Thursday 12 January 2012

Where Is Mrs Hannon?

Cerebus #274 (January 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard, additional dialogue by Nicholas Zivkovik

DAVE SIM:
(from a letter to Nicholas Zivkovik dated 30 October 2001, reprinted in Cerebus 274)
I'm not sure if I ever wrote back to you about the comic strip samples that you sent me for comment back in 1993. The strip was called Kilhook ...The reason that I am writing to you now is that I hung onto the strips at the time because - although the artwork was amateurish, certainly too amateurish for a newspaper syndicate (even assuming that they might have an interest in historical fantasy) - the writing had just the right note of authenticity in the dialogue for a Dark Ages battle scene. Knowing that I had a Dark Ages battle scene coming up in Cerebus (a hundred or so issues down the road), I put your samples in with my "way off up ahead" file of reference material. Having arrived at "way off up ahead," I pulled your samples out to retread for the first time in eight years. And realized -- pretty much right away that I couldn't improve on what you had written. So I just extracted those lines which most impressed me and best suited the tone I was looking for - and then whittled them down from there (I wish I had more pages to work with, but that proved not to be the case). Anyway, I am enclosing a cheque for $100 US - which I hope will cover my unauthorised use of your material.

NICHOLAS ZIVKOVIK:
(from The Comics Journal #241, February 2002)
I thought it was cool. I've been a Cerebus fan for a long time. He does some cool things... It's not a project I'm pursuing to any degree. For a fanboy to be included in this, that's a cool tip of the hat.
Kilhook (1993)
Art by Nicholas Zivkovik

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