Introduction to the 48 Hour Graphic Novel

Hi, I’m Dave, the co-creator, and idea man behind Graphic Novel Weekend or the 48 hour graphic novel. Admittedly, other people may have come up with this before, but I haven’t found any record of it – if you know of anyone, please let me know. 

In this website, I’m going to bring together as much information as I can related to the concept, the goal, attempts that have been made both successful and otherwise. 

If you want to contact me directly, I’m available at 48hourgraphicnovel at gmail dot com.

What is Graphic Novel Weekend?

Simply put, Graphic Novel Weekend, or a 48 hour graphic novel, is a single story graphic novel created by a combination of writers and artists over the course of a 48 hour period. 

This is a serious challenge, because multiple voices and styles have to come together in a limited time and still manage to create a single coherent story. Communication has to be managed, corners have to be cut, and coffee has to be made. 

How is this different from 24 hour comic day?

The idea for the 48 hour graphic novel came from 24 hour comic day, and trying to find a way to make it a more collaborative process. The main differences are resources, time, and sleep. In 24 hour comic day, 1 person has to write and draw 24 pages in 24 hours. 

With 48 hour graphic novel, groups are put together with one dedicated writer and several artists – and over the course of the weekend people may move from one group to another. 

In addition, there is additional time – we have 2 or 3 separate days to work on the project (it depends on how the event is planned), and time to sleep is planned in. Sleep helps keep the mind sharp, and coherent, but also gives the ability to sleep on ideas and come up with new ways of doing things. 

In a 48 hour graphic novel, some creators will create many pages, and some will work slower but with more focus – with this we balance the end project, but still finish it in one time, in one place, over a 48 hour period. 

Why Create a 48 hour graphic novel?

There are three reasons to create a 48 hour graphic novel. 

First, the least important of these reasons is to have a finished graphic novel. If you’re joining into this project, you should really like comics, and that being the case, having more comics in the world is a great thing. And having a well made final product is great. However, the final product is the least important goal of this project – and it’s important not to lose sight of that fact.

Second, of higher importance is what that graphic novel represents – this is a calling card for the creators involved. Credit is essential – and it must be 100% clear what was done by who. The creators will have something published that they can use to show off their capabilities. Sometimes it’s hard to create an entire project by yourself, but in a group, you can, and in the end to show this off it must be possible to see who did what in the book. 

Third, and most important, is learning, networking, and connecting with others. The art world, and the world of an independent comic creator anywhere (or a European comic creator, in general) can be one of solitary creation. This is a situation where newer creators can learn from seasoned pros, and vice versa. Everyone has something to bring to the table, and something to learn as well as to teach. Really, the event should feel like a collaborative party in some regards. A time to learn and experience. 

My own history

Truthfully, I came up with this idea because of two separate events. First, I did a 24 hour comic day, by myself, shortly after moving to a new country. It was depressing and lonely. I craved a sense of community, but I thought about the process itself and realized that while I could go do a 24 hour comic day with a bunch of other people, I lived in a country where (at the time) I didn’t speak the language. I would have been alone in a crowd, and I wanted to be with people.

Second, I realized that I’d had a half finished graphic novel sitting in my computer for years. Finding the time and energy to work on that was just not happening. I wanted to find a way to force the creation process. Not necessarily with that project, but with a project. And setting a time limit seemed like one way to do that. But an aggressive time limit had some requirements and we’ll discuss those and lessons learned in this website.