Happy New Year, dear reader, from all of us here at SOLRAD!

SOLRAD is officially two years old as of this week, and despite launching in the era of COVID-19, we’re pretty proud of how far the magazine has come over those two years. We took a short break to finish out the holiday season in December, and hopefully, we find you all refreshed and ready for a new year. I can speak for Daniel and myself when I say that we are excited to continue to work on SOLRAD as a part of the Fieldmouse Press mission. While the last two years have been extraordinarily difficult, we are hopeful for your good health and safety, and we hope that SOLRAD will be around for many more years to come.

We are pleased to announce some new faces in the SOLRAD Presents cohort. We’ve partnered with Scott Finch to publish his graphic novel, The Domestic Afterlife in its entirety, starting today with chapter 1. We’ve also partnered with Derek Van Gieson to publish a new Eel Mansions comic, The Locust Lodge, which starts tomorrow. We have a few other new projects in the works with SOLRAD Presents, and if you are a cartoonist looking for a digital home for your comic, please get in touch at publisher@solrad.co.

We have some great stuff coming down the pipe, including a new manga review from Tom Shapira, a feature on Nancy Woods, the classic Archie Comics character, and reviews of some 2021 books we didn’t manage to catch last year. If you missed it at the end of 2021, I highly recommend our video interview with the creators & publisher of š! #43 ‘Queer Power.’ It was a great session and a highlight of my work as a critic in 2021.

Finally, some requests:

• First, check out our new YouTube channel (linked above) and if you could subscribe, that would be helpful. We’re planning to do some more video content in 2022, and more subscribers makes it easier for us to customize our YouTube channel.
• Second, please donate to our SOLRAD funding campaign for 2022. It’s off to a rough start, and we are going to need to continue to raise donations to make SOLRAD work this year. We’ve specifically avoided ad-based revenue, embedded links, and other fundraising schemes to make the magazine run. We’d really appreciate it if you could toss a few bucks in the proverbial kettle.
• If you don’t want to donate, but are interested in getting a great new comic, you can also preorder Ariel Bordeaux’s CLUTTER, which will be published by our parent, Fieldmouse Press, in 2022. Keep your eyes open for an announcement for our Spring/Summer 2022 collection coming soon!
• Finally, Daniel and I are searching for a volunteer Assistant Publisher who will help coordinate SOLRAD Presents. If you like what we do and want to help out, please email me!

That’s all this month! If you have feedback or questions, email me at publisher@solrad.co or on Twitter at @sequentialstate.