The Weed Of Revolution Bears Bitter Fruit!

Cerebus ad designed by Richard Bruning

For further information on Richard Bruning see the in-depth profile in
Comic Book Creator #7 (TwoMorrows, Spring 2015).

Chaos Rules!

Cerebus ad designed by Richard Bruning

For further information on Richard Bruning see the in-depth profile in
Comic Book Creator #7 (TwoMorrows, Spring 2015).

Cerebus & The Jaycees

MARGARET LISS:

The fanzine Cerebus The Newsletter was originally published by Fred Patten and then by Aardvark-Vanaheim from January 1981 to October 1985 and ran for 13 issues. After asking Fred Patten and Dave Sim if I could use the name of the previous fanzine, Jeff Tundis and I started anew in 2009 with issue #14. I published issues #14 through 21, which was released in November 2011. Below is an article that I wrote for the Cerebus The Newsletter - albeit the article below has additional information and pictures. If you would like to purchase back issues, some of them are still in print and can be found at the Friends of Cerebus website.

It all started in May 1981 when Tom Hegeman was elected the District Director for New York's region V, District 6 of The Jaycees. Tom had been a comic book reader for a while, and wrote for fanzines, comics magazines and was very active in the fan world of comics.

When he was elected District Director, he had been reading Cerebus since he brought the first six issues at one of the many comics conventions he attended. In his district the District Directors had a tradition of having a theme or slogan during their year in office. Tom decided he'd like to use "Fight Like An Aardvark" for his slogan and asked Dave Sim if that was okay with him. Dave gave his okay to use Cerebus as their mascot, and Dave helped out with the cloisonné pin design. At the Fantacon in 1981 Dave drew the image that became the pin.

The pin was shown in an ad in the back of issue #34 of Cerebus. The pin is 1.5" in diameter, has a black in color outer rim with gold in color text, a dark red background and a gray Cerebus head. The text along the rim states "N.Y. Jaycees Reg. V Dist. 6" and "Fight like an aardvark". In the inside it says © D. Sim.

The first edition of the pin was 150 pieces and sold for $5 each. Tom says "I think that of the 150 we had produced about half are in the hands of collectors and half are owned by Jaycees." After the original 150 pins sold, Tom did 50 more pins in a second run. This second run used the same design, and is identical to the first pin with the exception that the dark red background is a bit lighter in color.

First edition of the pin (left) and second edition (right).

Since Cerebus was the Jaycee's mascot, they not only had the really nice pin - (Margaret notes: which out of all the Cerebus pins out there, I'd have to say this is by far the best done Cerebus pin!) but they used Cerebus on their newsletter, entitled "Filthy Lies!".

Filthy Lies newsletter (Click to enlarge and read Tom's notes on the new mascot)

Also the Jaycee's stationary, which as Tom says "I was so impressed with the Aardvark-Vanaheim stationary that I ripped off the design for the year." Here is the Aardvark-Vanaheim letterhead in the early 1980s:

And the letterhead Tom came up with:

Region V, District 6 Jaycee stationary header. Note: I removed Tom's Address for his privacy.

According to Tom there were "a dozen bottles of beer (that) were relabeled this way at the end of my year as District Director in the NY Jaycees and given out to whoever I liked. The joke is that the founder of the US Jaycees was Henry "Hy" Giessen-bier, and that is his most famous quote."

Tom's district also had Cerebus featured on the recognition certificate given out for a 'record of excellence':

Edited to add: In the digital High Society individual issues which have the 'Cerebus Archive' material in the back, issue #27 had this letter from Dave to Tom:

High Society No 3 2012 page 34 digital copy

The letter from Dave gives Tom permission to use Cerebus as the JayCee's mascot, but just to give Dave credit and copyright. 

Jeff Seiler: Dave Sim & Me

JEFF SEILER:

Eleven years ago, when Cerebus ended, Dave Sim decided to answer all of his back mail. A month or so later, he had his "Jeff Seiler Day" in which he answered multiple letters I had written over the previous year. After I received that letter, I decided to keep writing, and he kept his promise to answer every letter he received. And now, I have a foot-high stack of letters written and received over 10 years or so. I will be posting full paragraphs or pages of interesting excerpts from those letters every Saturday.

From a letter dated 13 November, 2004, from Dave to me, written during his days of attending the weekly city council meetings religiously, so to speak:

I wonder myself at what the city council members think of me. They had a special tent set up in front of City Hall during the Oktoberfest opening ceremonies and, as a promotion, the Council members were all dishing up the sauerkraut and weiner-schnitzel. Councillor Geoff Lorentz saw me walking by and yelled, "Hey, you should be in here doing this with us." Which would seem to indicate a "we consider you part of the family" gesture, which was nice. I try to maintain a distance because I see myself as monitoring what's going on, rather than as a participant and I think it's very easy to get seduced into taking their side, rather than keeping an adversarial frame of mind, which seems necessary if only because I'm about the only person who's there every week. Mayor Zehr always tells the people who are there for the ceremony, "You’re welcome to stay for the rest of the council meeting..." This invariably gets a big laugh. "As if!" Disheartening for obvious reasons.

Weekly Update #90: A Fax To The MRI Clinic

Dave Sim provides yet another update on the state of his quest to get an MRI and fix his hand, as well as a sneak preview of volumes one and two of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond as well as several other interesting little tidbits of information that are sure to delight and interest individuals of all ages.

-- NEWS FLASH --
Remastered 'Cerebus: High Society' download available for FREE on Sellfy!

A Plan for Church & State I

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.

Here at A Moment of Cerebus, we've looked at Dave's notebook #4 a few times already, it covers issues #59 to 70, and while the cover stated it had 200 pages, only 160 pages were scanned. The front cover, on which Dave had written "Albatross Encore Une Fois", is so worn that it had fallen off the notebook.

On page 108 it looks like Dave wrote down a list of things that he wanted to do in the next dozen or so issues, and then marked down issue numbers of where those items would end up.

Notebook #4, page 108

About a third of the way down the page we see that Dave crossed off "Elrod: "Hemingway is the key". It doesn't even have an issue number, crossed off earlier. Though we all know that Hemingway will show up much later in the story, but he isn't much of a 'key'. We also see that "Chap questions Cerebus about how long he has had the sword and medallions". Though instead of that in issue #66, we get the baby being thrown, which isn't mentioned on this list at all.

A few of the things on this list that aren't crossed off, still don't come to be on the finished pages. For example, slated for issue #67 according to this page is "Cerebus: "You keep your toys aimed outwards and we'll do just fine". Sounds like Cerebus talking to Weisshaupt about Weisshaupt's canons.

Also not used was something for issue #71: "A young girl named Janette Jo evidently she has seen a vision - wants the church cleansed. She sees money as an impurity. Barter only." Much later in the story - in Guys - we see that money is no longer around, but Jo never appears. There is a Janette that appears in issue #23 & 24, one of the three girls at Madame duFort's school for girls, but those are the only issues in which she appears.

We also see a note written around the list. It is from a "K" to Dave: "Hi there, remember me, I'm the one who used to write notes in your book, and your (sic) the one who crosses them out." Dave's response: "Yah, I remember. 'D'". I'm guessing the K was Karen McKiel, Aardvark-Vanaheim's administrator.

Cerebus TV Reruns: Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing Special

Now showing on Cerebus TV:

Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing Special

(First Aired: 31 July 2010)

LINKS:

Donate to 'Cerebus TV' and help keep the show on the road!

Download your copy of the 'Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing' now!

A Taxonomy of Damage+Repair

Mara Sedlins:

Last week I promised to follow up with a comprehensive list of the restoration issues we encountered in the restoration work for Church and State I - particularly the Trauma One and Trauma Two pages. The original impetus for creating the list was our promise to trauma page sponsors to include a summary of the restoration work that took each page from “before” to “after.” But this exercise has the potential to be more than just a post-hoc story attached to those particular pages. Thinking through each type of problem we encounter and organizing them in a systematic way serves a practical purpose too.

A taxonomy (not to be confused with “taxidermy,” Wikipedia warns us!) is a classification of things or concepts, or the principles underlying such a classification. In general, taxonomies (particularly folk taxonomies) tend to be purpose-driven; they’re created to explain, predict, or drive behavior. For instance, if you can identify a mushroom as belonging the morchellaceae family, then you know that it won’t kill you if you eat it. (Useful information.)

Humans are categorization machines, and we’re creating our own taxonomies all the time, whether we realize it or not. There’s a William James quote that social cognition experts like to paraphrase as, “thinking is for doing” (the original is, “My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing,” but that’s not nearly as catchy or memorable). This means that the way you divide up the world depends on what you’re trying to do. A blunt example would be that you’re probably (hopefully) going to be attuned to different personal characteristics depending on whether you’re interviewing job candidates or participating in a speed dating event.

I’ve mentioned the “usefulness vs. arbitrariness of socially constructed categories” with the idea that a nuanced appreciation of grey areas can be valuable. But really, the majority of everyday classifications we make are necessary and practical. You don’t want to have to re-decide every time you wake up whether coffee is a “morning beverage” or not. You just want to drink your f*&king coffee.

And so, what are some of the functions of our taxonomy of damage and repair techniques for the pages of Cerebus?

• creating a checklist of repairs needed for each page
• standardizing the final level of cleanup across pages
• improving our ability to identify time-intensive pages ahead of time
• guiding the development of new restoration techniques
• dividing up the work depending on our areas of expertise/abilities

The List - with examples and prevalence (out of 12 Trauma pages):

• Sean’s initial adjustments and sharpening process (every page)
• Adjust Cerebus’ tone separately from the rest of the page (2 pages)
• Replace a damaged section from the negative scan (4 pages)

• Erase anything outside the image area (page numbering, autographs/messages, scanner shadows; every page)

• Erase noise in white areas (10 pages)

• Square panel corners/straighten edges (5 pages)

• Blacken white noise in panel borders (9 pages)

• Replace damaged or shrunken Letratape (5 pages)

• Strengthen black in areas with damage or light ink coverage (10 pages)

• Blacken white noise due to tone edges in black areas (7 pages)

• Replace Cerebus tone that was shrunk or damaged (11 pages)

• Replace shrunk or damaged scribble tone (11 pages)

• Erase tone that extended past where it should (6 pages)

• Clean up stray crosshatching (2 pages)

• Strengthen or fill in lettering for legibility (3 pages)

Which problems were most prevalent? Which required the most labor? Which ones are worth spending time improving/speeding up our restoration methods?

As I expected, the most time-consuming type of repair was replacing tone, especially the scribble tone. For the “Trauma One” pages that needed tone replaced, they had on average 19 places per page that needed attention. So this is something to watch out for on future pages, and maybe think about alternative techniques (I favor drawing in the pattern using the Stamp tool, but there are faster approaches that probably look just as good in print). For the next volume, it may also be useful to classify pages depending on which of the restoration issues above are present in order to make the cleanup process more efficient.

Taxonomies evolve over time, and I’m sure we’ll continue to update this list as the artwork changes and as we add to our repertoire of restoration techniques.

The Deciding Vote

Cerebus ad designed by Richard Bruning

For further information on Richard Bruning see the in-depth profile in
Comic Book Creator #7 (TwoMorrows, Spring 2015).

Leonard Starr (1925-2015) RIP

Glamourpuss #24 (March 2012)

Art by Dave Sim

EDDIE KHANNA:
(from the Patreon Update, 6 July 2015)

Last week saw the passing of one of the greats in the field and the last of the photorealists from the Raymond / Drake / Prentice / Williamson era. In the area of realistic comic art, Leonard Starr was one of the giants, with his high watermark achievement on Mary Perkins, On Stage influencing comic book professionals for years afterwards. There's a quality to Starr's work where the energy in the art almost causes it to jump off the page (captured even in Dave's recreation of the Mary Perkins image above from glamourpuss #24). The Classic Comics Press reprints of On Stage have introductions from the likes of Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin and Eddie Campbell and Kurt Busiek, all revealing their love and admiration for his work. And while I'm not sure how much of a fan Brian Bolland is, his style does seem very reminiscent and influenced by Starr (whether consciously or unconsciously). Which is something I wouldn't have seen before Dave began talking about the photorealists and their work and influence on the medium. As well, Leonard Starr does figure into the narrative of SDOAR... [Read the full update at Patreon]

Happy 68th Birthday Katherine Collins!

Neil The Horse #1 by Katherine Collins

(Aardvark-Vanaheim, February 1983)

Campaign's End

Cerebus ad designed by Richard Bruning

For further information on Richard Bruning see the in-depth profile in
Comic Book Creator #7 (TwoMorrows, Spring 2015).

Editing The Graphic Novel

Editing The Graphic Novel: Advise & Consent

Following Cerebus #5 (August 2005)

Art by Dave Sim

Wallace Wood: The Big Blue Pencil

Reprinted in The Comics Journal #70 (January 1982)

Jeff Seiler: Dave Sim & Me

JEFF SEILER:

Eleven years ago, when Cerebus ended, Dave Sim decided to answer all of his back mail. A month or so later, he had his "Jeff Seiler Day" in which he answered multiple letters I had written over the previous year. After I received that letter, I decided to keep writing, and he kept his promise to answer every letter he received. And now, I have a foot-high stack of letters written and received over 10 years or so.

For the last month or so I've been running excerpts from Dave's letters on Twitter, but the 140-character limit is frustrating, so here we go with the reformatted Dave Sim And Me, which will be running on AMOC every Saturday!

From a letter dated 13 November, 2004, from Dave to me:

I’m not really sure if I pioneered the sequential reprinting. That honour probably goes to Russ Cochran with his E.C. Library when he decide to reprint the entire runs of the E.C. titles, including colour covers. I think if you look at most collections of reprints, they include the covers and sometimes the advertisements. I was driving at something else, modeled more on the serialization that used to be done in Dickens’ and Dostoevsky’s time, where the completed serialization was collected into book form. In fact, I’ve taken a lot of flack over the years for not reprinting the Cerebus covers in the trades. Just another example of me swimming upstream against the tide. To me, if you call them graphic novels, they should read sequentially from front to back with no outside material. In fact, I worked very hard to get to the point where it would be difficult if not impossible to tell where one issue ended and another began in the reprintings. That’s the exact opposite from the effect created by reprinting the covers.

Okay, AMOC-ites, check in again next Saturday for another pithy paragraph from the same letter from Dave. We're still in year one, carrying over from Twitter, of the ten years of letters I have in the box...

Weekly Update #89: The 'Off-White House Copies' Explained

-- NEWS FLASH --
Remastered 'Cerebus: High Society' download available for FREE on Sellfy!

Restoration Bulletin-- seeking Church + State I reprint essays

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings folks!

I'm in the midst of putting together the back matter for the new Church & State I printing, and with eight pages to fill, I'm looking for some help with the content.

Does anyone reading this happen to have copies of the  Church & State I reprints, published as an extension of the Cerebus Biweekly reprint series? What I'm looking for specifically are the essays that Dave wrote for these editions, or any other material unique to the reprints. These don't need to be fancy-pants high-res scans or anything, only readable scans (or photographs) of the pages in question.

If you can help me out with this, please send scans (or photos) to CerebusArtHunt at gmail. And please leave a message here stating which issues you've sent, so that people don't waste their time sending pages that have already been sent.

Thanks for your time everyone!

US Tour 1992 tour diary

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.

We've already seen a bit from Dave's notebook #17 - see "Po's monologue about Bran" and then the a three column series on "The Good and Bad of Comics in the Early 90s". As this notebook covers issues 153 to 164 in the early 1990s, there is a bit more in it I'd like to show you. A tour diary of sorts, from his US Tour 1992.

On the notebook's page 55 and 56 Dave was writing some dialogue for Suenteus Po, and the on page 57 we see he must've been at his hotel as he jolts down "Oops, Mitch just got here for the Midnight Comics signing."

Notebook 17, page 57 (as always, click to enlarge)

It looks like Steve Bissette and Julie Doucet were to be at the signing at Midnight Comics in Albany, NY. We also see that Dave tells a short story of how he met Tom Palmer from Marvel Comics. The signing was part the US Tour 1992 and happened on June 20, 1992 according to the back cover of Cerebus #158.

Then on the next page we see Dave writing about how Mitch wasn't coming to pick him up for another half hour for the Midnight Comics signing? This is actually part of the Note From the President for issue #160. Though it is way down the bottom of the note.

Notebook 17, page 58

The rest of the page appears to be a prologue the rest of the NFtP that was in the back of the issue on a page long note with super tiny text. The next page in the notebook is used in the NFtP in issue #160 as well, though edited down and put before the Albany tour stop info.

Notebook 17, page 59

It deals with the Minneapolis stop of the tour, on June 7, 1992. So perhaps Dave started his tour diary at the back of the notebook, and his Cerebus stuff at the front, and the pages before 57 where there is he Suenteus Po dialogue were not done right before he was interrupted by Mitch from Midnight Comics. Perhaps he was in the middle of the line on the bottom of page 57 which is why it just ends mysteriously, we don't find out who the first two people he met were.

This starting out at the back of the notebook would also explain why on the next page - page 60 - we see what becomes the start of the NFtP for Cerebus #160, a bit about the Kansas City tour stop on May 31, 1992.

Notebook 17, page 60

As you can see down the bottom of  page 60, which happens to be the last page in this notebook, is the start of the Minneapolis note, which is continued on page 59.

Dissecting the Trauma Pages

Mara Sedlins:

The cleanup work is almost complete for Church & State I - soon we’ll be moving on to the book layout stage (followed by the print-and-double-check-everything stage)!

This week I’m also preparing the before and after plates for the C & S I Trauma pages, including a summary of the restoration work done on each page. Many thanks to our page donors! As I take a step back to consider the process, I’m curious to see what cleanup issues ended up being the most prevalent in these special attention pages.

Given the amount of time I’ve spent working on them, it seems like it would be a straightforward task to come up with a taxonomy of issues that were addressed. But it’s not immediately clear how to categorize all the things we do to “fix” a page. After thinking about it for a bit, I realized this is because there are (at least) two different ways of viewing the problems on a page: 1) in terms of what caused the problem (e.g., shrunk tone, smudged ink, tape damage) or 2) what concrete actions need to be taken in order to fix the problem.

Of course, the latter is informed by the former - but it’s not a one-to-one relationship. That is, the same solution (blacking in white noise with the brush tool) can address several different causes of noise (light ink, dust on the page, edges of tone). And vice versa: the same issue (damaged tone) can require different restoration techniques depending on various factors (the extent and placement of damage, the type of tone). So when I start to list the issues on a page, I have some choices to make about how to describe what was done and why.

Here are some before-and-after examples from the pages I’ve been looking at:

Playing “spot the differences,” what I see is the actions I took to get from “before” to “after”. But I think it’ll be valuable to document both the how and the why of what was restored. Next week I'll follow up with the final list of issues that I come up with. 

Meanwhile, I was glad to see some new leads on original art pages in our inbox recently. Thanks again for keeping the hunt going!