Category: 24 Hour Comics

Puxley the Possum vs. Buddy Boo the Bad: A 24-Hour Coronavirus Comic

Several friends and Doomkopf alums (who are also friends) got together virtually this past weekend to make something out of the fact that we’re all stuck at home due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 24-hour comics process and rules would be the same — we’re just doing it in April instead of October.

For mine, I started with my normal routine of soliciting random words to help me generate ideas. My girlfriend — on the spot and off the top of her head — gave me “possum,” “avenue,” “dream” and “oceanside;” Doom, Where’s My Car? gave me “cartography” and “comatose.”

From those seed words, and from “Show Me the Way” by Styx (which came up on our 90s station during the ideation period), I came up with the idea you see below.

I wanted to place this story in an abandoned city (my coronavirus influence) but I almost ditched the idea completely when I thought about how tedious it would be to draw city streets and storefronts over and over for 24 pages. Fortunately, my friend Christina — who has been taking photos of the mostly abandoned lower Manhattan lately — graciously shared some of her photos, which I was able to use as background influences (Christina also gets credit for suggesting the names “Buddy Boo” and “Puxley”).

This was by far the most linearly I have ever constructed a 24-hour comic, as I had a good (general) idea of where I was going to start and (generally) where I wanted to go right from the beginning. However, I had no idea how to end it. All the details get filled in along the way (for example, Pete the Wizard was inspired by one of my friends’ comics, which involved a Pizza Wizard), but once I hit 20 pages 18 hours in, I was completely stumped on where to go from there. I sat there for another hour with no additional ideas on how to salvage it, so then at 8 a.m. I decided to take a three-hour nap with the hope that my subconscious would save the day.

I woke up with an ending in mind, talked through it with my girlfriend, and then she made an off-hand comment that gave me a much better idea on how to end it. So I scrapped my first idea, sat down and cranked out the last four pages —- and came in just under the wire at our 1:30 p.m. stopping time. I had to use banked time when I completed my most recent 24 hour comic, so it felt good to be able to start and finish within the 24-hour window.

As always, it was a blast to be able to do the challenge with my friends, and I hope you enjoy this story! We’ll have Doom DeLuise’s story up here on the site once he’s had a chance to scan and upload it.



A Journey of Change: A 24 Hour Comic

It was hard to get back in the 24 Hour Comics swing. I hadn’t done one since 2014, and I hadn’t done one with the Doomkopf crew since 2012. Doom DeLuise and I decided to rekindle some old magic, and we reunited via webcam and hung out remotely for most of the 24 hours.

I got a late start on the East coast (I wasted a lot of time purchasing, attempting to set up, and eventually giving up on a new webcam), and I ended up pooping out at 6:23 a.m., which was the 15-hour point. What was supposed to be a little nap turned into 6.5 hours of sleep. I woke up to find DeLuise chugging away and nearing completion (and he finished — go read it). I worked to the end of our 24 hour period, but I wasn’t finished.

I realize technically — according to the rules of the challenge — I failed, but I was enjoying my story, and out of commitment to DeLuise, I was determined to finish it. So figuring I had 6.5 hours in the bank, I waited until my next opportunity to tackle it. Work and personal travel tied up the next few weeks, but finally today I cashed in those hours and finished it.

The lingering story popped into my head occasionally over the past few weeks, but I did my best to not think about it until I was sitting down and officially resuming. I didn’t want to cheat with the limited time I had left by thinking about it “off the clock,” so to speak. And when I did sit down this afternoon and officially resumed, I realized I had way more work ahead of me than I thought I had.

I only had around 10 pages completely done. I had a bunch of pages either fully drawn and inked (but not lettered) or at least sketched — but I had very little recollection of what some of my intent was with some of these pages. So I spent a lot of my time today just getting reacquainted with what I had produced on 24HCD, trying to make sense of what I intended and trying to figure out what I could do with it.

I usually work non-linearly on 24HCD stories, but this one took that to another level completely. I drew so many pages with no idea where they were going, how they were fitting in or even what they were fitting into. This went to such an extreme that, with about 2 hours left, I realized I had actually laid out a 26-page story. I found one page I could ditch completely, but only one, so I ended up making a 25-page 24-hour comic in 24 hours and 30 minutes. I went over time, but still averaged under one page an hour.

This year, for inspiration, I asked my girlfriend to just tell me some random words. She offered balloon, rake, jungle gym, vacation and feudalism. Also — to honor tradition — Doom DeLuise and I listened to a 90s web radio station all night. Early on, “Sadeness Part 1” by Enigma played, and I started talking about the “monk craze of the early 90s.” He and I both happened to write down “monk craze” as inspiration. You can see it in both of our stories this year.

Working in a non-linear fashion keeps it fun for me. If I figure out too early on where the story is going, I get bored. This one kept me figuring things out to the end (and when I say “figuring things out to the end,” I mean figuring out important things that should happen on page 3, 8, 14, etc.) and more than any other 24 hour comic I’ve done, felt like it was revealing itself to me. Technically a failure, but one of my favorites. I hope you like it!



To Hell and Back: A 24 Hour Comic



The Music: 24 Hour Comics Day 2014

I would just like to point out that I made this in November 2014, and Mad Max: Fury Road didn’t come out until May 2015. I loved MM:FR, but also hated the fact that this was always going to seem derivative of it.



Pokrok Zapadu, The Greatest Warrior Who Ever Lived: A 24 Hour Comic

Created as part of 24 Hour Comic Book Day, Oct 2-3, 2009. Of the Doomkopf gang, I was the only one who was able to participate this year. Check out our creations from 24HCBD 2008. Notes and spoilers on this comic after the jump.

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Man Alive:
A 24-Hour Comic

This here comic wasn’t written by one of us on the blog, but it was written and illustrated by a dear friend of ours who attended 24-Hour Comic Day with us in Omaha last weekend. Let’s call him Doom ‘n’ Gloom. He can’t offer us any insight into what went through his mind while he drew this sucker, because he’s on a plane to Germany, where he’ll be living for the next few months or years, though, so I figured I’d offer a little introduction.

He sat next to me during the time that he spent with us at the event, and all I can confirm is that he laughed to himself a lot. The basic premise for his comic is that the main character can’t die, so he drinks himself to death every day, only to wake up with no harm done. Plus, he’s friends with a balloon. And it talks.

This isn’t finished, though, because Doom ‘n’ Gloom left early so that he could go get drunk. I don’t blame him. Aw, hell, I done introduced it enough. Here it is: (more…)



The Garden:
Jim Doom’s 24 Hour Comic

As I mentioned during our live blogging, I was struggling to come up with an idea for my comic. Fin Fang Doom brought some random words and genres to draw from to help inspire people; I drew “real-life,” “horror,” and then stuff like “rhubarb.” I’d had a dream earlier that morning about a dispute over lawn ornaments involving Barack Obama and John McCain, so as I was rapidly burning daylight, I committed to a horror story involving lawn ornaments.

The story took quite a few turns as I grew bored with it every few pages. It’s interesting how, for me anyway, these 24 Hour Comics are less like a 24-page comic book and more like a collection of 24 interconnected one-page pieces. I would think of the story in one-page increments, and often got bored if a theme carried to more than one sequential page. The story was assembled fairly non-linearly; at one point in the night, I got so bored with my story that I just decided to draw a page I thought would be interesting, and I’d figure out later how to work it into the story. Overall, though, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I hope you like it.
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Space Dinosaurs from the Future: A 24-Hour Comic

I’m not going to lie to you. I couldn’t think of anything good. This 24-Hour Comic just went from bad to worse, and the only reason I kind of enjoy the final product is because, over the course of the event, I made the decision several times to kill off all the characters and scrap the idea, but, after doing the killing, reversed the decision and tried to figure out a way to dig my way back out of the hole I’d just dug my way into. Little bit of advice, though: If you ever find yourself in a hole, don’t dig your way out. Climb out. It’s probably much, much easier.

I hope you enjoy this. Sorry for the heavy-handed symbolism at the end, by the way. It seemed more subtle in my mind, but instead it’s just kind of in-your-face obvious with how it explains the rest of the story. And, just a quick heads-up, even though it doesn’t read this way, the last picture is supposed to be an overhead shot of a dinosaur paw-print in some mud. Spoiler alert? Feast your eyes on this!
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Portals of Doom: A 24-Hour Comic

Here’s the comic that yours truly produced this weekend for 24-Hour Comics Day: Portals of Doom! You may notice that the art quality regresses quite a bit over the course of these 24 pages. The coherence of the storytelling has a similar degradation, albeit on a much larger scale. That’s what a lack of sleep and forethought will do to you, I guess.

Below is the first page. Clicking on it will take you to my flickr account, where you can read the whole thing. Enjoy!
PoD 1



Doomkopf @ 24 Hour Comics

This year’s 24 Hour Comics Day is October 18, and several of us here at Doomkopf will be participating.

Omaha’s 24 Hour Comics event will be held at Krypton Comics at 2819 S 125th St. Suite 261, Omaha Neb., 68144. The challenge will commence at noon Saturday and conclude noon Sunday. Krypton Comics will be providing food and energy drinks for everyone doing the challenge. All you have to do is show up on Saturday and register for the event.

For the uninitiated, the premise of the event is to create a 24-page comic from scratch in 24 hours. Fin Fang Doom, Doominator, Doom DeLuise and I participated back in 2006, took a year off, and now we’ll be back in 2008 (minus Doominator, but plus Colonel Doom) at Krypton.

Last time, Fin Fang Doom pulled off the whole challenge. Doom DeLuise got pretty far but had to leave for work. I think he came back later, but it’s been a while. I think Doominator finished, and so did one of his friends that came. I wimped out about 5 a.m. and slept on the floor of the diner. I was totally keeping up with the requisite pace, but then a diner customer chatted my ear off for more than an hour and totally killed my momentum. We started at 8 a.m. Saturday, which I think was a mistake. My thinking was that it would be easier to stay up since we ended earlier, but I underestimated the value of sleeping in before staying up all night.

UPDATE!! I just learned there is also going to be a 24 Hour Comics Day event in Lincoln, tentatively scheduled for the Hi-Way Diner, site of the 2006 outing.

You can read Fin Fang Doom’s 2006 24 Hour Comic here.