (Marjorie Liu)
Stages of Rot (Linnea Sterte)
World Heist (Linnea Sterte)
Vit Volvo (Erik Svetoft)
BTTM FDRS (Ezra Clayton Daniels & Ben Passmore)
Upgrade Soul (Ezra Clayton Daniels)

BOOKS
Patternmaster serier (including Survivor) (Octavia E Butler)
Kindred (Octavia E Butler)
Unexpected Stories (Octavia E Butler)
Lilith’s Brood series (Octavia E Butler)
De Ska Drunkna I Sina Mödrars Tårar (Johannes Anyuru)
Ixelles (Johannes Anyuru)
Jag och Min Son (Sara Lidman)
Jag Ringer Mina Bröder (Jonas Hassen Khemiri)
Göra Rätt (Simon Felix Adler)
Deltagänget (Salka Sandén)
Brev från en Cell (Henrik Johansson)
Succubus series (Richelle Mead)
The Peripheral (William Gibson)
Stories of your life and others (Ted Chiang)
The Tangleroot Palace (Marjorie M Liu)
Book Thirteen (Jamie Delano)
Leepus: Dizzy (Jamie Delano)
Leepus: The River (Jamie Delano)
Hellstrom’s Hive (Frank Herbert)
and I’m rereading the Dune books (also Frank Herbert)
Babel-17 (Samuel R Delany)
Empire Star (Samuel R Delany)
The Word for World is Forest (Ursula K LeGuin)
Autonomous (Annalee Newitz)
Embassytown (China Miéville)
Voidwitch series (Corey J White)
A Pretty Mouth (Molly Tanzer)
Escape From Incel Island (Margaret Killjoy)

MOVIES
Perfect Days – Wim Wenders
The Shrouds – David Cronenberg
Honey Don’t! – Ethan Coen
The Battery – Jeremy Gardner
The Fifth Seal (Az Ötödik Pecsét) – Zoltán Fábri
Kinds of Kindness – Giorgos Lanthimos
A Samurai in Time (Samurai Taimu Surippā) – Jun’ichi Yasuda
Blue Ruin – Jeremy Saulnier
Green Room – Jeremy Saulnier
The Brutalist – Brady Corbet
Ned Rifle – Hal Hartley
The Empty Man – David Prior
Before We Vanish (Sanpo suru shinryakusha) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Clash (Eshtebak) – Mohamed Diab
Cosmos – Elliot Weaver & Zander Weaver
I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Charlie Kaufman
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – George Miller
Deadpool & Wolverine – Shawn Levy
RRR – SS Rajamouli
Cure (Kyua) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night – Ana Lily Amirpour
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon – Ana Lily Amirpour
The Bad Batch – Ana Lily Amirpour
Silverton Siege – Mandla Dube
Titane – Julia Ducournau
The Zone of Interest – Jonathan Glazer
Wife of a Spy – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
The Show – Mitch Jenkins
Severance – Christopher Smith
Prey – Dan Trachtenberg
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – James Gunn
Passing – Rebecca Hall
Infinity Pool – Brandon Cronenberg
The Menu – Mark Mylod
Nope – Jordan Peele
Crimes of the Future – David Cronenberg
1945 – Ferenc Török
The Princess – Le-Van Kiet
Det vita folket – Lisa Aschan

TV & SIMILAR
Critical Role currently campaign 4 (best starting points: campaign 2 or 4)
Legend of Vox Machina (animated version of CR campaign 1)
The Mighty Nein (animated version of CR campaign 2)
I’ve of course seen a lot more, but right now nothing specific comes to mind so I’m afraid I’ll have to suggest you do your own research here… Although, now that i think about it, I should also mention these two animated high points:
Scavengers Reign
Common Side Effects

GAMES
Black Myth: Wukong
Humanity
Sword of the Sea
Cocoon
Flintlock
And now I’m playing Alan Wake II…

Guess that’s it for this year, then. See you next time!

Kulturkanonen 2026 calendar

CBK just released a calendar for 2026, in protest against the recently introduced official Swedish cultural canon. We think it’s not only unnecessary but also a nationalist attempt at building a national identity and therefore counter to the very evolution of humanity.

Since it’s aimed at a specifically Swedish context, it’s written in Swedish and illustrated by Oskar Aspman, Jakob Dittmar, Caroline Ulvros and me. Printed in 2-color risoprint. Cover by Oskar Aspman.

ORDER IT FROM HYBRIDEN

Många är säkert överens om att den officiella svenska kulturkanon var ett onödigt projekt, ett försök att bygga en nationell identitet genom att lyfta upp ett antal verk och företeelser som skulle sammanfatta den svenska folksjälen. Efter att ha hånat projektet (både dess syfte och urval) över en middag i Ystad, satte sig fyra illustratörer och valde ut 12 saker som också format Sverige men som inte direkt bidrar till nationell stolthet. Resultatet blev denna kalender för 2026. Köp den som julklapp till den som behöver påminnas om hur landets historia också är fylld av mindre smickrande element, eller den som vill gotta sig lite åt hur värdelöst det är med nationalism. Från skotten i Ådalen till Vipeholmsexperimentet, Boforsaffären och Rasbiologiska Instotutet.

Tryckt i tvåfärgsriso för en grafisk upplevelse som varar hela året!

As a sample, I’ll let you see my three illustrations, for February, July and November:

Some context:
February is about the pension reform of 1993/-94, because in the official canon, they included an earlier, more egalitarian pension system. This one, however, which was insituted by a similar right-wing government to the one we have now, made sure to better preserve class differences even after the end of our work lives. Which, for example, will probably make it impossible for me to be able to relax during my time as a pensioner since I will need to keep finding other ways to pay my bills.
When it was introduced, it was made too complicated for the news to properly report on what it would entail, so public debate before it was too late was more or less nonexistent.

November is about Karl XII, the Swedish king from the 1600s whose death brought what is called (and was called even in its own time) the Age of Liberty. He also lost a lot of territory previously occupied by Sweden and was killed (possibly) by one of his own soldiers with a button since they were out of bullets. These days he is only celebrated by Nazis.
My drawing is, as you can see, a before/after version, with the kingkilling button/bullet included in the corner there.
I once illustrated a book about the clashes between Nazis and AntiFascists in Lund during the period 1998-2008, which I still have a few copies of, but that’s another story…

Speaking of the cultural canon, I made a comic about the project in 2023, around the time when it was first announced, shown in Tusen Serier‘s (Anti)rasism exhibition and in an issue of Brand.

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)…

Vi har gjort ett Zine om Köpcentret entré

I have a comic in a zine about the Malmö shopping mall Entré, titled: Vi har gjort ett Zine om Köpcentret entré, which has its official release with exhibition this Saturday (Oct 4) between 17-20 at Rum för Serier.

My story isn’t specifically about Entré, necessarily, but it’s on a related subject. It’s about the gates at the exits of supermarkets (specifically ICA), and is set in a near future where it’s been made illegal to enter and exit a shop without buying anything.

It was originally intended for Galago, so that’s why I tried to make it look a bit [chibi-]autobiographical. Any similarities to real life me and Kinga are completely coincidental or whatever.

The zine itself is super nice, edited and hand-bound at Fanzineverkstaden by Siri Nuottaniemi.

Here’s the first page:

Angry Animal about a Genocide and a Ceasefire

Earlier this year, after Israel broke the ceasefire, I made a sequel to the Angry Animal about a Genocide. It’s called Angry Animal about a Ceasefire and deals with the situation following its collapse.

Both comics were published on the Cartoonists for Palestine website, where you can read it in its entirety, along woth lots of other comics. Here’s the first page (of 3):

I combined both the Genocide and Ceasefire comics with a few older ones on related themes info a zine, published by Tusen Serier. I thought it made a lot of sense to show that this is a conflict that didn’t start with the October 7 attack.

It’s available from Hybriden and the Swedish internet bookstores in a Swedish version, in case it’s not enough for you to read it for free.

Speaking of things that are available both for free and for money, there’s also Joe Sacco‘s War on Gaza, which is his rage- and despair-fueled sequel to the brilliant journalistic graphic novels Palestine and Footnotes from Gaza. The printed version was released earlier this year, but you can also read it for free at The Comics Journal site. All of his books on the subject are highly recommended.

 

Utvisningspolitiken: Lag utan Rätt

In times of genocide and upheaval, it can be good to also remember that things have been bad for a while, even in Sweden (no matter what the myths say about this country).

Recently, one of my illustrations was reused for an article in Internationalen, written by Karin Fridell, about ways our [current and former] government works to get rid of immigrants outside the purely legislative methods.

Here’s a quote from the article:

Ett kännetecken för en rättsstat är att det är tydligt vilka lagar som gäller. En lag ska inte gälla för handlingar som utfördes innan lagen trädde i kraft. Men migrationspolitiken har ända sedan 2016 präglats av retroaktivt verkande lagar. Den ”tillfälliga begränsningslag” som då infördes gjorde det svårare att få asyl och avskaffade de permanenta uppehållstillstånden. I stället skulle alla uppehållstillstånd göras tillfälliga. Den nya lagen, som senare gjordes permanent, tillämpades för alla asylprövningar från och med 20 juli 2016, även om asylansökan lämnats in långt tidigare. De som hann bedömas enligt den gamla lagen hade stora chanser till permanent uppehållstillstånd men många tusen asylsökande fick avslag eller i bästa fall tillfälligt uppehållstillstånd enligt en lag som inte fanns när de sökte asyl. Alltså direkt mot rättsstatens principer.

(…)

Men det är inte alla lagar som behöver följas. Barnkonventionen är svensk lag sedan 2020, men ska vägas mot ”Sveriges intresse av en regerad invandring”. Det betyder att man ensamutvisar barn som bott i Sverige i hela sitt liv, eller utvisar en förälder medan barnen får stanna i Sverige. ”Sveriges intresse” verkar framför allt vara att demonstrera att inga invandrare och flyktingar ska känna sig trygga här. För varför är annars Sveriges intresse att splittra en libanesisk familj , tvångsutvisa en svenskfödd nioåring och hennes mamma till Etiopien eller efter många turer ge en familjehemsplacerad albansk nioåring uppehållstillstånd endast ett år i taget?

Sannolikhetsdrift

OUT NOW!

Sannolikhetsdrift
By Mattias Elftorp
2025 April
24 pages.
(also available in English as Probability Drive from Wormgod)

FRAMTIDENS UTOPI har en besättning på tre: Astrid, Isak och Katten, var och en med sina hemligheter. På sin väg mot människokolonin på Nya Paradiset får de problem. De har fått stopp i sin sannolikhetsdrivna Schrödingerianska osäkerhetsmotor och de har viktig last som måste nå kolonin.
De kan bli tvungna att öppna lådan…

AVAILABLE NOW at HYBRIDEN!

About the process behind the book:
Sannolikhetsdrift/Probablilty Drive is a space operette in comics form, also published in English in CBA vol 64. It was made to connect to a guitar body I painted for Ruokangas Guitars and their Art Infused Collection. Elements from the painting were used in the comic, and the story itself evolved due to that collaboration.

I enjoy taking scientific concepts and seeing what can happen if you stretch them and twist them around a bit. This comic was inspired by a few different sources, such as Sven Linqvist‘s Utrota Varenda Jävel (Exterminate All the Brutes) and Ursula K LeGuin‘s The Word for World is Forest. Both books deal with subjects of racism, colonialism and genocide. That felt like a logical backdrop for this story of space colonisation. And of course there’s my complete bastardization of the Schrödinger’s cat parable and the related theories of probability/uncertainty.

It’s also funny that this is one of the few times I (or CBK for that matter) publish anything in Swedish, even though it is my native tongue, and it’s something as un-Swedish as a sci fi story…

Anyway, here are a couple of SAMPLE PAGES:

 

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.

Brand new (old) zombies

I recently remastered some of mine and Susanne Johansson’s zombie paintings for the upcoming issue of Brand!

Back in 2010, one of the early Wormgod exhibitions was called ZOMBIES. These paintings were put up along the walls so visitors went into a landscape in the dark with flashlights, we had a smoke machine, it was great!

Afterwards, we turned it into a comic in Dystopia #10, and some of them were used as illustrations in Brand’s special pamphlet called Life in Limbo, with a text by Turbulence. One of the writers of that text, Keir Milburn, is being interviewed in Brand #1/2025, so they wanted to use the same images again. In the end, I used some other pictures and reworked them for the 3-color format that Brand uses these days.

Subscribe to Brand, Sweden’s oldest anarchist magazine.

And here are the zombies: