24 Hour Comics Day

Today is 24 Hour Comics Day 2006. This means that you should be sitting somewhere with a pen and some paper, working in a fever pitch towards creating a complete 24-page comic sometime in the next 24 hours. Creators all over the globe are scratching away at this moment, all aspiring towards these hastily-created, unplotted, spontaneous minicomics. Shhh – can you hear them? Scratching? Gallons of ink are spilling forth onto pages and trees are being milled to keep up with the demand.

You don’t need to know what you’re doing to draw a 24 Hour Comic. In fact, the less experience you have, the more interesting the product is likely to be. Go ahead – be scrawly and barely-literate! You can make up some deep metaphorical meaning for it later, just like the art world has been going for decades. Want to use motor oil on Pop tarts? As long as you have 24 of them and they comprise a narrative, no one’s complaining. If you’re not done at the end of 24 hours, that’s okay. If you need to keep on going after 24 hours, that’s okay too. There are addendums to the rules for those eventualities. We’re here to inspire, not to restrain.

Today, many 24 Hour creators will gather in predetermined locations and will be aided by free pizza and coffee-based beverages, camaraderie and the benefit of mutual inspiration and goading. They’ll be officially timed by event coordinators. For those of us who live in the deepest inaccessible crevasse of North Mid-Nowhere Valley, well, we’re allowed another day to sit solitary in our studio / room / basements and practice our craft amid the trolls and toadstools. We’re left to the honor system and our creative integrity. And at the end of it all, we’ll send our sleep-deprived tales to Scott McCloud, comic guru and originator of the event, and he’ll nod at them approvingly. If you’re lucky, you’ll get published in the ‘Highlights’ compilations that have been published yearly since 2004. While that’s certainly the icing on the R2D2-shaped geek-cake, it’s not a goal. It’s simply a bonus beyond the goal of that thrilling accomplishment of creating something in the span of 24 hours.

Last year’s experience was fueled by root beer and bristol paper, and the collective energies of hundreds of other artists all over the globe powering towards a single goal in unison. At the end of it all, I emerged with a story about a robot on a ghost planet that I’ve always wanted to tell, and a genuine sense of accomplishment. I’m more excited about 24 Hour Comics Day than I am about my birthday, which falls 3 days after 24 Hour Comics Day. You know what I’d like for my birthday? Another 24 Hour Comics Day, please. And the ability to use the phrase ‘24 Hour Comics Day’ in a paragraph more than three times without looking foolish. Clearly, I’ve failed at that.

You can check out the efforts of past participants in the Highlights compilations, as well as unpublished works on artist websites across the internet. In the 2004 Highlights book, you’ll see Danielle Corsetto, whom you might recall from my previous article about collecting original art at conventions. You’ll also find Alida Saxon, an exceptionally generous and talented artist whom I met through a charity art drive I arranged after Hurricane Katrina. If you’re a fan of smaller, underappreciated comic artists, this is your starting point. Anyone who’s taken part in this wonderful challenge takes the craft seriously, so go spy on what they’re up to. From there, it’s a never-ending chain of further creations that remain buried in undeserved obscurity, looking for readers.

While the fate of the 2006 Highlights book is still in limbo, here’s hoping that it finds publication. They’re excellent, inspiring resources to flip through, and they’re the demure stars of my graphic novel shelves. It’s not too late to start a comic of your own! As long as you finish it by this time tomorrow, it’s fair game. I’m stocked up on pens, I have a story about owls and ghosts stored in my memory banks, and I’ll meet you there.