The Sharpie Marathon

At one table, two devils wandered through a postapocalyptic wasteland. At the other end of the room, a boy and girl passionately embraced, but tragically, she turned into a robotic killing machine and chased him all over the city. (Modern love is like that.) Across from them was another pair of lovers whose affair was much more traditionally romantic, if you overlooked the fact that he was a square and she was a triangle.

They were all stories drawn in ink, pencil, and marker by a collective of artists—eight bespectacled, nerdy guys mostly in their twenties. They call themselves the Cartoonists’ Conspiracy, and they were hunkered down at three tables at the downtown Grumpy’s. Each was focused intensely on a sheaf of thick, white Bristol one-hundred-pound paper. They were participating in the Twenty-Four Hour Comics Day, an endurance contest that took place a couple of weeks ago. Each artist had a single day to complete a twenty-four-page comic, with no advance planning or preparation.

The idea was proposed about ten years ago by author and cartoonist Scott McCloud. While our local crew was inking away, five hundred others in sixty similar groups were putting pen to paper as far away as South Korea.

Originally published May 20, 2004 in Rake Magazine. Read the complete article.

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