On September 21, Tusen Serier will have a table at Angered’s bokmässa (with some stuff from CBK and Wormgod as well) in Gothenburg. I will do a presentation together with Amalia Alvarez who will also do one of her own.
And there will be an exhibition by me: Sagor från Angered, which showcases pages from a graohic novel I started working on with Amanda Casanellas in 2016. Hopefully, the book will actually be finished at some point, but that’s pretty far in the future, the way things look now.
So the best way to see at least parts of it will be this exhibition, and a zine version of one of its chapters, remastered to be a standalone story called Encounter in the woods, published by Tusen Serier in cooperation with Konstepidemin, Konsthallen Blå Stället and Kultur i Väst. The zine will be given away for free at Blå Stället, and we’ll also have some copies at Hybriden.
Me and Suss were interviewed for an article about Wormgod in COdA #15 (the August edition of the zine), re: the release of After the ends of the world 2.
We also made one illustration each for the occasion. Here’s mine:
The zine is free and you can download it to print it yourself. Instructions for how to fold it are included. Feel free to share it with anyone who might be interested.
It’s time for me to be main editor of CBA again (last time was CBA vol 36|37: In the Pits of Madness). So send us your most interesting comics and/or texts on the following theme:
CBA vol 47 – Science/Fiction
Science and fiction rule our lives. The laws of physics seem set in stone while the laws of man are arbitrary mirrors of the morality of the times. Gods and spirits are creations of the mind but also the explanation when comprehension fails. What lies beyond our understanding? Is it more science or something else? What dark forces lurk outside our field of vision? What machineries of death and destruction are we yet to invent in the name of money (which used to be metal and paper but is now to a great extent nothing but speculation and expectations)? What (or who) else meet in the intersection between science fiction and real science? What came first? The egg or the hatching machine?
In CBA vol 47 – Science/Fiction, we explore the borderlands between science and fiction, in comics and text articles.
Main Editor: Mattias Elftorp Deadline: November 1 —SUBMISSION GUIDELINES—
Please read and follow these guidelines: Number of pages: We prefer comics that are about 5-30 pages, but any number is welcome. Format: 20x26cm Color: Color / Black and white Language: English File format: .TIF Resolution: 1200 dpi line art or 300 dpi CMYK Length (texts): A good size for a text is ca 7500 characters (including spaces), but it can also be longer or shorter. Bleed: 5mm. Think you know how to handle bleed? Read this to make sure you know what we mean.
Within this space, there are no limits.
Delivery: We prefer download links that do NOT require us to login anywhere (wetransfer usually works fine, for example). Request: Please don’t use Comic Sans. We don’t like it and will ask you to change to another font. And again; Please check our guidelines for bleed.
Please send us high-resolution files from the start.
Include a short presentation text about yourself, with one URL (if you have a website or similar). Please ask us if you are unsure about formats, resolution, bleed, etc. We prefer stupid questions to bad files. And there are no stupid questions!
Unfortunately we cannot offer you any payment for participating. If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can offer at this time. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material stays with you.
–ARTICLES AND COMICS GENERAL GUIDELINES–
What we are looking for is comics which rely on artistic ambitions and a will to experiment rather than what has been done a thousand times before. We want to expand the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in the comics medium. We are looking for the same thing in texts; articles, essays, exploratory texts, etc. Use your imagination, and have fun! : – )
Send your comics to: submissions [at] cbkcomics [dot] com
My latest book is a collaboration between me and Susanne Johansson of Wormgod, and also includes a soundtrack.
Once more we explore the different ways the world ended. From a hindsight perspective we delve into various scenarios to pinpoint the details of the apocalypse.
Comics and illustrated texts from the minds behind Wormgod, a roadmap of things to navigate to come out on the other side of the future. Also a furious description of the world we live and die in now, with all its horrors.
You can listen to the KOEFF track on YouTube.
Both the SYSTEMET and TRAUMA COMMAND track are live recordings from last year’s TRAUMA, for those of you who missed or want to relive it.
And here’s a taste of some of my one-page illustrations/stories:
Right now, Hybriden is showing an exhibition of the latest volume of CBA.
The theme is Qtopia:
So many LGBTQ narratives end in tragedy as a consequence of the LGBTQ-hood of the characters. Those stories are important because LGBTQ people are still being targeted by prejudice, discrimination and violence, but in this volume of CBA we encouraged artists to do something different. To tell queer stories where the queerness isn’t a narrative catalyst for bad things, but rathera source for joy or love or just one characteristic among others.
Queer tales about situations involving LGBTQ characters. Utopian queer tales in the sense that everything might not be perfect, but at least the horrible things that happen don’t have anything to do with the characters’ sexual orientation.
My contribution to this volume is the left-hand side of the cover spread, which was a collaboration by a bunch of us in the CBK crew: Kinga Dukaj (idea + coloring), Luddvig Melin, Lisa Örtlund, Henrik Rogowski and me.
I’m soon going on vacation, this weird concept that you get when you have employment, where you spend some time not working at all. Employment is rare for me, so it still feels like some kind of novelty. And it won’t be completely without work since we have a CBA release/exhibition on July19 (work being defined as when you do things with a purpose other than pleasure/relaxation, not to be confused with employment where you also get paid).
So I thought I should make some small summation of what I’ve beem doing lately. I should say ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ since most of what I do is done in the context of one or more of the collectives I’m part of within the Hybriden constellation…
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Let’s start at the chronological end, with this year’s CRACK! festival (June 20-23) where I was with Kinga Dukaj and Luddvig Melin to represent AltCom/Hybriden/Wormgod/CBK/Tusen Serier and ourselves as artists. If you don’t know, this is one that I’ve been going to every year for the last decade or so, except last year. Which was probably good, because this time it felt better than it has for a while. Less people than usual, but I got some of that magic back, where you meet new people who do interesting stuff, old friends that you only see once or a few times a year (depending on which festivals you go to) who also do interesting stuff, you see lots of cool art, you make some yourself, you’re in this small piece of a possible future/squat paradise on earth called Forte Prenestino to share in the evolution of the comics/printed art underground. It’s a source of inspiration for AltCom and for a lot of what I do and how I do it.
Idyllic breakfast with background reminder…
Our cell:
The theme for this year was APERTO (OPEN), similar to the NO BORDERS theme of AltCom 2012, so that fit us well considering what we’re usually publishing.
One of our neighboring cells
On June 22 there was also a huge demonstration against evictions of squats as well as against raised rents in general. CRACK! has a natural connection to this since Forte Prenestino is a squat since 1986. I didn’t go to the demo myself because I can’t handle being out in the Italian heat for that long, but rumor says it was a manifestation of around 100 000 people.
I was asked to make a sticker or something for the demo, but I found this and couldn’t imagine doing it any better.
I also have to say, without going into details, that the crisis management from the festival organizers is very commendable. They managed to turn an incident into an assembly of around a hundred artists to discuss what had happened. In the end some people disrupted the meeting and I’m not sure where they will go from where it ended, but I fully trust them to handle it in an intelligent way that is respectful to many different aspects of the whole situation.
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A while ago, we opened a new permanent exhibition at Hybriden, with works that have been produced at Fanzineverkstaden by its members and/or workshop participants. It was also, finally, the official release event for Fosfor, our zine distribution system.
The Lore exhibition is still up, with material related to the theme of the latest issue of CBA. The best bet if you still haven’t seen it is to go this week (Wed-Fri 11-15 + Sun 12-15). After that, Hybriden will close for the summer except for the opening of the Qtopia exhibition on July 19 (at Hybriden). As I write this, we’re actually in the final stages of finishing to files for CBA vol 45: Qtopia to send off to the printer.
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We’ll be back in August at Fanzineverkstaden, open weekdays between 15-21, with lots of new workshops coming up during the fall, so keep an eye open for that. And do use the place, because it’s a great opportunity to print stuff and try some new ways for self-publishing, and you never know how long it’ll last (except we know we’ll be here for at least another year). We also brought home some examples from CRACK! to use for inspiration.
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And speaking of things that are being printed as we speak… My contributions to the upcoming Wormgod book, After the ends of the world 2 by me and Susanne Johansson, have largely been produced at Fanzineverkstaden in between my regular working hours. More on that later, but here are a few of the pages from the book that I also showed as prints at CRACK!
Not much work left now before After the Ends of the World 2 is ready to go to the printer.
It’s a bunch of short stories, visions of different versions of the end of the world, with a few longer stories by Susanne Johansson commemorating the victims of three gruesome murders, and a 15 page comic of mine (Why you (maybe) shouldn’t kill Hitler, previously published in CBA vol 40|41). Just like the first book in this series, it will also have a downloadable soundtrack, this time contributed by Systemet, Nimam Spregleda, Feberdröm, Factory Farming and Trauma Command. If you were at TRAUMA last year, you might have seen all of them play there… Published by Wormgod,of course.
I’m planning to put a few samples of it on the blog in the coming weeks before it’s released. I just got word today that Norway, of all countries, just made some changes to their laws, making abortions less accessible (link in Swedish, sorry, you can probably find it in other languages, I don’t have time to google it, even though it’d probably be as fast as writing this). Which sucks, of course. So I felt this one was a good fit for today:
I will be representing Wormgod at SIS (Stockholms Internationella Seriefestival) this weekend (Apr 6-7). The festival is to be found at Konstfack this time.
You’ll find Wormgod next to Tusen Serier and CBK and a few extra tables for individual artists from the groups.
We’ll also receive zines for Fosfor (the zine distro that’s included in the new webshop at Hybriden).
I made a bunch of new works for it, inspired by some stories I heard as a child, and some I’ve heard later. Fairy tales and similar concepts that inspired me in one way or another.
You may recognise the symbol in the background from Berserk or Nameless or the upcoming Brightburn. I wish I could tell you its true origins, but… Also, if you haven’t seen The Witch, that’s maybe something you should think about doing?Dhagdheer, a long-eared vampire(?) from a Somali folktale…
Yeah, I know, this last one doesn’t really fit into the whole fairytale theme, but what the hell. Dune was a great influence on me while growing up, and now when I’m rereading it I’m really enjoying it, so I think it fits anyway.
