Tom Mortimer

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?

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: 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.

Latest issue of the international comics anthology series: Step into the world of KOLAZ, where images are discovered, altered, and transformed — merged with sketches, digital twists, and layered reconfigurations. It’s a creative process of cutting, rearranging, and reimagining, where fragments are pulled apart and pieced back together. Story themselves are patchworks of moments stitched into something new, where unexpected contrasts may emerge and magic happens when each reader brings their own meanings, their own interpretations, their own fragments to the pasteboard. Comics by: Pavol Bratský, Mattias Elftorp, Tom Mortimer, Damir Stojnic von Ktonsky, Susanne Johansson, Markus Samnell, Julia Nascimento, Adam Boman, Mette Norrie, Helena Menanda, Aiden Kvarnström, Mileta Mijatovic, Mårten Edman, Miku Maria Gustavsson. Cover & main editor: Kinga Dukaj.

Liminal space, a concept that deconstructs the notion of fixed boundaries and absolute realities. It is a space that challenges the dualities of self and other, inside and outside, past and future. A bridge to cross, a door to open. A place to question and transcend. Liminality has always been a part of humanity. Maybe not as a state of transition but rather as a state of constant becoming. It is a space that disrupts the linearity of time and questions the stability of identity. That area of blurred boundaries is very much an integral part of the creative process for us as humans and artists. A realm of ambiguity. A pause in time, a shift in state. A realm of potentiality. Where form and meaning await. Here (or in there) we can push the boundaries of the unexpected. With comics, the idea of the liminal space can be used to craft stories and narratives that exist between different realms of reality.

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.