{"id":5499,"date":"2017-01-03T09:50:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T14:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hypercastle.com\/blog\/?p=5499"},"modified":"2017-01-03T09:50:22","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T14:50:22","slug":"2015-and-2016-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/2015-and-2016-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 and 2016 in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like many progressive American people, 2016 has been an alarming year for me. <\/p>\n<p>I got re-invested in the political process during the primaries. Thinking about the issues led me to finally get to <em>This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate<\/em> by Naomi Klein on my to-read list. This book is a clarion call to agitate for immediate climate action. <\/p>\n<p>And then Trump was elected. In addition to his distressing racist, sexist, and dishonest rhetoric and behavior, his potential nominations for his cabinet are a climate nightmare.<\/p>\n<p>In comparison to the challenges of climate change mitigation and an authoritarian president, my psychedelic space fantasy comics have seemed such an inadequate pursuit. I still believe in the power of stories and that art has transcendent value but I feel so privileged working on comics while the world collapses around me. Especially when I see what activists can accomplish in places like Standing Rock. I\u2019m not sure if I want to make my comics more political or just get more involved with activist groups.<\/p>\n<p>So I haven\u2019t been as productive in 2016 as I was in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>In 2015 I drew a lot and tabled at SPX for the first time. I had pages in four anthologies, <em>Blank Hill Zine<\/em>, <em>RhiZome<\/em> #3, <em>Ink Brick<\/em> #4, and <em>Future Shock Zero<\/em>. Yeah Dude Comics put out my mini-comic <em>Sphere Fear<\/em>. I finished <em>Skew<\/em> Part 3 and a couple other comics for Study Group. I did two large Acrylic paintings as rewards for the Fall 2014 Sparkplug Books Kickstarter.<\/p>\n<p><include acrylic paintings in the post, not sure I've posted them on my blog although they're on my website in the Paintings page><\/p>\n<p>In 2016 I tabled locally at the KC Zine Fest but didn&#8217;t travel to any national shows. I did some watercolor paintings for a couple of KC area art shows. Alternative Comics took over the Sparkplug backstock and then released <em>Vortex<\/em> through Diamond and produced a digital edition. <\/p>\n<p><include watercolor paintings? they're not on my painting page><\/p>\n<p>My biggest accomplishment was finishing <em>Skew<\/em> Part 4 and an epilogue. As a reward for reading through this post, here are six pages from Part 4:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hypercastle.com\/images\/2017-01-03_skew-183.png\" alt=\"Skew Page 183\"><br \/>Page 183.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hypercastle.com\/images\/2017-01-03_skew-184.png\" alt=\"Skew Page 183\"><br \/>Page 184.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hypercastle.com\/images\/2017-01-03_skew-185.png\" alt=\"Skew Page 183\"><br \/>Page 185.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hypercastle.com\/images\/2017-01-03_skew-186.png\" alt=\"Skew Page 183\"><br \/>Page 186.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hypercastle.com\/images\/2017-01-03_skew-187.png\" alt=\"Skew Page 183\"><br \/>Page 187.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hypercastle.com\/images\/2017-01-03_skew-188.png\" alt=\"Skew Page 183\"><br \/>Page 188.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One of my goals in 2017 is to find a publisher for a print edition of <em>Skew<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been working on another comic that should come out next year. It&#8217;s weird to work on comics that I&#8217;m not posting as soon as they&#8217;re finished. I don&#8217;t want to say anything else for fear of jinxing it. And I\u2019m involved in at least one other anthology-ish project for 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like many progressive American people, 2016 has been an alarming year for me. I got re-invested in the political process during the primaries. Thinking about the issues led me to finally get to This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein on my to-read list. This book is a clarion call to agitate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recaps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypercastle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}