High Society Prints On Friday!

SEAN MICHAEL ROBINSON:

Hello everyone!

First off, let me say a special THANK YOU to new Cerebus Art Dragnet participants Scott Stewart and Michael Ragiel! Michael submitted a slick Mothers & Daughters original, while Scott sent us a scan of a beautiful page from Issue 16, featuring Dave's infamous struggle with duo shade. Restoring that page will be really interesting challenge. Thanks so much to everyone who continues to shake those pages free from the trees.

Please excuse the tardy post. I've been running around like a crazy person for the past ten days because of this weekend. Friday afternoon, at 3 pm, we're finally going to print on High Society. 

I'd half-written something in my head over the past few days about how hard it is to let go of a big project, about all of the times I've thought I had something finished, only to make one last dive into it when the deadline approaches. But I'm running out of time, I'm still fielding emails from the prepress person at Bang, the project manager, left-handed faxes from Dave... So, my story of last-minute mix adjustments or overdubs or panicked mastering sessions on the various albums I've worked on will have to wait.

Suffice it to say, I've been a maniac the past two weeks, and only now am I beginning to calm down a bit and accept that, barring more original artwork scans being sent to us over the next few years, this is as good as it gets. 

Which is to say, it's really good.

I had somehow avoided looking through my old copy of High Society until very recently. Mara did the scanning, after all, the image selection, picking out from the various sources for each newsprint page and deciding which would give us the best image.

But finishing up the book this week, I was suddenly struck by the oddity of it all. How, for several pages at least, we were using the very copy of High Society I first read, as a teenager, to restore the book for all copies going forward. I had a strange moment, sitting with the now-cut up remains of the book in my lap and the oversized printouts of the newly restored pages to the right of me, trying to remember holding that book in my hand at age thirteen. On a car trip with my family? I think we bought it at a store in North Carolina. I'd already read an issue or two, had seen the TMNT crossover issue via First's color reprints, but this, this was the real deal.

The distance from there to here seemed impossible.

And that's where we're at now. Happy that it's done, happy that it's turned out so well. Thrilled to be moving forward to Church & State. And most of all? Thrilled that, at least until we circle back to the first volume, there will be no more pages sourced from newsprint!

For your amusement and edification-- a few newsprint-sourced High Society pages, sans page. First person to identify them wins a shiny copper portrait of Lincoln, signed by the Treasurer of the United States... or, my undying admiration. Your pick!

(Anything you'd like to see here? Let me know in the comments!)