SIZE MATTERS: The Mini-Comics Blog

“__________ Are Always Fun to Draw” edited by Isaac Cates
Comics are hard to make, mini-comics even more so. Yet there are some hardy fools out there who try to make it even more challenging. Isaac Cates of Satisfactory Comics and Elm City Jams is one of those fools. He’s made a name for himself in the mini-comic word by doing minis with various constraints and rules in place.

Right around SPX, he sent me a copy of “_________ Are Always Fun to Draw,” and it continues with the weird rules thing. Each of the twenty-two contributors made a big list of things that “are always fun to draw.” Isaac compared the lists and picked the forty most common things from them, and then sent that new list back to each contributor. Then each person had to draw a single page with at least forty things from the list, with the top thirty as required things for each page.

The Thirty Required Things:
Skulls or skeletons
Dinosaurs
Robots
Octopi or quid, including giant squid
Space aliens
Cats
Monkeys or apes
Demons
Fish, especially in goldfish bowls
Pirates or pirate hats
Self-portraits
Dogs
Explosions, especially mushroom clouds
Mountains or volcanoes
Vampires
Birds, especially black ones
Dragons
Fire or flames
Guns, especially rifles or x-ray guns
Saturn or other planets
Trees, especially talking trees
Earthworms
Bats or other things with bat wings
Cigarettes or cigarette butts
Eyes or eyeballs, especially angry ones
The undead, especially zombies
Vikings
Ducks
Cowboys, especially drunk ones

Here are three pages from the book.

Damien Jay
Karen Sneider
Ben Towle

You can get a copy of “_________ Are Always Fun to Draw,” and you really should, by sending $2.50 to:
Isaac Cates
178 Lawrence St. 2nd Floor
New Haven, CT 06511

You can also send $3 through PayPal to isaac.cates@liu.edu