2022 was a difficult year for me. Work stress and heartsickness over world events made it hard for me to muster up my creativity for comics; as a result, 2022 was one of my least productive years since I started keeping detailed records in 2019. However, I did get some artwork done.

In January, I finished two more pages of Reluctant Oracle #2, getting to a good stopping point before switching to paid work. Here’s one of those two pages:

I’m excited to get back to Reluctant Oracle #2 in the next month or two! That will be my main project until I get it done. I don’t want to leave anyone hanging for too long (*cough cough* Hyperbox *cough cough*).

Then in February I designed a logo for Moon Beast Games, an indie tabletop games company who are, in their own words, “devoted to the worship of the nameless creature that is just out of sight behind your right shoulder.”

As I mentioned in my 2021 recap (which I didn’t post until June 2022, lmao), Moon Beast had a successful Kickstarter last spring and have begun fulfillment. Be on the lookout for future Kickstarters from them that will include a couple illustrations I drew back in 2021!

In June and September, I tabled at two local shows: KC Zine Con #7 (in Kansas City, MO, natch) and the inaugural Paper Plains Zine Fest in Lawrence, KS. Here’s a photo of me with the latter’s mischievous mascot, Jammy the risograph:

These were my in-person first shows since 2019 and it was exciting to huff the rarified air of a zine fest! It felt great to be tabling and talking shop with fellow comics folk again.

Jumping back to August, Charles Stross’ Freyaverse series inspired me to write my first SF book review since 2018. Writing a review was a grind at first until I got my groove back. I’ve also done some work to try and save the older blog posts here from link rot and hotlinked images (sorry to anyone I did that to), although sadly there were a couple posts that even archive.org couldn’t save.

In November, my buddy Tim Brown took me and fellow cartoonist Thayer Bray to check out Chris Beneke’s comics library in Parsons, KS. Chris has a fascinating theory about how time works differently in comics, especially older newspaper strips; but of course I was drawn to newer stuff like this amazing Basil Wolverton cover:

The majority of my year, however, was spent designing characters for and drawing the third collab between me and writer Mark Peters:

You can read all eight pages of “Cosmic Planet-Eating Contest” here on my site. I had a blast drawing orb-crunching mayhem and working in a Kirby homage on the first panel. Even though I didn’t actually finish the detail work until this month, it was mostly done by the end of 2022.