Sunday 8 January 2023

The Last-er Day?

Hi, Everybody!

52 more sleeps until the Remastered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8 from The Waverly Press Kickstarter launches:

Yesterday's bummer:

As Dave said, The Last Day has been postponed.

A re-solicitation will be forthcoming. When I know, you'll know.

(I have no idea if previous orders will be cancelled, or if they'll get reapplied to the new solicitation.)

I mean, this doesn't surprise me:


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Oliver's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil... And now on Mometu.
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Heritage has a bunch of neat original art.
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Up to 40% off site-wide: 
January 11-13, 
January 19 and 
January 25-29.
Tell your fans! Remind them that everything will be up to 40% off 
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Next Time: An aardvark walks into a bar...

5 comments:

Bill Ritter said...

I continue to believe that Dave makes this unnecessarily complex or imposes seemingly arbitrary (and self-destructing) obstacles on Cerebus efforts. An apparent unwavering loyalty to DIA to the detriment of any Cerebus project is foremost in my mind as one such example.

Working a pen on napkin...Form & Void got around 160 supporters and at least $26,000 (average $168/person). Looking over the Archives got 120-160 supporters. Cerebus in Hell managed around 60 backers for the last one and upwards of 80 on earlier. So, there is a core following "gimme anything Cerebus" of ~60 and there are premium buyers (e.g. hardcovers) at ~150, half of which may spend $200+ each.

Sooo...my point: stop the trading card and sticker and signed this and variant that foolishness. I doubt that any notable count of that ~160 bought Form and Void because of the beer coaster. Run a hardcover campaign every 4-6 months. Have everyone shut up about woke this, and Dave Sim persona-non-grata that, and just promote and sell the damn book. Keep cerebusdownloads and Patreon and anything else out of the effort.

Maybe there is a Part 2 avenue for DIA...but, unless DIA is generating the $25,000-$35,000 per campaign the KS might, they are a distraction (at best).

I maintain: a good read is a good read. Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Salman Rushdie, Ayn Rand...all of them had "controversy" of their opinions, and proceeded with a resounding "F-you" and published (and got published). This whole Cerebus thing seems to wallow in self-pity and verbose reasons for "why not".

I admit: I speak without knowledge of publishing, an outsider looking only at backer counts and purchases. There might be some other business issue I am missing in ignorance. I admit my bias is wanting the damn hardcovers, also...

Steve said...

Bill -

May I humbly suggest you find a book binder and make your own custom hardcovers?

Steve

Bill Ritter said...

Steve, I have thought about doing just that service...doesn't appeal to me. It's not "published". And the paper is troublesome (especially now after Waverly Press' hardcovers and Sean's reworking/remastering work). And so many other things.

Which leaves us with my whining about it.

Dave Kopperman said...

While there's a lot of what you (Bill) say that I agree with, I think the collectors' cards and all that stuff are pretty much a win-win. The crux of Dave's argument is that he's trying to do a little work as possible on these legacy projects to monetize them efficiently. I want the hardcovers, so anything that makes the process more profitable is fine with me, and the fact that they've been tiered for different types of collectors works really well in that regard.

ChrisW said...

I get why toast might be sunk and/or screwed, but how does it even have a goose, much less knowing how to cook it?