Thursday 17 November 2016

The Cerebus-Ending Crisis: Can We Keep Going? - Part 5

CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER 6
A Portfolio of 10 Signed & Numbered Prints with Exclusive Commentary by Dave Sim
Raising Funds For The Restoration & Preservation Of The World's Longest Graphic Novel 


HI! DAVE SIM HERE! ANNOUNCING THAT KICKSTARTER CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER 6 (CAN6) HAS LAUNCHED! CLICK HERE TO LINK TO IT! AND PLEASE JOIN ME HERE EVERY DAY AS I DISCUSS, WITH CEREBUS FANS, THE "CEREBUS-ENDING CRISIS" WE'VE BEEN IN SINCE JULY OF THIS YEAR:

CAN WE KEEP GOING? THE TMI ANSWER!
PART FIVE OF FOURTEEN

In answer to our Kickstarter Survey Question "Do you have any suggestions for future Cerebus Kickstarter campaigns?" Greg G of Los Angeles, California wrote:
Second suggestion is to break these campaigns out of the Cerebus fan echo chamber. Something like a Cerebus Archive - endorsed anthology of criticism, not unlike the Eric Hoffman book. And it should be real criticism, and Dave should have the opportunity to respond to it. Bring in heavyweight literary and comics critics and maybe the premiums could include signed copies by some / all of them, or a video of some of them reviewing their thoughts with Dave, or something like that. Serves dual purpose of widening reach of Cerebus dialogue and raising the bar on Cerebus as literature.

I have a line of credit on my life insurance policy and some RRSPs. That's all that kept this whole operation going in July of this year. We had sufficient revenues to get through August, September and half of October and now we're back living off the line of credit and the RRSPs, which WERE (and, what's left of them, ARE) there on the theory that they would pay for nursing care (which I am likely to need because we're all going to need it some day).

We're going to try and do a Kickstarter every two months, so a lot depends on how many of the 200 CEREBUS fans that are left can afford to keep up with that.

We lost 40 Pledge Partners between CAN4 and CAN5 and then got 20 new ones, so who knows? Maybe there IS some kind of "churn" happening that might actually "kickstart" something.

It's still a "net loss" of 20 people, though.

So, the trajectory is still pretty much straight down.

But, Greg, you and 200 people like you are, so far, managing to keep that trajectory from just being a total freefall into oblivion. As long as you keep doing your part, I'll keep doing my part.

And, best of luck to anyone who wants to make a try at breaking CEREBUS out of that downward trajectory or Greg's CEREBUS Fan Echo Chamber. I'm always more than happy to be proven wrong!

THANKS FOR JOINING US! MY DISCUSSION OF THE "CEREBUS-ENDING CRISIS" CONTINUES NEXT WEEK ON A MOMENT OF CEREBUS:


CAN WE KEEP GOING? THE TMI ANSWER!
PART SIX

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave,
I'm planning on making physical printed copies of the notebooks and books of letters at a print on demand company, if you're ok with this.

However, the letters books don't have cover images. Collected Letters 2 and 3 had comics for covers. Obviously, with your hand out of commission, you can't draw a comic cover for each book, but any chance of writing a comic cover and having someone else draw it? (Seeing as how this is most likely a "me" problem, and not a "Cerebus fan" problem, I'd be happy to draw it, and provide you with a finished copy that you could distribute to any other interested parties... assuming there are any.)

Or maybe a CIH? comic for the cover? (Which I'd happily digitally composite.)

Otherwise, I'll probably print them out using either images from the Cerebus Oversize project, or with a plain white cover with just the name. (Once again, assuming you're ok with these being printed off.)

Thoughts on this clearly pressing issue would be welcome.

Benjamin Hobbs




Unknown said...

Hi Benjamin! Yeah I'm fine with whatever you want to do.

Any of the COLLECTED LETTERS 1989 to 2004, you might consider doing a montage of that year's CEREBUS covers. It would not only be relevant to the content, but it would mean when you were reading the letters, you could say "What issue was May, again?" And that would (mostly) tell you what we had just finished working on when I was writing the letters.

To reiterate: anyone wants to put something together and post it here for the COLLECTED LETTERS we've already done, you'd probably get a lot of "takers".