2014 in Review: Ant Sang

What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?
 
Working on the collected edition of The Dharma Punks with my awesome mates at Earth's End has been a real highlight this year. From the nerve-wracking experience of launching our Kickstarter campaign, the excitement of hitting our target in five days, and launching the beautifully produced book on an amazing, jam-packed launch night at Heroes For Sale.
 
Travelling to the wonderful and exotic Ubud Writers & Readers Festival where I did my first Pecha Kucha and talked faster than I ever have in my life, about my work and ten things I've learnt during my twenty years of making comics; hung out with comic pals I haven't seen in years and met a heap of other inspiring creative folk.
 
Spending a week in Long Bay as part of the NZ/Taiwan graphic novelist exchange - getting to know Rae, Tim and the Taiwanese artists and planning our collaborative graphic novel.
 
Tutoring a nine week Comics course at Studio One - a great group of people in the class and a chance for me to re-learn a lot of comics-process stuff.

What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?
Dylan Horrocks' Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen, Paul Pope's Battling Boy, and loving the artwork of James Harren, Becky Cloonan and Toby Cyprus.

What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?
I've been working on some film projects - an animated short film, and co-writing a feature film.
Hanging out with wonderful, inspiring people and being constantly amazed by my daughters.

What are you looking forward to in 2015?
I'm developing a couple of collaborative comics projects which I'm really excited about.

Travelling to Taipei for the Taipei Book Fair and the second part of the graphic novel exchange.
 
New Zealand comics: Three Words comics anthology, Faction climate change issue
 
Movies: Star Wars: the Force Awakens, Mad Max: Fury Road.

Ant Sang

2014 in Review: Joshua Drummond

What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?
Having my ridiculous Relaxed Painting of John Key, which I did as a joke, wasn't happy with, and nearly threw out before putting it on TradeMe, end up as the cover of Steve Braunias' new book Madmen. It's now officially an NZ best-seller, sitting at #10 on the list, immediately below Quake Cats: Heart-Warming Stories of Christchurch Cats. I illustrated another book cover, wrote and illustrated a feature on the Armageddon expo for Metro, and did a advertistment-as-comic for a Microsoft affiliate that was a hell of a lot more fun than it probably sounds. I made a press release in the form of a comic for my friend's music notation software and I also did a long-overdue revamp of my website, tworuru.com. So yeah, mostly commercial stuff, but I've started work on a proper long comic book / graphic novel / thing as of just lately, which I am absolutely terrified about but also really enjoying.

What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?
I liked Bryan Lee O'Malley's Seconds - it was a weird, bitchy and personal book but I thought it was fantastic. Brandon Graham's run on Prophet has been entirely excellent and I'm looking forward to picking up the trades. Dylan Horrocks' The Magic Pen was a highlight - I followed it online and bought it the day it came out. Honestly, though, this has been a standout year for webcomics, which are what I really get into. John Allison's Bad Machinery went from strength to strength before he wrapped it up at the end of the latest story arc a month or so back. I can't wait to see what he does next. Emi Lenox should get a shout out - I really liked her daily comic Emitown, and she's consistently producing some of my favourite illustrations. Gunnerkrigg Court just keeps getting better, and Oglaf and Curvy are hilarious and NSFW fun. On the local scene, I just discovered Eddie Monotone's excellent (some of it totally NSFW) stuff, and everything Ralphi does is awesome.

What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?
Uh. Honestly, for whatever reason, Captain America 2 is the first thing that comes to mind. I loved it - it was a fantastic mash-up of a fast, funny comic book film, 70s espionage thriller (some shades of Le Carre in there) and a Bourne movie. Speaking of Le Carre, Nick Harkaway is his son, and he wrote my favourite book of the year, and one of my favourites of all time, Tigerman. I suppose you could call it a deconstruction of the superhero, if you were being uncharitable or po-faced, but honestly, it's just fucking awesome. Must read. His other books Angelmaker and The Gone Away World are unmissable - someone coined the term pulp-lit for them, and I reckon it fits really well. Oh and Shihad's new album FVEY is stonking brilliant.

What are you looking forward to in 2015?
Finally letting loose on this graphic novel that I've been brewing for the last seven years or so. I'm toying with the idea of serialising it online. My very-occasional webcomic, Cakeburger, has been pretty dormant for a while and I should probably put the domain name to work. The Three Words anthology by a bunch of stupendously talented New Zealand female comic artists should be a highlight of 2015. And I'm looking forward to seeing New Zealand's best (and probably youngest?) political cartoonist, Sharon Murdoch, unleashed on the Sunday Star Times. I'm pretty tired, just realised I spelt "anthology" as "analogy" before fixing it, so I should probably wind this up here. Oh, yes, and Chromacon. That should be fun.

Cakeburger

Two Ruru

2014 in Review: Andrew Fulton

What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?

I think every year I'm going to say a highlight is putting together the next run of the Minicomic of the Month Club. It's always fun organizing the lineup, sending out awkward emails to people whose work I like, hoping they won't think it's too dumb. And then I yell about it on social media for a week or two, which is also a bunch of fun and hopefully not too grating for everyone else. 

My own output has been a little slow this year, started a new job and have had less time and energy to draw than I would like. I won a "gap-year" Ledger Award, that was fun and nice and I'm pretty sure that was in 2014?

What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?

I've been enjoying Ryan Cecil Smiths work - he does this fun goofy sci-fi series with some great cartooning and the minis and zines he makes are really well put together, mostly (all?) riso books.

I really liked the Frontier series from Youth in Decline - especially I think Sascha Hommer's one. I had seen his Insekt story online a million years ago and had a panel from it printed out and stuck on the wall long after I forgot all about what it was and who did it, so it was great to 'rediscover' him. 

Gregory Benton's B+F was another favourite. A great example of the Wordless Adventures In A Strange Landscape With Weird Monsters genre, and a nice big-format book too - it looked great.

And I got this Cowboy Henk book, too. That'll be on my shelf forever.

What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?

We got chickens!

What are you looking forward to in 2015?

Is there a way I can say 'nothing in particular' without sounding super sad? I'm sure there will be a lot of great stuff but I don't have a really good sense of what any of it will be yet.

Andrew Fulton's Mumblier

2014 in Review: Sam Orchard

What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?

This year I printed the first three issues of Family Portraits! A comics series that celebrates gender and sexuality in New Zealand. I ran a Kickstarter and got enough money to print them and travel to America to do a comic tour.

It was really amazing to meet lots of incredible LGBTQI comic creators, and to show off my stuff over there. I feel really lucky and grateful to the amazing people who supported me in the kickstarter, that was definitely a highlight for me.

What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?

I really enjoyed We Can Fix it by Jess Fink and Tomboy by Liz Prince, the new Bold Riley issues by Leia Weathington are also incredible, and I have recently discovered Blue Deliquanti’s O Human Star webcomic as well.

What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?  

There’s been some really amazing TV coming out in the last year - I’m currently watching Nowhere Boys, an Australian Sci-fi, and I loved making my way through the first two seasons of Orphan Black.

What are you looking forward to in 2015?

Continuing to work on the next issue of Family Portraits, and maybe, just maaaaaybe a trip back to the USA :)

Rooster Tails

2014 in Review: Christopher Downes

What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?

One of the biggest highlights for me was getting nominated for Best Editorial Cartoonist at this year’s Stanley Awards. I’m still reeling for the thrill of hearing my name called out among my cartooning idols!

What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?

Pat Grant’s Toormina Video was one of the best things I’ve read this year. I also discovered Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac and fell deeply in love with it. I couldn’t sleep at all that night! It opened something up in me and the next day I drew one of my favourite cartoons I’ve ever drawn for the Mercury. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to chase that elusive spark of inspiration.

What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?  

My family. My wife is such an amazing support and my 3 year old daughter is great at getting me to sit down with her to fill up her sketchbooks. Watching her artistic skill develop is such a wonder to behold! She draws Jack Skellington over and over! I also really loved the LEGO movie.

What are you looking forward to in 2015?

A lot! There’s so much potential for this next year. 2014 turned out to be so much better, bigger and more satisfying that I could have imagined! I’m making a new year’s resolution this year to avoid doing parodies in my cartoons. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with parodies. Some cartoonists do them really well. I just want to take the opportunity to work on my own personal voice without trying to emulate another person’s style. Plus, most of the time I get hung up on trying to make a parody joke “work”. That usually takes up most of the day and in the end, many people don’t get the reference anyways.

The Cartoons of Christopher Downes