Monday, October 05, 2009

Zander Cannon's 2009 12-Hour Comic!

It's true, the pressures of having a child have caused me to dial back my output and led to this year's mere 12-hour comic, "The Mysterious Skeleton".

I completed it in the same manner as a 24-hour story, deciding the genre beforehand (a spooky mystery) and then drawing a Pictionary card to determine the plot points. The words this year were:

Skeleton (lucky draw!)
Gong
Fingerprint
Drought
Black Eye

I also had a cast of characters I had to name, so I drew another card for that:

Centipede
Earmuff
Amputate
Reporter
Pothole

The comic was completed in 12 hours, 1 hour per page. I wrote, pencilled, and inked each page before moving on to the next one in order to keep on schedule.

The result is obtained by clicking the link:



I also changed the formatting of the book from the 5.5" x 8.5" I've done for 24 hour comics in the past to basically a 5.5" x 5.5" format, where each page is half as wide and one-third as tall as an 11 x 17 sheet of paper--that's 6 pages on each side. That way I can photocopy a 12-page minicomic on one sheet of paper. No one ever said Zander Cannon wasn't thrifty!

There are also a bunch of names in this comic that are homages to friends and people who have interesting names: Jesse Gillespie, Alice McGee, Jason Horshaw, Danno Klonowski (nee Ochsendorf), Tom Nguyen, Shawn Van Briesen, Ryan Dow, Lupi McGuinty, and my grade school gym teacher, Mr. Udovic.

Many thanks to Steve Stwalley and David Steinlicht for their camaraderie during the event!

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17 Comments:

At 11:16 AM, Blogger Kevin Cannon said...

This is my new favorite 12 hour comic.

 
At 11:38 AM, Blogger David Steinlicht said...

Hooray for the Junior Mystery Solvers! Fun story. I hope that's the last we see of The Skeleton! Hope we see more of the J.M.S.!

 
At 12:19 PM, Blogger Donn Ha said...

Excellent fun.

 
At 1:19 PM, Blogger mrmonkey23 said...

Funny! Especially the "dinnertime" cast-whittling.

 
At 1:46 PM, Blogger Zander Cannon said...

You have to make sacrifices when you only have 12 pages to wrap things up!

Thanks for the comments, everyone!

 
At 2:01 PM, Blogger Loops O'Fury said...

That's cute. I like the nicknames. I may have to try the pictionary card thing next year.

 
At 2:39 PM, Anonymous Doctor Popular said...

What a fun read!
I'm glad you found time to make it happen.

 
At 4:00 PM, Anonymous Daniel Olson said...

Nice job Zander! The purple gutters were a god choice.

 
At 4:51 PM, Blogger Zander Cannon said...

Thanks, Dan! It's a really easy way to make a black and white comic look like it's in color.

 
At 4:53 PM, Blogger Zander Cannon said...

And thanks, Doc Pop! Good work getting the link in to Boing Boing!

 
At 10:31 PM, Blogger Colin Tedford said...

Wow, I've had quite a "spooky mystery" hankering lately - thanks for scratching the itch a little with a fun story!

 
At 8:52 AM, Blogger Fritz Bogott said...

That made my day! I am now trying to type while doing a gleeful handstand.

 
At 8:55 AM, Anonymous Daniel Olson said...

Wow...I meant that the purple gutters were a good choice....not God choice. Although, it was pretty Godly.

 
At 3:47 PM, Blogger staplegenius said...

GAH! Now everyone knows my deep dark secret! "Sh-Shut up!" indeed!

...Seriously though, that was hilarious. Fine work sir. I shoul dreally get in on this 12 hour thing. I'm getting too old for this sh*t, Riggs.

 
At 4:55 PM, Blogger Zander Cannon said...

Danno-- not feeling like I wanted to die at the end was a nice plus, but having 24 pages to pay off all of the plotlines and characters I inevitably introduce is one thing I miss. Honestly, getting rid of five characters with a panel that says "Dinner!"? That's just cheap.

 
At 4:57 AM, Anonymous Jessaroo said...

Now I wanna constantly carry around a packet of Black Cats to set off unexpectedly, thus earning the nickname "Reporter".

 
At 3:27 PM, Blogger Cuacomekiki said...

This was horrifically cute! -- I got a paper version in Fallcon and I have to say I read it in paper with lights off and a flashlight. :)

 

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