MadInkBeard by DerikBadman

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2012 was to make at least 2 comics a week (theoretically, one during the week and one on the weekend). This seemed like an easily achievable goal to reach above and beyond my other responsibilities (like having a full time job). I didn’t actually end up making 2 comics (in this case counting each page or strip as 1) a week. There were large swaths of time where I didn’t make any at all, especially early in the year, where I think I was in the middle of some transitions of how I work. Moving away from drawing, but not totally sure where I was going with it. But there were also a number of times were I was making a comic every day (sometimes 2) or nearly every day (late in the year when I got into a better working rhythm). All told I ended up (by my best count) making 133 pages/strips in 2012 (a lot of them are on this blog or at my Tumblr). Which is a bit better than 2/week. I can’t say for sure, but it might have been my most productive year ever.

I put out three issues of MadInkbeard (I fell behind in getting number 4 done despite having enough work for it, hopefully before this month is out I’ll rectify that) and participated in a number of anthologies. I had a piece in Secret Prison #666 which I did in collaboration with Warren Craghead. I had a comic in C’est Bon Anthology #19 (which just came out last month, here’s a color excerpt). Supposedly, I have a piece in the new issue of Catch-Up, but I haven’t seen it yet. There is also the Comics As Poetry anthology, which I also haven’t seen, though I know there are a few copies out there somewhere. I made some strips for Carousel Magazine’s 4Panel series (here, here, here, with one more still unpublished).

There were a few positive mentions of my comics by the likes of Rob Clough (also here), Frank Santoro, Ryan Holmberg, and Craig Fischer. Also my minicomic “Badman’s Cave” was a Notable comic in the Best American Comics 2012 volume.

On the writing front I was much less prolific (maybe that’s why I was more prolific in making comics). I wrote a piece about manga and Red Colored Elegy for Secret Prison 7. I wrote a few pieces for Hooded Utilitarian on: comics poetry (I’ve stalled on part 2), Wonder Woman and Harry Peter, Locas and superheroes, and the first comic book I ever read. There’s also the essay on photocomics in MadInkBeard No.2.

I read 239 books/comics during the year (almost 240 since I’m halfway through rereading Lord of the Rings), with a mix of comics, literary fiction, poetry, criticism (comics, art, photo, literary), zen, webdesign, fantasy (I’m on a fantasy kick right now), and a good bit of Thoreau.

All in all, I guess it was a productive year. I’ve already got some plans for 2013, we’ll see where they go.

Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks for reading.