Saturday 18 February 2017

ANNOTATING DAVE SIM's CIH?#1 STRIPS

Cerebus In Hell? #1
by Dave Sim & Sandeep Atwal
In Stores Now!
DAVE SIM:
Thought we should have some "rookie content" given that this is the first Saturday that CEREBUS IN HELL? #1 is in the stores (and thank you to all of the stores who have ordered copies! Matt D at Diamond tells me that CEREBUS IN HELL? #2 is "in the house" and now has a March 1st "street date" i.e. the February issue will ALMOST ship in February)

Sean - Can you download these? I don't think there'll be room for them in the first trade (tentatively scheduled for Christmas release), but -- someday -- in an OMNIBUS CEREBUS IN HELL? COLLECTION?  It's much easier for me to annotate as we go.
(Don't know if Sandeep wants to annotate his: different writers have different attitudes on annotating their work):

page 1 - This one is one of Sandeep's but it always reminds me of "But let him summon his associates; we TOO [emphasis mine] will summon the guards of Hell"  part of Sura 96 "Clots of Blood", the first sura revealed to Prophet Muhammad.  That "too" in there seems to me to validate my God/YHWH theory.

page 2 - This was the second one that I wrote, back when CEREBUS IN HELL? was called DESECRATING CEREBUS.  I thought there was a "vandalizing" sense to the word "desecrating" but, no, it means "to make not sacred".  Oops.  The burning of the Temple of Dagon takes place in 1 Maccabees 10:49.  I think Judas Maccabee was supposed to be the meschiach (messiah) and was on track until he signed the treaty with Rome.  D'OH!

page 3 - There WAS a movie adaptation of THE LIFE OF PI, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a HIT movie. I think the character was actually a panther, as well, not a leopard.  But, close enough for comic-strip humour!

page 5 - One of Sandeep's. I forget what he had at first instead of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" (a Dean Martin tune I think) but he can be forgiven, being a mere infant of 46 years.  I read that a member of Bennett's band had given him the song at some point and it sat in Bennett's underwear drawer for a number of years before he even looked at.  Still a great tune.

page 11 -  The guy nailed to the dirt is one of the few Scriptural figures in DANTE'S INFERNO (that I recognized anyway) Caiaphas, the Jewish High Priest who condemned Jesus: "that one man should die over the people".  I had Sandeep change it to "two thousand years" for that reason.

page 12 - This was the first DESECRATING CEREBUS strip that I did.

page 13 - This one got built around the phrase "Internet-meme cat video" when Sandeep used it in conversation.  Being a complete Luddite, I'd never heard of such a thing.  If you can't build a gag around the words "Internet-meme cat video", you're in the wrong line of work.

page 14 - I always find the impulse to make up admission rules so as to exclude specific people inherently funny.

page 15 - I researched all the names online of boyfriends/husbands/fiancees on SEX AND THE CITY.  There sure were a lot of them!

page 20 - The first Francis Albert strip!  Based on Frank Sinatra's full name, Francis Albert Sinatra.

page 22 - Personally, I don't think there's any doubt that DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is THE definitive Batman.  Congratulations, Frank!  Spoiler warning! This strip ISN'T continued in #2!

And now TRAVIS with what OTHER comics are in your future and Sean with final (?) MINDS corrections!  

6 comments:

Sean R said...

Got em Dave! I'll file these away every time they appear here.

Jeff Seiler said...

Dave, I picked up my CIH? #1 copies today at The College of Comic Book Knowledge, along with the remastered volume I and the new Locke & Key one-shot. I went through all four of my copies and the six on the shelf--no variants.

Glad I won the auction!

I'm gonna love these ongoing annotations.

Travis Pelkie said...

Ooh, this will help with my review.

Got my copy today, no Black Angel. That strip is beautiful (all of it is, great work Sean!), so I'd guess with the angel being that light that some ink just worked its way into the plate or something.

I didn't get a chance to look through the other copy that my guy got for the shelf, though.

Unknown said...

Just grabbed mine a little while ago, it was the last copy on the shelf. This was the first time I'd been in a comic shop in over five years....

Rick

Craig Johnson said...

Regarding LIFE OF PI, if Dave is referring to the big cat in the book, it's a tiger in book plus movie (my copy of CiH hasn't arrived yet to check context of this annotation)...

Unknown said...

Craig Johnson - I stand corrected. Sean? Can you change that to "tiger" in my annotation? Thanks!