I drew my fifteenth 24 Hour comic at the Theater for The New City in New York City on Saturday March 2nd and Sunday March 3rd. Here are some photos from the event:
David Chelsea is listening to:
Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age
by Steven Johnson
The other participants were Jim Ryan, Rachel Nabors, Adriano Moraes, Lindsey Morris and Arlen Schumer. Here I am with Arlen:
Jim Ryan inking. His comic was based on stories he tells his five-year-old daughter:
Adriano. His story is about a guy who is hired to evict a nest of ninjas:
Four of the stories from the session are up online, including Arlen’s autobio comic, drawn with an increasing number of frames per page (Arlen aimed for 24 pages, but only reached sixteen, after taking an extended nap. In 24 Hour Comic parlance, this a “Gaiman Variation”).
Adriano’s The Evictor in “Take Out”
Rachel Nabors’s Battle Princess part 1
My own story “Are You Being Watched?“, is another Gaiman Variation, with 21 pages completed in 24 Hours. Part of the reason I failed to meet my goal was a constant stream of visitors through the theater, some of whom I had not seen in decades (and all of whom I was delighted to spend time with, don’t get me wrong), but mostly it was that the story was particularly dialogue-heavy, and there are few things in comics more time-consuming than filling in a lot of dialogue balloons with tiny lettering, especially when you write it all in pencil first.
I borrowed the structure from the old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore movie Bedazzled (itself based on the Faust Legend), but most of the content satirizes current Reality TV shows (all of which me and the family watch). Without giving away TOO many spoilers, Mugg (my interlocutor from the perspective books) falls for a girl who only has eyes for Reality TV (Mandy from the Sandy & Mandy strip I’m currently drawing for Dark Horse Presents):
Mugg trades his soul to the Devil (me) in exchange for seven wishes, all of which land him on one Reality TV show or another:
…. among them, Hoarders, Storage Wars, What Not To Wear, and Survivor:
You can read the entire story at the Comics Lifestyle website here.
Blog post about my upcoming 24 hour Comic Collection, Everybody Gets It Wrong!
Many thanks to Brad Smith and Jennifer Jones for organizing the event, and to all the other participants and visitors (Sarah, Robin, Clare, Dan & Adele, Madi, Jorge, Martin & Barbara, Randy & Susann, Jill & Slim and anyone else I’ve forgotten), and everyone at the Theater for The New City.