Looking back, Looking forward (2025 edition)

Happy New Year! May 2025 be awesome for each and every one of you who choose to read this. (And everyone who doesn’t.)

For those who’ve come in late, I wrote a piece back around New Year’s last year. In a way, it served as a North Star for my efforts in 2024. In another, major, way, it didn’t anticipate what was to come.

My mantra from last year bears repeating:

I’m going to try to get a little bit of creative work accomplished every day that I’m home this year.

2024: The road ahead (January 2, 2024)

Against that standard, how did I do? I was far from perfect. There were days when I didn’t do anything creative. There are plenty of reasons…but excuses are just that…I did not bat 1.000. Alas.

Thing is, I enjoy setting goals like this – ones that are nearly impossible to meet – because they always give me something to aspire toward. Was I perfect? No. Did 2024 end up being pretty darned good? Oh yes.

Here’s the plot twist: It did not resemble anything like what I was planning when I wrote that post. After the statement repeated above, I wrote this:

It might be advancing a script, or drawing an illustration, or laying out/pasting up a publication…but it will be something.

2024: The road ahead (January 2, 2024)

Where’s the “launching a video channel” part? Where’s the “making 3+ videos a week” part? They didn’t exist. They weren’t even a concept of a plan! I was all about making comics a year ago, not making videos (in addition to comics and zines).

With that in the rearview mirror, I suppose you could say that 2024 was a year of innovation. What a year it was!

• Two issues of Strange Times, starting with the issue five “My Best Joke” anthology and concluding with the issue six focus on “Keith Newsome: Renaissance Man”.
• Three issues of Something in the Water (read ’em here), always a challenge as I am doing the whole thing myself (even the artwork!).
• At long last, an issue of Hologram (read here), but more importantly that the series has the amazing Tony Lorenz bringing the balance of the 12-part ship into shore. I am over the moon excited to see how he visualizes the climactic ending!
• An issue of FANzine (Two) – A tribute to music that I love so much.
• SEVEN United Fanzine Organization Awards! I don’t expect anything as amazing as that this year (lower zine output and all), but WOW was this an incredible affirmation by my peers.
• Annnd my first-ever credit in a “comic shop” comic – “Run for Your Life” written by me, drawn by John Muller, in Planet Comics #30 from Antarctic Press!

Was it perfect from a publications point of view? Nope. No Heroes Now in 2024, but hopefully that will be corrected in early-ish 2025. Precious few stories plotted and scripts written, which doesn’t bode well for future publications. I need to light a fire on that front, but…

Then there was FANzine Live. From mid-March onwards, I have been hip-deep in zines, videos and all that entails. It has been an absolute blast to do, celebrating zines of all sorts across the miles and the years. I won’t itemize each video, but here’s a 2024 summary to chew on:

• 318 channel subscribers
• 14,443 channel views
• 733.5 hours of videos watched (Remember, most videos are under 10 minutes long)
• Viewers from USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Vietnam, Croatia, Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Peru, Italy and South Africa…and that’s less than half the views registered! (Many YouTube accounts don’t geographically identify themselves, I guess.)

And this is all from scratch, in under nine months. It’s stunning to me. Clearly there’s an audience for discussion of small press comics, zines and to a lesser extent zine culture.

Sure, it takes a ton of creative time away from writing, drawing and publishing. That said, can FANzine Live be considered anything other than a first-year success? It’s so gratifying to see things take off as they have.

There was a lot more to the year, most notable my trips to Central Europe and Canada – resulting in my exposure to World Zines on a first-person level.

I feel much more knowledgable, much better rooted in the global zine culture that I only discovered/appreciated in 2024. (Do I sense a forthcoming issue of FANzine coming out of this…?)

So yes, a lot of gratitude. In fact, I put a brief video together (of course I did…that’s hoe things work these days) on that point. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

I don’t think there’s anything else to say about 2024. Let’s close the book and look forward.

---

What does 2025 hold? What can I expect? After the nuttiness of 2024, I can honestly say I don’t know. So let’s instead focus on those aspirational goals in the same spirit of this past year.

I want to find balance with my creative time in 2025. I want to write more stories. I want to draw more comics. I want to do something new and different. And with all that, I want to continue to make interesting videos. I have no idea how this will all happen, but I’ll strive to get there.

There. Simple. Straightforward. I want to be as much of comic/zine creator as a video maker. Probably impossible to achieve considering the weekly content challenges of FANzine Live, but that’s what aspirations are about. To pull it off, I need to realign my free time to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. I’m going to do it. I have to do it. That’s my goal.

I wish all of you the best for 2025. Thank you for your friendship, your support, your readership and (now) your viewing time. I’m a self-driven guy, but each one of you makes the effort all the more rewarding.