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Hi, Everybody!

Dave sent me a thing:

22 November 23
re: CEREBUS: GRAND DESIGN
Hello Joseph! 

Okay, HERE's what you get for the (REALLY!) exceptional circumstance of sending me ten finished pages and 11 pages of thumbnails. Roughly 24 hours of my "Best thinking" on your concept so far. These are all just suggestions. It's YOUR book.

You have a much crisper, sharper cartoon line than I do. I started off trying to imitate it and then thought, "Well no, not necessary. I'm just showing Joseph what me SORT OF riffing on his drawing style is, not trying to pass as a Gabbard clone."

If it is a CIH? title, you'll be responsible for putting the Kickstarter together. Rolly and Alfonso can handle the fulfillment and you pay them out of the Kickstarter funds. A-V will solicit for it through Diamond and pay you.

One of the things I've done is to accelerate the beginning. As I told you on the phone, as soon as you publicize the book everyone is going to know what the CONCEPT is: Cerebus is a Talk Show Host interviewing his previous selves over the entire 6,000 page graphic novel. If they don't "get it" from the publicity, they'll "get it" from the cover. So you need to skip introducing the CONCEPT on page one and go straight to the various (hopefully grabby) PREMISES. The idea is to make sure that the reader knows more at the end of the page than he did at the beginning of the page. The story has to move forward like a shark. If everything is the same at the end of page 3 as it was at the beginning of page 3, you've wasted a page.

PAGE ONE

 

SUGGESTED PREMISE #1: I've written more of the monologue. The reader has to look at the word balloons and sense how much reading there is to do and a) feel like they're getting value for the money and b) not say "I have to read ALL THIS?". The monologue is Talk Show Host Cerebus (TSHC) explaining how the show happened. The Elevator Pitch that sold whatever network it was (feel free to use CIH?'s intentionally misspelled NETFUX) on CEREBUS TONITE. We come in on the end of it but it establishes the reader hasn't missed anything. It's the pilot episode. It's all brand new, even to TSHC.

SUGGESTED PREMISE #2: As with a real talk show, the collective audience reaction is a big part of the content. HA HA HA and CLAP CLAP CLAP (see my 11-21 TSHC master drawings). In this case, TSHC gets as far as mentioning

ANTEATER SNOUT BARBARIAN CEREBUS and

CAPTION: Just mentioning ANTEATER SNOUT BARBARIAN CEREBUS drowns out the rest of the monologue with WILDLY ENTHUSIASTIC APPLAUSE. NO ONE expected THAT. Rare (?) instance of a behind-the-scenes narrator. A member of the crew? The producer? The production staff? Not really a Premise but an arrow in the quiver if you need it. CLAP CLAP CLAP HA HA HA covering up the remaining word balloons on page one.

SUGGESTED PREMISE #3: TSHC thinking to himself "This is really TOO EFFING WEIRD." Again, you don't want to do this all the time, but when necessary have TSHC react to what's going on TO HIMSELF in a way that he wouldn't with his guests or the audience or the crew. Which you have to imagine most Talk Show Hosts do quite a bit: WTF? Where is [GUEST] GOING with this? but having to ACT AS IF everything is fine and under control. Up to and including i.e. Drew Barrymore flashing David Letterman. That kind of edginess. You might find that you want to do this all the time. That's up to you. It's YOUR book.

PAGE TWO

CAPTION: So Talk Show Host Cerebus gives up and retreats to his desk

TSHC: Seven panels in, ANTEATER SNOUT BARBARIAN CEREBUS cuts a guy's hand off.
AUDIENCE: HA HA HA HA HA HA
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
TSHC: And yet you absolutely love him.
AUDIENCE: HA HA HA HA HA HA
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
TSHC: You folks should seriously look into CLASS ACTON GROUP THERAPY
AUDIENCE: HA HA HA HA HA HA
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
TSHC: (thought) OMG They think Cerebus is KIDDING

As you can see, I just photocopied a master image (SLIGHTLY different from the first three) and all I changed from panel to panel was the position of the eyes, the size of the eyes and the mouth. Obviously you don't want to do THAT static an image, but my point is you don't want to get TOO FAR from that static an image or you'll lose the TALK SHOW ambience. Don't move the hand but have the pencil wiggling up and down in panel four. Or tapping on the coffee cup. Or Cerebus pointing at the audience with the pencil and then going back to the same position.(The pencil, I think, came about when Johnny Carson quit smoking. He needed something in his hand and he hit on the pencil). You can open the hand and have him THROW the pencil away in the last panel, back over his right shoulder but you really need to save that for an major "I GIVE UP" panel.

PAGE TWO PREMISE: The audience is made up of lunatic CEREBUS fans, so their reaction is FREQUENTLY odd. Like cheering wildly for "cutting a guy's hand off" and not being even slightly self-conscious about it. Which means the new reader has divided loyalties but defaults to sympathy for TSHC and the long-time readers get to enjoy being in the LUNATIC MAJORITY for a change.

On to page three (your page TWO)

PAGE THREE (YOUR PAGE TWO)

I would shorten Anteater Snout Barbarian Cerebus' entry line to "ALE!!"

AUDIENCE: HA HA HA HA CLAP CLAP CLAP ALE! ALE! ALE! ALE! ALE! GIVE! HIM! ALE! GIVE! HIM! ALE!

TSHC: Uh.

Again, in the 21st century, only Cerebus fans think getting Cerebus drunk is funny.

Okay, that's as much as I thought I was going to get across to you, so I'm (next) going to do a mock-up of my revised page two so you can see what varying the HA HA HA CLAP CLAP CLAP sizes and TSHC size does to the HOW FAR OVER THE TOP IS THIS? quotient.

I'm going to get Rolly to scan and e-mail to you what I've done and e-mail it to Matt Dow at AMOC along with giving him your e-mail address so anyone interested can e-mail you suggestions for gags through Matt.

I think you'll find that your estimate of 120 pages will end up being "lowball" (speaking as the guy who figured he could do Alex Raymond's fatal car accident over the course of two or maybe three half-issues of glamourpuss. Fourteen years and 582 pages later…) But, that's your headache not mine. What you want to TRY and do is get as much of it down to single panels and one-liners (like the BUGGID OF SCODGE CERBISS line I did here). From MY point of view, the closer you can get to 120 pages, the better. "If you don't want to try all 6,000 pages to start, try reading Joseph Gabbard's CEREBUS THE TALK SHOW HOST parody first. If you like that, you'll probably like the rest of it."

I don't know if Gerhard would be interested in doing the master background (which I've done from memory of the later, 1980s Johnny Carson -- or, possibly early post-Carson -- TONIGHT SHOW set) or how much he would charge you. Whether he does it or you do it or someone else does it, it's a balancing act with all of the foreground characters having 30% grey tones. You can "halo" all of them (cutting out white highlights on both sides of their heads which would definitely be TV-style lighting) or pitch it in a 15% to 20% range so solid black and 30% grey both POP. You can maybe try to hit on a TV style residual, where Gerhard gets a percentage of your profits on every panel or page where you use his background and you only use it for establishing shots if it gets too expensive and/or your sales are in the toilet.

THROWAWAY LINE: "We've been texted by Dennis the Menace. He wants his hairpiece back."

LATER ISSUE: Talk Show Host Cerebus retreats to his dressing room to contemplate his TALK SHOW MORGUE MEMORIAL

Everyone who ever had -- and LOST -- a Talk Show.

All the names. Followed by the SHOW's START and END DATES

A couple of wide panels with a close-up of actual names and dates.

TSHC: They say you never hear the TERMINATION TEXT that gets you.

Okay, strange way to spend the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination.
Hope you have/are having a Happy Thanksgiving.

Joseph would be Joe Gabbard. He's on the Faceybookee group. Today's his birthday. I asked if there was anything he wanted to add to the above, and he said:

Just that I'm gonna be working on this awhile and not certain if it'd going to be serialized in CiH.
But we'll figure that out once the time comes.

So more info as it lands on my desk.

_________________________________

Where the fuck did I leave off on Narutobus?

Fuck it...

There. 

That's all I've gotten.

Enjoy!

Next Time: Mondays, am I right?