Mandatory Roller Coaster | 2016 Year in Review

There’s no point in sugar coating it, 2016 was a shit of a year. These Year in Review things are supposed to be highlight reels but honestly this time around I’m just not feeling it. So this was my 2016, the highs and the lows:

2016 was the first time in over five years of doing Mandatory Roller Coaster that I flat out skipped an update. This happened twice. Both times I was exhausted and fighting depression and completely unable to come up with anything I liked. I’m not proud of it but there it is.

This was also the year I decided to reinvest myself in Patreon and launched a 30 Days of Art campaign where I posted a drawing every day in October (and rested on Halloween). It was a huge challenge and a huge amount of fun and although I was one person shy of meeting my goal of doubling my patrons, I still consider the experiment a success and am grateful to everyone who signed up, everyone who has supported me in the past, and everyone who continues to do so. 2017 will see even more cool stuff happening on Patreon.

And then back in November I posted what ended up being not just the least popular cartoon of the year but also the least popular cartoon I’ve ever drawn. I thought it was pretty great. Go figure.

On the positive side of the ledger, my drawing of Andrew W.K. was reposted on Twitter by the man himself, sending a bunch of traffic my way, so that was pretty cool.

All in all though, 2016 deserves to be thrown into a garbage can and the garbage can thrown into a river and the river set on fire. Here are the top 10 comics I drew in 2016:

1 The American Dream

2 What is the deal with wizards?

3 A Pirate’s Life

4 Avoid Heartbreak

5 Your Waitress

6 Ghost Intern

7 Living With Depression

8 Good Music

9 “Do You Work Here?”

10 Tattoos

Despite all the massively evil garbage happening seemingly every few days, I somehow managed to do some of my best work ever this year. And although my comics about lazy wizards and bumbling ghosts got a lot of love, nothing even came close to this year’s #1: The American Dream. This comic was tweeted by Union Stewards, translated into Russian, and eventually picked up by the Fight for $15 movement. I honestly could not be happier about something I made traveling so far.

And of course I am grateful to all of you for your support. See you in 2017!