Hourly Comic Day / 24 Hour Comic Day

About

Hourly Comic Day is an annual event in which participators draw one short comic for every hour that they awake during the first day of February.

Origin

On December 21st 2005, John Campbell, creator of the webcomic “Pictures for Sad Children”, starts to keep a journal of every hour that he is awake, which he calls Hourly Comics, which are often referred to as “Hourlies”. Afterwards, he starts to only make them during January of each year (sometimes February and December, see link). On the site for the Hourly Comic, John states that he “wanted to see what it would be like if journal comics were a little more detailed and also monotonous.”

Spread

Spread of the Hourly Comic began in a similar fashion to memes such as [citation needed] and Roller Coaster Chess which were started by another webcomic, xkcd. Due to the comic’s popularity, especially with the indie comic scene, more and more people started drawing to the style of Campbell’s Hourly Comic. Interest grew on several artist sites such as deviantART and sheezyart. John shares his Hourly Comics with other artists and often these other artists would post their own derivatives on their own art sites. The idea of doing a comic per hour spread even further from comic artists to fans.

As people started doing Hourly Comics more and more frequently, Campbell announced the first annual Hourly Comic Day in 2009.

Campbell has a forum where people may share their hourly comics, but several people opt to feature their Hourly Comic on their own websites. Oftentimes, the more popular artists even get their hourlies showcased on other sites and blogs.

Hourly Comic Collections

2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011

24-Hour Comic Day

Similar to Hourly Day is 24 Hour Comic Day, where participants do a comic every hour for a full day. This event is usually held every October, but an official date is not really set. 24 Hour Comic Days have been going on since 2004, but only recently started gaining momentum mostly because of Hourly Comic Day’s recent popularity. For every hour, the artist has to do one page of a comic. These comics do not have to be autobiographical, but several online comic artists have started to do so. Also, Hourly Comic Day and 24 Hour Comic Day have often been confused with one another, leading web artists to to 24 short comics as opposed to 24 full pages.