Category: Work

Morning International Comics Competition: results!

The results from Japanese Morning Magazine’s International Comics Competition are finally out. I knew I was among the 21 finalists, and then I made it into the top 8, which I’m very happy with. See the list of finalists and winning entries here (also note that I’m not the only artist from sweden. I was joined in the first round of 21 finalists by Maria Frölich).

≪Judge’s Comment≫While the story driven by the main character’s monologue is flat, the protagonist’s behaviors and the appearance of the “god” [she] sees are surprising, giving this work a strong impact. Unfortunately, this entry’s ending was difficult to understand, and ultimately it did not leave a good impression.

The fact that I didn’t make it into the top 3 means that I’m free to use this story as I please, which is fine by me and lets me put it into Piracy is Liberation book 009: Desert Stories. So now I’m more than 1/3 done with that book. The rest will be a remake of the story The Lord of Flies, that I made back in 2001 for C’est Bon #1. The book will concentrate on the apocalypse rather than the usual cyberpunk postapocalypse, so it will be quite different from the rest of the series. I’m looking forward to working on it, though I suspect it may take me a while before I have the time…

Yesterday, I finally started working on the script for the album-length version of Jag & min Pappa & Zlatan, which is supposed to be around 100 pages and all drawn and ready within a month. Some hard work ahead…

The other thing that will take up a lot of my time will be working with the AltCom 2010 festival. I’m vary happy to say that the list of international guests will include artists such as Ho Che Anderson and Ivan Brun. I should also mention that the festival anthology is still open for submissions (on the theme of SEX & WAR). See the site for details.

Wormgod: LOVEHATE!

July 30 in Malmö at the Sing Sang Studio:
Concrete Threat: HARSH NOISE DEATH release + live gig / Wormgod: LOVEHATE exhibition
Start time: 22:00.
Entrance fee: 40 SEK

Wormgod exhibition at the release of HARSH NOISE DEATH, the all-new 6-cassette box collection from Concrete Threat, legendary harsh noise band from Helsingborg (still talked-about since the gig at Stapelbädden in February 2009).

The HARSH NOISE DEATH box collects most of Conctrete Theat’s production since they started, almost 5 years ago:
Noise-In-A-Box
In Cold Blood
Death Trap
Blood Red / Stone Dead
Thrusts Of Passion
The Pine Grove Killings
Black Omen
+ tracks from splits with Vomir, Werewolf Jerusalem and Ichorous

Concrete Threat website

Wormgod website

—At this event—
Concrete Threat – LIVE GIG
CT delivers the harshest and most brutal in the harsh/wall noise genre, as usual. Prepare for head trauma.

Wormgod: LOVEHATE exhibition
Two images from Wormgod’s exhibition at the CRACK! festival website in Rome recently + one new collaboration, created specifically for this event.

Johan+Johan DJ-set
Techno/inudstrial all night when the band isn’t playing.

HD: Världens Lyckligaste Folk 17-18

Two new illustrations published since last one I showed on this blog in the Världens Lyckligaste Folk series (by Lena Sundström) in Helsingborgs Dagblad. The first one is about the debate about veils that has been going on in various European countries. Denmark being one of them:

Translation:

-Because you are so oppressed, we are now going to tell you what to wear.

-Seriously…

And the other one, about statistics on the media coverage of different subjects before elections, and how that may affect the outcome (for example, foreigners was the subject of around 60% in the debates before the last Danish election):

Piracy is Liberation 001: Information Wants to be Free (third edition)!

Yesterday, I sent the third edition of Piracy is Liberation 001: Information Wants to be Free to the printer.

Pirate is an information addict. When he recieves a cry for help: ‘Information wants to be free’, he has to find out what it means. Only problem is that the infopolice are hot on his trail, so he has to run and avoid falling in the same trap that Information did.

Unaltered story content but with a new cover made by me and Susanne Johansson. I also wrote this new introduction:

Three years have passed since the second edition of this book came out, and nothing much has changed. We’ve had a right-wing government in Sweden since then and immigrants and poor people are treated badly just as they were under the Social democrats before them. On an international scale, it’s also more or less the same old stuff. War, poverty and environmental disasters as a result of capitalism still going strong.

So this is the third edition, complete with a new cover by me and my Wormgod partner, Susanne Johansson, and the world is working its way towards making my dystopian vision come true. A postapocalypse where capitalism is religion and the inhabitants of the last enormous city are kept ignorant of the world outside and even the concept of history. Which is also a reflection of our current affairs, where we are being presented with an illusion telling us that we are at the height of human civilization (ie the globalised Western civilization). That we are going in a certain direction and no real deviation is possible.

This is not true, of course. We just need to think outside the City. Outside the boundaries on our thinking that have been laid on us through television, through the school system, through a society that needs us to be wage laborers first and human beings second.

We have the technology for new ways of distributing information now. And even though those in power try to limit the possibilities of this free exchange of thoughts and ideas, information wants to be free and information will be free. And when we’ve managed to see beyond the indoctrination, to think for ourselves, to find and create and spread our own information, we need to turn those thoughts into actions. Because information is dangerous only when it breeds new thoughts, thoughts when they breed action.

So after you read this book, if you like it, tell your friends to buy it. Or, if they can’t afford it, direct them to a free version of it on the internet. Or, if you can’t find one, scan the pages and spread it yourself. Piracy is, after all, liberation.

Mattias Elftorp
Malmö, Sweden, 2010

 Published by Wormgod.

HD: two latest…

So I’m back from Crack!, but more about that later. Need more photos first…

There has been two new illustrations in HD since last time I posted anything:

Translation speech balloon:

They’re uncivilised. We don’t want that kind of things here.

Translation text on shirt:

REINSTATE THE DEATH PENALTY

This one is about racism breeding in well-kept area without much problems with poverty and such things. Perhaps you get more protective if you’ve got more to lose?

HD, Piracy, Crack!, Ship to Gaza…

Yesterday, another illustration in Helsingborgs Dagblad (Världens Lyckligaste Folk by Lena Sundström):

Today: Chapter 2 och Piracy is Liberation 001: Information Wants to be Free begins:

http://www.elftorp.com/piracy/

And next week, I’m representing Wormgod at the Crack! festival in Rome:

I feel right now that I should say something about Ship to Gaza, but I’ll just express my sympathy and solidarity with the people of Palestine and post this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGlnsIW3zJk&feature=player_embedded]