Sean Michael Robinson:
Holiday greetings to you all!
Last week I wrote about the newly restored Cerebus Volume One, which is currently at the printer, focusing on the sixty five pages or so of the book that have been newly sourced from scans of the original artwork. (And here's a separate post about the book, discussing the remainder of the pages, which were restored from the original monthly issues and scans of the original negative that remained through several decades of printing)
Here's a closer look at some more of those original art pages new to this printing.
A large portion of the new pages came from Cerebus super-fan James Guarnotta, whose collection will improve future printings of High Society just as much as it is improving the new Volume One. James had several pages from issues 23 and 25, which, as I mentioned last week, suffered from poorer reproduction than the issues immediately preceding them, partially because they were shot and printed by a new printer, and partially because Dave was experimenting with new pen and ink techniques that didn't always reproduce as well as, say, big bold brushwork did. Which makes me wonder how much visual style has been driven by the available reproduction techniques. If it doesn't come across as well in print, why keep doing it?
Luckily for us, the effect comes across just fine now, with good sharp scans retaining the small detail and sheet-fed offset printing keeping fill-in and gain to a minimum, so any page sourced from original artwork can now benefit from the changes.
Luckily for us, the effect comes across just fine now, with good sharp scans retaining the small detail and sheet-fed offset printing keeping fill-in and gain to a minimum, so any page sourced from original artwork can now benefit from the changes.
You can see that some of the China white used to create the rain is not quite high-contrast enough to reproduce as white without a little assistance. These lines were selectively contrast adjusted to ensure they reproduce well in the new edition.
(I always loved the little irritated Cerebus riding next to Claremont. Irritated by the rain? By the castle they're traveling to? By the ignominy of traveling by box?)
James also owns a page later from this same issue, a page very reminiscent of the soon-to-come High Society: specifically, the middle of the book, dominated by dramatic use of black, dark syrupy shadows, and judicious use of a single mid-tone, essentially pairing the entire world down to three or four values.
It also happens to be a hilarious page.
Above, you can see where the waxiness of the blue line pencil has caused the paper to resist the ink of the border. This was an occasional issue during the High Society restoration, especially when it happened on the letter forms themselves, causing them to break up where the letter guides overlapped the actual letters. 
There are earlier issues that also used splatter, and those are similarly improved by returning to the original artwork, especially all pages we've come across for issue 13, which has always suffered in print. It appears to have been shot from photocopies or low-quality stats of the original artwork, as even the original run of the issue has a rough quality to the tone that's atypical of first-generation reproduction. Here a passed-out Cerebus is brought to the lair of Necross the Mad.
The color reproduction here makes it a little easier to see how the texture of the hill was built up in layers of mostly brush and splatter. Above you can see how the contour of the priest was indicated in pencil before being discarded at the inking stage. Even this early in the book, Dave was very adept at using dramatic blacks to ramp up the drama of an image.
Here's another page, this time the actual restored image created from an original art scan and contrasted with a scan of the eighth printing of Cerebus Volume one, to give you an idea of what a difference this can make in print.
And one last one before I go... talk about experimentation! Here's the splash page from issue fifteen, which, had I never seen the original artwork, I wouldn't have guessed featured pencil shading across several sections of the image. This appears to have been a one-page experiment, as I haven't seen it on any other pages. Check out the new Cerebus Volume One when it arrives in your local comic store this January to see how it reproduces this time!
And lastly, a merry Christmas from Lord Julius, his razor strop, and a little slime guy bath toy!