Leviathan

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.

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?

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?

Few non-genital body parts are the object of nightmares and obsessions as much as fingers and teeth. Focusing on single body parts might seem hard when telling a story, or evoking feelings in art, but not regarding fingers and teeth. We all have some story connected to them. The human touch and the animal bite, desirable or dangerous. In this issue, we zoom in on the most bodily representations of anxiety and vulnerability.

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.

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?