A Post About Posters

FunkMasterJohn here, attempting his first blog post and trying to navigate his way without messing up anybody else's work! Most of the content below is from Dave with my commentary added in [brackets].

DAVE SIM:

With the CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE Kickstarter, theoretically, starting today, I've definitely gotten inquiries about posters. CEREBUS posters are a very difficult subject, so instead of posting these to the Kickstarter site, I'm getting John Funk to post them here with his own comments and soliciting comments from Pledge Partners and potential Pledge Partners. 

That is, none of these is available YET on Kickstarter.  Depending on how the discussion goes, we could see one or more of them up and available before CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE ships a couple of months from now.

Basically, John and I are in agreement that this whole operation runs a lot more smoothly if we stick to 11x17 prints and Bonus Prints, so anything having to do with actual posters is definitely adding to John's workload and would have to be compensated separately, as a kind of mini-Kickstarter fulfillment -- involving not only additional packaging and additional postage but additional labour as well.

[FMJ - it's a bit more work in planning, organising and matching, but I think we've overcome the hardest part of the learning curve on the first two Archives]

The alternative, of course, is just to do the posters as Bonus Prints, reducing them to roughly 11x17 size (with room for signing and FIRST RELEASE gold seals).  That we would be able to do, keeping the price point to $9 + $1 same as any other Bonus Print.

Here's the status with the posters that are currently in the Cerebus Archive:

Read 'Minds' poster:
Promoting the exhibition of all of the artwork to the MINDS trade paperback at Kevin Eastman's WORDS & PICTURES MUSEUM in Northampton, MA.

Only a handful of these are in the Cerebus Archive, so the questions on this one are: 1)  should Sean attempt to do an accurate reconstruction of it 2) should it be printed this size? (I've put it next to one of the CEREBUS ROOFTOP posters to show the relative size) options: 2a) reduce it to the size of a Bonus Print and make it a bonus print; 2b) figure out how much it would cost to produce them this size with modern printing technology without going fuzzy as oversized prints for civilians who don't know the difference in printing tend to do  3) how much of a premium price would you be willing to pay so that Sean gets paid for his reconstruction, the printer gets paid to do accurate sharp oversized printing on an extremely limited run and John gets compensated for packaging these individually -- either flat or in mailing tubes?  I'm guessing a ballpark figure of $150 with a head sketch and another $50 or so for printing a really short run 100% accurately and mailing them individually.

THE FIRST HALF poster:

Original printing. Roughly 18" by 24".  There is enough of a supply of these in the Cerebus Archive that we would be able to offer them as part of CAN3.  I haven't counted them exactly but I think the Cerebus Archive could spare 20 and offer them with a Cerebus head sketch, personalized, for $100 each.  There will be a premium price on the shipping and handling because they can't be packed with the folios themselves, so it's pure additional labour for Funkmaster and Rolly.

THE THIRD QUARTER poster:

Original printing,  Roughly 18" by 24".  Same deal as THE FIRST HALF poster. I'm not entirely certain how many of them there are. I don't really want to UNpack them to count them and then have to REpack them, but I'm guessing that the Cerebus Archive can spare 20 of them and offer them with a Cerebus head sketch for $80 (since there's less room for a head sketch than on the FIRST HALF poster)

FOUR MORE YEARS poster:

Definitely down to the last few of the original posters so this one won't be offered in its original form, but same basic question: do you want this reconstructed at the 17" by 22" size by Sean and are you willing to pay a premium $150+ for it or would you be okay with a reduced version of it as a Bonus Print for $9 + $1 postage?

[FMJ - if Sean is already reconstructing the size, then you might as well make it as large as you like and not limit it to 17x22. Once you cross the size gap into 'large format' you're at a new cost plateau for printing and shipping, and, for example, 24x36 is not that much more costly than 17x22 or 18x24]

CEREBUS ROOFTOP poster:

My idea was to do a poster of the CREATORS of CEREBUS rather than the comic's fantasy subject matter for comic stores -- basically a reverse of Meatloaf's BAT OUT OF HELL poster (by Richard Corben) which stood out in record stores for the opposite reason: fantasy subject matter instead of the creator of the music.  

There are a lot of these in the Cerebus Archive but they are all folded down to 81/2x11.  So I have no problem with offering them as Pledge Items for the standard $9 each (autographed and personalized to a first name: no room for a head sketch).  The question that remains is: how much does John Funk want to charge for packaging these with the folios, given that we've abandoned the idea of doing mini-prints because of the labour- intensive nature of packaging smaller items with the 11x17 folios?  Make John an offer and he'll tell you if he can live with it!

I've signed this one in red marker as my recommendation of what works best, comparing that to...

...where I've signed it in black with the same thickness of marker. It tends to blend in and not really look as if it's signed: more as if the signature was printed on the poster.  Likewise with signing inside the photograph area on...

I've actually had to enlarge it so that you can see that the signature is actually there. 

In terms of Gerhard signing these:  I've basically instructed Sean with anything that he reconstructs and/or restores that he supplies Gerhard with digital files so that Gerhard can print (or reconstruct in a different way if he doesn't like what Sean's done) his own versions of anything that has his work on it.  

If he wants to make his signature a pledge item as part of any of the CEREBUS ARCHIVE Kickstarters, he's more than welcome to do that.  He and John Funk both went to the same high school, so I'm sure John would be happy to drop off and pick up any material Gerhard is interested in signing for whatever fee they agree upon between themselves and then I would pay Gerhard whatever the agreed-upon amount was after he's signed everything. 

[FMJ - Yes, I'm in on that! Funny story.....neither Gerhard nor I knew each other in high school, other than the fact that I remembered a 'guy by the name of Gerhard' who could draw really well, but I didn't make the connection. Yet, every time I saw his photo in some CEREBUS ARCHIVE material, or on the web, I would tell Dave that he looked so familiar, but I couldn't place it. Anyway, to make a long story short, the clue was when I read Sean's interview of Gerhard that he gave a few years ago, where Gerhard mentions a name of someone that he was friends with in high school. CLICK. I remembered that name and mentioned it as an 'oh, by the way...' to Dave in one of our faxes and then Dave confirmed that it was the same high school name and after digging up an old copy of my yearbook, I made the connection! Small world, eh?]

As far as I know Gerhard only signs CEREBUS material that he worked on, so it would be limited, for the moment, to these posters.