Tusen Serier has now been around for 11 years and it’s time to celebrate! So we put together this exhibition to showcase some of what we’ve been doing during this time.

From a humble beginning as a project among others under the Swedich Comics Association, aiming at making some small change in the Swedish comics climate, we’ve grown to something that will hopefully be shown to have had a larger, more lasting impact.

After publishing some twenty books, showing almost fifty exhibitions, organizing over a hundred workshops, a couple of festivals, a collective workshop and a Hybrid network, we’ve at least made a good start. Who knows where the next 11 years will take us?

Each section of the exhibition has its own introduction:
GRAPHIC NOVELS
FANZINEVERKSTADEN
WORKSHOPS
EXHIBITIONS
HYBRIDEN
AltCom

When we started Tusen Serier, it was with a consciousness of how segregated Swedish society is, and how it is also reflected in the Swedish comics culture. People socialize in their circles and those circles are often ethnically homogeneous (at least among the majority population).

It’s in such a context that movements and political parties can emerge that are based on fear of cultures and people that don’t look like what you’re used to. Movements talking about closed borders and harsher measures and evil foreign cultures. There is no interest in trying to understand someone else’s situation or to solve common problems together. Instead, those who are portrayed as ”the others” are blamed for everything and aggression becomes the only solution. Immigration is seen as the cause for everything bad, from crime to unemployment to the general feeling that everything gets worse all the time. Even if race and skin color are reinterpreted as culture and religion when talked about openly, everyone knows what it means. In the new nationalism, Sweden is the best and everything coming from outside is a threat. There is an implicit understanding that makes it unnecessary to explain WHY Sweden would be better, or exactly HOW someone born outside Europe automatically becomes a threat.

In that situation, it becomes be an act of resistance to publish and distribute comics by creators with a background in other countries, comics that talk about migration in a different way or just comics that have a slightly different perspective than what we’re used to from the regular publishers. But it’s not only an act of resistance, it’s also an attempt to move us forward, to create understanding, insights and empathy, for a better future than the one we seem to be heading towards today.

Comics as a medium have the potential to bridge boundaries and increase understanding, but who gets published is very much a question about knowing the right people, so Tusen Serier was needed to do its part to get past such obstacles. A non-profit association that doesn’t have to take into account what is already seen as commercially viable and therefore can look beyond what’s established and publish something new.

Find our books in the shop!

These are the books we released during our first decade, by comics creators with origins in Chile, Iran, Colombia, Turkey, Slovenia, Irak, Bosnia, Egypt, Spain, China, Lickan and Sweden:

DESTRUKTÖRERNA
by Marco Leal.

The colossal Destroyers have come from the future to obliterate history and our present time, and only David Lincen knows what’s going on. Science fiction meets ancient as well as new mythology in a trip through philosophy and politics like you’ve never seen before.

Imagine a mix between Alejandro Jodorowsky, Moebius and Geoff Darrow, and you’re getting close to what you can expect from this book.
Language: English, Swedish and Spanish.

This is a TUSEN SERIER GRÄNSLAND book:
Stories from the borderlands between comics and illustrated litterature. Tales where image and text interact but not in a classic comics format. Still, so much of the work’s meaning is carried by the pictures that it would not be the same without them. In these borderlands we find new expressions, new languages and perhaps a new way to read and understand the relationship between text and image.

FEM PAPPERSLÖSA KVINNORS HISTORIER
by Amalia Alvarez.

An award-winning book featuring comics based on true stories about five women who live or have lived “illegally” in Sweden. One who the author met at a women’s shelter tells her story as a mail-order bride, another whom she met at the trade union tells about the situation for female undocumented workers in Sweden, about trafficking networks etc. Another story is about a woman who got her asylum application rejected and about her road to Sweden and struggle to be reunited with her daughter.

Languages: Swedish/Spanish/English

BEKELE
by Raquel Lozano, Emre Özdamarlar & Mattias Elftorp.

Bekele lives and is married to Johannes in Malmö, Sweden. Periodically, they go on interviews at the Migration Board to prove that their marriage is genuine.

But what do you do when your whole life situation is suddenly turned upside down? When something happens that puts more at risk than just the relationship?

This is the story of Bekele, Johannes and Simon, but also about Sweden of today…
Language: two different book-versions; English and Swedish.

Language: Swedish.

COOL CYKEL
by Tanja Komadina.

Det hjärtskärande dramat om Mile och hans drömcykel är en historia alla kan känna igen sig i. I sin enkelhet en drabbande berättelse om besvikelse och avundsjuka, om konsekvenserna av att ta saken i egna händer när längtan blir för stark.
Utan moraliska pekpinnar speglar Cool cykel hur en pojkes drömmar möter verklighetens orättvisa och hur de vuxnas konflikter ger eko i barnens värld.

Tanja Komadina har utmanat sig själv och skapat en trovärdig och engagerande seriebok för barn, där svåra frågor om rätt och fel dröjer sig kvar efter historiens slut.
Cool Cykel är Tanja Komadinas seriedebut i albumformat efter att tidigare ha medverkat med kortare historier i flera av den slovenska serietidskriften Stripburgers temanummer. Den här gången har hon skapat en serie efter en berättelse av Manke Kremenšek Križman ur novellsamlingen Gårdsfönster.
Language: Swedish.

Language: Arabic, Swedish.

Language: two different book-versions; English and Swedish.

FINSMAKARNA
by Marco Leal.

David Lincen survived the apocalypse in the struggle against the Destroyers. Now he is travelling through a world controlled by malicious connoisseurs, in a story tainted by war and populated by icons.

Finsmakarna is the sequel to Marco Leal’s Destruktörerna from 2013. A philosophical trip through a strange and yet familiar postapocalypse.

Language: Spanish, Swedish, English

LILLEBRORS FANTASTISKA MARDRÖMMAR
by Aida Ghardagian, Bekim Gaši, Mauritz Tistelö, Meisam Azimi

This book is based upon Mejsam’s nightmares. The other co-writers have added their nightmares to create a long journey towards liberation and awakening.
What began as a therapeutic work was transformed into a book that is also a meeting between four artists. An art project and at the same time a meeting between the existentiality of, and the society that creates the conditions for, our dreams and nightmares.
Dream stories are a way to get away from the roles that have been set upon us; undocumented, citizens, workers, artists.
A way to escape and to understand our lives.
Language: Swedish, with translations in English, Bosnian and Farsi

MAPUCHE – JORDENS FOLK
by Jorge Varas Varilla.

Mapuche, Chiles ursprungsbefolkning, har en rik kosmologi som mest har existerat som muntlig tradition. Här presenteras den som barnbok, rikt illustrerad av Jorge Varas Varilla.
Languages: Spanish, Swedish

MYLING
by Amanda Casanellas, adapted to comics form by Yossra El Said.

Mylings are children murdered by their mothers and buried clandestinely, maybe in the forest, maybe under the floorboards. Stuck between two dimensions, their bodies have continued growing in their graves, in twisted, unnatural ways. Sometimes they wake and venture out to haunt the living.

Amanda Casanellas has taken this old Nordic myth into a new, postapocalyptic context in her novella, adapted to comics form by Yossra El Said. The book contains the comic in Swedich and English as well as the original short story in English.

Myling won third prize in the comics competition in Oulu 2015, on the theme Hunger of horror.

Language: Swedich and English.

FEM HISTORIER OM PROSTITUERANDE
by Amalia Alvarez.

Historier om fem personer som definierar sig själva som prostituerade. De beskriver “los prostituyentes”, de som köper deras tjänster. De befinner sig i en del av det svenska samhället som inte syns för alla men som finns där under ytan.

Sexarbete beskrivs oftast ur ett utifrånperspektiv. Liksom 2013 års Fem papperslösa kvinnors historier bygger Amalia Alvarez’ nya bok på intervjuer med personer som själva befinner sig i den situation som beskrivs. Boken ger en inblick i hur de prostituerade ser på sig själva och på de som köper deras tjänster.

Languages: English, Spanish, Swedish.

SVENSKA MED SPANSK BRYTNING
by Alicia Pena.

Alicia traded the beach and her flipflops for a warm hat and biting winds, all for the sake of two blue eyes. In Svenska med spansk brytning we follow two girls from different cultures, full of humor och moods.
What happens when the Spanish temperament clashes with the typical Swedish? Through her alter ego, Alicia questions and parodies contemporary Swedish society.

Language: Swedish

VOID
by Susanne Johansson

Images appear in my head when I close my eyes. Sometimes because it is the only sane solution in an insane world. We do what we can to survive or escape the monstrocities of the universe. No matter how brief the respite.

Language: English, Swedish.

BERÄTTELSER OM YUNNAN
by Emei Burell.

I mitten av 1960-talet svepte kulturrevolutionen genom Kina och förändrade tillvaron för ett otal liv. En hel generation stadsfödda ungdomar skickades till landsbygden för att ideologiskt omskolas genom fysiskt arbete under sina mest formativa år.

Emei Burell har skapat denna seriebok om sin mammas historia i kulturrevolutionens Kina. Det är en vindlande berättelse om hur en tonårsflicka från Beijing lyckades bli en av de ytterst få kvinnor som fick ansvaret att köra lastbil högt uppe i bergen i södra Kinas gummiplantage.

Language: Swedish.

JAG & MIN PAPPA & ZLATAN / ME & MY DADDY & ZLATAN
by Mattias Elftorp

Sara used to play soccer with her friends. When she and her dad had to leave their country she was happy that they were going to Malmö, Sweden, where Zlatan lives. Her greatest wish is to see him play and maybe even meet him.
But all isn’t completely well. They may not be allowed to stay. And there is something strange about this new country where you have to wear a Swedish mask to hide that you are “different.”
Will Sara’s dreams come true? Or will her nightmares?

Language: two different book-versions; English and Swedish.