462. Back in New York, Your Poll Results, & My Trip Home to Perth

Plus! Abandonment Issues, Sketchbook, & Morris roars hello.

…and Happy New Year!

Welcome to Issue #462 of New York Cartoons. As I’m writing this, my fingers are thawing out from my frost-bitten morning walk with Morris- a stark contrast to the clear blue skies and warm sun of Western Australia.

I’m back from my vacation in my hometown of Perth, visiting family and old friends and back in the seat for another year of japery, tomfoolery and a litany of imbroglios.

The flight there and back was a brutal odyssey, but it’s always worth it. I wrote about the 25+ hour slog to get to Perth here:

I’ll write about the trip back to Perth and all the adventures (yes, there were kangaroos… and quokkas) in some upcoming posts, but suffice it to say, I really needed the vacation. Among the gems I found while poring through old albums was one of the first snaps of my mother and myself as a young lad:

Puberty was brutal.

But back to YOU! — I’m grateful to you for filling out my survey when I asked how you’d prefer to get this newsletter this year. The results are in, and they’re pretty much what I suspected:

So, you can expect to hear from me in both short and long-form at various junctures throughout your week, in both written, hand-drawn and video formats. Huzzah and good day. I’ve got some really big things planned for this Substack for 2026, so keep your eyes peeled and your inbox open!

If you missed it (or you’re just joining), I put together a bit of a ‘best of’ for the past year. I didn’t realise how much I’d written last year until I went through to collect the best ones— I have over 139 posts from 2025. If you’d like to access the entire archive, you can upgrade to paid and unlock them.

At the end of last year, I shared that I’d ticked over to 21 years as a freelance cartoonist. I handed in my resignation letter on the 10th December in 2004— while I was back in Perth, my old ‘boss’ came around to catch up with me after many years. It was pretty cool to catch up with what he’s been up to since then. (Spoiler alert: he also quit and moved to America! I’m such an influencer.)

My old ‘boss’, Craig— He got the ‘Navy shirt’ memo.

Speaking of Not Having a Boss…

I made an arbitrary goal in January last year to create work valuable enough to have 500 paid readers by December. I put an enormous amount of work into my Substack last year. After sharing 132 ‘posts’ in 2025, I just ticked over to 400 paid.

I’m very grateful to everyone who supports me, allowing me to making the work that I’ve been wanting to share my whole career without an external curator or art director over my shoulder.

I’m on the low end of the conversion average at 2.06%, but I’m never particularly interested in that side of things. I don’t push paid as hard as some, I push it harder than others. I like to think I’m not badgering people about it.

What did I do differently?

I stopped paying attention to what was ‘doing well’ and being tempted by audience capture to re-post reduxes of the most engaging work. I just write what I would want to read. I’m glad (and lucky) that people enjoy reading it.

“Feed only those who show up for dinner.”

I don’t worry about Unsubscribes. In fact, they’re something to be celebrated because it means I’m consolidating my list, building a tighter community of people who actually want to hear from me. If someone Unsubscribe because they don’t like what I’m making, it’s no skin off my nose. I’m just not for them.

I’m not chasing subscribers, I’m just catering to those who have already subscribed.

I also started doing live video in 2025 which I was initially skeptical about, but now love. (Thanks to Clyde Rathbone for the suggestion). I’ve now done 31 episodes of drawmeanything.com In 2024 I published 124 newsletters. As of December 2025, I’d posted 139.

Nothing that different there. Maybe the cadence? (ie. average 2-3 p/week). Some weeks I post 1 thing, some weeks I post 4 or 5. It’s not that consistent. Just sharing this for fellow Substackers to see. I’ve been on here since 2020. I hope I’m still here in 2030 (before the ASI robo-army takes over.) 😃

Be sure to leave a comment below.

If you want to support my work, please take out a premium subscription (just $1 per week).

The Sketchbook I’m sharing with you this week is a selection of the sketches I did of peoples’ dogs as gifts this past week. If you have a friend with a dog, send me a photo and I’ll draw them into the book for you.