The Making of a Bookplate

 Carson Grubaugh:

"Thank you," to the fans for keeping interest in this project alive through the ups and downs, and years of waiting. Even after five years of working on the book I am ultimately one of you, a massive fan of Dave's work, a ginormous fan of the glamourpuss material, someone who has been eagerly awaiting being able to own a copy of SDOAR since it was first announced. My involvement was always about helping make sure this amazing piece of comics history saw shelves, and...

The time is finally here! 

The Strange Death of Alex Raymond Kickstarter will go live at 1 pm EST on Weds April 28th!  

(Yes, the book is available through Diamond and Amazon, but you can also get it directly from Sean and I, thus cutting us in on a bigger slice of the profits, which will allow for a larger print-run.)

More important, for all of the hardcores, we are offering a Limited Edition of 301 copies (yes, Seiler, this is 100% for your sake; a legitimate #301 of  301! How is that for fan service?). 

The Limited Edition will include the hardcover SDOAR, plus a bookplate illustrated by myself, signed by both myself and Dave, as well as a special 80 page booklet that collects all of the collage mock-ups I received from Dave for v2 and v3, as well as all of the "technical notes" Dave sent along with those mock-ups to explain what I was looking at. 

The cover of the 80 page booklet, Dave's cover design for V2:

 

 

A sample page from the 80 page booklet, a page of mock-ups for V2:

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Now, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the bookplate!

My initial idea was to have something that picture me and Dave with word balloons we could sign our names in. Something humorous. The hope was to have Dave draw a portrait of me, with me drawing Dave and anything else that needed doing.

Dave declined to jam on the illustration so I set about designing it on my own. 

My poor memory told me there was a photo out there of Dave giving someone a noogie. I wanted to use that to make a drawing of Dave giving me a noogie while saying something playful. I was also hoping that if I wrote some piss-poor dialogue it would spark Dave's creativity and he would create some actually funny dialogue for the drawing.

Margaret Liss couldn't think of any photos of Dave giving a noogie, but did send me a set of Dave fighting Cerebus:

That last one looked pretty great, very dynamic, so I rolled with it and took a photo of myself that would lock in with Dave's pose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and mocked up an idea in Photoshop.

I was very happy with how "cool" and dynamic the image was but not so thrilled with how adversarial it looked, so I sent it to Dave to see if he would approve it as is or if he had any ideas for dialogue that could help lighten the mood.

Understandably Dave took it as a "dick" move on my part and rejected the idea, suggestion I focus instead on Raymond and Drake. 

 

Duh...

Using some old practice drawings of Raymond and Drake I mocked up this image (with very bad types-manship. Doh!).

 

Dave requested that we lose the dedication, move the figures up, and throw in a '56 Corvette at the bottom.

 

Needing reference for the car I stumbled around the net and into an Episode of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, in which he takes Jimmy Fallon on a ride in a 56' Corvette. What an amazing resource that episode is for '56 Corvette shots. Thank you, Jerry!

 

I settled on this screen capture.

And proceeded to produce this image.

 

Approval granted I went ahead and made my standard Photoshop tracing, deciding to use a different photo of Drake while I was at it. It just felt more "Drake."

 

That got printed out in pure cyan ink and the final inks were done directly over that print out.

There was one round of suggested changes made to the faces of Raymond and Drake in the Corvette that got us to the finished piece shown in the image above. 

No one will ever see the absolutely abysmal Raymond face that was there the first time around. Thank goodness for whiteout.

This bookplate will be signed by both myself and Dave, and will be affixed to the inside back cover of only 301 copies of SDOAR. These copies are available exclusively through the Kickstarter, so be ready to order yours on Wednesday, April 28th! 

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Once again, thank you all so much for sticking by this project through the years. It is your enthusiasm that has pushed it forward to the forthcoming release to the general market. We thank you ahead of time for this last show of support!

Best,

Carson Grubaugh