Magic Beans and Son

That's me with my son, Dylan helping me on 24 Hour Comics Day. He's the main reason I wasn't at the glorious event with you all, but I literally couldn't help myself getting involved, so I decided to work from home...

This was my third attempt at 24 Hour Comics Day. The first one was a disaster best not mentioned, but also a valuable lesson in how not to do it! The second attempt was in 2008, which produced a comic amidst the desolation of spending a whole day in the house on my own, drawing comics.

I really fancied trying the group effort this time, but my family comes first, even *GASP!* before comics :)

But you know, it worked out rather well in the end. I wasn't alone all day for a start, just in the bleak hours of night, but Paul and the gang were just a text or phonecall away, which gave me a great boost. Jo and the boys were there for me and supported me all the way, and I couldn't have done it without them. I even did a special 2 page story for six year old Alex to help with, he inked it and lettered it himself and it's brilliant! I'll be including it in the printed version, so I guess I kind of managed a 26 page comic...

As for my comic itself, I did cheat slightly by deciding beforehand to use an established character, crime fighting local news TV presenter Mike Neville, but beyond that I went completely unprepared and made it all up on the day. Unlike last time though I spent a lot of time working on the story early on, and this really helped later on in the day when I was drawing on autopilot, having lost the ability to think in any useful way :)

Dylan does have a habit of getting up at 5AM and thinking it's playtime, which no doubt contributed to me falling asleep after midnight, and waking up at about 7AM with a bit of a mountain to climb. So the last quarter of my comic existed in a pretty sketchy form when the deadline loomed, but exist it did. So I'm calling it a modest success!

Keep watching the pies,

Ben