The REAL Truth about Cerebus #1.

Hi, Everybody!

Happy Monday!

So...video Updates from Dave on Fridays, faxed religious observations from Dave on Mondays. Hobbs and CiH? on Wednesdays, Margaret and notebooks on Thursdays, Oliver and the link-storm on Sundays? I gotta work what? Two days a week? I ain't gonna bitch...

But you guys probably will, SO:

Helping research the Secret History of the Counterfeit Cerebus #1 for the Waverly Press (I'm part of the "compiled and edited by" credit...) I noticed a serious flaw in the legend of Cerebus #1.

What am I talking about?

As every Cerebite learns in Cerebus School*:

In late 1977, Dave Sim wrote and drew, and Deni Loubert published Cerebus #1. There were two thousand copies printed, with five hundred copies going to Now & Then books in Kitchener, Ontario. Five hundred copies to Big Rapids Distribution in Lansing, Michigan. And one thousand copies to Sea Gate Distributing in New York, New York. Dave and Deni then sold copies at a Toronto Comic Convention when issue #2 came out in 1978. When they were down to their last twenty copies, Dave set them aside. Ten went with Deni when they divorced in 1983. Dave auctioned a signed CGC'ed copy for $10,000 to benefit ACTOR (now the HERO Initiative) in 2004.

Notice the problem?

As I faxed to Dave:

Hi Dave!
 I’ve been reading through the rough (Really rough, how rough? I turned my back for a minute and all the hubcaps were missing from my car when I turned back around, I mean rough…) first draft of CEREBUS THE COUNTERFEIT SAGA**.
 And something funny occurred to me. How many copies of the REAL Cerebus #1 were printed?
 “Cause, I say cause, the numbers don’t add up, son. The math’s all wrong. Arithmetic boy. Ya got yer numbers all jumbled…” So, two thousand copies were printed, yes? And Harry Kremer took 500. 1000 went to a distributor in New York, and 500 to Detroit. (These numbers come from one of the articles about the counterfeits.)
 So: 2000 minus 500, minus 1000, minus 500 means where the heck did the copies you and Deni sold come from? (And the twenty you set aside that Deni got 10 of when you guys split the company.)
 Something is rotten in the City-State of Palnu (And I’m not talking about the stuffed tomatoes I had for lunch.)
 Would you please elaborate on how the numbers work?
 Manly Matt Dow

And Dave faxed back:

So there are/were 2000ISH copies of Cerebus #1. And half of them are smudgey on the cover. Also, there are an unknown number of counterfeit copies that aren't printed as nice.

This is why I backed the remastered #1 Kickstarter. It'll look nice, and I don't have to sweat whether I wasted a crap-ton of money on a #1 that wasn't once touched by Dave Sim...

*I got my BS from Cerebus School in 2017...
**The Secret History has been completely reworked since I wrote that, and is *MWAH* PERFECT!
Next Time: I got mail!