The Garden:
Jim Doom’s 24 Hour Comic

As I mentioned during our live blogging, I was struggling to come up with an idea for my comic. Fin Fang Doom brought some random words and genres to draw from to help inspire people; I drew “real-life,” “horror,” and then stuff like “rhubarb.” I’d had a dream earlier that morning about a dispute over lawn ornaments involving Barack Obama and John McCain, so as I was rapidly burning daylight, I committed to a horror story involving lawn ornaments.

The story took quite a few turns as I grew bored with it every few pages. It’s interesting how, for me anyway, these 24 Hour Comics are less like a 24-page comic book and more like a collection of 24 interconnected one-page pieces. I would think of the story in one-page increments, and often got bored if a theme carried to more than one sequential page. The story was assembled fairly non-linearly; at one point in the night, I got so bored with my story that I just decided to draw a page I thought would be interesting, and I’d figure out later how to work it into the story. Overall, though, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I hope you like it.