The Strange Death of Cerebus part 2: Form & Void

Hi, Everybody!

So when I was filling in for Jen on Tuesday, I talked about Cerebus' death and Square One.

Well, at the end of Form & Void, this happens:

Now in the notes, Dave talks about how Cerebus is performing the traditional Hebrew mourning rituals of rending your clothes and covering your face in ashes. 

And I'm not denying that, but there's other layers going on as well.

On one level, Jaka is enacting Cerebus' march from Minds when he was on Pluto:

(Which Cerebus reenacted in Going Home:)

On another level, as the Cerebus/Jaka relationship goes the way "Dave" prophesized it would in Minds, Cerebus covering his face with dirt is also an inversion of the Square One Motif. Cerebus is trying to go into silhouette. And of course he keeps "going blank" which leads to WHITE panels instead of Black silhouette.

I guess I'll ask Dave about it for the January Please Hold For Dave Sim...

Rigamarole:

New AV Book:

Cerebus #1 Facsimile Edition and Cerebus #1 Facsimile Edition Signed

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The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe: up to 35% off:

December 25-29.

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Heritage has a few Dave Sim/Cerebus items. Including a thing I didn't realize Dave didn't have..

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The Strange Death of Alex Raymond Go Fund Me.

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The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill.

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Larry Shell could use a hand. (I still haven't heard about where/when Dave's donation is getting sold.)

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EVERYTHING on Cerebus Overload is 35% off until the end of the year. The. End. Of. The. Year. Use code "SANTA" at checkout.

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The Last Day Without nothing.

   "      "     "        "  Dave's signature.

   "      "     "        "  an Old Cerebus Remarque

   "      "     "     Auction catalog for the Panoramic Remarques. 

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Oliver'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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Next Time: The Anniversary, Part 2

The Strange Death of...Cerebus?

Hi, Everybody!

Jen has a thing, so I'ma pinch-hit this one.

If you go over to The Strange Death of Alex Raymond Go Fund Me, you'll see that ain't NOBODY donated since last week. 

So Jen's Update would be last week's Update Redux.

Anyway since I'm posting...

Dave's talked about the Square One Motif, and chess factors into Cerebus heavily.

But it wasn't until recently, that I noticed something...strange about Cerebus dying:

So Cerebus starts in a black silhouette:

 and ends in the white light:

Well, on a chessboard

if you start on a black square, and cross straight across the board, you'll end up in a white square.

Black:

White:

Just something I noticed...

Next Time: Hobbs and what HE noticed...

STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE: THE SECRET ORIGIN OF CEREBUS IN HELL? PART THREE

Hi, Everybody!

Continuing from Tuesday (which itself was a continuation from Monday. (Continuity. Ya can't spell "AMOC" without "Continuity"! (wait, yes you can. That's the last time I buy a dictionary from the dollar store. It just stops in the "Ks". Nothing after Kwyjibo...)))

STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE: THE SECRET ORIGIN OF

CEREBUS IN HELL? PART THREE

The CIH? book introduction you won't get in SWORDS OF CEREBUS IN HELL? because the books are exactly 112 pages long if we just reprint the issues so the introduction would have to be 8 pages to make another signature. Or maybe a 4-page intro and 4 pages headlined "AUTOGRAPHS". Hmm.

Dave Sim: FUN FACTS ABOUT CIH? FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER ACTUALLY EXPERIENCED FUN BUT HAVE HEARD REALLY GOOD THINGS ABOUT IT:

FUN FACT #1) The strip was originally called DESECRATING CEREBUS in the sense of VANDALIZING CEREBUS (my laptop thesaurus adds destroy, despoil, deface, disfigure, mutilate, damage, sabotage, wreck and ruin to desecrate when you type in vandalize. Actually, when you type in "van". So even if I'm looking for a synonym for Van Halen or Vanna White, as usual my laptop thesaurus is pretending to be the Ken Jennings of Family Feud (to mix several game-show metaphors and a defunct rock band) (actually they're all defunct rock bands, these days, right?) with the first three letters. Desecrating means "to treat a sacred place or thing with violent disrespect". There are many things I would consider CEREBUS to be but a sacred place or thing isn't in the top 50. Sandeep just thought that made it funnier.

FUN FACT #2) Sandy was the one who picked the three iconic Cerebus images we all use to this day -- two seriously steamed Cerebi and one placid Cerebus. Same relationship as hydrogen to oxygen in the composition of water. Seriously steamed hydrogen and placid oxygen. It didn't seem fair to, say, the Whore of Babylon to have a bunch of Cerebus images to pick from and just one Whore of Babylon image. Either that or Sandy found something better to do (perhaps watching paint dry?) after he had found three of them and, so, stopped looking for more images. There are, as you can see, several Fun Facts in Fun Fact paragraph #2 to pick from.

I actually tracked down what pages they're from:

This is page 53 from my digital Reads, but that might not be right...

Page 64, but, again, that might not be right... (Also, "Cirin" said "moment" Heh.)

Two from Reads, and:

Page 19 of issue #113.

FUN FACT #3) When Sandy would turn in a strip with the song lyrics "My man INF left a tec and a nine at my crib, turned hisself in, he had to do a bid" or "Who shot ya? Separate the weak from the obso…lete, hard to creep them Brooklyn streets…" I was a) naturally curious about what song the lyrics were from and who was the performer b) what those lyrics were when translated into English c) very much aware that I'm i) really, really white and ii) really, really old, so my expressing my curiosity was apt to seriously damage the reputation of the performer in question. Clearly, there are white Fun Facts and non-white Fun Facts and they're best left that way. Call it "Good Segregation".

TO BE CONTINUED

Thanks Dave! (And: Thanks Sandy! "Arf! Arf! It's Sandy!" Sorry, Sandeep...)

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Crisis In Infinite Quarantine:

Swords of Cerebus in Hell? Volume 5

Heritage has some interesting "Dave Sim" bits (Page from issue 5, and two (count 'em) TWO! Beavers strips! And an original Diamondback deck.)

The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe 

Up to 35% off site-wide:

June 12

June 23 – 27

Tell your fans! Remind them that everything will be up to 35% off -- that means $13 tees, $20 phone cases, $30 hoodies, and way more!

Next Time: Oliver and HIS "Fun Facts"!

KRAKAthakkaBOOM!!!

Hi, Everybody!

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What kinda "marole"? A RIG-A-marole:

Hope you ordered your copy of Vark Wars, 'cause it's time to order VARK THING! OCT191438

Click for biggerness

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You want a prototype The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, you gotta pledge (or up your pledge) here. Eddie clarifies:
So if you joined after sep 6, for $50, we’re assuming you want in on the contest so you get 50 chances. If you were already a contributing Patron before, and you had contributed $150 in total since you joined, and you upped your pledge by $10 after Sep 6, you get 15+ 10= 25 chances.
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Friend to the Blog, and recipient of his own special themed week here on AMOC (last year, and again at the end of the month. That's right, like Shark Week, Steve Peters Week is COMING BACK!), Steve Peters is running a new KickStarter to fund his latest project: Parallel Comicverses #1, will be a softcover black and white, digest-size book, with 70 pages of comics and over 30 pages of glimpses at the creative process. And a new story WRITTEN BY DAVE SIM! With a Cerebus knock-off character: Cerberus
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AND: New Cerebus Merch:

Ladies love the Vark Wars! Love it!

David Birdsong says:
US: Vark Wars Yellow Logo Tee T-Shirt
Vark Wars Yellow Logo Tee Sweatshirt
Vark Wars Yellow Logo Tee Long Sleeve T-Shirt
Vark Wars Yellow Logo Tee V-Neck T-Shirt

UK: Vark Wars Yellow Logo Tee T-Shirt
Vark Wars Yellow Logo Tee Sweatshirt
Vark Wars Yellow Logo Tee Long Sleeve T-Shirt

Germany:Vark Wars gelbes Logo-T-Stück T-Shirt
Vark Wars gelbes Logo-T-Stück Sweatshirt
Vark Wars gelbes Logo-T-Stück Langarmshirt

And still available - "Approval Is An Authoritarian Construct"
US: Approval Is An Authoritarian Construct Tee
UK: Approval Is An Authoritarian Construct Tee

I'll send a copy of Vark Wars signed by both Dave and myself to the first person that sends Dave a Vark Wars shirt. There's really just four versions and the V-Neck for the Ladies is sold only on Amazon US.

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Colin Upton!: https://www.patreon.com/colinuptoncomics COLIN UPTON!!!: https://colinupton.tumblr.com/ For the love of Pete: COLIN UPTON!!!!!: https://www.facebook.com/Colin-Upton-Comics-257449422123/
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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...