A 24-hour comic is a 24-page
comic book drawn in 24 hours. According to the game's inventor
Scott McCloud (and yes, this can be called a game, sort of an epic version of
Exquisite Corpse or
something like it, with the randomness of blind collaboration replaced with
the resistance-shattering effects of speed and endurance), you must take your 24 hours consecutively. However, most people who undertake the challenge seem to break the process up into shifts.
As McCloud elaborates at scottmccloud.com:
In the summer of 1990 I was convinced that I
was the second-slowest artist in comics. The
slowest, my pal Steve "Glacier" Bissette, was
having a particularly slow year, producing at a
rate of a little over a page a month when he came
to the Boston area from his native Vermont to do
a signing at a local comics store. I watched in awe
as he did sketches for fans. His hands ripped
across the page at blinding speed, turning out
masterful pen and ink renderings that would make
Heinrich Kley weep with envy. I thought: Why is
this guy slow?? I'll bet he could do a full length
comic in a day if he wanted to! Why, I'll bet he --
(Sound Effect: Lightbulb clicks on.)
Suddenly, I knew what Steve needed to do. And
I knew I could only get him to do it, if I did one
too.
The deal was struck. We would each do a
complete 24-page comic in a day. It had to
happen by August 31st. My original idea had
been midnight to midnight, but Steve's
semi-nocturnal schedule worked better within the
more flexible 24-hour rule.
[...]
I finished at about 11:30pm, throwing in a cover
so that when Steve did his I could brag that I did
one more page than he did. Steve, even though he
knew nothing about mine (by mutual agreement),
pulled the same trick. Each of us had drawn a
complete 25-page, 24-hour comic.
We had no idea what we were starting.
McCloud proceeds to document what he started in the 24 Hour Comic subsection of the Inventions section of his site. Notable cartoonists who've created 24-hour comics include
Rick Veitch,
Dave Sim,
David Lasky,
Tom Hart, and
Matt Madden. Almost no female cartoonists have taken up the challenge (not and told McCloud about it, anyway), perhaps because the whole thing is kind of an exercise in
machismo.
Some of the rules of the game (again from the McCloud site):
No sketches, designs, plot summaries or any other kind of direct
preparation can precede the 24 hour period. Indirect preparation such
as assembling tools, reference materials, food, music etc. is fine.
Your pages can be any size, any material. Carve 'em in stone; print
'em with rubber stamps; draw 'em on your kitchen walls with a magic
marker. Anything.
The 24 hours are continuous. You can take a nap if you like but the
clock will continue to tick! If you get to 24 hours and you're not done,
either end it there ("the Gaiman Variation") or keep going until you're
done ("the Eastman Variation"). I consider both of these the Noble
Failure Variants and true 24 hour comics in spirit; but you must
sincerely intend to do the 24 pages in 24 hours at the outset.
When you're done, send me a copy.
115 different 24-hour comics are catalogged on the site.