Inspired by my friend Kevin Cannon‘s work on his 288 hour graphic novel, Far Arden (read more about that project here), I’ve embarked with some of my comrades in the Minneapolis cell of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy in THE GROSS COMIC PROJECT. It isn’t what it sounds like.

Like 24 hour comic day, the goal of the Gross Comic Project is to produce a certain number of pages in a certain amount of time… in this case 144 pages in 144 hours… a gross of pages, get it? 12 hours a month for a year.

Unlike 24 hour comic day, however, the goal of these comics is quality more than speed… if we are going to invest this much time in it, we want to produce something fun, readable and well-drawn,  rather that just quickly produced. To that end, we allow all the planning, drawing, and even working on actual pages outside of the monthly 12 hour sessions that a cartoonist chooses to do. However, the 12 pages should be completed by the end of the 12 hours.

That said, I ran late a few hours on mine… thankfully, this project is self-policed. I repeat… the point is to make the pages, not be a ninny about how much time it takes… just get it done, already, dammit!

Here are the first 12 pages of my new Gross Comic, Ezekiel Fishman Versus the Martians.

Here are the first 12 pages of Kevin Cannon’s Oceanis, and the first 12 pages of Zander Cannon’s Heck.

We have 6 other cartoonists joining us in this undertaking next month… Dank!, Shad Petosky, Tim Sievert, Maxeem, Curtis Square-Briggs and Eric Lappegard.

Some will be playing catch up and doing 12 pages this month, some will be starting next month. Other cartoonists around the world are encouraged to join in as well, and we’ll post links to all the comics on the Cartoonist Conspiracy blog.