Moving Forward with SDOAR

Carson, here-

You all deserve more details. Also, it is important to hear from the fans regarding the future of SDOAR given this massively disappointing news coming from Dave.
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Where the projects stand:

Two full volumes of SDOAR are completed and ready to print. They have been for quite a while. This is about 250 pages of material, about 75 pages of art from myself. (Sorry, not gonna take an exact count).

Both issues of YDKJ are ready for print, and have been for an even longer time. This is mostly my work, but includes a few drawings by Dave and a page per issue by Sean Robinson.

The Heritage Auctions parody catalog, Hermitage Awesomes is ready to print and has been for over a year. I wrote and designed the book with very vague instructions from Dave. He took what I did, made slight modifications to the design, and almost entirely re-wrote the gags.

There are 20 or so pages of mock-ups for Volume 3. Dave quit producing those when I told him I could not justify time away from my painting, which is important to my actual career, unless we had solid release dates and at least one actual book on store shelves. Basically: until I can put something tangible on my resume.

At some point "forthcoming from IDW" on the resume started to feel like a lie. Now it is actually a lie and I have been telling it to potential employers for a couple of years. Not cool.
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Regarding IDW:

They are firmly out of the picture now that Ted Adams is no longer there. Scott Dunbier communicated this to Dave some time ago (I just found this out yesterday from Sean. Thanks for the updates, Dave.)

Ted told Dave many times that he was not in debt to them for the page rate he received while producing SDOAR. Dave continued to insist he was something like thirty-grand in debt, which was his reasoning for doing the release of SDOAR all backwards. He had to pay IDW off first, because he had no faith the book itself would earn them their money back.

Dave's marketing/release "scaffold" was initially something like: do a limited Artists Edition print of the first 50 pages of SDOAR, then release YDKJ, then release V 1., then another AE of another 50 pages. As time went on this shifted to 20 pages for the AE's, I believe. It is hard to tell. As may now be clear I often wasn't in the loop.
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Regarding Heritage Auctions:

The plan then morphed into something like a collaboration between Heritage Auctions and IDW, in which we would release the HA parody, possibly with the full V1. in the back, then have the auction, etc. Neither company was ever fully on board. I am not sure IDW even knew Dave was working on this.

Dave was supposedly in contact with Todd Hignite from HA about all of this. As far as I could tell HA mostly wanted to auction the remaining original Cerebus art and was humoring the idea of a parody of their catalogs in an effort to get some of that action.

Hard to tell. Dave usually called me about these issues and the details often changed. He once asked me to just show up at the Heritage offices in San Francisco and walk around to check out their operations. I never understood what this was supposed to accomplish or why Dave thought I could just saunter in without him setting up an appointment for me.

We rarely ever talked about these things through fax. I have come to suspect Dave faxes and request faxes in return when he wants things "on the record" and calls when it benefits him to be able to say the other party got something incorrect. Just my perception.

For instance, Dave hoped aloud to me a number of times - knowing it was a long shot, I think - that HA would fly the two of us around the world to do showings of the art at their numerous show rooms. Wouldn't that be great for my resume? Or, more recently that we could set up a show of the art in San Diego to coincide with Comic Con when he got down there at the end of his CA trip.
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Regarding the California Trip and the Edition to fund it:

This never made any sense to me either. When Dave first proposed it his thought was that if we worked our way from the top of CA to the bottom we would cause a word-of-mouth storm of excitement that by the time we hit Southern California would have Hollywood executives asking for a meeting to option our properties.

His plan for these meetings was to offer You Don't Know Jack as a television series in which Jack is stuck in a Groundhog-Day-style loop of the same day being lived out in different realities, as a different intersectional-identity-Jack each time. Each episode would have to be done entirely by representatives of a certain "community." For example, a Gay-Hispanic-Catholic-Female Jack episode, written, acted and directed by entirely by gay, Hispanic, Catholic women. Funny. I would have loved if we made it happen and got an award for contributions to diversity in film and television. But, uhhh... really? This is the plan? Really? Can we just release our comics?

Sean Robinson and Oliver Simonsen can back me up on this. They were both asked to help contribute to a producing a teaser trailer that would be shown to the executives in the meetings Dave's trip was supposed to whip up enough excitement to ensure. I never saw what was made and would love to see it.

Dave asked me to plan his trip. I refused, but did plug the list of stores Rolly generated into a trip-planner website that we paid $200 for.

The Fundraiser Edition for the trip was never mentioned to me. I would have been against it. I was against handing out free copies of our products on the trip as well. I can't imagine a product being interesting to publishers when the core audience has already purchased it and there are loads of free copies floating around the market.

But, apparently I was going to be signing them? A call or fax would have been nice.
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My take:

I was always against these marketing and release plans. My stated position to Dave, since I finished my part of V1 in 2016, was always, "Give it to IDW and lets print this bad boy. The fans deserve it."

I, luckily, still have a lengthy letter I sent in early 2017 expressing my dissatisfaction, prior to me starting work on YDKJ. Dave called instead of faxing back on that one. That letter is available here.

Most of my faxes were sent by typing them directly into the text form at FaxZero.com. Hopefully they exist somewhere in Dave's archive. I suspect only his responses do.

But, it is Dave's baby. I bowed to his plans.

I was thrilled to work on YDKJ and was totally willing to delay V1 with the idea that YDKJ would be promotional material for SDOAR. Still proud of the work I did on that.

I was against the HA catalog, but felt it was the last barrier Dave could possibly throw up to publication so produced it begrudgingly. By the time I was done I was proud of it and still think it is funny.

I foolishly spent four months painting a cover for V1 that got scrapped. I hated every minute of making that painting and agreed upon completion it made a piss poor cover.

I foolishly worked on and completed V2, largely because the mock-ups Dave sent me excited me so much. I just really wanted to draw them. I am extremely proud of those pages.

At that point I became absolutely convinced of my suspicion that Dave has never had any intentions of releasing SDOAR, especially not of completing it., This worry had been in place since Dave first asked me to produce commentary for the AE (which I also did) intended to precede V1 in 2017. That ask was the impetus for the aforementioned letter.

As far as I can tell Dave will generate reason after reason, project after project, to push the release back in hopes of dying before the work is done. I really hate to say it, but that is my gut reaction to everything I have witnessed in the last four years.

I have never received on cent of payment for any of my work on any of these projects. I spent about two-and-a-half years not producing any of my own work. Associating myself with Dave has always been a massive risk to my career in academia, for what should be obvious reasons. I did it all, gladly, because I believed in the products. No regrets.
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Moving forward:

Dave has always been very clear that all creators who contribute to a project have equal right to seek publication. I consider Eddie Khanna and Sean Robinson as massive contributors to the work and thus as co-owners. I hope Dave will honor his long-standing position on ownership and allow us to share our hard work with the world.

I, personally, think the best thing we can do is seek out a publisher willing to publish V1 and 2 as a single, printed collection. I would happily illustrate the 20 or so pages from Vol 3 that have been mocked up once a contract and release date are in place.

Part of Dave's reasoning for doing things his way was his belief that the book would perform so poorly that it would be immoral to let a publisher waste money promoting and publishing it. The best chance we all have of seeing the work completed is to actually publish it. If, IF, it were to do well and prove to be an income producer for Dave, it MAY convince him that SDOAR is more worthy of his time.

If it does poorly, well, at least it is out there, in a physical edition that we can all have as a record of where Dave hit a wall. Trust me, this does not look anywhere near as good digital as with proper printing. Everyone who has seen it in both formats will back me up on this.

Dave always said that if he died before he finished Cerebus it should be printed up to the point he died as proof of where God said "Enough." I would like to apply that here as well. "This is where 'far enough' was on SDOAR."

I believe even in an unfinished state SDOAR is a work worthy of publication. It is a real, formally ingenious, master-class in the comics medium. The world deserves to see it in the same way the world deserves to see every last scrap of Big Numbers. This is part of the medium's history and deserves to be revered as such.

Dave would be paid his cut. Of course.
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It would be great to hear from you all what you think about this hope to publish. Doesn't mean we are going to agree, or that you will get your way (too many different opinions to achieve that, I am sure) but the input would be much appreciated.

Best,
Carson Grubaugh