Every February 1st, cartoonists celebrate (or bemoan) the highest of made-up cartoonist holidays: Hourly Comic Day! For every hour of the day, you make a little comic to document what you did in that hour. Some are quick and sloppy, some are beautifully inked or thoughtfully composed with an overarching theme, and a great many are abandoned after a few hours, because making comics is a time-consuming task! I first learned about it I was working full time at kids magazines by day and working on In the Sounds and Seas & helping organize CAKE on nights & weekends, and couldn’t imagine having the time or inclination to document the usually-boring minutiae of a normal day.
Then in 2017, home with a toddler and missing connections with my cartoonist friends, I drew hourly comics for the first time and enjoyed the exercise but only found the value of it when I returned to it the next year. How lovely, how meditative, to honor and document the usually-boring minutiae of a normal day! How amazing to see how life, my routines and my kids have changed year over year, and to see what remains constant!
Feb 1 2020 I took close notes of my day and drew comics to read front of an audience on Leap Day at Zine Not Dead, which you can read here in a slow-loading slideshow—it is still one of my favorites—and was the last time I got to be in a room full of people for a long time, because, of course, 2020. I’m so grateful I took the time to document the small details of that day, before everything changed.
Anyway, I spent too much time on it this year, which was a real delight. Feb 1 2023 happened to be a really great day.
Thanks for reading!
Xoxox marn
Yours were some of my favorites 💛