2024 in Review

Last month I was chatting with cartoonist (and Drawn & Quarterly founder) Chris Oliveros at a book festival in Montréal, and he asked me “How are you balancing out your creative work with all the other projects you are doing?” I had to simply admit “I’m not!” I thought of this exchange as I sat down to write up this traditional annual review of my creative projects, something I’ve been doing now for nearly a decade. Looking over my published projects and work in progress from 2024, there’s no doubt that my creative output has slowed down a bit! 

I’ve been quite busy with my part-time position as the Marketing Manager of Pow Pow Press and other small gigs, as well as working on renovations and projects at our new home in the woods (which, after 2 years of work, is nearly “done”), and I find all that work very satisfying. But I must admit that I am a little sad to see that some of my creative work has been put on the back burner in 2024. I’m going to have to make an effort to shift the balance a bit in the coming year and make sure to focus on my creative practice.

All that said, I wasn’t exactly resting on my laurels for the last 12 months, either! I had quite a few projects I’d been working on finally see the light of day, did some fun minor gigs, and I was working hard on projects that will be published in 2025 and beyond as well. 

Lunettes, Brillen, and Now, Eyeglasses

I already mentioned this last year, so it feels a bit like cheating, but I have to mention that the English-language edition of my children’s book Extraordinary Eyeglasses: The Amazing Invention that Helps Us See was published in August! As always, it’s a delight to see a book on the shelves with my name on the cover (along with writer Caroline Stevan and translator Jeffrey Butt)! At this point the book is available in French, English, and German, with a Chinese edition (!?!) coming soon(ish). This is a great book for the younger (7-12) kid in your life who is getting their first pair of glasses.

Taking Notes

Boulet’s Notes: Back in Time is a “best of” collection from the early years of Boulet’s webcomic Notes was a very interesting project that I was deeply involved in: I not only translated the strips into English, but I chose which comics were included, lettered the book, and did the graphic design! Phew! It was a lot of work but I think the final product looks awesome. Congrats to Boulet for 20 years of Notes, and I hope we get to do more collections of his work in the near future! Here is a little video I created looking at the (quite nice) physical book. 

Talli Becomes a Trilogy

Speaking of translation, another volume of Talli: Daughter of the Moon by Sourya came out this year, and it was my favorite yet, full of epic action and some great emotional beats. I’ve gotten to read volume 4 of the series already and I’m champing at the bit to bring the rest of Sourya’s fantasy tale to the anglophones of the world!

Idiom Savant

I was quite honored to be asked to participate in La langue par la bande, an anthology of 28 comic strips illustrating some of the unique and colorful French expressions and idioms my adopted nation is famed for… I felt like I’d truly earned my “Québecois” card! I guess I’m finally a local? I illustrated the expression “Ne pas avoir posé les pattes aux mouches” i.e. “Did not put the feet on the fly” (!!!) which is an idiom which means “Isn’t particularly intelligent or creative.” Above is an excerpt from my nearly-silent, single-page comic (I’m not allowed to show the full strip), for the moment it hasn’t been posted online, and this book will certainly never be published in English, so if any of you are die hard François Vigneault completionists (are there any?) you’ll have to pick this up directly from the Government of Québec!

Lettering and Design Gigs

In addition to the the aforementioned books (I generally letter and design my own work), I had the pleasure of working on a few fun projects this year in the roll of either letterer, designer, or both, including a story by Zack Quaintance and Nick Cagnetti in the very fun anthology Death of Comics Bookcase, Lara Pickle’s I Feel Awful, Thanks, Buzzelli Collected Works Volumes 2 and 3 from Floating World Comics (oh by the way Buzzelli Vol. 1 was nominated for an Ignatz award), and a few other bits and bobs. Always enjoy the more behind-the-scenes work that goes into making a book look its best!

Pow Pow Power

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a good amount of my year working in a part-time (but quite time-consuming) gig as the Marketing Manager of Pow Pow Press, one of the coolest publishers of graphic novels out there! I’m very happy to be getting the word out about the fantastic books that this Québec publisher is putting out in English and getting the books into an increasing number of bookstores and comic shops in the United States and beyond! I was proud to see our latest books The Jellyfish by Boum (“A deeply moving meditation on disability, diversity, and joy… a near perfect symbiosis between narrative and art,” Kirkus, Starred Review) and Botanica Drama by Thom (“…a love story, charmingly told,” Montreal Review of Books) get a ton of fantastic press in the media. I also got to travel all around the USA and Canada in 2024 to represent Pow Pow at comics events such as MoCCA Arts Fest, MCAF, TCAF, VanCAF, SPX, Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, and the Prairie Comics Festival! Whew! Watch for me at more shows in the coming year and look for Pow Pow titles at your local bookstore or comics shop (or even better, tell your bookseller you wanna see these books!). We have some great new titles coming in 2025, so stay tuned.

Interviews and Reviews

I’ve continued to conduct interviews and round-table discussions with comic book creators throughout the year. Like my work with Pow Pow, for me this is all about connecting with artists and getting word out about their creative practice. I think that over the years I’ve become a very able interviewer, in my humble opinion! So much so that I’ve been contemplating some ways to develop this into yet another sideline… Save me from myself, please!

This year I sat down for a chat with Boum that ran over on Broken Frontier, interviewed Boulet in the new Notes collection, did in-house interviews with Pow Pow creators Thom and Samuel Cantin, conducted VanCAF’s “Comics Across the Globe” roundtable with Kaori Tsurutani, Alex Baladi, Jesse Jacobs, Freddy Carrasco, and Jean-Marc Rochette at VanCAF (overloaded with talent but cool to get to meet such a variety of creators), moderated a pair of excellent panels at the Montreal Comic Arts Festival (“Stranger in a Strange Land: Expats and Immigrants” with Alison McCreesh, Veronica Post, and Zoe Qiu; and “On the Road,” a truly all-star panel with Jillian Tamaki, Tillie Walden, and Adam de Souza), spoke with Chris Oliveros at TCAF, and most recently I hosted a “Comic Book Confessions” panel with Montreal creators Chris Oliveros, Walter Scott, and Éloïse Marseille at the Read Quebec Book Fair.

I also reviewed a couple of excellent books over at the Comics Beat in 2024: Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? by Chris Oliveros and Tokyo These Days by Taīyo Matsumoto. I’ve always enjoyed writing down my thoughts on books over on my occasional review blog Tipped In and on my Goodreads page, but I’m quite happy to be writing for a larger outlet where I might be able to reach more readers and potentially turn them on the books I dig. Expect more from me in the coming months.

Take a Picture

Does photography count as a creative project for me? I’m really just doing it for fun so it feels not quite right to list it here, but at the same time I’ve enjoyed playing with my Olympus M43 camera this last year, taking pictures of my local flora and fauna (both animal and human). I don’t have any special plans on how to share this “work,” I mostly just take these for myself or to share with the folks I take pictures of directly, but I have posted a couple on my IG: Photos from the Montreal Comics Arts Festival, Vancouver Comic Arts Festival, and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. I’m currently sorting through photos of a recent holiday trip to Colombia, so make sure to follow me on Instagram if you wanna see some cute birds in your feed soon.

Coming in 2025: A Mystery Story for Kids and More

Wow! That’s it? Yes, I truly had a less productive year than usual, at least on the creative side of the equation. I am definitely feeling energized going into 2025, and though I know better than to promise you (and myself) the world, I can definitely say that I have some stuff in the works that will be completed and published in the coming year!

First up, my main creative project the last few months has been illustrating a mystery comic for kids, which will be published in Fall 2025 by La Pastèque, the French-language publisher behind my award-winning book 13e Avenue. This has been a lot of fun to work on so far, and I have a lot of work to do on this book in the next couple of months, so I’ve got absolutely no choice but to knuckle down on this project to meet my deadline! It is a very charming and silly story, and I’ll share more from my process soon, but here is a sneak peek:

I also have a 10-page short story appearing in BARADA and NIKTO, the new double anthology from Toronto-based comics studio Raid. This book already had a successful Kickstarter campaign but as of this writing you can still order the book online. I’ll announce on my Instagram when the book is out, of course, below if a sneak peek of my story, a sort of EC Comics-inspired twisted tale:

And of course I am very slowly plugging away at my graphic novel Blue Moon but I know better than to make any extravagant promises about that book! I ended my review last year by saying the following hopeful prognostication about Blue Moon:

I WILL be making more time for MY book in 2024, too! I have finally started actually drawing Blue Moon and so far I’m really loving the way it looks, and feel more energized and inspired to get back to the grind on it… I’m excited to see where I will be with this project at the end of 2024!

Can I say I made a lot of progress on Blue Moon in 2024? No I can’t. But I did make some. I do promise that I am chipping away on it and I am determined to make progress on it in 2025. I do love how it is looking so far and I think it’s going to be a cool, smart book (but again, it’s taking far too long).

So that’s where I am at, creatively, as we begin 2025. I simultaneously feel quite happy about the multi-pronged approach I have taken towards my career, and also more than a bit disconcerted that I have consistently put my most personal creative projects on the back burner as I hustle to make ends meet with gigs (not to mention renovations, volunteering, and (gasp!) just relaxing from time to time). Throughout this new year, I think I am going to often think of Chris’ question to me: “How are you balancing out your creative work with all the other projects you are doing?” I’m not quite where I want to be, but I have to say I’m not doing too bad, either. Hopefully at the end of 2025 I’ll be positioned to say that I am doing better than I am today.

As always, my sincere thanks for your continuing interest in me, my life, and my work. I’m looking forward to connecting with some of you throughout the year, either in person or at a distance. If you haven’t done so yet, please make sure to subscribe to my email newsletter (my preferred platform to get the word out about what I am working on and the events I’ll be at) and Instagram, and maybe even Patreon (honestly, I have been posting less frequently on Patreon so I encourage you to subscribe at the free level, or adjust your pledge down to $0… I don’t mind at all). Furthermore, don’t hesitate to reach out directly anytime if you have questions for me or just wanna chat… Life is short. Best wishes as we enter a new year.