What to Expect in Early 2026

TL;DR

You can click on any link below to jump to the relevant part of this blog post.

Three main goals of this blog – stop working in a silo, share my knowledge with others, prop up fellow artists.
Momotaro is a Japanese folklore tale that I’m too lazy to repeat in this summary, so if you want to know more, keep reading.
My upcoming graphic novel Infernally Employed puts a modern-day twist on Momotaro.
But before I work on Infernally Employed, I’m working on its prequel titled Cold Hands, Cold Heart.

Before we start…

It has been so many years since I wrote in a blog. It might have been the early 2000s, on either Xanga, LiveJournal or Blogger. Remember those websites with crap UI and loud background music you couldn’t stop? (Totally guilty of doing it myself, unfortunately.)

Anyway, just so you know what to expect here, I’ve got three main goals around starting this blog:

I want to get out of my shell. I love juggling complicated projects which people seem to want to hear more about (to no one’s surprise but my own) so this’ll be a space for me to share. And I’d love to hear what you think about them.

I’ve got a bunch of knowledge in my head to share. Things like, what the hell is CMYK? How many pixels wide/tall should your file be if you want to print a comic page that measures x by y inches? How do I create a plan to execute my project? I’ve got (too many) years of working in tech, working with tech etc. It would mean a lot to me to transform what used to be a painful experience I ran away from into a way of giving back to others.

I want to share awesome art/artists/info that I come across. Who doesn’t like cool stuff? But my fellow cartoonists in my network have propped my work up for me, so this is mainly me doing my part in paying it forward.

I’M SORRY, THAT WAS SO GROSS AND CORPORATE. Goal-setting is definitely one of those icky corporate things that have stuck with me, making sure we have the same expectations and all that jazz. Onto the fun stuff now, I promise.

The fun stuff

The original story, Momotaro

This is an image from the free bookmarks I’ve been giving out recently. Some folks at Fresno Zine Fest asked me, what are the characters you’re dangling as puppets here?

This design is a little different from the version you have, if you’ve picked up a bookmark from me in the past. (I had them printed with Mixam this month so I had to make some changes!)

The boy with the topknot is Momotaro and the three animals are his sidekicks – a monkey, a dog and a pheasant. They’re all characters from a Japanese folklore story that you can read about on Wikipedia, or (as I prefer) watch the catchiest video ever instead.

Infernally Employed, i.e. modern day Momotaro

In July/August 2025, I started working (and stopped, more on that later) on a graphic novel titled Infernally Employed. It is a twist on Momotaro but set in the modern day world of Big Tech.

In my story, Momotaro is a slacker rather than a hero who’d rather hook up with his partner Tamaki than write a single line of code. His coworkers are the animals from the folklore tale, who are better than him in many ways. You can read the official synopsis here.

My initial depiction of the entirety of Infernally Employed in 4 panels

Putting a pause on things

I got quite burnt out working on Infernally Employed. It turns out contributing a new comic for an anthology, finishing your studies in comic art, creating new work to enter a comics contest and then working on a brand new graphic novel in the span of 5 months without a break will do that to you. Who would have thought it? (Anyone. Anyone but me.)

It got to the point I was screaming at my accountabili-buddy (the bestest you could ever wish for) – “I F-ING HATE DRAWING, I AM DONE!”

I did zero drawing in September while I did what my friends were calling my “East Coast Tour”. I attended Small Press Expo, travelled a bit, recharged and spent my social battery, visited several art galleries, got a bit of FOMO seeing other people’s work.

Burnout is no trivial matter and can take far longer to overcome, but when I got home I felt ready to dive into art again, so I did all 31 Inktober 2025 prompts which are now an art zine titled The Disadvantageous Demises.

COLD HANDS, COLD HEART: the prequel to Infernally Employed

I’m easing myself back into working on Infernally Employed by creating a prequel to it titled Cold Hands, Cold Heart. It is literally inspired by a friend’s husband doing jazz hands in the background while I was talking to her on Google Meet. Gotta love supportive partners who sneak up on calls holding a Mason jar full of water for their better halves.

Cold Hands, Cold Heart expands on the backstory for Tamaki – what they get up to before they meet Momotaro for the first time, and then how they actually meet him. (If you missed it, Tamaki is Momotaro’s partner in my graphic novel that I completely made up.)

Initial concept design for Tamaki when I wanted more of Ghibli’s style to come through, but I have since decided not to make my life harder…

Here’s the synopsis:

Tamaki is a consultant sent to work in a brand new city, but their loneliness accidentally brings about a yokai who is determined to keep them that way.

I’m obsessed with bringing yokai (Japanese supernatural creatures) into everything – this prequel will feature one called Tsurara-onna (“icicle lady”).

Cold Hands, Cold Heart will be gradually posted both online and also available as zines, with Chapter 1 of 3 targeting for release around February 2026. Ish. Will I make it or burn out again? You probably know better than I do.

But for now, I leave you with an intentionally low-res preview of my thumbnails for half of Chapter 1…

I can only draw 50% of the time, or so these thumbs will have you believe ;D