All through the year

Tumbleweed blows

If you’re signed up to this Substack, you’ll be very aware that I seldom post to it. I try to maintain my Patreon, and that eats almost all the spare writing I have time to do. I do semi-regular posts for free members there, but I’m well aware that this mailing list has a lot of historic subscribers who have never, and will never sign up over there. So I wanted to say “hello” before the end of the year. It feels more virtuous than posting a load of pictures to Instagram to signify a 100% fun 365-gone-by.

2025 was a decent year, good and bad, but probably more good than bad. A B- year.

My Mum and Dad receive a Christmas card every year where the parent of one of my schoolfriends from the late ‘80s describes his wife’s various ailments then exposes his now middle-aged children’s struggles by way of a holiday greeting. I will attempt to keep this round robin free of such unnecessary candour, but feel free to imagine my various injuries and personal disasters. Perhaps I suffered an agonising groin strain after an ill-advised splits at the ice rink, before a pivoting gingerly into a disastrous relationship with an insurance actuary who turned out to be a jewel thief.

I apologise. Despite my best efforts, we have drifted into a redundant intimacy. I will attempt to move on to the professional portion of the newsletter before leaving you to your NYE revels.

What I made this year

Webcomics-as-a-career rolled on. I still can’t believe I get to do this, and I have no idea how long I will be able to continue to do. The internet I began my work on barely exists now, yet doggedly maintaining control over an old-fashioned, regularly-updated website has allowed me to survive (or perhaps persevere) beyond the point when most of my 2000s contemporaries have moved on or diversified out from the way I still do things.

This year I tried to finish off all the run-aground projects I had hanging over from 2020-2024 - Solver: Wobbly Head tied up the Wicked Things story I wasn’t able to finish when Boom suddenly cancelled the series, NEMS 1968 concluded my Beatles story from the pandemic (after a failed attempt in early 2022), and Savage Sword of Susan would have formed the epilogue to my Conan story that was cease-and-desisted last summer. It felt great to put all these stories to bed, and in each of them, the pleasure of resolving things seemed, at least to me, to be evident on the page.

In the spring, Dark Horse published what I suspect will be the last of my projects for the US comic market for the foreseeable future: Great British Bump-Off: Kill Or Be Quilt. The series was finished early in 2024 (and written and roughed out by me in mid-2023), so it was a long wait for something I believe everyone who worked on it was very proud of. It’s nobody’s fault; put simply, the industry has changed immeasurably since Giant Days #1 was published in 2015, and the sort of long runs that lend richness to my stories seemingly aren’t commercially viable any more. I’m lucky to still be able to operate on my own terms and deeply grateful to all my colleagues on my direct market series.

Late in the year, I began reruns of Solver at GoComics and Webtoon. Adapting my work for the vertical phone scroll of Webtoon was laborious and may yet prove to have been a folly, but it seemed to me it was worth a go. I know my work is esoteric. I frequently think of myself as an unmarketable product. I am lucky to have got as far as I have, but I have always been heartened in my approach by the fact that attempting to give people “what they want” leads me almost immediately to disaster. Connecting with new readers is the hardest thing for me, and there’s more friction in that process than there has ever been. I’m too old and too tired to pivot to video. Look at the state of my face.

What I want to do next year

After years of chopping and changing, I want to do a whole year of Solver. I have six issues lined up in a row, all properly thought through and ready to write and draw. Once three are done, I’ll publish Solver volume 2. My comics aspirations go no further than that. 150 pages is about all I can manage in a year these days and I believe it is enough.

I still feel bad about my other series, Steeple. I know people liked it, and there was a lot more material there. I’m annoyed that there is an unpublished volume 4, and I won’t publish it myself when the first three volumes are in someone else’s hands and could easily go out of print. But here is some Steeple-related news to come in 2026 that might move things along so I am trying to be positive. I spent a few days recently trying to work out other things I could use the Steeple settings, stories and characters for - TTRPGs, card games, choose-your-own-path type books, before realising that I don’t like to play any of those things or inhabit their makers’ worlds and so I don’t really know how to craft a satisfying feeling version of them. But it was nice to think about the characters in a different way and I remain open to possibilities for them.

You can still read Steeple online if you want to revisit it.

I’d like to do more in-person events next year. Not necessarily conventions. Maybe not even comics-specific. Perhaps what I want is the moon on a stick. I don’t know.

What I (increasingly) don’t want to do next year

Live my life through a screen, performing for attention.

Albums of the year 2025

1 BALLOON BALLOON BALLOON – Sharp Pins
2 BLEEDS – Wednesday
3 NESTED IN TANGLES – Hannah Frances
4 PHONETICS ON AND ON – Horsegirl
5 LIFE, DEATH AND DENNIS HOPPER – The Waterboys
6 RASPBERRY MOON – Hotline TNT
7 MORE – Pulp
8 IT’S A BEAUTIFUL PLACE – Water From Your Eyes
9 WHEN I PAINT MY MASTERPIECE – Ada Lea
10 GETTING KILLED – Geese

11 JOEY – Joey Joesph
12 EURO COUNTRY – CMAT
13 THE BERRIES – The Berries
14 MICHELANGELO DYING – Cate Le Bon
15 BURY THE KEY – TOPS
16 INSTANT HOLOGRAMS ON METAL FILM – Stereolab
17 BURNOVER – Greg Freeman
18 NEW THREATS FROM THE SOUL – Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band
19 SWITCHEROO – Gelli Haha
20 COTTON CROWN – The Tubs

21 GRASS – Grass
22 SONG SHARDS – Peter Stampfel
23 MARAVILHOSAMENTE BEM – Julia Mestre
24 UP LATE WITH DUMBELLS – Dumbells
25 SPRING GROVE – The Ophelias
26 BUGLAND – No Joy
27 SOUNDS LIKE… – Florry
28 TOMORROW COMES CRASHING – Smut
29 LUMINESCENT CREATURES – Ichiko Aoba
30 2 – Foxwarren

31 SNOCAPS – Snocaps
32 I LOVE PEOPLE – Cory Hanson
33 ANTIGONE – Eiko Ishibashi
34 LOVE CHANT – The Lemonheads
35 SPRING BOARD – The Chills
36 BUYER BEWARE – The Men
37 ALL CYLINDERS – Yves Jarvis
38 SINISTER GRIFT- Panda Bear
39 ANIMARU – Mei Semones
40 TIMELESS WORLD FOREVER – Graham Hunt

I’ve said too much

This is a long old email. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. Thank you for your time. I have said it before, but it bears restating: I am grateful to all my readers for the time you give me. Our world is ever more uncertain, and to take you away and entertain you for a little while is something I do not take lightly. It is my pleasure to do so.

Whoever and wherever you are, happy new year.

JA