Friday 30 November 2012

Step Forth And Taste Earth-Pig Steel!

First drawing of Cerebus as a comic-book character (1977)
Art by Dave Sim
DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Cerebus #1, Swords Of Cerebus Vol 1, 1981)
In the year prior to my sitting down to pencil the first issue, I had a) met a girl named Deni who was doing a fanzine b) designed a logo for said fanzine herein known as Cerebus (the logo is the same now as it was then) c) persuaded girl Deni that she must have a name for her publishing enterprise d) received two suggestions from girl Deni's brother Michael (Vanaheim Press) sister Karen (Aardvark Press) and e) diplomatically selected both. I proceeded f) to design a company logo featuring a cartoon aardvark (since I didn't know how to draw a Vanaheim). I then supervised the pasting up of the first issue of Cerebus The Fanzine featuring prose and art by g) Brother Michael, Boyfriend me, Sister Karen, Head Honcho Deni, Too Tall Bob and numerous others. Printer h) rips us off for originals and payment and Aardvark-Vanaheim Cerebus The Fanzine bites the big one.

In the course of all this, we noticed that Deni had spelled "Cerberus" incorrectly. I solved this by suggesting that Cerebus was the name of our aardvark mascot. It was a small step from this point to pencilling a page of of Cerebus bouncing merrily a top a horse (yay) and sending it to Mike Friedrich as a new feature for Quack; which he was quick to refuse (boo).

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