Sean Michael Robinson:
Another week, another late blog post...
I'm bogged down again this week, with the initial work on Church & State II and as-yet unannounced Mystery Cerebus Volume. Yes, two books simultaneously. Yes, a bit of a logistical nightmare to try to get them both off the ground, especially as they've very different from each other in terms of the materials involved...
BUT! All I have time for here is an anecdote, and a quick quiz (and prize!)
Here's a few of the sheets of tone that Dave faxed me a few months ago, when work began on Church & State I. These were sheets of tone used during the monthly production of the book, to create various background textures, tones, or other effects. The idea of sending them to me was, when adjusting a negative that was damaged in the initial photography, or an original in really bad shape, I could refer to the actual tone sheets as reference, or even scan a chunk to use to replace damaged tone on an original, if need be.
Of course, the "used in the monthly production of the book" aspect was really an abstraction until I saw one particular sheet of tone.
You might recognize the texture from various places in the series. For me it's memorable in Weishaupt's death scene. But a particular segment of this was, I dunno, REALLY familiar.
Look familiar to you?
It's an interesting mental exercise to consider what relationship this sheet of discarded tone has to the original art of the mystery page in question. A distant cousin? A ghost? A cast-away carapace?
Recognize the ghost of the page above? Like to play along? Leave a comment identifying the book and page number (or numbers) related to the image above. First one to successfully do so wins a prize sent to their home, a prize related to the upcoming Church & State I printing. Leave a comment, and once you've been selected as the winner, send your mailing address to cerebusarthunt at gmail dot com.
Happy hunting!