HARDtalk: The Dave Sim Interview (20c)

I donated to the Cerebus Kickstarter fundraiser as I instantly understood the importance of creating a permanent digital archive of the Cerebus comics and related materials which will exist long after we are all dead and buried. Was this your motivation behind the Cerebus Digital 6000 project, or are you just looking to make a quick buck off the younger generation of comic readers?

Okay so my point is:  this is not making a QUICK buck or a STEADY buck necessarily.  It remains to be seen if there are going to be ANY bucks.  So far, we know that we were able to get Kickstarter crowd-source funding to do this ONCE.  On "9.12.12" (or "12.9.12" if you're in the UK) -- the week after the FREE download of No.26 has "shipped" when the four-issue package (#27-30 for $3.99) "ships") -- we'll find out if it was just 1,140 people giving me money ONCE or if this thing "has legs".  It's a very interesting situation because all we can do is forge ahead covering as many bases as we can.  The FREE download of No.26 now exists in raw form.  I've recorded all of the audio.  Sandeep has scanned all the negatives -- and the scans are GORGEOUS no matter how much you enlarge them -- I've annotated all the Cerebus Archive documents from the time (30 pages per issue roughly), I've annotated all of my Notebook entries for No.26, George has the scans Paradise Comics did of the front and back covers of the Dave Sim file copies at 1200 dpi and has put together an animated intro with them.  But it's still just in raw form.  Roughly four weeks before it "ships".  It's a brand new world.  What happens NEXT we have no idea.

Is "the younger generation of comic readers" -- that you started with in your question way back a few days ago -- going to be remotely interested?  No idea.

Black and white on the Internet is pretty much unheard of from what I understand because colour doesn't cost more to "print".  Will anyone put up with black and white?  No idea.

Is 40 to 60 pages of annotated additions "overkill"?  No idea.

Does the fact that you get the first issue free, the next four for $3.99 and "two a week" for $1.99 after that going to outweigh the perceived drawbacks?  No idea.

At the very least, we'll be able to say that this is the most thorough presentation of HIGH SOCIETY possible.  If it crashes and burns, well, at least we can say that out of the 16 books, HIGH SOCIETY was done properly and thoroughly.  Even if it flops as a paid digital download we'll still have enough money to start on the CEREBUS volume and get as far along with it as possible.  And then try to raise money to keep going with another Kickstarter campaign.

I'm very interested in seeing how this plays out over the next 25 days.  We all are.

Cerebus #26 (May 1981)
Free Digital Download - Available 12 September 2012

So what shall we talk about tomorrow? Let's see now:

From the material reprinted in the Cerebus Archive magazine, you seemed to keep just about every letter or scrap of paper you ever touched. Are you a hoarder by nature or did you have a sense of its importance and that all this stuff was worth keeping at the very start of your career?

Be here tomorrow, same Moment Of Cerebus time, same Moment of Cerebus channel!