This past Saturday, October 3rd, 2020 I did my second 24 Hour Comic and was again successful. My story, as per the rules, was completely unplanned, unprepared, and made up on the fly. It’s 24 pages (and a cover) and this one contains over 90 panels (there is no panel goal as far as I know… just wanted to brag on that bit). I began my quest at 11:30am CST and finished the following morning at around 6:15am CST. During this time I updated periodically on IG Live and spoke with friends who were attempting to do the same challenge.

The 24 Hour Comics Challenge was created some years back by Scott McCloud who you know from his award winning “Understanding Comics” a book that has informed my understanding of the medium since I first picked up a copy in the mid 90’s, before I ever considered that one day I would be doing this stuff for a living.

I’ll spare you the fine details of the 24 Hour Comic origin and rules, but I encourage you to look these things up as they may inspire you to make your own attempt, or to modify the challenge to meet your needs. When I’ve done this challenge I have been by the book. I see the rules as the definition of a challenge… I mean, any diversion would certainly make it less challenging and what would be the point in that? This said, I levy no judgement on those who chose to modify, some folks are just plain less masochistic and prideful than I am. 

I do take pride in having done this. The freakshow nature of the challenge appeals to me, I live a pretty easy life in many ways and opening myself up to the brutality of a sprinting marathon of sequential art and storytelling is a good shot of the good stuff. As a freelancer I spend a lot of time in my head wondering where the next job is, who will collaborate with me, and what the next story I need to tell is. This challenge answers all of these questions with a dispassionate list of rules and forces me to get going even when the whole thing seems (at times) to be a fool’s errand.

The hardest bit this year was the first few hours. I had stayed up late the night prior catching up with friends on a lengthy phone call; full disclosure, I drank a bunch of beer in the process. I don’t know what it is, I like to drink beer and laugh with friends even when I know it will create another obstacle the following day. I was aware of my choices and I was willing to endure this stuff to be present for my friends.

Thankfully I wasn’t too low energy. I’m used to working on a less than ideal sleep schedule, so I have learned how to rally and know that coffee is my friend. The real struggle in those early hours was determining what kind of story to tell and reconciling that I wasn’t going to be able to draw it the way I prefer to. I’m never super precious about my art, but the nature of the challenge requires that one presses on even when knowing you kinda phoned it in here or there, or should have spent more time working out the composition of a page or panel. This kind of charge toward the goal changes the creative process quite a bit and I learn a lot every time. One of the great lessons, hard as it is to face, is that my best work isn’t too far removed from my bad work. I think this is because I am very much a student of visual art more than I am an artist in many ways. I’m happy with the fact that I become a better artist every day, and I can say in all humility that I prefer my own work to many who exhibit greater confidence than I can muster.

The big hurt is not being able to tell some stories because it would require a degree of precision or research that the challenge time wouldn’t allow. I needed to set my story well away from something recognized as “our world” so that I would not be held to, or hold myself to, any of the rules associated with such a mundane setting. I think I was quickly able to convey this by making the lead character have elven ears- bang! Subtle cue and away we go!

I decided that the best way to tell the story would be for me to quickly write down some notes I wanted to hit and figure out how to make that flow through the 24 pages. I jotted down some blocks and began, without any idea at all of how I would end the story. I knew it was about a guy who decided he would be king. I knew that the story would center on his efforts to please everyone, so he embarks on a journey to collect information from a variety of the inhabitants of this strange world. I didn’t know how to give that idea value, I just knew that at the end I had a few pages left to close out the account and to try to make some kind of statement, or to leave a particular tonality with the reader. I didn’t plan this out because I knew this was where I would get stuck in the weeds and end up falling behind on myschedule.

Plunging into it I HATED it. I was ready to stop, admit defeat, and go play some video games or faceplant on the bed and feel sorry for myself. I wanted to shitcan the whole thing, post to social media that I’m a fraud and a blowhard, and just disappear. Again it was pride or vanity that prevented me from doing so, but I wasn’t happy with what I was producing and I felt woefully alone and exposed.

I came to realize that I do this stuff for a number of reasons. Some are very petty, like feeling somehow elevated because I don’t personally know anyone who has been able to complete this challenge in recent years. Again, pretty weak, but I also like knowing that some see this as impossible, irresponsible, or just plain dumb. With it being October, folks are reminding each other that Inktober type challenges are super hard and that it’s ok to skip days or whatever… I’ve never been of that opinion. YOU can do what thou wilt, but when I take on a challenge I do it, and do it by the book… that’s what it’s all about… not to prove it to you but to prove it to myself.

I fail regularly. I’ve become so well acquainted with failure that I am at risk of accepting something as a failure before it’s even begun. I’ve been a frequent victim of a self-defeatist attitude because I put myself out there a lot. I take shots at things I have no business attempting, so I accept failure pretty readily. Like everyone I am far more likely to share the shiny successes over the heaping mounds of ruin that threaten to define my creative life. THIS challenge however was something I could control. I CAN BE ON FOR 24 HOURS. 24 hours isn’t much, we can suffer and push and go and get the thing done. It may not be pretty, and it may not feel good, but this was something that I could show agency over. A 24 Hour Comic has no gatekeepers. A 24 Hour Comic can’t be assaulted by critique because it is, by its nature, something that any critic would likely fail to do. Those who would throw stones would be unlikely to ever attempt such a thing because they’re too busy trying to find funny ways to shit on other people out there hustling.

In these ways the 24 Hour Challenge provides a feeling of freedom and a return to the exuberance and excitement of PURE CREATIVITY that is unencumbered by fears and happens without focus onn impressing anyone, creating a saleable product, or even exhibiting any talent. The talent on display is self discipline and willpower. As I came upon these thoughts I was able to rally in the 3rd or 4th hour and start to feel good about what I was producing and the path that I had chosen to take.

Once I found that peace I was more at ease. I was still not completely confident that I would make something worth all the trouble, but again the “trouble” was the damn point of the exercise. Could I choke down this meal of self doubt and still manage to clean my plate? Could my efforts here inform future struggles about my willingness to grind and to create, to get through tight spots? I didn’t have a clear answer to those questions but I continued on and as I did so I had other strange thoughts that were both egotistical and self deprecating… as ya do.

I can’t deny that the egotistical thoughts included wack stuff like “I’ll show them!” and “Behold my (dumb) might!” and even more thoughtful but equally self congratulatory thoughts like “Maybe this is inspirational for someone?” Along with these thoughts were the negative little vampiric ideas and voices that want to remind me that I’m a hack and an imposter. The voices would say that I lack fundamental skills, and that projects like this are a smokescreen to obscure that. That this challenge created the illusion of progression while ultimately doing nothing but perhaps drumming up some attention. I also wondered if this book would stand up against “The Watts”, my book from the year prior that has quite surprisingly found a nice little audience of folks who seemed to enjoy what I had done.

Discovering a middle ground between self admiration and self loathing is a huge part of my story as not only a creator, but as someone walking the earth. That story is writ daily through my actions and thoughts, and I’m trying real hard to be fair to myself and to the world around me. Completing the challenge would not be a measure of my value, it wouldn’t change the way I am seen or see myself, it wouldn’t legitimize me or elevate me, it was something I was doing because I wanted to see what would happen. What happened was this meditative introspection that no one, my partner included, knew was going on. I was facing myself and all the gross and misguided ways I think of myself and my impact on the folks around me. I was humbled and made stronger, just a little bit, and I was happy to have found something to force me into real self examination.

We all wonder what others think about us. Some of these same egoic factors drive our thoughts, to the same degree of counter measures often find their way into that as well. We feel hated by those who love us and to be loved by those who don’t care. We seek approval from those who would withhold such things, and completely ignore those who think we’re great. This is the silly nature of affirmation seeking that has ruined countless people who would be just fine if they chose to see things as they are.

The way I see it most folks are struggling with their own wounds, and triage dictates that they address this first. Unfortunately from the moment we are able to say “I am.” we begin bleeding and it never stops. We pack gauze into the wounds and petition the great invisible powers to save us, but it’s damn near impossible to take our eyes off of our own desperation. We will withhold care at times in a misguided attempt to not cheapen our efforts, or to protect ourselves from the embarrassment of giving something to an unwilling recipient. We are so fucking scared for ourselves that we struggle to see that not only are we being neglectful of those who need us, but we become so preoccupied with finding life support that we fail to see the forest through the trees. The people who back us up become translucent, sometimes dismissed or explained away with the flawed, damaged logic of someone whose fears have taken the wheel. We lose sight of what we can give and what we’re being given. We can’t expect to be celebrated, the party doesn’t need to be cancelled because it’s already been happening and we’ve been sleeping through it. There will never be enough cake, and when you do get a piece you’ll eat it so greedily it’s as if it was never even there.

Becky went to bed awhile after midnight. She didn’t want me to go it alone, but was exhausted. She was so sweet and so kind about making sure I had water and snacks and support that I damn near had to chase her from the room. Having ruminated on these ideas of support and ego and all that I was able to see how goddamn lucky I am to have someone who believes in me and is willing to let me know. I really hope that everyone has at least one person like that in their world, it makes all the difference.

As the hours grew small I was going at a much quicker rate. I had figured out where it was all heading, I had found a shorthand for representing the characters, and with the end in sight I found a second wind for that final dash. I’m not gonna delude myself into thinking that the final pages are some great display of my skills, but they work and before I knew it my story was told.

Finishing early is when you can find a new kind of guilt. This is the guilt of calling it done and getting some well earned sleep rather than going back and fixing stuff or adding some more details and background context. I didn’t give myself that hard time, as the process had in fact reminded me to cut myself some slack and to loosen up. I was delirious from the experience and ready to be done with it.

CLimbing into bed I briefly rolled around the thoughts that I had confronted during the process of the 24 Hour Challenge. I wanted these to be the last thoughts in my head as I fell asleep, because I knew without further meditating on such ideas I would surely return to old bad habits. The habits of self celebration over honest evaluation, and negativity over troubleshooting solutions. The habits of feeling invisible and unloved, and of course its ugly bedfellow that doesn’t allow me to celebrate the beauty and talents of others.

This challenge is hard. This thing isn’t for everyone, and I don’t think it’s meant to be. Conversely, it isn’t elite, or exceptionally more difficult than other things… it’s a tool that I welcome you to pick up and add to your personal creative utility belt. There is as much to be learned from this challenge in failing, or in deciding it isn’t for you as there is in its successful completion. I just wanted to put it out there, and to share the relationship that I have had with it.

When I finished the final page I immediately swore I was done with this challenge. I had again proven that I could do it, no need to go for it next year. Here I am just a few days out and I’m already reconsidering… This is why people climb mountains- sure they miss the view, but it’s that incline and the burning pain that brings them back.