Here is another in my irregular series of posts about stories in my 24 hour comic collection SLEEPLESS, published this spring by Dark Horse. I drew “Now Open The Box”, my tenth 24 Hour Comic, at the Cosmic Monkey Drawpocalypse event on April 5-6 2008. I loosely based it on that week’s Modern Love column, which I was then illustrating for the Style Section of the New York Times. That piece, by Lori Jakiela, was about a couple who buy a sex chair online, but find themselves too embarrassed to test it out after their seven year old son appropriates it as a battleground for his plastic army men.
David Chelsea is reading: Fighting American
by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
That’s fine for a family newspaper, but I figure such coyness would never be tolerated in comics, so my couple definitely get the chair. I drew this story on isometric graph paper, which gives the panels a look like old-school video games or architectural drawings. The view approximates that of a spectator in a high balcony watching a stage production through opera glasses:
By the way, I borrowed the title “Now Open The Box” from a very strange 1930s children’s book by Dorothy Kunhardt, about “the teeniest weeniest teeny teeny teeny weeny weeny weeny little dog in all the world,” named Peewee.
SLEEPLESS AND OTHER STORIES: DAVID CHELSEA’S 24-HOUR COMICS, VOL.2
Publisher: Dark Horse
Publication Date: March 16, 2016
Format: b&w, 168 pages; HC, 6” x 9”
Price: $19.99
Age range: 16
ISBN-10: 1-61655-884-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-61655-884-0
It’s getting awfully close to Christmas, but there’s still time to order the book from Amazon here!: