Infotrip

Piracy is Liberation #2

by Mattias Elftorp

Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

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]

I just love Susanne Johansson's cover for this book...

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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?

[Mattias Elftorp]

Well, I made this book, and it was the first collection of any of my works, back in 2004. Getting this book from the printer was really exciting. There are some passages in it that are very personal and deal with my own political awakening. "She showed me things I always felt but never knew", for example, is a very precise description of an experience I'm sure some of you have been through. When someone else describes what you yourself din't have any words for before.

Anyway, when I was this far into the story (this is book 002), I already had a few ideas for where the overall story was going. There are premonitions in this book that I managed to realize in the coming books, even though I had only a vague idea about the details and a lot changed as the story progressed in the rest of the series (writing this, I've finished the first 11 books out of a planned ca 20).

Drawing this book, I used to flip through Dave McKean's Cages to get the right feel for the lines. Ten years later, I'm still pretty much happy with how it turned out. Warren Ellis had this to say about it: "an art style that seems to me to combine Brian Wood with Ben Templesmith, to jagged, hate-ridden, nervous effect. I really like it, and I’m pissed off that my copy got mislaid."

I later realized it must have been his copy that I found in the restroom of the [Komiks.dk] festival...

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