This comic was done for Grand Papier’s 24 hour comics day, from 9am on October 13th until 6am on October 14th in Buenos Aires. If you haven’t heard of 24 hour comics events before, this is how it works: cartoonists who choose to participate have 24 hours to complete 24 pages of comics (including a cover) which adhere to a constraint or theme given out at the start of those 24 hours by the organizers of the event. Constraints can vary widely, from “Popeye” to an audio clip of caucaphanous sounds to dense philsophical texts. The constraint given by Grand Papier this year was a video of images of clouds to be used as inspiration.
This isnt meant to be a contest or a race, its an exercise. You can learn a lot about how you work as a cartoonist by pushing yourself like this, and its good for learning how not to be too precious about your work. You can’t expect yourself to make 24 perfect looking comics pages when you’re essentially working at a rate of one page per hour (although I am always amazed at the people who seem to be able to do this anyway…they must be magical.) It’s also just a fun thing to get a bunch of people together for.
Now, most people just think up a new comic on the spot. This is what youre “supposed” to do. But when I saw the images of beautiful clouds set to calming music, I thought immediately of an essay I wrote a few years back which I had been thinking of adapting as a comic for a while, but was never able to find the free time to make. So I did what you’re not “supposed” to do and used this essay for my 24 hour piece (they also say that you’re not “supposed” to adapt straight prose into comics, but whatever.) It´s about a love for travel and a fear of flying and you can ether read it on Grand Papier’s site with a nice interface or below on a slightly clunky image viewer:
If you want to read the original essay, go ahead. Its here on this blog that I started back in 2008 which I was going to post essays on, but which I never made public or continued to update after two posts because I ended up getting approached by Vertigo about making my graphic novel about a week later.