My current, F-Zero Lap Record for a Low-Tier Jane is 4 hours. ASSUMING I worked 168 hours, literally 7 days, STRAIGHT without sleeping, eating, or using the restroom like a artistically deranged lunatic... I'd end it with 42 comics. 8 short.
Okay, but this is also assuming I'm being paid a lot of money. Like, an embarrassing amount. So I need to get 50 out there. That, and I know that I cannot work 168 hours straight, as I am not the 6 Million Dollar Man. So, assuming that I can work this schedule, it would thusly: four 15 hour days, two 12 hour days, and another 8 hour day at the end for I need to sleep and eat. Using that schedule though, I only end with 21 strips! What now, Paul?
Easy. I phone it in.
While 21 strips are going to be actually quality, the other... 29, more than half, are going to take a hit. We're talking solid color backgrounds, no shading, topical video-game centric humor, the works. Assuming that I can Garfield these strips enough, then I may be able to cut down the time on that even further. At that point, further questions come into alignment.
"Do I need to draw new artwork?"
"Do they need to make sense?"
"Do they need to be FUNNY?"
At which point, the answers are no, no, and no. This turned into quantity, not quality a while ago. So, by that logic, working on a sort of momentum based system of earlier onward I draw new artwork for recycling later, by the end, I'm going to be pumping out a three-panel, CTRL-ALT-DEL worthy comic every 45-30 minutes! Actually, honestly, these comics would be praying to be CTRL-ALT-DEL. They'd be terrible.
But, the math says thusly: Working on that schedule, assuming every comic takes 45 minutes, and there are 24 hours in a day, each day has 1440 minutes. A week has 10080 minutes, meaning that if I return to the conceptual, every-waking minute schedule, I'll have wrought 224 COMICS into horrid existence.
But that's not realistic, Paul!
But even then, let's try a realistic schedule! Assuming 12 hours were spent on comic-ing a day, every day, I'd still end with 112 comics! More than twice what I need! So let's go even further. Let's say 8 hours, Mon-Fri. That's 2400 minutes/45 minutes. And that leaves me with 53.333333 comics. My quota, with two days off, and assuming I'm still making bank on my lucrative endorsement. Check. Please.
On the other hand though, it won't take long for the cracks to show. The sheer drain of making 53.333333 unfunny, uncreative, and stress-fueled comics every week will undoubtedly shatter my fragile hippie psyche in a matter of months. The comics will turn from little girl's adventures in competitions to dogs playing Nintendo Switch, to a man desperately trying to figure out what his next joke should be. His boss' schedule creeping down his back, like the grim reaper's hand down a old man's back. I'll have money, but so what? Money can't buy back sanity. I'll be a broken man, ruined in his youth by a lucrative comic endorsement, as he sold out for a (not so quick) buck, and lost himself in the process. He'll die quickly, drained of his will to live.
So, in essense, yes. I could do this. I could write 50 comics a week. BUT.
The price to pay would be far too great.
Now, a fun experiment though, is 50 comics in A DAY. That'd be a fun thing to try, just to see if you could.
