The Seven Cent Nickel part 1

Hi, Everybody!

VARK WARS: WALT'S EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

And there is more High Society than you can shake a baby at.

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Okay, so many many years ago, I was gonna write an article for Cerebus the Newsletter about the economy of Estarcion.

I was gonna call it The Seven Cent Nickel after this bit from Animal Crackers:

That clip cuts off the opening dialogue:
 Chandler: "In the last analysis, it is a question of money. The nickel today is not what it used to be ten years ago." 

Spaulding: "Well, I'll go further than that. I'll get off at the depot. The nickel today is not what it was fifteen years ago. Do you know what this country needs today?...A seven-cent nickel. Yessiree, we've been using the five-cent nickel in this country since 1492. Now that's pretty near a hundred years' daylight saving. Now, why not give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could have an eight-cent nickel. Think what that would mean. You could go to a newsstand, buy a three-cent newspaper and get the same nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime!"
Chandler: "Captain Spaulding I think that is a wonderful idea!"
Spaulding: "You do, huh?"
Chandler: "Yes."
Spaulding: "Now then there can't be much to it, forget about it..."

Which is pretty much the basis for the Estarcion economy in High Society. But, as I've been re-reading the series for 2019 (shut. up.) one of the many motifs I've been looking for is money, specifically references to the economy.

First is issue 3 (or page fifty-three of the first phonebook):

Borealan gold mines are failing, and Boreala is going broke.

Then, there's issue nine (or page one hundred and eighty-five):

Which shows how the devaluing of Borealan gold is affecting everybody else.

Then, in issue ten (or page two hundred and forty-eight):

The first panel: "Cerebus knew the military government would be delighted to at last balance their budget."

The next time economics shows up is the Palnu Trilogy, and there are alot of examples there, so I'm gonna save them until a later time.

But I'll leave with another bit of foreshadowing from Issue one:

"Ten times a thousand pouches of gold"?

See Church & State volume one:

Church and State has so many clever callbacks to the first phonebook.

 Next Time: Hobbs or Birdsong, maybe Margaret. I've honestly stopped paying attention...

That weird Cerebus Preacher/Punisher crossover?

Hi, Everybody!

House of Cerebus. (FOC should be REAL soon...)

The Silver Cerebus

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As was mentioned in an old Please Hold For Dave Sim (you're gonna have to find it yourselves, I got a headache...) Dave was once a guest at an Australian Comic Con, along with Garth Ennis. They ended up spending a lot of time together. Which makes the following even stranger:

So, just before the 2/3rds mark of Cerebus (Issue 198), Dave does this bit:

We all know how it ends.

Well, at just before the 2/3rds point in Preacher (Issue 39 (of 66)), Garth Ennis does this bit:

Weird coincidence right?

It gets weirder:

Everybody remembers this bit:

Well, AMOC's ol' friend Paul Slade sent in:

Dear Matt,

I’m currently working my way through Garth Ennis’s Punisher Max run. In issue #39, I found this scene featuring a Russian general called Zakharov. It’s the 1980s, and he’s executing a village full of Afghan civilians by marching them off a cliff when one of them begs him to save her baby. Zakharov agrees to take it, and then this happens:

TWO issue #39s by Ennis, that echo Cerebus?

Weird...

Next Time: Oliver!

The Great 2019 Cerebus Re-read Part, the WAIT, THIS IS STILL A THING?!?

Hi, Everybody!

So, as we all know, Barry Windsor-Smith  drew "Cerebus Dreams", and inspired Dave to do more Cerebus dreams stories.

It's a motif of the series.

But did it start with BWS?

I say...nope!

Issue #8, which precedes BWS's story. 

It may have been a fever dream, but it's still a dream...
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Vark Thing!

Next Time: Oh, it's gonna be great...

Who's the narrator? MIND BLOWN!!!

Hi, Everybody!

The Jaka's Story remaster has a Starcode!  APR191258 First month orders will be signed and numbered! "However many orders there are in the next 1 week[?], that's how many signed copies there will be. Diamond will order over the initial orders by some other amount, and those will become inventory books available after the initial order...but they won't be signed." [Thanks Sean!-Matt] 

There's a special AMOC auction for the cover of Green Dante/Green Virgil. (John Christian is winning with a bid of $250 USD.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one. But all the postcards should be in the mail. So watch for the postman.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another hundred and ninety-nine bucks CAD ($197 USD), it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this.

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So, I was working on a post based off of something Dave said in the last Please Hold, when I ran across something in Reads, that blew my mind.

Namely, this:

Reads page 41

Is...

Is Suenteus Po the all-knowing Narrator from the first half of the series?

I mean, after Women, there is no all-knowing narration.

I ran through the phonebooks in my head:

Cerebus: All-knowing narrator

High Society: All-knowing narrator, Suenteus Po the human member of Cerebus' cabinet

Church &State 1: No narrator(?)

Church & State 2: No narrator (?), all-knowing narrator during the ascension

Jaka's Story: No narrator, Oscar

Melmoth: No narrator, Oscar's friend's letters

Flight: All-knowing narrator

Women: All-knowing narrator

Reads: No narrator, Victor Reid, Viktor Davis

Minds: "Dave"

Guys:  No narrator other than this bit:

Rick's Story: No narrator, Rick's book, "Dave"

Going Home: No narrator, F. Stop's book

Form & Void: No narrator, Ham's book, Mary's diary

Latter Days: Cerebus does the narration

Last Day: Well, there's this:

Which I'm gonna say is "Dave"

I guess I'll be faxing Dave tonight...

Next Time: Hobbs. ALL Hobbs...

The Great 2019 AMOC Re-Read Part, the eighth

Hi, Everybody!

Preamble:

There's more auctions up at ComicsLink. (Twenty days to go!)

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets four grand, it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. (Forty-Two days left, $2019 left to get the Gerhard.)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one. (But there should be a second Postcard in a few months.)

I'll be discussing the remastered Volume 1, which is available digitally for $9.99, eventually. (Like I did yesterday.)

And The Jaka's Story remaster won't get a Starcode number until the April previews is out, so hopefully next month. (This month?)

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The Great 2019 a Moment of Cerebus Re-Read

Continuing with Year Three:

So, the big problem here, is that I just want to run every page, unbroken non-stop for issue after issue after issue...

I know I kinda rushed through "The Palnu Trilogy", but that's only because I wanna get to the next Motif:
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You ain't going nowhere boy!

Cerebus spends sixty pages in Palnu, and leaves and never wants to go back, yet:

Just look at that, the 17th printing is just the "bees' knees"...

The same thing happens *SPOILER WARING* at the end of High Society, with Iest.
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Square One

As I've already said, the "Cerebus in Silhouette" endings continue through this next arc:

Cerebus' "Champion" ending. 

"Fluroc" ending

"She-Devil in the Shadows" ending

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But back to "Champion":

So the bit right before this does a little Tarimite world building. But I'm stopping myself from posting the entire issue.

Anyway, Commander Krull is Conan. He looks like Conan. Slightly older, but he's Conan.

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Next Time: Hobbs! (He's gonna thank you for buying a postcard...)

The Great 2019 AMOC Re-Read Part, the seventh

Hi, Everybody!

As I'm wont to do:

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets four grand, it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume.

There's more auctions up at ComicsLink.

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

Hopefully I'll be discussing the remastered Volume 1, which is available digitally for $9.99, eventually.

And The Jaka's Story remaster won't get a Starcode number until the April previews is out, so hopefully next month.

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The Great 2019 a Moment of Cerebus Re-Read

As we all learned when I last talked to Dave, the "Cerebus in Silhouette" Motif has an actual name (emphasis mine):

Dave: Okay, the other thing that you were commenting on, in over 40 years you’re the only person who has noticed it, is the Cerebus silhouette thing.

Matt: [laughs] I only noticed it because I read the first three issues and I was like, they all have that same ending and I’m like, I wonder how issue 4 ends? And I got to that one and I’m like, “Okay, that’s… something that I just noticed.”

Dave: That was square one. That was the first panel in the first issue of Cerebus, Cerebus is a tiny silhouette, you can’t even tell where he stops and where the horse begins. So, it was always going back to square one, panel one, in the early stories, cause I didn’t know how many of these I was going to be able to do, and this was certainly my experience was, it didn’t matter what I did, I was always back at square one.

Matt: [laughs]

Dave: Which, was why I called 112/113, “Square One.”

Square One. Which is how I'll refer to it from now on.

So, The Palnu Trilogy:

It starts off with the Silverspoon strips, which truly read better as individual strips, and not an eleven page story. But it's funny, because except for one panel in High Society (which I've finished re-reading, and will be getting to soon), and the beginning of Church & State Volume one, Silverspoon is completely ignored for the rest of the series after these eleven pages. He doesn't even get mentioned by name in the series proper during the Palnu Trilogy:

We also get the idea of how Lord Julius runs Palnu. 

Lord Julius is a strange character, while his likeness and attitude is a parody of Groucho Marx, Dave doesn't quite pull off the physicality and mannerisms. (That changes later in the series.)

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I like that "GAH!"

Hey look! It's the first appearance of Baskin.

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As always, the crispness of the 17th printing always blows me away.

Here's a few pages from "A Night at the Masque":

I didn't JUST post these pages because of the buxom women in the backgrounds, but it certainly made for an easy decision...

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A part of me wonders if this came out BEFORE or AFTER Raiders of the Lost Ark? Cause it seems a lot like the "Cairo Swordsman" sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark...

And after seventy pages of Palnu fun, it's time for "Square One":

Next Time: A new Motif appears...

The Great 2019 AMOC Re-Read Part, the sixth

Hi, Everybody!

I've FINISHED my Re-Read of Cerebus Volume 1!

But first:

The Birthday Card is available.

And the Postcard Kickstarter.

Which is offering personalized posters (that you gotta print yourself,) they look like this:

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The Great 2019 a Moment of Cerebus Re-Read

Alright, Cerebus Year Three (part one):

Now that Dave went monthly, he kicks it off with a 71 page (ya gotta include the eleven Silverspoon strips...) EPIC. We meet Lord Julius, learn the ins and outs of Palnu, see Cerebus engage in swashbuckling adventure, and it all wraps up with the revelation that Jaka is Lord Julius's niece. The art and writing are progressing at an extraordinary rate now that Dave is producing 40 pages every two months instead of Year One and Two's 22 pages every two months.

And after ALL that, Cerebus rides off in silhouette...

Ah Damn it!!!

Let's see how this motif continues for the rest of Year Three:

Issue 17, "Champion" 

Cerebus in Silhouette. "But," you say, "Issue 17 ACTUALLY ends with an epilogue featuring Lord Julius."

You are correct:

Lord Julius... IN SILHOUETTE!

Then there's "Fluroc":

You may not be able to see Cerebus in the crowd THAT'S IN SILHOUETTE!

Then there's "She-Devil In The Shadows":

See, you're SUPPOSED to think that Geeta is the She-Devil, but it's ACTUALLY Perce. 'cause she drugged and kidnapped Cerebus...

Next is "Mind Game":

Hey look! An ending where NOBODY'S in silhouette! It's a Cerebus Re-Read Miracle!

And then it's "Captain Cockroach":

Yeah, next to the Roach in the shadows, Cerebus...

And "The Death of Elrod":

It's almost a joke at this point...

Which leads to "The Beguiling" which is another multi-part story:

Nobody's in silhouette. 

The next part is "Swamp Sounds":

See, my theory is that Dave doesn't do the stock ending for multi-part stories. It's... a working theory.

And finally: "This Woman, This Thing":

Did you see it?

Did ya?

Cerebus is just about to walk away in silhouette when his greed brings him back.

Wait.

Was this whole Motif a set-up for this gag?

I mean, fifteen of the first twenty-five issues end with somebody in silhouette.

Just sayin'.

Next Time: More of Year Three...