Another one done

Only two left and I'll never have to do this again! Hurrah!

I haven't scanned this one yet so it won't be up until sometime over the weekend. Also, I'm planning on getting this month's done as soon as possible instead of leaving it to the end of the month again. With the one I've just done, I left it til the last week of the month, and then realised that I didn't actually have any full days free, so I had to draw the comic on a day when I had other stuff to do. So on Friday last week, as well as going to work for four hours and then helping to set up the tables for the Low Energy Day on Saturday (which was a big success- well it was for me anyway) I drew a 24 hour comic.

Next month is the 12Th comic, which means it's the last of the year long challenge. It's also the official 24 hour comic day, so that's when I'm hoping to do the comic. I'm trying to think of something different I can do for the last one. I was thinking either fully painted, or drawn on scratch board. Suggestions would be welcome.

Number 9

Another comic drawn on the last day of the month. When I started this one I found myself with absolutely no desire to tell a story or start making anything up. Instead I somehow came up with this. I got plenty of sleep during this one as well, but not right at the beginning like last time.

On writing.

I didn't draw a 24 hour comic at the end of last week, mainly as I couldn't be bothered, and decided that doing two in the same week was a stupid idea. I did draw eight pages of something that I may develop into a longer story.

I was recently looking through the book 'How to Write a Damn Good Novel' by James Frey, and there was a bit that stood out in the section on conflict (or maybe character development. I can't remember and I'm not going back to the bookshop to check.) He says that the protagonist and antagonist in a story should be evenly matched, and attempted to illustrate the point by commenting that 'No-one pays money to see Muhammad Ali fight a crippled dwarf.' Which would be fine except the first thing I thought when I read that was 'I'd definitely pay to see that!' I asked a couple of friends, and they confirmed that they would also pay to see Muhammad Ali fight a crippled dwarf. Mr Frey obviously knows knothing about writing and I will not be consulting his book again.

The other things I've been working on...

I was looking back at the first post and noticed the bit where I said the 24 hour comics would be in addition to the other comics I would be drawing, which with hindsight has turned out to be quite ironic, as apart from the 24 hour comics I've drawn very little. But I have got some stuff done which is worth mentioning.

First of all, I've drawn two comic strip film reviews, which have both been published, one in Trespass, the other in Electric Sheep. I also drew a piece for a forthcoming anthology.

But the thing that I'm most excited about is something that I wrote for another artist. It's the first issue of my new comic:




Written by me and drawn by Oliver Lambden, this is a series of self contained murder mysteries with me as the main character. It's like Murder, She Wrote meets Joe Matt's Peepshow. In the first story. Marked For Death, I am wrongly accused of being a pedophile, then find myself targeted by a killer whose victims are all pedophiles. It should be back from the printers within the next few weeks. I'm currently hard at work on the script for the follow-up, 'The Killer Next Door' (Not literally, obviously; right now I'm typing this crap. But as soon as I get some sleep, draw another 24 hour comic and then get some more sleep, I'll be hard at work on it).

The eighth 24 hour comic is done, and should be appearing online in the next few hours. It was drawn on Monday, the last day of June, which brings me to an interesting point. I've just about managed to do these one a month, but it hasn't been at the same time each month. On a couple of occasions I've waited til the end of the month to do one, then done the next one at the beginning of the following month to get it out of the way. So number 5 was done the week after number 4. And number 9, which I plan on starting tomorrow, will be done in the same week as number 8, whilst still being in consecutive months.

I'm going to try and start working on it as soon after I wake up as possible. I generally try doing that with all of them, but sometimes I keep putting it off, which is what happened with number 8. I started drawing at midnight, then after half an hour I fell asleep and didn't wake up fully until 11 hours later, leaving me just over 12 hours to draw 22 pages. This meant dispensing with things like panel borders and backgrounds. Other than that I think the end result is a pretty good comic.

Speaking of falling asleep, the worst thing about sleeping during a 24 hour comic session is that you usually start dreaming that you've finished drawing the comic. Then you wake up and realise you still have 14 pages to go. On the last one I dreamed that I'd found a 24 hour comic in a sketchbook that I'd forgotten about, and I was thinking about whether or not to do something new, or just pass that off as this month's comic. the really annoying thing about that dream was that I kept drifting in and out of sleep, so I'd wake up a bit, realise the comic didn't exist, then drift back to sleep and dream that I was looking at it again.

Anyway, that's enough rambling. Here's the cover to comic number 8:

Love comics, hate blogging...

which is why I haven't posted on here for a while. But I've successfully drawn a 24 hour comic a month every month for sixth months, which is the important thing. I may post some thoughts about the whole process of making a 24 hour comic at a later date, possibly next week. right now I'm 7 hours into this month's 24 hour comic, taking a break to write this (I'm getting close to the point where I start feeling a strong urge to give up completely and go to sleep like a normal person, which I've felt at some point on every comic except Zombies. I'll resist though, as I always do, and get this damn thing finished.). After I finish I'll be printing and binding stuff for No Barcodes on Saturday (www.londonundergroundcomics.com). Then after the events over I'll be sleeping for a long time.

Also I've added a link at the side that takes you to the most recent comic.

More comics coming soon.

The lack of recent updates doesn't mean that I've fallen behind or abandoned the project. Comics 3, 4, and 5 have all been drawn and will be posted shortly. Also I will be selling print copies of all the comics to date at the UK web and mini comix thing on the 22nd.