MARGARET LISS:
I originally posted this to my now long defunct blog way back in 2009. I thought it'd be fun to show AMoC readers all of this Cerebus goodness with a little rewriting, and some new pictures taken with a newer camera. So no notebook entry this week, instead, you get a look at some items used in the printing of Cerebus.
So at work the that day way back in 2009 I came back to my cubical to find a large poster tube in it. I saw Dave Sim’s address on it, and inside I found a bunch of mylar negatives used in the production of this cover:
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| Cerebus #104 |
I'm not an expert in four color printing using printing plates, but as far as I can determine, these mylar sheets are used to create the printing plates used to print the comics.
When I originally got them there were four negative images made out of mylar with black emulsion on them on each larger mylar sheet: two front cover and two back cover. Each of those smaller images is taped to the large sheet with just regular clear tape.
On the picture above of the overall sheet one of the two front cover negative images was removed. The mylar sheets are approximately 2 feet by 3 feet and have one hole in the center and four slots on one side - at first I thought that would be to used to register the mylar to each other, but now I think it is just to keep them in a book of some sort. As the cover negatives are just taped in place to the larger mylar sheet, and I don't see how they would be put on the same place of each sheet, which would be needed to register (align) each negative to itself.
If these were used to create the (metal?) plates for printing, you would only use one set of the mylar images at a time - one for red, one for blue, one for yellow and one for black. The images on the mylar sheets are actually taped on to them. The images are also the actual size of the image on the comic. Here is a close up of the “magenta” one:
And this is what it'd look like in magenta:
Also included with the four different mylar negatives was a “color layer separator”:
I'm thinking these were used in the creation of the metal printing plates. That they would put these on top of the mylar negatives, so when they exposed the mylar negative to light, only image they needed was put on the metal plate. If there was any foreign material, dirt, dust, crud, it wouldn't be imaged onto the metal plate. At least that is my guess. . .
They overlay perfectly onto the large mylar sheets. You can also see the holes in the large mylar sheets where the two sheets above overlay. Another close up:
Yeah, they just taped the mylar sheet to the red color separator. The mylar sheets are the actual size of the cover:
5 comments:
Neat.
Cool, and groovy. Deep dives like this make you an Olympian, M.
This cover production process is literally “The Making of Cerebus #104.” Thumbs up. But can anyone confirm whether Dave or Bob Burden drew the Carrot here? I guess this issue was drawn in Georgia when the Canadians (Dave and Gerhard) invaded the U.S. to visit Bob, but I don’t know if the Flaming Carrot on the cover was drawn by Dave or Bob (?).
John: That's a good question that hadn't occurred to me - I'd just assumed it was Burden. Obviously it's Gerhard's colors, but there's a couple of things that make me think the linework might be Dave - notably, the hands are less articulated with sausage fingers (Burden really drew almost absurdly detailed hands). Comparing line is sort of tough, because Dave has always been an expert mimic, though Burden generally favored a very heavy brush (I'm assuming) line. The drapery on the figure could really go either way.
I'm basing this on looking at the original reproduction in the covers collection. Possibly the notes in the original issue might clarify?
I just looked up Flaming Carrot on google and found several cover images by Burden. Comparing them to the Cerebus cover, I'd say those are definitely Sim hands-Kopperman is correct. Maybe Sim drew the body and Burden drew the carrot, but why, unless it was a time issue? My guess is that Sim just really wanted to draw the character and it was his book and Burden just shrugged and said something like "one less carrot man to draw is one less carrot man to draw."
Good Please Hold question for July. BTW, Dave faxed me (via Eddie) his response to my theosis question yesterday, which response he will be reading on the same July Please Hold, inshallah.
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