Call for submissions – CBA vol 61: Liminal Space

Call for submissions for:
CBA vol 61: Liminal Space
Main editor: Oskar Aspman
Deadline: June 15

Liminal space, a concept that deconstructs the notion of fixed boundaries and absolute realities. It is a space that challenges the dualities of self and other, inside and outside, past and future.
A bridge to cross, a door to open.
A place to question and transcend

Liminality has always been a part of humanity. Maybe not as a state of transition but rather as a state of constant becoming. It is a space that disrupts the linearity of time and questions the stability of identity. That area of blurred boundaries is very much an integral part of the creative process for us as humans and artists.
A realm of ambiguity.
A pause in time, a shift in state.
A realm of potentiality.
Where form and meaning await

Here (or in there) we can push the boundaries of the unexpected. With comics, the idea of the liminal space can be used to craft stories and narratives that exist between different realms of reality.

To volume 61 of CBA we invite artists, to create and interpret Liminal Spaces and to engage with and contemplate their own experiences of blurred boundaries and change. A journey to the unknown into a space that invites us to question the very foundations of our understanding of the world and ourselves, and to embrace the multiplicity and fluidity of our existence.


—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!

Facebook event

PAPER ECHOES exhibition

CBK presents:
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

Facebook event

 

This project has support from Malmö Kulturnämnd.


CBK presenterar:
PAPER ECHOES

Var: Ateljé XX (Industrigatan 20B – ingång från gården, Malmö)
När: 4 mars (endast en dag) kl 15-22 (fika till kl 18, efter det tar vi fram vernissagevinet)

Under hösten 2022 bjöd vi in en grupp serieskapare för att vara med i ett antal workshops där vi turades om att introducera varandra för nya tekniker och sätt att göra serier och/eller konst.

I denna utställning visar vi resultatet av dessa workshops, från gelliprints till att måla med rakblad till en icke-kronologisk stafettserie.

KONSTNÄRER: Eileen Laurie, Saskia Gullstrand, Oskar Aspman, Caroline Ulvros, Henrik Rogowski, Kinga Dukaj, Mattias Elftorp

Facebook event

Detta projekt genomförs med stöd av Malmö Kulturnämnd.


PHOTOS from the exhibition opening

Oskar Aspman

Saskia Gullstrand

Caroline Ulvros (Leviathan)

Eileen Laurie

Henrik Rogowski

Henrik Rogowski

Henrik Rogowski

Non-linear jam comic by Oskar Aspman, Caroline Ulvros, Henrik Rogowski, Mattias Elftorp

Kinga Dukaj

Mattias Elftorp

 

PHOTOS from the workshops

 

 

RELEASE EVENT: Piracy is Liberation 012 & Vårdfällan

CBK presents, with Wormgod and Tusen Serier:
Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy & Vårdfällan, double book release with exhibition and book talks!

Where: Poeten på hörnet (Södra Förstadsgatan 65B, Malmö)
When: One-day event on February 25 at 18-21 (or whenever we’re finished)


This is the release event for 2 new books from CBK/Wormgod and Tusen Serier: Mattias Elftorp’s Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy and Raquel Lozano’s debut novel Vårdfällan. 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 (email us about review copies!)
ORDER Vårdfällan (email us about review copies!)


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!

 

PRE-RELEASE: Piracy is Liberation 012 & Vårdfällan

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 Vårdfällan (Raquel Lozano) and Piracy is Liberation 012: Outer Enemy (Mattias Elftorp)!

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 (email us 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 (email us about review copies!)


Also new in the webshop:

CBA vol 58: Modern Glossolalia or the Erosion of Meaning and CBA vol 59: Aloneliness, the latest issues of our international comics anthology! And from Tusen Serier:

Mapuche by Jorge Varas Varilla is now available in a new, quadrilingual edition (Mapudungun/Spanish, with subtitles in English/Swedish).

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).


 

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], Korin(a) 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], Korin(a) 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.