Some sequels…

Had a meeting with Raquel Lozano last week about Bekele 2. It’s just the first step where we made a list of themes and maybe a few scenes that we wanted to include in the book. General directions we wanted to move Bekele and the other characters in.

Came home a bit drunk from that, so I guess it wasn’t the same day bu the day after, where I wrote down another piece of voice-over for Transgressions 2. I had a session with that in early June as well, compiling ideas and writing some unfinished scenes and partial dialogue. I think I have a fair grasp of where I want to go with it. Some thoughts about ancient goddesses and fictionalisation of (what used to be) consensus reality. Piecing all of it together still remains, and also deciding how connected the story needs to be to the soundtrack, but I’m tentatively excited about it. The plan is to get it published next spring, so there’s still plenty of time.

And last night I had an idea and thought that maybe we should also make a sequel to After the ends of the world, but we’ll see about that. Especially since this is the only idea I have for it:

It started when the president of the United States, in his first term, decided to exit the Paris Agreement. Sure, there was one Democratic president just after him, but he ended up nuking a few countries, and after that it was all Republicans, so in the end the world declared war on the US, in an act of environmental self defense against their global suicide. So then we all got nuked in the end and now we have to live underground.

Linoprint!

It hasn’t always been easy for me to work with linoprint. But yesterday at a Tusen Serier workshop I discovered the softcut lino plate, which allowed me to work faster and more intuitively. So suddenly I felt more at home with the material.

These are not the best quality prints I made, but I like it when things aren’t perfect.

Coming soon in a collective zine from Amanda Casanellas and Tusen Serier…

Below the surface we are all dead. You just have to admit it, accept it and embrace it.
Everything isn’t black or white, they said. But that was a lie, of course, just like everything else.

 

This one is the one I’m most happy with. It’s not a print but the paper I had to protect the table from when I was rolling the lino:

To me, a big part of my aesthetics in art is about embracing accidents.

CRACK! and other recent stuff…

So I came back from CRACK! a couple days ago and tomorrow is the first day with no meeting or things I have to do, so I will set the phone to silent and stay away from any other means of contact with the outside world.

Maybe spend the day in New Bordeaux or in space or the future.

But before I go into my 24h hibernation, here are some things from recent times that you may find interesting:

New books:

En Andra Chans (Tusen Serier) was written by me and drawn by Shko Askari. It’s written in Swedish & Arabic and consists of two interconnected stories, read in different directions, that meet in the middle. About war, racism, integrity and migration.
You can order it here.

CBA vol 36|37 (CBK) was edited by me, with stories by Akab, Spyros Verykios, Elena Guidolin and Serena Schinaia, with a cover by Radovan Popovic. I’m very happy with this latest volume of the international art comics anthology. This one is all in English.
You can order it here. Here’s another pic of the cover, this one modified during CRACK!:

Speaking of CRACK!… One of the things that happened there was a gig with Noise Against Fascism, for which I made this backdrop (which turned into a kind of cape during the gig):

And while I’m writing this I’m answering Facebook comments on this text. Some people seem to be unable to think outside the boundaries of the law, even if the law is immoral, which is kind of worrying. Others seem to have problems with texts longer than a tweet, so here’s a short summary:

When I grew up, in the 1980s/90s in a small town in Sweden, anything out of the “normal” was weird and something to stay away from (reading comics/listening to techno/being gay/being born somewhere else/watching foreign movies/being female etc).
Parallel to this, it was hard for immigrants to get asylum here (and it’s worse now, no matter what right-wing propaganda you hear). And anarchism was unheard of as a viable ideology. The mainstream ruled.
It’s all connected so what we do in CBK/CBA is antiracist by providing a printed space for what isn’t seen as normal.

Of course, it’s more elaborate in the blog post, so maybe read that…

Here’s an excerpt, which I think may be the most controversial part:

Once, a bunch of years ago, I was with a large group of people outside the refugee detention centre in Malmö. We were there to stop a deportation of a man from… I don’t even remember from where. The police came to get him. We stood in the way, blocking all entrances. After a while, the cops said: “All right, now you’ve made your statement. You’ve expressed your opinion. Now stand aside and let us do our job”. That hit me on a deep level. We were there to save someone’s life, and they thought we just wanted to express out opinion and then things could go back to repressive normality. Of course we didn’t move. We stayed there all day, hungry, getting burned by the sun, until the guy managed to break a window from the outside and get out. Within minutes he was in a car being driven away from there, to a life in hiding. Maybe eight months later, he got his permit of residency, proving us right.

People here seem to think that opinions is something everyone can have, as long as they don’t interfere with reality. Conversely, they also see them as something harmless, which is why we’re supposed to be so lenient towards racism. Because it’s just an opinion, which anyone is entitled to, and it has nothing to do with real life (and, incidentally, they won’t hurt you as long as you belong to the white mainstream (but who worth considering isn’t white mainstream?)). Except it does. Anything that today is ‘just an opinion’, may tomorrow be the new mainstream, with real-life consequences.

In other news… A while ago I made this book cover for Malvarma Bufedo (SLEA) the Esperanto version of Jenny Wrangborg‘s Kallskänken. Got my copies of the book the other day (and you can (soon anyway) order it here):

Also, if you drop by Hybriden these days (it’ll probably be closed but if you’re lucky or look through the window), you can see the Berättelser från Yunnan (Tusen Serier) exhibition by Emei Burell. Or you can order the book here.

And you will also see our banner in support of the XM24 squat in Bologna:

I’ll finish this off with two pages from Transgressions (Wormgod) that I think illustrate part of the point I wanted to make in that CBK blog post (click for bigger version):

You can, of course, order it here…

En Andra Chans – now available!

Now you can order my new book, En Andra Chans (scripted by me and drawn by Shko Askari), at the CBK webshop or the usual internet bookstores in Scandinavia (Adlibris, Bokus, etc if you prefer, but it’s cheaper at CBK and all the money will go directly to Tusen Serier, which is a lot nicer)!

Not sure why I write this in English since the book is in Swedish & Arabic, but now it is the way it is and we will all just have to live with it.

Here’s a page from the book:

More info + samples at the Tusen Serier site!

Coming soon: En Andra Chans!

My first book in Arabic (& Swedish) is officially released by Tusen Serier next week, April 12!

I wrote the story a few years ago, and it’s finally finished and printed and ready for reading.

The whole thing started when one of the artists associated with Tusen Serier, Yousif Akar, asked if I’d want to write a script for him to draw. I thought it sounded fun, but all I knew was that it was supposed to be in Swedish and Arabic, and I just had no idea what it was going to be about. Until one day, on the train between Stockholm/Malmö(?), when I realised that I’d have to deal with the fact that you read the two languages from different directions.

From that point, the story more or less wrote itself. It turned into two stories, told in each direction, revolving around the same situation but with different main characters, that meet in the middle.

Then Yousif dropped out of the project because of reasons, and through the help of magician (etc) Stefan Eriksson, I got in contact with Shko Askari, who became the new artist of the book, which turned out really nicely. And here it is, now.

An Iraqi doctor is on his way to work in Baghdad when a car bomb is detonated just outside the hospital. He starts treating the victims, but there are some people who think that certain victims are less deserving than others.
/
A Swedish student gets an email from a long lost migrated relative in the US. He wants to come visit her in Malmö.

Those are the starts of the two stories. I don’t want to risk spoiling anything by telling you more than that.

Anyway, you can order the book through the CBK webshop.

Crowdfunding! CBA vol 36

The other day i finished lettering the comic I don’t want to dream by Spyros Verykios. We normally don’t do that but he needed help and I liked the story so much that it was worth it.

It’s a beautifully painted and quite disturbing comic of 43 pages that will be included in the upcoming CBA vol 36. A while ago we changed the structure for how we work with the editorial stuff in CBK. Instead of having big meetings that decide the contents of each issue (well, we still have those big meetings to discuss the comics), we have one person that is the main editor. This is because the new crew that took over CBK 2 years ago is a bit more diverse that earlier ones when it comes to taste. Which is a good thing in general, but it also meant that for each new volume, no one was completely happy with the contents. Having a rotating main editorship made a change in that; now everyone can at least be completely happy with one issue once in a while, and it’s ok to not be 100% satisfied the rest of the time. To be clear: I’m not saying that I don’t normally like the comics in CBA, but you always have your favorites. There’s a Swedish proverb to explain this. Taste is like the ass: divided.

So CBA vol 36 is my volume. I got to use my absolute favorites of the material that has come in from the last calls for submissions (Spyros Verykios, Akab & Elena Guidolin), and also headhunted some other stuff (Serena Schinaia & the cover by Radovan Popović), and I’m really happy with it.

The problem is that CBK is currently out of money. Tusen Serier is letting us wait a bit with paying our part of the rent for Hybriden, but it’s not a good situation since our funding from the Swedish Arts Council was cut off. So we decided to try crowdfunding via Indiegogo.

HERE’S THE CAMPAIGN PAGE. Please help us by donating some money and/or share the link and spread the word (if you prefer, it’s also possible to donate directly to us via PayPal: info [at] cbkcomics [.] com). It would really mean a lot to us (and to me, since this volume is a personal matter) and you’ll also get some perks as thank you. The really big spenders will get our entire back catalogue of what we still have in print, which is a massive pile.

Also check out this really cool promo video with art from the book, made by Víctor Expolio, with music by Feberdröm.

Let’s plunge together into the pits of madness. Let’s watch the dissolution of reality, let’s dance with clear heads and see where it takes us. Let’s travel the river hiding in the desert sands until the wind rises and we reach the final collapse. Let’s look deep into the eye of the tiger. And see afterwards if we dare to dream.