Hi, Everybody!
THIS:
 |
| Click for bigger... |
Is on the eBays: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/127781131875 until Thursday night. Then it goes to ONE lucky winner (and presumably the next page will go up. But since this one is currently going for $1325CAD, and Dave made $10K apiece for the Six Deadly Sins pages, I think this experiment is going to end in "welp, THAT didn't work...".)
So Jen's BACK from London because her Show: Woman in the Arena, was nominated for an award. She didn't win.
You'll get 'em next time Jen!
Anyway, the next performance is May 4-5, so I'm back having to "do" Tuesdays until she comes back. IF she comes back... Speaking of which, I received:
Note from the Interim Head of SDOAR Division
"It's *hic*, it's like I said...*urp* 'scuse me, thas what it is, all right..."
(Lady at the bar Jen's been talkin' at for ten minutes) "It's like what?"
"Whas like wha'?"
(L.A.T.B.J.B.T.A.F.T.M.) "You said it's like what you said. What's like what you said?"
"It. It's to'lly like wha' I *urp*, 'scuse me, said. To'lly."
(L.A.T.B.J.B.T.A.F.T.M. getting up to leave) "well...it sure is. I'll be back."
Spoiler alert: She never came back.
Since December of 2022, Dave Sim has drawn and finished pages 555 through 702 of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond. Sean and Carson published pages 1-205 through Living the Line's hardcover version of SDOAR (with Carson's 30 page epilogue). Pages 587-593 were included in issue #68 of Yeet Presents (Mike Jones might still have copies available...) And page 604 was a Bonus Print on CAN12. Pages 206-554 exist as mock-ups you can get from Jen's GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023, and her plan (with Philip R. Frey) is to produce print ashcans of those mock-ups. Dave has gone back and produced new finished art for a few of those pages, but he's mostly focused on moving forward (His actual "tagline" is: "Either Dave Sim finishes The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, or The Strange Death of Alex Raymond will finish Dave Sim...")
Sean and Living the Line have 21 pages in their Consigned anthology (Currently being Kickstartered: https://www.kickstarter.com/.../consigned-a-living-the... ), which pages did Sean (who gets the scans of all the pages from Dave) pick?
Why not back the project and find out Spunky?
Just the GoFundMe Facts, Man...ly:
128 pages released so far as mocked up and/or drawn by Dave Sim through 22 Feb 2022, or 2/22/22 for all the numerologists
$90.00 away from unlocking page 129
If you have not donated, a $5+ donation grants you access to all 126 pages and all unlocked pages moving forward >> https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023
GoFundMe now offers automated monthly donations!
>> https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023/donate?source=btn_donate
SDOAR GoFundMe -->> https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023
So Jay asked: "Remind me again what exactly is meant by “ashcan” and how did such a term come to be applied to such things…"
And Philip replied:
Two questions here:
1) Where does the term come from?
In the olden days of comics, in order to establish a copyright, a publisher had to, well, *publish* a comic with a proper copyright notice. If they weren't ready to go to print, they would produce a comic *just* to establish copyright. These weren't meant to be sold or kept. They were just needed to prove you had ownership of the material. Then it could be "tossed in the ashcan".
In the 1980s, Bob Burden (of Flaming Carrot fame) and other indie publishers would produce "ashcans" of upcoming books to show around, maybe sell at conventions, etc. It then became more widely used to describe promotional comics, mini-comics, etc. Anything not meant for the standard market.
2) Why are these SDoAR comics known as "ashcans"?
When Dave stopped work on SDoAR, as you may know, he left in the middle without any conclusion. This is why Dave refers to the hardcover published volume as "Carson's Version" because Carson "finished" the book so it was, at least, in a publishable state. (And it turned out pretty good, what with an Eisner nom and all.)
When Dave first started working on SDoAR again, he wasn't yet in a position where he felt he could draw, but he still had the mock-ups he had done for Carson and he began producing more mockups, with no real eye towards publishing, I think, just so he could get his ideas on paper.
But he eventually began actually working on the pages, drawing them all by hand. Dave isn't the kind of person to go back (typically), so he didn't start producing those mocked up pages, he just kept going, drawing them this time.
Jen put together the GoFundMe to finance the project with the intention of cleaning up the mockups a bit and publishing them as "ashcans", since they weren't fully produced pages. When I jumped on board to do the "remastering", I very quickly didn't want to just clean the mockups, but to actually bring them to a publishable standard that wouldn't look out of place alongside Carson and Dave's fully illustrated pages.
I must have done a good job because Dave decided they should be published at a size equivalent to the hardcover, hence the term "Giant-Sized Ashcan". He also decided that the pages looked good enough that he wanted to re-draw several sections where there just wasn't good enough material to clean up to his (or my) satisfaction.
---
Well, that's the answer(s) to the best of my knowledge and recollection. Hope that clears things up.
So, This.
Then:
________________
Cerebus the Aardvark #1 (and Spawn #10) en Español (I know it's in a language you might not read, but it'll be highly collectable if they only do this one Kickstarter... Plus, you aren't a REAL Spawn completist if you don't have a copy of EVERY variant...)
Living the Line's next Kickstarter with 21 pages of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond in it. Now with Archival Cerebus related offerings.
The Tyrant Kickstarter.
Next Time: Cerebus in Hell?
No comments:
Post a Comment