2023: Year in Review

A wintery welina to you all! It feels like this year was very fallow creatively because, while I did draw a ton, I was mostly focused on working and saving for 2024 and also doing a lot of organizing! I also used this year to take classes and workshops to dig deeper and renew my creative process. Next year will be focused on 2 collaborative graphic novel projects so I really wanted to focus on absorbing art, fiction, and the creative philosophies of others. Still, combing through my work for the year, I did more than I thought so here’s a little round-up in no particular order.

• Leslie and I ran the 2023 Minicomic Awards with your special guest judges Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh! Each winner was awarded $1000, a generous prize pool made possible by our wonderful donors! The Awards will now be hosted by the Cartoonist Cooperative and you can see the winners, donors and more on our new homepage! Submissions for the 2024 Awards are already up, too!
• My team and I founded the Cartoonist Cooperative, a volunteer-run organization that aims to improve and protect the careers of comics workers globally and currently the biggest comics rights movement in history! We also have brand new Member Benefits and are adding more all the time which we’re very proud to offer!

• I was invited to give virtual craft talks and workshops for places like Center for Cartoon Studies and Clarion West which was super fun!
• I started working for Wizards of the Coast as a Visual Writer designing art for Magic the Gathering cards. Incredibly fun job and the perfect niche little job for a cartoonist!
• My story “Paradise” was featured in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume One published by the wonderful Tenebrous Press.
• I was commissioned to write a story for an unannounced MIT Press anthology which I’m really stoked for people to read. Not sure when it’ll be out yet but it was a story that took up a lot of my attention this year and I’m happy with how it came out!
• Death in the Mouth Vol 1 made the 2023  Locus Recommended Reading List and won a Australian Shadows Award!

• I mentored a good grip of cartoonists and comic writers through the Unicorn Authors Club where I coach and also freelance via my website. It’s so rewarding to see what other artists are working on and trying to help them to find connect to their work and themselves in a deeper way. Also just uncovering how the industry works for those not embedded in it, it can be so opaque to new folks! If you nee career or comics coaching or editing, hit me up here.
• Prism Stalker: The Weeping Star, the 2nd volume in my indigenous sci-fi adventure series came out in August! Here’s the animated trailer for Vol 1 again because it’s just that sick (and you can’t forget the original book soundtrack by Nomie!)! Oh yea and some posters I made for my book tour…

• I crowdfunded Death in the Mouth Vol 2 successfully with my co-editor Cassie Hart! It was a bit of a pain switching from Backerkit to Kickstarter right at launch but we pulled it out in the end! Here’s the trailer for the book, made by Darius Ou and our beautiful cover by Jeffrey Kam!

• The Blade and the Bloodwright came out from Lightspeed Magazine! Its a Pasifika-inspired dark fantasy short story about a magical woman who is a weapon of mass destruction, island nations at war, and the woman’s envious protector!
• Leslie and I collabed on a short comic for a VIZ horror anthology called BETWIXT! This was such a blast and always a dream to work with my bestie on comics 🙂

• My novella With the Blade as Witness came out in Interzone #296! You might remember this far-future indigenous mech short story from awhile ago…well, it’s been DOUBLED in length! I wasn’t done with this story and im excited about the shape its taken now!

• I put together a Cronenberg fanzine called Murdered Futures with a bunch of cool authors and artists! Use the password ‘ephemerol’ to download it.
• Sold my story “Last Resort” to the Dark Matter Presents: The Off-Season anthology!
• I said this up top but…I/we sold 2 collaborative graphic novels! One I’m writing with Leslie Hung drawing and one I’m drawing with Brian Evenson writing 🙂
• I got to draw and design a cover for my friend Porpentine’s novel, Serious Weakness!

• I attended the Native American Media Alliance TV Writing Workshop and was awarded a Native American Writer Accelerator Grant through them and Netflix! An incredible surprise! I also attended NAMA’s film festival LA Skinsfest which features exclusively work by native creatives! It was amazing!

• I was featured in the first issue of Gladiolus Magazine, run by powerhouse Jamila Rowser!
• I read for the LA Times Book Prize again with fellow judges Zach Hazard Vaupen and Nero O’reilly-Villagallos! So many good comics as always, its going to be hard to choose just a single standout.
• Not a highlight but a pivotal moment in my life this year: I lost my grandma, a sweet and loving woman who always supported me and all her loved ones. She’d been in a care home for several years, hanging on despite all her health issues. I don’t really like sharing much about my personal life but this changed me, as did my grandpas death and struggle up to it back in 2019. That generation of my family is now gone and with that comes a new weight for me to carry, grief but also a sense of commitment to my life, loved ones and my work. Here’s their beautiful faces in their youth:

• I also lost my good friend Akira of almost 14 years. Akira was a serious lady and a loyal protector. I’m gonna miss her. Here’s a little drawing and poem I wrote about her…

Some favorite things I watched/read this year though I didn’t watch many new things:

Comics: The Extraordinary Part: Book One: Orsay’s Hands by Jerome Mulot and Ruppert, Blood of the Virgin by Sammy Harkham, The Great Beyond by Léa Murawiec, CODA by Si Spurrier and Matías Bergara, Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise by Trade Moore, A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll, #DRCL midnight children, Vol. 1 by Shin’ichi Sakamoto, Prokaryote Season by Leo Fox, Social Fiction by Chantal Montellier

TV: Pluto, Jujutsu Kaisen, Beef, Reservation Dogs, Succession, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Barry, I’m a Virgo, Dead Ringers

Movies: Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall, The Boy and the Heron, May December, John Wick 4, Tar, Beau is Afraid, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Suzume, May December, Napoleon, Passages, The Iron Claw, Perpetrator, Rotting in the Sun

Games: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, (I put no effort in digging for indie games this year sadly)

Books: Wilding by Melanie Tem, The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, Villette by  Charlotte Brontë, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman, Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich, Twins: Dead Ringers by Bari Wood, Serious Weakness by Porpentine Charity Heartscape

Remember when I said I wanted to move to LA last year and had a lead on a TV writing gig? Lol. Lmao. Maybe in a few years when stuff gets back to “””normal””” in LA T_T.