Climbing The Mountain

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings everyone!

VERY brief update today as I am buried under work-- the remaining 165 pages or so of cleanup work remaining on Church & State I, as well as a bunch of my non-Cerebus work (freelance illustration). (Fans of Mara updates be alert--she promises us something here from her next week.)

So-- what's new?

Still making steady progress on the work, still getting in new original art pages for this volume. Special thanks to Steve Birnbaum, Margaret Liss, and Greg Griffin, all of whom contributed original art scans since the last update! We're still on the lookout for more, so please keep your eyes peeled, and if you have a page (or a dozen), won't you consider sending us an email?

Secondly-- aside from the remaining cleanup, the only real decision remaining on Church + State I is whether to enlarge the artwork further than the 6" x 9" active image area of the High Society printing. There was a lot of discussion of the possibilities back in December. I'll be making some mockups next week to send out to Dave, illustrating the possibilities. In the meanwhile, I'd love any feedback anyone has on the prior discussion. (note-- as mentioned in previous weeks, much of C + S was mysteriously photographed much smaller than the typical 6" x 9". It has already been scaled accordingly. The issue is whether to make the entire book larger than this standard size.)

Lastly-- the High Society re-release received a rave from Tim O'Neil, writing for the Onion AV Club.  

While the entirety of Sim's Cerebus has remained in print for decades, this new edition represents a significant upgrade from the old. Longtime comics fans will remember the once-ubiquitous Cerebus phonebooks, formerly a mainstay of every well-stocked comic shop, now more likely to be found clustered in quiet corners of second-hand bookstores. While there has been much ink spilled on the myriad reasons why Sim and his creation have fallen so severely out of favor, this new printing of High Society highlights the degree to which the continued existence of Cerebus has become less a matter of the contentious present than of historical insight.

And my personal favorite line...

The results speak for themselves: This edition of High Society sets a new standard for the restoration of modern-era black-and-white comics.

 Take a bow, Cerebus fans. You continue to make it happen.