2020 in Review
2020: The year of the Zoom interview. With the Comix Claptrap crew—Rina Auyang, Thien Pham, and Josh Frankel
This is where I usually say something like “another year has gone by,” but I think in all honesty 2020 wasn’t just “another year” by any stretch of the imagination. I can still remember the day (March 7th) where I was doing some “back of the envelope” calculations about the R0 of the new Coronavirus and I realized things were about to get bad… Just ahead of the wave of government lockdowns and mounting infections. But I personally could never have anticipated all the twists and turns this year has thrown at us, from the gigantic protests for racial and social justice to the violent backlash against those demands, to the conspiracy theories that undercut social discourse and intelligent action, and just how blatantly the outgoing President and his allies would attempt to undercut the will of the voters. It’s been a year for the history books, that’s for sure, tho’ at times 2020 has felt more like an awkwardly-plotted sci-fi potboiler with a few too many twists and turns.
It was obviously also a huge year for me creatively and professionally, and it has often felt weird to be trying to promote my work in a moment that can feel nigh-apocalyptic (my friend Jonathan Hill, whose excellent book Odessa came out on the same day as TITAN, wrote a great essay on this subject). I tried my best to muddle through it all, and I do think that I am especially proud of the ways that TITAN reflects on the current political landscape, especially since the book originally came out in French over three years ago. As I mentioned in a my author letter that went out to libraries and booksellers earlier this year,
“While TITAN is inspired by some of the darkest chapters in our history, the book also shamelessly—perhaps foolishly—puts forward themes of connection, love, and reconciliation as well, and I believe that those ideas are timeless. Let’s hope they are timely as well.”
I wrote that letter before the election, when there was maximal uncertainty about what kind of world my book would be “born” into. I am very, very happy that there is some semblance of hope on the horizon now. The road ahead is going to be a tough one, the existential challenges we face in the coming years and decades are going to make 2020 seem pretty small in comparison. But I do think we took a step back from the brink this year, and I hope that the path forward will be better… “There’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.”
As always, many thanks to everyone who has supported my work this year and throughout the years (by the way this is the sixth year I am doing one of these “Year in Review” posts, here are links to 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019). I consider it a truly great honor and privilege that so many people are interested in my work and my creative voice… I can’t believe how lucky I am to have the opportunity to be creative for a living. I recently posted an extensive (yet still far from complete) list of acknowledgements for TITAN, I truly couldn’t do what I do, for better or for worse, without the support of so many, and if you are reading this, that includes you. So my sincere thanks for your interest, your support, your feedback. A happy new year to all and a peaceful holiday season!
TITAN
Obviously this was the big event for me creatively this year… After a long search with several bumps in the road, TITAN ended up being published in English by the wonderful Portland-based publisher Oni Press, and I couldn’t be happier with the final result. Even though TITAN was published in 2017, this new edition was a ton of work, I was doing lots of last-minute edits to the book, touching up artwork and doing some rewrites to get the whole book reading as smoothly as possible, drawing new pages to add some depth to the book, designing the new cover, re-lettering, and more, which made this new edition a huge proportion of my creative output for the year. On top of that I spent a ton of time doing interviews and other outreach in the hopes of connecting TITAN with the biggest audience I can given the pandemic… This lead to some super fun conversations, like my talk with the aforementioned Jonathan Hill, appearances with dear old friends on podcasts like Comix Claptrap and Serious Moonlighting, and the official launch of the book with Ben H. Winters hosted by Librairie D+Q.
The TITAN window display at Librairie D&Q in Montréal
I’m happy to say that so far the critical response to TITAN has been very positive. Quill & Quire ran a starred review and said that TITAN is a “fast-moving page-turner, but it is also a complex, visceral, even chilling exploration of the ways our identities, and our very humanity, are enmeshed with the larger political landscapes in which we find ourselves – for better and, sometimes, worse.” Grovel rated it 5-stars and said TITAN is a “perfect storm of European-style science fiction, packed with drama, character, understated futurism and a deep intelligence.” and I loved that Montreal Review of Books called it “…a pointed adventure that is incredibly deep and complex.”
Reader reactions have also been a delight, with some people loving the book and others less so, I read all of them and really appreciate the time and energy people put into thinking about my work, including the ones that are critical. I posted quotes from some of my favorites earlier this year, and I just put up a new one, Reader Reviews Redux, which has some great reactions (I’ll take a moment to encourage you to honestly rate and review the book on the platform(s) of your choice, like Goodreads, Amazon, Powells Books, etc… It makes a big difference in other people discovering the book).
PRIX DES LIBRAIRES
13e Avenue Tome 1, the series I co-created with writer Geneviève Pettersen, won the inaugural Prix des Libraires Jeunesse for Comics, a huge honor! This comes in addition to the whopping seven nominations the book had already garnered. Work is set to begin on 13e Avenue Tome 2 soon, I’ll be sure to keep you updated with some sneak peeks once that book gets up and running… Hopefully it won’t be long before I can announce it’s coming to a libraire near you (and eventually get released in English)!
Geneviève Pettersen and I accepting the Prix des Libraires (Photo © Charles Bélisle)
CECI N’EST PAS UNE PUB
Most of my comic projects this year are still under wraps until 2021, but one comic I drew was most definitely on public display, right in the middle of the Place d’Youville in Québec City as part of Ceci N’est Pas une Pub, part of the Québec en Toutes Lettres Festival. The final project, a collaboration with the writer Alexandre Fontaine-Rousseau, was huge, nearly four feet across! So cool to see my art displayed in this format!
Photo by Paul Bordeleau
LETTERS TO MONTRÉAL
Another project I was really delighted to be part of was the “Letters to Montréal” anthology from the Montréal Comic Arts Festival! My four-page story, inspired by the city I have now been living in for over five years (!?!), was a nearly silent look at a post-apocalyptic Montréal. A ton of great artists were involved and the sales benefit the Montreal Comic Arts Festival, so well worth checking out!
MAGAZINES
As I always say, magazines have a special spot in my heart, I am always just tickled seeing my art running alongside an article, interview, or short story. This year I did the reading-themed “cartoon” for the Summer issue of the Montreal Review of Books, an illustration of disappointed punks and an homage to one of my favorite spots in Montréal for Maisonneuve, more work for the Monitor, a couple pieces for the Feathertale Review (including two pieces in their upcoming 25th issue), and a cover and full “package” of drawings for Precedent magazine. Looking forward to what mags I’ll have work in next year… Art directors, hit me up!
BOOKS, PODCASTS, ALBUMS, AND MORE
I got the chance to work with some fantastic clients new and old this year to help them bring their visions to life. I designed the first two books in the Five-Finger Jazz series by Brock Chart, the wordmark for the new Too Legitimate to Quit podcast, a free-to-download coloring page for Super Essential Workers, a bunch of illustrations for Fair Vote Canada’s Building a Better Democracy campaign, the cover for Silly Songs (the sophomore album from Kids Songs Rule, actually drawn a couple years back but updated for the release), designed the cover for film director S. Craig Zahler’s new geraphic novel Forbidden Surgeries of the Hideous Dr. Divinus, and another volume in the You Can Write It series.
LOOKING TO 2021 AND BEYOND
Next year will see the appearance to more than a few projects that I have been working on throughout 2020, including the as-yet-still-secret monthly comic I have been drawing (I think the publisher is just about to finally officially announce it, so expect some news from me soon!) and other long-simmering projects like the release of Brecht Evens’ City of Belgium which I entirely hand-lettered, coming out from Drawn & Quarterly. I am also hoping to start writing and drawing a brand-new graphic novel called Blue Moon, and illustrating the second volume of 13e Avenue as well. There are sure to be lots of other surprises along the way as well, I’m sure!I am very hopeful about our world in the coming year, I think we have turned an important page and, I hope, we will be headed in a better direction going forward. As all of us move in to an uncertain future, together or apart, I wish everyone reading these words a bright new year, and a peaceful holiday season. Thank you as always for your interest and support.