Piracy 005-008 digital comics!

I recently put up another batch of digital Piracy is Liberation books for download at Hybriden.

Sometime within a year I plan to also make book 009-011 available like this, and a year after that books 012-013. In other updates, I’ve finished the first few pages of Piracy is Liberation 013: War and Pieces, which will hopefully be out by the end of this year, possibly beginning of 2024. But more on that later…

What happens when the rules have suddenly changed and the police can do nothing but watch as people party in the streets? What happens when even the rules of reality can be broken? One section of the City where Capitalism is the only religion has been freed from the influence of landlords and indoctrinating television, but when the authorities come back with a vengeance to evict the Free Section, expect violence.
Meanwhile, something is moving on the net. Some kind of entities seem to be interfering with its users. What are these Spiders and how will they affect the plans for the Information Upgrade that the anarchists are planning?
Also in this collection:
Can Technograph change the past through timetravel?
And introducing Ming, the open source web-based sentient being.
Political theory, filtered through autobiography masked as fiction, in the form of cyberpunk postapocalypse.
320 pgs
Name your price (minimum 72 sek)

This is a collection of four more books of the Piracy is Liberation series, in digital versions based on the original publications. They are downloadable as a CBR file, a classic format for filesharing comics. You can open it in various comics reader apps, or just a regular unZIP or unRAR app.
Digital comics should be much cheaper than paper books, so it’s a “name your price” deal, with a minimum price based on page count.


Digital download bundle of books 001-004 is of course also still available:

Cyberpunk stories in a future where Capitalism is the only religion, where only sinners disobey and nobody loves a sinner. Pirate is one of those sinners, downloading illegal information straight into his mind to get high. When he gets caught while trying to free Information, he has to use all his skills as a 4-dimensional hacker to break them out of digital prison.
One year later, he’s part of a group trying to free sections of the City from the clutches of brainwashing television, riot cops and the Priests and Masters who control everything.
Meanwhile, Erica toils away as a Slave in the factory. But what’s the dark secret behind the cogs and wheels and levers of her machine? What hides in the desert that no one knows exists? And what of the Drivers and their upcoming strike?
Political theory, filtered through autobiography masked as fiction, in the form of cyberpunk postapocalypse.
266 pgs
Name your price (minimum 60 sek)

 

 

Kindred review (Octavia E Butler)

Ok, so, Octavia E Butler… Lately I’ve been reading her Patternist series, and now I’m reading Kindred and it’s touching me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. The other night when I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep because of anxiety over what was going to happen with one of the characters (I won’t spoil anything, but I had stopped reading at page 185 of the 2023 Headline edition, for anyone who knows). And now I just came out of a 2 hour bath because I couldn’t figure out how to stop reading it to get out of the tub. I have 20 pages left, and fuck Disney+ completely if their adaptation isn’t a good one!

The above was written a few days ago. I’ve since finished the book and seen [enough of] the TV version and here’s what I think:

They’ve made some weird choices.

Right from the start, with the choice of the opening scene, it feels like they were going to set this up as a long-running series instead of the finished story it should have been. That feeling seems to have been correct, considering the first season is an unfinished story of 8 episodes, which would have continued if it hadn’t been cancelled.

I’m trying not to spoil anything of the book (I don’t care as much about the TV series), so I won’t go into details, but…

Hang on. My comments on the TV series are kind of meant for people who read the book and are trying to decide if they should try the TV version, but let me be a bit user-friendly and start by introducing the story a little bit.

It’s a time-travel story. 26-year-old Dana goes back in time to save the life of Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner. It gets complicated since Dana is black and Rufus’ family owns slaves and black people need paperwork to prove they’re not slaves. Dana’s husband is a bit older and white and also goes back with her some of the time. I’m not even sure I’m going to say much more about the story itself, you should just read it, but as you can imagine it deals with a lot of complications. It has a clear perspective on power-relations while at the same time blaming the times rather than necessarily the people who live in them. By which I mean that all the characters in the book are believable and have motivations that can be understood (if not sympathized with), even when they act monstrously. The book also does something that feels far too unique, which is treating everyone, from slaves to slave-holders, as people. It feels like most of the time when this period of US history is depicted, black people are portrayed as victims only, with little to no agency. Or their agency is almost exclusively defined in relation to white people (actually, don’t quote me on this. I haven’t done any thorough research with statistics or anything. It’s more of a feeling I got when reading Kindred, that this was something that’s often been missed). And, as I mentioned in the beginning, Butler has a way with storytelling that I have a hard time defining with any word other than captivating.

So with that said, here are some more thoughts on the TV series:

Some of the choices I can kind of see how they could have made them work. Like having Dana be an aspiring TV writer rather than a novelist. Having her want to write things like he favorite show Dynasty feels a bit infantilizing, however. It could have made sense for an adaptation. If done right. But no.

Some were just bad choices, probably meant to make things more exciting but instead rendering some important points in the book impossible to transfer to the screen. For example, Kevin isn’t her husband and fellow novelist, but some musician guy she just started dating, by which I mean that their first date ends with both of them visiting Maryland of 1815. And there are some discussions they have in the book about their experiences, which really need to be between two people who have a long-standing relationship, not two persons who just met and hardly know each other. But I guess it’s supposed to be more exciting if they can get to know each other under these extreme circumstances? Or maybe it’d be too controversial to have an interracial married couple in a 2022 TV series (but not a 1979 book)?

They’ve preserved some scenes from the book, but put them in a weird order in a way that takes away what could have been both subtle and/or powerful scenes. Instead we get watered-down versions.

I read a review that said the TV series delt gratuitous in its depictions of the brutality of slavery, with increasing degrees of torture in the episodes I haven’t seen. This also feels wrong to me, because the book managed to get the wrongness of slavery across even without a constant barrage of black people being whipped. That part of it makes it much worse, of course, but it’s also important to remember that even the more benign slaveholders were part of a system that absolutely needed to be abolished.

In general, it kind of felt a bit dumbed-down, which is always a bad sign. I saw the first two episodes (almost). Then I jumped to the 8th to see if it seemed to get better. It didn’t. It’s just as well that it got cancelled, especially if it means someone else can have a proper go at making an adaptation.


Having written a version of the above as a comment on facebook, the app decided to die on me and it blinked what I’d written out of existence. I’m going to end this review of the TV series with the same thing I decided to write in my comment instead:

Stay away from it, it failed.
But also: read the book, for fuck’s sake!

Magasinet Konkret

There’s a new web-based Swedish news/culture mag: Magasinet Konkret

Remember when alternative media used to mean news and articles written from more of a leftist perspective compared to the mainly liberal mainstream news channels? When “liberal” meant center-leaning right-wing (which it still is even though the rest of the right are now trying to paint liberal as some kind of extreme left, inspired by the political climate in the US which is a two-party/one-ideology system)? Before alternative media as a concept was taken over and almost dominated by the far right (nationalist/conservative/racist etc) who are doing their best to paint the mainstream as dominated by extreme leftism, even though it’s still dominated by the same liberalism as before?

Anyway. Magasinet Konkret is trying to compensate by being a space for a bit more of those leftist perspectives that are so rare these days.

And I’m part of it! Just one illustration/text so far, but there will be more. Follow this link to see my contributions!

Here’s the illustration:

CBA vol 60 is here!

CBA vol 60: Stories just came from the printer!

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].

96 pages of international comics!

Get it from the Hybriden webshop!
This is also a good time to start a subscription.

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 in Brand #1/2023

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.

You can buy it here.

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.

Unused illustration

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:

Paper Echoes exhibition

My next exhibition:
PAPER ECHOES

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

 

This project has support from Malmö Kulturnämnd.

RELEASE EVENT: Piracy is Liberation 012 & Vårdfällan

It’s finally out!

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!

You can read about both books here.

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).

ORDER Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy
ORDER Vårdfällan

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!

 

What I did in 2022: games+

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 clicker
Abby, 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…

This Saturday: (Anti)rasism exhibition!

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.

Facebook event

Here’s a sneak peak at my contribution, another Angry Animal story (at some point I’ll probably show the whole thing here, with translation):  

To be continued at the exhibition…