With everyone disappointed with no challenge at Anime North, I was left with no choice. Last year's challenge gave me no time to enjoy the convention and cost approiately 4 times more for the same number of submissions as last year. With the size of this year's artist alley at Animenorth, it wasn't necessary. Well, I thought... 

Months later, I was approached locally to run a Manga Jam for local artists. At the time, running the club was taking up my time.  Adding another thing wouldn't be productive. Still I couldn't stop thinking of how it could be run. 

I checked out London Comic Jam to see how they handle such an event. The art was impressive but I thought that starting artists would have hard time trying to finish one page. Later on, I fell in love with Azumanga Diaoh and it's 4 koma (4 panel) comic strip. The exception is that Japanese style comic strips run vertically from top to bottom as oppose to horizontal ... left to right.  I designed a page used for this challenge and thought it would work. 

Unfortunely another person took over looking over the manga jam. 

Not to be undaunted, I decided to try the 4 koma challenge at C.N.Anime to see how it would fly. I figure I would get 2 3/4 pages with all the pro comic artists turning down the challenge. To keep ballooning costs of the commissions, I limited it to 5 dollars a panel with some disgression on wheither to go beyond that.  I didn't have much hope of many takers. 

Armed with a list of 50 words taken from japanese.about.com's 50 Kanji for Tattos, I headed to the artist alley. 

At the end of friday night, I had 3 full pages with two comic verterans pitching in their efforts. Huh? The following day, I had couple groups of artists jumping on the bandwagon. By sunday, I was worn out but had 7 completed 4 koma strips. I was almost able to give photocopies of the results to the participants that weekend. 

On top of the $140(can) I spent on commissions, I donated another $25 dollars to Comic Book Legal Defense Fund which had a booth at this year's Comic Expo.  Oddly this project was a success and worth trying again. Hopefully, those running Manga Jam will be inspired by this and we'll be seeing results.