24 Hour Comics Day 2006 press resources

For specific requests, please contact press@24hourcomics or call (805) 499-4091

24 HOUR COMICS DAY logo (no date):

24 HOUR COMICS DAY 2005 logo:

Talking points:

• The first 24 Hour Comics Day was April 24th, 2004.
• Over 500 cartoonists were at work in 57 event locations for the 2004 festival, with an untold number more celebrating at home.
• Over 800 cartoonists were at work in 70 event locations for the 2005 festival, with an untold number more celebrating at home.
• For 2006, we already have more event locations signed up, with more signing on all the time.
• 2004 event locations: US, Canada, and South Korea, with individual particpants in other countries and on other continents.
• 2005: US, Canada, Thailand, France, Germany, the Nethrlands and Serbia.
• Most of the participants are in their late teens or twenties, with a real mix of male and female participants.
• While most participants are amateurs, many pro cartoonists take part as well. Past years have seen participation from such big-name folk as former X-Men artist Paul Smith, popular online cartoonist Scott Kurtz (pvponline.com), and Tone Rodriguez (currently working on Conan). Some were folks who want to be professional cartoonists. And many were folks just having fun by trying it.
• You don't have to be a good artist to participate. It's a lot of fun to do, even if you use stick figures to tell your story.
• People do different styles of comics. In addition to the most common black-ink-on-white-paper drawings, we've had full color painted comics, computer-drawn comics, photo comics, ones made of pictures of posed action figures, a series of painted stones with captions, and we even had one guy who made a Daredevil superhero comic by cutting pictures of Ben Affleck's head out of magazines and pasting them onto stick figure bodies. In terms of content, there's a lot of humor comics, some action, some superhero, some sci-fi, and a lot of autobiography.
• The 24 hour comics challenge was created in 1990 by Scott McCloud, leading comics theoretician and author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics.
• Between 1990 and 2004, people were doing 24 hour comics on their own or in small gatherings for more than a decade. However, we estimated that the number of people who have done them roughly doubled on 2004's inaugural 24 Hour Comics Day, and added a greater number to the list in 2005, with 2006 looking to be bigger still.
• The 24 hour comics that were done before 24 Hour Comics Day was launched tend to be much more downbeat and depressed than the ones done at 24 Hour Comics Day events. This is probably because people at the events are working side by side and sharing the fun; working on a comic at 4:30 AM all alone can give one a lot of time to reflect on bleak thoughts.
• In both 2004 and 2005, the single biggest single location was in Austin Books in Austin, Texas, with 40 cartoonists the first year and 70 the second. Due to a store layout situation, they've had to limit themselves to 20-some this year, so the 2006 title is up for grabs.
• Cartoonists who are falling behind the clock often do a full-page shot (instead of a bunch of panels) in order to try to catch up.
• Round about page 19, when cartoonists are worried if they'll finish at all, their characters sometimes fall into a cavern, turn out the lights, or get lost in a snow storm, so that the cartoonist has a page or two that is all-white or all-black with dialog balloons, a cheap and obvious trick for catching up quickly.

For specific requests, please contact press@24hourcomics or call (805) 499-4091