Out now: CBA vol 59

CBA vol 59: Aloneliness is here!

We finish off with the last issue of 2022. For once, the last issue of the year actually came out BEFORE the year is over. Celebrate this achievement with us by enjoying these comics about ALONELINESS:

In a world where everyone seems to be moving into the forced crowd that is the City (more than 50% of the entire population of earth live on the 2% surface that is urbanized, in Sweden the rate is 85%). The epidemic of loneliness is skyrocketing alongside the skyscrapers, we sit inside our empty little apartments with our empty little hearts. The mortality rate of being lonely rivaling those of smoking too much. We are but morals and the City is our graveyard it seems.

And one bad thing isn’t enough, because at the same time a new phenomenon is being researched. Aloneliness is the negative feelings that arise from NOT spending enough time alone. In a city, in a crowd there is never time to slow down, to contemplate, to ponder and to recover. Stress and its manufactured hellhole well-being-spa-solutions is in itself another epidemic.

SO this issue of CBA invites you to explore this longing to be more alone. These comics want to take you to your favourite place of solitude, show you moments of solitary relaxation, tell you the tale of nostalgia-ridden woodlands, a sunlit forest glade, the forgotten refuge on a rooftop in a crowded city.

Where do you go to, my lovely
When you’re alone in your bed?

Comics by: Gunnar Krantz [SE], Ole Comoll [DK], Julia Nascimento [BR/SE], Korina Hunjak [HR], AnnaKarin Fridh [SE], Maria van Driel [NL], Solo & Oz & AI [IN], Julia Magnusson [SE], Manasee Jog [AU], Tommi Musturi [FI], Anamarija Kvas [HR], Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE/SE], Ebba G. Ågren [SE], Stefan Petrini [SE].
Cover by: Oskar Aspman [SE], Pernille Sys Hansen [DK] (back cover).
Texts & illustrations & main editor: Oskar Aspman [SE].

120 pages of international comics!

Get it from the Hybriden webshop!

 

Coming soon: Piracy is Liberation 012

The first 6 books of Mattias Elftorp‘s Piracy is Liberation were published by CBK before the cyberpunk postapocalypse series moved over to Wormgod. With Piracy is Liberation book 012: Outer Enemy, it’s back with us again, published in collaboration with Wormgod. 212 pages starts off an all-new story arc that continues where it left off in book 011 which came out back in 2012.

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?

Don’t worry if you haven’t read the first books. Book 012 is a good place to jump into it, with a story so far section that tells you in short what you need to know. And if you want to get into the back story to get the full experience, we have all the back issues and collections at Hybriden for a good price!

The official release will be early in 2023, but we’ll figure out some excuse to offer a sneaky pre-release sale of it already in December of 2022.

Out now: CBA vol 58

CBA vol 58: Modern Glossolalia or the Erosion of Meaning is here!

This issue was kind of a response to various election campaigns (not least the Swedish one) where the very meaning of words seem to have been a casualty of populist rhetoric in the hunt for votes. Freely interpreted by our comic creators, as usual.

How do we talk when words that used to mean certain things have become so vague that they can be freely appropriated by anyone, for any purpose? And what’s up with the currently so prevalent flirting with war, fascism and the dehumanization of anyone who doesn’t fit into the unspoken and conveniently unspecified national identity?
Objective truth (if there ever was such a thing) and even language itself seems to be sacrificed on the altar of rhetoric and propaganda.
What are the consequences when you can string any random, misspelled words together and people will make their own connections and decide to aggressively either agree or disagree, wholeheartedly even though the sentence actually makes no sense?

Comics by: Tom Mortimer [UK], Daniela Filippin [IT], Jesper Hellvik [DK], Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE/SE], Radovan Popović [RS], Aleksandar Opačić [RS], Jelle Kindt [BE], Gareth A Hopkins [UK], Mattias Elftorp [SE], Jean Jacques Tachdjian [FR], Helga Gorshe [RU], Miguel Santos [AO/PT], Leviathan [SE], Aiden Kvarnström [SE].
Texts by: Ainur Elmgren [SE/FI], Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Illustrations by: Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Cover & main editor: Mattias Elftorp [SE].

104 pages of international comics!

Get it from the Hybriden webshop!

 

Call for submissions – Stories for CBA vol 60

Call for submissions for:
CBA vol 60
Main Editor: Mattias Elftorp
Deadline: February 1

For this volume of CBA, we have no theme planned, we just want stories. Maybe we’ll set a theme after the deadline if we can find words to describe the comics we get, maybe we’ll leave it with no title. In any case, send us your comics and we’ll see what happens!

And don’t forget, we also want text articles (with or without illustrations)! If you’ve followed CBA the last few years (which of course you have, why wouldn’t you?), you can probably figure out what kind of material we’re after, even if it’s for an open theme this time.

Good luck, and we look forward to your submissions!

—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: 20 x 26 cm
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 bio*, 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!
Normally, we also organize a release exhibition showcasing sample pages from the new issue. Please let us know if you’re NOT ok with us using your works for that purpose. It’s part of our marketing and it usually takes place in a physical exhibition space, although these days we’re more likely to make a digital exhibition online at the Hybriden website.

*Your bio should be approximately 500-700 characters in length. It should read more as an entertaining and informative bio and less as a CV. What you want to say about yourself is up to you, but it’s generally more interesting for our readers to know about your interests, who you are and what else you’ve published rather than where you’ve studied. We may edit it if needed to fit our format.
Send comics, questions, etc to: submissions(a)cbkcomics(.)com


Unfortunately we cannot guarantee you any payment for participating (although these last few years we’ve had more financing so we have been able to pay at least something, i.e. when all the expenses have been paid we will share the surplus of the financial support we receive for CBA amongst the participants). If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can promise at this date. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material will stay in your hands.

Also note that we are constantly overworked and there’s a great risk that we won’t get in touch in case your submission doesn’t make it into the current volume (we WILL, however, let you know if we do publish your submission, and if you don’t get into this one we might keep your comic for a future issue). We are sorry for this and will try to catch up as soon as things clear up (optimistically in 2025)…


Feel free to share this call for submissions to any comics creator you think would be interested!

Digital exhibition: WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW (CBA vol 54|55)

CBK presents:
WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW
A new digital exhibitions to celebrate the release of CBA vol 54|55!

Where: hybriden.se
When: The exhibition starts Friday Sep 16 at 17:00
and will stay active for the foreseeable future (or at least until Nov 30).

Have you ever had to just stop what you’re doing and go: “Wait, is this a dream?”
When the unknown starts bleeding into reality and you are forced to question your sanity, if just a little bit.
You know the sort of thing that happens in dreams that makes you sure it’s just a dream? How do you cope when it happens in the waking world?

Artists: Kinga Dukaj [SE], Knut Larsson [SE], Oskar Aspman [SE], Radovan Popović [RS], Aleksandar Opačić [RS], Marcel Ruijters [NL], Saskia Gullstrand [SE], Aiden Kvarnström [SE], Katie Handley [UK], Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE/SE], Susanne Johansson [SE], Korina Hunjak [HR], Mattias Elftorp [SE], Ollie Severin [SE], Sid Church [CA], Henrik Rogowski [SE], David Lasky [US].
Exhibition by: Kinga Dukaj.

Go HERE to see the exhibition.
CBA vol 54|55: WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW and other books can be ordered from the Hybriden webshop.

This exhibition is presented with support from

 


Edit:

We’d like to say a few words about one of the comic creators in CBA vol 54|55, Ollie Severin.
We recently heard about their untimely passing due to illness and we are heartbroken. We would like to send our deepest sympathy and sincerest condolences to their family and all their friends and comics colleagues.


Call for submissions – CBA vol 59: ALONELINESS

Call for submissions for:
CBA vol 59: Aloneliness
Main Editor: Oskar Aspman
Deadline: October 1

In a world where everyone seems to be moving into the forced crowd that is the City (more than 50% of the entire population of earth live on the 2% surface that is urbanized, in Sweden the rate is 85%). The epidemic of loneliness is skyrocketing alongside the skyscrapers, we sit inside our empty little apartments with our empty little hearts. The mortality rate of being lonely rivaling those of smoking too much. We are but morals and the City is our graveyard it seems.

And one bad thing isn’t enough, because at the same time a new phenomenon is being researched. Aloneliness is the negative feelings that arise from NOT spending enough time alone. In a city, in a crowd there is never time to slow down, to contemplate, to ponder and to recover. Stress and its manufactured hellhole well-being-spa-solutions is in itself another epidemic.

SO this issue of CBA invites you to explore this longing to be more alone. Take us to your favourite place of solitude. Show us moments of solitary relaxation. Tell us the tale of nosthalgia-ridden woodlands, a sunlit forest glade, the forgotten refuge on a rooftop in a crowded city.

Where do you go to, my lovely
When you’re alone in your bed?

—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: 20 x 26 cm
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 bio*, 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!
Normally, we also organize a release exhibition showcasing sample pages from the new issue. Please let us know if you’re NOT ok with us using your works for that purpose. It’s part of our marketing and it usually takes place in a physical exhibition space, although these days we’re more likely to make a digital exhibition online at the Hybriden website.

*Your bio should be approximately 500-700 characters in length. It should read more as an entertaining and informative bio and less as a CV. What you want to say about yourself is up to you, but it’s generally more interesting for our readers to know about your interests, who you are and what else you’ve published rather than where you’ve studied. We may edit it if needed to fit our format.
Send comics, questions, etc to: submissions(a)cbkcomics(.)com


Unfortunately we cannot guarantee you any payment for participating (although these last few years we’ve had more financing so we have been able to pay at least something, i.e. when all the expenses have been paid we will share the surplus amongst the participants). If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can promise at this date. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material will stay in your hands.

Also note that we are constantly overworked and there’s a great risk that we won’t get in touch in case your submission doesn’t make it into the current volume (we WILL, however, let you know if we do publish your submission, and if you don’t get into this one we might keep your comic for a future issue). We are sorry for this and will try to catch up as soon as things clear up (optimistically in 2025)…


Feel free to invite people to the Facebook event or share this call for submissions blogpost!

Out now: CBA vol 54|55 & 56|57

Two massive new double issues of CBA just came from the printer:
CBA vol 54|55: Was it a car or a cat i saW
and
CBA vol 56|57: UNCOMICS

ORDER HERE (Hybriden)

180 pages each, and filled with comics (and uncomics) from an international assortment of creators. All printed on a shiny new paper stock that really makes both colors and blacks look great!

CBA vol 54|55: Was it a car or a cat i saW

Have you ever had to just stop what you’re doing and go: “Wait, is this a dream?”
When the unknown starts bleeding into reality and you are forced to question your sanity, if just a little bit.
You know the sort of thing that happens in dreams that makes you sure it’s just a dream? How do you cope when it happens in the waking world?

ISBN: 978-91-87825-28-6

Comics by:
Kinga Dukaj [SE], Knut Larsson [SE], Oskar Aspman [SE], Radovan Popović [RS], Aleksandar Opačić [RS], Marcel Ruijters [NL], Saskia Gullstrand [SE], Aiden Kvarnström [SE], Katie Handley [UK], Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE/SE], Susanne Johansson [SE], Korina Hunjak [HR], Mattias Elftorp [SE], Ollie Severin [SE], Sid Church [CA], Henrik Rogowski [SE], David Lasky [US]

Texts & illustrations:
Kinga Dukaj [SE], Mattias Elftorp [SE]

Cover & main editor:
Kinga Dukaj [SE]


Edit:

We’d like to say a few words about one of the comic creators in CBA vol 54|55, Ollie Severin.
We recently heard about their untimely passing due to illness and we are heartbroken. We would like to send our deepest sympathy and sincerest condolences to their family and all their friends and comics colleagues.


 

 

CBA vol 56|57: UNCOMICS

Uncomics – an artistic field where contemporary art and comics inform each other.
Where the absence of sequence encourages the reader to investigate the picture plane(s) in any direction and order, becoming an active co-creator in the process.
A space outside the tedious limitations of story, where images both abstract and suggestive interact.
Comics, at last, as a visual art form.

ISBN: 978-91-87825-29-3

Comics by:
Tym Godek [US], Kimball Anderson [US], Warren Craghead III [US], Simon Russell [UK], Anastasia Hiorns [UK], Gareth A Hopkins [UK], Tana Oshima [JP/ES], Rosaire Appel [US], allison anne [US], William Lillstjärna [SE], Louis Deux [US], Mark Badger [US], Miika Nyyssönen [FI], Shaun Gardiner [UK], Laurel Lynn Leake [US], Churchdoor Lounger [US], Mattias Elftorp [SE]

Texts, illustrations & main editor:
Allan Haverholm [DK/SE]

Cover:
Jeremy P. Bushnell [US]

2x exhibition: UNCOMICS & [PLACEHOLDER]

CBK presents:
[PLACEHOLDER] & UNCOMICS
Double release exhibition for the new CBA vol 53 & CBA vol 56|57!

Where: Panora/Fish Tank Gallery
When: The exhibition starts Thursday June 9 at 19:00
and will stay up until the middle of August (possibly a bit longer)

Two exhibitions at once, with international comics art to celebrate the release of two new volumes of CBA! From comics about the special situation brought by the pandemic to comics that break up their own form to such a level that they begin to question what comics as an art form is.

At the opening on June 9 at 19, you can witness a live painting/music performance with Grønvall.Haverholm.

Exhibition: [PLACEHOLDER] (CBA vol 53)
The pandemic was supposed to have a deadline, most of us agreed on a year but it lasted much longer. What happens when the world is paused for an indefinite time? What does this do to our experience of our existence? How do we replace our routines? We’re waiting, and in our wait, we imitate the “real” we hope will soon return. Like placeholders in our own lives.
Available now! Buy it here
Participating artists: Adrián A. Astorgano, Aiden Kvarnström, Felipe Kolb Bernardes, Ivana Filipovic, Julia Nascimento, Kinga Dukaj, Matt Carr, Mattias Elftorp, Nataniel E, Saskia Gullstrand, Tom Mortimer

Exhibition: UNCOMICS (CBA vol 56|57)
Abstract art emerged in the early 20th century as a reaction to the complexities and — just as often — atrocities of modern society. Meanwhile, embedded in the entertainment industry, comics evolved primarily in terms of disposable spectacle or literary ambition; stylized pictures in service of story.
Comics scholar Jan Baetens noted a decade ago that narrative “melts in the air when [abstraction] walks in”. Living in a time of hyperlinked, multi-threaded and immersive narrative, we suggest instead that abstraction opens up to non-linear, ambiguous understandings of comics. Understandings so contradictory in terms that we need a new phrase to describe them — we give you: uncomics.
An artistic field where contemporary art and comics inform each other. Where the absence of sequence encourages the reader to investigate the picture plane(s) in any direction and order, becoming an active co-creator in the process. A space outside the tedious limitations of story where images both abstract and suggestive interact. Comics, at last, as a visual art form.
Available now! Buy it here
Participating artists: allison anne, Anastasia Hiorns, Churchdoor Lounger, Gareth A Hopkins, Jeremy P. Bushnell, Kimball Anderson, Laurel Lynn Leake, Louis Deux, Mark Badger, Mattias Elftorp, Miika Nyyssönen, Rosaire Appel, Shaun Gardiner, Simon Russell, Tana Oshima, Tym Godek, Warren Craghead III, William Lillstjärna

Performance: Grønvall.Haverholm
Grønvall.Haverholm is an improvisational, crossover-media act combining live music and drawing with appropriate amplification – distortion and back projection.
Allan Grønvall (bass/guitars) has a varied musical background in the Danish metal underground of the 90s. In Grønvall.Haverholm he’s taken the DIY-mentality and lo-fi focus from back then to a new level.
Allan Haverholm (charcoal/paints) is a visual artist and editor. Moving from graphic novels via musical expressions in comics onto his current, abstract expressionist work, his work remains deeply moored in comics.
Giving concerts since early 2015, the duo have joined their individual fortés in avant-garde comics and extreme music into a unique, creative performance.

Panora
Grønvall.Haverholm
Order CBK books from Hybriden

Facebook event

This double exhibition is produced with support from Malmö Kulturnämnd.

PHOTOS

By Andrés Díaz García

By Allan Haverholm:

By Julia Nascimento:

Call for submissions – CBA vol 58: MODERN GLOSSOLALIA – THE EROSION OF MEANING

Call for submissions for:
CBA vol 58: MODERN GLOSSOLALIA – THE EROSION OF MEANING
Main Editor: Mattias Elftorp
Deadline: Jun 30

Edit, just before the original deadline:
EXTENDED DEADLINE! It is now June 30!
I also changed the theme title! It is now Modern Glossolalia, instead of Political Glossolalia. The reason is that I think the word “political” in this context feels somehow superficial and too specific. Because everything is political, but using the word seems to fence in the potentials of the theme. The theme description and intent remain the same.
And I changed the image while I was at it.
/Mattias

How do we talk when words that used to mean certain things have become so vague that they can be freely appropriated by anyone, for any purpose? And what’s up with the currently so prevalent flirting with war, fascism and the dehumanization of anyone who doesn’t fit into the unspoken and conveniently unspecified national identity?
Objective truth (if there ever was such a thing) and even language itself seems to be sacrificed on the altar of rhetoric and propaganda.
What are the consequences when you can string any random, misspelled words together and people will make their own connections and decide to aggressively either agree or disagree, wholeheartedly even though the sentence actually makes no sense?

Bring your own spin on this. From alternate history to experiments with glossolalia to explorations of nationalism of the illiterate, what take is something only you would think of?

 

—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: 20 x 26 cm
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 bio*, 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!
Normally, we also organize a release exhibition showcasing sample pages from the new issue. Please let us know if you’re NOT ok with us using your works for that purpose. It’s part of our marketing and it usually takes place in a physical exhibition space, although these days we’re more likely to make a digital exhibition online at the Hybriden website.

*Your bio should be approximately 500-700 characters in length. It should read more as an entertaining and informative bio and less as a CV. What you want to say about yourself is up to you, but it’s generally more interesting for our readers to know about your interests, who you are and what else you’ve published rather than where you’ve studied. We may edit it if needed to fit our format.
Send comics, questions, etc to: submissions(a)cbkcomics(.)com


Unfortunately we cannot guarantee you any payment for participating (although these last few years we’ve had more financing so we have been able to pay at least something, i.e. when all the expenses have been paid we will share the surplus amongst the participants). If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can promise at this date. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material will stay in your hands.

Also note that we are constantly overworked and there’s a great risk that we won’t get in touch in case your submission doesn’t make it into the current volume (we WILL, however, let you know if we do publish your submission, and if you don’t get into this one we might keep your comic for a future issue). We are sorry for this and will try to catch up as soon as things clear up (optimistically in 2025)…


Feel free to invite people to the Facebook event or share this call for submissions blogpost!

The old call for submission image in case anyone was missing it…