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| No Riders (Cerebus #168, March 1993) Art by Dave Sim & Brad W. Foster |
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No Riders
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Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream
Winsor McCay was perhaps the greatest cartoonist of all time, and the Sunday newspaper strip Little Nemo in Slumberland was his most enduring creation. Locust Moon Press has spent the last two years assembling the LITTLE NEMO: DREAM ANOTHER DREAM anthology, in which many of the world's finest cartoonists will pay tribute to the master and his masterpiece by creating new Little Nemo strips, following their own voices down paths lit by McCay. Taking on the same giant, broadsheet newspaper-sized canvas as McCay, artists such as Michael Allred, Paul Pope, Yuko Shimizu, J.H. Williams III, Charles Vess, David Mack, J.G. Jones, Craig Thompson, Paolo Rivera, Carla Speed McNeil, Bill Sienkiewicz, P. Craig Russell, Ronald Wimberly, Denis Kitchen, Jill Thompson, Stephen R. Bissette, Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon, Farel Dalrymple, John Cassaday, Cliff Chiang, and over a hundred more have all done some of the very best work of their illustrious careers.
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| Gerhard with his finished page for 'Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream' (April 2014) Gerz Blog details how this page came about. |
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Ass-Kissing Overture Letters From Journalists
The following letter (taken from Dave Sim's Collected Letters 2004) was written by Dave Sim in response to Chris Shulgan's article in the Saturday Night magazine in November 2003.
9 February 04
Hi Chris:
I'm finally getting around to answering my mail now that Cerebus is done, having plowed through 2001 and 2002, I’m now about halfway through 2003, and here's your fax making the original inquiry about doing an interview for the Saturday Night piece and reminding me that I intended to write to you when the piece came out, win, lose or draw.
It was interesting. I’m really starting to think that there would be some value in posting on the Internet the ass-kissing overture letters I get from journalists and contrasting them with the smear pieces that end up in print. I know I’m not alone in this and it isn’t just Canadian journalism that’s at fault. I think journalists have sort of moved their scales of justice away from their finished pieces and now weigh things from the initial overture (i.e. having kissed his ass shamelessly to get the interview, in order to be balanced, I now have to kick his ass as hard as I can). It was amazing to me that you never asked me about the Astoria-based-on-Deni hallucination, just as the fact-checker (make that fact "checker") never asked either. It would have been very simple to straighten out. Likewise when the fact checker mentioned that I had gotten a good deal from my dealer on the acid. And I said, No, I didn't have a dealer – the acid was a birthday present from my brother-in-law, Deni's brother, Michael. The article comes out and it's turned into "an acquaintance". My brother-in-law is an acquaintance? I already mentioned in 298 that Cerebus was never a recipient of the wide acclaim that you attached to the publication of High Society. Hardly. The publication of High Society, because I sold them direct to fans, made me the most hated person in comics at the time. The exact opposite of wide-acclaim.
The first time that I knew I was in trouble was when you were here doing your interview and I kept wondering when you were going to ask me anything about my faith. I mean, I understood the appeal – particularly to Canadian Marxists – of disparaging me as a drug-addled misogynist. I wouldn’t expect anything more from a Canadian journalist. But, the first question you had to ask in your fax was about the “phases” in my life and, as I told you, there are only two: pre-Bible and Koran and post-Bible and Koran. Anyway, at one point you asked me about praying five times a day and asked me about the prayer. Had I written it myself? I said, Yes, I had. Then I said, it runs about ten minutes, would you like to hear it? And you said, No. I really didn’t know whether to laugh or not, but I sure felt like laughing. Oh, this is going to be a really balanced article, I thought to myself. This is going to be a gem.
Well, as I say, you lived down to my worst impressions of my fellow citizens and, so far, your article stands as the last Canadian word on Cerebus. Certainly it is, as history will now record the only Canadian word on Cerebus in a major Canadian publication prior to the actual completion of the work.
I’ve also been typing letters in response to readers for the last two weeks. I think yours is only the second Canadian letter I’ve had to answer.
So, hey. Good for your team, eh?
No hard feelings.
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The Late, Lamented Moondance Comics
The late, lamented Moondance Comics -- the first time I ever saw a comic-book store in an upscale shopping mall and I was doing a signing there! How cool is that? It was also where I first met Kevin Eastman (see photo: Kevin faked me out, I thought he was going for his gun) and where Michael Zulli and Stephen Murphy showed me a few sample pages from a comic book they were working on to be called THE PUMA BLUES.
You know, Dave. It's a SHOPPING MALL. Middle of the day. It's really not that SUNNY in here.
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The Puma Blues
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| The Puma Blues by Stephen Murphy & Michael Zulli |
(from the Panel-To-Panel interview, February 2013)
...Puma is my first published work and Michael's as well. We actually worked together on a couple of short stories first though, just to see how we'd get on together. Those have never seen print. How did Puma start? That was a long time ago, something like twenty-five years now, and half a lifetime away. Puma actually began life several years before I met Michael. I was taking a "comic creating" class in Northampton, Massachusetts. I think it was through the long defunct Northampton Art Guild. The teachers were two very talented local cartoonists, John Hayman and Brian Turner. The class' final assignment was to start an actual comic book. I can't say precisely how it came together for me but at that point in my life I had been spending most of my free time hiking the Quabbin Reservoir and, I suppose, doing a fair amount of daydreaming. One of the things or stories about Quabbin was the increasing circumstantial evidence suggesting that the area was either being visited by a mountain lion - a puma - or that the watershed area was actual home to one. I think that possibility, which I saw as both romantic and melancholic - a lone puma out and about in the shadows of man - struck a chord deep within myself and gave voice to my sense of isolation and alienation. At any rate, I wound up calling it The Blue Puma, writing the first few pages and even illustrating them in my own cartoony way. The class ended and a few months later I got a job at Moondance Comics, a comic store in Holyoke, Massachusetts. I continued developing the story during my free time, changing the title to The Puma Blues. Michael was a regular customer, someone whom I was a little afraid of at first - he can be very off-putting at first, a defense mechanism of his - but when a fellow employee told me Michael was an artist I got up the courage to talk to him and before long we warmed to each other. One day Michael gave the store a clock he had made: a basic clock face mounted on a beautiful piece of wood (more a slice from a tree showing both rings at the center and bark at the edges) upon which Michael had painted a very dark image of Batman. It was amazing. I soon got up the courage to ask if he'd like to work on some comics together and before long we did (those short stories mentioned earlier). We then started spending some time together outside of the store and at some point I explained the whole Puma series concept, which Michael strongly identified with. Feeling we were kindred spirits we tackled the project...
...Moondance had Dave and Gerhard as guests one day. Michael and I, knowing this in advance, decided to screw up the courage to show Dave the first eight or so finished Puma #1 pages, as it had been announced that Sim was going to be reviewing portfolios for future A-V titles. Michael and I waited in line with the other hopefuls and dreamers. As soon as Dave read the first three pages he said he'd publish it and that Michael and I were the next Alan Moore and Barry Windsor Smith. No shit. And, obviously, at least as far as I'm concerned, not quite. Few can even come close to Alan...
The Puma Blues was a comic book written by Stephen Murphy and drawn by Michael Zulli. Published first by Dave Sim's publishing imprint 'Aardvark One International' and later by Mirage Studios, it ran from 1986 to 1989, stretching over 23 regular issues and a single "half-issue" minicomic.
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Dave Sim's Notebooks: Jaka's Story (II)
MARGARET LISS:
Last week we saw how Dave had an overarching idea for the story, in this instance JAKA'S STORY, and then he began to fleshed it out. As shown with page 17 of notebook 10, he listed all the issue numbers in the phonebook, and then broke them up into individual books of the phonebook. Bits of dialogue were seen along with a sketch of the characters. This week I've pulled out a couple pages that show more of this fleshing out of the story - but this time we are down to the individual issue and page.
JAKA' STORY via text passages and (typically) a single picture shows us both Jaka as a young girl living in Palnu with her Nurse and then via the usual comic panels shows us Jaka in present times. For Jaka as a young girl, Dave would write and write passages looking for the exact wording he wanted. Here is one such example that didn't make the cut. A description of Jaka's breakfast time and Nurse's porridge, with a thumbnail for the page that never was comes from page 66 of notebook #10:
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| Notebook 10, page 66 |
An example of Dave fleshing out the issue more on a page by page case is from page 72 of the same notebook:
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| Notebook 10, page 72 |
A list of the individual page numbers and a quick synopsis of their contents. It doesn't quite match up page for page on to the finished phonebook, as some pages were compressed into one page - the notebook listings for page 5 and 7 were compressed into page 14 of the phonebook (page 4 of the issue). But some of the dialogue is already there - page 3 from the notebook is the dialogue on page 3 of the issue.
Next time I'll be looking at Lord Julius in Church & State, as each idea was requested separately - but like peanut butter and chocolate, they are pretty good together.
Margaret Liss is The Cerebus Fan Girl and maintains the Cerebus Wiki.
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Restoration Update #2: tick tick tick
SEAN MICHAEL ROBINSON:
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Sean Michael Robinson can be found online at Living The Line.
When I talked to Dave about working with Cerebus pages at a higher resolution, the first thing he said to me was, something along the lines of, "when you press down a bump in the carpet it comes up somewhere else."
Well, we keep pressing down the bumps.
My newer, faster computer arrived on Tuesday, and Dr. Mara and I started into the project in earnest.
Some of the roadblocks we're hitting have everything to do with working at such a high resolution. Although the resulting files are actually pretty small, being bitmaps, the in-process grayscale files are massive. Just for some perspective on this-- my former computer, now being used by Dr. Mara in my studio, can run upwards of 50 channels of high-resolution, 24 bit depth audio, all with plug-ins, without blinking. Opening a single one of these massive files and attempting any kind of manipulation brings it to a stand-still.
What this means in practical terms is, for now, I'm doing the majority of the adjustment myself on my new computer, and until it's financially possible to purchase a second high-end workstation, that's the way it'll stay.
The good news is, I've set up several of the processor-intensive actions as “actions” in Photoshop, meaning that I can press the “go” button and it starts the work by itself. For instance, I'm typing this now to you all on a laptop right now while Photoshop works away at the workstation.
Dr. Mara, meanwhile, is scanning pages from the Swords volumes that Dave sent me last month, to replace the negative scans we were supplied.
This is the real major roadblock, one George told me about and one that me and Mara are experiencing for ourselves now. Basically, everything is sourced from different places, everything is imperfect in some way. In short, everything is a mess.
I have two separate sources for the destroyed negatives right now, and have had sporadic access to a third source.
The first source of negatives have the deadly combination of blurriness and excessive sharpness on the edges. More critically than that, they have scan “hitches,” line by line errors, possibly caused by some kind of mechanical error in the scanner. On the finer line, these hitches transform them into broken-line dots. They also have periodic vertical hitches as well, missing several lines of vertical information in the file. The latter is unlikely to be very visible in print, but the former gives the appearance of a low-res scan, with visible stair-stepping in lines that intersect the error at the right/wrong angle. (What it actually looks like is some kind of ineffective digital interpolation with automated sharpening, but there's no way to really know without having the scanner here in front of me)
The second source of negatives are lower-res than I'd like, and have a severe “negative shadow,”meaning that the negative was mounted in such a way as for the positive areas to cast a shadow on the scanner bed during scanning. However, unlike the first batch, this can be corrected with an automated process involving levels adjustment, blurring and upscaling.
The third source is Lebonfon's “copydot” scans, which are 1-bit 1200 ppi scans from the negative. I've only seen a few pages of these, as they haven't given me access to the whole batch, but they're useless to us for a whole other set of reasons. Although they're very sharp, the 1-bit 1200 ppi sampling has blown out all the fine line areas into broken lines, or made the finer lines disappear entirely.
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| A small area of Lebonfon's 1200 ppi copydot scan of page 186 of High Society |
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| The same area of the lower-res grayscale negative scan. Notice the presence of the blown-out lines. |
This is the problem I alluded to last week, of having to choose between flawed scans of better sources, or better scans of flawed sources.
The best sources are, no surprise, the rare cases where we have high-resolution scans of original artwork. Even the lower-res scans are incredibly useful, once I've applied Currently "Secret" Procedure #2 to them. (It's a little surreal to see smooth hi-res line art arise from a low-res color scan.)
It's really amazing to sit down and adjust a page from original art and compare a printout to the original books, to see how much information really was left in the dark room. Between the bad/underexposed photography of the early books, to the inevitable dot gain/line fill-in of each step of the former photographic processes, a tremendous amount of visual information just filled in, became a mass of black rather than the fine lines that constructed it.
But.
But but but.
The original pages need more attention than any other potential source.
First off, unlike scans of the negative or printed matter, the original pages have never been contrast adjusted. My "one button" process is handling this well, but pages that have a significant amount of pencil or white-out/reverse drawing with white need more individual time/contrast adjustment of those specific areas before moving on to the final stages.
Additionally, all of the older pages suffer from tone shrinkage. All that Cerebus dot-tone is essentially emulsion on acetate with a sticky binder to keep it on the page. Over time the acetate shrinks, leaving gaps between the tone and the outer edge of the area it was applied.
Well, Dave asked me, how about fixing it?
It's relatively simple to clone the tone from adjacent areas and move it into the gaps. But like anything, it takes time. How much time? For these early pages, somewhere between 5 and 35 minutes, depending on the amount of tone on the page. Conceivably much longer than that on, say, the tone-heavy Fall and the River. This equation might easily change, however, when we get to the later books, which were of course, better photographed, and being comparatively younger, are less likely to have significant shrinkage.
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| A newly fine-lined Jaka examines Cerebus' tone shrinkage. From Cerebus issue 6, sourced from original art. |
So, is it worth it? How much is it worth?
That is for Dave and the rest of you to decide.
Meanwhile, I'm excited and thrilled by how good the finished pages look so far, and very hopeful that in the near future, when the options narrow and the materials improve, that the way forward will only get easier.
Next week we'll be delivering the replacement signatures to Lebonfon, and we'll have some news on the original art front... In the meantime, let me know what you'd like to see here, what's interesting to you, and what's dull as dirt. More absurdly close-up pictures of tone? More action? More drawings of cats sleeping on unbound copies of Cerebus and High Society?
(drawn by one of my cartooning students, the awesome Sofia Angulo, during a “job shadow” last month. I'm not sure what she learned, other than the fact that freelancers do approximately 30 things at the same time...)
Sean Michael Robinson can be found online at Living The Line.
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Weekly Update #38: Sitting On A Crumbling Ledge
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Crisis on Infinite Dave Sim File Copies averted
2. File Copies prove to be the best restoration raw material available
3. Long term concerns:
a) drop-off in sales on CEREBUS ARCHIVE which is financing the restoration
b) can the pool of CEREBUS fans be expanded through outreach?
4. The Off-White House will entertain its first researcher 29 September to 10 October
Happy 4th of July and 7th of Ramadan everyone!
Bit of a crisis this week.
I had left a phone message with Pete Dixon of PARADISE COMICS last month when Sean was gearing up for his restoration work asking Peter to send a few issues from the Dave Sim File Copies...
TMI ALERT FOR THOSE WHO HATE CGC "SLABBING" TMI TMI TMI TMI SKIP ALL OF THE ITALICIZED PARAGRAPHS THAT FOLLOW IF YOU HAVE NO INTEREST:
-- the 20 copies of each issue that were bagged and boarded and put away on publication (I got the idea from hearing that Bill Gaines had put away 20 copies -- turns out to have been 10 -- of the original EC comics) that Sean had said he didn't have very good resolution on in his sources, while I sent him the best copies I had in the Off-White House (a 1995 printing of the CEREBUS trade and SWORDS as it turned out).
Peter is accredited by CGC as being able to authenticate signatures for their Signature Series: if Peter says he saw you sign a comic book, that's good enough for CGC. So that's what Peter did on 13 March 2004 -- the day #300 hit the stores: witness me and Gerhard sign all of the Dave Sim File Copies, which Peter now has custodianship of: as a way of verifying that they are the Dave Sim File Copies and not just books that I signed for someone else.
They haven't all been encapsulated by a long shot.
First of all, it costs a lot of money per book and second of all there's something called the CGC Census which keeps track of all the books that have been encapsulated and what they are graded at. So, if you're reading a Heritage Auctions catalogue and they're auctioning a -- say -- 9.4 CEREBUS No.2, they can tell you how many encapsulated copies there are, how many in that grade, how many higher and what they sold for. The FULL stats are available at a place called GP Analysis.
The idea was to encapsulate some and sell them and use the proceeds to encapsulate the others. If we just got all of the No.2's encapsulated that would skew our Census.
"20 copies in 9.8, one higher", let's say. That doesn't look particularly rare which would drive down the price.
There's SOME interest, but basically just in the first 20 issues or so which are the hardest to find in the best condition.
MY interest was to have the best copies in the Cerebus Archive, so basically I'm skimming the occasional 9.9 and really exceptional 10.0 Gem Mint for permanent preservation as the books are getting encapsulated. BTW The Dave Sim File Copies have a few of the earliest 10.0 Gem Mint books in the CGC Census. There's interest in those, but more as "1978 Gem Mint 10's" than in anything having to do with CEREBUS.
We tried auctioning a few 9.8's through Heritage and got...very spotty...results. To the extent that the best solution seemed to be to just forget the whole thing for a decade or so. Literally. I'm Mr. Long Range Planning as you know. It's been about five years since Peter and I had a serious discussion about what we're going to do and it will probably be another five years until we have the next one. These things take time.
And, as I say, my interest is in making sure that the Cerebus Archive retains the 3 of the 20 copies that have the highest grade attached to them. The rest aren't going to go DOWN in value, so there's no motive to flood the market. Starve the market until you need the market.
I didn't have much confidence in the File Copies for restoration purposes. My concern with them, at the time, had been that they be in as close to perfect condition as possible, bagged and boarded and then put away. It was Deni's job, originally, then Karen's, then Monique's. When Monique left we were up at issue 135 so I figured there would be no shortage of mint copies at that point, so Ger and I stopped bagging and boarding them. We'll see what posterity has to say about that.
I figured Peter pulled the books, FedExed them to Sean, Sean looked at them and went "Meh." and that was it.
I realize part of that reaction comes from my use of the studio copies -- the complete set of CEREBUS that is unbagged and unboarded and pretty much falling apart -- that I use anytime I have to refer to something. Just this past week when Tim at AMOC faxed me for anything I had on Dan Vado. I knew there were Petuniacon photos of him and roughly where they were. Shuffle shuffle shuffle, flip flip flip. Issue 65.
I just ASSUMED that the File Copies were the same as the studio copies, none of which I would have used for restoration or as good example of printed CEREBUS.
So the day before yesterday, Peter leaves me a phone message. "Dave, you left me a phone message last month when I was in New York. I just remembered today. Give me a call."
You know when they say that you have ice water pour into your bowels? I always thought it was an expression.
Here we are -- tick tick tick -- against Lebonfon's clock and Sean hasn't even SEEN the File Copies. So I phoned Peter and Peter was very YIKES and I made the decision to send Sean all 25 issues. Peter. You have to get on this. Which he did.
Peter doesn't get as much credit in the field as he should so let me say right here that he is probably the only comics dealer that virtually EVERY OTHER comics dealer would trust with his life. Or, even more significant, his best comic books. Dealers are notoriously "whatever" about their lives in comparison. So, I knew he would get the job done, even though he had left his message about 4 pm on Wednesday and I hadn't called him back until I got the message around 5 pm.
Didn't think about it again for another half hour or so.
Today's the 2nd I thought.
Tomorrow's the 3rd.
Friday is...the 4th of July.
"Peter!"
He already had the package wrapped.
"It has to go out tonight."
"Well, it's not going out TONIGHT. The FedEx guy has already been here. It'll go out tomorrow and it'll be there on...the..."
He's obviously looking at Sean's address.
"Where's FedEx in Toronto? Peter, it has to go out tonight."
"I'll go online and check."
And that's where we left it.
Fax comes in from Sean the next morning. "Peter made it happen!"
I don't even want to check and see how far FedEx is from Paradise Comics and do the math. "Let's see. I spoke to him at...6:45...FedEx closes at 7:30? 8? And it's...THIS...far away.
Anyway, like I say, a shout out to the guy that virtually everyone in the comics field that he touches on would trust with their lives. Or, as I say, their comic books.
2. And it turns out that the File Copies are the Best Source possible for Sean's purposes. The only exception is #5 which is better in SWORDS. He and Mara had checked as far as No.13 when I heard from him yesterday.
Anyway, since this is the only MAJOR story happening in the CEREBUS world right now -- and, as you can see, there are a lot of twists and turns yet to go -- I've asked Sean to post BULLETINS in the countdown to Lebonfon's deadline.
Ultimately, when the book is printed, I'm going to get Sean to give us all a guided tour of the restoration. If you have a copy of the restored book, we'll invite your input. What I'm suggesting is that Sean do some "high end" work on the book once he has all four signatures up to what he considers a good journeyman version and then as many pages as he can to Legacy Edition level.
Then we all have to have a serious talk about what it's going to cost to do Legacy Edition level restoration -- which will tell us how long it's going to take (roughly). With our Patron Retailer's $10,000 contribution (and THANK YOU AGAIN, "TF") and Sean and Mara's on-going experience with how long it takes to do what as the "canary in the mine shaft".
When the first $10K is gone, we look at where we are and that should give us a ballpark figure on all 6,000 pages.
I think I'm safe in saying it will drop, we just don't know by what.
Taking out an ad in PREVIEWS was/is a bit of a risk. We have to sell roughly 50 copies of NUMBER ONE just to pay for the ad. Is that going to happen? We don't know. I'm assuming we can sell NUMBER ONE and NUMBER TWO and NUMBER THREE in perpetuity but in very small quantities as soon as they have Diamond order numbers and barcodes on them. That was one of the things that I tried to "build in" the other way. John should be able to put together 1 or 2 copies and ship them to Diamond and there will be the same fixed cost. We don't have to do a print RUN. Each one is expensive, but should be profitable.
Anyway, we seem to be sitting on this crumbling ledge.
As an example -- when we pitched Kickstarter #2, ahead of time, to the 1,100 people on Kickstarter #1, we got 90 people who reserved CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER ONE, but only 70 of them actually pledged, despite John contacting them several times. Don't want to rain on anyone's Independence Day Parade, but that big a drop is not a good sign for the future of CEREBUS ARCHIVE.
What I've found -- and this is anecdotal -- is that only a small percentage of CEREBUS fans are even aware of A Moment of Cerebus and what we're trying to do here. It's been ten years since the book ended. It's not a Hot Topic of Conversation in comic-book stores (most of which are, likewise, not aware of what we're doing here).
I appreciate that people want to make me feel famous and admired and secure but...uh...we're ARE on this crumbling ledge.
What I'm picturing is some means of trying to contact "alumni" CEREBUS that (obviously) doesn't involve spamming people but which (also obviously) involves spamming people. Let me, Luddite that I am, pose the question:
Is it spamming if CEREBUS fans -- looking at the names and addresses of the CEREBUS fans that appeared in the book over the years -- tries to find those people on, say, Facebook and asks to "friend" them and wonders (e-mail aloud) if they are aware of A Moment of Cerebus and the efforts to restore the trade paperbacks with the CEREBUS ARCHIVE Kickstarter campaigns?
I mean, it's a quandary.
You have to do it in an organized way -- you can't have two dozen CEREBUS fans all sending e-mails to the same people (who may -- and, my guess, most of them do -- absolutely HATE CEREBUS and Dave Sim at this point). And if you're organized -- dividing up the number of issues "I'll try to find and contact everyone in #74 to #84" -- well, then, you're spamming. But you're spamming as an individual. And they're individual e-mails. Is that spamming?
Are there enough of you who are even interested in doing this?
I'm just asking because sustainability is a core on-going problem. I'll keep living, personally, below the poverty line in order to make preservation possible. But, you know, a crumbling ledge is a crumbling ledge. And, really, I don't think it's possible to CREATE a new CEREBUS audience. It's a comic store thing and the stores, realistically, say "I have two CEREBUS fans and they have everything. All I can do is sell two of whatever Dave produces to those guys. There is no audience and no potential audience beyond that."
I mean, REALISTICALLY.
So the only possibility is for me to give all of you the benefit of the doubt that there is this large untapped market out there. And what I see is "People who used to read the book but aren't likely to ever hear anything about it in Our Information Age".
I've asked John Funk to post the invoices for his work on the Kickstarter campaign every Friday in the comments section so everyone can see...uh...how fast the ledge is crumbling (you...uh...might want to consider edging over this way a bit) (there, that's good).
Anything else you can do on your own to help the situation -- and if you have a better way of contacting CEREBUS alumni, we're all ears.
4. Looking on the bright side! One of the people now joining us here on the crumbling ledge is Dr. Paul Williams of the University of Exeter from whom I've just had a letter today informing me that he has, indeed, gotten the funding for his plan to research The History of the Graphic Novel (1970s to 1980) and will be here from 29 September to 10 October going through as much of the material as I have on hand as he can get to in that space of time.
He won't have a climate-controlled basement research centre I'd like to have here on day, but he is our first official researcher.
And he's actually been following all of this stuff on A Moment of Cerebus.
Will wonders never cease?
5. And a plug for Sgt. Christopher Woerner who sent me his new book REVOLUTIONS. Just to give you an idea of how high my regard is for Sgt. Woerner's writing, Mimi Cruz sent me a copy of Christopher Hitchens' ARGUABLY collection of essays which also came in today.
Obviously I disagree with Hitchens about religion but agree with him about the threat of Terrorist Islam -- and I have to call him my top "must read" columnist on ANY subject -- agree or disagree -- when he was alive.
But I have to say it was a "no-brainer" that it was Sgt. Woerner's book that I was flipping through and reading compulsively even though I had ABSOLUTELY NO TIME TO DO SO today (or any day, for that matter).
He mentions in his cover letter that he sold a grand total of 12 copies of his first book, DOUBLE, which he self-published a couple of years ago.
He's reading this, I know, so hopefully he'll let you know how you can order a copy of his book or books.
He personalized the copy writing that I said to him, once, before his first (of three) tours of duty in Iraq "The War on Terror needs writers".
And he sure hasn't been slacking off.
Keep 'em flyin', Sarge! And have yourself a happy 4th of July!
See you all next week!
Help finance Dave Sim to complete 'The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond'
by donating at Patreon.com or via Paypal.
by donating at Patreon.com or via Paypal.
Originally serialised within the pages of the self-published Glamourpuss #1-26 (2008 to 2012), The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond is an as yet uncompleted work-in-progress in which Dave Sim investigates the history of photorealism in comics and specifically focuses on the work of comic-strip artist Alex Raymond and the circumstances of his death on 6 September 1956 at the wheel of fellow artist Stan Drake's Corvette at the age of 46.
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Cerebus' First Girlfriend
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| A Cerebus Jam Story: Michelle (1985) Art by Dave Sim |
Michelle was Cerebus' first girlfriend. He lived with her when he was 18 and a tax collector. She left Cerebus to be with another man. She made her only appearance on the back cover to issue 13 of Cerebus the Newsletter, although she is referred to in Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Cerebus #53 and #55.
(via Cerebus Wiki)
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Cerebus Restoration Bulletin-- Stapled Packets of Paper
SEAN MICHAEL ROBINSON:
So that's what we got.
Mara and I were both excited and a little nervous opening up the package. It didn't help that Peter had wrapped the debut issue separately from the rest, sandwiched between several heavy layers of cardboard, and marked ominously, "inside issue #1."
We left that one alone for a while and attended to the rest.
And lo and behold, almost every issue was significantly a better source than the Swords reprints and the negative scans we had been testing before. We immediately faxed Dave the good news and Mara started into the scanning.
I shot this photo as Mara opened the first page of issue #1. I think it's pretty clear even from this photo what a significant improvement this is over any existing material. Seeing this in person made it pretty clear to me that Preney must have not had access to the original negatives for the first issue, possibly for the first few issues, and must have shot his own negs from the books, which, when combined with the slight bit of underexposure in the original, led to the clogged and clouded look that's been in every Cerebus #1 reprint since. It was really breathtaking to see the scans, to watch each new page as Mara flipped through the book.
"So, uh, you sure you want me to do this?"
In the background you can see one of our "action flowcharts" for the different sources of pages, as well as some test printed Cerebus tone that we use to calibrate our soft proofs of the pages.
But... but... she's gonna give it a SPINE bend!
Dr. Mara Lives Dangerously. (Real Life Dr. Mara quote from Thursday-- "Can we get some archival gloves? And a micrometer?")
And that's part of the promise of print, part of why books and physical art and reproduction still matter. Because Mara and I can take these stapled packets of paper into our hands and not just be transferred into the world of the story, but into the world that they came from.
We took most of Friday off to watch some explosions on the beach, but now it's back at it for me. I hope to have most of the pages completed by Monday, when Mara and I will hopefully be dropping them into the template and moving on to the next stage.
We'll keep you updated.
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A '56 Corvette Convertible
DAVE FISHER:
Until then, to the first order of business, -- blog content (and aren't you glad you're still reading?) -- here's something you probably haven't seen before...
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Hi, introducing myself - Dave Fisher. I wear a variety of small hats at Aardvark-Vanaheim -- from reference photographer to video-editor to art dealer, to now, apparently, part-time blog contributor. You may have unwittingly seen my background "work" appearing in a number of venues, from the cover of Dave Sim's Collected Letters Vol. 2 (photos of Harvey Pekar and Chester Brown -- a story for down the road), to the cover of The Comic Eye (Sim staring into a crystal ball and recoiling in horror), and too many episodes of Cerebus TV to mention.
What am I doing here? I'm here for a couple of reasons:
1) To assist in keeping the blog rolling along with fresh content and contributions, from my behalf especially to anything relating to Glamourpuss and Sim's up-coming The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, which I can confirm to you right now is looking pretty darn awesome; and
2) I'm currently going through Sim's Glamourpuss output pulling together original art-work for auction. Now, these finished original pieces typically fetch a price-point beyond the affordability of most fans, especially my wallet. Therefore, in the spirit of practicality, affordability, and unfathomably hardcore super-fannery, I am also going through the Glamourpuss archives pulling together sets of Sim's raw working material -- specifically his tracings and draft compositions -- as well as some special cover mock-ups with Sim's water-colours and hand-lettering -- and will be making these available for auction on eBay at low opening bids of $1. This will be happening shortly. Stay tuned to this space for announcements!
Most of these will probably be claimed for peanuts, but I reckon fans and comic-book artists will be fascinated with these exclusive unique packages. Having recently re-read Glamourpuss in its entirety, I'm currently pulling tracings of particular interest, particularly as they relate to Sim's new Strange Death of Alex Raymond. These tracings are the sui generis of what will be a monumental work. They're rare & unique, and Sim is going to sign it all and sweeten with some tremendous offers. Right now I'm preparing shipping rates and a schedule. Again - keep your eye on this weblog for announcements!
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Until then, to the first order of business, -- blog content (and aren't you glad you're still reading?) -- here's something you probably haven't seen before...
The source photos for the penultimate pages of the last issue of Glamourpuss (No. 26, pages 16-19) with Alex Raymond and Stan Drake freeze-framed in tragic freefall in Drake's 1956 Corvette convertible.
Aardvark-Vanaheim not being in the position to acquire an antique '56 'Vette or afford a crane to hoist one skyward to shoot the undercarriage, Sim did the next best thing and purchased a scale model. Or, at least something close enough, his toy being a hot pink modified late fifties Corvette with mag wheels.
We crossed referenced the toy's undercarriage to small bits & pieces we could jigsaw together from google images. It was close enough to accurate to proceed. I suspended the toy from a chandelier with fishing line and photographed it from a dozen angles onto b&w film. Sim made his selections, traced, penciled and inked them, eliminated the mag wheels, exhaust and hard-top, and added rain, motion and a terrified Drake. I own a digital camera now, which makes the film & darkroom printing obsolete, yet here you have it -- comic-book photorealism in action!
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The 'No Butt Crack' Guarantee
The ferocious need to make money earlier this year came with an "answered (however unspoken) prayer" when a friend of mine, Rudi Schweitzer, asked me to do a cartoon for an ad he was going to run on the back of the local GRT Grand River Transit buses for his plumbing business, Schweitzer's Plumbing. The "No Butt Crack" guarantee was his idea and we're going to be franchising it to other plumbers. I thought it was a great idea, particularly for housewives and working women who maybe don't want to admit it, but, that's what they're going to be thinking. I hope the guy doesn't have his butt crack showing.
It's been on the road for the last week or two and neither Rudi or I have seen it. I must look like one of those trainspotter kids, every time a GRT bus goes by. Is that it? Is it on the back of this one?
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Tarzan No. 211
DAVE SIM:
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Robert R sends me old reading copy comic books from time to time (which is really all I need: they're only for reference) that he thinks I'll be interested in. He has a strange track record of finding books that bang a gong, but not for the reason that he thought. In this case TARZAN 211 from DC which he thought I might like for the Hal Foster TARZAN material in the back. What REALLY got me... well, you can just read my letter to Robert to find out. Thanks again, Robert!
First person who can identify the day that Hogarth TARZAN Sunday page appeared…well, they'll win something. But first they'll have to prove what Sunday it was because I have NO idea. Although a part of me thinks, I can just drop down to 103 Queen Street and there it will be on the wall in the second room.
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Cerebus Restoration Bulletin #2 -- Two Days Remain
SEAN MICHAEL ROBINSON:
Greetings everyone,
With two days remaining, we're powering through, despite some pretty heavy computer-related setbacks. Mara is setting up our template on a borrowed laptop while I'm blasting through the remaining pages, doing my best with the time remaining.
In the meanwhile, with the discussion of Dave's "cartoony" style versus his more recent strides towards realism, I thought I'd share one of the biggest shockers for me through this process so far. Here's a panel from the VERY beginning -- issue one, page two of Cerebus. For me, this goes a long way to showing that aesthetic judgments are complex and many-faceted, and it's easy to pass judgment on an image without understanding how the mechanics of the reproduction, or even things like the cleanliness of panel borders, are affecting your view of the image as a whole.
This panel has everything I love about early Dave's artwork -- exuberant acting, atmosphere, strong design, and, muscular and inventive inking. It's a shame it's been reproduced so poorly in the past.
Will do my best to rectify that.
Will do my best to rectify that.
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Dave Sim's Notebooks: Lord Julius
MARGARET LISS:
Margaret Liss is The Cerebus Fan Girl and maintains the Cerebus Wiki.
Last week we saw the fleshing out of an individual issue, issue #114 in JAKA'S STORY, and a couple pages from that issue, which showed us how Dave would sketch out an idea and then hone in the fine details of the dialogue and layouts in his notebooks. This week it is page 840 from CHURCH & STATE II, or if you're following along in individual issues - issue #93 page 4.
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| Notebook #7, page 72 |
The first thing you can see is how the page on the other side bleeds through on page 72 of notebook #7. When I was scanning the notebooks, I wanted to ensure that I got all the detail on the page - from the lightest pencil mark to the darkest sharpie marker. This also resulted in whatever bleed through there was showing up as well. One can make out Cockroach in his Secret Sacred Wars Roach incarnation. The sketches are roughs for Dave's homage to Frank Miller's cover for Batman: The Dark Knight #2, which is the cover for Cerebus #93.
But when we focus on this page of the notebook, we can see the dialogue for page 4 of issue 93.
The conversation is between Bishop Powers (1, 3) and Lord Julius (2, 4, & 5) and the 'she' in the conversation is Astoria, who is being held prisoner. Dave has the conversation broken up by panel, and when we get to the fifth and final panel, Lord Julius' dialogue is crossed off several times. This is the finished dialogue in the book for panel #5:
"Say, do you mind if I tag along? This sounds like the chance-of-a-lifetime to discuss a restructuring of my alimony payments..."
Dave went through several iterations of the punch line: "...some jointly held property we've been quarrelling over" to "...our joint bank account" to "...reducing my alimony payments". Rather than having the ex-couple having joint ownership of something, Lord Julius is the one making the spousal support payment to Astoria. Lord Julius, Grand Lord of Palnu, to whom everyone else comes to asking for a reduction in interest rates, even he is paying his ex-wife, leader of the Kevilist (re: feminist) movement, money. A good punch line and one that still makes me chuckle. I chuckled again when I read Dave's different iterations in the notebook - even Lord Julius can't get his alimony reduced, just restructured.
Along with having the final punch line written out, the next page in notebook #7 has a rough for page 4, and it is pretty much panel for panel with the finished page. The one difference? Dave put the final punch line's word balloon above Lord Julius' head rather than below it.
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| Notebook #7, page 73 |
There are also some sketches of Lord Julius from the same page, and some sketches and dialogue for the next page in the issue. It makes me wonder if Dave had the notebooks out when he was working on the actual pages, or if once it was in the notebook, he had the concept he wanted set in his mind and just went with his memory of it.
Margaret Liss is The Cerebus Fan Girl and maintains the Cerebus Wiki.
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Restoration Update: The Day Arrives As A Surprise, or, Too Much Cerebus
Sean Michael Robinson:
Too. Much. Cerebus.
So, would I call it a good, adult idea to, I dunno, prep almost a hundred and twenty pages of a visually complex graphic novel sourced from literally dozens of disparate sources, all while developing and perfecting your methodology for doing so, all in, jeez, less than a week?
No. I would say that's not a very good idea, certainly not a very adult one.
Well, that's what we did.
Finally back to two working computers, Dr. Mara and I pounded through the rest of the pages last night. We were joined by Mara's husband Bebo and my wife Rachel, who manned our "catch it before it's too late" station well into the night.
This. This is what too much Cerebus looks like.
Bebo's proofreading station, with scattered printings and correction notes.
Missing--elaborate color-coded marker system.
My workstation-- a $2000 computer with a $12 monitor. Notice my loupe, my tablet, and the raft of paper that threatens to overturn the file copies I have out for reference. Hey, Sean, is that some newsprint schmutz on that panel, or some exploding rock? Dunno, better check in the TOTALLY RAD STACK OF DAVE SIM FILE COPIES! O man.
Mara's work station, complete with her loupe, the missing markers, and half a dozen jump drives. Oh, and a snazzy Exclusive Diamond Distribution Lectern.
Staying up all night, at 34? Makes you a little bit like this guy. No, no, the purple one.
There'll be more to follow when I've, you know, slept and bathed. But here's a last parting image that demonstrates what my major takeaway has been from this experience so far. Want a quality image? Don't spend your time trying to polish what you have. Spend your time looking for a better source.
More on this next week. But in the meanwhile, every Cerebus fan reading this right now, I would love (love love love) it if you would take out your copy of Cerebus #13, pictured above, and examine the printing. If anyone out there has a copy with relatively black blacks, that still has fine detail in the lines, please let me know in the comments. I would love to get a test scan from you, and possibly a scan of the entire book, for possible inclusion into future Cerebus editions.
Until next time!
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| The second image here was sourced directly from Heritage's auction website. This was the brilliant idea of George Peter Gatsis, who accumulated dozens of images from their website. |
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Weekly Update #39: Free 'Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing' Download
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The CEREBUS volume is in Lebonfon's hands now!
- CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER ONE signed and numbered on track for August delivery!
- Winsor Newton Series 7 #2 Brush Crisis threatens completion THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND!
- George Peter Gatsis offers free digital copy of THE CEREBUS GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING at cerebusdownloads.com with any purchase of a Cerebus Book Club Package.
- Paul Slade's suggestion of "Pick and Choose" CEREBUS ARCHIVE packages and THEMED PACKAGES don't seem viable.
Wow! This was getting pretty exciting while I was going crazy keeping a bunch of other things going.
Thanks to Sean and Dr. Mara for documenting things so thoroughly. The earliest history of CEREBUS is pretty sketchy so Sean's theory that Preney shot the #1 negatives from a printed copy is very possible. The interiors of #1 were printed by Fairway Press while Moir Press did the covers. I like to think that I was sophisticated enough at the time -- I soon was, anyway! -- to know that I needed those negatives! The general printing policy was that printers owned the negatives unless otherwise specified. They recycled them for $ as I recall.
I'd forgotten what solicitation time with Diamond is like.
Having turned in the ad a week ahead of time, I figure, "Okay I'm done". That works until the ACTUAL DEADLINE day arrives which was yesterday. Matt needs a barcode (BARCODE! EVERYTHING NEEDS A BARCODE NOW! I FORGOT!). Matt needs a shot of the CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER ONE cover! Right! Right! Matt also wants to know if the CEREBUS volume is on track because they're getting ready to issue a Purchase Order. So I had to POTENTIALLY lie and say, "Lebonfon has the digital files as of today".
Not knowing if Sean had actually turned them in. I figured he had, but yesterday being the deadline, I didn't want to fax him. The last thing you want on Drop Deadline Day is an "Are you done?" question. It's like that scene in JAWS where Richard Dreyfuss is tying off the flotation drums and Quint's going, "Mr. Hooper" while he's aiming at the shark. And Dreyfuss goes "DON'T WAIT FOR ME!"
What do you know? This time Richard Dreyfuss comes through! Way to go, Sean and Dr. Mara!
Next step is proofs, then, then approvals and then, God willing, onto the press.
Pretty exciting indeed.
2. I spent most of the week on CEREBUS ARCHIVE. I've already been paid for those, so in my mind, that shifts the focus. You do the stuff you've gotten paid for and put the stuff you won't get paid for until they're done to one side.
So, all of the bookplates that needed to be signed have been signed and all of the signed bookplates that needed names hand-lettered onto them have been hand-lettered onto them. That was certainly a weird day. How many ways can YOU find to letter "Nathaniel Oberstein" into a space roughly an inch by two inches? I used 05, 03, 01 and 005 Archival pens, so a lot of shifting gears.
All of the fully inked Cerebus heads are done (more on this in a moment) as are the ballpoint pen Cerebus heads. All the ones that needed to be personalized have been personalized.
The membership card is done. Colour on the front: Basically the first panel of "Dead Cerebus" from #300 -- with no white light in his eye and the number "261" in red. 254 single orders and 7 retailers. On the back "This card certifies that this person is one of the two hundred and sixty-one people keeping a dead aardvark on life support in May of 2014" and room for your name and my signature. Should look pretty good with the UV coating.
John delivered the first plate -- CEREBUS THE BERZERKER -- which I signed last night. About six of them had little red speckles on them so those are being rerun. According to John's schedule, I should have all of the plates by the 24th. It takes about an hour to sign 300, so that's the most non-intrusive thing right now. Just put my head down and go.
3. THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND suffered a couple of blows this week.
First: the CEREBUS ARCHIVE material needing to be done. So a lot of jumping on and jumping off. I barely got a page done.
Second: I finally got around to ordering Alex Raymond's -- and my -- favourite brushes: Winsor & Newton Series 7 #2. This was partly prompted by my decision to ink the heads on the front of the CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER ONE's with one of my #2's (I've got six of them, one unopened). It was the one that was in the worst shape, but it was still a viable #2.
Well, now it isn't.
Cerebus brush strokes at that size, you have to get way too much inch on the brush to do them properly. And that kills the brush. Mind you, the ink goes on like a dream (and people were paying good money for single heads), which is why I decided to sacrifice one of them: the inked drawings look really good. I think all 26 people who pledged for them will be very happy.
The other reason is that I have to get away, mentally, from babying the two best brushes and have more than one back-up. I always wonder, "How many of these did Alex Raymond have at one time?" I'm willing to bet dozens. Just because: some of them are better than others and you don't know until you're using it if it is or it isn't. And if you only buy one, you're always going, "Um, no this is fine." Because you just paid $36 for it, right? Even if it's quirky in some way or just not as smooth as it can be. I mean, they're meant for watercolours. Cartoonists are the only people stupid enough to use sable brushes for india ink. We're lucky that ANY of them last longer than a day or so. I've got one -- marked with masking tape on the back end so I know which one it is -- that is an absolute dream and has been for a few months now.
So I (big spender) ordered two from Wyndham's. And Chris faxes me back and says, "I don't know if you're aware that sable brushes can no longer be imported into North America. They've declared the sable an endangered species (which I don't agree with)."
No. No, I didn't know that.
So Chris sent me what he had: a nylon #2 and a nylon/sable blend #2. Which I haven't tried out yet.
But, they were, like, $8. So I'm not expecting much.
I know it seems like I'm always asking for something, but here's an Open Need On-going if I'm going to finish THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND properly.
If you want to help out and are near an art store that sells painting supplies, can you see if they have a Winsor Newton Series 7 #2 brush? You should be able to see through the little plastic case over the bristles if it comes to a point. If there are little hairs sticking out of it, it's not worth taking a chance. But if it comes to a point it's APT to be (no guarantee) functional. If you want to donate it into the cause of Finishing the Graphic Novel that never ends, you can just send it to Box 1674 Station C Kitchener ON Canada N2G 4R2 and I'll trade you a CEREBUS comic with a good head sketch or something else (within reason). Or if you just want to be reimbursed, send the receipt and I'll send you a cheque in US funds or Canadian funds. Or if you want to be reimbursed AND get a CEREBUS comic with head sketch -- let me know if there's a specific issue you want. #0 Gold? Done -- our operator (me) is standing by.
It's apt to be seriously wasteful: as I say, you never know if it's a good brush or a so-so brush or a no- good brush until you're using it for a while. But, considering I just raised $30,000 so I could pay $10,000 for a substandard printing job, I have to get a better perspective on this. Paying out a few thousand dollars for 100 brushes and getting 10 really good brushes out of it, makes a lot of sense. Particularly if this "sable crisis" has spread to...or originated...in England, the home of Winsor & Newton and soon there won't be ANY Series 7 #2's anywhere for love or money.
It doesn't SOUND as if it makes sense, but it does.
This is one of those instances where I'm not going to be able to find a comparable brush, I'm pretty sure, as eco-friendly as I like to be. It seems every time I turn around I'm being offered something not quite as good with the implied sense that I'm Obligated to agree that there's no difference. Because it's 2014 and We're Fixing Everything That's Wrong.
Alex Raymond used the Winsor Newton Series Seven #2, for me, ends the discussion.
4. George Peter Gatsis -- MANY thanks to George, by the way, for doing yeoman's work on cerebusdownloads.com: which has been generating an average of $200 a week (up until this week when we flatlined, anyway -- maybe it's the World Cup) -- is offering a free digital copy of THE CEREBUS GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING to anyone ordering one of the Cerebus Book Club Packages (basically anything more than a single volume) all this month. Thanks to Steve N. who prompted this by offering $50 for a copy and then actually paying $50 (THANK YOU, Steven!) -- which prompted George to go digging through his Lebonfon digital files where he found the latest incarnation from 2010. THE CEREBUS GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING all this month at cerebusdownloads.com. Thanks, George! Hope your movie is coming along good!
5. On the idea of "pick and choose" or "themed" CEREBUS ARCHIVE packages. I'd have to say no. This gets into personalizing the packages which is fine if everyone wants the same thing, but everyone wants different things. The idea is to have a simple package that can be offered for sale on Kickstarter and then through Diamond that John can produce individually as needed. The package took me two years to come up with and I went through every possible mental permutation before arriving at the one that I did. It's RELATIVELY simple but that means it's also RELATIVELY complicated. What I'm finding out right now is how long it takes John and I to actually execute the package. This week was really taken up with CEREBUS ARCHIVE which is fine every once in a while but if it becomes steady, then THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND is going to become a pipe dream.
I COMPLETELY understand if you don't want the early material. There IS a danger that we won't MAKE IT to, say, JAKA'S STORY if the drop-off is too severe between NUMBERS. What I'm hoping is that 250 people is a reasonably solid number and that we can afford to drop down to 100 and still be viable. My gut instinct tells me that there is a core number who can a) afford these b) want to have them c) will order them and that "chasing orders" by offering WAY TOO MUCH variety is a recipe for disaster. A lot of people tend to complain but that doesn't mean that they would order if I did it their way: a lot of people just like to find fault and suggest what they consider a better way -- but purely as an intellectual exercise. They don't actually order things, they just, you know, intend to. :)
The idea of CEREBUS ARCHIVE is: "Here's what I THINK I can do. Here's what I'm PRETTY SURE I can do...AND do THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND." The jury's still out on whether that's true. But the impetus is going to be in the direction of: how do I further simplify the CEREBUS ARCHIVE program so it isn't eating SDOAR time, not "how can I add a number of new wrinkles to the CEREBUS ARCHIVE program so NO ONE has any complaints about it?"
It really is an either/or. I don't have a work/life balance. I have a work/work/work balance. There are three different kinds of work that I do and it's just a question of what I'm doing 12 hours a day six days a week. I'm coming up on two hours of typing this and I still have a ways to go.
I appreciate ChrisW picking up on that (still enjoying your book, Chris -- you are a WILD MAN!).
If you want to be reading THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND someday and you'd rather that was 2017 than 2020, then I'm afraid this is Monty Python's Scotch Tape Store. You can buy CEREBUS ARCHIVE or you can buy CEREBUS ARCHIVE. And we have some lovely CEREBUS ARCHIVE on Kickstarter. Or you can have CEREBUS ARCHIVE. It's far more a fund raiser for restoring CEREBUS than it is anything else. If you can afford $79 and postage costs to help us restore CEREBUS, many many sincere thanks. Here's what we can offer you as a reward.
Coincidentally I am thinking along the lines that Mike Kitchen is talking about: bonus prints. If you buy the CEREBUS ARCHIVE package, you have an option to purchase an additional print -- one, per campaign -- and we'd have maybe a dozen to pick from. But I still have to mull that one over. It's adding a step to John's process and introducing a variable that is apt to cause trouble. "This isn't the bonus print that I ordered." Now we have to mail something separately to you. The bonus prints would have to be pre-printed (that's part of the potential attraction -- you could have them pre-printed: but that gets into the problem of how many of them are you going to have and how many are you going to pre-print? If you have 20 options and you print 50 of each, that's 1,000 prints that need to be stored -- and dug through -- any time someone orders one).
Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
Okay, I have to put some time in on the Patreon site which has been skipped the last couple of weeks before my 5:30 prayer and then HOPEFULLY actually get back to THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND for the 6 pm to 11 pm stretch. Unless a bunch of faxes and phone messages came in while I was here.
See you next week!
So, for the moment, we are sticking with the CEREBUS ARCHIVE program as constituted. I think we would have to see two or three NUMBERS go out of here smoothly and on-time before we add any more buzzsaws to our juggling act. :)
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Cerebus: In My Life - Anthony Phillips
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| Cerebus #36 (March 1982) Art by Dave Sim |
I read Cerebus when I was a teen. It was probably the deepest comic I'd read yet. This was just around the time the term "graphic novel" was becoming popular, but men like Sim, Moore, and others had been doing this for a while.
Cerebus taught me that this art form was depthless. Longer page counts than any novel, and filled with art - comic form was WORTHY... as any other medium. It had paid its dues. I started to be proud of what I'd read.
And Cerebus had scenes of such breathtaking beauty and sadness. Single pages that stood striking and stark. Jaka returning the sword is one scene that really got to me. I love seeing these sorts of frozen moments now.
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Now Playing On Cerebus TV...
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Dream Another Dream Kickstarter: Gerhard Print Stretch Goal Added
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