24 Hour Zines: Part 1

The Roberts Street Social Centre had their 24 Hour Zine Challenge last month. I went and, in addition to eating some pancakes, make a couple of zines.

The first was the newest issue of the Halifax Comic Jam anthology. I didn't draw much of this issue, but I scanned it all in, did some digital editing, designed the cover, and laid it all our. Hurray!

The cover was pretty fun to make. I found a jam jar in the fridge (I can't remember what was in it, but it wasn't jam...), soaked it in water, pealed off the label, dried it off, scanned it, and edited it on the computer.

You can find the Halifax Comics Jam on Facebook. Their next event is on September 25th.

Halifax Comix Jam Number 13

It's time once again for me to "review" one of these jam comics and tell you about this month's Halifax Comics Jam!

This month's is tonight (Tuesday, April 3rd), from 7-10pm, at the Roberts Street Social Centre, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You should come! No artistic talent is required, and there are usually cookies or some other snack. Here's the facebook event.

For those that don't know, Jam comics are comics where one person starts a page by drawing a panel, and then another person draws the next panel, and so on until the page is finished. They usually don't make a lot of sense, but they can be pretty funny at times. This one actually has a remarkably coherent, and amusing story about the adventures of a soul. Hurray!

Here's a video you can watch that possibly explains it better.

Halifax Comix Jam #11/12

It's the end of the month, and so it is once again time for me to "review" an old issue of the Halifax Comix Jam comic in order to promote the comic jam happening tonight at Roberts Street!

Honestly, I think jam comics like this are probably more valuable to the people that made them than to random outsiders. This is because these comics rarely make any sense at all.

(If you're not aware of what a jam comic is, they're comics where one person draws a panel, and then someone else draws the next panel, and so on. They usually don't have any real narrative flow, and the art styles can change drastically between panels.)

Still, I think they're neat because the jam sessions themselves encourage people to draw and be creative, which is something I think more people should be doing.

But yeah, go to the Comics Jam at Roberts Street Tuesday, February 28th (tonight!), 7-10pm. It will be fun! I promise. There will be cookies.

Halifax Comix Jam

I have to admit that I have an ulterior motive to reviewing these minicomics on this day. And that motive is that the next Halifax Comic Jam is happening tomorrow (January 31st), at 7pm, at the Roberts Street Social Centre (there’s more info on the facebook event page). You should come by and draw some comics! No talent is required.

Jam comics are comics that are made when each artist draws a panel, continuing the story (or not). They're kind of like exquisite corpses, except you can see what’s come before. The stories generally involved bizarre humour, often don’t make a lot of sense, and frequently just stop without any type of ending. They can still be funny though.

It’s strange reading several of these in a row, because I see that the same characters show up again and again as artists draw their own creations into the comics. I’m not sure who invented Hitler-Cat, Maraca-Squid (see above), or that weird little robot, but when they show up they tend to take over the comics.

One thing to remember about these things is that they are 18+, and I’m pretty glad that nobody saw me reading them at work.

Khyber Komix Jam #2

Edited by Kyle

A comics jam is an event where a bunch of people get together and draw collaborative comics. Usually each person draws a panel, and then passes it on to the next person (who in turn passes on the comic they'd been working on). You spend an evening hanging out with other comics artists, and at the end you have a pile of usually bizarre, generally nonsensical comics.

While these are great drawing exercises for the artists, both to get them to actually draw something and to draw within a certain period of time, they results are generally incredibly uneven. You have some participants who try to continue the story started by the previous artists, but others who go for random jokes and non sequiturs.

You also have an incredible variety of art styles, and while a few of the artists here are quite good at drawing something within the allotted time, others are not. My favourite comic had to do with a horrible jelly fish attack, both because jelly fish (or at least the idea of flying ones) terrify me, and because on average I think it has the best art. I guess jelly fish aren't that hard to draw.

Ultimately though, I think the biggest problem is the lettering. I can't even read a bunch of the dialogue! I'd be really interested to hear of any comic jams have used a writer/letterer who would write the dialogue/captions in advance and have the artists draw things to try and match up with that. I don't know if it would work better, but at the least the produced comics would (probably) be more coherent.