Tuesday 10 November 2015

Bonus Printstravaganza!


Sean Michael Robinson:

Howdy folks--

Alright, there are only ten days left to pledge to the best Cerebus Archive Kickstarter campaign yet.

This time around we have a lot of really slick bonus prints, so I thought I'd take a minute to spotlight them.

First up, we have "Jacob Moore," a great drawing done in the style of a Victorian copperplate etching, depicting a certain familiar comics figure as Jacob Marley and Cerebus as Ebeneezer Scrooge. This barely-seen commission was drawn for Tim W., founder and principal blogger of this here website!



Creepy, eh?

Thanks for the scan, Tim!

Next is the cover of Swords of Cerebus 3, a rare color piece featuring Julius and Cerebus. Also of interest? It was painted on duotone board, a special drawing paper that came with chemicals that could be brushed on to release different types of tone. As you can see, the effect has changed somewhat over time-- there's some remnant of it above Cerebus's head, and some of it creeping in on the edge of the paper as well. This is a nice example of Dave's early mixed media color style, well-suited to the spot-black-heavy of his rendering at this period. I don't have a copy of Swords 3 handy so I can't see for myself, but I'd be curious to know how these colors have changed over time. Some of the color scans I've seen of High Society era covers have seen some color shift-- I'd assume the same is true here as well.



click to embiggen

Next up is one of my personal favorites, the splash page from Selling Insurance, one of the color short stories that appeared in Epic Magazine. The scan for this one was kindly sent by Cerebus art hunter/illustrator extraordinaire Dean Reeves, who specifically asked us to use it for the campaign this time around. Thanks so much for the scan Dean!

This one has a real bande dessinée feel to it, with the rich painted color and bouncy, animation-like characters with thick, expressive contour lines.



Next up is "On the Stairs," an unusual, really nice cast portrait by Dave and Gerhard, done as a commission back in 2007. The rich color (Dr. Martin's dyes?) and slight reinvention of the character style (check out that rubbery Elrod and refined, perfectly coiffed Jaka) really reminds me of the great covers of Following Cerebus done around the same time.


And lastly, we have two different recreations/homages to the iconic Cerebus No.1 cover, one that presents itself as a sequel to the series, another actually imagining the cover as a physical act and extrapolating the before and after. I believe the first was done as an A/V Christmas card, and the second as a commission? (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong). It was also used as an animated intro on the short-lived Cerebus Art website, set up to sell original art and solicit commissions.



As for the last few bonus prints for this round? Let's just say we've saved some exciting items for the end. I'll have a short post up about one of the items in particular, as it has some significant, shall we say, historical interest?

(any guesses what I might be talking about here??)

In the meanwhile, please pledge now, and pledge often!

11 comments:

Jeff Seiler said...

Sean, in regards to your comment/question about Swords of Cerebus 3, I have a 1st edition copy of it. I can tell you that overall color of the cover is flatter (more matte) than is your exemplar, but the hues of the colors are not significantly different. What is especially interesting is that there appears to be a very minimal shadow in the tone on the wall behind Cerebus, that seems to be the shadow of him and his sword. I don't think that shows up in your exemplar.

Unknown said...

Hi Sean! The cover was done mostly with coloured markers because I had pretty much given up on watercolours. Surprisingly, the marker colour hasn't faded which is usually the case with coloured markers

(Harry Kremer bought a Berni Wrightson presentation piece he had done, pitching DC on letting him do SUPERBOY. I saw it for the first time in maybe thirty years -- before Harry died -- and it was completely bleached out compared to how it had looked in the mid-1970s).

I'll just add to my point yesterday that immigration isn't really a solution -- although it's pitched as one -- to the drop below replacement birth rate. The problem with a Feminist Theocracy such as we're living in is the extent of the indoctrination: the feminist solution to ALL problems is "MORE WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE". So, however many immigrants you have, you're training them into societal suicidal ways.

[which is one of the actual problems with the European emigrant crisis: how fast can you indoctrinate populations into the ways of the suicidal Feminist Theocracy? Not fast enough and basically you'll just be creating Muslim countries everywhere that society is committing suicide-by-feminism: which is everywhere in Europe. You're going to have to create Feminist Theocracy litmus tests: "Do you believe that a father is the head of the household?" Feminist Theocracy answer: no. "Do you believe that a man has any proprietary claim to his children by virtue of being their father?" Feminist Theocracy answer: no.]

Feminists have absolute control over education and indoctrinate girls to have careers, to have fewer children and to have them later in life if they insist on having children. There's not much room between here -- 86% of women in the workforce -- and the plexiglass ceiling -- 100% of women in the workforce. Likewise universities which started by moving in the direction of numerical parity between the genders -- 50-50 when it was 70-30 in favour of men -- and haven't even slowed down now that the enrolment rate is 70-30 in favour of women.

This applies to Cerebus Archive. My concern is what is going to happen on campus when when the Feminist Theocracy approaches their 100% objective -- higher education exclusively for women -- and that still doesn't fix their STRUCTURAL problems. All Cartoon Collections are on campuses and campuses are about as close as you can get to Stalinist Russia without being there. That's in 2015. The last thing I want is CEREBUS -- an intelligent discussion of feminism and matriarchies -- "inside" when the Feminist Kristallnacht happens.

Totalitarian societies which don't accept dissenting viewpoints need scapegoats at the point of apogee. The point of apogee for the Feminist Theocracy will be long after I'm dead but, unfortunately, I have to plan for it now.



Anthony Kuchar said...

Hi Dave: The buzzword used in Universities these days is "Problematic".

"Shakespeare's good, but he's problematic"
"Shaw's good but he's problematic"
"Twain's good but he's problematic"

I saw a play at Brock last year called "Jehanne of the Witches" by Canadian Sally Clark. It was a modern re-imagining of George Bernard Shaw's Joan of Ark which postulates that Joan(English name for Jeanne d'Arc) wasn't spoken to by Angels and Saints but was in fact being manipulated by Pagan spirits into becoming a sort of unwitting pre-pubescent killing machine on behalf of Charles VII. Her mother was also a pagan witch and source for much of her "powers". Also, Gilles de Rais was there and his attraction to Joan made him dress up little boys as her and kill them (among other things). When I was watching it I thought this is the kind of thing Alan Moore would love.

Christianity=Bad for Women
Paganism=Good for Women

This was a play that was made by feminists, with feminist values. Lets rewrite history till it becomes less problematic.

https://experiencebu.brocku.ca/organization/DART/calendar/details/17307
http://www.brocku.ca/webfm_send/30135

Anthony Kuchar said...

Dave Sim would be so far beyond Problematic, they couldn't even imagine.

Sandeep Atwal said...

“Hey who wants to help me get this cartoonist out of here? I need some muscle over here.”

Tony Dunlop said...

I have never seen Cerebus as primarily a critique of feminism, and I'm sure I'm not alone. If that's what Dave intended from the beginning, and I'd be surprised if it were, then his great glee in subtlety and obscurity - which is what attracted many of us - hid this metatheme much too skillfully. I saw it more broadly as a merciless skewering of earthly power in all of its forms, and I recall Dave himself saying as much in the back of the monthly book once upon a time. Sure, the second half (Mothers and Daughters onward) got more explicitly antifeminist (!), but that's only the second half. So the dangers of matriarchy/feminism was the theme of half of the run; if it was intended to be the theme of the whole series, I don't think that comes across at all. Certainly a hypothetical reader starting with the new remasters isn't going to pick up on that for quite a while; they're just going to see what so many of us saw; brilliant and hilarious parody in the tradition of Swift and Voltaire.

Anonymous said...

I just hope that Dave's post for today isn't excerpted in a way that skews his message to make it seem like Dave's a crazy misogynist who is all over the map. Let's remember to focus on his true message, which is that a lot of money is needed to preserve Cerebus.

- Reginald P.

Anonymous said...

@ Anthony:

I think the latest thing at universities, and in particular gender studies departments, is to make all their favourite topics plural. So, you don't talk about feminism, you talk about "feminisms", because we must acknowledge the diversity of opinions in feminisms and that the concepts of feminisms are constructions that are constantly in flux (or fluxes). Meanings are contested. Concepts elude definition. The same with Islam. We must talk about "Islams" for the same reasons as above.

On the other hand, anything bad is singular. So there is definitely patriarchy and that can definitely be defined. Or imperialism or colonialism.

- Reginald P.

Anonymous said...

"...when the Feminist Kristallnacht happens..."

...Okay, did Dave Sim, of all people, just pull a Reductio ad Hitlerum?

Seriously?

Seriously?

Travis Pelkie said...

The way I read that issue of M&D where the background of Cirin and the Cirinist/Kevillist schism was laid out, I saw it as a critique of communism a la Orwell's Animal Farm. Yes, it was with a female led movement, but it seemed more analogous to communism to me. At least when I first read it ages ago.

Glen said...

@Anonymous


You can't escape Godwins Law.