The REAL Truth about Cerebus #1.

Hi, Everybody!

Happy Monday!

So...video Updates from Dave on Fridays, faxed religious observations from Dave on Mondays. Hobbs and CiH? on Wednesdays, Margaret and notebooks on Thursdays, Oliver and the link-storm on Sundays? I gotta work what? Two days a week? I ain't gonna bitch...

But you guys probably will, SO:

Helping research the Secret History of the Counterfeit Cerebus #1 for the Waverly Press (I'm part of the "compiled and edited by" credit...) I noticed a serious flaw in the legend of Cerebus #1.

What am I talking about?

As every Cerebite learns in Cerebus School*:

In late 1977, Dave Sim wrote and drew, and Deni Loubert published Cerebus #1. There were two thousand copies printed, with five hundred copies going to Now & Then books in Kitchener, Ontario. Five hundred copies to Big Rapids Distribution in Lansing, Michigan. And one thousand copies to Sea Gate Distributing in New York, New York. Dave and Deni then sold copies at a Toronto Comic Convention when issue #2 came out in 1978. When they were down to their last twenty copies, Dave set them aside. Ten went with Deni when they divorced in 1983. Dave auctioned a signed CGC'ed copy for $10,000 to benefit ACTOR (now the HERO Initiative) in 2004.

Notice the problem?

As I faxed to Dave:

Hi Dave!
 I’ve been reading through the rough (Really rough, how rough? I turned my back for a minute and all the hubcaps were missing from my car when I turned back around, I mean rough…) first draft of CEREBUS THE COUNTERFEIT SAGA**.
 And something funny occurred to me. How many copies of the REAL Cerebus #1 were printed?
 “Cause, I say cause, the numbers don’t add up, son. The math’s all wrong. Arithmetic boy. Ya got yer numbers all jumbled…” So, two thousand copies were printed, yes? And Harry Kremer took 500. 1000 went to a distributor in New York, and 500 to Detroit. (These numbers come from one of the articles about the counterfeits.)
 So: 2000 minus 500, minus 1000, minus 500 means where the heck did the copies you and Deni sold come from? (And the twenty you set aside that Deni got 10 of when you guys split the company.)
 Something is rotten in the City-State of Palnu (And I’m not talking about the stuffed tomatoes I had for lunch.)
 Would you please elaborate on how the numbers work?
 Manly Matt Dow

And Dave faxed back:

So there are/were 2000ISH copies of Cerebus #1. And half of them are smudgey on the cover. Also, there are an unknown number of counterfeit copies that aren't printed as nice.

This is why I backed the remastered #1 Kickstarter. It'll look nice, and I don't have to sweat whether I wasted a crap-ton of money on a #1 that wasn't once touched by Dave Sim...

*I got my BS from Cerebus School in 2017...
**The Secret History has been completely reworked since I wrote that, and is *MWAH* PERFECT!
Next Time: I got mail!

Who knows what TERROR lurks in the heart of Men? The Ol' AMOC Mailbag knows!

Hi, Everybody!

The Cerebus In Hell? "Approval Is An Authoritarian Construct" T-Shirt is available in the US and UK. But for some reason, not Germany...

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99. 

AND SEND IN YOUR @#$%ING FLIMSY @#$%ING POSTCARD FROM HELL? KICKSTARTER SURVEYS ALREADY!!! (Um, "please"?)

If you got a couple of extra bucks and want to do a fellow Cerebus fan a solid, Friend of the Blog Mike Battaglia has a go fund me here.

And if youse got sumtin' youse want me to ask Dave Sim, leave a comment on this post.

________________________________________________________

As I wait to hold, we reach now once again in to the teeming (and slightly teetering) ol' AMOC mailbag at momentofcerebus@gmail.com (geez I gotta clean this thing out more often...)

Let's see:

Bill...

"You may already have won..."

"Greetings from His highness the crown prince of Nigeria..."

Uh...

Ooo, here's something!

Steve Swenson, (you guys remember Steven Swenson right?) sent in:

Hiya Matt -

So about a week ago I was going thru one of my boxes of comics and came across a copy of Cerebus #1, pretty obviously a counterfeit.

What's odd is I have no recollection of when (must've been in the past few years) or why I bought this, nor how much I paid. I have a few authentic #1's and one other counterfeit; this one is a complete mystery to me.

Maybe I'm having a senior moment. But I can't remember.

But what's surprising is a fairly accurate counterfeit signature, placed right where Dave was signing the issues once the fakes came out. The signed authentic copies I have (from what I remember) are also signed on the first page - but in the art space rather than margin. Dave moved his 'signature space' at some point, like I mentioned I think it's around the time the fakes came out - gave him the room to also write 'authentic' or 'counterfeit' plus signature.

Dave's cursive signature during these years was much more 'open' than what it's become, so someone took the time to both find out what an 'old' signature would look like and then practice it enough to get pretty close. Like I mentioned, this copy is clearly a counterfeit, so unless Dave was ... perhaps inebriated I can't imagine him mistaking this copy for an authentic.

So, here's a pic too, maybe on a slow day it'll come in handy for A.M.O.C.

Steve

I only know of one authentic Counterfeit with a genuine "Dave Sim" signature. Right Margaret?

 Thanks Steve!

Next Time: I shit you not, Ben Hobbs is looking for pussy...

Cerebus #1 and the Fakey Fakers: How to Tell A Counterfeit From the Real McCoy

Hi, Everybody!

So, everybody remember Dirty Laundry? Remember when I said, "And everybody's friend, Sean Robinson, has kindly agreed to make up a post/email for these purposes."? Well, here it is (photo comments by me, you're welcome...):

Sean Michael Robinson:

So you've got a lead on a Cerebus #1.

So you've bought a Cerebus #1.

Is it fake? Is it real? That is, is it actually one of the 2,000 copies printed in 1977 by Kitchener newspaper printer Fairway Press for the fledgling Aardvark/Vanaheim, or is it one of the (unknown printrun) sub-par counterfeit copies printed several years later by a (sort of) unknown unscrupulous person out to make a buck by fleecing comic collectors of their hard-earned cash? Are you bidding on a piece of history or a piece of infamy?

If you're actually holding both a real issue and a counterfeit issue in your hands, the differences are very easy to detect. But bidding on the internet, or just holding a random issue in your hand, it can be a daunting task.

Well, no more. Want to know if an issue is authentic, or a worthless stapled packet of newsprint? There's only one place on the cover you need to look.

Meet Floyd.

 Above: A closeup of an authentic Cerebus #1 cover. Click to embiggen. There's no real "trapping" of the red color, i.e. the red only overlaps the pure black areas a little bit. Notice the side of the arm of the figure—no "halo" of red leaking into the arm of the figure.

Meet "Pink" Floyd

Above: a closeup of the same areas of a counterfeit Cerebus #1. Click to embiggen. Notice that the red is mis-registered, and leaks into the figure's arm, making a red "halo" in the inner arm, chest, and the medallion. Additionally, the red is "trapped", completely covering the medallion.

If you see an auction on ebay or any other online seller, ask them for a closeup photo of this area of the cover. If they won't comply, it's safe to assume they know they're knowingly selling a counterfeit of the book.

If you can actually see the interior of the book, there's an even easier way to tell. Turn to the splash page of the dragon and the wizard, page 16.

If the Cerebus figure on the bottom of the page is toned, it's an authentic copy. If the Cerebus figure has almost completely filled in to black, it's a counterfeit.

Real Vark

"Quit checking out Cerebus' ass!"

Above: a closeup of page 16 of the AUTHENTIC Cerebus #1.

Fake Vark aka: "Counterfeit Cerebus" coming soon(?) to a Cerebus in Hell? strip near you (next year, maybe?)

"Counterfeit Cerebus doesn't mind you checking out his ass, he relishes the attention..."

Above: a closeup of page 16 of the COUNTERFEIT Cerebus #1, with filled-in tone and washed-out blacks.

Happy hunting!
                                                                                                                                            
Okay, everybody say, "Thanks Sean!" Thanks Sean.

I mean I had my Cerebus #1:

Okay, okay...I admit it, it was a counterfeit. And delicious...

AND...

I got this message TO Seiler FROM Dave:

7 August 18

Hi Jeff!

RE: your response on AMOC:

I hate to pick nits and scabbed-over wounds simultaneously, but wasn't it Shecky McAssCRAP (no "e" on the end?)?  I was actually going to ask at some point what the first name was. I remembered McAssCRAP but couldn't remember the given name.  Glad to hear that your own Monkey Boy-name-shaming days are behind you. 

Actually, it was ORIGINALLY "Slambo Asscrap," which I swiped from a print edition of a webcomic,  and then changed to "Shecky McAsscrape" once Seiler embraced it, and I was afraid he (or worse, me) would get sued.

1. The date on the counterfeit was 1977, not 1982, so, yes, the intent to deceive and obfuscate was there.

2.  I'm hoping that there's general agreement that the metrics should be widely available, but I don't think they are. I know from long (long, long, long) experience that it's almost impossible to explain anything about CEREBUS to anyone besides CEREBUS fans.  Everyone else seems to have built-in CEREBUS filters. Which is why I wanted the most easily identifiable of those metrics -- Pink Floyd -- to be what we restricted ourselves to.  The longer the list of differences, the more people's eyes were likely to glaze over and, in the case of CGC copies, it has to be something you can see on the front or back cover.  The Monday after this was posted to AMOC, Alfonso showed me a CEREBUS No.1 he had bought at a recent convention.  "It's a counterfeit" I said while it was still a couple of feet away.   This many years later on and with more experience at seeing the actual Pantone WARM RED colour of an authentic No.1 than even most CEREBUS fans, the pinkish cover colour is the giveaway for me.  But we can't use that as the metric because most people have never seen a real No.1.  Thus, the red ghost image on the chain-mail and other black ink details on Pink Floyd is the best way to

a) identify a counterfeit

b) disseminate the way to identify a counterfeit

As I said before, CGC KNOWS about the counterfeits, and grades them as such. I've yet to hear a credible story of  a counterfeit that has been graded as real.

Particularly in this day and age where it's a matter of pushing a few buttons to

i) take a high resolution photo of the cover

ii) enlarge that section of the cover

iii) incorporate it into the seller's post

Unfortunately, you need to have a), b), i), ii), and iii) happen simultaneously in order to improve the situation and I don't think that's likely to happen which is why I'm sending you this letter and having it e-mailed to Matt Dow later, so I can repeat my thinking and hope that this time it sticks:  that the scans that Sean has taken of the genuine CEREBUS No.1 and the counterfeit, be made available to any interested CEREBUS collector who regularly surfs the auction environments online and that they (if they're interested -- I can certainly understand them not being interested) get into the habit of e-mailing the Pink Floyd blow-ups to anyone auctioning a CEREBUS No.1and suggesting that they do comparable blow-ups of their own copy.  And "commenting" where possible on the inadvisability of purchasing a No.1 where someone hasn't done so.

Here's the post. It has the label, "Floyd Pink Floyd" if any future post deals with this, it will have the label, "Floyd Pink Floyd".

3.  With any luck, we can make the, as you put it,  "time-dishonored" approach of caveat emptor no longer viable when selling a CEREBUS No.1 and, instead, replace it with Ronald Reagan's favourite Russian proverb: "Trust. But verify." There can't be, on any given day, THAT many CEREBUS No.1's offered for sale, particularly relative to the number of CEREBUS collectors regularly searching for CEREBUS material online.

You'd be surprised Sim, you'd be surprised...

4.  It shouldn't be the case, in an ideal world, that you wouldn't bid on a CEREBUS No.1. If you WANT a CEREBUS No.1 and you're willing to pay the going price for a CEREBUS No.1, questions about its authenticity, in 2018, shouldn't exist.  But that requires the active participation of CEREBUS collectors to ensure. We can't properly infer that Tim P. was actively misrepresenting his No.1 because there was no online mechanism in place to establish its authenticity.  In effect, all the CEREBUS collectors stood around and stared at it and did nothing. What I'm proposing is that CEREBUS collectors no longer do that.  That CEREBUS collectors make a point of e-mailing Real Pink Floyd and Counterfeit Pink Floyd to actual sellers and suggesting that they shoot a photo and enlarge it.  If enough CEREBUS collectors did that so that NO seller can ever again say "I don't know" about it, then a failure to a) take the photo and b) post the photo can only be a tacit admission that they're attempting to pass of a counterfeit as an authentic one.

If a Cerebus #1 ISN'T slabbed, then Black Cerebus and the Dragon should be the go to. But Floyd is workable too.

5.  Damian considers anyone a "pompous ass" who disagrees with his political opinions.  Which makes him something of a pompous ass, by definition.   :)

This is gonna bring me trouble, I should just delete it, but that'd bring me trouble too. Before you idjits start "having a go" in the comments, remember your poor Interim Editor and that he's getting old and doesn't have the energy to referee your bullshit...

6.  Let me correct your misinformation here.  There were only 2,000 copies printed, yes, but they were virtually all sold to two distributors, not three comic-book stores  -- 500 copies to Jim Friel's Big Rapids Distribution in Lansing, Michigan and 1,000 copies to Phil Seuling's Sea Gate Distributors in Coney Island, New York -- and 500 copies to Now & Then Books, the local comic-book store in Kitchener.  All of them sold their copies to any interested purchaser -- Jim and Phil to the stores that they supplied -- and Harry Kremer to his own customers and other Southern Ontario comic stores.  There was no secondary market in December 1977 and January 1978.  By the time issue 3 was published, No.1 was pretty much unavailable.  THAT was when the secondary market started.  Deni and I had, maybe, 50 of them to sell at conventions.  And I only remember having No.1 and No.2 in those quantities at one Toronto show in early 1978.  No.1 sold faster than No.2 and when we were down to 20 copies, I said, okay, that's it. We're bagging and boarding those 20 and putting them away.  When Deni and I split up, part of her settlement was that she got 10 of the No.1's.

There was a genuine kerfuffle when Harry put a $50 price tag on a No.1 that he had reacquired.  Which he did because he, more than most, knew that they were hard to come by.  He still had a basement full of 5,000 copies of OKTOBERFEST No.1 and 2,000 copies of NOW & THEN TIMES No. 1 and 2, both of which he had published, but after he sold his 500th copy of CEREBUS No.1 it was a while before he saw one again. Too late he realized that he should have put 20 of them aside when he still had 500 of them. 

A good chunk of the direct market were underground people who saw that as profiteering. No comic book should ever be sold for more than cover price. "Ground level" collectors tended to see it the same way and tended to view anyone who sold comic books for more than cover price as a really disgusting and sordid ghetto in the outer fringes of the mainstream.  I took a lot of heat for not denouncing people for selling CEREBUS back issues for more than cover price and for letting Harry advertise them in the back of the book.  Hopefully, we're past that now.

Yeah, "hope in one hand"...

A few years back, a major Golden Age dealer called in a favour from Pete Dixon asking if Pete could get me to sign a CEREBUS collection he had bought and Pete called in a favour with me getting me to do it.  At the time, Peter (and his then partner Kevin Boyd) was the only store owner who had signed the petition, so he had a lot of cachet with me.  And still does.  I asked him to phone the dealer and find out if he wanted Neal Adams or Frank Frazetta on his No.1 -- it was a counterfeit.  And only found out later that he had paid several thousand dollars for it (in 8.5).   

I must assume that it was NOT graded and slabbed by CGC...

The "metrics" aren't as "widely available" as CEREBUS fans tend to think.  But, I hope -- one step at a time and with the active participation of CEREBUS collectors -- we can keep situations like this from occurring in the future.

Best,

Dave

PS:  Let me know when you get this in the mail so I can have Rolly e-mail it to Matt Dow.            

Which he did. And now you people get to read it. Like the man said, "We're MASS Communicating!"

Alright, Public Service performed.

Next Time: That Jingles thing Hobbs has been trying to post since whenever, UNLESS I INTERFERE AGAIN! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The Ol' AMOC Mailbag: David Birdsong

Hi, Everybody!

The Ol' AMOC Mailbag got a number of items from Superman's frenemy, David Birdsong:

Dave’s solution to spotting the counterfeit Cerebus #1

From the Cerebus covers book. 

Click to make it big enough to read the tiny print...

He also sent in: 

Dave Sim in 2005:

I have my suspicions as to who did the counterfeit but, no, the FBI never managed to catch the guys who were selling them-the "mules" folded their operation as soon as word started to spread-and therefore there was no route to anyone who was behind the scam. I certainly wasn't about to accuse anyone publicly without evidence to support it but, yes, I'm pretty sure I knew who did it.

Margaret Liss' has a great page on her site with several examples:

 http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/counterfeit.php

And finally a REALLY BIG image of the two side by side from Heritage Auctions:

I shrunk it down, because the image doesn't really show the difference. So, this is more to show that CGC KNOWS about the counterfeits, and slabs them accordingly.

 Speaking of CGC, back here, I said:

One of the BIGGEST problems, with the whole "counterfeit" issue, is that we don't know EXACTLY how many copies of Cerebus #1 there are. There WERE 2000 copies of the real Cerebus #1. (If I'm remembering right.) Now there has to be an attrition rate of copies that were bought and thrown away/read to pieces/lost in "misadventure". So that means there's <2000 copies that are real.

And, as far as I know, no one really knows how many copies of the counterfeits there are.

It would be really awesome if somebody (not me), set up a census of Cerebus #1s.

Well over on the CGC website, they have a census of everything they've slabbed. Including Cerebus #1:

So that's 219 real copies.

And 58 no-good-dirty-rotten-"worthless" fakes.

And finally, David sent in:

I'm pretty sure this one is fake...

cerebus-reboot-cyberpunk

"The warrior aardvark of legend returns in an all-new series that catapults Cerebus into a dark, dystopian future to face the most terrifying enemy he has ever known: The Voids. A parasitic race of creatures driven only by base emotions of fear and hunger, the Voids have infiltrated the city at nearly every level, binding men of power and influence to their vampiric will. Can Cerebus stop the Voids before they consume every man in Iestopolis with their unspeakable hunger, or will they continue their rampage unopposed until the very last Male Light goes out?"

 Alright, everybody say "Thanks David!"

Next Time: Dave on "The Genesis Question" part the next...

Dirty Laundry

Hi,  Everybody!

First, today is Gerhard's "Moments of Cerebus" art auction.

Second:

If you know the words, SING ALONG!

So, 'emember the post where I listed the comiclink auctions, and all sorts of other fun stuff you guys could buy, including Tim P's eBay auctions, including his Counterfeit #1? Yeah, that one.

In the comments, Jeff Seiler said:

That's DEFINITELY a counterfeit #1. The Overstreet Guide used to list the counterfeit #1 as being worth exactly $0.00. Now, as of the 2017 issue, it just lists a brief description. Regardless, I think it is a crime that Tim should make any part of the (current) bid of £149 from selling it. Furthermore, Tim most certainly could (and should) have done his due diligence and discovered for himself that his copy is counterfeit. That he did not speaks volumes about him as a seller. He should strongly consider removing the listing, if that is possible.

 To which I replied:

Hey Jeff,

How's the weather up there on your high horse?

Matt
(Tim DID say he didn't know if it was legit or not, and I had three people compare it to the photos on Margaret's website, and WE all thought it was real...)

Well, I got an email from Everybody's friend, Sean Michael Robinson, which had a fax from the reason we're all here, Dave Sim:

There's a lot to unpack here, but let me start with the most germane part:

That Rat Bastard Seiler ratted me out!!! There's a REASON I call him "Shecky McAssrape"!

 I WAS going to post this fax ASAP, but then Ditko died, and I was working, and I needed to respond to Sean, who offered to make up a simple "how to" guide to tell real copies from the fakes.

Then "Shecky" sent me this:

Hi, Matt!  Hope you and yours are all well.  I was just wondering:  It's been a week since I last spoke on the phone with Dave, in which conversation he told me that he faxed you, via Sean, a response to my question about what his current stance is on counterfeit issues of Cerebus #1 being sold on ebay (or, elsewhere) for profit.  He told me, essentially, that he supported my view of it as being criminal and that he had, in his fax to you, indicated that he didn't think that I had been (as you put it), "up on [my] high horse", but that I had spoken the truth about the reality of selling counterfeit items for profit.  

There are, currently, multiple copies of Cerebus #1 for sale on ebay and only a few of them show anything besides the front and back covers.  And, when you zoom in on the photos, the resolution is too poor to make the differentiation on the red dot tone.  Personally, I believe that the dragon page is the "make or break", but I've only seen one recent offering on ebay that showed a photo of that page.  Almost all of them show just the front and back covers, with very poor resolution.

Oh, and, Dave told me that he had included in the fax, once again, very clear guidelines for determining whether or not any given copy of Cerebus #1 is counterfeit.

I'm just wondering:  Have you received that letter/fax?  And, if so, when will you be posting it at AMOC?  Clearly, that was what Dave wanted you to do.  In part, to vindicate me, but also to try to keep the record clear.

So, when?

Best to you and all the lovely ladies, 

Jeff

When? WHEN Shecky? When I G-D D-MN feel like it!

Ya know, now.

So, before anybody gets the impression that I'ma about to pay Shecky a late night visit with a crowbar and some VERY stern words, allow me to clarify myself:

When I asked Jeff, "How's the weather up there on your high horse?", I wasn't referring to his position on the legality of selling a counterfeit Cerebus #1. I was responding to the inferred use of his "school marm" voice.

As regular readers of the Wild and Wooly AMOC comment section know (Hi, Damian!), Jeff has at times come across as... (how do I put this?)...(ya know, "nicely"?)...a bit of a... "pompous ass."

My reply to his comment was specifically made to the phrase: "Tim most certainly could (and should) have done his due diligence".

Sorry, Jeff, but to quote one of my favorite people (no, really!): "render unto me a fucking break!"

I spent ten minutes on Margaret's delicious CerebusFanGirl site, looking at the various ways of determining a genuine from a fake. I had other people look at the photos. We all agreed that Tim's copy was most likely a genuine copy. As everybody's friend, Sean Robinson said in the comments of the post:

There are other obvious differences, but they all involve having an authentic #1 on hand for comparison. 

So, short of having both, it's a bit of a crapshoot.

(There was also an inferred "peevishness" since Jeff doesn't have a copy of #1, and I figured he was pissed that he bid on it before finding out it wasn't genuine. Possibly pure fantasy on my part, but possibly not.)

So, THAT'S why I asked about Jeff's "high horse".

Back to Dave's Fax.

Yes, the form e-mail isn't the worst idea.

And everybody's friend, Sean Robinson, has kindly agreed to make up a post/email for these purposes. So, yes Sean, please do.

I do question the need to contact the local cops, but that's more my aversion to dealing with The Fuzz.

As to counterfeit #1s being immoral, I agree that the initial counterfeiting was definitely an immoral (and criminal) act. But, I believe that selling a counterfeit is only immoral if you KNOW that it's a counterfeit and DON'T disclose that. As far as buying a counterfeit, I believe it was the Romans ("terrific race, the Romans") who coined the phrase: "caveat emptor". (Which, the post/email will hopefully help to educate the buying public.) (Who would do well to remember the sage advise of the late Harry Anderson: "a fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.")

As to counterfeits having no value, this is a "eye of the beholder" situation. What exactly is the value of a Cerebus #1? Is it the content? Or is it the physical object? If you believe that the value is in the content, then a Cerebus Bi-weekly #1 has a higher value than a Cerebus #1, because it has the entirety of Cerebus #1, plus the introduction from Swords #1. If you believe that the value is in the physical object, then one would assume that you'd not be reading it, but slabbing it to ascertain it's value, and preserve said value.

All my research into counterfeit #1s, says that CGC knows the difference between genuine and counterfeit copies. So, if you want to buy a Cerebus #1 for it's inherent value, and not to read the beginnings of our favorite Aardvark, I'd suggest either ponying up for a slabbed and certified copy, or schooling yourself in all the myriad differences between real and fake copies, and hoping for the best.

One of the BIGGEST problems, with the whole "counterfeit" issue, is that we don't know EXACTLY how many copies of Cerebus #1 there are. There WERE 2000 copies of the real Cerebus #1. (If I'm remembering right.) Now there has to be an attrition rate of copies that were bought and thrown away/read to pieces/lost in "misadventure". So that means there's <2000 copies that are real.

And, as far as I know, no one really knows how many copies of the counterfeits there are.

It would be really awesome if somebody (not me), set up a census of Cerebus #1s.

And as far as buyers/sellers sending Dave a cut of the money for the sale of counterfeits...

While the initial counterfeiting was a crime, is it REALLY a crime for retailers who were hoodwinked by the counterfeiter, to try to make up their loss by selling the counterfeits AS counterfeits? In my researches, I came across retailers who paid five dollars a copy for the counterfeits, and sold them for ten, (clearly labeled as counterfeits.) (There was also the case of the retailer who bought 54 copies for $770, that then sold them as counterfeits for 20 or 25 bucks.)

I mean, I agree that it would be nice, but I don't expect it to be the rule instead of the exception.

(I also wonder about Dave's "illegally acquired personal property" line. I'm no lawyer, but is it really illegal to buy a counterfeit? And Dave was GIVING away the story contents of Cerebus #1 when he was giving away the first phonebook a few years back. (Which was my idea (sorta), so I apologize for bringing it up in an asshole way right now. But the point kinda stands. (Especially in light of Dave's saying that Cerebus is essentially in the Public Domain.) (I mean, I get that in 1982, Cerebus #1 was VERY much a protected and copyrighted property, but here almost 40 years later, not so much.))

I'm sending this to Dave, so I'll let everybody know what he says in reply.

Next Time: All the deals on oats I can find so Jeff can feed his high horse. (I kid, I kid...)

Cerebus TV Reruns: The Great Cerebus #1 Counterfeit Scam

Now showing on Cerebus TV:

Season 1 Episode 14

(First Aired: 26 February 2010)

Further Reading: 
Cerebus Fan Girl: Real vs Counterfeit