In Boston, a bunch of comics-loving people got together at Hub Comics, where we scribbled comics, ate chocolate, drank tea, watched sci-fi movies, argued about Spider-Man, Harry Potter, Nutri-grain bars and other topics, and generally had a merry time.
Around 3 AM, we were starting to mellow out, and quietly work on comics.
Then someone knocked on the door.
It was the police.
To make a long story short, they told us to leave the store. The store had people in it at 3 AM, but no such hours were publicly posted on the outside of the store. So we had to leave the premise. A store associate (not owner, corrected) of Hub Comics, who answered the door, explained that he had called city officials the day before to make sure he was set for hosting the event. The police told the owner that he and everyone had to leave.
"Out-of-control troublemaking punks" does not really describe the atmosphere of a 24 hour comic-making marathon. Our dangerous, edgy activities included to drinking Mountain Dew, trading bad jokes, and drawing comics. (As you can tell, I'm still not sure what the fuzz busted us at 3 AM for.) But either way, we reluctantly began packing up. Actually, first we started taking one last group photo. Then the police knocked again, to tell us we seriously needed to get out. So we abandoned the group photo and quickly packed up. We left the store under the watchful eye of the police.
So there we were at 3 AM, huddled on the street corner and trying to keep warm. (Being Boston, the temperature had unexpectedly dropped 15 degrees in the last hour.) Some people had rode the T from MassArt or Allston, and -- since the T stops running by 3 AM -- they had no means of getting home.
However! Luckily, one Mr. Little from the group lived nearby, and graciously invited everyone to crash at his house. So a few people parted ways with the event, and the rest (8 or so?) got ourselves to the house and spend the rest of the event watching animations, eating apples and drawing comics.
All in all, though, I had a fun time! And despite the unexpected 3 AM relocation due to police, I'm happy to say I got 24 pages of comics drawn.
Here are a slew of photos, chronicling the event. (No photos of the police, sorry.)
(Around 9 pm, I finished penciling 24 pages.)
At 3AM, we relocate.
I continue to ink my comic....(Below: Spot the differences!)
11 Am Sunday. After staying awake for the whole event, some people suddenly crash.I continue to work on my comic.
Some of the survivors of 24 Hour Comic Day, 2008!Below -- cover and first page of the comic I drew.
5 comments:
Oh my gosh, I am forced to share a story of woe from my past, 11 or so of us poets including my 5 year old daughter were thrown out of a public park for reading poetry several years ago. Well, assembling for reading poetry. We were accused of being rowdy, loud, uncontrollable, etc. Luckily we had a member of the press with us and the Park Rangers wound up looking like fools in the article in the paper the next day. Interestingly enough, I then wrote the copy which was illustrated by Katy Jean May - rather comic book like into a small limited release run book "Curious Jane Meets the Man" which describes the whole incident from my then five year old's eyes. Power to the poets and the comic book artists!! I feel your pain!! My daughter, now much older than that, ironically enough, is now a comic book artist. Her work is at Photobucket under drummerchick_1781
Dianne Miller
www.artbydianne.blogspot.com
Hi Aya! This is James, from Hub.
Thanks for posting your pics of the event. Any chance I could steal them for posting on the Hub Comics site?
Or, you could copy & paste this blog post to there, since anyone who is a member on the site can post a blog. Then I can push it to the front page!
Let me know, and thanks for everything!
Diane M -- what a story!
Sure, James, steal away! I'll be happy to copy and paste the blog entry or provide a link at Hub Comic's site, too.
okay now that I've seen photos of that group in action, I understand why the police felt they had to break up the party. You're clearly a bunch of radical elements. Big time threats to the peace.
Much as I'd like to agree with the mob, remember how we appear to people who don't give a shit about comics. In the eyes of patrolmen paid to deal with the worst aspects of humanity, we were lawbreakers.
We merely got caught in an obvious disconnect between the law makers and law enforcers.
Hopefully James, Jesse and the gang will chalk this up as a lesson in local politics and do this next year.
Oh yeah, I'd love to do a photo exchange. I look like a hard worker in Aya's photos.
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