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], Korin(a) 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…

Call for Submissions – CBA vol 56: UNCOMICS

CBA vol 56: Uncomics
Main Editor: Allan Haverholm
DEADLINE: Feb 20

UNCOMICS
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.

For inspiration:
Follow the hashtag #uncomics on Twitter, which will be used to post inspirational material.

CBA guest editor Allan Haverholm invites you to break the mold and unmake comics. To bridge the gap between comics and modern/contemporary art. Be bold, explore and dig deep!
Allan Haverholm is a graphic artist and comics researcher, former co-editor of CBA and host of the upcoming Uncomics Podcast.


—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 presentation text* about yourself, 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, similar to what we did for CBA vol 52.

*Your presentation text 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


What we are looking for is comics which rely on artistic ambitions and a will to experiment rather than what has been done a thousand times before. We want to expand the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in the comics medium. We are looking for the same thing in texts; articles, essays, exploratory texts, etc.

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). 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 by linking to this blogpost or inviting people to the Facebook event.

CBA vol 53: PLACEHOLDER out now

CBA vol 53: Placeholder just came from the printer today!

Buy it HERE.

About the volume:
The pandemic was supposed to have a deadline, most of us agreed on a year. CBA deadlines are like the pandemic:we’re still open for submissions for the theme PLACEHOLDER. 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.

Comics by: Aiden Kvarnström [SE], Tom Mortimer [UK], Saskia Gullstrand [SE], Adrián A. Astorgano [ES], Julia Nascimento [BR/SE], Nataniel E [SE], Mattias Elftorp [SE], Matt Carr [US], Kinga Dukaj [SE], Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE/SE], Ivana Filipović [RS/CA].
Text and illustrations: Mattias Elftorp [SE].
Cover & main editor: Leviathan [SE].

The perfect book to pass these socially distanced times with while you’re waiting out a pandemic that seems determined not to let us go on with our lives.

 

Comics for CBA vol 54|55

Reminder:

CBA vol 54|55: WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW?
Main Editor: Kinga Dukaj
NEW DEADLINE: OCTOBER 31

Clarification:
This is not a theme about dreams. We’re not after dreams specifically, just that feeling you can get when you don’t know if something is real or not. A very Lynchian feeling. More Twin Peaks season 4 than the depiction of a dream.

Have you ever just had to 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?

In this theme we’ll explore the dreamy and the bizarre, the uncanny in the mundane, the creepy in the dark corners of everyday life. Magical realism with a twisted flair, comics that invoke a mystical, surreal, dreamlike state of mind, with a tinge of discomfort… Think of the movies by Lynch, for example…

Check the original post for detailed instructions.

CBA vol 50 in the Supertoon selection

CBA vol 50 was included in the official selection for the Supertoon animation & comics festival of 2021 (July 19-23).

We’re accompanied by some other CBK-related friends/artists, like Komikaze and Stripburger in the magazine selection and Radovan Popović and Igor Kordej in the book selection.

 

 

 

 

 

And of course the festival poster was made by Danijel Žeželj.

We won’t be at the festival, but a copy the book will be there!

CBA vol 50 is available at Hybriden, as is CBA subscriptions.

CBK presents:
BURNOUT
Digital release exhibition for the new CBA vol 52!

Where: hybriden.se/burnout
When: The exhibition starts Wednesday May 26 at 16:00
and will stay active for the foreseeable future
Buy the book: CBA vol 52

From hospital staff to comic creators to basically any job in the gig economy, burnout has become an increasingly normal part of everyday life for many of us since the term was getting widespread use in the late 1900s. Anyone who doesn’t have a steady income, or who is expected to do more work in less time than is reasonable, can feel it. So who or what is to blame? Could we create a situation, a systemic change, to avoid the conditions that cause burnout?
This volume of CBA explores BURNOUT. Not so much stories of depressing social realism, but rather artistic expressions of that feeling, suggestions for solutions, wishful thinking and visual abreactions. Expressions of rage rather than apathy, insurrection rather than complicity. Something to read for strength in times of austerity.

Exhibited artists:
Steve Nyberg [SE] | Mattias Elftorp [SE] | Henna Räsänen [FI] | Iso Sling Lindh [SE] | Tom Mortimer [UK] | Radovan Popović [RS] | Aleksandar Opačić [RS] | Manuel Rodriguez Navarro [DE] | Felipe Kolb Bernardes [BR/DE] | Korin(a) Hunjak [HR] | Julia Nascimento [BR] | Aiden Kvarnström [SE] | Rasmus Gran [SE]
Exhibition organized by: Mattias Elftorp with Kinga Dukaj of CBK

The exhibition is presented with support from Malmö Kulturnämnd.

Call for submissions: PLACEHOLDER (new deadline)

Once again, we’re extending the deadline for CBA vol 53: PLACEHOLDER. We know things are hard in these times, so we want to give our artists a bit more space to work. The new deadline is July 15.

The pandemic was supposed to have a deadline, most of us agreed on a year. CBA deadlines are like the pandemic:we’re still open for submissions for the theme PLACEHOLDER. 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.

Main editor: Caroline Ulvros/Leviathan

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
These are the basics for submissions. More info here.

Number of pages: We prefer comics that are about 5-30 pages, but any number is welcome.
Format: 20x26cm
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.