My First Political Cartoon in Three Years
New comic, new projects for 2024
I hope your new year is off to good start. Mine has been pleasant and calm as winter finally picks up in Canada. We are experiencing late-onset snow this year, but it’s piling up now as storms smack most of North America this week. My 2024 is beginning with the usual lifestyle recalibrations: hitting the gym more, cutting back on drinking, trying to get into better habits and routines as I design my work days around a lot of concentrated comic book writing. I’m working on… four books at the moment. More on those in a minute.
The lede this month is that I’ve drawn my first political cartoon since May of 2021. It is on the Israel/Gaza war and you can read it at this link. I figured I’d dip my toes back in to the medium with a light topic. I edit the comics section at In These Times magazine every month and I’ll throw in my own hat from time to time as ideas come to me.
By the way, The Nib wrapped up last year, as I think you all know. If you were already signed up for the daily newsletter, check your inboxes for a little something…
A Quick Ask
If you have read Justice Warriors, I would humbly ask if you could post a short review or rating on Amazon or Goodreads. These things really matters in the days or algorithms and recommendations, especially for creator-owned work where we are trying to make something new. Something that could, say, go on for many more volumes of dazzling dystopian mayhem and satire.
If you can take a moment to give us a rating or a short review, it's greatly appreciated.
2024: Many Comics Ahead
I have a lot of longer projects in the works right now, but the first thing out from me this year will be a short comic with Daniel Irizarri for Project: Cryptid, an anthology of cryptid comics from Ahoy. Our story “Cabrón” deals with chupacabras and an entrepreneur obsessed with optimizing his body to live forever. He may be based on a real life cabrón injecting himself with his son’s blood.
This issue also featured a great story about Sasquatches by Mattie Lubchansky and Maki Naro, so it’s a mini-Nib reunion as we pivot to cryptid content. Call your comic book shop and tell them you’d like to order Project: Cryptid #6 in stores February 21.
As I mentioned above, I am writing multiple comic books right now. Some I will draw, some I will not, some are creator-owned, some are licensed characters—a first for me. There are three scripts on deck that I move between with a fourth project to follow once the deck clears a bit. For that last project I have been doing a lot of preliminary drawing and character design the last few months.
None of these comics are set to be announced just yet, but I hope you’ll like the new directions. All my current projects fit together in a certain way and you won’t make it through this year without me sounding the trumpets for multiple book launches and hundreds of pages of comics to be published in the next year. When I mentioned on Facebook last week that I had my first political cartoon in a while coming out, someone responded, “We need post-apocalyptic mutants now more than ever!”
Trust me when I say I know this and I’m working on it…
Panel of the month
Odds and Ends
I contributed to The Beat's 2024 creator survey about what I'm up to and what is up with comics. I went for concise.
How are student loan repayments going? More than 3 million billing errors and hold times stretching into hours. Cool!
I will be tabling at TCAF in Toronto this May 11-12, which I’m now realizing is my new regional con for the long haul.
Michael Mann confirms that HEAT 2 will begin filming this year. Adam Driver is in talks to star.
A psychic was on Fox News pulling Tarot cards for the election year. You know what that reminds me of…
it's funny because it would work [re your political comic]
LOL great!