Cerebus False Starts: Bear

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

FORM & VOID page 397. This was a good example of a literal visualization of a scene just not working. The idea is that Bear and Cerebus are sitting across a campfire from each other and Bear is reverently uttering his "uber fanboy" line about Grizzly Beer, that it started being called "Griz" because Ham Ernestway called in that in one of his short stories.

It's really nothing to get reverent about (and I see a lot of that in the Hemingway cult: the Running of The Bulls at Pamplona is nothing to get reverent about -- it's really a pretty stupid thing for anyone to do, but it has this reverence attached to it since DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON: that was the satirical point I was trying to make).

This is what it would have looked like, Bear's features burned out to white and viewed from Cerebus' lower angle. And then I thought, "Well the heat from the fire would cause wave distortion in Bear's features or in part of his features" and thought -- I really don't have that many lines to work with in the first place without having to white some of them out and then "wave" line some of them back in. So that was when I went with the angle I did in the story, viewed from Bear's left and slightly elevated. It wasn't accurate, but it conveyed the idea visually a lot better.

Cerebus False Starts: Method Acting

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

Issue 200 page 11 -- What I was attempting to do here was to visually "method act" Cerebus coming apart at the seams on "Juno" as he comes to the conclusion that he's been an a--hole all along (and is completely unaware that he's going to continue to be an a--hole). Basically "Paint It Black". It was the page that I was working on as people were arriving from out of town for the Spirits of Independence stop in Kitchener. Once the stress of that was out of my life, I was able to rethink what I was trying to say and to have Cerebus about to shed floods of tears -- and to have the sound of ringing telephone come out instead.

Cerebus False Starts: Gravitas

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

You remember the rejected page from the beginning of MOTHERS & DAUGHTERS that I gave up on because it lacked Scale? Well, before I decided that Scale was the problem, I thought maybe it was a lack of Gravitas, so I wrote this honking great block of text giving a peak into the mind of Cirin as she's purging the Papal Library.

That was when I realized that you can't START an 1100 page graphic novel with a giant block of text. Comic fans HATE text.

Now, I'm not so sure. CEREBUS fans already had the experience of JAKA'S STORY and if it's just ONE block of text in the early going, it might have been acceptable. You know? As long as the REST of issue 151 is a fattening sugar-rich comics dessert, maybe you can get them to eat a bowl of vegetables first.

Hope you can read the text because I'm NOT retyping it.

Cerebus False Starts: Explosions In Space

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

The explosion in outer space (page 122 of MINDS) Take One. I had given Gerhard the suggestion of doing mirror image atomic explosions, which he did and then wasn't happy with the result (arguing that -- with no "up and down" in space -- it was completely impossible that the explosion would be "up and down": it would have to be a spherical expansion) (which I certainly couldn't argue with but are you SURE you want to start over again from scratch?). Which he did. As Gerhard used to say, "Who WERE those guys?"

Cerebus False Starts: Too Much Coffee Liqueur Man

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

GUYS -- The second "Too Much Coffee Liqueur Man" page from GUYS. Just poured onto the page. I was happy with the text but it needed a lot better composition. TMCLM and Cerebus sitting and talking in a dark bar by moonlight needed to be "Will Eisner on Steroids". Do I white out the lettering and redo the composition or just start over? Just start over.

Cerebus False Starts: John Lennon

DAVE SIM:
When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

Issue 156 pages 12-13 double page spread. The John Lennon/Illusionist page. I forget which album cover it was that had him with multiple pairs of glasses on (I know they reproduced it on the cover of SHAVED FISH, the only Lennon album I owned). Got as far as blue-pencilling the Lennon head and then lettering.

"Illusion within illusion within illusion -- the history of our movement"; "Beneath the mask always ANOTHER mask…";"Ina world of illusion, how you tell ally from foe -- who is an illusionist and who is an illusion?"; "No one (I think) is in my tree"; "No secret handshake no signpost on the road";"But you know I know when it's a DREAM";"But here we are NOW, Young Cerebus -- you have seen behind the last of my many masks";"The time has come the Walrus said to talk of many things of…"; "Too nasal"

Most people are Extreme Literalists and I thought, no, they'll read that and go "Suenteus Po is John Lennon?" So what do I take out? The lines from "Strawberry Fields Forever" or the Lennon head? Maybe they'll get it: The Walrus is from the "Walrus and the Carpenter". The Walrus was Paul (John Lennon was the carpenter: Jesus, get it?). No, I'll be answering questions about this for the next forty years. Too bad, I would have liked to have drawn that head with the multiple glasses.

Art fans will have kittens: I just folded the double-sized artboard in half for easy storage. When you've wasted part of your morning on a discard you're not exactly disposed towards treating it charitably.

Cerebus False Starts: Going Home

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

GOING HOME -- Issue 238 page 1 - Making the point that a lot of tourism is pretty thin gruel. If you don't know the significance of the local thing it's pretty much "smoke and mirrors". In that light, tourism brochures can be pretty depressing: sad that the local community puts such store in it, sad that people find themselves so far from home and this is the thing with which they've rewarded themselves for going so far afield. ("Educational!"). And then I thought, No, really the point is that Cerebus and Jaka have had what appears to be a tiff but is actually a core schism. That was better represented, I thought, with a two page sequence of them "Not Speaking" against a bleak Ontario-style landscape.

Cerebus False Starts: Flight

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

FLIGHT -- Issue 151 page 11 - The scale -- or, rather, Scale -- was too small for where I had left the cliffhanger at the end of MELMOTH. We needed a big two-page spread of Cirin culling the library and then have you turn over the page and see FRAGMENTARY images of Cerebus attempting to flee, sword first. There. THAT'S Scale. You can see the order the process went in: light sketch layouts, then the border tape, then starting to tight pencil. I did get as far as tight pencilling the bottom right panel before I went, "No, I don't like it. WHY don't I like it?" Answer: no Scale.

Cerebus False Starts: Rick's Story

DAVE SIM:

When you're keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, there really isn't an opportunity to "redo" pages. On the other hand, if you have serious doubts, there is a window of opportunity to change your mind. Sometimes the window was a little wider than it was at other times:

RICK'S STORY page 164 -- Too comedic. Having developed this really ominous tone over the previous two pages I was in danger of frittering it away. As you can see it took me a while to figure that out.