24-hour comic

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A 24-hour comic is a 24-page comic book written, drawn, and completed in 24 hours. Scott McCloud originally came up with the challenge for himself and Steve Bissette as a creative exercise. McCloud drew the first 24-hour comic to prove it could be done on August 31, 1990, and Bissette did his on September 5.

Word of the challenge slowly spread, especially as Dave Sim started publishing his own 24-hour comics in the back of his popular Cerebus the Aardvark. Eventually Scott McCloud had collected six 24-hour comics on his website from different, well-known comic-creators. Creators Erik Larsen and Chris Eliopoulos published their 24-hour stories together in the one-shot comic Image-Two-In-One featuring The Herculean and Duncan ("The Herculean" being Larsen's creation, and "Duncan" being Eliopoulos').

1 Rules
2 Events
3 Similar challenges
4 Books
5 External links
6 See also

[edit] Rules

As originator of the challenge, Scott McCloud has established rules for a comic to qualify: It must be begun and completed within 24 consecutive hours. Only one person may be directly involved in its creation, and it must span 24 pages, or (if an infinite canvas format webcomic is being made) 100 panels.

The creator may gather research materials and drawing tools beforehand, but cannot plan the comic's plot ahead of time or put anything on paper (such as designs and character sketches) until he is ready for the 24 hours to begin. Any breaks (for food, sleep, or any other purpose) are counted as part of the 24 hours.

If the cartoonist fails to finish the comic in 24 hours, there are two courses of action suggested: Stop the comic at the 24-hour mark, or continue working until all 24 pages are done. The former is known as "the Gaiman variation" after Neil Gaiman's unsuccessful attempt, and the latter is called "the Eastman variation" after Kevin Eastman's unsuccessful attempt. Scott McCloud calls both of these "noble failures", which he will still list on his site as long as he believes that the creator intended to finish the project within the specified amount of time.

To be officially recognised as a "24 hour comic" or a "noble failure", the cartoonist is required to submit a copy of the resultant comic to Scott McCloud.

[edit] Events

Nat Gertler organized 24 Hour Comics Day on April 24, 2004. On this day, comics creators around the world were invited to spend the day making a 24-hour comic. All participants were requested to send their completed comic to McCloud, who keeps an archive of all completed 24-hour comics on his webpage. Many comic book stores supported this event by setting up space for participating artists to work on their comic. It attracted many writers and artists, working both in print and web media. In 2005, the second annual 24 Hour Comics Day began on Saturday April 23, such that the 24 hours ended on the 24th, with over 800 cartoonists taking part at organized events with other folks taking the challenge at home. 2006s 24 Hour Comics Day fell on October 7 of that year, and had over 1200 participants at official event locations in 17 countries around the globe.

Lo Spazio Bianco organized 24 Hour Italy Comics Day, a similar event for creators in Italy, beginning on 1 October 2005, with authorization from McCloud and Gertler. Information can be found on the event's web site: [1]

The School of Visual Arts hosts a 24-hour Comic Day every year, but due to classes, the date isn't set.

[edit] Similar challenges

The 24-hour comics idea has inspired similar challenges in other art forms. There is also the The 24 Hour Plays, in which a group of playwrights/actors script and perform a full play by the end of 24 hours. This, in turn, gave birth to the 48 Hour Film Project. The International 3-Day Novel Contest started in Vancouver in 1977 and now happens all over the world every Labour Day Weekend. The 24 Hour RPG project, started in 2003, asks designers to produce a playable role-playing game in 24 hours, and does frequent 'Grand Events' which assign a theme and a time window for designers to compete. A similar event in the computer games field is the Indie Game Jam.

On a longer timeline, November has been declared National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) by an organization of writing enthusiasts. The objective is to produce a novel of 50,000 words, beginning on the 1st and finishing before midnight on the 30th. Similarly, February Album Writing Month (FAWM) challenges intrepid musicians to compose 14 songs in 28 days.

The Seven day roguelike is a challenge in producing a roguelike game in a period of seven days. Challenge dates are discussed online in a variety of forums including the newsgroup rec.games.roguelike.development.

[edit] Books

Four books of 24-hour comics have been published:

24 Hour Comics (ISBN 0-9716338-4-3) presents nine comics selected by Scott McCloud.
24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2004 (ISBN 0-9753958-0-7) presents selections from the 2004 event, edited by Nat Gertler.
24 Hour Comics All-Stars (ISBN 0-9753958-4-X) presents comics by several professional cartoonists, edited by Nat Gertler.
24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2005 (ISBN 0-9753958-6-6) presents selections from the 2005 event, edited by Nat Gertler.