I asked my friend Colin Tedford, a cartoonist, to guest post about the 24-hour comic. It’s similar in many ways to the composition exercise I did last month (I’ve blogged about it repeatedly since) in which I wrote a bunch of pieces in several hours. I find that I relate to quite a few of Colin’s observations, including several that I didn’t write about.

So, here’s Colin:

In comics we have a time-constrained art tradition dating back to the 1980s known as the 24-hour comic, in which one tries to draw a complete 24-page comic book in 24 hours. Comics theoretician Scott McCloud, at the time one of the slowest cartoonists in the business, invented the 24-hour comic as a challenge for Stephen R. Bissette after seeing Bissette, then one of the other slowest cartoonists in the business, rapidly produce detailed drawings for fans at a convention. Of course a lot more than drawing goes into making comics, but they both did the challenge, word got around,  Nat Gertler founded the annual 24 Hour Comics Day in 2004, and thousands of people have drawn 24-hour comics since then. Artists in theater, video, and other fields have adapted the exercise.

Why is it so popular? What do we get out of it?

• Achievement. Staying awake for so long, and engaging in a focused activity for most of that time, is in and of itself an achievement.
• Accomplishment. At the very least, you’ve created something, probably a lot more than you would have done otherwise. It may or may not be good, or serve as a first draft or source material of something else, but it’s done, and that’s satisfying
• Fun. Art is essentially play anyway, but the time-constrained challenge makes it a little more explicit by giving it an aspect of a game or sport.
• Renewed inspiration. Having finally sat down to do it, many people remember how much they enjoy drawing and telling stories. These events produce a lot of people who are very enthused about making comics or getting back to other creative pursuits (follow-through varies, of course).
• Learning. As any seasoned procrastinator knows, looming deadlines can bring out remarkable powers of “getting stuff done”. The time pressure reminds to relax and not overwork things. Some may discover different ways of working – for example, drawing smaller (even if you use the same level of detail, a larger drawing takes longer to complete because you have to cover more physical area).

I’ve attempted (and successfully completed) three 24-hour comics. I’ve published portions of one (some of it redrawn), and printed small batches of the other two, but most of the work I’ve produced this way has limited outside appeal, which is normal (though they’re all amusing to me in some way). I think that the ability to consistently produce engaging 24-hour comics is a sign of a skilled cartoonist – one with the sort of facility Jacob talked about recently in the context of music.

The variety of people who draw 24-hour comics continues to surprise me (at least in the events I’ve attended). I thought that a grueling comics-making marathon would only attract hardcore cartoonists, but many people, young and old, show up to draw their first comic. People who haven’t drawn in years show up. The last event I attended included two teenagers, a person I’d guess was at least 50, a newspaper editor, and of course several cartoonists. In a culture where many abandon the arts as they “grow up”, this speaks strongly to the freedom that time-constrained art can inspire.