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What is a 24 hour comic?

It's a challenge: one cartoonist tries to create a full 24 page comic, normally months of work, in 24 straight hours.more info

What is 24 Hour Comics Day?

It's an international celebration of comics creation. Cartoonists all over take the challenge of trying to create a 24 page comic story in 24 straight hours. Many gather at special events in comic book shops, schools, and other locations.

24 Hour Comics FAQ

Books of 24 Hour Comics

Sending in your comic

Random story seeds

Host a 24 Hour Comics Day event

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Frequently Asked Questions from stores and groups interested in hosting a 24 Hour Comics Day 2007 event

October 20th, 2007.

Events can be hosted by any comic book shop, educational institution, museum, civic organization, arts organization, business, or previously-established comics club in the world.

Before we can list you as a participating 24 Hour Comics Day event store, you must commit to actually hosting the event and all that it entails. This means that you commit to providing:

A room to draw in, including chairs and tables. While many retailers are planning to host the event in store, thus putting the cartoonists on display, this is not a requirement. It could be any space with tables and chairs, (hotel meeting room space, space at a local school). This space needs to be available to the cartoonists for at least 27 hours, so that people who do not complete their work in 24 hours can still finish up, and those who arrive a little late still have a full day.
A nap room: a quiet separate room with cots, sleeping bags, or reasonable sleeping surfaces, for those who feel they will they'll be able to keep going better after catching forty winks. (Some locations in the past have used RVs or simply a van with a mattress in the back; you should consider the risks in doing this, particularly if the vehicle will be in a place that risks break-in or collision.) This should be open for the same period as the drawing room.
A bathroom! People need bathrooms. People drinking a lot of caffeine to stay up need bathrooms a lot.
Food. This is apt to be a "snacky" effort, so full multi-course meals aren't needed, but some substantive food will be need, and at multiple times (and not the same food all the time -- yes, pizza should be involved, but not solely pizza).And plenty of snacky bits.
Drink. By which I mean primarily caffeine in key liquid forms (coffee, sodas, energy drinks), but also some non-caffeine ones for those who choose to go that way. And yes, water is needed and useful. We don't particularly recommend alcohol, as it has the effect of putting people to sleep.
Access to a 24 hour convenience store or supermarket, because needs will arise.
Manpower: someone from the organizing group (someone not doing the challenge themselves) should be on hand at all times. This should be done in shifts, so that someone alert is always on hand. It might be good to have two people on hand, particularly if you're hosting this in an open store, so that one can run out for any emergency supplies.
Transportation: I'm not worried about folks getting to the event, but none of the participants are not to be allowed to drive themselves home after being up for 24 hours. This is not just a kindliness thing, this is also a safety thing and a liability thing. You can provide transportation, or you can require cartoonists to give you the name and the phone number of the person who is going to pick them up. The last thing any of us need is for some sleep-deprived cartoonist to cause a major accident. This is a very serious matter, and there may well be major financial liability issues involved.
Drawing supplies. While the participants should bring their own drawing materials, it's still good idea to have a supply of drawing paper on hand. You don't need full-size comic book drawing paper; because folks doing 24 hour comics generally draw smaller. If it's convenient, have some other drawing supplies as well.
Copying and shipping. After the event, you need to mail us photocopies of all of the finished comics created at the event. If you have a good photocopier on hand, that would be the best way to handle this, so that people don't have to wait for you to copy it elsewhere or to return their art later. If someone doesn't want to leave their art with you or you really don't want the hassle, you can alternatively provide the participant with a stamped, addressed 9"x12" envelope with sufficient postage for mailing 25 photocopied pages. We do not yet know the address that these comics will be sent to, but expect it to be in the United States. (These are the copies required to be sent to Scott McCloud under the terms of the 24 Hour Comics Challenge, but in the past About Comics has collected them on Scott's behalf.) We do not expect there to be any need for rush shipping. If you are creating a book of the stories from your event, sending us a copy of the book will cover this requirement.
(added March 2, 2007) Access to telephone or email. For the publicizing of the event, we need two reports. Shortly after the start of your event, you;ll let us know how many cartoonists are on hand. At the end of the event, you'll let us know how many cartoonists participated (including anyone who drew at all during your event), how many people completed 24 pages, and how many pages total were created (including both complete and incomplete works.) End of addition.

We will list your store on the www.24HourComics.com website, and use our international publicity efforts to steer folks toward the website and find the listing. Some of the publicity will include a listing of locations.
We will provide promotional materials such as customizable press releases, signs, sign-up forms, and handouts. Because these things are designed for you to add your own store information to, they will be provided in digital rather than printed form. (Just to make it clear: we cannot generate local media publicity and coverage for your event. We don't know your area, and it goes outside our area of expertise anyway.)
We will provide you with access to a private online discussion forum for event hosts, so that you can share plans and suggestions. (After you sign up for hosting the event, we will email you your user name, password, and the web address of the discussion forum.)
We will give you author access to the 24 Hour Comics Day blog so that you can share your plans and updated with the public.

However, there are things that we provided in past years that we will not be providing this year. We will not be providing the video tape of Scott McCloud talking about the 24 hour comics phenomenon. We will not be mailing out certificates of participation to the participants (although we may provide a certificate form that you can print out yourself.) We will not be offering returnable copies of any of our products. We do not anticipate expending much effort trying to find corporate sponsors to provide food, drink, and art supplies. We've done that in past years, and our success was very small when compared to the time and money invested.

No! About Comics does not charge any fees for the event hosts, nor for the cartoonists. We might offer event hosts the chance to buy t-shirts or promotional posters at some reasonable price, but you will not be required to buy them.

We are not releasing a new book of 24 hour comics in conjunction with that day, you will still be able to order copies of four existing books:

The original 24 Hour Comics anthology, edited by Scott McCloud with tales by Neil Gaiman, Al Davison, Steve Bissette, and more.
24 Hour Comics Day All-Stars with the very first 24 hour comic by Scott McCloud, plus Paul Smith, Sean McKeever, Tone Rodriguez, Dave Sim, Chris Eliopoulos, and other commercial comics creators.
24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2004, the ultra-thick book with stories by Josh Howard, Eric Wolfe Hanson, Ken Lashley, Christian Gossett, and many more.
24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2005, thick as a brick with dozens of stories, incuding tales by Lea Hernandez, Ben Avery, Svetlana Chmakova, Chris Fason, Mark Englert, and so many others.
24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2006, with ten stories including Frazer Irving,

These books will be available on a non-returnable basis through Diamond Comics Distributors and on a returnable basis through Diamond Book Distributors (and via the standard book wholesalers who order through them, such as Ingram and Baker&Taylor.) Some or all of the books may be available to direct market comic book stores through Cold Cut.

No.

The books of the past years, as proud as we are of them, were not profitable, and they took a large effort to compile. As such, barring either some sizable grant for producing it or some other established publisher expressing an interest in publishing the book this year, there won't be a central book.

However, we will encourage individual sites to produce their own anthologies, and expect to be partnering with a print-on-demand service to help make this practical.

First, let me clear up one misunderstanding I've gotten from a host. About Comics does notprovide professional cartoonists to the retailers. We will publicize the event to the comics community and use our list of stores to steer interested folks to you. While we do know of professional comics creators who intend to be involved in the events, we expect the vast majority of folks will be amateurs. Art students, your local minicomics community, the folks who buy your copies of Draw and Write Now! and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel and even How To Draw Manga are all likely folks.

So what do you do to get your local cartoonist community, amateur and pro, involved? First, you have to publicize it. These easiest way is in store -- put up some of the downloadable signs, hand out the flyers, talk to any of your customers that you know are cartoonists. We also recomend using the customizable press release we will provide to get local press attention. And getting signs up at your local art school, college, and possibly the art supplies store could all help.

Keep in mind how much space you have, and don't overbook your space (and realize not only that folks drawing take up more space than people just sitting there, but also that people staying together all night need space to stretch, to walk around, and perhaps to simply get out of each other's face at times.) You can, of course, set a limit of how many people may attend.

You may charge for participation. In the past, almost all hosts chose to forego this, seeing all of the expenses as reasonable promotional costs (and the only exception that I'm aware of was a store that used the money they raised for charity.) Retailers should remember that these cartoonists make your store look like a hip place where things happen, and this whole event should help you get the word out about your store. If you are charging, keep the price reasonable, and make sure that the charge is included on your flyer and other materials.

(Even if you can't talk the local known professionals into taking the 24 hour challenge, you might be able to convince them to make surprise visits during the event, giving encouragement to participants. Do keep it a surprise, because that way if the pro fails to show for any reason, no one is disappointed.)

Perhaps not all of them. You can expect a certain amount of people flaking out. This isn't surprising; even the best-intentioned of folks are apt to find out that there's something they have to do during a fixed 24 hour period. Generally, a strong majority show.

We are not going to guarantee exclusivity in any area. Most sites are likely to have a de facto exclusivity, but if an area has more than one shop that is cool enough to host such an event, it likely also has enough cartoonists to get attendees at both.

No. We allow any location to start at any time they want, so long as some part of the event overlaps with October 20th local time. Basically, that means starting the 24 hours at any time on the 19th or 20th. (Previously, we have allowed events to start so long as it was on the 24 Hour Comics Day date anywhere in the world; we are considering whether to include that in this year's guidelines; please contact us if such an option would be vital to your event.)

We recommend against the midnight-to-midnight scheduling. The downside about starting at midnight Friday/Saturday is that you have trouble getting rested cartoonists. Most will have been up since Friday morning, a tough way to start a marathon session. Starting at, say, 9 AM Saturday will let them start rested, and thus be more likely to complete it.

However, there are up-sides to starting at midnight. First off, it sounds cooler. If you're holding it in store, it's easier to publicize that your store will be open all day Saturday. And if people are stopping by the store at normal hours, running midnight-to-midnight means that they're more likely to see the heart of creation. Plus, some media-savvy retailers feel that it's easier to get TV coverage if the event starts at midnight.

It's your choice. Pick times you think will do best for you.

This change was made with the input of many past event hosts. The April scheduling proved problematic for many comics retailers who wanted to host events, as it was too close to Free Comic Book Day. Also, there were problems for school sites with the dates falling at a difficult point in the school year. October is a relatively quiet time, generally without major comics conventions, superhero movie releases, or other events that can cause complications.

No. While we work to coordinate 24 Hour Comics Day, we cannot control the situation at your event site. We do not offer any assurances or guarantees against problems or liabilities arising. While we attempt to offer insight from our experience coordinating the day, we are not lawyers and do not represent any of our materials as protecting you from any legal, financial, or practical situations that may arise.