Hi, Everybody!
The
Kickstarter for Dave and Carson Grubaugh's
You Don't Know Jack ends Friday at 8PM (CST) (9PM Dave time, (which might be Carson's time too, now that he's livin' it up in Hazzard County ('emember Carson, they's just a coupla Good ol' boys, never meant no harm...) and 6PM in Modesto California where Sean is hiding from George Lucas and the army of Mouse lawyers who wanna ask him some pointed questions about
Vark Wars: Walt's Empire Strikes Back (which you can buy signed by Dave, signed by Dave and me, or well, those are the only options really).).).
The Newest Update:
Hello friends,
There are THREE DAYS LEFT to get your Jack fix! AAAAGHHHH!
First off, yesterday evening Carson was interviewed by the comics publisher/blogger Critical Blast. Take a look below to listen or watch his interview!https://youtu.be/sE6yBPxqXvE
Second, we've decided to prolong the Lisa Frank Holographic Deathmatch for just a wee bit longer so we can get a larger sample of votes from you all!
Which of the below sticker would you PROUDLY display on your Trapper Keeper, Ford Monster Truck and/or Toyota Prius? Let us know in the comments! We'll tally the results soon and will send you all your very own Holographic Jack Swag at the close of the campaign.
For those of you into strategic voting, so far version FOUR is ahead, by just a few votes, with version ONE A close behind! Anyone looking to throw their vote away, perhaps TWO or THREE are more to your liking?
Outrageous. Truly truly truly outrageous.
Thirdly, Carson and I have revamped the campaign "story" a bit and added some info as to how to easily alter your campaign pledge to include new or different items. Please take another spin through to make sure you haven't missed anything you'd like. We'll be reminding you again as the campaign comes to a close, but there's no time like the present.
Lastly, we would love any and all help you could lend us getting the word out in these last few days! Tell the mailman! Your doctor! Your grandma who does the bitchen needlepoint! We appreciate the shares, the buzz, the commentary, the attention.
And thank you again very much for your support.
-Sean and Carson
Thanks guys!
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If you missed the Waverly Press Kickstarter for the Remastered Cerebus #1, limited overflow of the rewards are available at
cerebusoverload.com.
Cerebus masks and whatnots with all the money going to Dave.
Until the end of the month, there's also "
Cerebus in Hell? 4 Sell". With all the profits going to Aardvark-Vanaheim.
Speaking of Cerebus in Hell? you got another week before the Final Order Cutoff for:
Vault of Cerebus! And The "Censored for Grandma" variant:
Batvark XXXXXSpeaking of which, A Moment of Cerebus is facilitating Aardvark/Vanaheim's auctioning of a signed copy of the mis-stapled The Amicable Spider-Vark #1. As soon as I get pictures, I'll show you what it looks like, but it's signed by Dave five times with a silver sharpie that was dying, and some of them are smeared. It's a "Sandeep Atwall 1 of 5". Bidding starts at $12 American dollars (plus shipping, this ain't a charity...).
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"Well that's enough shilling Matt, when the @#$% are you gonna get to Cerebus?!?"
You know, you've got a mean streak that isn't very pleasant to deal with...
Anyway, the Cerebus Fangirl herself, Margaret Liss sent in:
Matt -
I have two of the four Aaardvarkian Age columns that Deni's brother wrote. Figured they might make good reading on the AMoC site. At one point I had emailed Michael Loubert about hosting them on the Cerebus Wiki and he was okay with it. Now that the wiki is dead, perhaps they can go up on AMoC.
--
Take care,
Margaret
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com
From issue #16:
The Aardvarkian Age
By Michael Loubert
(in each issue of Cerebus Michael Loubert will be examining some of the background on the various places the Earth-pig finds himself. This first installment concerns itself with Lower Felda and Palnu, Cerebus’ stomping grounds for the lest six issues)
“Such dust! A Tarim forsaken place, these lowlands.’
“On the contrary.’
“What, you ken (sic) these dry places?”
“Far from it. But the land is so ridden with religion — far from Terim-forsaken.”
from “Discourses of Theyr”
That was an accurate observation. Nearly front the beginnings of their histories, the twin Feldan lands of upper and Lower Felda had bee plagued with so excess of religious fervor.
Theyr was visiting The Kingdom of Felda about two centuries before Cerebus arrived on the scene. Felda at the time was wracked by religious civil war. The King, a conservative fellow, had tried to outlaw the new Ezthran Heresy from the capital of Beduin. The Ezthran were massacred and the survivors fled east.
There they set up a Puritan religious state, ruled by a dour Council of Five. All their heretics (i.e. orthodox Terimites) were mercilessly butchered. That started another war, reprisals were answered by more massacres, and it is truly surprising that Lord Theyr managed to survive it all to write his famous urbane travelogues.
Anyway, after the smoke cleared and the wars died out, the King in Beduin was murdered by a clique of disgruntled army officers. They proceeded to run the place their way with the usual attendant corruption and graft. Lower Felda, as it became known, became the target of every wealthy cult in the Feldwar States.
All this concerned the urban dwellers of these lands. In Lower Felda the peasantry (always the bulk of the population in agrarian societies) tried to ignore the weird goings-on in the cities. They tamely joined the armies when recruiting officers visited the hamlets, and when pushed too far during hard times — such as plague or famine — would dig up their swords buried under their huts and rage about the countryside for a few months.
Then the army would drop by (composed of fellow peasants) and would butcher them. Back to square one. No one gave much thought to the humble tillers of the soil. Their history is unwritten.
The basic foodstuff of the Feld River lands is wheat spelled with a capital W. It fed the teeming throngs of lest and Beduin. It also fed the equally enormous armies of Khaidoge and the Mad Onliu. It was responsible for the growth and eventual fall of the Feldwar States.
The Feld River Lands were the bread-basket of the Aardvarkian Age. The peasants toiled, the overlords told them what to plant and when to reap. In return the surplus wheat went to the cities to be consumed or traded overland to other nations less fortunate. It was a great irony that the very nations who spent so much energy keeping the Onliu out were selling them grain to feed the invading armies.
There were problems with the setup in the Feldwar States. They were never able to expand into the Grass Sea and cultivate it — the Hsifans had a military and political system superior to the fratricidal Feldwin, lestan and Moreshin armies were regularly shot to pieces by the Hsifan mounted archers.
The real trouble lay in the nature of Feldwin agriculture. They practiced no form of irrigation. Rainfall was not abundant but sufficient for wheat cultivation. The Feld River Lands had mostly been savanna before the coming of man. The nomads who wandered over it (and still dwelt in the Grass Sea) did no lasting damage to the steppe. They didn’t tear up the thin, fragile topsoil with the wooden plows used by later peasants.
The Feld River did leave a deposit of alluvium annually in the valley itself, but the uplands were bare to the wind. Someday the soil would be exhausted, famine would wipe out much of the Feld Folk, and the Hsifans would sweep in to finish off the survivors.
In the meantime, however, things didn’t look so grim. Lower Felda was known for other things than exotic cult havens. Aside from the “Breadbasket” title. Lower Felda was the home of many rich merchants — and not all were schizophrenics like the Cockroach — who made their fortunes from the East-West trade between the Shen Steppes and the Southern City-States.
***
Perhaps an explanation is due concerning the rather peculiar political set-up in Palnu.
First, understand that the present Sepran Empire is in fact a successor state of an older empire. The southern portion had, upon its fall devolved into the so-called ‘Southern City-States’. Palnu became one of the more powerful of these.
The Sofim river lands reorganized into the Sepran Empire, but the Southern City-States remained independent. In Palnu, an unstable monarchy established itself. It was highly decentralized — the King was elected upon the death of every sovereign. The Electors were the more powerful landholders, and since anyone of ‘sufficient noble blood’ could be elected, foreigners were often chosen. They were easier to manipulate than native Palnin.
Time passed, end the World changed. The Feld states to the East opened new trade routes. The invention of the printing press allowed more specialization in politics, the sciences and economics. The old land based economy slowly gave way to a money-based economy.
This trend was fiercely resisted in Palnu, as elsewhere. Often the strife hid behind religious wars: sometimes the nobility would take advantage of the new money’d class, borrowing cash then driving out their creditors by force of arms. But this state of affairs was not to last long.
Far to the north, on the Grass Sea, the Hsifans had defeated the fanatic Onliu, nomad remnants of a dead civilization. The Onliu fled south, over the Feld River and into the Kingdom of Havaina. This they utterly destroyed, cities and all, and resumed their nomadic life.
A large band of refugees from the devastated kingdom marched to Palnu. Better weaponed and organized they dispersed the feudal rabble Palnu raised and took Palnu City after a short siege. There was little real resistance.
Their leader, Clasa, reorganized the defunct Kingdom. He allied himself with the emergent money’d classes. encouraged trade with Amstanat and the Feld States and stabilized the borders. All private armies were abolished; the Nobles were not allowed to engage in trade, the government or the Army. These replied with revolt, but with their retainers scattered, they were easily crushed end their land divided among the Merchants, who could afford to buy.
Class began the custom of selling the Nobles’ titles to the Merchants. Then the Bureaucracy went up on the block. With the government so tightly centralized in the City, the outlying provinces became difficult to administrate. More peasants flocked to Palnu City, where the money was. Soon a client system was set up, not unlike that in Rome about First Century. Lord Julius can be taken as fairly typical of the rulers of Palnu.
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Thanks Mags!
And Thanks! Michael!!
Next Time: Hobbs, then Margaret, then I'm back with the Weekly Update. And the You Don't Know Jack Kickstarter ends, DON'T YOU FORGET ABOUT JACK!!!
Holographic sticker DEATH MATCH
