It was hour 20. Stacks of paper with hastily scrawled images and text were
scattered on every side of me. I'd been up for over 30 hours and my body was
running on caffeine and very little else. My hand was aching and simply wanted
to remove itself from the end of my arm, take a nice bath, and lie down. The
rest of my body was attempting to start a civil war with the part of my brain
that agreed to take part in a 24 hour comic challenge. The collateral damage seemed
to be my spine, shoulders and neck.
I should explain. The 24 hour comic
challenge was invented by comic book scholar and practitioner Scott McCloud in 1990. Any willing participants are required
to produce 24 pages of a comic in 24 consecutive hours. No prior preparation is
allowed bar a gathering of materials and sustenance. The exercise was a reaction
to the length of time he and his peers spent agonizing over single panels.
Hours, days, and even weeks fell prey to extended bouts of procrastination and
this, McCloud surmised, would encourage a different way of working. It proved to
be a wonderfully inspiring, creative task for people who took part and there are
now worldwide events based around the
idea.
Sitting in London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) during 2007's COMICA festival, I found
myself now attempting to add my own weary, masochistic efforts to the thousands
of existing 24 hour comics. It isn't exactly what you'd call the ideal way to
spend a weekend. Let's go a little further and say that it would probably sit
fairly far down the list. Somewhere below extensive keyhole surgery and
discussing religion at a dinner party for 24 hour consecutive hours.
Very
early on in the 24 hours of mental and physical insanity, I'd decided to draw an
auto-biographical comic about my experiences with Crohn's Disease. After 15
years of living with the damn thing, it struck me that I might just have enough
material to fill 24 pages. It was a big part of my life, but also a part of my
life that I felt embarrassed about and thus, it seemed that this might be a nice
opportunity to vent my frustrations and 'come clean' about the complaint. Within
a few hours of sketching out rough pages and looking around nervously at my
fellow comic artists - furiously etching into their own notebooks - it became
obvious to me that I had been writing this comic in my head for a long time.
Reaching 24 pages wasn't going to be tough, knowing when to stop would be. My
hand was incapable of drawing fast enough. I would interrupt the inking of one
page to make sure I could scribble my thoughts down for an idea to come eight
pages later.
One thing I wasn't prepared for was how the intense,
ticking, ever impending time-bomb of a deadline would provoke me to be so honest
and open about the disease. Looking at the comic now, I immediately cringe and
want to curl up into a tiny ball - roll away somewhere no-one will ever find me.
Did I really draw that? Did I really write that? What was I thinking?! Clearly,
my sleep-deprived brain had initiated a delayed, sadistic form of payback. Most
of my friends have read the comic now and I have mixed feelings about this. On
the one hand, I'm relieved that I don't have to explain myself should I need to
rush off unexpectedly to the nearest restroom. On the other hand, I'm aware that
everyone knows exactly why I'm doing so.
