No Elephant Town today! Instead, enjoy this terrible 24 Hour Comic I made in 2004.

Good morning! (And good evening, you night owls/people on the west coast!)

As I mentioned last week, I'll be taking the next few weeks off from Elephant Town updates. I'll make a post to explain all of that later today.

But first, since I know y'all love a Monday comic update, I'm sharing this entirely embarrassing 24-page comic that I made when I was 23 that I didn't know I still had on my hard drive (and was hoping I'd lost). 

I made this comic between noon Saturday and noon Sunday one weekend in 2004, during the first nationally promoted 24 Hour Comic Day event. (Scott McCloud writes about the concept behind 24HCD - and its rise to a worldwide annual event - here.) My friend Chris Eberle - shown here in an ancient photo taken on FILM - invited a bunch of artist friends to his comic book shop in New Jersey to rise to the challenge of making a 24-page comic book in 24 hours.

Star Wars playing in the background. Snacks in the foreground. Chris dressing like an obnoxious fanboy and harassing the artists as we attempted the impossible. We'd stay up all night drawing and laughing and being idiots and pulling pranks on each other as we each tried to make a full comic book from start to finish, and doze off one by one under the tables or on the couch in the back when we could no longer keep our eyelids up. We'd wake up a few hours later as if we'd woken up on the floor of a college party, and groggily get back to work, loopy on a breakfast of caffeine and sugar and leftover pizza. And by the end of the event, at noon, most of us would have an impressive number of pages done, and one or two of us would have all 24 - a completely new book, started and finished in 24 hours.

(If you read more than halfway through mine, you'll see my cheap hack that allowed me to finish on time! STILL WORKS!)

That first weekend is one of my fondest memories. The intoxicating camaraderie of other artist friends working at the same goal, and the thrill and surprise of showing yourself what you're really capable of...  I've wanted to take that challenge again for years. 

But you know what I don't want? 

A FUCKIN ALL-NIGHTER. I'm too old for that shit!! I bet you are, too.

So, I reached out to the 24HCD people and asked for their blessing in promoting 48 Hour Comics Weekend. (I have their blessing.)

This is pretty late notice, but 24HCD and 48HCW will take place next weekend, October 2-3. So I'll be working all weekend on a new 24-page comic, this time with all 48 hours at my disposal. I'll livestream some of it if I can - if you're a patron, you'll know about it first! - but either way, you'll see whatever I complete here, even if it's as bad as the one I'm posting from 2004.

So maybe you're thinking THIS SOUNDS COOL I WANNA TRY IT and maybe your responsible brain is going YOU DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THAT. Hey, I get it, you're busy! Lucky for you, there aren't really any rules here, just guidelines. You could try to make a 24-page comic book, or you could make 24 comic strips... or you could make 24 single-panel comics... or you could make a 24-frame animation. 24 drawings on post-it notes. 24 commissioned sketches. 24 origami animals. 24 paper flowers.

The idea behind 24HCD is to surprise yourself with how much you're really capable of creating in a short amount of time. Would you like to make 24 haiku? Decorate 24 cupcakes? Sculpt 24 little heads? The goal is up to you. Use the "24 of something" guideline and the "24 or 48 hours" rule, so that you aren't being TOO flexible, and make plans next weekend to join us. :)

Here are the rules I'll be going by, just to give you some ideas:

• Make a 24-page comic in 48 hours - anytime between Saturday morning and midnight Sunday night.
• No script or sketches beforehand...
• ... but you can bring notes if you've already got an idea.
• Doesn't need to be in color.
• Your work station can be prepared ahead of time.
• You don't have to make a page per hour (or every 2 hours). Just get it all done before the 48 hours is up.

Those are my guides. You can alter your rules according to your needs. If you wanna join in and enjoy the camaraderie of others working at the same time, I'll be using the hashtags #48hourcomicsweekend and #48hcw on social media, and hopefully we'll have others tagging as well. I've already got a few artsy local friends who want to join me, and a couple of faraway beloved fellow cartoonists who are interested. :)

If you'd like to join in, do me a favor and comment below, and tell me what your goal will be (if you already have one)... or just an idea of what you'd like to accomplish. I hope some of you can join along for this! 

(Oh and also feel free to humiliate me for this 24-page comic, which is almost certainly based on how I saw myself at that age! As much as I'm making fun of it, though, it's 24 pages of something I wrote on the spot and FINISHED, and that felt really good.)