My CANT Kickstarter Rewards

So what did you get in your Cerebus Archive Number Two Kickstarter Rewards package?

Share your scans and photos with other Cerebus fans at: momentofcerebus [at] gmail [dot] com

Gerhard's High Society Prints

High Society (2015)

Art by Gerhard

Prints Available To Order Now!

Kickstarter: Comic Book People 2

Comic Book People 2

Photographs From The 1990s

by Jackie Estrada

Kickstarter Fundraiser ends Friday 13 March 2015

Comic Book People 2 is a follow-up to last year's Comic Book People: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s, also funded through Kickstarter. The photos to be included were taken mostly at the San Diego Comic-Con, but there are also images from such shows as the Chicago Comic-Con, WonderCon, the Alternative Press Expo, SPX, and various trade shows of the period. You can expect:

• Rare photos of such Golden/Silver Age creators as Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Vin Sullivan, Paul Norris, Martin Nodell, Chad Grothkopf, Al Williamson, Sheldon Moldoff, Bob Kane, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Irwin Hasen, Harry Lampert, Ric Estrada, Bill Ward, Ramona Fradon, Bob Haney, Nick Cardy, Paul S. Newman, Dan Barry, Carmine Infantino, John Buscema, and Frank Frazetta.
• Pix of the big names in mainstream comics of the period, from Neil Gaiman, George Perez, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Peter David, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Kevin Eastman, Mark Waid, Alex Ross, Dave McKean, and Frank Miller to Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld.
• Lots of photos of writer/artists who were movers and shakers in the self-publishing/indie comics movement, including Dave Sim, Jeff Smith, Terry Moore, Linda Medley, Billy Tucci, Colleen Doran, David Lapham, Carla Speed McNeil, James Kochalka, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Dean Haspiel, Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer, Donna Barr, Shannon Wheeler, Scott McCloud, Paul Pope, Roberta Gregory, and lots more.

CANAR: Isolation

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 #11, July 1973

Isolation: Strip by Dave Sim

All contents of CANAR © John Balgé Estate.

Weekly Update #70: EAT PRAY LOVE Meets MY DINNER WITH ANDRE About a Genocidal Cartoon Aardvark

DAVE SIM:

Hello, everyone!  Lots of ground to cover so...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

1. All, repeat ALL, CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER TWOs are now en route.  CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE Kickstarter scheduled to launch one week from today! 

2. "Workcamp David" gearing up to start processing the Off-White House Copies hopefully in the next week in descending order of condition. 

3. CEREBUS:FRACTURED DESTINY the 3D movie continues to make progress.  We are not, repeat NOT, anti-movie business, anti-investor or anti-Hollywood but we ARE Creator-Driven 

4.  The Brad Pitt parody movie poster is done and arrived in California yesterday morning, doubtless relieved to be away from the -31 degrees Celsius Kitchener winter weather

1.  After the usual "white knuckle" one-day pause at the border, all of the U.S. copies of CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER TWO are officially on their way to the Pledge Partners' addresses.  Major applause for Funkmaster John and Funknephew Rolly for shaving major time off of their previous delivery record.  And catching me flat-footed in the process.  So I spent yesterday and the day before prepping my commentaries for CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE which (God willing) will have its Kickstarter launch February 20th, a week from today.

Same as last time, I thought I would just "bomb through" the commentaries in a day and this is now day three and I've got about another quarter of them to do.  Since nine of the ten earliest CHURCH & STATE pages in the Cerebus Archive are "Silverspoon" pages -- the PRINCE VALIANT parody -- my commentaries have really turned into "Why I'm Not Hal Foster and Never Will Be".  Which I'm really looking forward to because of the near complete dearth of quality black-and-white reproductions from PRINCE VALIANT available commercially.  So Sean will be dipping into scans from the Heritage Auctions and ULTRA-sharpening them as only Sean can and you'll be able to see, head-to-head just how feeble I am in the BEING HAL FOSTER Sweepstakes.  And how Hal Foster just NAILS "Non-stylized Realism" with flawless work that spanned four decades.  I mean, FLAWLESS.

A reminder to Sean who is still juggling various suggestions for the next ten Bonus Prints, that, Sean, you're only going to be posting two new ones every Friday, same as we did last time.  Lots of really good choices to pick from, I have to say.  I'm glad I'm not the one choosing :)

Potential problem I foresee with the Bonus Prints is that we'll be retiring ten of them each time out.  Which I can see some folks getting stressed about: so "never say never".  What we will say is that the "Last Chance" prints this time around will be offered signed and numbered for the last time at the $9 rate (plus $1 postage) but you will be able to get them unsigned and unnumbered after that for $20 each.  The price bump really results from the EXTREME inconvenience of having to do "onesies and twosies" in addition to the on-going CEREBUS ARCHIVE workload.  As I say, we "get" "never say never" but:  it's quite a workload just as it is.  Balanced against "BUT I HAVE TO HAVE THAT PRINT!"  We "get" that as well.

We're going to be posting a goal of $800 as we've done the last couple of times.  Not being pessimistic, just my way of saying -- again and again and again -- I am more than willing to fight to the last ten CEREBUS fans if it comes to that.

2.  Not much progress to report on the Off-White House Copies, but I did think the other day that what we're going to do is put them in descending order of physical condition.  So if the lowest condition is a VG and there are 20 of them, that's #20.  You will be notified, though, so you can pass if you only want mint or near mint copies.  Jeff Seiler, by the way, is first in line for a lower number if anyone wants to pass on ANY copies they're entitled to.  Nice to hear from you,  Jeff!

Anyway, let me try to convey -- again -- what I see as the really remarkable and totally unprecedented thing fewer than 300 hardcore CEREBUS fan/collectors are accomplishing here.  I mean, this minute. Today. 13 February 2015.  I'm still gobsmacked as it slowly sinks in:

3.  We -- Oliver Simonsen and all of us Legion of Substitute Simonsens -- are making a full-blown 3D movie, a good chunk of which is already done, and which is 100% Creator Driven.

We're keeping all available channels open to TT (aside to TT: as always feel free to use or delete any of this in keeping all of your investor colleagues in the loop. And PLEASE translate it into functional Hollywoodese where necessary.  i.e. Is it still called an "elevator pitch"? If it's called something else now, please call it that. Thanks!) and potential investors and players like Dede Gardner (see last week's Update).  We're not at all anti-movie business or anti-Hollywood or anti-investor, but from Oliver on out, it is the individual volunteer creators who are driving this particular bus.  That's why I said that I thought a conference call was WAY premature.  All I could foresee was "Okay, what do you want for the rights to CEREBUS?" And me saying, "The rights to CEREBUS aren't for sale."  End of conference call, getting all of us nowhere.

Once I started pitching in creatively, everyone started looking at me.  I have the veto, so it's my movie, right?  And what I've been saying through Oliver is:

It's just a theory. I'm a non-film guy so it's an uneducated theory, but it is my theory that the reason CITIZEN KANE is still regarded as the greatest movie ever made is because it's pretty much, top to bottom, 100% Showboating.  Everything about that film calls attention to itself.  Check THIS out! It pulls out all the stops.

So my -- largely NON-instructions to everyone working on the film and looking to me for guidelines is: ACTIVELY Showboat. Antony B:  You do titles for a LIVING so? Do titles that blow every other titles ever done out of the water.  Do titles that will make every other title guys and girl out there drool with envy.  John E.: You're modelling The Sanctuary, which pretty much follows right on the heels of Antony's titles.  The audience has just watched a virtuoso display of movie titles, so your job is to do modelling that blows Antony's titles out of the water if you can manage it.

And (CENTRAL point to my uneducated film theories) there is no deadline.  No one's going to call a Monday morning meeting and say "Yeah, I know we said you had a month but the studio's pulling in the reins so you only have a week."  On CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY whatever it is that you're doing, you don't let go of it until you're ready to let go of it.

4.  Which brings me to the Brad Pitt movie poster and an apology.

[let me interrupt myself to say that if it wasn't for Susan Alston, authoress of the forthcoming -- I'm guessing VERY forthcoming :) -- DAVE SIM's LAST GIRLFRIEND (August 20 1994 to February 15 1998) -- we wouldn't be talking about this.  World's Biggest Brad Pitt fan.  Nicest birthday present I ever bought her was an autographed picture of Brad Pitt. Saw him for the first time in THELMA AND LOUISE which she owned.  "Oh, James Dean. The ladies have been waiting for him to come back for a while."  He could actually act. An understatement.  He's like James Dean AND Brando.  Then SEVEN.  The "What's in the box." scene.  I got chills.  TWELVE MONKEYS.  OCEANS ELEVEN. TROY. Yessir.] [I digress]

I was serious when I said I said to myself "You might not want to do that [mention Brad Pitt]".  It set up an "either/or" I should never have allowed to happen:  I could either look as if I was ignoring one of Oliver's primary potential investor (as a newcomer on Oliver's movie) or I could find myself WAY further down on a track I definitely didn't want to "back into".  But, having backed myself into it, I definitely needed to give it serious consideration.  And immediately.  Which I did.

It really cuts to the heart of the weird way we're doing this once-in-a-lifetime thing.  We're making the movie pretty much backwards.  The voices will be among the LAST things finalized.  Years from now.  But, definitely, with the BENJAMIN BUTTON performance to go by, Brad Pitt was my top pick.  A no-brainer.  All of his movies make money and all of his performances get critical raves.  I can't think of another working actor whose performances regularly chart either "as high" or "higher" than the movies that he's in.  Historically, as someone who reads way more movie reviews than sees movies, the only actors in that category are Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson.

And there's a core problem to the movie, structurally, as I'm picturing it.  As I said last week, the "elevator pitch" which I'm still slicing and dicing is:

"It's EAT PRAY LOVE meets MY DINNER WITH ANDRE about a genocidal cartoon aardvark".

Surreal doesn't begin to describe that elevator pitch.  As Hunter S. Thompson said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".  You have to really be completely up-front about it.  In Hollywood 3D animation means kids movie. Period. You can't take the SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS poster and put the CEREBUS cast in it and then make EAT PRAY LOVE meets MY DINNER WITH ANDRE and expect to come out of your Friday opening in one piece.  You have to tackle it head-on.  Which is why I did the poster speciality drawing that I did (which, hopefully, Sean has posted or will post around here somewhere).  It's basically a parody of the "CONTROVERSIAL" Italian poster for 12 YEARS A SLAVE which I only knew about because the NATIONAL POST did an article on it. Controversial because the poster had a big picture of Brad Pitt, a white guy, and a little picture of Chiwetel Ejiofor, the movie's titular slave.  Which, when I read it, my reaction was a) Oh, come ON! and b) Well, there goes Brad Pitt's O*c*r that he deserved for BENJAMIN BUTTON.  And then later c) Oh, hey, he WON? OKAY! Maybe we're not as crazy as a society as I think we are most of the time.

So, I thought, well, okay. That's pretty esoteric but I think it's safe to say that you have to be a REALLY devoted movie person to go to movie theatres anymore with the size of widescreen TV's and the availability of Netflix.  So, the odds are you'll probably get it.  And do a double take.  Waitaminute.  That's the....controversial Italian movie poster for 12 YEARS A SLAVE.  No, it isn't.  Yes, it is.  But it's a...cartoon.  Why...why...would a CARTOON have a big picture of Brad Pitt on it?

You ready?

Because he does ALL the male voices!

Sorry, this is the sort of stuff that happens when you work on a movie poster parody for roughly nine hours.  You have a LOT of time to "blue sky" things.

And, just to jump ahead, no the poster isn't going to be a Bonus Print.  I don't want to muddy the waters of what is a very sincere apology and a peace-offering for my blundering into a situation I shouldn't have blundered into.  I hope he likes it. I hope he thinks it's funny. I hope Dede Gardner likes hers. I know TT already likes his. It's part of the discussion of what we're doing here in the sense that if Brad Pitt isn't interested -- after reading the CEREBUS and GOING HOME trades I've sent him -- this is still a structural thing that I think Oliver needs to take seriously so we can gently but firmly jolt everyone away from thinking CEREBUS:FRACTURED DESTINY will make a good two-hour babysitter for the kids on summer break.  I'm hoping to keep it to a PG rating at the worst.  But, it's a lot closer to EAT PRAY LOVE than to the LEGO MOVIE.  So the poster has to be -- like virtually every aspect of the production so far -- Completely Unheard Of.  No one ever did this before and no one ever will again.

Whoever The Actor turns out to be (and I've got three other names here, two white actors and one black actor who will remain NAMELESS having learned me a hard lesson) he gets a big portrait at the top of the poster right under his name and there's the little CEREBUS graphic at the bottom (and no, I don't think it's racist to put Cerebus in place of Chiwetel Ejiofor: remember, the aardvark is an African mammal. YO!)

Next "Unheard Of" uneducated Dave Sim filmmaking theory: Actors know better than directors or producers most of the time which source material scenes to pick.  They never get to pick them.  What they usually have to do (from my reading between the lines of movie reviews) is to fight to get enough clout so that they can keep the scenes they signed on to do from ending up being cut from the script before filming begins.  But -- to reiterate -- Brad Pitt is in movies that always make money and his performance is always rated as high or higher than the film that he's in.  From that I infer that he knows what is going to work and what isn't going to work.  "I can play the hell out of this.  And this. And this. And this."

CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY is, structurally, about 70% flashbacks and we've got roughly five thousand pages of source material to pick from.  It's Unheard Of, but doesn't it Make Sense to...

-- if he's interested -- we're "blue-skying" here --

have Brad Pitt pick the flashback scenes based on "I can get all of the ball on this one and 100% guarantee you, take this one to the bank, that I can plant it eight rows up in the third deck in straightaway centre field".  If he's interested -- man, I'll get OUT Of The Way of THAT.  Give me a top ten list or top twenty list and I'll find a way to shoehorn them in.  Are you kidding me?  And again, there is no time constraint.  This is a Zero Stress production.  Not "low stress", Zero Stress.  If he wants to just read CEREBUS and GOING HOME, I'll work the story around whatever he picks.  He wants to read everything...uh, I can get the books wholesale!  I know the guy who publishes them! Personally!  That seems to me a totally rational CITIZEN KANE offer to make.  We're off the dial already when it comes to unorthodox.  The weird have turned pro!

Two final Unheard Of's and I'll run along back to the CEREBUS salt mines:

I'm on the third day of working on the poster and I go, "Wait a minute.  The whole point of the framing sequence is that Cerebus is trying to intimidate 'Foy'.  He's in full-bore Monster mode.  And she isn't intimidated.  WHERE are you going to find a voice actress who ISN'T going to sound intimidated playing opposite Brad Pitt BEING intimidating?"

About thirty seconds later. DUH. Angelina Jolie.  My mind is a playground.  What if she did all of the FEMALE voices?  Brad Pitt as Cerebus and Angelina Jolie as the Regency Elf.  Brad Pitt as Lord Julius and Angelina Jolie as Astoria.  Brad Pitt as Cerebus and Angelina Jolie as Red Sophia AND Mrs. Henrot-Gutch in the same scene.  I'd pay to see that...and I'm pretty sure Oliver can get me on the guest list. I mean, seriously. Cross referencing their picks.  Any scene that's on both lists near the top is in!

I wish I'd thought of Angelina Jolie before I started the poster.  If she wants one of her own, I'll be glad to do one, TT!

Final Unheard Of!

I'm soliciting input as well on an "Oliver's Movie" storypoint/emphasis.  Oliver is really "leaning on" the opening pages of CEREBUS No.1.  "He came to our city in the early dawn blah blah blah".  Which works for me big time: a definitive link between the movie and the opening of the first graphic novel?  Comic store Tpb Sales Magic Time. So we need the text piece itself to be called something as The Earliest Written Record of Cerebus in Estarcion (1385 if I'm remembering Alexx Kaye's timeline accurately).  We need to call the actual parchment fragment or Rosetta Stone or Dead Sea Scroll or whatever it is...something.  Something historically...catchy and authentic sounding...like the Codex Sinaiticus or Codex Alexandricus (both 4th and 5th century translations of the Septuagint).  We're going to want Antony -- if he's up for it -- to really go to town on the ancient writing so we need a good Greek or Latin sounding name that makes everyone in the theatre go "WOOOooooOOOOOO".

Okay, my Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro bill came in yesterday -- last month it was $250 and this month it's $330.  A sure sign that it is definitely 2015.  So, it's back to the salt mines for me.

Hope to see you all back here for the Kickstarter launch next week (God willing) (or the week after if we're being a little too optimistic about our efficiency :)

On Tour '92

MARGARET LISS:

A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.

Dave's notebook #20 is a smaller notebook then his standard. Measuring 5.5" x 8.5" it would appear easily portable. And as Dave mentioned in his update on January 16, he would take pages from the notebook if he needed a piece of paper to write something on. And it shows with notebook #20 - the cover says 115 sheets of paper, and only 36 were scanned, 54 were blank and 27 were missing. Page #53/54 was ripped out and only a bit remained to show the place it once held.

Being smaller than his usual notebook, plus the sketches of people in it, he must've carried it around with him:

Notebook 20 page 1 and 3

Notebook 20 page 5 and 7

On a couple of the pages he sketched some ideas for the 1992 tour and Free Cerebus:

Notebook 20 page 9 and 27

Cerebus Action Figure Update

Cerebus Action Figure In Development

by George Peter Gatsis

More photos and details at Bleeding Cool.

MORE JUST IN FROM GEORGE:

A few specs on the action figure:

• Over 50 points of articulation
• Half scale (2:1)

Accessories:

• shield
• long sword
• short sword
• spear
• helmet
• bag of gold and silver coins
• 2 coin necklace
• cloth jacket
• Church & State Pope cloth outfit
• doll
• crying baby

Specs on the development:

• Daniel Grant built the initial model off of Dave Sim's drawings
• George Peter Gatsis enhanced the model, articulated, 3D printing & testing
• Makerbot 3D printer is used
• The plastic used in the 3D printing is PLA
• Started development Nov-2013

Check out the previous videos of the development at CerebusDownloads.com

Church & State Restoration Work Begins

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings everyone!

You might have noticed from Dave's update last Friday that restoration work has started in on Church & State I.

This is a big one for me. Because of the sheer size (592 pages in the current incarnation, likely a few more for the next edition), you'd think this would be an intimidating project. But the reality is, as we start into the book, all I'm feeling is relief.

There's a lot of reasons for this, but the primary one is that this is the first book since the Cerebus Restoration project began where the scanned materials have any amount of uniformity at all. With the exception of however many "in the wild" pages the art dragnet catches (16 pages for C+S 1, and counting; please keep them coming!), there will be two sources of scans for this book:

--original art scanned by Dave, on the Opticbook A300

--negatives scanned by Funkmaster John, on his negative scanner.

Which means that, aside from the tone shrinkage, all of the pages sourced from the Cerebus Archive original art can now be much closer to a normal production job. For my part of things, this meant taking an hour or two on Friday to familiarize myself with the scans, with the quirks of the exposure and optics of that particular scanner, and then writing a script I could execute on a per-page basis.

And as far as tone shrinkage goes, looking over the pages Dave has scanned so far, I've been feeling a lot of relief, mainly for Mara's sake. There's very minimal tone shrinkage overall, especially compared to some of the "in the wild" pages we've worked with, many of which have very significant damage to the tone. Most of the shrinkage can be dealt with very easily using the techniques we've already developed. (Anyone have any guess what leads to the additional shrinkage? Is it sun exposure? Humidity? AIR exposure? Any chemists want to weigh in??)

Which isn't to say there won't still be some quirks in the process. Some of the letratapes have suffered more than the tone, and will need to be digitally re-worked or straightened, and others have aged to the point where they need to be "spiked" a bit contrast-wise in order to reproduce correctly.

But the biggest takeaway from seeing all of this wonderful original art?

All those tiny little lines!

Yes, so far, the pages sourced from original artwork look significantly better than they've ever appeared in print. What seems to have been lost in translation? All of the now-recognizable issues-- gained-up tone, thickened line work, a loss of detail in the densely cross-hatched areas, and tons of fine-line information.

Here's the top tier from page 147 of Church & State I, a page that resonates throughout the rest of the series. The first two images are sourced from the scans Dave just sent.

And above is a scan from my copy of C&S I.

With the normal caveat that distinctions like these with line art are harder to see on screen than in print-- do you see what's missing there? I've picked this as an example not because it's a dramatic example, but rather because it's a typical example. This is the level of information, so far, missing on an average Church and State panel with fine crosshatching, the amount of information that will be appearing in print for the first time sometime this year. 

(An aside-- anyone notice the "cleanup" that's happened in the above example? I've found several other examples so far of the production staff at Preney making adjustments to the artwork in C+S I, mainly, thickening and/or redrawing the very thin panel borders throughout issue 52. I'd say it was a good choice in the above example, and a technological limitation in the border redrawing example, the borders being drawn with a lighter ink than the rest of the page.)

Anyway, this is why I'm excited, why every time I get a new batch of original art scans it feels like Christmas. It's going to be a beautiful book.

By the way, past and future Cerebus Art Dragnet contributors-- the second round of proofs for the Dragnet Certificate is on its way to Dave as of this week! After they're approved, we'll be able to start the printing process and coordinate all of the mailing back and forth it'll take to get these signed by everyone and to your door. Please accept my apologies for the delay, and once again, my deep gratitude and thanks to everyone who's contributed to the art hunt so far! Every page we get access to makes a huge difference to the final books.

Thanks also to everyone who suggested bonus print ideas. Keep them coming!

The Beavers: The Ticket

The Beavers: The Ticket

by Dave Sim

(Oktoberfest #1, Now & Then Publications, 1976)

DAVE SIM:

(Cerebus Archive #8, June 2010)

...Wintario was the, then, revolutionary provincial lottery whose motto was "With Wintario we all win"...

Before Cerebus #1 was published in December 1977, Dave Sim created The Beavers newspaper strip, which ran in weekly installments in The Kitchener-Waterloo Record between 1976-1977.

CANAR: Working Conditions In The Comic Book Industry

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 #10, June 1973

Working Conditions In The American Comic Book Industry:
Commentary by Dave Sim
All contents of CANAR © John Balgé Estate.
 

Restraint

Restraint

by Dave Sim

(Glamourpuss #21, September 2011)

Grumpy

© Hey Lala (2013)

Weekly Update #69: He's Not Only The Star... He Also Makes A Great Bodyguard

DAVE SIM:

Hi everyone!

Way late getting this posted this week so sincere apologies!  So late I didn't have a chance to review the last week's worth of posts, so if anyone had a question for me, send it to me in a letter, fax or by phone message and I'll get to it next Friday.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.  Lake Erie Warehouse Report follows this Update:  Step One in making ALL of the inventory available for sale ASAP (hopefully calendar year 2015), including the Off-White House Copies of CEREBUS and my IDW variant covers from 2012-2013 

2.  CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER TWO North American orders are now packaged and ready to be shipped so they should start arriving in the next two weeks or so.  Watch the Kickstarter site for last minute glitches or individual problems with YOUR order. 

3.  ALL of the original art in the Cerebus Archive from CHURCH & STATE I has been scanned and is on its way to Sean Robinson for remastering.  Next: the negatives!

4.  Still looking for suggestions for the eight remaining Bonus Print slots for CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE.  My two suggestions?  The LOCK & KEY variant cover and the ULTIMATE CEREBUS cover for the GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING.  Also: Diamondback decks will be our first Bonus Feature (not Print) item! 

5.  CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY specialty drawings: two down -- "TT" and DeDe Gardner (which should be pictured around here somewhere, courtesy of Sean)  -- and one to go (Brad Pitt).

1.   Dave Fisher and I had our first meeting today on the Off-White House Copies getting ready for making the first major push on getting them ready early next week. Don't miss his "Report from the Warehouse" posted earlier today.

As I was reviewing the photos, it occurred to me, "These are SEALED boxes.  And they've been sealed from the time the books in them were brand new."  Not only that, they're all in PRENEY PRINT & LITHO boxes which are the LAST PRENEY PRINT & LITHO boxes in existence.  If you're an obsessive CEREBUS collector (and there are a few), I need to point that out.  I mean, right NOW there are thirty-some-odd skids full of them.  But, once Dave Fisher starts breaking the boxes down and prepping the books for sale, there are going to be fewer and fewer authentic boxes in existence.

But these photos are always going to exist.

So, if you're a person with a favourite CEREBUS issue (Margaret leaps to mind, whose first CEREBUS was 114 and which "looms large in her legend") and you want something very few CEREBUS fans are going to have, now is the time to say something.  Don't wait until you're looking at the photos ten years from now and going "Oh, man -- all those boxes are GONE NOW!"  Virtually all of them WILL be gone.  I'm going to pick a sample box for the Cerebus Archive. I don't know which one, but one of them.

I'm just saying:  don't say I didn't warn you WAY ahead of time  :).

And some good news for all of you who were concerned that they didn't have a low enough number to be able to get Off-White House Copies:  the Off-White House Copies are also going to include all twenty-odd IDW variant covers that I did.  Some of those books I've still got 75 out of the 100 I got as part of my payment, so that means some of those books will be available to those of you with numbers up around 100.  Stay tuned!  

2. Apart from that, still a weird "in-between" time where I'm "hands off" with the CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER TWO.  John informs me that the North American orders have all been prepped and are ready to go.  A couple of late glitches in the USA shipping but, he's working on it.  John also informs me that he's done a video on the Kickstarter site demonstrating the best way to unwrap the package when you get it (when we wrap them SECURE we wrap them SECURE!). So, everyone waiting for their copies, please be sure to check that out.  And remember, we always have GUARANTEED replacement on anything that gets damaged even if it's just that you didn't know about the flaps on the Stay-Flats.  Zero Disappointment is our GUARANTEE.

I REALLY like the gold logo on CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER TWO and I'm pretty sure all of you will as well.  

3.  Apart from THAT, I am finally scanning the CHURCH & STATE artwork after a few fitful weeks of getting the scanner to work.  Many thanks to Sean for all his help.  Time-consuming as well: my working day starts at 4 am with an hour of scanning every day (not to mention cab transport to and from the artwork off-site storage location during the working day).

But I have to say that the A300 scanner is all that it was promised to be: literally NINE SECONDS for a full 11x17 scan.  So I was able this week to scan ALL of the CHURCH & STATE I pages in the Cerebus Archive in three morning sessions.  At that rate, I should have ALL of the artwork scanned in two or three months at the most.

4. You may have noticed Sean asking for suggestions for Bonus Prints on CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE.  This was my suggestion to him because I tend to have very esoteric taste in my own artwork.  When I hear a Cerebus Fan suggestion, I always go, "Of COURSE!" but I tend not to think of it myself.  So, the two suggestions that I'm offering for inclusion in the ten NEW Bonus Prints are 1) The LOCK & KEY variant cover and 2) the ULTIMATE CEREBUS cover.  I'm pretty confident about those!  The other eight?  Well, let's hear from you!

Menachem suggested remastered Diamondback cards.  Which, I think I can go one better on that: ORIGINAL Diamondback card decks (Second Series)!  First come, first served, but there's definitely a small box of them downstairs, already signed.  Watch for CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE coming soon!

5.  "TT" (whose photorealism comic-art portrait should be around here) is one of a consortium of Hollywood investors who have expressed interest in CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY.  He's a huge fan of Oliver's filmmaking (as am I!) and is the one with whom Oliver has had the most regular on-going contact.  So, I think it's a given that he will be our "go-to" guy when it comes to Hollywood interface.  He's the one (you may recall from last week) who brought up DeDe Gardner (my spellcheck insists that's the correct spelling but I think it might be Dede) of PLAN B ENTERTAINMENT.

IS there a role for investors in what we're doing?  I'm guessing "Yes", but that depends on all of us coming up with a movie that I'm going to approve.

Right now, we're all -- including me -- just Oliver's Volunteers pitching in on Oliver's CEREBUS Movie.

I'm very RESPECTFUL of that.  These are people who are all nuts about 3D animation the way I'm nuts about Photorealistic Comic Strips.  They work terribly hard at it all day and then come home and...work terribly hard at it for free.  If I can make this "happen", I will.

[It's unusual but not unique, I found, to do something like this.  About a year after Oliver asked if he could make a movie and I "didn't say no", I read about a Winnipeg Theatre Company which developed a stage musical based on Sir Elton John's music and then wanted to know if they had his permission.  Sir Elton basically did the same thing. He "didn't say no" and they went ahead and did it, without formal legal authorization.  And they got a BUNCH of investors to invest in it to the tune of many millions of dollars.  ALL of the investors knowing that if Sir Elton ultimately said "no" they were out a pile of cash. I think they ultimately got approval but I don't know how far the production itself went from there]

I'm also going to leave it up to "TT" to take any of the content of these Updates that he thinks would be useful and to "crunch" them into personal letters, e-mails, FYI's -- whatever.  Basically translate it into Hollywood language and "reach out" to anyone he thinks might be attuned to what Oliver is trying to do.

And, on my part, I'll be happy to participate in a limited way, doing specialty drawings like these.

I got the DeDe Gardner one most of the way done and then called "TT" to find out "How WELL do you know DeDe Gardner?"  One of those times when HOW someone reacts is as important or more important than WHAT their reaction is (thus phone instead of fax relay through Oliver).  Part of it was the personalization.  He's giving her this drawing so, how would he address it if it was, say, a birthday card?  Full name (in both cases).  He wanted me to put my name first and I laughed.  Well, no, she knows YOU.  If she saw you in the reception area, she'd be, like "Oh Hi!".  If it was me, she'd call security.  As well she should.

The question I didn't ask him was "Are you cashing in serious chips on this?"  That's up to him to judge.  Right now, we aren't offering anything because -- the way we're doing it -- the movie has to be made first before there's even anything to talk about.  If Oliver or "TT" on behalf of Oliver wants to round up money for Oliver's movie on the "Sir Elton" basis, that's up to them.  Maybe PLAN B ENTERTAINMENT would be interested.

For MY part, it's, like, "Seriously. D*E*D*E G*A*R*D*N*E*R?"  On Oliver's behalf and on behalf of the production I'm volunteering on, that warrants a Very Nice Piece of Art.  Framed (I'll be sending "TT" a cheque to get both the DeDe Gardner and Brad Pitt pieces framed).  So if "TT" is -- however inadvertently -- cashing in some serious chips on our behalf, maybe he isn't going to lose ALL of the chips he's cashing in.

[Although I have to admit, while I was doing the Gardner piece and now that I'm on Day Two of the Brad Pitt piece, I'm wondering:  what would someone in Hollywood MAKE of these?  Pen and ink photorealism is so far out of fashion, I'm not sure what they would relate it to.  It might be useful to have "TT" there just to say, "Uh, yeah -- those are all actual little tiny pen lines. India ink."  I think in 2015 the reaction would be: "They have a computer program for this now? Scratchy pen 2.0?"  :)]

But, definitely, I'm all in favour of Oliver making EVERYTHING available to DeDe Gardner that "TT" thinks she might be interested in.  I mean, she is HUGE in every way that it's possible to be HUGE in Hollywood.  And HUGE in a way that we might really need somewhere up ahead a few years, because one of my primary concerns is that CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY is a very tough pitch.  Just going on "Approach to PLAN B ENTERTAINMENT":

1) it's a COMIC-BOOK MOVIE, so it APPEARS to be completely off your radar screen. However, on a COMIC-BOOK MOVIE scale with EAT, PRAY, LOVE as a "0" and THE AVENGERS as a "10", CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY is going to be a "2" or a "3".

2.  It's a 3D ANIMATED MOVIE.  However, it's not TEX AVERY BERSERKER ANIMATION.  On that scale, if EAT, PRAY, LOVE is a "0" and MADAGASCAR is a "10", CEREBUS FRACTURED DESTINY is, again, a "2" or a "3".

The only category where those needles would budge is PRINCESS FANTASY FILM where, if EAT PRAY LOVE was, say, a "2" and FROZEN is a "10", CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY would, again, be a "2" or a "3"

I mean, that's in the "I'm not seeing it" category relative to Hollywood, I think.

Like the best "elevator pitch" I've come up with:

The Genghis Khan of cartoon animals reflects on his blood-soaked genocidal rise to absolute political power in a wide-ranging interview conducted by a UMass Psych Major who is unaware that she is a dead ringer for his long-dead One True Love, The Princess of Palnu.  Miscommunication ensues as romantic sparks begin to fly.

That's why there's no way around it:  we have to just MAKE the movie and show it, in progress, to people as it's being finished.  Because there's no way anyone is going to "see" it otherwise, I don't think.

But, definitely, we want to keep PLAN B ENTERTAINMENT "in the loop" on this.

Next week, God willing, I'll have more to say about the pure creative side of CEREBUS: FRACTURED DESTINY.  The purer the better.  Basically:  I want everyone working on the film to be entirely comfortable Showing Off Their Best Chops.  How that applies to where we are right now and how that applies, however remote a possibility, to Brad Pitt as I say,  I'll get into next week!

Cerebus Inventory Report: Lake Erie Warehouse

DAVE FISHER:

Dave Sim asked me to forward you a report of his inventory stock that has been in a warehouse a couple hundred km from Kitchener in preparation for a move to Kitchener. The boxes have been stored at the warehouse for over 25 years, and funnily enough Sim had never visited or viewed the site. He asked me to make a road trip and report back.

Cerebus Inventory Report:
Lake Erie Warehouse

January 26, 2015

The Cerebus inventory stock is stored in three separate sections of the warehouse. Most of the stock is stored on skids (wooden pallets). Whereas most shipping skids come in a standardized size, these skids are variable -- small-sized, regular size and oversized, making calculations somewhat tricky.

A) The first section is stored indoors and heated to room temperature.

There are boxes stored two-deep on shelves. Many of these boxes are open and partially filled. Boxes can be cut down for easier shipping. There are additional stacked boxes on pallets. Some boxes overlap pallets and will need to be re-stacked.

Estimated number of skids: 5-6

B) The second and biggest section is in cold storage on lower level.

Many skids have boxes wrapped in plastic. Ideally, all boxes stored on skids require secure stable re-stacking and should be wrapped in plastic.

Estimated number of skids: 18-22

C) The third & last section is located upstairs, in cold storage .

Section includes a pair of skids of empty folded shipping boxes. The Cerebus inventory boxes on these skids overlap and will require re-stacking. The boxes are not stacked high, possibly for distribution control, but also possibly to not stress the floor. It's like an old barn and does not appear to be structurally strong, so the boxes may have been spread out on skids to evenly distribute the weight. Notes:

• Boxes can easily be stacked higher for shipping. I'm uncertain whether they should be stacked upstairs or stacked & wrapped downstairs after they've been moved to the loading dock. The loading dock is semi-sheltered, but is outside.
• Warehouse has a forklift & elevator system to get those skids to the lower ground level. For shipping, all boxes on skids should require wrapping in plastic to stabilize them. It will need to be determined if those upstairs skids will need to be wrapped upstairs or down on the loading dock.
• Another factor, the boxes should all be shipped on the skids, but will require a hand-jack (or forklift) at the destination end to unload, whether the storage facility has one or the truck rental. As far as I know, the new storage facility in Kitchener has trolleys, but I don't know if they have a hand-jack or forklift. (Need to investigate.) (Perhaps one can be rented?) If we don't have a jack at the destination end, it will require hand-bombing the boxes off the truck onto a small trolley, which is a pain in the arse that right now we don't want to contemplate. That's a worse-case scenario.

Estimated number of skids: 8

SUMMARY:

• Total number of estimated skids: 30-36.
• This is going to require a serious transport truck.
• And/or might require a few shipments.
• Recommendation: upstairs cold storage pallets (Section C) should wait until at least spring time before coming downstairs.

I Want To See Your Armpit

MARGARET LISS:

A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.

A quick one this week. With the New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl I've been watching the interception again and again. And again. Sports are like a drug, the lows (how the heck did he catch that? Not again. Nooooooo.) to the highs (interception! We won! OHMYGAWD! WE WON!). And I just can't give it up yet. So between that on Sunday and the parade tomorrow (yes, I'm going), that doesn't leave much time to write this. So I picked some bits from one of my favorite phonebooks.

Reads.

Yes, Reads is in my top 3 phonebooks. The material. The structure. The grand meeting of all three Aardvarks. The fight. It has everything. Notebook #18 covers issues #164 to 187, and on page 118, Dave gives us a rough layout of the structure of Reads:

Notebook #18 page 118

Then on pages 163 and 164 are the only roughs I can see for the epic battle between Cirin and Cerebus:

Notebook #18 page 163

Notebook #18 page 164

Bonus Prints, Bonus Printing

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings everyone!

This week I officially started work on Church and State, going through Dave's scans of the first twelve Church and State I pages in the Cerebus Archive. It was gratifying work, getting to look forward instead of behind, getting some sense of the ways in which this project will be easier (more uniformity of materials, materials in significantly better condition) and harder (length, primarily) than High Society.

But also on the horizon! With CANT now shipping, we've started preparations for the third Cerebus Archive portfolio, to be known as CAN3. And while the main plates are already fixed for this project (being the ten earliest C + S pages in the Cerebus Archive), what's still up for grabs are the bonus prints.

So! Here's where you come in. There are a few simple principles guiding our potential choice of bonus prints. Namely, 

1. How great would this look on a wall or in a portfolio?

2. How many folks would be interested in pledging for this?

John "Funkmaster" Funk's Bonus Print Popularity chart

So, maybe it's a bit premature, but I wanted to ask the question-- what kinds of bonus prints are you interested in seeing this time around? Would you be interested in, say, color reproductions of key /iconic pages from Church and State that are not currently in possession of the Cerebus Archive, but that we have scans of? Would you be interested in Dave's commissions and color art from the past few years? Historical color art from the time period represented by the portfolio?

Additionally, we're looking to you all for assistance in acquiring scans for some of these items as well. Do you happen to own a particularly interesting or impressive piece of Dave original artwork? We have scans of some interesting artwork, but just as much is already out there in the world, on a wall or in a private collection.

So-- feedback time. What makes a good bonus print? What would you like to see? What would make you more likely to contribute to the next portfolio?

Say, maybe, I dunno. Something like.... this?

The Beavers: "The Great Canadian Newspaper Strip"

The Beavers: October

by Dave Sim

(Oktoberfest #1, Now & Then Publications, 1976)

DAVE SIM:

(Cerebus Archive #8, June 2010)

...At the time, what "salvaged" Oktoberfest for me was the Beavers strips on the inside front and inside back covers: published appearances that would make them appear successful... and a 4-page interior strip, "The Trophy"... The Kitchener-Waterloo Record had agreed to carry the weekly The Beavers strip in their entertainment supplement Pulse. I was sure it was going to be "The Great Canadian Newspaper Strip."

Before Cerebus #1 was published in December 1977, Dave Sim created The Beavers newspaper strip, which ran in weekly installments in The Kitchener-Waterloo Record between 1976-1977.

Tracing Paper Auction: Alex Raymond's Gullwing Mercedes

Glamourpuss #14 (July 2010)

Art by Dave Sim 

eBay Auction: Ends 8 February 2015

DAVE FISHER:
Five tracing paper drawings of Alex Raymond's Gullwing Mercedes SL300:

• Page 1 tracing paper. close-up detail of Gullwing door opening. Page measures 11x14-inches, illustration composes most of that page. Small tear patched with masking tape at upper edge - does not touch illustration;
• Page 2 tracing paper. whole Gullwing with Raymond stepping inside w/ door opened. Page measures 11x14-inches, nice clean page, no tears or folds;
• Page 4 tracing paper. Two images of Mercedes Gullwing, the first and larger is front-on and beneath is a smaller side view. Also hand-lettered pencil text/type. Page measures 11x14-inches, light fold at lower-left corner, does not touch illustration. (Same smaller illustration used on Glamourpuss page 5);
• Page 6 TWO tracing papers. a) 3/4 side profile of Gullwing with doors up -- illustration mesures 4x7 inches on 11x14-inch tracing paper; page is clean, no folds or rips; b) "finger of death" illustration, measures 7.5x6.5 inches on 11x14-inch tracing paper, no folds or rips.
• 5 reference page photo print-outs of Mercedes Gullwing SL300, each page measures standard 8.5x11-inches 11x17 orig. scale photocopy of Page 2 (Alex Raymond stepping into Gullwing) - folded in half.

New York Street Art

Art by Myth NY (2014)
Photo © The Dusty Rebel

"You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours,
yet even at those odds you will lose & I will win."
~ Ho Chi Minh

Myth NY is a Brooklyn based street artist who uses superhero imagery juxtaposed with political statements meant to confront passersby with a wide range of social issues from animal cruelty to class and gender inequality.