Henrik Rogowski - Böcker

First volume with comics by the new editorial crew! New design! New paper stock! New logos! New hope! This is a glimpse of an exciting future. We live in interesting times. See how we deal with it through our comics. Please do not be afraid. CBA (formerly known as C'est Bon Anthology) contains avant-garde comics from all over the world. What we’re looking for in the selection is comics with a will to experiment and a passion for storytelling, a mix of established artists and new talent, with unique creative voices and stories that matter.

CBA is an international comics anthology for experimental storytelling. The theme of this volume is FRAGMENTS: The past can be found in the form of small parts inside your body. Some parts are impossible to get rid of. Maybe they’re important, maybe they’re not. But they do exist for a reason. What is your reason? Even though your past time is out of reach, there is always the possibility of deciding how it will look in front of other people. What would your fragments look like if you showed them in public?

CBA is an international comics anthology for experimental storytelling. The theme of this volume is Worst Case Scenario: What’s the worst that could happen? And if that happens, what’s the worst that could happen? And if that happens, what’s the worst that could happen? And so on… There’s a psychiatric method in cognitive behavioral therapy called “The Downward Arrow Technique” where you begin by writing down the answers to this repeated question and we thought it’d be the perfect theme for our upcoming CBA vol 40. Especially since this is an election year in Sweden. Especially since war and famine and climate change and personal disasters are on the horizon. So how bad can it get?

In this volume of CBA the focus is on superheroes, but instead of the conventional view we have instead subverted the genre, resulting in comics and texts that really explore something different within the superhero genre.

Folklore – it’s the stories our parents told us as children as well as a glimpse into another world, of fairies, trolls, and magic. But folklore is more than just stories about bad children who get eaten by witches; it’s our shared fears, hopes and dreams and they often share similar themes across the world. Folk tales have been told by an infinite number of people with equally infinite motives; some to warn, others to encourage and some who just try to make sense of the world around them. In volume 44 of CBA we want to dig deep into the roots of folklore from different cultures and explore what it has to say about ourselves as human beings regardless of nationality.

So many LGBTQ narratives end in tragedy as a consequence of the LGBTQ-hood of the characters. Those stories are important because LGBTQ people are still being targeted by prejudice, discrimination and violence, but in this volume of CBA we encouraged artists to do something different. To tell queer stories where the queerness isn’t a narrative catalyst for bad things, but rathera source for joy or love or just one characteristic among others. Queer tales about situations involving LGBTQ characters. Utopian queer tales in the sense that everything might not be perfect, but at least the horrible things that happen don’t have anything to do with the characters’ sexual orientation.

New issue of the international comics anthology: CBA vol 48 is about cats. Cats and the lifelong friendships we form with our furry friends. Bonds so strong and endearment so deep and ancient, it permeates our lives through time. You find cats in scary stories, in cute stories, they’re a sign of bad luck in some cultures and good luck in others, worshipped as deities or shunned like pests. Remnants of our relationships with the floofy furs are found not just all over the world, but all over the internet as well. Here’s our contribution to the Cat Library of Time.

New issue of the international comics anthology: Where were you born? Where are you from? When these questions are asked really what the person means often is, who are you? In the new volume of CBA we want you to ask yourselves some questions. Who are humanity as a collective consciousness? Where do we come from? All these little specks of life in this big dark space of nothing, and for what?

No theme, no limits, only members of the current and former editorial crew of CBA celebrating this anniversary issue by doing whichever comics they want! Illustrated haiku poems! Vampires! Cyberpunk! Abstract patterns and ruminations on death! Working with the elderly and trying to find your husband in the realm of the dead! There’s also a seal.