Ten Years Ago: A Tribute To Mark Simpson

Mark Simpson (1968-2005) 
Co-founder (with Stephen Holland) of the UK comics shop Page 45
Founder of the Cerebus Yahoo Discussion Group.

DAVE SIM:
(from the Cerebus Yahoo Group, 2005)

Before we get started here I wanted to publicly pay my belated respects to the late Mark Simpson here in The House that Mark Built. I didn't know him terribly well but there is definitely something about getting to know someone in the midst of a weeks-long event that you have no idea how it is going to "come off" - the '93 Aardvarks Over U.K. Tour (there’s a good shot of him taken by Gerhard's camera on the back cover of issue 177) - that gives you a clearer sense of the "cut of a man's jib" which is perhaps a more important and central element to the human character than those more conventional attributes we think of in regards to our associates and our friends.

Page 45 was a reasonably new experiment back then and it gave me great confidence in the possibilities presented by that experiment (now confirmed and affirmed - exponentially - many times over) to see Stephen and Mark interacting. Stephen - who could make choosing a restaurant into an ardent and critical life experience pregnant with meaning and life-altering potentialities - ably balanced by Mark: he of the dry-as-dust mordant Rule Britannia demeanour who could - with a well selected phrase or two - return any discussion to those more grounded and sensible proportions from which it had recently taken flight. I would speculate that that balance, so crucial in the early years of their collaboration, became less necessary as Stephen learned to fulfill for himself the role that Mark had so ably provided in the beginning (I suspect going back to their Fantastic Store "Rebels in the Basement" days) and that Mark had chosen to open up Page 45's "Internet Front" as a means of widening their on-going war on comic-book retail mediocrity.

It was characteristic of him that he saw a need - no one was discussing Cerebus as a creative work, they were just vilifying Dave Sim - and chose to fill it. He didn't write or phone and say, "Dave. What do you think of this idea?" The straight line he had drawn mentally between the problem he saw and the solution he had arrived at didn't pass through me so, for Mark, there was no need to bother me with it. He built the environment, nurtured it through its early days as an active participant until he was sure that it was up and running and when he was sure that the structure was sound and the concept fully entrenched, he moved on to his other areas of greater need: the unsolved problems. Not only didn't he bother me with issues of midwifery, he also didn't contact me to say "Look at what I've done for you, Dave." The pat on the head was anathema to Mark. The business of improving the comic-book field was something that was to be "gotten on with". A solved problem wasn't something that you admired and waved under the nose of others, a solved problem meant only that there was now more time to devote to unsolved problems. It had been, literally, years since he had even checked in to see how his offspring was doing.

UK Tour '93:
Gerhard, Dave Sim, Mark Simpson & Stephen Holland (seated)

And, of course, the kicker is that - had he contacted me with his solution to the problem - I would've deemed it "just some Internet crap" and told him to do whatever he wanted but that I didn't want to be bothered about it. I'm sure he knew that, too. Just as I'm sure that he had the foresight to understand that this would one day become the primary Cerebus environment after the book was done and that I would come - very, very late - to the realization of just exactly how large a favour he had done for me and Ger and for the book in creating this environment very early on so it would have time to take root before March, 2004.

It would've meant very little to him to have me acknowledge - as I am here - that he had been more farsighted than I had been. There were echoes of Mark in Stephen's voice - the part of Mark that is now as much a part of Stephen as his own personality - when I called to offer my condolences a couple of weeks back when Ger had told me the news.

[I said,] "If it hadn’t been for Mark, there wouldn't have been a Cerebus Newsgroup."

[Stephen replied,] "Well, if it hadn’t been for Dave Sim there wouldn’t have been a Page 45."

We talked about Mark very briefly and then switched to the Situation Board, how things are and what can be done about it. It was really the most effective way to honour Mark's memory. It's all that would have interested him if Stephen and I were jabbering away at each other as we were wont to do. His facial expression was always eloquent: Get to the point, it said, and then get back to work.

Even though he would've made a wry face, arched an eyebrow and said, "That…really…isn’t necessary." I'd like to propose that the headline for this mailing list permanently include a very small line beneath it reading The House That Mark Built with an icon that will take the reader to a short biography and a photo.

There you go, Mark, I got to the point and now I'm getting back to work.

RESTORATION BULLETIN -- GOAT Redesign continued

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings everyone!

Last week Dave wrote that he's entertaining suggestions for potential redesigns for the "Goat" section of High Society. As I mentioned last week, the section is a bit clunky as-is, owing to the fact that it originally ran as a "Unique Story" back-up feature in the monthly book, and originally consisted of double page spreads, which were subsequently chopped up for the High Society collected edition.

I asked for those inclined to post potential mock-ups, and we've received two so far! First off is one from Scott Yoshinaga, of the adorable webcomic nemu nemu, who says the following--

Here's my quick take on GOAT. Not sure if it's OK to move the text around but I felt if the actual page was going to be on the right side of the book, there should be some context. Also got rid of the Unique Story logo entirely although I tried to play around with it in conjunction with the GOAT heading but it looked out of place. Maybe a small text that says "A short aside." or something under the GOAT heading would work.

And version number two is by Tom Palmer Jr, who has the following to say--

Is it possible to expand Goat to 6 pages? If so, here's a way to redesign the story so that the original spreads remain intact:

(The new page 1 is the original title lettering with a bit of the smoke enlarged and bleeding off the bottom of the page.
New pages 2 and 3 are the original first spread, but with the title lettering and Unique Story banner removed. I cloned the smoke so that it now rises up off the top of the page.
New pages 4 and 5 are the original second spread, except the final two "transcript copy..." lines have been removed as well as the figures of Julius and the goat.

And new page 6 is the two "transcript" lines from the original last page with the figures of Julius and the goat at the bottom of the page.) 

UPDATE: Tom revised these some and sent a new version, which is now posted below. Here's what he had to say about the new version--

Wow! Thanks for pulling my and Scott's layouts into their own post. Didn't expect that at all.

Now that the layout is out there on the big stage, I'm actually a little embarrassed by the quick Photoshop roughs I made. I knew I should have spent a few more minutes with it! Here's a revised version that I took a little more time with:

.....

I made a few tweaks to the layout to fix some concerns I had and to address a few of the comments that have popped up here. Aside from tightening up the layout, I added in page numbers as well as the facing pages from the previous and next chapters so it's easier to see what it will look like when placed into the book. 

Like M Kitchen and Eddie, I can see how that new first page is a bit sparse when seen in context next to the last page of the previous issue. So, I worked up another version of the first page with a quick "High Society Interlude" banner along the top (since I think the old "A Unique Story" doesn't really convey how "Goat" fits into the novel.)

To answer your question, Tom-- yes, we can definitely spare two pages from the back matter, if need be.

Thanks for the great layouts, both of you! They both punctuate the chapter in very interesting and different ways, and I think both have significant advantages over the current layout. If anyone else reading this wants to take a crack at it, post a link to your files in the comments and I'll add them to the post. I'm hoping to get feedback from readers on the ones so far, and on Friday Dave will take a look and possibly make a final determination.

(Am I wrong in thinking this might be the first crowd-sourced book layout project??)

Kieron Gillen: Jaka's Story

Cerebus Vol 5: Jack's Story (1988-90)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

KIERON GILLEN:
(from Kieron Gillen's Blog, 31 July 2014)

Someone asked me about my comic criticism recently. I’m digging some of it out. I was looking for me writing about AMERICA, but found this. It was for a zine site Charlie Chu and I ran for a while, which was basically comics writing in the wanky mode of music journalism. This one leaned serious, but there was some agreeably goofy stuff in there. Tempted to drag out the Scott Pilgrim Vol 2 one. Anyway - kept it in Drafts for a while, and forgot about it, but let’s drop this thing now. Untweaked from the period, as much as it pains me.

JAKA'S STORY

It was three, maybe four, in the morning. It was just gone midnight when I let my Ex in. She was here to see the house-mate whose room was directly above me. It could be to chat, but it was probably sex. But I really couldn’t be sure.

Hence ceiling-staring. Hence listening. Hence sleeplessness.

I was a virgin before I met her. We’d split in the usual boring ways that I could handle. This was something different: An unprecedented sort of horror, and one that I simply didn't have the tools to deal with. I wasn't yet drinker enough to fall into the arms of a bottle of Smirnoff Blue. I didn't know about Nick Cave's From Her to Eternity, whose obsessive passion fantasia of murder-and-menstruation-blood dripping through the ceiling would have romanticised it all, given it meaning. And, relevantly, I didn't have a copy of Jaka's Story sitting on the shelves, whispering all about it.

So. Jaka's Story. What is it?

It's a Love Story. Of sorts.

It's about Art and the Artist. And the sacrifices thereof.

It's the fifth of the collected editions of Cerebus, describing issues 114-136. Except that really isn't important. Despite being foreshadowed by a pair of apocalyptic encounters in the previous High Society and Church & State, this stands alone. In fact, standing alone is one of its most lasting impressions. People like statues, arranged in rows, never touching until they're pushed. And then they collide, falling like dominoes, shattering into dust.

It's all the more effective for its brutal schism between form and content. The tools applied are as graceful and elegant as you can wish for, all silent panels, the borders tightening as the tension rises, as if to crush the players alive. The content mutters in the dark, painting with tears on a canvas of old-diary pages. Together, it's a comic that doesn't so much tear your heart out as incise it scalpel-style. And remember: rough cuts can heal. Smooth-edged cuts bleed.

It's a fearlessly measured piece, dovetailing dual separate narrative threads. One, presented in sequentials, is the events of the current day. The other is in illustrated prose, a single crystalline image with a stream of text, tells the tale of the eponymous Jaka's youth as a Lady-to-be. Its strength is the contrast, the hard juxtaposition: The long still pauses and awkward gabble of life versus prose’s sense of distance, structure, shape. This is comics swallowing prose alive and picking its teeth with a book-mark. This is prose as an artfully constructed lie and comics as truth.

It's in the most part a tiny-clockwork toy of a comic, with a minimal cast, even compared to comics other than the Grand Political Comic (genre, not form) Adventure of the previous Church & State and High Society. Small people. A single setting. Emotions too big for tiny rooms. The personalities work against each other, parts in a motor that’s gradually edging its way to a conclusion and...

Let's talk a little about clockwork things, as people never fail to misunderstand them. You say something runs like clockwork, then it's considered a beautiful perfectly-ordered system. That's purely an artefact of our perception. Take it from a cogs-eye view. What we see as order is actually its tiniest parts locking against its neighbours and wrestling, manipulating and being manipulated in return . Clockwork is simply small things trying to tear each other apart, continually denied release. Watch what happens when you stomp on a clockwork mechanism: it explodes, springs flying, cogs breaking, everything running for freedom, albeit briefly. And then brutal stillness.

Such is the lot of the poor cast of Jaka's Tale, lost half-way up a mountain. Little imperfections in their personalities mill against one another until a boot falls from the sky and exposes their gears to the world.

Let's meet the cogs. Look at Cerebus, Barbarian aardvark, living in a miscarriage's room, listening through the wall to his Ex, hoping the arguments get worse and the love-making gets less. His Ex? Jaka, married to a useless, hateless man and dancing in a bar with no customers. Food and board costs three coppers a day. Luckily, her dancing pays three coppers. The landlord, grocer and innkeeper are all the same man. He watches her cleavage, running through the same conversations in his head until the flames of hell lick along the grooves. Jaka's Husband, Rick gets drunk on one beer and thinks it’s entirely natural that everyone's in loves his wife: after all, she's lovely. Oscar Wilde smokes opium cigarettes, watches all and writes a pretty little story.

While only Cerebus is literally waiting each night for the noise of his Ex's passion for another to thrust voodoo-lances through his guts, heart and balls, all the characters are crouched in a bed of their own making, waiting for similar resolution. It can’t go on like this, surely? But it does, inching onwards for the majority of the work, with the only joy being as the clock strikes midnight and perfect chimes sound. For a few moments it’s all so beautiful that they forget Cinderella's Folly and the rotting pumpkin stinking outside.

As cogs, they turn. Slowly, like the waltz of Continents, waiting for the only release clockwork can hope for...

The heaven-sent boot? As if I’d spoil that particular apocalypse. But it comes, and comes hard. And then they’re all back to staring into the darkness, waiting for the footsteps of their own personal executioners.

Quiet. Shush. Cease your prattling. Listen carefully. What can you hear?

Nothing?

No you don’t. You’re not paying attention.

It’s the sound of everyone you’ve ever loved betraying you and betraying themselves.

You'll never hear it, but Jaka's Tale will tell you all about it.

Kieron Gillen is a British comic book writer and former computer game and music journalist. He is known for his creator-owned comic Phonogram, created with artist Jamie McKelvie, published by Image Comics.

Dave Sim: The Kickstarter Q&A (2)

The following (edited and reordered) Q&A with Dave Sim originally appeared in the final hours of the Cerebus Archive Number Two Kickstarter campaign in October 2014.

CEREBUS

AL RONEY:

Any parts of Cerebus you'd like to re-do? Art or writing? Did it go as you had planned or was there a moment or moments where you thought "Wow, this isn't what I had in mind at all, but here we go!". Thanks for all the years of entertainment too! I first picked up Cerebus at issue 112/113 and it's been a hell of ride.

DAVE SIM:

Re-do? For me, no. It was built in with a 6,000-page 26 year comic book story that you just couldn't re-do it or any part of it. It was one long narrative string. I tended not to plan, per se. I had an overall direction I was going. The example of Fitzgerald / Hemingway / The Bible. I certainly didn't plan to be as unimpressed with Hemingway as I was. You can't plan that so you don't. You say, "I'm going to read everything Hemingway wrote and then create a Hemingway character and say what I have to say based on my reaction to all of it."

Reading Mary Hemingway's HOW IT WAS was definitely in the category you're talking about. I just couldn't find a centre to Hemingway. I read everything he wrote and nothing jumped out at me. I could rank it personally according to my preferences, but you can't build a graphic novel out of "I liked this", "Didn't much care for this." When I got to the page where she and Hemingway ate the lion meat. "Oh, now THIS can't end happily." STRONG visuals. STRONG Metaphysics. Badda-Bing, Badda-BOOOOMMM!

And I was almost AT that part when I found it. Oh boy. HERE we go. This better work.

It has been a hell of a ride, hasn't it? Even 10 years later on.

BILL RITTER:

Cerebus 1-25 read like a parody with minimal narrative string threading through issue to issue. With #26, start of High Society, the structure moved from parody into satire (not that parody was lacking, but the story reads as more a satire of politics and society than a sword & sorcery parody) and from a more “done-in-one” to a (very) multi-issue extended storyline. Preamble over... the questions: (1) Do you recall what compelled you to commit to this drastic change in storytelling style? (2) What provided you the confidence that the market (and readership) would be committed (or that you were committed!) to 25 issues of High Society?

DAVE SIM: 

1) Well, in order: a) this is viable. I can keep dong this so how long am I going to keep doing this?  b) if I do 300 issues that puts me in a very select mainstream company of success (156 issues when it was bi-monthly and then when I saw that I could handle monthly, I doubled it).  c) Okay, how do you FILL 300 issues? You can't just do 3 and 4-issue story arcs or you'll be repeating yourself all the time.

2) I didn't really have the confidence in the market. That was the open question: how much will the market bear of my experimenting like this? Comic book characters were expected to -- and did -- stay roughly the same. It was a kind of sacred covenant and as a long-time comic-book fan I was aware of that. But I also wanted to do a graphic NOVEL. The novels I liked, the characters didn't stay the same. That was the kind of novel I wanted to write. It really had to -- and did -- thin out the audience.

CORY FOSTER:

1) Regarding your study, and then the use, of various authors over the course of the story (from Wilde to Hemingway): If Cerebus had continued past 300, which authors would you also like to have covered? 2) Have you kept up with Woody Allen's more recent films? If so, I'd be interested in your opinion and thoughts.

DAVE SIM:

1) I would have liked to have done Norman Mailer. But, that was one of those "time and place" things. In the year 2000, you have to say that Hemingway had held his spot as The Apex Author he had held since mid-century. Fitzgerald, too. Mailer, we're not going to know for another couple of decades, but it's looking good, I think.

2) No, I don't see any movies, although I do read the reviews in the NATIONAL POST every Friday. That's about as much as movies interest me: as a cultural touchstone filtered through "time and place" reviewers. Not really worth 90 minutes of my life. Through that filter BIRDMAN and LISTEN UP PHILIP are the movies I would see if I was going to see a movie this week.

ERIC FENNESSEY:

Religion informs a lot of the latter third (or more) of Cerebus, but when you conceived a 300 issue series that wasn't really part of your philosophy. Can you share how you envisaged, in broad terms, that last 100 issues or so going before your conversion?

DAVE SIM:

In BROAD terms? Really just Cerebus living the life I was living at the time, GUYS, then "What happens if Jaka comes back?" Which wasn't really carved in stone, just "That's all he wants, so he has to get that" and to keep with the Up! Up! Up! Higher and Higher and Higher motif, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and the Bible. Because that --as far as I know -- is sort of "received literary wisdom" of Up  Up and Away. So, that's the route and we'll see where it takes me.

Hemingway, when I got there, was a giant step down from Fitzgerald, so the mid-point of my Up Up Up was already "off". But, by then I had read The Bible, so it was Up (Fitzgerald) Down (Hemingway) and then WAY! UP! The Bible by the time I was DOING Hemingway.

RELIGION

TRAVIS PELKIE:

How did you come about also incorporating the Koran into your belief system? As I recall, it was about '96, '97 when you read the Bible in preparation for Rick's Story, and that led to your religious conversion (forgive me if I'm oversimplifying), but I would say at that point in time, many Westerners would have gotten to the Bible, converted, and not necessarily continued to search. I suppose the question is "how were you as a non-religious Westerner exposed to the Koran enough to make that the 'next step' in your religious awakening?"

DAVE SIM:

The first time I just read the Bible as if it was a novel. So, the Torah -- the Law and the Prophets was definitely rising action pointing towards a resolution. Then I read the Apocrypha (Jewish) because that's next in the 1611 King James. And it was the wrong voice (of Voice). Then when I read the Gospels, it was the right Voice again, but it was skewed, and the John's Gospel skewed it again a different way and then there were a bunch of incoherent commentaries (personal opinion) and then John's Revelation. But it wasn't resolved for me as a reader. Where's the next Book? And I basically just picked up religious texts at the library and read the first page. Wrong voice. I read the Christian Apocrypha because a lot of people were very big on this in the late 90s. Some of the Gnostic material was interesting. It wasn't the right voice, but it was the right subject. But most of it... feh. It made the Jewish Apocrypha read like Isaiah  : )

And then I picked up a translation of the Koran, again, at the library and it was strange because the first page was "Clots of Blood" which was the first Sura revealed to Prophet Muhammad but is the 96th Sura in the Koran. To this day, I can't figure out who would have done that: published a Koran that started with "Clots of Blood".

"Oh, here we are. This is the voice."

And basically (spoiler warning) it said, No, he wasn't the son of God. God doesn't have a son. "It would not beseem the God of mercy to have a son" as it says in one part.

"Well, no, I didn't think so" was my reaction to reading the next part of the novel. It's accusing God of committing a carnal act.

Of course I debate that internally between my Muslim and Jewish and Christian self, but... I think we may have lost half the viewers right there!  : )

CEREBUS RESTORATION

SORDEL:

One of the problems for the graphic novelist (as opposed to the writer) is that revision of the published work is almost impossible. When the Tintin portfolios were redrawn on-model they lost a lot of their character. Revisiting the artwork in the detail required for the conservation project are you grateful or irritated that you have so little opportunity to rework Cerebus?

DAVE SIM:

Grateful. Grateful, really, that I have the sensibility that I do about Comic Art Metaphysics. I did a classic 1980s indy comics character so, to me, you have to have the appropriate respect for that. There is no such thing as "on-model" in the context as I perceive it. Cerebus in 1977 looked one way and in 1985 looked another way and in 1995 looked another way. All you can responsibly do is to use the technical advances that exist to restore the original quality with as little physical interference as possible and as necessary.

I don't relate to it in terms of CEREBUS so much as I do the photorealists. Seeing what Alex Raymond's originals look like on Heritage Auctions' website and then seeing how RIP KIRBY has been reproduced over the years.

As Bill Clinton said, "We can do better."

DREW WOODWORTH:

Any chance giving the rest of Cerebus the same digital treatment as High Society where each digital issue includes all the back matter, or is this a stupid question because that has been the plan all along?

DAVE SIM:

No, it's not a stupid question, but it is another example of being pulled in too many directions at once. After I'm dead, the Cerebus Archive -- God willing -- will still exist and DIGITAL HIGH SOCIETY will exist as a template. What will be missing is me and -- in most cases -- I'm the only one who could identify the "back matter" or explain what it means. And that depends on my memory holding out sufficiently to retain all of that.

That being said, a lot will depend on future detective work on the available materials. It will be all in the public domain and, hopefully, scanned and readily available. Then it's a competition between the Most Devoted Second Generation CEREBUS Fans as to who has the greatest familiarity and, consequently, can produce the definitive JAKA'S STORY or the definitive GOING HOME and then have it STAY definitive. That's the tough part.

There have been a lot of Dicken's biographies but I'd be surprised if anything will replace Peter Ackroyd's in my lifetime. Or Richard Ellman's OSCAR WILDE.

JASON PENNEY:

With the focus on the restoration of the phone books, I'm curious about the "in between" issues like 51, 112/113, 137/138. Does 51 get restored with High Society, or with Church & State I, or at some later point (or is that not even on the radar?). Also do you have ant plans for these issues down the road. Personally I'd love them to be inserted in the books for the "Legacy" editions, but I understand if that's not really on the cards. Do you think they're likely to be collected again, in some sort of volume of miscellaneous material?

112/113 was the first Cerebus issue I picked up (I had a TMNT 8, and at least one other book with a guest appearance at that time). It may not be the best intro to the book for everyone, but it just blew me away. I didn't know what was happening, but I "wanted" to know so badly I saved up and bought the phonebooks as soon as I could (which took a bit, because either I had the money and couldn't find them, or couldn't afford them when I saw them).

DAVE SIM:

Not on the PRIMARY radar screen, but I am aware of them. We'll have to see how many pages of each (original and negs) we have/can get. That's certainly the intention -- Vol. 17 CEREBUS MISCELLANY BLACK & WHITE. Whether there's enough demand to do it while I'm alive is another question. We'll find that out.

Great story, Jason! I don't think you're alone in having 112/113 be your first exposure or in your reaction to it. All I can say DEFINITIVELY at this point is that 51, 112/113, 137/138 are never going to be "expunged" from CEREBUS. The question will come up after I'm dead: "Should we print these if Dave never did after the early 1990s?" The answer is "Yes" but it will be up to anyone who chooses to reprint the trades once they are in the public domain as to WHERE. One publisher might include it with HIGH SOCIETY at the end another might include it with CHURCH & STATE at the beginning. Someone else might want to do a "stand-alone" volume with all four issues. Someone else might want to do just another "popular edition" like CEREBUS ZERO.

CEREBUS ARCHIVE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGNS

MICHAEL RAGIEL:

Is it possible for future kickstarter campaigns to have "themed" bonus prints instead of just a collection of prints? For example, all Cerebus covers, SDOAR pages, glamourpuss pages just for 1 archive. I had a Cerebus bookmark from Friends of Cerebus and lost it. Aaarghh! So for future kickstarter campaigns incentives bookmarks would be a great edition.

DAVE SIM:

Thanks for your idea about the Art Folio. I hope you get a few like-minded people together and we can work at getting exclusive features for you that will work with the standardized Folio itself.

Anything is POSSIBLE. In this instance, I basically went through scans that I had from back in the day when Sandeep did all my scanning because I know where those are and how to access them. But I'm not computer adept, so what we're pointing towards right now is me getting all of the information on the various hard drives I've got duplicated and send that to Sean or -- I don;t know -- YOU maybe? And say, "Here, you're a major CEREBUS fan -- go through a;; of this stuff and see what you think would make for a good Bonus Print... or Bonus Item" Sean is a good choice because he can also see how it would reproduce. Which is why we can have half-sized Prints on some of the pieces. The scanning wasn't detailed enough to sustain 11x17.

I'm trying to avoid the CEREBUS covers because of the IDW book. I don't want to compete with that or "kill their action". And I'm trying to stick with Cerebus items for the most part. Cerebus is what I'm known for and these Kickstarter campaigns, I think, SHOULD respect that. A thrice yearly CEREBUSfest. EVERYthing's got the Aardvark on it if we can manage it.

I'm definitely thinking of bookmarks but I need to talk to John about what the limits are with the Akuafoil process. It would be interesting to go gold and purple Akuafoil on Cerebus' "Pope scarf" billowing on a bookmark.

THE CEREBUS ARCHIVE

MICHAEL RAGIEL:

When Cerebus Archive number 18 (the comic book came out -- did you know that was going to be the last issue? Did you have additional pages done to go forward with issue #19? Would you like to finish what you started? Maybe having a supplement to SDOAR.

DAVE SIM:

1) Yes, it was pretty clear that even at a $4 price point it wasn't selling enough to sustain it. Maybe 40 copies on first release and a thin trickle after that. It was the shipping problem again. There was -- and is -- no commercially viable way to sell individual comic books by mail. It just makes them too expensive.

2) I had the "next things" in the Cerebus Archive -- printed strips, unpublished strips, BEAVERS strips, letters, etc. -- pulled and ready to be copied and documented. All of them have been put back where they belong.

3) Part of me would like to. A BIGGER part of me has seen what CEREBUS ARCHIVE and CEREBUS TV did to "orderliness" here at the Off-White House. A lot depends on how long it takes to do SDOAR and what shape I'm in -- eyesight, stamina, etc. -- at that point. I think I would be more inclined to just "putter" in the Archive. I could enjoy putting all the photos in photo albums and writing comments on them rather than feeding the insatiable Audience Beast which (naturally enough) W!A!N!T!S! #19 the minute they finish reading #18 AND the next this AND the next that. With my 60s just around the corner, I have to start seriously considering scaling back. Getting pulled in too many directions at once -- which is how I've lived my entire adult life -- at a specific point becomes "getting pulled apart" and I want to stop well before that happens.

CEREBUS ACTION FIGURE

JAKE A. CAPPS:

The production of the Cerebus action figure seems to scream for a Kickstarter to taking it across the finish line, and into everyones hands. Has this option been considered?

DAVE SIM:

We still haven't worked out the logistics on the figure and "into everyone's hands" is a logistical nightmare until we know exactly how it would be packaged as a product and then packaged for shipping domestically here in Canada, internationally in the U.S. and around the world. Not to mention how it would be painted, what accessories would be included, how they would be packaged (product pkg. and shipping pkg.).

The key to all these things is working backward from the result -- a MINT action figure & package arriving everywhere we want to send it in perfect condition -- and then costing everything out to the penny and then considering what the average CEREBUS fan is going to be willing to pay. And the average store. And "Is this a Gold Medal Deep Pockets item because there's no rational way to keep the costs below a threshold beyond the average person's budget."

We haven't even started answering those questions as yet.

LARRY WOOTEN:

Concerning the Cerebus action figure. You may be able to get some helpful information from Jill Thompson, creator of Scary Godmother. She did a Kickstarter to produce a figure last year and has run into some interesting hurdles that she is still working on... I was thinking more in terms of the trouble she was having with the production houses in China. What I have seen of the Action Figure looks amazing.

DAVE SIM:

Jill really helped lead the charge of the on-line tarring and feathering of me back in '94. The last time I saw here was at a Blue Jays game in Toronto a comics retailer brought us all to when she and her husband were sitting in front of me and she offered me some of her candy floss and we made amiable chit-chat (her husband -- who's actually a famous comics guy, but I forget who -- was very funny on the subject of the pitcher he remembered and loathed when they had him in Chicago. "Just stand there. He can't throw a strike to save his life." And sure enough. As long as you didn't swing, he walked you. But the Blue Jays kept swinging and striking out. And it was this major comeback. They were almost going to tie it. And he's going. "No, you swung. Don't swing, just stand there." It was hilarious. Those were the kind of things that made me come up with the petition. Does she think I'm a misogynist or doesn't she?

THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND

BRIAN JOHN MITCHELL:

For the average page of The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond, how many hours are spent on research versus writing versus pencilling versus inking?

DAVE SIM:

Depends on where I am in the story at any given moment. Today -- this is the second time this has happened! -- Eddie [Khanna] FedExed me the stuff I needed right this minute. Stan Drake Comic Art Metaphysics examples from his 1940-41 stint at Centaur Publications. So you have to factor in: 1) how long did it take Eddie to find it. It's a LOT of online public domain comics to read -- really bad primitive 1940s comics -- to find a "resonance". Although in this case, it's really looking for Stanley Allen Drake signed stories. I want all of those. So I have three stories in addition to to the one I just got. But where are they? Dig through and find them. Okay. I know what I saw in here but I don't have room for all seven pages. Where's the panel that makes the point? Do I have to use two panels? Which two? Okay, I've got four panels that make the first point, two panels that make the second point and a splash panel that makes the fourth point. So that's the page. Now I need to design the page, compose where the three go. Okay, do that. Now I want to tilt them, so I need to photograph them at the right angle. Do that. Now I want to know what size to print the photos of the panels out at before I trace them. Don't know. So, let's just do 100% and see how they are. Print them out at 100%. They're too big. I need 70 to 75%. And that's as far as I got before it was time to do this campaign ending Q&A. Because they're primitive 1940s comics they're easier to trace and pencil and ink, so THAT part of this page of this page should only take a day or so. Most of the time will be taken up moving my captions commenting on them around so you can still read the original panels and still read the SDOAR narrative in the right order.

Compare that to the CHIP MARTIN Neal Adams (attributed) Johnston and Cushing advertising strip I had to recreate with a portrait of Neal hovering over it. That was pure tracing, pencilling and inking and almost none of the pure design I was doing today. But it needed to be the whole strip. It's a Bell Telephone ad so people need to see the whole strip and the (hand lettered) Bell Telephone logo in the last panel. "This will look really cool SOMEDAY when I finish it." I said that a lot.

SELF-PUBLISHING & THE INTERNET

SCOTT YOSHINAGA:

What are your thoughts on web-comics and web-publishing? Also, have you ever thought about writing and drawing new Cerebus stories to possibly generate interest from new readers via print or webcomic? As far as I know, no one has taken an established character / story and released it as a webcomic. Thank you for being a pioneer in indie comics publishing. Your work really inspired me to create comics at an early age, and today my wife and I have our own webcomic [Nemu Nemu]! aloha! 

DAVE SIM:

I've THOUGHT about it, but I don't think "Don't Believe The Hype It's A Sequel" is pretty much carved in stone. the Comic Art Metaphysics just militates against that working. CEREBUS was successful BECAUSE it came out in 1977. Had it come out in 1970 or 1985 it wouldn't have been. Things are "of their time". All you can do is disappoint the people who believe in the intellectual property the most.

On web comics and web publishing -- if I'd have known that that was coming up ahead, I could have saved myself a LOT of time and trouble promoting self-publishing as HARD as I did. "We have to do this now! This chance will never happen again."  Now it happens everyday. Hundreds and hundreds of webcomic publishers who will NEVER be exploited by major corporations or get robbed blind because there's no need to go THERE if you don't want. There's a HERE you can stay -- the Internet. I spent a good 20 years of my life digging earthworks and building battlements and then suddenly behind me PING! An impregnable fortress pops into existence. "Oh. Uh. Yeah. THAT will work, too, won't it?"

Dave Sim's Q&A for the Cerebus Archive Number One Kickstarter campaign in May 2014.

Restoration Bulletin-- GOAT redesign?

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings everyone!

One last fax from Dave that I'll be posting today, this one concerning the "GOAT" story, originally published as a back-up feature in the monthly Cerebus book. As such it has the "Unique Stories" banner running along the top of the page, and is visually a little incongruous with the surrounding material.

(The other thing that makes it a little strange is that in the monthly book, the first page was a verso page, i.e. on the left, and in the High Society book it became a recto page, which means that what was initially double page spreads are now bleeds instead.)

So! Anyone want to take a crack at redesigning these pages in mockup form?

Dave's fax--

The pages up for grabs are 309-312 in the collected High Society. 

Restoration Bulletin-- CONTINUED...

Sean Michael Robinson:

Hello again everyone,

We're looking for your input on this next decision. In my notes to Dave about the book, I asked him to consider allowing us to delete some of the extraneous captions in the book that were functions of the monthly publication, but out of place in the book edition. Specifically, the small "continued..." at the end of "Mind Game II" and the "Next: Hsiffies" that appears towards the end of the book.

Well, once the door was cracked, Dave ran with it. He has condemned virtually all of these "end of issue" captions to death. Should any of them be granted clemency? We're looking for your input. Some further discussion follows. (You'll notice Dave is also reinserting page numbers, I had requested that Mara leave off any page numbers that were on pages with graphic elements at the bottom of the page, hence their reinsertion when the graphic element is eliminated.)

To which I replied:

I am in agreement with you on all with the following exceptions--

I would spare the captions on 188, 208, 372, and 432. Mainly for visual reasons-- the pages are obviously composed with those elements in mind. And they look great! Well, maybe 208 is arguably disposable. And I will definitely correct the semi-colon on 188 regardless-- correct it and then delete it, if necessary... And from a thematic perspective, I think they're all (except possibly 208) useful in punctuating the inter-issue rhythms that are already present in the storytelling. Like the one on 372-- it's a visual "time to put the book down and get a snack before I read the whole damn thing." (Getting rid of Astoria's bubble on that one, though, is brilliant. Great idea.)

To which Dave replied:

So-- what do you say, AMOC readers? Give the axe to them all? Spare a chosen few? 

Restoration Bulletin-- the Final Days of High Society, Part 1

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings everyone!

Yesterday morning I woke up to a veritable avalanche of faxes from Dave. What were these documents? Notes on High Society corrections/revisions? A comedy routine? Solicitations of advice from AMOC readers? The musings of a caffeinated brain? 

All of the above, it turns out.

I'm going to post these faxes today, with some commentary from me at parts. I'll be splitting them up by topic in the hopes of getting feedback from any readers out there on individual decisions that need to be made. In certain cases (tiny inset "continued" captions) the decisions has already been made. In others, Dave and I have either different ideas, or are individually unsure about the decision.

I hope you all enjoy this peek into the process here, as we do our best to, respectfully, make the best High Society reading experience possible.

First off, some odds and ends--

So, we've added several instances of missing tone to the book, but this is definitely the first instance of "missing ear."

These next few notes go back to issues of readability. How small can you make the stroke of white on black text and have it not fill in/have it still be legible in print? Dave's suggesting possibly making a "High Society narration font" to solve this. Fortunately it's not necessary in this case, as I can expand the text in easier ways, but it's a good thought for other reasons. Anybody out there interested in a Dave Sim font? They'd certainly be useful in any packaging redesigns.

CANAR: Star*Reach Review

Star*Reach #1 (Apr 1974) & #2 (Apr 1975)

Cover art by Jim Starlin & Neal Adams

Dave Sim contributed to all 32 issues of CANAR (Comic Art News And Reviews) published by John Balgé (1954-2014) between September 1972 and April 1976. Balgé had got to know the sixteen year old Dave Sim through Harry Kremer’s Now & Then Books comic shop in Kitchener, Ontario. Balgé, Sim and Kremer travelled together to comics conventions in the US and Canada interviewing many prominent comic creators of the day, making the back issues of CANAR a treasure trove of interviews with the likes of Will Eisner, Russ Heath, Harvey Kurtzman, Barry Windsor-Smith, Mike Kaluta, Gil Kane, Berni Wrightson, Howard Chaykin and others.

CANAR #26/27/28 Triple Issue, Oct/Nov/Dec 1974

Star*Reach Review by Dave Sim
All contents of CANAR © John Balgé Estate.

(Click image below to enlarge)

Mike Friedrich published 18 issues of Star*Reach between 1974 and 1979, with Dave Sim appearing in Star*Reach #7 (Jan 1977) with the script to I'm God! (art by Fabio Gasbarri). Mike Friedrich also published other comic-anthology titles: 6 issues of Quack (1976-1977) with Dave Sim's The Beavers appearing in #3, #4 and #5 (Apr, Jul, Sept 1977); 6 issues of Imagine (1978-1979) with Dave Sim's Anticipation (art by Fabio Gasbarri) in #1 (Apr 1978) and Cosmix in #4 (Nov 1978).

Weekly Update #64: Young Zack

DAVE SIM:

Really hate to preempt "young Zack" so be sure to skip down to the footage of him with Seiler's Christmas card. [Video now added above ~ Tim]

We ALL have a soft spot for kids:  hard-wired for it.  I get my "fix" with the Kitchen kids every few months for One Day. By the end of 24 hours, I'm ready to go back to my monastic existence. Mike [Kitchen], for his part, enjoys coming and picking me up at the Off-White House and sitting around and just talking about comics and cartooning without interruption for an hour or two.  Which comes to an abrupt ending when we walk in the front door at his and Erika's place.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.  I've revised all of the Inked Heads that I got wrong on CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER TWO and am now making my way through personalizing (hand-lettering) the signed bookplates.

2.  Joe Rubinstein responds!  He's "in" as far as doing a Bonus Print of the "The Morning After" splash page and the pencilled "production painting" for CEREBUS: THE MOVIE

3.  CEREBUS: THE MOVIE Cerebus & Foy (working name) don't exactly "meet cute" but -- in keeping with Oliver's work so far -- they DO "meet surreal".

1.  So far, in one five-hour stretch yesterday, all of the aforementioned corrected Inked Heads and on the signed bookplates:  Up Up & Away [Cincinnati Ohio comic store]; Vitas P. [MA]; John S. [FL]; Truls A. [NOR]; Michael H. [IL]; Jonathan H. [UK].  I'm of two minds about the bookplates right now.  At $140 for 16 of them (one for each trade), it's QUITE good money (to say the least), but at the same time the volume of orders really jumped after people saw what they looked like from the CANO postings.  Which means I really can't "fudge" them -- people have seen what they look like -- but they are eating up entire days.  I am concerned that anything I try to drop from Kickstarter is going to give people an excuse to jump off the bus (so, I definitely want to avoid that).

Same thing with the Inked Heads.  The CANO Cerebus I can do in my sleep -- coming up with an idiosyncratic HIGH SOCIETY one was a different matter and CHURCH & STATE is going to be the same.  But, the people who wanted a different Cerebus head for EACH CEREBUS ARCHIVE -- well, they REALLY wanted a different Cerebus head for EACH CEREBUS ARCHIVE. In a tone that I can't sensibly ignore.

Even working, as I am, 13 hours a day -- and then 20 hours a day on a non-fasting day like this one -- I have the sense that "something has to give" at some point.  I'm PERSONALLY philosophical about it. Work is just what I do between prayer times and I try to do the best work I can on whatever I'm doing, but I am pushing 60 and, while caffeine certainly has miraculous powers when you only have it once every two weeks, I think there are limits there as well.

Trying to get everything done that I think needs to be done before I die is going to take quite a bit of money and time and the REALLY positive results on CEREBUS ARCHIVE FOLIOS (and thank you all for that) tells me "it's now or never".  It would be nice to have a few years with everything done just KNOWING everything is done and...puttering...around the Off-White House.  But it is a Huge Mountain of Work that I'm looking at and it's getting BIGGER every day.

Some days I think I'm maybe halfway through THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND and other days I think, "You're kidding yourself. You've barely scratched the surface."  And I am getting slower every day.  And SDOAR grinds to a halt when it's time to do the "already paid for" stuff on CEREBUS ARCHIVE.

I'm just sayin'.

2.  Wow!  That actually worked!  I feel as if I finally found a "chink" in the "LARIV" (anti-viral) containment armour housing me and CEREBUS.  Joe left a phone message saying that he had gotten my message on the Bonus Print via Facebook.  I'm paraphrasing his phone message:  "I've never gotten a message that way.  It was like having an owl drop a message into my lap from Hogworts" (sp? Harry Potter reference, I know that much).

Okay, let's see if that works again!

[I know everyone finds it weird that I do things this way, but it's really a matter of addressing the "Internet presence" thing -- which I accept:  here we are and you have to deal with it YOU. NEED. TO. HAVE. AN. INTERNET. PRESENCE. -- okay, granted, but that means having a divided career.  Part of your career producing actual work and part of your career documenting your career.  It would be very easy to slide down that slippery slope and spend so much time documenting my career that I wouldn't have one anymore.  So, I try to short-circuit the process and -- with these Weekly Updates -- documenting the self-publishing, intellectual property proprietor process.  And it seems to me the best way to do that is to basically do as much of the nuts-n-bolts stuff publicly as I can.  The nuts-n-bolts has to be done anyway and as long as I have people willing to participate, that means I'm producing content without actually producing content if I can keep redundancy to a minimum.

What I mean is -- to use the latest example -- Sean at the moment is up to his eyeballs in faxes from me, one for each page of HIGH SOCIETY that I've had to correct from his print-out and I've asked him to post those faxes here as he deals with them as "HIGH SOCIETY BULLETINS".  You see where I'm going with this.  I have to tell Sean what needs to be fixed.  HIGH SOCIETY is all that I'm really known for.  Make each page a different post and I'm producing content for AMOC while I'm T.C.B. "Taking Care of Bidness".  It's genuine Up To The Minute CEREBUS content.  And when Sean wakes up in a few hours, he'll be glad to share it with you -- all of my faxes to him from 1 am to 6 am today.  Okay, "glad" might be a stretch.  But, hey. AMOC content is AMOC content.

So, now, what I'm going to try to do is to drag Joe into this, as well.  Ahem.]

Hi, Joe. Thanks for your phone message.  Since the Bonus Prints for CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE are still pretty far down on my "To Do" list, here's all I can suggest at this point:

Take the "The Morning After" splash page and do PART of it -- a little chunk of it -- the three different ways that you talking about in your phone message.  Further to the above parenthetical aside:  what would benefit both of us is if you wouldn't mind documenting what you're doing with cellphone photos or quick scans of the three "chunks" in progress and posting them here at A Moment of Cerebus [contact 'momentofcerebus [at] gmail [dot] com'].  That way, our customers (OUR customers) can see what it is that you're doing and have an idea of what the finished version(s) will look like.  After you have the three of them done, sign them, mail them to me, I'll sign them and I'll get Dave Fisher to auction them on eBay and we'll split the proceeds 50-50 (minus 10% for Fisher).  That should tell us which one is the most popular and by how much.  If it's a two-way or three-way "tie" then we should be safe in doing a Bonus Print of each version (if you're up for it).  If one of them "walks away with it" then I think we'll be better just doing the one.

The beauty of it -- to me -- is that we all get to find out in Real Time what the answer is. And make a few no-idea-how-many bucks into the bargain.

Feel free to include your contact info for possible "commissions action" with your Updates.  We're all just trying to keep our heads above water, eh?

On the CEREBUS: THE MOVIE production painting(s).  I've got one pencilled but it's a semi-close-up.  Which brings us to Point 3 this week:

3.  Not giving too much away, but -- in answer to the (predictable) criticism of bringing the ending of LATTER DAYS into CEREBUS: THE MOVIE -- Cerebus and Foy don't START as we see them in the closing sequence of LATTER DAYS.  It takes Cerebus a Long While to get to his super-comfortable (for Cerebus) Perry Como motif.  The part that I didn't cover is that when Foy FIRST comes to interview him, Cerebus is trying to intimidate her, which he does by taking the old Spore Wagon (from the end of issue 276) and turning it into a Papal throne so he's LOOMING over her in the little pink armchair he provides for her, the two skeleton/sculptures and the scorpion "hood ornament" right In Her Face.

If someone said the title A GAME OF THRONES to Cerebus, that's what he would come up with.

[And it was definitely a weird Metaphysical Comics moment to be working on that and have a movie actually called "The Interview" suddenly causing such a, uh, stir?]

So, Joe? You still there?  Hello, Facebook, this is Houston. Do you copy. Over?

Roger that, Facebook.  Go ahead, Houston.

So, what I have is, as I say, a semi-close-up of Cerebus delivering his line "Does Cerebus LOOK LIGHT-HEARTED? and HAPPY-GO-LUCKY? to you, young lady?"  That's the pencil drawing you'll be getting (and which will be posted here as soon as I can get a memory card with a scan of it to John Funk).  But I also want to make a reduced photocopy of it as part of a wider shot of The Sanctuary and do a "lighting guide" for it with washes.  Which is my "next thing" to do on the movie.

But, right now, that's well down on my list after all of the CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER TWO things that have been paid for and aren't done yet, finishing the HIGH SOCIETY final corrections with Sean and making a start on scanning the original pages from CHURCH & STATE and getting a start on getting the CHURCH & STATE negatives digitized. And you have the "The Morning After" splash page to start on.

EVENTUALLY, we'll be able to scan the production paintings for Oliver's use and as Bonus Prints and THEN auction the originals (including my tracing paper preliminaries and wash "lighting guide") and see what level of interest there is in production paintings for comic-book movies that may never be seen except on a FAREWELL COMIC CONVENTION TOUR.

Okay, time to go pick up the mail and get groceries.

See you all, God willing, next week.

Seiler's Ugly Christmas Card

MIKE KITCHEN:

Here is Zachary Kitchen giving a demonstration of Jeff Seiler's Ugly Christmas Card to Dave Sim. Dave brought it along to show it off to the whole Kitchen Family and little Zack quickly commandeered it. After Dave returned to Kitchener, we realized the card had been left behind. Via fax he told us:

...I already decided it's an accidentally great toy I brought for Zack.  I'll take it back in March for the Cerebus Archive after Zack has fried it.  Keep your fingers crossed that the technology hasn't advanced TOO far so that he's still playing it non-stop three months from now.

DAVE SIM:

(from Weekly Update #63, 27 December 2014)

...As I wrote Jeff Seiler, if that isn't the funniest Christmas card I ever saw, it's certainly in the Top Five. Bringing a whole new meaning to the term "ugly Christmas sweater". So funny I took it with me to Mike and Erika's place on my pre-Christmas visit. Where three-year-old Zack GLOMMED onto it. I'm hoping Mike or one of the girls can shoot low-res footage of the card and post it here (we're all wondering how long the battery will last under 'three-year-old game conditions')...

JEFF SEILER:

I try, every year for the last several, to send Dave either the funniest or the most annoying X-mas card I can find. Apparently, this year I hit the trifecta: annoying, funny, and 3-year-old magic!

The Christmas card was a small-ish (about 4 inches by 3 inches) replica of an ugly Christmas sweater, hanging on a small hook that had "pull up" printed on it. Across the front of the sweater were the old-timey large X-ms tree bulbs attached to cords. When you pulled the hanger up, the lights lit up and the card played a melody of "Deck The Halls".

Annoying and ugly as... well, you know.

And, then, Dave took it with him to Toronto when he went to visit Mike Kitchen (Spy Guy!!!) and his family and, apparently...

Well, Dave wrote me that 3-year-old Zack found the card to be so much fun that Dave left it with Zack as his Christmas present, as Dave said he could not think of a better present for Zack. And, then, Dave told Mike that they should all pray that the battery would die sooner rather than later.

I got a very nice thank-you in return, from Dave, a few days ago. Unfortunately, I left it in my brother's car while he was visiting and now it is in Arkansas. Hope I get it back.

So, there's the story.

Restoration Bulletin-- Seeking Diamondback Scans, New Year's Contest

Sean Michael Robinson:

Happy New Year everyone!

Now that we're closing in on High Society, I'm getting last-minute corrections and suggestions from Dave. The most recent fax was a whopping four pages, and covers the "Cerebus Kidnapped" sequence of issue 27.

So! We are now in need of high resolution (600-1200 DPI) scans of a Diamondback deck-- mainly the Priestess, Queen, and King cards, but ideally, the entire deck.

Do you have a Diamondback deck and access to a scanner? Then please let me know by sending me a message, or the scans, at cerebusarthunt at gmail. As per Dave's fax, the first person to send me scans will received a signed Diamondback deck from him, and will of course be thanked by name in the book.

Please, if you send scans to me, leave a comment here to let everyone else know! Otherwise I'll try to update this as soon as I've received them.

Thanks everyone!


Sean

UPDATE:

I've received scans of the whole deck from Steve and Michael, and am now adding them to the H.S. thank-you list. Thanks for your help guys! And everyone else, keep your eye on AMOC for the next two weeks for possibly more posts along these lines. We're pulling out all the stops to make this the best book it can be, and that involves your help!