Ninja Falcon: A 24-Hour(ish) Comic

Sep 25, 2011 by Adam    Comments Off    Posted under: Adam Drew This, Comics Art, Graphic Fiction (comics)

See below for Adam’s notes.  Click images to enlargify!  Bigger art is prettier art.

Adam’s Notes

I’ve always wanted to do a 24-hour comic.  It’s a Scott McCloud idea—he challenged the brilliant but “slow” Steve Bissette to do a 24-page comic in a 24-hour sitting after seeing how fast the guy was at an in-store signing. And then it became A Big Thing, an event that officially takes place every October.  McCloud stipulates that you should come to the table with nothing … no script or pre-conceived ideas.  He suggests taking a game like Taboo with word cards and drawing a new card for every page and using the words in the comic.  I remembered something my studio-mate Tyler had shown me, the Periodic Table of Awesoments!  I thought it was very funny and had a lot of words I’d like to draw a comic about.  I cut up the Awesoments, put them in a bowl and drew out five: Ninja, Falcon, Metal, Video Game and Kool-Aid.

I started drawing.  I cheated by doing double page spreads to save time…I was working on 2 pages at a time.  I further cheated by sleeping in the middle.  (You are supposed to stay up 24 hours straight…)  I worked for 12 hours on a Saturday, slept 8 hours and put in another 12 hours on Sunday.  I was still five pages short.  I drew the last five pages on Monday.  Then I went back in on Tuesday and re-drew some stuff on the pages I didn’t like.  Then I spent a couple of days lettering it and spotting blacks in the computer.  So, all in all, it is more like a weeklong comic than a 24-hour comic.

It’s meant to be a pure experiment, but I ended up liking both the process (modifications and all) and the result. I showed to to my eight-year-old niece, Shaylin, and she really liked it and is really looking forward to more adventures of the Falcon Ninja. I’ve been thinking about going back in and changing a few things to make it more of a real story instead of a groovy experiment … So, as they say in the comics: To Be Continued …