Cropped Will Cardini artwork

January 4th, 2024

2023 in Review

Filed under: Recaps — William Cardini @ 7:48 am

2023 was a more productive year for me than 2022! I finished three times as many comics pages (or comics-page-equivalent artworks) as last year. Unfortunately, only one of those pages was for Reluctant Oracle #2:

Another preview of Reluctant Oracle 2

Instead, I drew a four-page comic for the Spring 2023 issue of ANMLY and a Riso print for the 2023 Kansas City Flatfile + Digitalfile show at the H&R Block Artspace. You can see the print in the middle of my Paper Plains Zine Fest 2 table in this photo:

Will Cardini and Peter Hensel at Paper Plains Zine Fest 2 in Lawrence, KS
I’m on the left and my brother, Peter Hensel, is on the right. He runs the comic book empire Gotham Newsstand in San Antonio and publishes his own comic series, Suspense Stories of the Silent, the first issue of which is below him.

The second half of my year was spent drawing the cover and interstitial pages for Cosmic Gossip, a 20-page mini-comic collecting my three collaborative short comics with Mark Peters, which was published by Bad Publisher Books and debuted at Short Run in November.

If you’d like a signed copy, head over to my Big Cartel to purchase one for $8! Here are a couple photos:

Cosmic Gossip cover

Cosmic Gossip interior spread

Cosmic Gossip got a great review over on Ryan C.’s Four Color Apocalypse Patreon, where reviews of comics sent in by indie cartoonists and small-press publishers are always free. Here’s an excerpt:

Hell, a pretty solid argument could be made for this being the most conceptually ambitious of ALL Hyperverse releases (if only, ya know, it actually WERE one), since its scope takes in everything from the creation of the cosmos to the destruction of large swathes of it for sport to a coda on the meaning of it all — if any such philosophical bromide exists. Hint : according to the text of COSMIC GOSSIP (as well as to your own finely-honed skill for detecting bullshit) it doesn’t, but why let that spoil your good time? And, like all Cardini artistic endeavors, this latest one is a VERY good time, indeed. And who isn’t in the mood for more of that as the very notion of a shared consensus reality literally melts into oblivion all around us?

Over the past five years, I’ve managed to put out a new mini-comic every other year. So hopefully I’ll have Relucant Oracle #2 for y’all in 2025! Before I can make that happen, however, I have a couple exciting projects underway for this year that I can’t quite talk about yet… but I can share these sketchbook pages and in-process watercolor painting:

Sketches of the Miizzzard

Sketches of melting Miizzzards

Random sketches

Unfinished watercolor painting

Unfinished watercolor painting

September 1st, 2023

Paper Plains Zine Fest 2

Filed under: Comic Fests — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:46 am

This Sunday I’ll be tabling at the second Paper Plains Zine Fest in Lawrence, KS!

I’ll have this new riso print for sale…

Robot Warrior 001 risograph print

…plus my usual offerings.

Paper Plains Zine Fest 2 flyer: Saturday September 2nd: Workshops and Programs at KU and throughout Lawrence. Sunday September 3rd: Vendor Fair 11am to 5pm at Van Go, 715 New Jersey St., Lawrence, KS.
Flyer by Lydia Halo.

This year, they’ve expanded PPZF to two days, and divided the programming and tabling onto separate days, which I love to see because tablers can attend without losing out on sales! The schedule on their website has the programming for Day 1, AKA tomorrow.

Sunday will be all tabling; I’ll be at Table 35, cozily sandwiched between my buddies Red Shorts Bindery and Jason Lips, plus a surprise special guest!! Click here to see a table map

June 1st, 2023

CAKE 2023

Filed under: Comic Fests — Tags: — William Cardini @ 8:01 am

I’ll be tabling at CAKE, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, this weekend, their first show since 2019!

Poster for CAKE 2023 with event details
Excellent poster by David Alvarado.

CAKE is at a new location this year, the Broadway Armory. Come say hi at Table 509A along the back wall!

Map of CAKE tables on the Broadway Armory with a callout for Table 509

My spread will be similar to what I had at KC Zine Con and Paper Plains Zine Fest last year (this post includes a photo of my table from last year’s KCZC). Reluctant Oracle #1 came out in 2021 but it will be new to CAKE!

Unfortunately I’ll be missing this year’s KC Zine Con because it’s also this weekend.

May 5th, 2023

New Comic in ANMLY #36

Filed under: Comics,Web Comics — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 11:34 am

I’m honored to let y’all know that I have a new short comic in the latest issue of Anomaly (stylized ANMLY), an online journal of literature and the arts.

ANMLY 36 cover by Dev Murphy, image is drawing of a scaly tunnel captioned I Dream at each end.
ANMLY #36 cover by Dev Murphy.

Here’s the first page of my comic, entitled “Sunk Mind”:

Sunk Mind by Will Cardini page 1, a black-and-white comic with two panels. Panel 1 caption: No thought thought in the history of the universe will ever be lost. Panel 1 image is a head breaking open with a wavy beam of light coming out. Panel 2 caption: Moving like liquid light, they exit the minds of a trillion trillion sentient beings... Panel 2 image is a wavy beam of light moving through space.

Click here to browse the table of contents for ANMLY #36, read the rest of my comic, and check out the other amazing contributors.

January 20th, 2023

2022 in Review

Filed under: Recaps — William Cardini @ 7:48 am

2022 was a difficult year for me. Work stress and heartsickness over world events made it hard for me to muster up my creativity for comics; as a result, 2022 was one of my least productive years since I started keeping detailed records in 2019. However, I did get some artwork done.

In January, I finished two more pages of Reluctant Oracle #2, getting to a good stopping point before switching to paid work. Here’s one of those two pages:

Preview of Reluctant Oracle 2

I’m excited to get back to Reluctant Oracle #2 in the next month or two! That will be my main project until I get it done. I don’t want to leave anyone hanging for too long (*cough cough* Hyperbox *cough cough*).

Then in February I designed a logo for Moon Beast Games, an indie tabletop games company who are, in their own words, “devoted to the worship of the nameless creature that is just out of sight behind your right shoulder.”

Moon Beast Games logo is a nervously smiling moon being squeezed by a monstrous clawed hand

As I mentioned in my 2021 recap (which I didn’t post until June 2022, lmao), Moon Beast had a successful Kickstarter last spring and have begun fulfillment. Be on the lookout for future Kickstarters from them that will include a couple illustrations I drew back in 2021!

In June and September, I tabled at two local shows: KC Zine Con #7 (in Kansas City, MO, natch) and the inaugural Paper Plains Zine Fest in Lawrence, KS. Here’s a photo of me with the latter’s mischievous mascot, Jammy the risograph:

Photo of Will Cardini at Paper Plains Zine Fest, standing behind his table of comics, hugging Jammy the mascot, a person in a full-body cartoonist risograph costume

These were my in-person first shows since 2019 and it was exciting to huff the rarified air of a zine fest! It felt great to be tabling and talking shop with fellow comics folk again.

Jumping back to August, Charles Stross’ Freyaverse series inspired me to write my first SF book review since 2018. Writing a review was a grind at first until I got my groove back. I’ve also done some work to try and save the older blog posts here from link rot and hotlinked images (sorry to anyone I did that to), although sadly there were a couple posts that even archive.org couldn’t save.

In November, my buddy Tim Brown took me and fellow cartoonist Thayer Bray to check out Chris Beneke’s comics library in Parsons, KS. Chris has a fascinating theory about how time works differently in comics, especially older newspaper strips; but of course I was drawn to newer stuff like this amazing Basil Wolverton cover:

Cover of Intense #2, a comic by Basil Wolverton

The majority of my year, however, was spent designing characters for and drawing the third collab between me and writer Mark Peters:

Title page for Cosmic Planet-Eating Contest by Mark Peters and Will Cardini

You can read all eight pages of “Cosmic Planet-Eating Contest” here on my site. I had a blast drawing orb-crunching mayhem and working in a Kirby homage on the first panel. Even though I didn’t actually finish the detail work until this month, it was mostly done by the end of 2022.

September 2nd, 2022

Paper Plains Zine Fest

Filed under: Comic Fests — Tags: — William Cardini @ 8:17 am

Hey y’all, I’ll be tabling at the inaugural Paper Plains Zine Fest this Saturday in Lawrence, KS!

Paper Plains Zine Fest flyer: Saturday September 3rd at Van Go, 715 New Jersey St., Lawrence, KS, 11am to 5pm
Flyer by Lydia Halo.

Entry is free. Come say hi at Table 48! There’ll be tables inside and outside; I’ll be inside, where masks are required.

Paper Plains Zine Fest table map

This is my second zine fest of the year (scream emoji), so I’ll have a similar setup to what I had at KC Zine Con #7, here’s a shot of my table from that event:

Photo of Will Cardini at Kansas City Zine Con 7 in June 2022

I’ll have my comics, a couple riso prints, and a few books from Retrofit. See ya there!

August 4th, 2022

Post-Human Scams and Spies

Filed under: SF Reviews — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 11:08 am

I’ve recently finished Charles Stross’ Freyaverse series: the novel Saturn’s Children (2008), the short story Bit Rot (2010), and the novel Neptune’s Brood (2013). The books had been on my to-read pile for a while because I’ve enjoyed his other space operas, especially Glasshouse.

Cover of Neptunes Brood by Charles Stross, cover art by Fred Gambino
This cover for the UK edition was painted by Fred Gambino.

The premise of Saturn’s Children is fantastic. It’s set in a future where humanity has created colonies across the solar system, but has since died out, leaving our artificially intelligent robotic creations to carry on a post-human civilization without us. One important conceptual detail is that even though these are manufactured beings, their brains are basically the same as ours: human engineers couldn’t figure out how to create general artificial intelligence from scratch, so they built artificial emulations of human brains.

One could imagine a sort of Bechdel Test for SF books about robots: do two artificial intelligences talk to each other about something other than humans? These books would easily pass, although they’re still ultimately about humans: our foibles and narcissisms are on center stage.

Click here to read spoilery details

June 9th, 2022

KC Zine Con #7

Filed under: Comic Fests — Tags: — William Cardini @ 4:54 am

I’m excited to tell y’all I’ll be tabling at KC Zine Con #7 this Saturday! It was the last con I tabled at in-person before the pandemic began, so it’s fitting that it’ll be my return to in-person tabling.

Poster for Kansas City Zine Con 7 with the following info: June 11, 2022, 11am to 5pm, in person at Plexpod Westport Commons, virtual at kczinecon.com
Poster by local tattoo artist Ana Mal.

I’ll be at table 19 in between John Coats, Thayer NG Bray, and Joe Trotter.

Map of zinester tables in the 1923 Room at Plexpod Westport Commons

There was a virtual KC Zine Con #6 in Fall 2020 in which I participated, but unfortunately nothing beats cramming a bunch of grubby zinesters and zine enthusiasts into the same physical space. I dream about alternatives to the con model of zine and art comics distribution in North America but I do enjoy hanging out with like-minded people IRL and sharing our passion for cheaper art produced by individual, or small groups of, visionaries. Fortunately the KC Zine Con organizers are taking the health of tablers and attendees seriously by requiring masks for everyone and proof-of-vaccination for tablers.

Photo of Will Cardini wearing a disposable face mask
This is what I look like wearing a mask.

This year I’ll have my newest mini-comic, Reluctant Oracle #1, in addition to my 2019 mini-comic Urscape #1, my 2017 collection of short comics Tales from the Hyperverse, my 2014 graphic novel Vortex, and a selection of Retrofit Comics.

June 3rd, 2022

2021 in Review

Filed under: Recaps — William Cardini @ 4:49 am

We’re almost halfway through 2022, but it’s not too late to tell y’all about what I was up to in 2021!

In July, I self-published the first installment of my latest graphic novel, Reluctant Oracle #1.

A Stack of Reluctant Oracle 1 minicomics

It dropped on the Strangers Fanzine distro, which was one of my most successful releases, and now it’s available via my Hypercastle Big Cartel. I’ve also moved all my other in-print comics there.

Reluctant Oracle #1 got a couple positive reviews on Ryan C.’s Four Color Apocalypse and Optical Sloth.

Later that same month, I had some pixel and paper artworks in the 2021 Kansas City H&R Block Artspace Flatfile + Digitalfile show.

Here’s a GIF of the Miizzzard loading:

A GIF of the Miizzzard getting progressively larger and less pixelated

Here’s an ink drawing, “Meeting of the Miizzz Minds”:

2022 Meeting of the Miizzz Minds india ink drawing

For the rest of my year, I worked on some illustrations for an indie tabletop game company, and I started Reluctant Oracle #2. The game company is Moon Beast Games; I’ll have more to say about them in my 2022 recap, and when they launch the Kickstarter for a tabletop campaign that includes my illustrations. Here’s a Reluctant Oracle #2 page I finished in December 2021 that I’m particularly proud of:

Preview of Reluctant Oracle 2

March 16th, 2021

A Year of Social Distancing

Filed under: Recaps — William Cardini @ 1:00 pm

For the past five years, I’ve posted a recap of my previous year in January. For 2020, I’ve struggled with how to approach this, but now that I’ve passed the one year anniversary of when I started social distancing in March 2020, it’s time to mark that dreadful milestone. The past 15 months have been full of upended expectations, struggle, and grief for everyone around the globe. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to keep my job and stay healthy.

I neglected to mention this in my post about 2019, but Tom Spurgeon passed away that November. I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing Tom personally but his passing has left a hole in my comics life. I used to read The Comics Reporter every weekday while drinking my morning coffee. In 2020 I missed his insight keenly. I’m sure he would’ve had a lot to say about all the back-and-forth between Diamond and DC, not to mention the cancelling of San Diego Comic Con and so many other shows.

Tom Spurgeon @comicsreporter pinned tweet, Jul 15, 2017, i will save this comics industry to the ground
This Tom Spurgeon tweet makes me laugh every time I see it.

It’s hard to see what shape the comics industry, such as it is, will be in after the pandemic ends, considering the shifts in the direct market and extended gap between in-person indie comic festivals. My brother runs a comics shop in San Antonio and the lack of statewide mask orders for keeping retailers safe and DC distributor changes have made this an incredibly hard year for him (if you want to support his shop, check out his eBay store). I only virtually tabled at one show in 2020, KC Zine Con. They did a good job of organizing virtual panels and creating a website that mimics the experience of browsing zinester’s tables, but it definitely doesn’t match the energy, or amount of sales, that I get from being in a cavernous room with everyone. KC Zine Con is the one show where I can usually count on making some money because I don’t have to travel for it. Luckily, I’m not dependent on that show income because of my day job, but how many cartoonists and small press publishers need it to keep going? How many of them will still be in business when these shows can hopefully happen again in 2022?

I don’t have the answers. Fortunately there are other options for art comics to get out there, through excellent distros like Birdcage Bottom Books, Spit and a Half, or Domino Books; or just by posting online. Several high quality comics have been recently serialized through daily Instagram updates, like Simon Hanselmann’s Crisis Zone, Alex Graham’s Dog Biscuits, and Michael DeForge’s Birds of Maine. DeForge has been going the web-serial-to-print-book route for years now, from Ant Colony (FKA Ant Comic) to Leaving Richard’s Valley to this latest one.

I put out two new comics in the past 15 months via this site. Even though I’m not leaving the house much it’s been a struggle to find the mental capacity to be creative when most of my days are spent juggling working at home and helping my kid with online school.

In February 2020, I finished a four-page comic for a zine organized by Kelsey Borch that she hoped to print and hand out at local climate action events. The sessions where we brainstormed ideas for it were one of the last times I hung out with people inside a building. I volunteered to make my comic about dealing with anxiety caused by ruminating on climatic catastrophes, a topic with which I’m all too familiar. The pandemic put a crimp in Kelsey’s plans for the zine so I decided to put my pages up here. If you’re putting together a zine for climate activists and would like to include my pages for free, just send me a message via the social media accounts or email listed on my About page.

Crop from my comic Anxious about Climate Change?
Crop from my comic Anxious about Climate Change?
Some crops of pages from Anxious about Climate Change?

In November, I finished a second collaboration with the humorist and writer Mark Peters. The comic is called The Big Baby and it was a blast to create! You can read all five pages here.

The Big Baby page 2
The Big Baby page 2.

I also drew fan art for my friend Pat Aulisio’s most recent graphic novel, Grid Observer, in July.

Fan art of Grid Observer by Pat Aulisio

By the end of 2020, I finished 10 pages of A Reluctant Oracle, a continuation of a story in Tales from the Hyperverse. I’d planned to self-publish A Reluctant Oracle #1 for CAKE 2020; when that show was postponed, I decided to postpone my comic as well. They’re letting everyone keep their tables for the next in-person show (hopefully I’ll see y’all in Chicago in 2022), but I’m planning to self-publish it this summer and sell it here. I’ve also made progress on A Reluctant Oracle #2.

Preview page from Reluctant Oracle 1
Preview page from Reluctant Oracle 1
A couple preview pages from A Reluctant Oracle #1.

In January of this year, my friend Amy Middleton passed away. Her kindness and friendliness were an integral part of the Austin indie comics scene. She always made me feel welcome at draw nights and 24-hour comic book day marathons, even when I was a newcomer. And the one-eyed bear costume she made for Zach Taylor to promote his Bear Quest comics was an eye-popping presence at Staple! every year.

Amy Middleton and Zach Taylor in the bear suit she made
Amy Middleton and Zach Taylor in the bear suit she made.