Zander Cannon's 2009 12-Hour Comic!

It's true, the pressures of having a child have caused me to dial back my output and led to this year's mere 12-hour comic, "The Mysterious Skeleton".

I completed it in the same manner as a 24-hour story, deciding the genre beforehand (a spooky mystery) and then drawing a Pictionary card to determine the plot points. The words this year were:

Skeleton (lucky draw!)
Gong
Fingerprint
Drought
Black Eye

I also had a cast of characters I had to name, so I drew another card for that:

Centipede
Earmuff
Amputate
Reporter
Pothole

The comic was completed in 12 hours, 1 hour per page. I wrote, pencilled, and inked each page before moving on to the next one in order to keep on schedule.

The result is obtained by clicking the link:



I also changed the formatting of the book from the 5.5" x 8.5" I've done for 24 hour comics in the past to basically a 5.5" x 5.5" format, where each page is half as wide and one-third as tall as an 11 x 17 sheet of paper--that's 6 pages on each side. That way I can photocopy a 12-page minicomic on one sheet of paper. No one ever said Zander Cannon wasn't thrifty!

There are also a bunch of names in this comic that are homages to friends and people who have interesting names: Jesse Gillespie, Alice McGee, Jason Horshaw, Danno Klonowski (nee Ochsendorf), Tom Nguyen, Shawn Van Briesen, Ryan Dow, Lupi McGuinty, and my grade school gym teacher, Mr. Udovic.

Many thanks to Steve Stwalley and David Steinlicht for their camaraderie during the event!

Blotchmen

Man, what a great weekend! This was my fifth 24 hour comic day event, and it definitely went the smoothest. Most of that was due to working smaller and having more time each hour to walk around, eat food, and sprint around the building.

Anyway, here's my comic for this year. For reasons that will become clear when you read it, it was important to colorize this one.

The original intent of the story was to be a Watchmen parody, but it ended up being more of a parody of a few of my favorite children's books. Although, while not intentional, you could make a case for Harold = Dr. Manhattan, and Max = Veidt.

[click image to read the story]


Read all about our crazy day of madness at /24-hourcomic.blogspot.com/

Also... thanks for the press, Press!
- Comics Reporter
- The Beat

Zander's 24-Hour Comic Online!

I'm not quite as on-the-ball as Kevin is, but here's my 24-hour comic, The Caterpillar Space Force of Robots, in glorious black and white.

I do 24-hour comics as close to the original concept as I possibly can: I don't plan out what the story will be beforehand, write anything, or design characters. Partly this is to stick to the rules; partly it's to keep me (and others) from having high expectations for the story.

At the starting bell, I draw a Pictionary card from the box and use the five words that are on it to launch the story. Sometimes I do know what kind of story I want to tell, (this year I wanted to do a space adventure story) and that does help focus my efforts, but I never think about characters or plot until I draw that card.

This year's comic was pretty grueling compared to previous years, in that I had no idea where the story was going from page to page. I was almost halfway through before I had any ideas of how to conclude it, and so I was not that amped about the story anyway. Reading it now, it's not that bad. Kind of funny. Pretty random.

The Pictionary Card words were:

Caterpillar
Box
Sapphire
Victory
Yodel

Enjoy! Click on image below to start the madness:

The 288 Hour Comic Book Challenge Chapter One

Hello, Friends. As millions of you already know, I have accepted a challenge from Steve Stwalley to produce a graphic novel in 288 hours. It's like the 24 Hour Comic Day event, but hurts more. I completed the first chapter over the weekend, from 7pm on Friday, October 20 to 7pm on Saturday, October 21. If all goes according to plan, look for a new chapter around the end of each month. And if all REALLY goes according to plan, I'll draw the final chapter during the 2007 24 Hour comics day event in Minneapolis, shoulder to shoulder with the evil mastermind who concocted this scheme: yes, once again, Steve Stwalley.

24 hour comics day

Zander and I participated in the 24 hour comics day event this past weekend. Here's my contribution. There's some swearing in it, if you care about that kind of stuff.

24 Hour Comics Link

Someone sent a nice email about Kevin's 24 hour comic today, and I remembered we never had a link from our own site. Zander and Kevin had their comics chosen to be in the big national collection. Every year, people from all over the world try to create 24 pages of comics in 24 hours. This is no small feat when "a page a day" is a great rate for most cartoonists. Check them out:

http://www.bigtimeattic.com/comics/24hour/