Zander's 2008 24-Hour Comic is Online!

Here we are again.  I'm already forgetting how emphatically I swore I'd never do this again, sometime around 2 in the morning this past Sunday.

This year, I was forced to abandon my beloved Pentel Pocket Brush Pen by an errant air conditioning duct that somehow made the pen ooze ink out of the side of the bristles.  Sorcery!  So I had to scramble and quickly switch to Micron pens, and it actually made for a cleaner and sharper looking comic.  

As with every year, I decided on a genre (this year, a superhero thriller), and then drew a Pictionary card to determine the plot points.  This year, the card had the following words to be made into a plot:

Wing

Freezer

Brainwashing

Fig Leaf

White

Also, this is the first year that I have not actually accomplished the 24 hour goal.  I regret to say I had to turn in a Noble Failure: Eastman Variation.  I was not finished at hour 24, so I stuck it out and finished by hour 25.  This is not fun, when everyone else is done and leaving.  And sitting next to you saying nice, helpful, supportive things.  And your brain has almost shut down with fatigue and frustration.  

The reasons for this failure are several:  

1.  I drew too many panels (167; the accepted number for a qualifying online comic is 100)

2.  I ignored my own advice and pencilled the second half of the comic before inking or lettering it.  I was behind and I thought this would help.  Foolish.

3.  Working with a pen forced me to be a bit more precise than I would be with a PPBP, and so I had to think about the details of each panel a bit more so it wouldn't look bad.

4.  There were some very chatty people at this year's event, one of whom, whose name I will not mention, was not working on a 24 hour comic and so had just a bit too much time on his hands.

5.  I've been working on a similarly-formatted comic without such strict time constraints and got a little soft.

Anyway, the comic is called Golden Wing versus The Freezer, and it's not all that bad.  You know, all things considered.

Click on the following image to read this year's attempt:

If you don't have a Flash player on your computer, here is the comic in one long scroll:

Zander Cannon's 2008 24-Hour Comic

Warning:  It's 1.2 Megabytes.