This volume of CBA has no theme, it’s just stories:
Stories are a way to escape reality, but also a way to communicate and to help us understand the world around us. These are stories on different subjects, told with different voices in different ways by 13 creators from 7 countries.
Comics by: Leviathan [SE], Oasis of Hate [PL], Daniela Filippin [IT], Eugenio Belgrado [IT], Hroge Cancelhaus [UK], Ivana Geček [HR], Joseph Hughes [US] & João Fraga Netto [US], Oskar Aspman [SE], Tom Mortimer [UK], Korin(a) Hunjak [HR], Marcel Ruijters [NL]. Cover, text, illustrations & main editor: Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Being main editor of this issue, I made a selection of lots of good stuff, both comics that were submitted for this issue and things that couldn’t fit into earlier volumes but was too good to not publish.
I’ve also written a text piece about various stories and myths that shape our lives, from religion to politics.
The cover was an experiment from a workshop (part of the workshops leading to the Paper Echoes exhibition) where we were supposed to put drawings into a pre-prepared non-linear panel grid. As a basis for the coloring I used a failed gelli-print from another of those workshops. It felt like a fitting image to use as a cover for this issue, with its storytelling theme.
Here’s one of the illustrations I made for my text piece:
Arg Kanin om Kulturkanon (Angry Animal about the Cultural Canon), the same comic I had (still have for a couple more weeks) in the (Anti)rasism exhibition, is also published in the new issue of the anarchist magazine Brand!
This issue was printed in 3 separate colors, so I hade to modify it a bit. It felt similar to preparing files for risoprinting and I wasn’t exactly sure how it would turn out, but in the end it looked just as I had hoped.
The comic itself was heavily inspired by Sven Lindqvist‘s books Exterminate all the brutes and The Skull Measurer’s Mistake: And Other Portraits of Men and Women Who Spoke Out Against Racism, which I’ve written a bit about before. And also the recent debate in Sweden about the conservative nationalists wanting to impose an official cultural canon. Which is an idea not to be taken seriously as anything other than a way to make everything a bit more racist, nationalist and right-leaning.
This is from a book project I was potentially going to be involved with. That never happened in the end because they went with an artist who could give them a better price (that happens sometimes, no big deal), so since I don’t like wasting my efforts, I thought I’d show it here instead.
I was aiming for a more androgynous look, but since I made this mainly as a sample, I never corrected it. In any case I was pretty happy with how it turned out. So here you go:
Where: Ateljé XX (Industrigatan 20B – entrance from the yard, Malmö)
When: March 4 (one day only) 15-22 (fika until 18, then wine)
During the fall of 2022, we invited a group of comic creators to join a number of workshops, where we took turns to introduce each other to new techniques or ways of making art and/or comics.
This exhibition is the result. From gelli printing to painting with razor blades to a non-chronological jam comic, we’ll be showing the best results of these workshops.
ARTISTS: Eileen Laurie, Saskia Gullstrand, Oskar Aspman, Caroline Ulvros, Henrik Rogowski, Kinga Dukaj, Mattias Elftorp
On February 25 at 18-21 (or whenever we’re finished), at Poeten på hörnet (Södra Förstadsgatan 65B, Malmö), CBK, Wormgod and Tusen Serier invite you to a one day release event for Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy & Vårdfällan! A double book release with exhibition and book talks!
There will be a small exhibition of prints from Piracy is Liberation. There will be wine. The books will be presented, with a reading from Vårdfällan. The books will be there, the authors will be signing, it’ll be great!
Welcome!
Both books are available for order now, from Hybriden and other places (Adlibris, Bokus, etc).
Piracy 012 is something I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It ended up as a 212 page examination of a City gearing up for war. It’s the 12th book of the series but don’t worry if you haven’t read the first 11. There’s a story so far section, and the entire series is also available from Hybriden.
Vårdfällan was written by Raquel Lozano, with cover and editing by me. Set in Malmö, it’s a scathing depiction of life as a worker in the health care business.
Here are a couple of sample pages from Piracy, which may or may not be part of the exhibition:
It’s getting harder and harder to be visible in social media, so feel free to help us by inviting anyone you know who might be interested! Thanks!
I know I’m late, but really, who cares? The past isn’t going anywhere. Games I played in 2022:
I finally felt the time was right to play Cyberpunk 2077 after they released updates that seemed to make it playable, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were some bugs, sure, but no more than any other game of that magnitude, and the game looks so beautiful that any such indiscretions are forgivable. So enough about that.
My first play-through was as a female Street Kid and I more or less finished it at 100%, having done all available side quests, romanced all lesbian and male hetero NPCs (I’ll do the gay and straight female ones on my next run as a male Nomad), got all the vehicles, apartments etc and most of the endings. After the Nomad I’ll do a Corpo run as well, and I’ll probably keep mostly staying away from fast travel al the way through. I just enjoy moving around in that world too much. They’ve built a Night City that has its own feel in architecture, clothes, weather, social interactions, music, everything. Maybe not a place you’d like to live in real life, but as escapism, I just never got tired of it and it’s one of the games I’ve spent the most time in.
I modeled my Nomad after Technograph (of Piracy is Liberation).Technograph
I guess it’s no big surprise that cyberpunk is a genre that appeals to me, and this is a very good representative of the genre, both in aesthetics and themes. The genre automatically lends itself so easily to satirizing the world we live in now, because it’s basically the same; a world run by corporations, with huge divides between rich and poor whan it comes to access to health care, housing, quality of life, where politicians may talk smooth but are most probably corrupt, where ads are intrusive and the media is skewed to uphold the status quo, where cops are just one more gang but more well-equipped and so on. It’s just seen from a slightly different perspective since the original roleplaying game, Cyberpunk 2020, is from the 1980s which makes this an alternate timeline where the CCCP is still a thing (which doesn’t make much of a difference). Normal life under Capitalism, only a bit more intensely so. So when CD Project Red say that Cyberpunk 2077 is apolitical, they probably just mean it’s not about party politics, because the anticapitalism is definitely there. And yes, there is an irony in a commercial product that comes with anticapitalist messages, but what else is new? Are we supposed to only make pro-capitalist content just because we live in that system?
They also released the animated Netflix series Edgerunners and a bunch of comics, all very high quality. I’m always a bit sceptical to this kind of out-branching because it’s often just a cash grab, but the side material to Cyberpunk 2077 is all good. Both Edgerunners and the comics they’ve made (Your Voice, Trauma Team, Where’s Johnny, Big City Dreams, with more coming in 2023) explore the world from varying perspectives, going into some details that are only hinted at in the game.
There was a sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, called Horizon Forbidden West. It’s still a good game, but it felt like it had lost something that the first one had. Not sure what, but it could be that there was too much to do in the open world that didn’t feel as meaningful? The environments weren’t as varied, the story wasn’t as gripping. Or maybe we’re just spoiled now with great games to compare it with?
Elden Ring, for example, which I’ve finished twice by now. Not sure what I can say about this game that others haven’t already. It’s a great game, the biggest yet from From Software, with that same feel to it that most of their games have had since Demon’s Souls. The thing that mostly sets Elden Ring apart is its accessibility to new players who may not have otherwise tried a Soulslike. There are so many different play styles available, and you can easily lower the difficulty by grinding until you’ve raised your stats enough to have a much easier time with the boss fights. Or using magic. Or using spirit ashes.
And it’s beautiful and the stories are sad and the fights are good and usually pretty well-balanced and the lore is big and interesting once you’ve managed to get more of the big picture and can actually understand what the intro is talking about.
And then they re-released The Last Of Us and I played it again and then the TV series came and as I write this we’re 4 episodes in and it’s a great companion piece to the original story. They kept the important parts and expanded on other parts in just the right way to enhance the watching experience. Like that little scene where Tess put her arm around a sleeping Joel, which held much more significance for gamers because that small detail said something about their relationship that we didn’t get to see before. And everyone is watching it and I can’t wait for the second season where everything will get so much more dramatic, and does this mean that the third game will have to come out before a third season of the show?
This feels like as good an excuse as any to show these drawings again…
Ellie from the games (part II, where she’s a bit older)A clickerAbby, from part II
Sooner or later I’ll get around to making some more posts about 2022; what I watched, what I read and what I did. For anyone who’s interested and for myself, to help me remember things…
I’m part of (and organizing) an exhibition this Saturday!
Tusen Serier presents: (ANTI)RACISM An exhibition with comics about racism.
Place: Fish Tank Gallery / Biograf Panora (Friisgatan 19D, Malmö).
Opening: Jan 21, from 18 until the start of the last movie for the evening.
The exhibition lasts until Feb 19.
Long ago, European countries propagated the notion of white supremacy, of how other races would inevitably perish to make room for the Western European peoples. Today, race is mostly not talked about in that way, but the same notions live on and thrive in many circles, even if expressed in other ways. There is talk of culture, religion and criminality, but there is always an implied image of who has an obvious right to a space and who must always justify their existence, be grateful, obedient and assimilated. Racism is not just about how we look at each other on the streets or at work, but also about how our lives are concretely affected by legislation around migration, discrimination, behavior and culture.
In this exhibition, we showcase comics that look at the phenomenon of racism from different angles. Personal experiences are mixed with theoretical reasoning and visual interpretations.
Participating artists: Ana Biscaia | Julia Nascimento | Felipe Kolb Bernardes | Bekim Gaši & Mauritz Tistelö | Jorge Varas Varilla | Mattias Elftorp
During the opening, you’ll be able to find our latest books, such as Vårdfällan (Raquel Lozano), Mapuche (Jorge Varas Varilla – new 4-language edition!) and Fem Papperslösa Kvinnors Historier (Amalia Alvarez – third edition!) from Tusen Serier, latest issues of CBA, from CBK, and my new Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy (not officially released until Feb 15)…
The exhibition is organized by Tusen Serier in cooperation with Fish Tank Gallery / Biograf Panora, with support from Malmö Kulturnämnd.
PRE-RELEASE of 2 new books from Tusen Serier and CBK/Wormgod! These books are only available at Hybriden until Jan 1, 2023. After that they will be taken down from the site until the official release in early 2023 (Jan/Feb)!!!
So take this chance to be among the first to get Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy and Vårdfällan (Raquel Lozano)!
Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy by Mattias Elftorp
Terror strikes the City, and Pirate seems to be the terrorist! Or is this finally the start of the revolution? As the City is gearing up for war, two girls walk its streets looking for action and trying to figure out what actually happened. How will our anarchist heroes deal with this situation as the equivalent to nationalist tendencies grip the population? What happens in a City where war has been an unknown concept, as its billboards are filling up with WANTED posters and military propaganda and the army recruitment centers are opening up for business? Who is the enemy?
10 year in the making, this 12th book in the Piracy is Liberation series finally takes us back to the City for 212 pages of a brand new story about a society on the brink of war.
Language: English
Page count: 212
Book type: graphic novel, softcover
Price: 150:- sek ORDER (contact CBK about review copies!)
Vårdfällan by Raquel Lozano
Alejandra vill egentligen wallraffa, men efter en tids uppehåll är hon nu tillbaka som vårdbiträde inom hemtjänsten. För att klara av sin vardag med duschar, blöjbyten och läggningar varvar hon jobbet med en ny hobby, även om den kanske inte är helt laglig.
Vårdfällan is Raquel Lozano’s debut novel. With Malmö as backdrop, she depicts the life of a young worker, and her struggle to survive an increasingly cold work climate.
Language: Swedish
Page count: 176
Book type: novel, pocket/softcover
Price: 100:- sek ORDER (contact Tusen Serier about review copies!)
Mapuche by Jorge Varas Varilla is now available in a new, quadrilingual edition (Mapudungun/Spanish, with subtitles in English/Swedish) (which I translated).
Five Stories About Undocumented Women by Amalia Alvarez has been hard to find for a while, but is now here in a 3rd edition, with new paper stock and still in 3 languages (Spanish/Swedish/English) (which I translated).
I made the cover for Vårdfällan, the debut novel by Raquel Lozano, published by Tusen Serier.
The official release will be in early 2023, but it’ll be available in a special pre-release deal at Hybriden already now in December. Stay tuned!
Alejandra vill egentligen wallraffa, men efter en tids uppehåll är hon nu tillbaka som vårdbiträde inom hemtjänsten. För att klara av sin vardag med duschar, blöjbyten och läggningar varvar hon jobbet med en ny hobby, även om den kanske inte är helt laglig.
Vårdfällan är Raquel Lozanos debutroman. Med Malmö som bakgrund skildrar hon en ung arbetares vardag och hennes kamp för att överleva ett allt kallare arbetsklimat.
As usual, Asylgruppen i Malmö are publishing their calendar for the next year, and as usual, I made something for it. The theme this time was dreams. They sell these as a way to raise money for what they do, which is help undocumented/asylumseekers in different ways, so it’s a good thing to support!
You can get it from Asylgruppen by sending your
– name
– address
– amount of which calendar
to: asylkalendern [@] gmail [.] com
I made a one-page Arg Kanin story for the week-based calendar. Here’s a panel from it:
Translation:
-You mean where the borders are open and nations dismantled?
-Sure, why not? They’re outdated concepts, anyway.
I also made this image for the month-based calendar. Less political content, but I still liked how it turned out (EDIT: this one didn’t make it into the actual calendar, but I liked how it turned out, so showing it here anyway)):
Stories are a way to escape reality, but also a way to communicate and to help us understand the world around us. These are stories on different subjects, told with different voices in different ways by 13 creators from 7 countries.
Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy by Mattias Elftorp
Vårdfällan by Raquel Lozano
