Transgressions

by Mattias Elftorp (writer/artist)

TRANSGRESSIONS the book is the story of a man who didn't want to be a man and a woman who turned him into something else. It is the story of these two outcasts trying to find a new life by crossing the border but get caught doing it. It is the story about their struggle to leave all rules behind. Social conventions, laws of physics as well as nations, even the most basic rules of their universe.

Contains necrophilia, zombification, gender transplants, human/animal gene splicing, fucking, human sacrifice, inhuman politics and unnatural birth. Enjoy!

Each chapter is accompanied by a corresponding track on the soundtrack by Feberdröm.

Genres: Comics

32 pages, Staple Bound

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

Has written and drawn the cyberpunk postapocalypse of Piracy is Liberation since 2001 (first collection published in 2004). Also other graphic novels like The Troll, Me & my Daddy & Zlatan, Bekele, En Andra Chans, After the Ends of the World, Transgressions, etc. Creator of the furiously political comic Arg Kanin (Angry Animals) and many short stories in various anthologies such as CBA, Novo Doba, Futuro Primitivo, Alkom’X, Workburger, Komikaze, Swedish Comic Sin, Asylkalendern and the AltCom anthology.

Active in various comics/art-related collectives/organizations:

WORMGOD
Comics/horror art collective: publishing comics, organizing art exhibitions, noise events.

CBK
Publisher of the international comics anthology CBA. Art comics, experimental comics, visually interesting narratives etc.

TUSEN SERIER
Working to open up the Swedish comics culture to readers & creators with other perspectives than the "Swedish" one. Antiracism, comics, exhibitions, workshops. Also running FANZINEVERKSTADEN, a place with resources for self-publishing comic creators in Malmö.

HYBRIDEN
Collective/network and webshop for the above.

ALTCOM
Organizer of the AltCom comics festival (2010: sex & war, 2012: no borders, 2014: postapokalyps, 2016: work, 2018: how to survive a dictatorship) and one of the organizers of Wormgod’s Trauma music festival (harsh noise, power electronics and other things to hurt your ears). Both held in Malmö, Sweden.

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I'm reviewing my own books sometimes to provide some trivia and/or personal reflections on them.

Reviews

[Mattias Elftorp]

There's a story behind this book. During the AltCom 2012: NO BORDERS comics festival / TRAUMA 2012 noise event, we were going to make a Wormgod exhibition called Transgressions. In my mind, thos title took the NO BORDERS theme and pushed it over the line. I just couldn't think of any images to live up to the title. So I had to make a book to base my artworks on. And while I was at it, why not also ask noise/industrial musician Feberdröm to make a soundtrack?

I always wanted to make a comic book with its own soundtrack.

Especially since the CD is integrated into the story.

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Using the review function here to provide som trivia/personal reflections about my books.
Yes, I'm giving it 5 stars. Otherwise, what would've been the point of making it?

[Fredrik Strömberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an allegorical story about human societies, about the pressure to fit in and conform, told in a wild and untethered story abut a man who transgresses just about every border possible in a story that escalates to universal levels.

Story:
A man wants a sex change but finds that he wants more and with a female surgeon he experiments in alternations of the body and sexual interaction, until he ends up with numerous genitalia and, among other things, a wolf's head. The couple get persecuted for their deviance and end up being chased and the surgeon killed, whereupon the male character first performs necrophilia and then black magic resurrection and finally an occult merger that ends with an upload to the internet, a merger with all of humanity and an exodus to the stars.

Art:
If you, like me, have followed the artist Mattias Elftorp, you know what t expect. If not, you're in a for an experience. Elftorp draws fast, really fast, in order to capture the emotion of a scene, often not editing much, and then adding digital background texture to his scratchy art. It's evocative, expressive and not for someone who's used to the slick art if commercial comics. Sadly, it's in black and white, most probably due to economic reasons. I would love to see Elftorp's art in full glorious colour, to see what such a free artistic spirit would do with those possibilities.

Critique:
Again, if you have followed Elftorp's career, this story is an almost self-evident follow up to many other projects he has been involved in, incorporating many of the themes and political ideals that he has returned to again and again in books like Piracy is Liberation vol 01: Only Sinners Disobey, A Subtle Fuck You Vol. 1 and Jag & min Pappa & Zlatan. There's a subversive, Martrix-like idea of the possibilities of connecting all of humanity through digital communication and a rather obvious critique of human societies that deem themselves as open minded and inclusive, but want everyone to conform to a pre-set system of rules and regulations of what is right and wrong. It helps if you know that Elftorp is an anarchist in the true sense of the world. Not an angry young man on the barricades (well he's that as well, sometimes) but more of a person who has accepted anarchy as a guiding rule for his whole life and art.

This book will most likely appeal to two kinds of readers: the politically like-minded and the ones interested in (sequential) avantgarde art. If you're looking for traditional comics, then this is not for you.

Comments:
This books comes with a soundtrack, a soundtrack that is available online at www.wormgod.net, and adds quite a lot to the reading (and listening) experience of this book. That alone raised my rating of this book with one star.