(A selection of) Dave's Death's Dark Tread Commentaries

Hi, Everybody!

So...um...sorry(?)

Dave sent me the UNCORRECTED 6-7/78 COMMENTARIES...on June 30th. (I thought the file was only a couple of pictures of Dave signing CiH? issues, so I didn't open it. Again, sorry(?).)

So, here's Dave's commentary on my favorite pages. If you got a copy of the portfolio, and want the whole thing so you can skip the Kickstarter for the Cerebus #4 CAN Portfolio 6-7/78, send me an email and I'll get you the file. (But if you DON'T already have the portfolio, just back the dang Kickstarter...)

Anyway:

- CAVEAT EMPTOR

INCORRECT AND BADLY EXPRESSED OBSERVATIONS MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

HI MATT! WELL THAT TOOK WAY TOO FREAKING LONG! THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY AND MONDAY. A) IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I'VE WRITTEN COMMENTARIES OF ANY KIND B) IT'S
COMMENTING ON 22 PAGES INSTEAD OF 10 PAGES C) MY WRIST IS KILLING ME D) I FORGOT THAT I NEED TO TAKE REGULAR "MY BRAIN IS TURNING TO CREAM CHEESE" BREAKS WHEN I'M RELIVING THE 1970S OR 1980S OR 1990S INSIDE A WORD DOCUMENT.

PAGE 2 - A lot of really inexplicable choices which are easily explained by my still learning to budget my inking time and not being terrible at it but not particularly good at it either. The lattice-hatching (to coin a term) in the upper left. The idea was to do the solid black and then transition to thick lattice hatching (using the same Speedball pen I used for the boldface lettering) and then into thin lattice hatching. It's too rough, the transition too abrupt, so it's visually distracting. Smoothing out the gradation would take too much time. This was a recurrent problem in No.4.

The spotting of the blacks is good compositionally, not so good contextually. And far more Bernie Wrightson than BWS. Going by Cerebus' Wrightson-like shadow on the wall behind him, Cerebus is under-lit from the left but that's inconsistent with the shadows under his fingers and the feathering on the left side of the rain barrel. The latter choice being the result of the vertical line-work on the wall being too widely spaced and done with a rapidograph pen so I couldn't get a clean edge on the rain barrel (I could have if I masked off the edge with masking tape or frisket and then inked the lines carefully, but that was a lot more "prep" than I was prepared to do in 1978. So I'm disguising the edge with feathering and thereby killing my own lighting effect. I'm using a mezzotint LT 137 on the door which I then needed to balance with the LT 935 skyline in the background because the two sides of the page were grey but the middle was hard-contrast black and white. Every time I "solved" a problem, I created another problem or two.

BWS didn't use tone anywhere on "Red Nails", so I was already "at sea" in a lot of ways. Watching myself answering my question "Why DOESN'T this look like BWS?" every step of the way. Let me count the DUH! ways! This is another recurring motif on No.4.

The quasi-Art Nouveau enhancements on the window and the awning (?) above Cerebus are interesting in that they're so crudely rendered, they enhance the primitive Bronze Age culture. They invented Art Nouveau, but they were really bad at it. I find that funnier now than I did at the time.

PAGE EIGHT - Burlap tone looks better on background objects that could, plausibly, be made of burlap.

Panel one. I'll give my 22-year-old self points that I didn't shy away from actually drawing a BWS "bustling marketplace" and only giving up and "mailing it in" on a few of the figures. Even to the point of doing a strange skyline that doesn't not work. Although it would be a stretch to describe it as working or Working. The strange design that I drew in the middle of the central building demonstrates that there was a finite point where I wouldn't keep working and actually draw something and, instead, just find something to fill the space with. The buildings are Bronze Age skyscrapers -- ridiculously tall for the time period particularly when you look at how tiny the ground level figures are in the extreme background -- and that was very difficult for me to imagine. And you have to be able to imagine it to draw it. But the "plus" is that there's no logical way to draw a Bronze Age skyscraper so whatever I came up with couldn't be technically wrong. All I had to do was -- plausibly -- fake another dozen or two dozen floors.

Panel two. Having to confront the fact that there were two structural choices in drawing CEREBUS the comic book: spend all of my time drawing background characters from the waist down (a la Todd's SPAWN 10 cover) or have Cerebus become impossibly tall all of a sudden. Here I opt for the latter solution. That's a pretty good BWS knock-off background character.

Panels two, three and four. Being forced to confront the problem of "they don't make animation cels that big". True, but I think I abandoned the "animation cel rule" too quickly. In a black and white comic where mechanical texture tones are "spotted in" sparingly and the lead character is the only one sporting a flat 30% grey tone, he's going to stand out in every page that he's on. Making him a solved problem. Whereas by using a beefy brush line, depending on how far into the foreground he is, that becomes an on-going problem to be solved. Eventually I solved the problem by saying "any rendering on Cerebus needs to be no thicker than the thickest line I can get out of a Hunt 102 pen nib". Not quite as thin as an animation cel line but not much thicker than that either.

Panel four. I'm really paying attention on the first appearance of Elrod's hand. It's funny to see exactly how much I'm paying attention.

"This is Moorcock’s Elric and the 'core of the funny' is the contrast between that brand of Grandiose Nobility and the fact that he sounds like Senator Claghorn/Foghorn Leghorn". Basically, where Senator Claghorn came from in the first place. He gets elected because he's a Good Ol' Boy but that Good Ol' Boy quality makes him seem wildly inappropriate in the Roman Senate Done Right United States Senate of the early 20th century.

One of BWS's ways of establishing that Nobility in CONAN No. 14 "A Sword Called Stormbringer" was to render at least a half-dozen close-ups of Elric's gauntlets. Glittering banded metal not just on the forearms but on the hand and each individual finger. "Okay, well, there's the challenge: the more I can do that, the funnier the parody is going to be". I never got quite to that level but this was about the closest. The five strips of metal issuing from the wrist across the back of the hand are a case in point. I've got connecting black bolts at the top of two of them but not the other three. "This far and no further". It would have required switching to a fresh Hunt 102 to go in that tiny. Deciding not to meant that I was choosing "paying attention" over Paying Attention.

PAGE NINE - As Moorcock indicated in his fan letter, I'm riffing on BWS's Elric which really had less to do with Moorcock's Elric than with Jack Gaughan's depiction of the character on his Lancer paperback covers. Writers and artists. We're all parasites swimming with Moorcock and feeding off of his creativity but can't be bothered to look at his descriptions of what we're drawing. In my case, it wasn't my target audience. My target audience was fans of Roy Thomas and BWS's CONAN.

It was definitely a drawing challenge. If BWS's Elric had the personality of Foghorn Leghorn, what would his body language be like? How would you draw him? That depended on where the character was on an illustration spectrum between a Robert McKimson animation cel of Foghorn Leghorn and a BWS drawing of Elric.

Panel three is where I'm having the most trouble finding that balance. Foghorn Leghorn is a "loud-mouthed schnook" (as What'shisname the Chicken-hawk described him). In "bigfoot cartooning", you depict a loudmouth with an exaggeratedly large mouth. But in "little-foot cartooning", a mouth is only as large as a mouth is. It worked in profile (panel 2) but I couldn't "get" what the panel 2 mouth would look like square on.

Panel four came out really good. "Don't worry about the visual loudmouth -- the dialogue and lettering will carry that -- stick with doing BWS".

His technique for doing a gleaming minaret had changed by the time of "Red Nails" (was it really just three years?) but this is both a good version of it and a good use of the LT 103. A series of happy accidents.

Panel five is really good. "Let's just try to do a good BWS figure." Mission accomplished. Cerebus is too tall or Elrod is too short or both but the rendering and the overall proportions are good.

In that proportional sense, it's also the best use of LT 181 to this point.

But then, partly laziness, I've guessed wrong on where to trim the tone next to Elrod's gauntlet and hand on his right arm (the 181 was really hard to see through because of the pattern density). It's pretty easily corrected. Just draw a few really tiny circles with a fresh 102 and be careful right at the tone (if India ink goes under the tone, that's all she wrote). Nope. I mean, it's partly laziness and it's partly being extremely "time aware". If it already looks really good, don't use any more time on it. Save your time for things that need fixing up ahead (no shortage of those).

I disagree now. Ten or fifteen minutes of carefully budgeted time to finish a really good panel would have been a good investment. But, I can understand why I didn't do it.

It isn't really possible to overemphasize the time element. This wasn't doing a fanzine story on spec or one with a completely open deadline. I was trying to make a living at this on a bi-monthly schedule so it needed to be as good as I could make it in the time available. As soon as I couldn't -- or didn't -- maintain that, I would find myself back in "fanzine city".

PAGE TEN - I seem to remember these as being actual attributes of Elric (I was past the point of reading High Fantasy by the age of 22. I read all or most of CONAN in my teens but never got into Elric). I either borrowed a copy of an ELRIC book from Michael Loubert or I just went to a bookstore and read the back cover copy on a paperback to get the Elric Reader's Digest version.

panel two - Still trying to solve the "loud-mouthed schnook" question. How large can you make the mouth before you're past the BWS proportions and into "too cartoony" territory? You have to make up your mind before you ink it, not while you're inking it. Which, I think, is what I'm doing here.

panel three - "ears that long" This was the first panel that indicated that Elrod saw Cerebus as we see him. Which I'd been dealing with, mentally, since issue 1. Not wanting to get bogged down in the "You're…you're a DUCK" Howard the Duck riff. "Everyone sees Cerebus differently. He's like a walking, talking inkblot test."

This tied in with the fact that Death doesn't actually exist. Death as a condition, yes, Death as an Incarnated being or Being, no. Which was actually pretty sophisticated metaphysical thinking on my part for age 22. The idea that the gem, in proximity to Cerebus, would affect the nature of the different levels of contextual Reality to the extent that it does. Knowing this but obviously not having room to get into it. And not knowing that I would have room to get into it -- 6,000 pages. The meeting place of free will and predestination.

If you compare the first appearance of Elrod's hand with this one, you can see the lapse in my level of attention to detail.

panel four and five transition. Not terrible BWS "Red Nails" figures. The transition is good, his hand on the sword hilt and then the hand reaction to what Cerebus is saying. Again, with the camera "jumping" back in a way that only works in comics.

It's also another "inside" metaphysical moment: Cerebus doesn't have a foot. He has toes or claws, but not what you would call a foot. He's reacting to Elrod's seeing his ears as they are by making an assertion about his pedal extremity as it isn't.

Panel six - A good example of what I was trying to do with the humour. "What's the funniest thing that I know?" the verbal gag is from one of the funniest Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Foghorn and a cat both chasing a worm. I'm going to paraphrase most of this because it's from 50-year-old memory. The cat catches the worm and, of course, because the cat catches the worm, Foghorn wants to "share and share alike". Grabs an axe and suggests they split the worm. "We'll draw a line and bisect him! " Draws a line on a tree stump and puts the worm on the line.

The worm scrunches itself onto one side of the line. "Lookee there, son, YOUR half is GONE! " Of course, it's the cat's half that's gone. Then the worm scrunches itself onto the other side of the line. "Well, I'll be. MY half is gone. I know what you're gonna say, son. Two HALF nothings is a WHOLE nothing. And you're RIGHT! It's a little old worm that wasn't THERE. That's mathematics. You can argue with ME but you can't argue with FIGURES." So, that's where I got the "You can argue with me, but you can't argue with status" line. I added the heretical "I've got a tall, pointy hat" on my own.

The Pope isn't the Pope because he has "a tall pointy hat" but the suggestion that his exalted status originates from his headgear -- and that that was his own rationale for wearing it -- definitely appealed to atheistic, agnostic and secular senses of humour. As Matt Dow pointed out J. Michael Strazynski had a copy of the panel on his door for years.

Of course, I had no idea at the time that the miter had its origins in Judaism, co-originating with the tabernacle and definitely bestowed by Moshe on his brother Aaron as the Levitical high priest to the YHWH's exacting specifications.

And I wouldn't know anything about that for another eighteen years or so.

So lots of levels to that particular gag.

I'm using the LT 103 as a background texture in this panel and then attempting to create a shadow effect by inking on the tone. Good concept, but the execution definitely left something to be desired. I then tried on the right of the panel to repeat my happy accident success with the early BWS-style minaret from Page nine panel four. And it turned out to be an unhappy accident.

Then, looking at the failure of my attempt to ink the tone, I thought, "Well, okay. How difficult is it to do a texture like that completely by hand?" And proceeded to try to do that with the roof below the minarets. Another unhappy accident.

Okay, but most people don't draw, so, hopefully, they won't know the difference. Not something I wanted to be relying on, but something I was definitely relying on. A big difference between what it looked like in my head and what it looked like on the page. And I was modelling myself on a guy --BWS -- who had dragged himself up from a third-rate Kirby clone to a microscopically specific one-of-a-kind artistic comics talent in the space of two or three years. And then kept going. There's hope for us all. Just not a lot of it.

PAGE TWELVE - I hadn't exhaustively thought through what the relationship of the Flame Jewel in issue 1 was to these gems. And to The Chaos Gem Cerebus was wearing. But ideas were definitely popping into my head. I was telling the story, but I was also being told the story. Elrod and Death didn't actually exist. They were manifestations of Cerebus being in proximity to the Chaos Gem. The Flame Jewel had turned out to be an illusion. It either didn't exist or it was an occult imitation of the actual Flame Jewel. The Chaos Gem was an inversion of that. It actually existed but, by its nature, produced lifelike autonomously functioning illusions like Elrod on a mundane level and Death at an elevated level.

I definitely was aware of the need to learn to remember all of these things because of the cautionary note that Robert E. Howard's Conan cosmology had proved to be inherently flawed. Attributable to the fact that he had just been "spinning yarns" for a per-word rate. It would have been the height of egotism to think that generations of aficionados would take the content -- and the cosmology -- of his word-smithing seriously. It had happened with Howard, which meant that it could happen again. And the only panacea to prevent having the whole thing blow up in my face was to consciously keep track of every element introduced into the narrative. Which was why the fact of "things popping into my head" was disconcerting: I hadn't put them into the narrative but they were implications of things that I had put into the narrative. Implications of Reality -- as opposed to the merely factual, fact-based and tactilely verifiable -- are a large part of What Reality Is. The conscious act of creating a consistent contextual CEREBUS reality caused implications of that reality to incarnate in my mind.

Where do you get your ideas?

PAGE EIGHTEEN "Where do the white outline stones go in panel five?" I figured would be the reader's question. First of all, I can't believe that I thought I had the chops to do a reproducible animation bounce in white paint. It's a lot better than it deserved to be. Second of all, the answer to the question is: putting the stones in will kill the animation effect, so the white outline stones just… go…away. These are not the credibility deal-breaker problems that semi-pro cartoonists at their drawing boards worry that they are.

Two or three good laughs per issue. I was right about that. First you get good, then you get fast, then you get good and fast. Just staying on a bi-monthly schedule was already faster than virtually all semi-pro guys are. Anyone who was capable of that in 1978, their target was getting work at Marvel and DC and that's where they were putting in their time: figuring out how to draw the FF or Spider-man or Batman enough to impress the editor of the FF or Spider-man or Batman and get paying work. Or figure out, "There's no money in comics. I think I'll try animation instead."

PAGE TWENTY-TWO - Say what you will about the pretentiousness of using the French "FIN" instead of "The End", it meant I had three fewer letters to draw.

It would definitely have helped my artistic insecurities at the time to know that forty-four years later issue 4 would auction for $52,000. The Buyer's Premium was more than Aardvark-Vanaheim made off of the original issue 4, issue 1, issue 2 and issue 3 rolled together!

Dave Sim
Kitchener, Ontario
27 June 22

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Living the Line got a new series with Carson Grubaugh  The Abolition of Man #1. It's a comic "drawn" by an AI.

They also published The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, which has the website of annotations.

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Cerebus in Hell?:

Flailing At Love

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In Oliver's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark is currently available "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi".

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If YOU have anything related to the 1982 Tour, that'd be of interest, shoot me an email at momentofcerebus@gmail.com and I'll get it to the Waverly Press.

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The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing is BACK on CerebusDownloads.com (if it doesn't show up, refresh the page.)

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The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe

Up to 35% off site-wide:

July 27-31

Tell your fans! Remind them that everything will be up to 35% off -- that means $13 tees, $20 phone cases, $30 hoodies, and way more!

Next Time: Hobbs. So, I'm out until Friday...