Press Release
24 Hour Comics Day, the international celebration of comics creation, got off to an unexpected early start today when the Hands On Thailand site decided to start early, commencing drawing at noon local time on Friday, 24 Hour Comics Day Eve. "It goes outside of our 'It's got to be 24 Hour Comics Day somewhere in the world when you start' rule," explained Nat Gertler, founder and organizer of 24 Hour Comics Day, "but there's an unwritten rule that you give some leeway to tsunami relief volunteers who are rearranging their schedule to get more relief work done." The event is taking place in a bungalow on Phi-Phi Island. For more information on Phi-Phi and the situation there, see http://www.hiphiphi.com/.
Before the Thailand event is finished, other events will have started, each with cartoonists trying to completely create 24 page comics in 24 straight hours. With official event sites in seven countries, the entire "day" is now scheduled to run 63 hours, from that start in Thailand to the end of the final event in a California comic book shop at 1 PM local time. The event sites range from that island bungalow to the center court of a Canadian shopping mall, to a comics-only library in Germany, to schools and community centers. Most plentiful are the comic book stores, placing the joy of both comics creation and comics reading under the same roof to a degree never before seen.
All told, more than 70 official events are being held, with some sites expecting to have a mere single cartoonist on hand while others have around fifty already signed up to appear.
"We can't know in advance how many people who have signed up will actually show up, how many will flake out, and how many people who hadn't reserved a space will show up anyway," says Gertler.
"Based on last year's turn out and this year's reservations, though, we're expecting more than 700 cartoonists at the official event sites, with many others taking the 24 hour comics challenge at home or in private gathering with friends. Not everyone will actually finish their pages, but it's reasonable to expect some ten thousand pages of comics will be created as part of this year's celebration."
Last year's celebration included not only unknown and unpublished cartoonists but also popular print comics creators like Paul Smith (known for working on X-Men and Leave It to Chance), Sean McKeever (Mystique, Mary Jane), Christian Gossett (The Red Star), Josh Howard (Dead@17), and Tone Rodriguez (Violent Messiahs) plus webcomics creators like Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots) and Jennifer O. (SquareCat Comics). You can see the work of all these cartoonists in the books 24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2004 and 24 Hour Comics All-Stars, published by About Comics.
Creative people interested in participating in this year's events should head over to http://www.24hourcomics.com for more information. This year's celebration is attracting more press attention than last year, with newspaper and radio coverage already appearing and more, plus TV coverage, on the way.
Folks who really want to keep an eye on what's going on, however, should head to the 24 Hour Comics Day Blog at http://www.24HourComics.com/blog/ and follow events as they unfold.
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