Five-Minute Marvels

If your Memorial Day festivities will involve youngsters, convince them to join you for a flash art session during which you both draw the same comic book or cartoon character. That's the idea behind "Five-Minute Marvels" (as in Marvel Comics), a site that encourages adults and kids to try their hand at illustration and then submit the resulting collaborative artwork for online publication. The concept—"One hero. One kid. One adult. Five minutes."—is that of self-proclaimed "Marvel Smartass" Tim Miner, a father of two young girls who began the drawing sessions as a creative alternative to bedtime stories. Why five minutes? According to Miner, it's "just enough to have fun, but not enough to beat yourself up about your drawing."