2023 was a more productive year for me than 2022! I finished three times as many comics pages (or comics-page-equivalent artworks) as last year. Unfortunately, only one of those pages was for Reluctant Oracle #2:

Instead, I drew a four-page comic for the Spring 2023 issue of ANMLY and a Riso print for the 2023 Kansas City Flatfile + Digitalfile show at the H&R Block Artspace. You can see the print in the middle of my Paper Plains Zine Fest 2 table in this photo:

I’m on the left and my brother, Peter Hensel, is on the right. He runs the comic book empire Gotham Newsstand in San Antonio and publishes his own comic series, Suspense Stories of the Silent, the first issue of which is below him.

The second half of my year was spent drawing the cover and interstitial pages for Cosmic Gossip, a 20-page mini-comic collecting my three collaborative short comics with Mark Peters, which was published by Bad Publisher Books and debuted at Short Run in November.

If you’d like a signed copy, head over to my Big Cartel to purchase one for $8! Here are a couple photos:

Cosmic Gossip got a great review over on Ryan C.’s Four Color Apocalypse Patreon, where reviews of comics sent in by indie cartoonists and small-press publishers are always free. Here’s an excerpt:

Hell, a pretty solid argument could be made for this being the most conceptually ambitious of ALL Hyperverse releases (if only, ya know, it actually WERE one), since its scope takes in everything from the creation of the cosmos to the destruction of large swathes of it for sport to a coda on the meaning of it all — if any such philosophical bromide exists. Hint : according to the text of COSMIC GOSSIP (as well as to your own finely-honed skill for detecting bullshit) it doesn’t, but why let that spoil your good time? And, like all Cardini artistic endeavors, this latest one is a VERY good time, indeed. And who isn’t in the mood for more of that as the very notion of a shared consensus reality literally melts into oblivion all around us?

Over the past five years, I’ve managed to put out a new mini-comic every other year. So hopefully I’ll have Relucant Oracle #2 for y’all in 2025! Before I can make that happen, however, I have a couple exciting projects underway for this year that I can’t quite talk about yet… but I can share these sketchbook pages and in-process watercolor painting:

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.

We’re almost halfway through 2022, but it’s not too late to tell y’all about what I was up to in 2021!

In July, I self-published the first installment of my latest graphic novel, Reluctant Oracle #1.

It dropped on the Strangers Fanzine distro, which was one of my most successful releases, and now it’s available via my Hypercastle Big Cartel. I’ve also moved all my other in-print comics there.

Reluctant Oracle #1 got a couple positive reviews on Ryan C.’s Four Color Apocalypse and Optical Sloth.

Later that same month, I had some pixel and paper artworks in the 2021 Kansas City H&R Block Artspace Flatfile + Digitalfile show.

Here’s a GIF of the Miizzzard loading:

Here’s an ink drawing, “Meeting of the Miizzz Minds”:

For the rest of my year, I worked on some illustrations for an indie tabletop game company, and I started Reluctant Oracle #2. The game company is Moon Beast Games; I’ll have more to say about them in my 2022 recap, and when they launch the Kickstarter for a tabletop campaign that includes my illustrations. Here’s a Reluctant Oracle #2 page I finished in December 2021 that I’m particularly proud of:

For the past five years, I’ve posted a recap of my previous year in January. For 2020, I’ve struggled with how to approach this, but now that I’ve passed the one year anniversary of when I started social distancing in March 2020, it’s time to mark that dreadful milestone. The past 15 months have been full of upended expectations, struggle, and grief for everyone around the globe. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to keep my job and stay healthy.

I neglected to mention this in my post about 2019, but Tom Spurgeon passed away that November. I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing Tom personally but his passing has left a hole in my comics life. I used to read The Comics Reporter every weekday while drinking my morning coffee. In 2020 I missed his insight keenly. I’m sure he would’ve had a lot to say about all the back-and-forth between Diamond and DC, not to mention the cancelling of San Diego Comic Con and so many other shows.

This Tom Spurgeon tweet makes me laugh every time I see it.

It’s hard to see what shape the comics industry, such as it is, will be in after the pandemic ends, considering the shifts in the direct market and extended gap between in-person indie comic festivals. My brother runs a comics shop in San Antonio and the lack of statewide mask orders for keeping retailers safe and DC distributor changes have made this an incredibly hard year for him (if you want to support his shop, check out his eBay store). I only virtually tabled at one show in 2020, KC Zine Con. They did a good job of organizing virtual panels and creating a website that mimics the experience of browsing zinester’s tables, but it definitely doesn’t match the energy, or amount of sales, that I get from being in a cavernous room with everyone. KC Zine Con is the one show where I can usually count on making some money because I don’t have to travel for it. Luckily, I’m not dependent on that show income because of my day job, but how many cartoonists and small press publishers need it to keep going? How many of them will still be in business when these shows can hopefully happen again in 2022?

I don’t have the answers. Fortunately there are other options for art comics to get out there, through excellent distros like Birdcage Bottom Books, Spit and a Half, or Domino Books; or just by posting online. Several high quality comics have been recently serialized through daily Instagram updates, like Simon Hanselmann’s Crisis Zone, Alex Graham’s Dog Biscuits, and Michael DeForge’s Birds of Maine. DeForge has been going the web-serial-to-print-book route for years now, from Ant Colony (FKA Ant Comic) to Leaving Richard’s Valley to this latest one.

I put out two new comics in the past 15 months via this site. Even though I’m not leaving the house much it’s been a struggle to find the mental capacity to be creative when most of my days are spent juggling working at home and helping my kid with online school.

In February 2020, I finished a four-page comic for a zine organized by Kelsey Borch that she hoped to print and hand out at local climate action events. The sessions where we brainstormed ideas for it were one of the last times I hung out with people inside a building. I volunteered to make my comic about dealing with anxiety caused by ruminating on climatic catastrophes, a topic with which I’m all too familiar. The pandemic put a crimp in Kelsey’s plans for the zine so I decided to put my pages up here. If you’re putting together a zine for climate activists and would like to include my pages for free, just send me a message via the social media accounts or email listed on my About page.

Some crops of pages from Anxious about Climate Change?

In November, I finished a second collaboration with the humorist and writer Mark Peters. The comic is called The Big Baby and it was a blast to create! You can read all five pages here.

The Big Baby page 2.

I also drew fan art for my friend Pat Aulisio’s most recent graphic novel, Grid Observer, in July.

By the end of 2020, I finished 10 pages of A Reluctant Oracle, a continuation of a story in Tales from the Hyperverse. I’d planned to self-publish A Reluctant Oracle #1 for CAKE 2020; when that show was postponed, I decided to postpone my comic as well. They’re letting everyone keep their tables for the next in-person show (hopefully I’ll see y’all in Chicago in 2022), but I’m planning to self-publish it this summer and sell it here. I’ve also made progress on A Reluctant Oracle #2.

A couple preview pages from A Reluctant Oracle #1.

In January of this year, my friend Amy Middleton passed away. Her kindness and friendliness were an integral part of the Austin indie comics scene. She always made me feel welcome at draw nights and 24-hour comic book day marathons, even when I was a newcomer. And the one-eyed bear costume she made for Zach Taylor to promote his Bear Quest comics was an eye-popping presence at Staple! every year.

Amy Middleton and Zach Taylor in the bear suit she made.

A year ago, when I wrote my 2018 in Review post, I said, “In terms of my art and comics, 2018 was mixed. I wasn’t as productive as I had hoped I would be.” I’m happy to report that I’m feeling better about what I got done in 2019 than 2018, and I feel ready to draw a lot in 2020!

The big reason I was feeling down on 2018 was because I intended to self-publish a mini-comic that year, but didn’t get it done; however, in Spring 2019, the long-gestating Urscape #1 finally saw the light of day. It got some positive reviews and is still available for y’all to purchase from my shop. I’ve got some ideas and sketches for a sequel but I’m putting it on the back burner for now while I work on some other projects.

Urscape #1 interior photo.

Another exciting event in 2019 was when I presented on Constructing Pyschedelic Narratives in Comics to my friend Tim Brown’s college class, Special Topics: Narrative and Comics in Art. We recorded a video but I haven’t gotten around to editing it down yet; sorry Tim, Jason, and anyone else who wanted to see it.

One thing I can share is the jam comic I drew with ideas from the class, based on a Jim Starlin comics layout for depicting a psychedelic mind battle:

And here’s the layout I used for that comic, with some Santoro-style arrows on it, from Captain Marvel #28 by Jim Starlin, Dan Green, and Tom Orzechowski.

I tabled at three shows this year, which was fun, and I sold my last contributor copy of Warmer, a poetry comics anthology about climate change. If you missed snagging a physical copy, you can buy a digital one for $5 from one of the editors, Andrew White. All proceeds from those sales will go to The Climate Mobilization.

Photo of me at my table at KC Zine Con 5. I was selling some Retrofit comics in addition to my own stuff.

In the summer, I finished drawing a short humor comic written by Mark Peters and posted it on this site. It’s called Nothing, you can read all four pages here.

Nothing page 3.

In the fall, the first part of the video game I helped Zach Taylor with, Meanderthal #1, came out! We’re already brainstorming more characters and plots for #2. You can still download #1 for free from Zach’s itch.io page.

Screenshot of The Meanderthal #1. You can see how Zach incorporates his comic panels in the gameplay.

And I had two pages in Universal Slime #7, a comics anthology edited by fellow Missourian John Malta which debuted at Comic Arts Brooklyn.

Screenshot of the slime box from John’s instagram.

A big comics project I made some good progress on in 2019 is a continuation of a story in Tales from the Hyperverse #1 that’ll eventually go into a hypothetical Tales from the Hyperverse #2 or come out on its own, depending on how long it ends up being (I don’t do a lot of outlining in advance for my comics). The comic is called A Reluctant Oracle. It’s about a rainbow robot named Mim. Their head was stranded on a rat world in Tales from the Hyperverse #1. In the sequel, Mim is rescued by the Floating Crystal Witch, who builds them a new body. The two pages from Tales from the Hyperverse #1 that introduce Mim will be a prologue to A Reluctant Oracle but I made some edits to that older comic to bulk up Mim’s backstory.

Here’s an edited version of a page from Tales from the Hyperverse #1:

Here’s a couple pages from A Reluctant Oracle:

In terms of my art and comics, 2018 was mixed. I wasn’t as productive as I had hoped I would be, but some exciting things happened. I wanted to self-publish a mini-comic or two so I was switching between two different comics but I didn’t get either one quite finished.

A preview of the black-and-white mini-comic I’ve almost completed.
Hopefully y’all will see it by mid-2019.

As I mentioned in last year’s recap, I’ve continued to collaborate with Zach Taylor on character and environment designs and the script for his video game-in-progress, Project Quinoa. In Zach’s latest update, he announces that the demo will be available in mid-2019!

Here you can see some of my designs on the left compared with Zach’s pixel art versions:

And here’s an environmental design:

I made three risograph prints in 2018, all printed by Oddities Prints, my local print shop. Two were for me to sell and are still available in my shop; the third was for the Oddities Prints Grab Bag Fundraiser.

On the left is a print of a splash page from Tales from the Hyperverse 2 showing Mim the Rainbow Robot descending on a new world. On the right is a print of a one-page comic from the first Tales from the Hyperverse called “Diana in Ghost Arrow.”

I included the Rainbow Robot and Diana prints and a Diana watercolor painting in my portfolio for the 2018 Kansas City Flatfile & Digitalfile show at the H&R Block Artspace. Flatfile is a cool biennial show in KC – this is my second time to participate. The invited artists put their flat artworks in portfolios that are stored in a huge flat file cabinet. The show runs for several months. Guest curators pick some of the art to go on the walls for a month and then the next curator picks different pieces. Visitors can check out the artwork in any of the files with the help of gallery assistants with gloves.

Artboards by my friend Thayer Bray.

This year I also submitted to another interesting KC arts event – the Mobank Artboards, where the Charlotte Street Foundation and a local bank commission and install art on two double-sided billboards in the arts district. The billboards are right next to each other, with a small space in between. It’d be interesting to see someone draw a comic for this space.

My submission for the left artboard.

My submission for the right artboard.

My submission wasn’t selected but I’m still proud of what I created for it.

One weird and amazing thing that happened was that Vortex was shown for a split second in the trailer for M Night Shyamalan’s next superhero movie, Glass! All credit to my wife, Glade Hensel, for her eye-catching cover design. You can see it in this screenshot or this link should go directly to the timestamp (0:48).

Eagle-eyed Zack Soto spotted that. Speaking of Zack, the fourth and final part of my second graphic novel, Skew, was posted on his comics site, Study Group Comics, this past April. Read the whole thing here!

Although my comic from Retrofit, Tales from the Hyperverse, debuted Sept 2017 at SPX, it was released through Diamond to the direct market in Jan 2018. As I’ve mentioned previously, Hyperverse was discussed in a few places in 2018, but it also made Colin Panetta’s 2017 faves list, which he posted on Dec 31st, 2018. I also drew some pages for the sequel in 2018.

Sphere Fear, my 2015 risograph-printed mini-comic published by Yeah Dude Comics, is now distributed by Domino Books. In addition to the review I’ve already posted about, it got positively reviewed (and analyzed!) on Ryan C.’s Four-Color Apocalypse.

I drew one page for Loving Richard’s Valley, a comics anthology edited by Scott Roberts that pays tribute to Michael DeForge’s originally online, and soon to be in print, masterful comic Leaving Richard’s Valley. All proceeds from the tribute anthology benefit the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society.

I only posted one book review on this blog in 2018.

I tabled for CAKE for the first time and KC Zine Con for the third time. Both were fantastic shows and I hope to table at them again next year. Maybe I’ll see y’all there!