Renowned comic theorist Scott McCloud's 24-Hour Comics project has challenged both professional creators and interested amateurs each to create a 24-page sequential art story, scripted, drawn, lettered, and inked in 24 continuous hours. Beginning with A Day's Work (McCloud, 1990) and A Life in Black and White (Bissette, 1990), the challenge grew and transformed, inspiring 24-Hour Plays, Animation, and Website projects, as well as 48-Hour Films. Hundreds of cartoonists contributed efforts to the eventual publication, 24 Hour Comics (McCloud, 2004), which McCloud discussed during a visit to Henderson State University.

The current project involves adapting the 24-Hour Comics challenge to an academic setting as the Workday Comic. Whereas the 24-Hour Comic is primarily intended as an intense challenge for people already familiar with comic production, the Workday Comic can bring together artists and writers who might never have discovered sequential art as a storytelling medium.

Guidelines

Create a complete comic book story (no "to be continued . . ." whether stated or implied; no teasers, trailers, or preludes to some story that's missing) of the designated length, at least 8 or 24 pages, and in the designated time, either 8 hours plus a one-hour lunch break or 24 continuous hours.

This means everything: Story, art, lettering, the works. Once pen hits paper, the clock starts ticking.

Indirect preparation can be done in advance, such as gathering tools and reference materials.

Pages can be any size, any material, although we do not promise we'll print anything larger than our scanner can handle: 11"X17". (For that matter, for budgetary and other reasons, we don't make any promises about printing.) Your work can be computer generated or assisted.

If you reach the end of the time period and you're not done, either end it there or keep going until you're done. Those completed in more than the designated time are referred to as "noble failure variants" as they're called in 24-Hour Comics, but we prefer to think of them as "working overtime."

Tell any story with only two restrictions: (1) No superheroes. (2) No fan fiction (no characters, families, items, worlds, etc., under copyright elsewhere).
Well, three restrictions: Don't break the law.