C'est Bon Anthology – serie

In CBA vol 69, we’re doing it! And by “it”, we mean, well, haha: SEX. We’re diving into sex; queer, straight, emotional, horny, funny, serious. Comics that explore intimacy, desire, awkwardness, joy. Stories where sex moves the plot, reveals character or simply celebrates pleasure and the sheer joyfulness of a great fuck.

Signs of science? The science of signs? Or neither, or both. How about the sleep depriving thought of eternity when you turn off the lights at night. Of the ever reaching deepness of space, black holes and the creation of photons in the core of the sun. How about when you get lost in thought, staring at your thumb, thinking about how the cells in your skin work and work and work, divide and fall off. The molecules they are made of. The vanishing weight of the atoms. How did the insects develop wings? What is the purpose of the flick-flack of the Rechenbergi spider, the tiny squeak of the desert rain frog, the Higgs boson? And what is dark energy anyway? The history of the natural sciences is filled with wonder, with horror and gore, with idealism and the search for truth, but above all curiosity. These questions were the basis for this issue of CBA. Full speed ahead, towards the event horizon of CBA!

What We Knew is a collection of wordless surrealistic poetry in the format of a graphic novel. The novel aims to be a selfish and intimate experience for both artist and reader. Where the reader can find their own meaning and interpretation instead of taking on the artist’s. The stories in the novel take place in a silent world filled with subtle momentary expressions. Where the world itself is as loaded with emotion and as much a part of the storytelling as the characters. The outer reality becomes the inner emotional and static things takes on a movement that can’t be controlled or avoided.

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.

Find me in this city is a story about isolation, finding your self and learning to be alone. The book mixes fiction and autobiographic elements. The end result is a fictive story of a girl who has lost her face in a strange city. While she is looking for herself, the cat is looking for the scary yet intriguing dark character who the dog is calling Nightmare. But can you trust a dog who is always lying?

Blue isn’t just a color. Mostly you’d associate it with depression, moodiness, full moons and break-ups. But, have you ever spent a cloudy afternoon on an old jetty by the sea, staring into the depths? Watching the intricate patterns fold and unfold into new and recurring shapes… Remember the feeling of liquid calm spreading through your scattered brain? Hypnotizing and invigorating. Like pouring fresh, wet, blue paint on a white canvas. New beginnings can be blue.

Everyone wants to feel connected to something bigger than themselves. When it comes to millennial ennui, however, things get complicated. Living the very American dichotomy of privilege and trouble, more often than not we gravitate towards anti-heroes and villains to break us out of our daily grind. But at what point do the troublemakers of American pop culture start resembling it’s youth more than the heroes? Diary essays paired with familiar faces create a dream landscape mirroring the millennial adolescent psyche. CBA vol 33: Repeat Offenders is Julia Scott’s solo debut about growing up weird, growing up other, and taking courage from the seemingly innocuous cartoon villains that populated the childhood of a generation. Julia Scott is an American working artist based out of the very raucous Baltimore, Maryland. Some of her clients include Warner Bros, Archaia Entertainment, and Lion Forge Comics. She draws the comic The Telepath Generation with writers Josh Tierney and Bobby Myers, and considers herself an animated pop culture connoisseur.

It’s time to put on your leisure suit and get to work on whatever. Whatever you want. Whatever. Is it working? No! It’s not working at all. Maybe it’s a sci-fi utopia. Or is it a fantasy? It’s all the time in the world. Odd moments are even. Time is money and everyone’s a billionaire. Spare some time? Here: free time for everyone! High quality time! No work and all play. Published to coincide with the AltCom 2016: WORK festival

Let’s plunge together into the pits of madness. Let’s watch the dissolution of reality, let’s dance with clear heads and see where it takes us. Let’s travel the river hiding in the desert sands until the wind rises and we reach the final collapse. Let’s look deep into the eye of the tiger. And see afterwards if we dare to dream. Horror meets madness and the inevitable collapse in this new volume of CBA, beautifully drawn and painted in heavy brush strokes and oil paint and sharp lines and halftones.

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.

I’ll see you around the corner. Yeah, cool, but where exactly is that? Corners are physical and mental places. Whether it’s is in your room or by the street down the block, they can be mysterious and shady spots. Corners have secrets to hide and stories to tell. Streets are packed with them, but so are the insights of the mind and its verging thoughts; so are comics as a panelled narration form. They host dust and spider webs, they might be grimy and smell like shit, but overall, corners are meeting points. Literally the angles made when two ways intersect. But also where two feelings or two people collide.

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.

What do we find in the depths? What lies in the depths in the oceans? What hides in the deep darkness of the corner of your room when you’re about to fall asleep? What thoughts trickle through your mind when looking deeply inwards, what do we find when we look where we can’t see?

Science and fiction rule our lives. The laws of physics seem set in stone while the laws of man are arbitrary mirrors of the morality of the times. Gods and spirits are creations of the mind but also the explanation when comprehension fails. What lies beyond our understanding? Is it more science or something else? What dark forces lurk outside our field of vision? What machineries of death and destruction are we yet to invent in the name of money (which used to be metal and paper but is now to a great extent nothing but speculation and expectations)? What (or who) else meet in the intersection between science fiction and real science? What came first? The egg or the hatching machine?

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.

The Underworld exists in many forms: an invisible realm of all deceased, a torturous prison for sinners, whatever alien societies rule a ‘hollow earth’, as well as the non- mythological but equally weird organisms that really do scurry around below us. Less literally, it could imply unseen aspects of any organisation, or the darkest moments in an individual’s journey. This volume comes with a specially made poster by Sajan Rai. Something to look at and feel that even though this final issue of 2020 was a bit late, even with the pandemic and all the other catastrophes going on, there is still some beauty in the (under)world.

New issue of the international comics anthology: From hospital staff to comic creators to basically any job in the gig economy. 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. 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.

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.

New issue of the international comics anthology CBA: 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?

New issue of the international comics anthology CBA: 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.§

The new volume of CBA features international comics dealing with the erosion of language. 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?

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?

Stories are a way to escape reality, but also a way to communicate and to help us understand the world around us. These are stories on different subjects, told with different voices in different ways by 13 creators from 8 countries. This volume of CBA has no theme, it’s just stories.