The Finkelstein/Rabbani/Morris/Destiny debate…

 

So I watched this debate last night and I just have a couple of things to comment on it (my comments will be clear if you watch the video first, so you should do that. It’s just 5 hours):

-When the ”it’s not a genocide” side says that international law doesn’t matter, they of course mean that it doesn’t matter to Israel, because it doesn’t matter to the US, because they’re both already criminals and until they can be held accountable they will continue to be. By which it logically follows that if Hamas had only claimed on Oct 7th that the IDF was hiding behind civilians, they could have murdered at least 35 times as many civilians and it would have counted as self defense.

-You can’t be a super efficient and exact army and murder that many civilians, especially that many children, and not be genocidal. So if you’re not intentionally genocidal, you have to admit that you’re fucking up real bad, and you need to cease fire to find another solution to your problem. It was ”funny” when Morris used the word ”proportionality”, because it’s a lot of bodies since Israel had any credibility in saying that their response is proportional. Of course, that’d require that you care about civilian deaths, which you obviously don’t, which takes us back to an intentional genocide being the most probable answer. And if it’s a genocide, it needs to stop immediately, because it’s a genocide and you’re not supposed to do those.

-And yes, Finkelstein was a bit harsh on Destiny, but he was also right: that moron shouldn’t have been there yapping his motomouth while the grown-ups were talking. And I generally don’t have anything against people being harsh on genocide apologists…

By the way, I do appreciate that they let this discussion take the time it did instead of forcing it into a shorter format. It could have been even longer to make room for decades of checkpoints, incarcerations, demolished homes, stolen homes and other abuses to give more context, but still… It’s a pretty good, if frustrating, debate.

Piracy013 RELEASE event & exhibition

When: June 14 at 18-21 (the exhibition lasts until Jun 28)
Where: Rum för Serier (Friisgatan 12, Malmö)
What: Book release with comics exhibition
Opening hours:
Thursday (Jun 20): 17-20
Tuesday (Jun 25): 17-20
Thursday (Jun 27): 17-20

This was supposed to happen on June 7, but had to be postponed due to illness…

Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis is the latest part of my cyberpunk postapocalypse epic.

The City is firing sentient smart-missiles against terrorists hiding in the previously unknown desert. But who is this outer enemy?
Using metamagic, Purple learns how to fly and takes Information and Erica on an expedition to find out, but the truth comes with unexpected dangers.
Piracy is Liberation is a mix of classic cyberpunk elements in a dystopian future with a glimmer of postapocalyptic hope and a pinch of metamagic.

The story, which started in book 012, is a comment on the increasingly war-hungry media climate. It takes place far into the future, in a city where Capitalism is the only remaining religion, where the people don’t know that anything exists outside the City (until now) or that things have ever been different.

We invite you to an exhibition with material from the book along with some more stuff, new and old.
Haven’t read the earlier books in the series? Don’t worry, they’ll all be available at a special price.
Come and hang out, look at the pretty pictures, buy the pretty book and have some wine, it’ll be great!
We’ll keep going until 21 unless we decide to stay longer…

The exhibition is presented by Wormgod & CBK in cooperation with the Swedish Comics Association. This is the final(?) step on my release tour.

Feel free to share and invite people to the Facebook event.

SIS 2024

This weekend in Stockholm: SIS (Stockholm International Comics Festival), the second step on my release tour for Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis!

I’ll bring all the Piracy is Liberation books to the Wormgod table, some Angry Animals, including a brand new zine I made of my Arg Kanin om ett folkmord that I made for the Rum för Frihet exhibition, and a bunch of prints/posters.

I’ll be sharing a group of tables with CBK, Tusen Serier and Dice Dominion, so there’ll be a whole lot of stuff (books, prints, dice).

See you there!

Rum för Frihet

Yesterday was the opening of the exhibition Rum för Frihet – serier om Palestina, at Rum för Serier (Friisgatan 12, Malmö). I have a comic in the exhibition (Arg Kanin om ett Folkmord) and so do Joe Sacco, Layal Safieddin and Seyda.

Here’s a bit of context:
-Malmö is host to Eurovision this year.
-Eurovision has not thrown Israel out of the competition, thereby siding with their ongoing genocide. People are angry at this.
-Actually, their participation in the event is only secondarily what people are angry about. If they’d end the occupation they can join whatever music things they want. Which is good to keep in mind when confronted with the official rhetoric…
-Malmö, in cooperation with Israeli security personnel, tries to remedy the situation in the usual, normal way: they’ve called in cops from all over Sweden + some from Denmark and Norway. And given them new, more powerful guns. And probably psyched them up for the biggest police event since Gothenburg 2001…
-They’ve prohibited Palestinian flags in the Eurovision venues.
-Friisgatan has been proclaimed as the festival street, so since Rum för Serier is on that street, they decided to do a pro-Palestine exhibition.
-Panora/Folkets Bio, a movie theatre on the same street, also have lote of pro-Palestine programming.
-Lots of windows on the street (and in the rest of Malmö) have Palestinian flags hanging from their windows.
-There are cops everywhere now. Cops with automatic weapons. Also snipers.
-The hospital now has armed guards. Unclear what threat they’re under…
-None of this is normal or sensible. And it’s all in defence of a state guilty of genocidal war crimes and a decades-long colonial occupation.

The watermelon in the exhibition poster is a symbol for Palestine, from the time (1967-1993) when the Palestinian flag was prohibited in the occupied areas so people used watermelons instead since the colors are similar.

Here’s a few panels from my comic (I may do an English translation in the future):

Piracy013 release tour 2024

My new book just came from the printer the other day, and I’ve just confirmed that there will be a release exhibition! So the 2024 release tour will be as follows:

Jönköping, April 26: The Old World Is Dying
Stockholm, May 25-26: SIS
Malmö, June 7: Release exhibition @ Rum för Serier

The Old World Is Dying (Insikten, Kulturhuset, Jönköping)
This is a noise event where I will have a Wormgod table along side Dice Dominion, Vertigo förlag.
Performing acts:
IDIOT CHILD (MALMÖ)
Violent sludgy noise rock from the dirty south.
TRAUMA COMMAND (MALMÖ)
Radical Feminist Power Electronics with a straight razor from Crime City.
FACTORY FARMING (GÖTEBORG)
Red Power electronics from the foggy Volvograd.
Both TRAUMA COMMAND and FACTORY FARMING are familiar faces from earlier events (and soundtracks) from Wormgod, and TRAUMA COMMAND is of course the other half of Wormgod and the cover artist for most of the Piracy books, including the new one.
If there’s space, I may bring a couple of books from CBK and Tusen Serier as well…
Check the facebook event for times, address and more updated info.

SIS 2024 (Kulturhuset, Stockholm)
The new edition of Stockholms Internationella Seriefestival. We will be there as usual with Wormgod, CBK and Tusen Serier, this time in the company of Dice Dominion. There’s not stage appearance by me planned this time, as I did that last year, but we’ll be there with a whole lot of books, prints and dice. See you there!
Facebook event

Release exhibition (Rum för Serier, Malmö)
And finally, there will be an official release party with en exhibition in Malmö.

A mix of classic cyberpunk elements in a dystopian future with a glimmer of postapocalyptic hope and a pinch of metamagic.

I haven’t made all the plans for this yet, but I will have all three rooms so I’ll probably also put up some of my older stuff as well as pages from the new book.
Maybe I’ll talk about the book, maybe I’ll discuss it with someone? Maybe there will just be a pile of books, some prints on the wall and a bunch of wine? Who knows?
In any case, I’m sure it’ll be great!
Event and stuff will come later.

I may also be going to the CRACK! festival again this year, since I haven’t been there for a few years and I miss it, but it’s not yet decided so we’ll see if the tour will be extended to include a trip to Rome and Forte Prenestino…

I recently made an Arg Kanin comic about/against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza for an exhibition by Seriefraämjandet, also at Rum för Serier. I’m trying to get it published somewhere as well, but nothing confirmed yet. I’m not even sure exactly when the exhibition will be shown, just that it’ll happen soon, but I’ll post some info on that when I know more.

And I was invited to have some art in the exhibition at Balkanska Smotra Mladih Strip Autora (The Balkans Festival of Young Comics Creators) (June 28-30), so that’s another place where I’ll be showing some Piracy works.

Some CBA short stories…

Sometimes I submit comics for CBA (the international comics anthology from CBK) or other anthologies that are actually chapters from Piracy is Liberation. Usually, I rewrite or otherwise modify them a bit to make sure they can stand on their own, without the context they were originally made for. Right now, I have two such stories, in the latest and in the upcoming issues of CBA.

CBA vol 61: SPYWARE
This one is pretty old. I made it originally for the Morning International comics competition in Japan in 2010, where it actually came in among the top 8. Which is super cool and better than I had expected. It also somehow validates my manga-esque storytelling even though my visuals don’t really fit into what is regularly seen as the manga style…

Since it was set in the world of Piracy is Liberation, I included it in book 009 and actually built the rest of that book around this story, at least in part.

Then, when Caroline Ulvros (main editor of CBA vol 61) chose the theme FINGERS AND TEETH, I realized that this story would fit. There’s a scene in the story where the main character takes a rock and bashes out her own teeth, which was in turn inspired by a scene in 12 Monkeys, where Bruce Willis’ character locks himself in a bathroom with a hammer to take care of surveillance equipment he believes have been planted in his teeth. As I recall, he looks happy and satisfied more than anything else when he comes out with the bloody smile of a successful operation.

CBA vol 62|63: UNTIL DEATH
Oskar Aspman‘s theme for this issue was LIMINAL SPACE. I had just written a chapter for the new Piracy book where I tried to get into the mind of an AI smart-missile and follow it on its short lifespan from being fired to its final detonation. Which made perfect sense for a cyberpunk concept, but I also tried to model it after phases in a human life, from birth/youth to self-discovery, through a philosophical phase, interpersonal interactions and so on, until death.

For the version in the Piracy book, I had to make some tiny adjustments in the text as well as adding a few pages to integrate it into the story in rest of the book. I also changed the title to DEATHDRIVE SENTIENCE.

Ignoring any parallels to real life (Sweden joining NATO, Israel bombing Gaza again), there were some external inspirations behind this story as well. In Karin Boye‘s Kallocain, a Swedish sci fi novel from 1940 (same era and dystopian subgenre as George Orwell‘s 1984 and Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World), the main character lives in one of a few megastates that seem to have divided the world amongst each other and who wage endless war against each other. It’s actually much the same setting as in 1984 and in Katsuhiro Otomo‘s short story CANNON FODDER (not included in the manga collection Memories as I first misremembered, but it’s in the anime of the same name).

That image stuck with me since reading these stories some 20-30 years ago, of a nation waging a never-ending war, routinely and perpetually firing rockets from cannons operated by peoplo who don’t really know who the enemy is, they just know that they’re at war and have a job to do. And since the current storyline, started in Piracy book 012, is about the City going to war against an unknown enemy, it was something I couldn’t help but include. Both as a reference to those great works of dystopian sci fi from the mid-1900s and to the feeling of living in a world where there’s always some war going on, performed by people who have no say in how the war is waged, or why, or when it might end.

CBA vol 61 came a couple of month ago and CBA vol 62|63 will arrive a few weeks from now, together with Piracy 013. They can all be found at Hybriden.se…

Coming very soon: Piracy is Liberation 013 + CBA vol 62|63

Last week, I finally managed to send my new book, Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis to print, and it’ll arrive around April 20.

You can order it now, from Hybriden and it’ll be shipped as soon as we have it from the printer!

The City is firing sentient smart-missiles against terrorists hiding in the previously unknown desert. But who is this outer enemy?
Using metamagic, Purple learns how to fly and takes Information and Erica on an expedition to find out, but the truth comes with unexpected dangers.

At 236 pages, this is my thickest book yet (not counting the massive collections) and, if I dare say so myself, the best one so far!

I will also have it for sale at a noise event in Jönköping, April 26: The Old World Is Dying. As you can see, not only will the music be great but it will also be the first official appearance by Dice Dominion! And if you didn’t know, TRAUMA COMMAND is Susanne Johansson who made most of the Piracy covers, including the new one. FACTORY FARMING also contributed to the soundtrack for After the Ends of the World 2 (and a bunch of Wormgod events, sometimes under different names). This is not to be missed!

Coming from print at the same time is also the new CBA vol 62|63: Liminal Space, where I also have a comic. It’s actually the first chapter from Piracy 013, but a slightly different version. It’s rewritten to work as a stand-alone story, but I’ve also handled post-production of the images differently…

You can pre-order CBA vol 62|63 from Hybriden.

Cover by Oskar Aspman, who was also the main editor of this issue

Getting closer…

I just drew the first page of the last chapter of Piracy is Liberation 013: Missile Crisis.

In total, this book is going to be about 228 pages and I haven’t checked, but I think that during this book I’ve passed the 1000 page mark of Piracy is Liberation as a whole!

I just re-read what I’ve done so far, to check that I’m on the right track, and the book’s shaping up to be pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the page, sans text to avoid spoiling anything, but at least you get to see the chapter title:

Inktober Piracy…

For the first time, I actually managed to stay disciplined enough to post a new drawing each day during October. I cheated of course, posting stuff I didn’t make for that day, but who can stay interested enough in Instagram for that long unless you cheat (I know people like it and that’s ok, I just can’t make myself do the same)?

Anyway, here are some of the pics:

And one that I never used:

New stuff at Magasinet Konkret

My newspeak dictionary, which I first made for CBA vol 58 (also included in the (Anti)rasism exhibition last year) and have since translated and expanded a bit, is now up at Magasinet Konkret.

It’s an attempt to figure out the new meanings of words after some years of degradation and erosion where some words now seem to mean the opposite of what they used to and some simply don’t really mean anything anymore. At least if you are to trust how the words are used in the news and on social media…

Magasinet Konkret is publishing one word/day on their start page, with a link to the complete list. I like that this gets some attention, since CBA often goes under the radar for a lot of people.