24 Hour Comics People

Various
605 pages (2008); 58.1MB download
Squid Works Comics; ISBN: SQUD-00001

DESCRIPTION

Introduction by Stan Yan:

As the unwitting organizer of the last two Denver 24 Hour Comic Challenges, and participant or host of more Denver 24 Hour Comic Challenges than anyone else, I guess there’s no person more “quantified” to be writing this introduction than me. Even before the advent of the First Annual International 24 Hour Comic Day in 2004, I invited an intrepid group of local cartoonists to my house for the 24 Hour Minicomic Challenge.

For those of you who are not familiar with what this challenge entails, the traditional rules are that you are to write, pencil, and ink a complete 24 page comic book in 24 hours. In the first two years of the event, of the thousands of participant stories worldwide, we’ve seen five of the Denver challengers published in the About Comics’ “24 Hour Comic Day Highlights” and “All-Stars” series including contributors to this book, Clara Harbour, John Peters, and myself. Even one who Scott McCloud would describe as a “noble failure” (one who did not complete 24 pages in 24 consecutive hours or who took longer than 24 consecutive hours to complete their 24 page story) was honored from our group — T. Motley, whose parody of Neil Gaiman’s noble failure, entitled “The Gaiman Variation” in the Eisner-nominated “2005 24 Hour Comics Day Highlights” book made publication. In any event, I’ve been proud to be a part of what I biasedly consider the most talented group of comic creators to participate in this event — a group I see getting more and more talented each year, not to mention larger. I don’t mean “larger” in girth (although we have seen some of our challengers grow up before our eyes), I mean in number.

This event has certainly taken on a life of its own, growing from 11 participants in 2004 to 14 in 2005 and 26 in 2006. This year for logistic reasons, we had to cap participants to 32, although we had 45 folks interested with very little advertising or PR. What can I say? We’re a victim of our own success. Well, and we also have been fortunate enough for the local media coverage through the years which has brought so much of the local talent to our event.

Sadly, last year, About Comics discontinued publication of their anthology series, and many of the Denver challengers were disappointed. So, in my second year’s efforts of organizing the Denver challenge, I was bound and determined to collect the finished stories from our local challenge into an anthology. Well, we convened this year’s on event Saturday, October 20, 2007 at noon to Sunday, October 21st at noon at our host sponsor, Enchanted Grounds in Highlands Ranch. With the help of our generous sponsors and volunteers, I’m gratified to see this collected book of successful story challenges and some awesome “noble failures” from our event. I’m proud to say that I’m not disappointed — I see our Denver challengers have elevated their game once again.