2017 in Review

Me with my first book!

I started writing these “Year in Review” posts two years ago now (here is 2015 and 2016 if you wanna check them out), and it feels really weird that the pace of life doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all… After a roller-coaster year in 2016, 2017 has brought lots more frustrations, embarrassments, and disappointments on the political front. Last year I said I was going to be thinking about my position in the culture as an artist and how my work might be able to have an effect on discourse. I still don’t have all the answers, but I as I look back on TITAN, which I finally completed in 2017, I do like the way the book reflects on many of the political and cultural issues of our day… Not many answers are given but I hope it does make people think (I chatted about this with Mike Dawson and Zack Soto on their podcast Process Party if you’d like to give it a listen).

2017 was a huge year for me and my creative career, with the completion of TITAN after five years of work! Many thanks to all my patrons who have helped me to put my nose to the grindstone to get this book done… I completed over half the book in just one year! You can read lots of Process Posts on the creation of TITAN here.

TITAN was published in French by Éditions Pow Pow, a Montréal-based comics publisher headed up by Luc Bossé. I am extraordinarily thankful to Luc for approaching me about publishing TITAN en français and I am really proud of the tremendous company I am in at Pow Pow… Luc has fantastic taste and a great editorial vision. The book weighs in at 200 pages and I couldn’t be happier with it. Lots of thanks to Alexandre Fontaine-Rousseau who did the translation for me (he is a fantastic and funny writer as well). The French-language edition has gotten some good press and is nominated for two different prizes: Prix Des Libraries Québec and the Prix BD des Collégiens!

Titan #5 featuring back cover art by the great Ben Sears.

In English, I was delighted to bring out the final issue of the TITAN series, put out by my long-time publisher Study Group Comics. My editor Zack Soto has been such a support to me over the years, and I am delighted that he chose to publish TITAN. Issue #5 was a double-sized whopper of an issue, with a TON of action and emotion throughout… My fave of the series.

My long-time client Area 1 Security, commissioned a really fun project last Christmas, an “Activity Book for Grown-Ups” titled Destroy All Phish. It was a a promotional client giveaway featuring the violent deaths of “phish”… Lots of fun to create!

This year we created something really special… A DIY paper toy of their new anti-phish bot, Joshua:

I’ll be posting a bit of process on the Joshua paper toy on the blog soon! As always many thanks to Area 1 CEO Oren Falkowitz for being open to fun ideas… Can’t wait to see what we make in 2018!

I had a lot of other fun freelance gigs thruout the year, including drawing the cover for Grilled Cheese, a bilingual kids magazine published here in Montréal:

A whole series of album covers for Kids Songs Rule!: including Dance Songs, Color Songs, ABC Songs, and the latest, A Kids Songs Rule! Christmas:

Drawings for the Portland Mercury, including this delightfully sick “serial peeler”:

A pinup for Sci-Fi San Francisco from Skoda Man Press:

And much more!

I have also been working on some really exciting bigger projects that I can’t talk about yet, but will be announced soon…

One is a special print project that involves nature and history:

And the other is a comic project coming out from a French-language publisher this year!

Both of these projects will be the subjects of lots of Process Posts in the coming months!

Many thanks to everyone reading this for your interest in my work! Special thanks to all my patrons who support me thruout the year… The money you pledge really makes a difference in my day to day life! If you aren’t a patron yet, please do consider becoming one… I post special, patron-only posts including downloads and more. But I’ll always post plenty of public things as well, so please come check out the blog thruout 2018!