Hey y’all, I’ll be tabling at the inaugural Paper Plains Zine Fest this Saturday in Lawrence, KS!
Flyer by Lydia Halo.
Entry is free. Come say hi at Table 48! There’ll be tables inside and outside; I’ll be inside, where masks are required.
This is my second zine fest of the year (scream emoji), so I’ll have a similar setup to what I had at KC Zine Con #7, here’s a shot of my table from that event:
I’ll have my comics, a couple riso prints, and a few books from Retrofit. See ya there!
I’ve recently finished Charles Stross’ Freyaverse series: the novel Saturn’s Children (2008), the short story Bit Rot (2010), and the novel Neptune’s Brood (2013). The books had been on my to-read pile for a while because I’ve enjoyed his other space operas, especially Glasshouse.
This cover for the UK edition was painted by Fred Gambino.
The premise of Saturn’s Children is fantastic. It’s set in a future where humanity has created colonies across the solar system, but has since died out, leaving our artificially intelligent robotic creations to carry on a post-human civilization without us. One important conceptual detail is that even though these are manufactured beings, their brains are basically the same as ours: human engineers couldn’t figure out how to create general artificial intelligence from scratch, so they built artificial emulations of human brains.
One could imagine a sort of Bechdel Test for SF books about robots: do two artificial intelligences talk to each other about something other than humans? These books would easily pass, although they’re still ultimately about humans: our foibles and narcissisms are on center stage.
I’m excited to tell y’all I’ll be tabling at KC Zine Con #7 this Saturday! It was the last con I tabled at in-person before the pandemic began, so it’s fitting that it’ll be my return to in-person tabling.
Poster by local tattoo artist Ana Mal.
I’ll be at table 19 in between John Coats, Thayer NG Bray, and Joe Trotter.
There was a virtual KC Zine Con #6 in Fall 2020 in which I participated, but unfortunately nothing beats cramming a bunch of grubby zinesters and zine enthusiasts into the same physical space. I dream about alternatives to the con model of zine and art comics distribution in North America but I do enjoy hanging out with like-minded people IRL and sharing our passion for cheaper art produced by individual, or small groups of, visionaries. Fortunately the KC Zine Con organizers are taking the health of tablers and attendees seriously by requiring masks for everyone and proof-of-vaccination for tablers.
This is what I look like wearing a mask.
This year I’ll have my newest mini-comic, Reluctant Oracle #1, in addition to my 2019 mini-comic Urscape #1, my 2017 collection of short comics Tales from the Hyperverse, my 2014 graphic novel Vortex, and a selection of Retrofit Comics.
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.
The other night, I dreamt I was watching the new Wheel of Time TV series, but it was an anime. Rand was flying across the ocean with the One Power (something that’s impossible in the books) towards a battle on a mystical island. And a translucent blue magical pyramid crowned his head. My dream show was so vivid that I drew some fan art, maybe it exists in an alternate timeline?
I’m looking forward to the live-action Wheel of Time TV show but I’m apprehensive about how they’ll portray the epic magic battles. How are they going to convey the threads of the One Power in 3D CGI? It would be better if it was an animated show. I always image them as flat lines flying around and interweaving or like thick threads of yarn. How amazing would it be if the One Power was shown as stop-motion yarn animations?
Anyway here’s a drawing of Rand with his pyramid crown and flaming sword:
I don’t know where the pyramid came from.
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:
Zach Taylor has released The Meanderthal #1, the first part of an indie video game he’s creating with my help on the plot, writing, and design (The Meanderthal was codenamed Project Quinoa).
A GIF of the Meanderthal battling the moleworm, a mini-boss I designed.
You can download the game for free from Zach’s itch.io page for PC or Mac.
In this GIF, you can see some slimy snails and background elements I designed.
Back in early September, Drew reviewed Urscape #1 in an episode of his indie comics podcast For the Love of Indie! Click here to listen via Apple Podcasts or you can read the episode notes and listen on other platforms here.
Draw talks about Urscape in the context of the larger Hyperverse mythos and says the Hyperverse “is a new Fourth World.” I’m blushing! I love Jack Kirby’s comics and his Fourth World creations are a big inspiration for my work. Thanks to a recommendation from my brother, I read the black-and-white Mister Miracle and New Gods collections back in the early aughts. Even without color, they blew me away with their inventiveness and energy. Kirby’s story of what happens after Ragnarok is visionary reimagination of mythology that he sadly was never able to complete as he intended. Fortunately I recently acquired the color trade paperbacks of New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen that DC released to celebrate the centenary of Kirby’s birth and they were even better in color. I hope that DC releases a similar edition of Forever People, which I haven’t had a chance to read.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a book review on my blog but I occasionally post reviews on Goodreads. I wrote a little bit more about those three Kirby comics there. Also, if you’ve read one of my comics, I’d appreciate a rating or review! Those can really help an author out. You can see my reviews and my comics from my Author Profile.
Bonus: here’s another animated GIF I made from an Urscape page.
Luckily I got in off the waitlist for KC Zine Con #5 and will be tabling there for the fourth time this Saturday! Here’s the awesome poster with all the deetz:
Poster by Gabbi Brandini.
I’ll be at Table #57 with Urscape #1, Tales from the Hyperverse, Vortex, and some newer Retrofit comics like Fashion Forecasts by Yumi Sakugawa, Understanding by Becca Tobin, and Survive 300 Million #1 and 2 by Pat Aulisio.
I circled my table location on this map of the venue:
Map of Pierson Auditorium on UMKC campus.
This is the last year that KC Zine Con will be on UMKC campus. Pierson Auditorium is a great venue but UMKC allowed a hate speech event on campus in April which resulted in violence against trans people and has made people in our community feel unsafe on campus. You can read more about KCZC’s thought process behind the venue change on their website. I support KCZC’s decision to seek a new venue for future cons. Trans rights are human rights.
Bonus Zine-Related Content: A recent Twitter kerfuffle made me realize that there are art and comic makers who aren’t familiar with the term zine! ’Zine is short for magazine but means any self-published booklet. It could be photocopied for cheap at a local library or sent to a printer, but to qualify as a zine the booklet should be self-published. My understanding is that it originated with SF fans around the middle of the century who self-published fanzines that mimicked the pulp SF magazines that were so popular. Major SF writers such as Moorcock got their start in these zines. In the 90’s, the Riot Grrrl movement and others developed extensive mail-order networks of zine creators and traders. These zines featured an expanded array of content such as poetry, photographs, personal essays, and collages. My friends and I made and traded our zines from 4th grade on. One of the first zines I encountered that was made by someone I didn’t know was the Dishwasher zine by Dishwasher Pete, which chronicled his adventures during his quest to wash dishes in all 50 states. In my personal lexicon, I usually call my self-published comic books mini-comics, but I think they also quality as zines. Now if you want to talk about what is and isn’t a mini-comic, that’s a whole other discussion.
For a different perspective, check out this page provided on the KCZC Press page:
There’s no creator so I’m guessing this was a collective effort by KCZC staff.
If you want to make your own zine on a photocopier without a computer, check out Julia Gfrörer’s zine, Thuban Press Guide to Analog Self Publishing, available from her Etsy store.
You can also download a free copy of Re: A Guide to Reproduction: by Ron Rege Jr., Dave Choe, Brian Ralph, and Jordan Crane from my site. This PDF got me started self-publishing my mini-comics over a decade ago.
