There is nothing quite like a 24 Hour Comics Day. We did it right, here in Seattle, at the Phinney Neighborhood Center. I coordinated this event from the ground up and made every effort to bring together as many cartoonists as I felt would make a great mix and not exceed too big a number. I even left some wiggle room for the unexpected. We ended up having some last minute additions to our crew and it all worked out great. Now, the next step will be to put together a book. I want to edit a book that captures the spirit of what we experienced. We may excerpt here and there and see where our page count takes us.
Our gang of cartoonists: Henry Chamberlain, Jennifer Daydreamer, David Lasky, Sean Robinson, Chyna Frey, Xochitl Briones, Marc Palm, Eroyn Franklin, Tiphoni, Stefan Gruber, Tom Doughery, Breanne Boland, Randy Wood, Andrew Davis and Sean Poppe.
I want to thank Comics Dungeon, Peaks Frozen Custard and the Seattle Folklore Society for their friendly support. We have certainly made a lot of friends along the way. As you'll see in the photos, we had quite a nice spot of our event. I mean this is a schoolhouse with a real old school feel, dating back to 1904. We cartoonists, with a soft spot for retro, really digged our location.
And, yes, we did start to feel the chill of sleep deprivation and people did worry if they would be able to complete the challenge. But we had a great time and created some very interesting results. Out of our group, Sean Robinson carried away the honors of completing every last bit of his comic down to the last ink stroke.
I had a great time allowing my story to take on a life of its own. I highly recommend coming into this with at least an idea of what you want to do. Better yet, create something tangible you can hook into: set up a premise, prepare a layout. You could even go much further and come in with a script. For me, I set up a premise about a week or so before the event and let that roll around in my head. As the days past, I'd notice this or that, something in the news or something that happened to me, and I'd see if I could add to my emerging story. I kept that up all the way into the event. I also had a layout of where I wanted the story to go. Maybe I should have had a preliminary set of thumbnails. I like to keep something to chance so I went with a rough Plan A and the option for a Plan B. It worked out, at least this time!
For more info and to keep up with details on our upcoming book, visit http://comicsgrinder.com/
