Dave's phone is STILL all screwy-kerflooie, and he can't Fax. He CAN get messages off the Off-White House answering machine/voicemail, so (519) 576-0610 if you need to let Dave know anything. (Rolly is passing the messages along, so be brief and succinct.)
I sent Dave the questions/comments I had for the June Please Hold For Dave Sim, in case we were doing it, and Dave sent back recordings of him answering the first few ones (I expect more before next week,) so if you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you might see them early.
And Rolly said when he sent me the files:
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the T-shirt!! Also the scans that are of the tracing paper are items that will be for sale on the CAN12 Kickstarter.
Later, Rolly
So you can presumably buy all these(?) (click for the bigger):
This is on a stay flat.
And here's further progress on Dave's variant Cover (again with the clicking for the biggerness):
And your guess is as good as mine:
There's presumably 16 of these things, whatever they are...
Hey Dave SAID he was doing 50 prints of Debbie:
And this:
(I mean, I know who that is, and I sorta know what he's holding, but I've no idea why...)
Tuesday: Jen's tells us all 'bout The Strange Death of Alex Raymond GoFundMe, and her raffle to support the same. $200 until page 115 of Dave's POST-Carson SDOAR mock-up pages unlocks. AND GoFundMe has a MONTHLY option now, so you can schedule a reoccurring donation. Jen says she's gonna use the roundabout way of contacting Dave since his phone is out, but she COULD just make me do it. Everybody else is...
Wednesday: Hobbs has the beast with nine backs...wait, trading cards, he has trading cards...
Thursday: Margaret does her GAWDAMN job! On the last Please Hold, somebody asked about a page from Women, and I told Mags to look it up in the notebooks. And she did. (Does this mean she'll FINALLY get paid time off and other benefits? @#!* no! She ain't gettin' nothin' 'til she straightens out her TPS reports...) You could be going thru the Notebooks if you had a copy of Albatross One. (If you click that link, you can see all the pages of the notebook, OR, you can get a PHYSICAL copy here, and now she's done with The Last Notebook. )
Friday: that's this post. You're reading the Friday post right now. This is STILL like that bit in Spaceballs. (Should I link to LAST WEEK'S Update in these things?)
Okay, so that was the past week in AMOC. You're welcome.
Rigamarole:
Friend to the Blog, Steve Peters has six days until the end of his latest campaign: Comicverse #6. He's got all sorts of neat stuff on offer, some of it from previous campaigns, meaning "there's Dave Art in them there add-ons!" He's got a few stretch goals:
STRETCH GOAL #1: $2000 - I will post a goofier and more embarrassing photo of Billy Sherwood and me than the one above - Digital rewards will receive 3 more PDFs of Awakening comics - Physical rewards under $50 will get a full set of 9 2025 trading cards - Physical rewards $50 and up get a small piece of original art - Bonus pay for the guest artists on our next issue - Some rapidograph pens for me! Papa needs some new pens!
STRETCH GOAL #2: $2600 - I will post not just the goofy embarrassing photo, but also two super silly photos of me and Billy Sherwood as the punk band "Maybe" - Digital rewards backers get 6 more PDFs from the Awakening catalog - Physical rewards under $50 will get the full set of Comicverse Swag (including the trading cards) and a small sketch - Physical rewards $50 and up get set Comicverse Swag and a larger piece of original art - A larger bonus for the guest artists on our next issue - For me, a bunch of Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens and a few pads of Bristol art board for issue #7 - An exclusive mini-comic previewing our next 3 comics and featuring 6 pages of never-before seen Sparky jam comics - I will record a custom song for any pledges that total $200 or more
He's currently at $1,349, so if you're interested in helping one of this Blog's friends...
I'm selling bootleg Cerebus trading cards featuring my art, coloring by Hobbs, and unused art of MY characters by Dave. $10 a set for 11 cards plus TWO HANDDRAWN cards (by me). Email momentofcerebus@gmail.com and I'll explain how to pay.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. More on this as I'm allowed to post stuff...
Our very own Jen DiGiacomo is part of a film production titled The Day Elvis Died. She'll never ask anybody here, but they're crowdfunding to finish the post production on the movie. (It's set in 1977, will a certain obscure Canadian cartoon aardvark make a cameo? (No. Elvis died in August. Cerebus wasn't published until December. Any appearance in the flick would be an anachronism that would ruin the movie for everybody. EVERYBODY!).)
*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.
______________
You can get all 16 volumes of Cerebus, many of them Remastered for $99CANADIAN at CerebusDownloads.com (More if you want the Remastered Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing...)
Oliver' Simonsen'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..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
_______________
Next Time: The next Off-White House Bulletin. And I sent Dave the Please Hold for june questions, and he sent back answers, so I'ma start assembling that...
A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.
Having finished looking at Dave’s last Cerebus notebook, notebook #36, it is on to a request from the big boss man. Take a load off, as this is a bit of journey.
Issue 173 (“WOMEN”) on Magus Doran and “Pure Male Magic” and its “lore”: —the most expansive and enigmatic, enchanting, dare I say Magical “snapshot” in the entire storyline. Dave leaving this mystique here and only touching very obliquely on this in “MINDS” was deft… but all these years later I intend to ask about it in his q+a community feature.
And he put that text with page 5 of Cerebus #173 (aka page 211 of the phonebook, Women):
Cerebus #173, page 5
And with a little back and forth on phrasing that in the form of a question for the Please Hold for Dave Sim podcast, we got a question and an answer:
And I was asked to share any notebook pages that dealt with that one page. Well, I found it and shared it to the group:
Notebook #21, page 93
And for those of us who have difficulty reading Dave’s handwriting. . .well, at least in his notebooks, not always as nice as it is in the finished book:
Cerebus had no idea how long he had been awake, starring at the clouds over the Church Upper City, rising in a dark column. He felt no ill effects from the scotch. But he heard a voice. A voice what seemed to come from the clouds themselves. A long-forgotten conversation with an old hermit Magus Doran in the woods near his parents’ house.
‘Well why not you, then.’ The voice was saying. ‘They’re starting again. Low Upper Felda this time. Our turn, they always say, you’ve had your turn. Well we haven’t had we? The women are always in control. Wives and mistresses, concubines, relatives. From the dawn of time, the men have never had a fair chance. The women are a sickness; they’re parasites, young Cerebus. Partaking of them will sicken your soul. Mark what I say here. If left unchecked they’ll take over the armies, they’ll take over the churches, they’ll take over business and government. They’re mad. All of them. Follow insanity back to its source and you’ll find a woman every time. When it’s time you’ll hear these words again. You’ll have the chance to stop them. If Tarim is strong within you you won’t have a lady-friend or a wife feeding on your guts. B You’ll have to be strong, though. There’ll be a trace of womanhood with you. Put it aside. It’ll be feeding on your soul. If you need to make a choice, save the Church. Put it aside. Be strong for all the men who are weak.
The women will try to break you.
You are our last and greatest chance. Let the one true Tarim live at last through you. Take back the throne that is rightfully yours.
There is a line of Dave’s writing pointing towards the line ‘There’ll be a trace of womanhood with you.’ And that line states:
A symbol a tolem that
You’ll be cling to a memory and the memory will be feeding on you.
Several other lines down to the bottom right:
A dead memory
A dead memory that will keep you weak.
Much of that notebook page’s text made it to the final text on page 5 of Cerebus #173. However, there is some additional text down the bottom. It is missing the mention of Ketigern.
There are two other pages in this notebook that cover Cerebus #173, but their mentions of page 5 are very small. First up page 94 has a rough plot outline for Cerebus #173 and page five just says ‘Cerebus’.
Notebook #21, page 94
The next page of the notebook has a more tighten plot outline which only goes up to page 12, However, it does have a bit more on page 5 than the previous page in the notebook:
Notebook #21, page 95
Again, no mention of Ketigern, but we do get a reference to Magus Doran and the text “some residue of womanhood – get rid of it. It represents something dead and you are very much alive.”
And yes, you can see the issue box number for Cerebus #174 on the following page.
1) One more page unlocked, this time by John Mosher, 114 pages in all!
2) Dave continues to be unreachable by fax or phone, and now is intimating he prefers it this way. I'll be reaching out to Rolly to see if he can can print out emails for me or if I need to go through Studiocomix Press.
3) That said, the raffle is over and raised $935 and 34 tickets sold. Who won? Well, I'll be reaching out to winner this week (see above) and announce next week. Cool? Cool.
4) Manly shared an image from The Strange Death of Alex Raymond that will be a chase card prize for CAN 12. I blurred the image so the Facebook preview wouldn't be too shocking.
5) See what I mean?
6) More fun stuff next week, in the meantime, let's see what the raffle winner will win ...
A) Hermitage Awesomes Silicon Session, a parody book by Dave Sim and Carson Grubaugh
B) A set of four Cerebus bookplates, signed by Dave Sim
C) David Birdsong donated Carson Grubaugh's painting from an early version of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond. Note that the frame was damaged and there was no glass in it so he removed the art. The marks made by the frame can be seen below. 16 x 20 inches, acrylic on board.
114 pages released so far as mocked up and/or drawn by Dave Sim through 18 Jan 2022.
$200.00 away from unlocking page 115
If you have not donated, a $5+ donation grants you access to all 114 pagesand all unlocked pages moving forward >>https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023
If you want to see how Carson Grubaugh finished the hardcover, well, you're going to need to purchase a copy of your own. HOWEVER, if you want to see how Dave Sim continued the story in the blue pages -- bring me the blue pages -- mockups that appeared in blue ink in final section of the hardcover can be found here...
Tomorrow, as she does MOST weeks, Jen DiGiacomo is gonna solicit everybody into giving a li'l something-something to The Strange Death of Alex RaymondGoFundMe she set up to get Dave money to keep working on pages (Dave's drawing pages in the 650s...). And as a part of that, she posted all of the pages from the Living The Line version of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond (up to page 205), and now she's posting Dave's mocked-up pages.
Fun fact: GoFundMe has changed their setup so you can contribute on a monthly basis (like the Patreon...).
So, to "tee her up", I'ma run the Proto-Strange Death of Alex Raymond that Dave ran in glamourpuss.
THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER: It seems like EVERYBODY has a crowd funding campaign type thing going on:
Friend to the Blog, Steve Peters has launched his latest campaign: Comicverse #6. He's got all sorts of neat stuff on offer, some of it from previous campaigns, meaning "there's Dave Art in them there add-ons!" I dunno, click around and see what he's offering. The campaign has met it's goal, but he followed KickStarter's advice and lowballed that. So more money would mean he doesn't lose money on the deal.
I'm selling bootleg Cerebus trading cards featuring my art, coloring by Hobbs, and unused art of MY characters by Dave. $10 a set for 11 cards plus TWO HANDDRAWN cards (by me). Email momentofcerebus@gmail.com and I'll explain how to pay.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. More on this as I'm allowed to post stuff...
Our very own Jen DiGiacomo is part of a film production titled The Day Elvis Died. She'll never ask anybody here, but they're crowdfunding to finish the post production on the movie. (It's set in 1977, will a certain obscure Canadian cartoon aardvark make a cameo? (No. Elvis died in August. Cerebus wasn't published until December. Any appearance in the flick would be an anachronism that would ruin the movie for everybody. EVERYBODY!).)
The current thinking is that CAN12/The Varkdalorian will launch in June. Dave has ideas, more on this as I figure out what the hell Sim is planning...
*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.
______________
You can get all 16 volumes of Cerebus, many of them Remastered for $99CANADIAN at CerebusDownloads.com (More if you want the Remastered Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing...)
Oliver' Simonsen'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..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
_______________
Next Time: Jen's ready for a Wet Hot American Summer...
Cerebus Archive Portfolio #12: Rick's Story is (most likely, but there's a chance I'ma wrong...) launching in June.
As part of that, Dave's gonna do more postcard puzzle packs.
And as a part of THAT, he's gonna have:
PRIZES!
And I got the scans of the FIRST batch.
Unfortunately, since Dave canna no fax, I don't have descriptions of what they are exactly, but I can hazard a fair guess:
A slabbed copy of the New Mutants graphic novel. Why Dave has this in the first place? No. Idea.
A slabbed copy of the DC Star Trek #1. (Canadian Price Variant.)
SuperCerebus VS Possum-At-Large #1 preliminary SuperCerebus figure tracing paper (Click for bigger)
Shannon Wheeler's Too Much Coffee Man Magazine #22 with a Dave Sim cover
Tracing paper for the cover to the Ultimate Cerebus Guide to Self Publishing (Click for bigger)
Uh...this is one of the covers for The Varkdalorian, but it may be a variant of the published cover, or a proof...
The preliminary (but very much NOT the final!) version of CereQuinn (Click for bigger)
A slabbed Cerebus #0
A slabbed Signature series Cerebus #18
An UNCUT cover to Cerebus #263 (where the heck did THAT come from?)
This is an original piece from glamourpuss. Don't know the issue number of the top of my head... (Click for bigger.)
This is another original to a glamourpuss issue. (One of the swimsuit ones...) (Click for bigger.)
Lindsey Lohan from glamourpuss (I don't remember which issue.) (Click for bigger.)
This is another variant cover, so maybe a proof?
The preliminary for Dave's variant cover. (don't worry, he's hand drawing this one, and it's gonna be spectacular...)
Rigamarole:
THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER: It seems like EVERYBODY has a crowd funding campaign type thing going on:
Friend to the Blog, Steve Peters has launched his latest campaign: Comicverse #6. He's got all sorts of neat stuff on offer, some of it from previous campaigns, meaning "there's Dave Art in them there add-ons!" I dunno, click around and see what he's offering. The campaign has met it's goal, but he followed KickStarter's advice and lowballed that. So more money would mean he doesn't lose money on the deal.
I'm selling bootleg Cerebus trading cards featuring my art, coloring by Hobbs, and unused art of MY characters by Dave. $10 a set for 11 cards plus TWO HANDDRAWN cards (by me). Email momentofcerebus@gmail.com and I'll explain how to pay.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. More on this as I'm allowed to post stuff...
Our very own Jen DiGiacomo is part of a film production titled The Day Elvis Died. She'll never ask anybody here, but they're crowdfunding to finish the post production on the movie. (It's set in 1977, will a certain obscure Canadian cartoon aardvark make a cameo? (No. Elvis died in August. Cerebus wasn't published until December. Any appearance in the flick would be an anachronism that would ruin the movie for everybody. EVERYBODY!).)
The current thinking is that CAN12/The Varkdalorian will launch in June. Dave has ideas, more on this as I figure out what the hell Sim is planning...
*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.
______________
You can get all 16 volumes of Cerebus, many of them Remastered for $99CANADIAN at CerebusDownloads.com (More if you want the Remastered Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing...)
Oliver' Simonsen'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..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
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