Things: A 24 Hour Comic

By James Wilkinson

I reviewed another 24 hour comic recently, and in my review I said that they can often degenerate into nonsense. This one really doesn’t take very long to do so as after three pages of plot it degrades into stick figures and other poorly drawn characters making bizarre jokes and metatextual statements (at one point a character even asks “You really think there are still people reading at this point?”).

Eventually it becomes incredibly self-referential and Wilkinson starts drawing other people at the 24 hour comic event he was attending. As such it’s an interesting look into the thought processes someone creating a 24 hour comic goes through, but perhaps not as effective a comic. It’s too bad as I liked the first few pages.

(Oh, an idea. I’d love to see someone do a Joe Sacco style journalism comic about a 24 hour comic event. That’d be pretty neat.)

Wilkinson included a letter along with the comic when he sent it to me. In it he explains that he spent forever drawing the first few pages, and then had to rush through the rest. He says that he “found it a very useful excersize for [...] creating comics, rather than agonising about creating something that’s perfect and therefore creating nothing.”

True words. So when’s the next 24 hour comic or zine event? Someone invite me to one so that I can get off my ass and make something.