Hur ser den moderna rasisten ut? Vad innebär islamofobi? Hur rättvis är Sveriges migrationspolitik? Hur ska man handskas med främlingsfientliga uttalanden i vardagen? Vad innebär det egentligen att vara svensk? Och inte minst… Är du också med i kampen?
Dessa angelägna frågor ställs, tillsammans med många fl er, i den här antologin. Serier mot rasism är ett kollektivt yttrande från ett trettiotal svenska serietecknare mot främlingshatets allt mer påtagliga frammarsch i vårt samhälle. Med både humor och allvar angrips temat som angår oss alla – som vi var och en kan antingen höja rösten mot eller tyst låta gro vidare.
Vinsten från försäljningen av denna bok går oavkortat till nätverket Ingen människa är illegal, som arbetar för papperslösa flyktingar.
Kemi Art Museum (Kemi, Finland), May 13-15
Anniversary exhibition to celebrate the past 30 years of comics festivals in Kemi.
Amalthea Bokkafé (Malmö, Sweden), May xx-xx
Wormgod: konSEKVENS excerpt. In conjunction with the release of Piracy is Liberation 009: Deicide, we’ll show some prints from the konSEKVENS exhibition suite, never before shown in Sweden…
International Alternative Press Festival (London), May 27-June 13
Wormgod art as part of the Swedish exhibition at the festival.
CRACK! (Rome), June 16-19
Wormgod: 3D REVOLUTION – no idea at this point what this will turn out to be. Probably some prints in combination with wall painting…
Working on some new stuff, or have worked the last two months, or will work on during the near future…
In Swedish Comic Sin 2: Wet Spot. 16 pages of erotica.
In Serier Mot Rasism: Arg Kanin om Asylpolitik och rasistiska alibin. Same as in Asylkalendern 2011, but with two new pages added about incarceration and deportations.
In Dystopia [upcoming issue]: My New Roommate. Script by me, art by Emre Özdamarlar. Satire about world politics and neighborhood policing.
In Dystopia [upcoming issue]: konSEKVENS. By Wormgod. Comics version of the konSEKVENS exhibitions.
Piracy is Liberation 009: Deicide. Next book in the series. More postapocalypse than cyberpunk this time around. Will contain the finalist story Spyware from the Morning International Comics Competition + a remake of an older story that was always intended to be a part of the Piracy is Liberation backstory. The title of the book is a clue.
All of the above, if things go as planned, will be out in time for SPX in Stockholm (see link in previous post).
And I’m also planning to do something for the Arctic Comics Festival in Kemi, Finland. We’ll see how that goes. If nothing else, I guess it’ll go into a future issue of Dystopia…
And there’s a secret future project that I’ll talk about when I know more. Maybe two new projects.
Right now in my life: Preparations to profoundly change the Swedish comics scene (you’ll soon hear about Tusen serier), working on one graphic novel about Swedish migration policies that seems to have a great effect on people, working on my 9th Piracy is Liberation book (Deicide), which is going to be more postapocalypse than cyberpunk, and still be as relevant to current politics. I’m also involved with the upcoming antiracist anthology Serier Mot Rasism and the erotic comics anthology Swedish Comics Sin 2. Planning at least two upcoming Wormgod exhibitions within the nex half year or so. And let’s throw in a rapidly growing noise festival sometime during the spring/summer as well. Mind you, this is only what’s going on in the nearest 6 months or so.
In the meantime, the World Revolution seems to be spreading throughout the north of Africa since people all over the world has had enough. And if they are hundreds of thousands of people in the streets each day, the least we could do at home is assemble a fraction of that to stop the mass deportations of asylum seekers that our government is doing every third week.
Suddenly, watching lots of TV series these past 1,5 months doesn’t seem like such a waste of time anymore, more like mental preparation and well needed rest. Also, I’ve found a couple of really great new friends recently too, which is very nice.
Did I mention that this is the first time an a very long time that I’ve got 8h sleep withoug having to first fill myself with lots of whisky and beer?
And yes, there are a few other things as well: My living arrangements will change within a week, I’m still going to be unemployed next month(?) and I’m planning to go on a small tour in June (Novo Doba-CRACK!-Punk Illegal)… Details.
More on all of this later…
Edit: Oh, yeah, I forgot! I’m also planning to have a new batch of Dystopias ready for SPX in May, so I have to start talking to some people soon about getting material from them. Here’s a list of names to possibly look forward to: Emre Özdamarlar, Oskar Aspman, Radovan Popovic, Aleksandar Opacic, Vassilis Gogtzilas, Fanny M Bystedt, Amanda Casanellas, Feberdröm…
I was looking through some old files and found some stuff I’d forgotten about. Like this one that I made maybe seven or so years ago. Sorry about the language…
Models were Oskar and Matilda.
Click the pages to see bigger format…
Looking at it now, it’s a bit of a different approach than I usually have now. Still, I think it was quite nice. I like the drawings…
On the other hand, it’s like a sketch for the concept of Metamagic that I’ve been developing in Piracy is Liberation.
And after that last post I went to Lisbon for the Feira Laica festival. First time I’ve been there and I had a great time. Put up aWormgod: WALL exhibition and sold some books. Also met some nice people, old and new friends doing very interesting stuff.
Apart from that, December has been a bit of downtime. Or rather, preparations.
I wrote a script for an upcoming Dystopia story: Room-mate (more on that later) and I’ve started proper planning for Piracy is Liberation book 009: Deicide (more on that, also later). There’s also been some planning for the new major project after AltCom 2010 (definitely more on that later, but right now it’s too early to tell). All I can say now is that part of it will entail finishing the Me & my Daddy & Zlatan book…
The most recent thing I did was make a sketch/script of the erotic comic story I have never… which will be in the second Swedish Comic Sin anthology. Very interesting to work with and I look forward to finding a suitable drawing style for it, trying to use the old nude drawing lessons for inspiration.
Also made some illustrations for Helsingborgs Dagblad. The one below was published on Christmas eve, another one will turn up during the new year’s weekend.
As usual, I’m sure there’s more but I needed to at least mention these things (to myself if no one else), because it feels like I haven’t got anything done. It’s usually like that between projects. Part of the process is just preparing mentally for what’s coming. May seem and even look like I’m doing nothing, but when I finally move I’ll move fast.
In January, I’ll wrap up the remaineing paperwork from the AltCom 2010 festival, while in my mind I’m alrady starting to plan for AltCom 2012…
So, if I don’t see you before that, have a good 2011. In the meantime, check out the newly released Bild & Bubbla 185, containing a long interview with me and the 6-page comic Den interdimensionella revolutionen and lots of other stuff.
Thought I’d try to recollect what I’ve done this past year. Starting with December 2009, since that’s where we are now and also since that’s really when the year started for me…
SPYWARE
During two weeks last December I made the story Spyware, which will be part of the upcoming Piracy is Liberation book 009: Deicide and which went on to the final round (top 8!) of the Japanese Morning International Comics Competition.
DYSTOPIA
December was also the start of the Dystopia project, which is a title I’m doing for Wormgod & The Swedish Comics Association. Different artists doing sequential short stories on their visions of the dark future that may or may not be on its way. These are the books that have come out during the year:
01
Side A: Vanja & Vanja by Danijel Zezelj
Side B: Desert by Carol Swain
(also available in Swedish)
I also made one book in the Piracy is Liberation series this year. Book 008: Spiders pt 2 (cover by Susanne Johansson):
And I started serialising Piracy is Liberation as a webcomic, starting in May from page 1 och book 001, publishing one new page every day, but somewhere in the end of the summer I kind of stopped updating it. It will come back on track, I promise! Hopefully soon. Chack out
Ok, let’s see. I wasn’t at Angoulême or MoCCA this year (nor Bok- och Biblioteksmässan or the Anarchist Book Fairs in Stockholm or London), but I did go to the Kemi festival in northern Finland, where I recieved third prize in their comics competition (for Jag & min Pappa & Zlatan). Then, there was the SPX in Stockholm, Komiks.dk in Copenhagen, my favorite festival, CRACK! in Rome and the always nice Helsinki comics festival. And, of course AltCom 2010 in Malmö, but more on that later.
WORMGOD
Second year of Wormgod started off with a DJ session by Suss at Skånes Konstförening in conjunction with a noise gig starring Con-Dom, Metal Pip! and Pestdemon.
Next, we made a guest appearance at a C’est Bon Kultur project: C’est Bon Black Box at Makeriet:
I June, I brought some prints and made a wall painting at the CRACK! festival in the catacombs beneath Forte Prenestino in Rome:
A rerun of the CRACK! prints with the addition of a new one were shown at the SingSang Studio in Malmö later in the summer, where we also arranged a gig with Concrete Threat.
At the Helsinki festival, we were invited to present an exhibition at the Helsinki Comics Centre, so we made a sequel to the konSEKVENS exhibition from 2009:
The latest thing we’ve done was the Wormgod: ZOMBIES exhibition, where we made a huge painting (1,8 x 25 m) being shown at Panora in Malmö during the AltCom 2010 festival.
An assortment of different Wormgod images will also be shown this December at the Feira Laica festival in Lisbon.
ARG KANIN
Made some new Angry Animals work. Some was published in magazines, some just on my blog. Especially around the time of the Swedish election.
Before:
And after:
I also made an Arg Kanin comic for Seriefrämjandet’s MUS, MOUSE, MAUS exhibition during AltCom and another for Asylgruppens kalender (which you can read if you buy it from them, it should be out soon).
MÖLLEVÅNGSAFESTIVALEN
Somewhere in the midst of all this I also managed to make all the graphic design work for Möllevångsfestivalen…
ALTCOM 2010
From August, most of what I’ve done has had something or other to do with the AltCom 2010 comics festival.
I made the graphics, designs, website and organisational work (with assistance from my subcomandante, Aida Ghardagian). My work was featured in several exhibitions connected to the festival, such as:
Wormgod: ZOMBIES (with Susanne Johansson)
MUS, MOUSE, MAUS (still on show at the City Library)
Tecknare mot Borgare: Sex & krig i det Nya Sverige, at the AltCom Asylum party at Kontrapunkt
and the AltCom 2010 SEX & WAR anthology:
Various participants, cover by Ho Che Anderson
Yeah, I think that’s it, but knowing myself I’m probably forgetting something.
Edit no 1: Oh, yeah, I was interviewed and will be featured in the upcoming issue of Bild & Bubbla with a comic I’m calling Interdimensional Revolution.
Edit no 2: I knew I forgot something else. As you can see in the older entries of this blog, I made illustrations for Lena Sundström‘s book Världens Lyckligaste Folk as it ran for 22 weeks in Helsingborgs Dagblad during the spring/summer.
Edit no 3: Uhm, yes. The anarchist magazine Brand just released a special issue 2.5 called Life in Limbo, where they used some photos from Wormgod: ZOMBIES to illustrate the undead state of liberalism…
I’m going to give this post a rest now and stop updating. Check the links in the text above and at the bottom of this page to see more…
Trivia: All this was done without the ability to make an appointment on time or go to bed before 4, and without making much money (I know people who make more in two months than I do in a year). And I still had time to get drunk (at least) a couple of times a week.
And so, 2011 is coming up and my plans include:
At least two more Piracy is Liberation books.
Finishing the graphic novel version of Jag & min Pappa & Zlatan.
More Dystopias.
More Wormgod stuff.
And, last but not least, Changing the face of the Swedish comics scene, maybe forever.
