What The Cerebus Archive is "All About" A SERIES OF POSTS ON THE LAST DAY OF CAN5 BY DAVE SIM
Please feel free to post comments and questions. I'll be checking back on each of these posts through the day.
The biggest priority -- and the most difficult problem to solve -- is how to get 1) the CEREBUS artwork and 2) the artist most influenced by CEREBUS in any given age -- after I'm dead -- together.
The best way for any artist to improve, when they are heavily influenced by another artist, is through access to that artist's original artwork. There are things you can see in the original that you really can't see any other way.
A good illustration of this is the relationship between Alex Raymond and Al Williamson. They met only once, in 1948, when Williamson went to see Raymond at his studio/home in Stamford CT. Williamson brought samples of his own comic-book work and Raymond would have seen that, by 1948, Williamson was 1) hopelessly infatuated with Raymond's FLASH GORDON work and 2) as good as Raymond himself working in that style.
Raymond's palatial home must have been stuffed to the rafters with his original artwork. Ten years of FLASH GORDON and two years of RIP KIRBY. The absolute best thing he could have done -- artist to artist -- was to give Williamson access to his original artwork and a drawing board where he could sit and study it while pencilling and inking on his own.
Logistically, there was no way for that to happen. Our society wasn't -- and isn't -- set up that way.
MY goal isn't to rearrange society, but it IS to create one small corner of it that does function that way. To make the Off-White House the place where that happens.
Artist A - Alex Raymond. Artist AA - Al Williamson
Call me "A". Call Gerhard "B". Call him/her -- the unknown artist -- either "AA" (primarily influenced by my artwork) or "BB" (primarily influenced by Gerhard's artwork) or "AABB" (influenced equally by both of us).
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