Cerebus Archive Number Nine Update, and Update, and Update, and...

Hi, Everybody!

Moment of "Cerebus" #1:

Carson Grubaugh updated all the Kickstarter backers:

The Blue meanines: The inevitable delay of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond

Dear Backers,

We almost pulled this off without a hitch, but, cursed projects are cursed projects, after all.

The print run was entirely printed. 700 copies were bound early and sent on their way to me so I could complete fulfillment before work obligations resume on August 10th. Then Sean got an unbound copy of the book.

The end of the book has a number of pages that use a second color, a process blue. The blue was missing from these pages, taking a lot of important content with it. A seeminly inexplicable error, only affecting those four pages but none of the surrounding ones, inexplicable in both how it occurred, and how it was missed when the book was on press.

I declined the shipment of book. The printer recalled the rest of the run and is pulping everything.

The printer has admitted 100% fault and are working with Sean to get us a proper version of the book ASAP, but after a week, we still have no ETA, and so feel obligated to loop you in.

The book is still coming, and all of your orders will be fulfilled. I am just going to have to do fulfillment in and around my contractual obligations as a professor.

Thank you all for hanging in there with us as we get this resolved.

.........................

The problem with Blue is actually an instance of a long standing curse that has haunted the project off and on throughout my involvement, and is part of why I chose to have some blue in my ending. It was thematically relevant.

The issue with Blue first cropped up while working on the painting that was supposed to be the cover to SDOAR Vol.1.

Dave sent over a mock-up and photographic materials for the cover as well as written instructions that mentioned using a turquoise glow on the cars.

Soon after receiving material that I watched the film, The Shape of Water, which is set around the time of Raymond's crash and makes a big deal about a turquoise car. Excited by this resonance I faxed Dave, inquiring if maybe Drake's car had been turquoise. There were models of the 1956 Corvette painted "Cascade Green." I was especially interested in this because when I print out my tracings from Photoshop, in cyan, made transparent to 30% opacity, they look a lot like this color.

Dave was convinced Drake's car was white given the photos he had seen, but I provided evidence that a car with that light of a color on it would reproduce as white in the standard photography of the time.

A bit from Dave on turquoise.

When I finally got around to producing a photo-collage of the cover I sent it to Dave for approval. The file was sent to Studio Comix Press, where they printed it out at size and gave the physical copy to Dave.

Dave swore up and down that the cars printed blue and he couldn't make a decision about the composition until I sent a version with white cars.

The cars were never blue at any point in my making of the file. Only ever white.

Alfonso at Studio Comix swore the print he gave Dave had white cars.

This happen three or four times. I would send a file and get a response, like this, from Dave.

This caused a lot of tension, because I never sent anything with blue cars and Alfonso knew not to give Dave anything with blue on it. I asked multiple times for Dave to send a photograph of himself holding a print with blue cars because I was convinced he was seeing things or making things up. He never sent a photo.

Eventually, Dave got a print that looked like it had white cars and approved the composition.

Around the same time Sean and I were struggling to get my printer to print only Cyan ink. If we could get this to happen then his job adjusting out my tracings would be much easier. As it was, the lighter version of the color I was using was causing the printer to use magenta and yellow as well.

I finally got a few things to print in pure Cyan, and thought we had a process that would be perfect. Then I tried to print the photos I was going to use as reference for painting the cover and realized that the only reason my printer was now printing exclusively in cyan ink was that it was broken. All of the photo reference printed out in pure cyan and nothing I did would fix the issue.

In desperation I ran to Office Max, bought the only unit they had of the printer I need for my process. It was a display unit that wound up having clogged print heads that lead to it also only printing in ... yup, cyan.

I ordered a newer model of the printer on Amazon for a much higher price tag, which finally fixed the issue.

I explained all of this to Dave as it was too weird to let go. He responded.

(Dave and Eddie did find conclusive proof that the car was white, btw)

To which I replied

Which Dave found particularly compelling.

All of this to say, of course using process blue in the final project was a bad idea.

Also, if you wondered why the cover had the colors it does, blue was very purposeful and once you have blue, orange is just a given.

It would sound crazy to me too, but I am living it,

Best,
Carson

Alls I can say, is "I'm blue da ba dee die"...

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Moment of Cerebus #2:

Dave has faxed me up a storm with updates on Cerebus Archive Number Nine:

Those aren't the boxes with Crisis on Infinite Quarantine, but you get the idea...

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Moment of Cerebus #3

Dave sent these photos of him signing Swords of Cerebus in Hell? Volume something or other (I dunno, who do you think I am, Hobbs?)

It's Volume two. I figured that out...

Oh hey look, it's a different volume!

And so's this one! AND, Dave's signing the reprint to the comic in the case on the wall. Take about yer Comic Art Metaphysics...

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Super-Cerebus vs. Covid-19

Swords Of Cerebus In Hell? Volume 7

Three days to go on Hobbs 2ND Kickstarter.

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Friend to the Blog, Steve Peters is running a new Kickstarter for his band The Fright Watch. Mentioning it in case any of you are interested.

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Hey, look what Heritage has. (New stuff. Click it. CLICK IT!)

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The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe (sales will return soon...)

Next Time: Dude that was like a week and a half's worth of Moments, and you want MORE tomorrow?!? WTF, Mags...