12:40 PM $27,547 PLEDGED! MANY, MANY THANKS!

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CONTINUES TO HELP! THE CAN5 KICKSTARTER IS ENDING TODAY: ACCESS THROUGH THE "JAKA'S STORY" BUTTON TO YOUR RIGHT THERE

I'm jumping WAY ahead in discussing these things but there does come a time to say, "Yes, there are long term plans underway" and the latest Kickstarter seems like the perfect place and occasion to do so.

I mean, where we are right now is in a frantic "do-or-die" (actually "do-THEN-die")  race to get all of the artwork scanned and the digital scans remastered and restored and the restored books brought into print before, on any given day, the money runs out.

It's as close to an impossible task as you could ask for.

We're a few years into it, with an uncertain number of years to go.  God willing we can keep going.

But, however impossibly, so far -- with the generous help of Diamond Comic Distributors and all of our Pledge Partners -- we're managing to do it.  So, as the First Custodian (the sole First Custodian since 2006) of CEREBUS, I always have to be thinking, "Okay, let's say -- impossibly -- we get through all this. THEN what?"

So, that's what this thinking is all about.

The artwork is presently stored off-site and has very limited insurance (ballpark of $120,000).  If you value just the CEREBUS pages -- 3,700 of them -- at $500 each, you're talking about $1.8 million; at $1,000 each, you're talking about $3.7 million. Somewhere between those two amounts.  You (meaning in a general First Custodian sense) don't want to sell the artwork because, for all intents and purposes, it then vanishes.  One person, the owner, has access to it with no way of getting the artwork and artist AA or BB or AABB together (again, the Top Priority).  Ever.  It just passes from "one person/non-artist access" to "one person/non-artist access" from then on.

Bad enough (from a First Custodian vantage point) that 2,300 pages are in that situation.  And that most of those pages are from the most artistically influential period of my work: CEREBUS and HIGH SOCIETY.  Bad First Custodianship on my part, but no use crying over spilt milk.

Given that I'm able in a good month to afford to pay myself $1,000 there is just no rational way to even contemplate insuring the pages as things stand now.  So the plan is, some day, to bring them back ON-site but in a way that satisfies all the insurance problems.  Which means duplicating the bank vault scenario by essentially creating bank vault conditions on-site.  That means as close to Zero Access as possible just as you have with a bank vault.

BUT! Still having extremely limited controlled access, but focussed on preserving that access in perpetuity for artist AA or BB or AABB, someone who may not actually be born until, say, 2147 when I'll be long dead.  As with everything else having to do with CEREBUS "in perpetuity" is always the problem because "in perpetuity" is, like, FOREVER!  :)

ANY COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? I'LL BE POSTING HERE ALL DAY SEPTEMBER 3RD UNTIL THE CAMPAIGN ENDS