24 hour Comic: A Documentary

The 24-hour comic started in 1990 as a creative exercise Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics) posed to his pal Steve Bissette as a speed challenge. The goal is for an artist to create 24 pages in 24 hours. because then, it’s become a day for cartoonists to gather, stretch their talent, and commiserate. (It’s now held the first Saturday in October.)

Milan Erceg has made a documentary about the phenomenon, 24 hour Comic, that complies with eight cartoonists trying the challenge at a comic store in Portland, Oregon. It’s now available for preorder with digital availability on July 11. Those eight artists are:

Paul Guinan (Boilerplate)

David Chelsea (movie co-producer)

Rebecca Celsi (David’s 13-year-old daughter)

Tom Lechner

Rachel Nabors

Sera Stanton

Jacob Mercy (who works as an assistant to Chelsea) and Pete Soloway (who with Jacob has produced Pizza Gun, last updated in 2015)

From interior evidence, such as the existence of Andrew McIntire, then vice-president of things From another World, the store where this was filmed, I believe the event was held in 2013. also participating in the 70-minute film are Mike Richardson (founder of Dark horse Comics and the things From another world retail chain), Scott Allie (Dark horse editor-in-chief), cartoonist Batton Lash, Scott McCloud (explaining the premise), and different late-night drunk store customers.

It was interesting to see how the cartoonists reacted as the night went on. It was like being there without having to be there. The creative variety was well-chosen, even if put together by accident, with one cartoonist utilizing a fountain pen, another a tablet computer. One person has tried the challenge 7 or 8 times and never succeeded, while Chelsea has completed fifteen 24-hour comics.

Erceg complies with up with the participants individually, checking out the themes of imagination and what drives people to make comics. For example, Stanton (now understood as Opal Pence) talked about working in a bookstore and cafe in purchase to make her comics. Guinan specifies he’s not able to make comics for money and has to do other things for income, while he’s working on his 24-hour comic as a pitch piece for media rate of interest in his character.

After early success, Nabors stop comics in 2007 because she needed surgical treatment and couldn’t pay for it. (She would likely have done much better in our new age of crowdfunding.) She’s now “a web person much more than a comics person”. Comics are a location for self-expression — and it’s treated as a medium, not a genre — yet the company elements are what get in people’s way. Taking a full day away to highlight imagination instead of wondering “what will this become” is therefore the ideal contrast. Here’s the trailer:

I only had two complaints. Sometimes, it takes the cameraperson a long time to focus the show on what you’re expected to be looking at, making for some temporarily fuzzy images. and I wasn’t sure whether everyone succeeded in the 24-hour comics goal. With five, it was clearly shown whether they completed or not, but the three others, I wasn’t sure of their final outcome.

24 hour Comic is going on my shelf next to animation college and She Makes Comics as considerable documentaries about essential moments in comics. It’s also an official choice of the 2017 Comic-Con worldwide Independent film Festival, so the documentary will be shown on Saturday, July 22, in San Diego.

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