Reads: A Study In Detail

Sean Michael Robinson:

Victor had always regarded illustrators as something between an unnecessary evil and a terminal malignancy in the world of reads publishing. There was a perverse streak within every one of them (Victor was certain of this) which compelled them to render everything within their engravings except that which was described in the text.

Greetings AMOCers! Long time no see.

Lots of restoration progress to report since the last brief update waaay back in November...

First off, contributors to Cerebus Archive Number Four will be happy to hear that my work on that project is complete and sent off to John, assuming the next round of proofs arrive with everything looking a-okay. It's safe to say it's already the slickest-looking package we've put together as of yet, and the bonus prints especially have been a joy to have laying around the studio as I work.

As for the restoration work, I'm making incremental progress on three books simultaneously now, zipping back and forth between them every few days so that no one of them is finished before the others. Why this strategy? There's still stock at Diamond of two of the three books in progress, and so there's no hurry to complete the work on any of them in particular. My guess is that all three will be completed and sent to Dave somewhere within the next ten weeks. (But I've been wrong before!)

As to when we'll print them? Could be six months from now, could be six years from now-- it's entirely dependent on sales of the series.

For those of you who haven't picked up your copy of Church & State I yet, what can I say? In addition to feeding your eyes with some gorgeously printed, painstakingly restored line art, you'll be helping us move one more square closer to the Big Dance for the next few books. (And yes, Adam, commenting from this week-- the paper stock is upgraded significantly, insuring the printing has minimal dot gain and rich blacks, and basically doubling the girth of the book and more than doubling its weight...)

Last bit of news-- despite what you might see on the banner above, I'm alone on this project for now.

Sad news for me but good news for Mara-- she's ramping up her research work and won't be available for any more restoration work in the foreseeable future. This is the other reason the restoration work has slowed a bit--although I've put in more hours to compensate, one person obviously doesn't work as fast as two.

The upside to this-- once we've passed the hurdles of the current books, it's much smoother from here on out, as the artwork is newer, the tone is more intact and the condition of the pages overall improved, and Dave and Gerhard used less tone overall in their work.

So! The past few months have been alternating between work on Cerebus Volume One, Church & State II, and Reads. Since we haven't seen any yet, how about we take a look at some Reads originals?

Those of you with good to middling memories will recall that Reads begins with a long text sequence tracing the progress of one Victor Davis, writer, through the "reads" industry. The sequence is a sort of Latter Half David Copperfield Meets Comics Publishing, that rather ingeniously equates the comics industry of the 1990s with the era of the serialized novel. (This transposition is an extremely clever and telling conceptual trick, one that my friend and I would borrow two decades later).

Anyway, the text sequence is accompanied by charming one-off illustrations on the facing pages. Here's a look at one of my favorites.

Below is a raw scan of the negative.

And above is the cleaned-up scan directly from the original art. Quite a difference in the values represented-- the original has a light, airy touch, despite the pooling black in the figure, whereas the negative scan seems clogged and murky in comparison. Notice also the marbling on the stone, broken up in the initial photography. 

And here's another comparison for you. The top is the negative--below that is the cleaned-up original.

Hopefully that gives you all just a bit into the types of improvements we've been able to make by going back to the original artwork, even on a much later book like Reads. The artwork is fantastic, to a page, and it continues to be our goal to get every inch of it off the art board and on to paper for you in the most readable form possible.

But my time is short, and I'd imagine you're a bit sick of my blathering at this point. How about some Reads Original Art in Extreme Closeup to send us out?

Your wish is my command.

(some of the following images have had their color channels adjusted to bring out non-repro pencil detail that would otherwise be invisible on-screen)