Top Ten (Longest) Morning Improvs

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wansley
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Top Ten (Longest) Morning Improvs

Post by wansley »

By my methods, "Whose Mind is it Anyway?" comes in at a duration of 94 days, making it either the longest Morning Improv comic or the second longest, depending on whether you want to count "Meadow of the Damned" as a single MI or three.

Here are the "Top Ten" longest Morning Improvs (really eleven, since I am adding an extra entry for the total length of "Meadow of the Damned"). The two columns are the duration in days followed by the title.

108 Meadow of the Damned - Total
94 Whose Mind Is It Anyway?
84 But No One Ever Noticed the Walrus
58 Monkey Town.
54 Meadow of the Damned - Part Two
46 Meadow of the Damned - Part One
28 Somnivore
23 Flap those Flagella Like You Mean It!
21 A Bucket Full O' Kittens
20 Robots Love to Dance!
20 The Evil that Men Forget to Do

(Scott, I still wonder if "Robots Love to Dance!" really took the full 20 days that comparing the conclusion dates seems to indicate. Do you have any recollection of how much time you spent on it?)
William Ansley
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Post by Scott McCloud »

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Robots Love to Dance was a lot shorter. Just a day per panel most likely, starting around Jan 2. I often take little vacations around Christmas/Channukah/New Year's/Ivy's Birthday.

As for the longest improv, I think it would be best to count Meadow of the Damned Parts 1-3 as a single Improv, making it the longest in duration when measuring the length of time it took to create.

BUT...

...Whose Mind is it Anyway is probably the longest COMIC to come out of the Improv. Due to it's sketchy style, I was able to add a whole tier of panels nearly every day. I haven't done a panel count, but I'm almost certain that WMIIA would beat Meadow hands down in that department.

Since our topic title references the "longest" improv, perhaps we should take that into account too. I'm sure some 24 page comic books out there took ten years to finish, but that doesn't make 'em longer than BLANKETS.

8)
DecafSilicon
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Post by DecafSilicon »

You know, I've lent "Blankets" to sixteen people, but I could only get four or five to read "Jimmy Corrigan," which I prefer.
Veleno
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Post by Veleno »

Scott McCloud wrote:...Whose Mind is it Anyway is probably the longest COMIC to come out of the Improv. Due to it's sketchy style, I was able to add a whole tier of panels nearly every day. I haven't done a panel count, but I'm almost certain that WMIIA would beat Meadow hands down in that department.
Here's a panel count...

Who's Mind is it Anyway?
Page 1: 18
Page 2: 19
Page 3: 21
Page 4: 20
Page 5: 23
Page 6: 32
Page 7: 20
Page 8: 43
Page 9: 40

Total: 236 Panels

Meadow of the Damned
Part 1: 43
Part 2: 41
Part 3: 7

Total: 91 panels
"The way to a man's heart is through his ribcage"
F'n'M

An alternative to panel count

Post by F'n'M »

Since panel size is not necessarily a constant in these improvs, I decided to try another comparison: total area. On my 15" monitor, at 1024x768 resolution, I made the following rough calculations for the four chronologically longest improvs:

Whose Mind: ~1850-1950 in^2
Nobody Noticed the Walrus: ~950-1000 in^2
Meadow of the Damned: ~570 in^2
Monkeytown: 500-600 in^2

These are rouch calculations of the total "active area": the rectangular "footprint" of each comic, minus any navigation panels or repeated title panels at the beginning/end of each page. Actual panel area will be somewhat smaller depending on the size of the gutters (which sometimes varies) or, in the case of trail-based Monkeytown, what does and doesn't count as panel space.

So Meadow of the Damned, despite taking the longest time, is third in total area. Though Nobody Noticed the Walrus was probably less time-consuming to draw because of the unchanging background art (and let's not forget the great filler panels!). If there's a point to this, somebody else can make it.

--F'n'M
Kris Lachowski
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Post by Kris Lachowski »

Thanks to everyone who did the calculations. These were all the stats i was wondering about, but was way to lazy to find out myself (actually I did count the panels of who's mind a little before it was complete, but I balked at redoing it and then counting the panels of other improvs.)
wansley
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Longest Improvs by Duration (Revised)

Post by wansley »

Here are all of the Improvs to date listed by duration of completion in days again. This time I put in starting and stopping dates for each one (the table below came out of a more complex MS Excel spreadsheet), which fixed the error in the length of "Robots Love to Dance". (Thanks, Scott!)

Since I assumed the starting date for most of the MI comics was the day after the previous one completed, I'm sure that my numbers are still a bit off, but they'll do for general comparison purposes, I think.

The two columns are 'duration of comic in days' and 'title'.

108 Meadow of the Damned - Total
94 Whose Mind Is It Anyway?
84 But No One Ever Noticed the Walrus
58 Monkey Town.
(54 Meadow of the Damned - Part Two)
(46 Meadow of the Damned - Part One)
28 Somnivore
23 Flap those Flagella Like You Mean It!
21 A Bucket Full O' Kittens
20 The Evil that Men Forget to Do
19 Junk Bar
18 Proto the Pet
15 The Accidental Dentist
14 Brad's Somber Mood
10 Uninformed Bob
9 No One Tells Interesting Jeff What To Do!
(8 Meadow of the Damned - Conclusion)
8 The Parallelogram's Revenge.
8 Zen Dating
7 I am The Most Beautiful Dog in The World
7 Robots Love to Dance!
6 When Luna Smiles
3 Man-Eating Shoes
3 Inertia Man
1 Happy Town
1 Scott McCloud ? I know you are reading this. Choose one of the many titles I have submitted.
William Ansley
wansley
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Longest Improvs by number of panels

Post by wansley »

[Edited to add column titles and other missing information.]

Here are all the Improvs to date, ranked by number of panels. (The posting above that ranks them (again!) by duration is by me too. I seem to have a problem recently staying logged on from click to click.)

I agree that the number of panels isn't the best comparison, since the size and complexity of the panels varies so much from Improv to Improv (and from panel to panel in the same Improv), which is why I didn't use it in the first place. It turns out counting panels in some of the Improvs (especially the single row or single column scrollers) is a real pain in the ass! So I don't claim that my panel numbers are definitive, although I tried very hard to be careful.

I agree that area is a better measure than panel number, but someone else can do that for all the comics. (However, it is interesting that my ranking by panel number matches the ranking by area, done by F'n'M, above, if you use my ranking of "Bob" that counts each strip as a panel, taking it out of the top 5.)

I counted titles as panels if they were drawn like panels, and counted them twice if they were repeated at the end ("Dog" and "Evil"). I didn't count "bridging" title panels, if the Improv was devided into parts ("Meadow", "Walrus" and "Mind"). It was also hard to decide in a few cases exactly what constituted a single panel ("Proto", "Monkey Town" and "Kittens"), but I did my best. "Uninformed Bob" is a special case. I decided to rank it twice, once counting each panel as a panel (which ranks it much too high, I think) and once counting each "daily strip" as a single panel.

The two columns are 'number of panels' and 'title'.

237 Whose Mind Is It Anyway?
97 But No One Ever Noticed the Walrus
89 Meadow of the Damned - Total
60* Uninformed Bob (each panel as panel)
46 Monkey Town
(42 Meadow of the Damned - Part One)
(41 Meadow of the Damned - Part Two)
39 Zen Dating
37 Somnivore
34 The Parallelogram's Revenge.
26 Proto the Pet
24 Flap those Flagella Like You Mean It!
21 Happy Town
21 I am The Most Beautiful Dog in The World
21 The Evil that Men Forget to Do
20 A Bucket Full O' Kittens
19 Junk Bar
16 The Accidental Dentist
15* Uninformed Bob (each strip as panel)
12 Brad's Somber Mood
9 When Luna Smiles
8 Scott McCloud ? I know you are reading this. Choose one of the many titles I have submitted.
7 Robots Love to Dance!
(7 Meadow of the Damned - Conclusion)
5 Inertia Man
4 Man-Eating Shoes
4 No One Tells Interesting Jeff What To Do!
Last edited by wansley on Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
William Ansley
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Post by Scott McCloud »

I LOVE that you guys took the time to do this. Thank you!
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