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!