Gerhard: The Nerdy Show Interview

The Nerdy Show celebrates 40 years of a comic book milestone: Cerebus the Aardvark:

It’s an independent comic that took the world by storm, changed the industry forever, and broke bold new ground with its hilarious and heart-rending story. The series was written and drawn by Dave Sim with background artist, Gerhard. Together they chronicled the life of this ill-fated aardvark with Sim drawing the characters and Gerhard anchoring the cartoon animal into immaculately rendered environments. This archival HeroesCon panel is a one-on-one conversation with Gerhard as Cap Blackard learns about the artists’ collaborative process in creating the longest-running indie comic of all-time, how to ditch school but still get some book learnin’, and breaking beyond the background with Gerhard’s new project, The Smile of the Absent Cat, written by Grant Morrison for Heavy Metal.

Listen to the podcast here...

Weekly Update #191: Cerebus In Hell? Returns!

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Aardvark Comics #1-- Fiery Gems For You, Only For You, the Last Wednesday of Every Month!

Order at your Local Comics Shop now! Diamond Order Code: JUL171242.

POIT! SMASH

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.

It has been over two years since we've looked at Dave Sim's notebook #20. The most recent time was in July of 2015's US Tour 1992 tour diary.  The notebook covers Cerebus #153 through 164, and it had 59 pages scanned, 20 missing pages and a ton of blank pages.

And somehow, while we've seen pages from this notebook many times already, we s till haven't seen the cover. Surprise! It is another Hilroy:

Notebook #20, front cover

On page 38 of the notebook there is a sketch of 'Cerebus 163 page 9' (or the phonebook 163, page 15):

Notebook #20, page 38

Looking at the finished page, it is another fine example of Sim thumbnails and Gerhard's finishing:

Cerebus #163, page 9

The finish page is close to Dave's sketch, but the building he falls into is rotated by 90 degrees - though the six window skylight is still there for him to fall through. Gerhard also put some extra detail into the finished page: top right hand corner of the first two panels show two people walking towards the top of the panel and a cart moving to the right edge of the panel.  Their movement from the first to second panel gives us a sense of time.

Dave also has written down a page by page summary of Cerebus #163, with page one being the text 'Book Two Women' as it is the first issue in that phonebook. I'll leave it to you to determine how close the rest of the notes match up with the final product.

Want to help on Jaka's Story?

Sean Michael Robinson:

Edit on 7/13/2017--

Thank you thank you thank you to David Roel for pointing me to a much better OCR solution than the two I was using! The Jaka's Story text formatting presented major problems for both Vuescan's OCR and Adobe Creative Suite's OCR techniques, but was handled easily by the fantastic OnlineOCR.net. A few minutes figuring out their interface, and $7.99 later, and I was in business, with only light amounts of adjustment to be done on the outputted text.

For anyone looking for an OCR solution, you might want to start there.

Leaving the rest of this post here, but I'm no longer looking for help on this. Thanks again David!

p.s. The complete Jaka's Story text, including the introduction, is just shy of 30,000 words. Just FYI!

previously, I wrote....

Well hello again! Fancy meeting you here!

Are you a fan of Jaka's Story(or Cerebus in general)?

Do you know how to do very basic text editing and formatting?

Do you have a few hours of time to spare sometime in the next two weeks?

I'm looking volunteer(s?) who might be interested in helping out the restoration effort by doing some basic formatting on the Jaka's Story text, prior to that text being passed on to Jeff Seiler for copy editing.

I've scanned the entirety of the text, done the initial OCR (optical character recognition) work, and used various find-and-replace tricks to get rid of as much of the text weirdness as possible. But owing to the various text formatting choices in the original book, the size and amount of fill-in on the text, and other oddities, there's still some formatting to be done, namely, adding in paragraph/line breaks and deleting various junk characters added by the OCR. Based on my formatting work so far, I'd estimate there's somewhere between five and eight hours of work to do on this.

Here are two screenshots, so you know what you might be getting yourself into:

The top one is the actual formatted text, with a single line break to indicate a paragraph break, and the additional line spacings resulting from the funky formatting of the original text removed. The bottom is how the majority of the text stands as of now.

I would love the help, and would be happy to add you to the credits for the finished book.

ALTERNATELY-- are you an OCR expert who believes you could transform my scans into a product much closer to the desired result? Please, contact me, either here in the comments, or by email: cerebusarthunt at gmail.

Thanks so much for your time everyone!

Paper to Pixel to Paper Again: Part 21

Index

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29

A guide to creating the best looking line art in print in the new digital print world

by Sean Michael Robinson

Part 21

Cleaning Up Line-up From Print Sources

Greetings!

This is the twenty-first installment of Paper to Pixel to Paper Again, a series that explains (in an overly thorough manner) the how-to's of preparing line art (and later in the series, color art!) for print.

If you haven't done so yet, please go back and read the previous installments.

And as always, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments!

***

In the last installment, we left off discussing techniques for cleaning pages restored from newsprint sources. Many of the techniques I ended with in the last installment are no different than how you'd clean a line art original or production negative, albeit with a lot more to do—but now we're going to discuss something unique to newsprint originals. 

When a visual has undergone multiple generations of any kind, there's bound to be some loss of quality, as the medium imparts some of its characteristics to If you're old enough to have made cassette mix tapes for friends or boy/girlfriends or whomever, you're familiar with the phenomenon. The tape hiss and corresponding rolled-off high end, and wow and flutter imparted by the cassette significantly changes the character of the sound. Dub a song onto multiple generations of consumer-grade cassette, and you're really in trouble.

Well, printing is no different, in that multiple-generation sources have picked up characteristics/flaws from their previous printings. In the case of restoring Cerebus pages, the newsprint and web presses used to print the monthly issues present these problems quite vividly, as a side by side comparison with original artwork will tell you. The chief noticeable characteristic is the dot gain of the printing—the tendency of ink to expand and spread as it hits the page—which we won't address now, as we'll be dealing with it in a future installment. The second characteristic is called slur. 

Here's a brief description of slur written by Gordon Pritchard--

One talks of slurring whenever the geometry of the halftone dot changes. The printed image then appears to be displaced. The round halftone dot assumes an oval form. Two kinds of slurring exist – on the one hand, in the direction of printing (circumferential slurring), and on the other hand, transverse to the direction of printing (lateral slurring). These effects lead to a reduction in quality, and reflect the processing conditions within the group comprising the plate, blanket, and printing cylinders, as well as on other material influences.

The above is taken from OffsetPrintingTechnology.com, a great resource for prepress and offset print troubleshooting.

The above visual example is pretty extreme, but gives you a good idea of what we're talking about here. For a variety of reasons, the impression the negative made on the paper varies from the intended image in ways that will add to each other should you make yet another copy of this copy, especially if the art in question involves this kind of mechanical tone.

There are, however, some things you can do to help things along and try to keep the tone from clogging up more in your copy of a copy.

For the purposes of this demonstration, we're going to work from a different page than before. Here's a print scan of the second page of Cerebus ever, as printed in the first-issue file copy used to restore the new (January 2017) release.

Please put aside any general observations you might have ("What, did Deni Loubert write in the corner of every single page of your copy?" "What pressman was running this, and why didn't they notice the smeared ink on the blanket, obscuring several words on every single copy of the run??"), and focus on the figure at the bottom, and whatever it is that's going on on his snout.

And here's what this looks like nice and up close, in my in-process version of the file. 

In addition to the horizontal stretching of the dots (slur) resulting from the speed of the paper feed, and various press issues, notice how large the dots are in the highlighted areas, and how some of the dots are even connected to each other. If these are left alone and the material printed from this file as-is, these areas will only become further degraded and clogged, possibly even leaving a dark black blotch in the very tight area.

Fortunately, once you've identified these issues using your eyes and your previously-printed copy, it's pretty easy to correct using the techniques we've already learned in previous installments. Those connected dots should have their connecting areas drawn out with a brush, and the larger, expanded dots can be replaced by tone patched from another area of the figure. (see the "tone fixing" installment from before.)

So let's take a look at how it appears after the cleanup.

Wait a second. That's not just cleaned up, everything is also magically shrunk uniformly?

Yeah. We'll get to that in the next installment or two.

(Fantasy parenthetical: it sure would be nice if you could, I dunno, click a button and make all of the junky tone disappear, leaving nothing but the line art remaining, ready to be re-toned... a nice fantasy, huh? Well, I've done some messing around with some freely-available Free Fourier Transformation tools--which include source code!--and it seems like, in the hands of someone with some real programming skill, it could be a reality. Are you a programmer interested in working on such a tool with me? Email me at cerebusarthunt at gmail dot com!)

Next week: The end in sight?

Sean Michael Robinson is a writer, artist, and musician. See more at LivingtheLine.com.

Batvark #1-- Savor the Taste of Sulfur, the Last Wednesday of Every Month!

Order at your Local Comics Shop now! Diamond Order Code: JUN171076

Diamond Preview Picks: July 2017

Tim here, filling in again for a poorly Travis Pelkie, with a selection of picks from the latest Diamond Previews catalog for the discerning Cerebus reader (or basically all the comics I would buy if I had an unlimited budget). Travis obviously would have done a much better job, so lets all wish him a speedy recovery for next time! Visit Travis at Atomic Junk Shop for a wider (and probably much better) selection of reading recommendations. To see your comics featured here or at the Atomic Junk Shop feel free to send an email to Travis at: atomicjunkshoptravis [at] outlook [dot] com.

Aardvark Comics #1
by Dave Sim & Sandeep Atwal
Aardvark-Vanaheim, $4.00
In Stores: 27 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL171242

The publisher says:
Comparing "Origin of Origin" stories; real-world historical figure in Action #1 (plus "stripped-cover returns"); "Whatever Happened to Tex Thompson, Pep Morgan, Chuck Dawson and Scoop Scanlon?" plus the earliest Super-Cerebus online strips from July 2016, Lucifer repents?!? Goldman Sachs, get it? Super-Cerebus versus Batvark the Movie; British Petroleum executives; dirty sea shanties; Atari 2600 ET;  Superhero Derangement Syndrome; Composite Batvark and more!  

Chris Ware Monograph
by Chris Ware & Ira Glass
Rizzoli, $60.00
In Stores: 11 October 2017
Diamond Order Code: APR178211

The publisher says:
A flabbergasting experiment in publishing hubris, Monograph charts the art and literary world's increasing tolerance for the language of the empathetic doodle directly through the work of one of its most esthetically constipated practitioners. Arranged chronologically with all thoughtful critical and contemporary discussion common to the art book genre jettisoned in favor of Mr. Ware's unchecked anecdotes and unscrupulous personal asides, the author-as-subject has nonetheless tried as clearly and convivially as possible to provide a contrite, companionable guide to an otherwise unnavigable jumble of product spanning his days as a pale magnet for athletic upperclassmen's' ire up to his contemporary life as a stay-at-home dad and agoraphobic graphic novelist.

Chris Ware Conversations
by Chris Ware & Jean Braithwaite
University Press Of Mississippi, $25.00
In Stores: 27 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL172411

The publisher says:

Displaying both Ware's erudition and his quirky self-deprecation, these collected interviews span his career from 1993 to 2015, creating a time-lapse portrait of the artist as he matures.

Dave Sim said:
(from Following Cerebus #6, November 2005)
...later in the interview, Craig [Thompson] asked, "Are you going to interview Chris Ware [for Following Cerebus #5]?" My mind boggles at these points. I told him I had a number for Chris Ware -- he had been one of a number of participants in a Overstreet Fan jam cover I had coordinated back around 1993 -- but I was pretty sure it was out of date. So Craig volunteers to give me the Chris Ware number that he has that Chris Ware evidently gave him. As I say, my mind boggles in these situations. So I phoned the number and got an answering machine and left a message explaining what I was doing and asking him to give me a call back if he was interested in participating. And, of course, I never heard a word. So at least I know I'm not the crazy one around here...

Fred The Clown: The Iron Duchess
by Roger Langridge
Fantagraphics, $19.99
In Stores: 27 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL171896

The publisher says:
This nearly wordless romp from master cartoonist Roger Langridge is the author's paean to the silent, heartbreaking slapstick comedies or the teens and '20s, spun for a contemporary audience. Though Langridge has garnered considerable acclaim the past few years for his brilliant takes on The Muppet Show, Popeye, Betty Boop, and Marvel Monsters, he is at heart a cartooning auteur, earning multiple Eisner, Harvey, Reuben, and Ignatz Awards nominations.

Roger Langridge said:
...I expect I would not have got into self-publishing as deeply as I did (i.e. regular comic-book format, distributed-by-Diamond deep; I always made mini-comics) if Cerebus hadn't been around as an example. By the time I began self-publishing there were a few other success stories, like Bone and Strangers in Paradise, to hang my hopes on, but I think all of us knew that Cerebus was the Daddy. The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing got a lot of my attention in 2000/2001 while I was gearing up to publish Fred the Clown...

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell & Others
Harper Collins, $20.00
In Stores: 20 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL171944

The publisher says:
The two volumes of the graphic novel adaptation of The Graveyard Book are now bound into one stunning paperback edition. Nobody Owens is a normal boy, except he lives in a sprawling graveyard and has been raised since infancy by ghosts and a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures in a graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, and the strange and terrible Sleer. There are dangers though, too, and if Bod leaves the graveyard, he may fall prey to the man Jack, who has already murdered Bod's entire family. Effortlessly inventive, chilling, and magical, Neil Gaiman's Newbery winning and bestselling Graveyard Book is a classic in the making. 

Alter Ego #149
by Roy Thomas
TwoMorrows, $9.95
In Stores: 18 October 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL172226

The publisher says:
Showcasing Gil Kane, one of the Silver Age's greatest artists-with gleaming Golden Age roots in the Simon & Kirby shop! Incisive and free-wheeling Kane interview conducted in the 1990s by Daniel Herman for his 2001 book Gil Kane: The Art of the Comics-plus Gil's incisive article from the Spring 1974 issue of the Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction, and other surprise features centered around the artistic co-creator of the Silver Age Green Lantern and The Atom! And beginning the autobiography of Golden/Silver Age Flash/GL scripter John Broome!

Dave Sim said in Swords Of Cerebus Vol 2:
"It was the Gil Kane interview in Comics Journal No 38 that had started me re-thinking the whole approach I was taking to doing my own comic book..."

Berlin #21
by Jason Lutes
Drawn & Quarterly, $5.95
In Stores: 20 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL171839

The publisher says:
The penultimate issue of the long-running series finds Silvia Braun and David Schwartz joining forces to sabotage a neighborhood National Socialist outpost, while Marthe Müller says her final farewells to the city where she has come of age. And as darkness manifests in the alleyways of the underclass and estates of the elite, Kurt Severing glimpses the worst of all possible futures.

NOW #1
by various
Fantagraphics, $9.99
In Stores: 27 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL171883

The publisher says:

Fantagraphics is proud to launch a new, ongoing comics anthology of short stories by a mix of established and up-and-coming talent. This three times per year series features all-new, done-in-one stories for comics fans of all stripes. The first issue includes new work from acclaimed authors such as Eleanor Davis, Noah Van Sciver, Gabrielle Bell, Dash Shaw, Sammy Harkham, and Malachi Ward, as well as international authors such as J.C. Menu, Conxita Herrerro, Tommi Parrish, Tobias Schalken, and Antoine Cossé. Plus other surprises, and a gorgeous painted cover by Chicago artist Rebecca Morgan. 

Poppies Of Iraq
by Brigitte Findakly & Lewis Trondheim
Drawn & Quarterly, $21.95
In Stores: 6 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL171842

The publisher says:

Poppies of Iraq is Brigitte Findakly's nuanced chronicle of her relationship with her homeland Iraq, co-written and drawn by her husband, the acclaimed cartoonist Lewis Trondheim. In spare and elegant detail, they share memories of her middle class childhood touching on cultural practices, the education system, Saddam Hussein's state control, and her family's history as Orthodox Christians in the arab world. Poppies of Iraq is intimate and wide-ranging; the story of how one can become separated from one's homeland and still feel intimately connected yet ultimately estranged. 

Streak Of Chalk
by Miguelanxo Prado
NBM, $19.99
In Stores: 27 September 2017
Diamond Order Code: JUL172010

The publisher says:

On the occasion of NBM's 40th anniversary, a classic returns to print! A small streak of an island in the Atlantic. On no map. In heavy summer heat. One general store with a woman and her taciturn boy. A lighthouse with no light. Memories and messages graffitied on the pier wall. A chance encounter with a beautiful elusive woman. A Murder. Or was it? Nothing seems completely real. Only the graffitied memories are constant. A mysterious multifaceted novel steeped in magical realism that can be read a number of ways, Streak of Chalk is one of Spain's best comics authors' magnum opus, and one of the greatest most pioneering graphic novels NBM ever published.

More (and probably better) Diamond Previews picks at Atomic Junk Shop's regular Flippin' Through Previews column.

Cerebus World Tour Book 1995

Cerebus World Tour Book 1995

Collects the 'Swords of Cerebus' backup strips:

The Name Of The Game Is Diamond Back with Marshall Rogers; The Morning After with Joe Rubenstein; What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One with Gene Day; Magiking; Silverspoon; Cerebus Dreams with Barry Windsor-Smith; A Night On The Town with Gerhard. Plus a new 19-page jam-story with Chester Brown 

Chester Brown: Diogenes & Prostitution

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
(see also "Getting Riel" from 2003)

Chester Brown, 2016 (via Montreal Gazette)
 

Diogenes & Prostitution

by Chester Brown

(first posted on Patreon, 8 July 2017)

My June 14th analysis of A Fake Name's reasons for thinking sex-work is morally wrong has been reposted on A Moment Of Cerebus. I have a bit of a follow-up to something I wrote in that post. I had written that some men, who have difficulty relating to women, are, "through their interactions with sex-workers [,...] able to learn how to be with women, and, as a result, [are] then able to attract girlfriends.” I just read an article about this. From the article:

“'I had one client who was probably in his forties and he had never had a sexual experience with another person because he had such severe social anxiety,’ [sex-worker Carmen Shakti] told VICE. After working with Shakti, he e-mailed her with positive news. He had met a woman whom he cared about and started his own sexual exploration."

It shouldn’t be a surprise that sex-workers can help this sort of guy. Sex, whether you pay for it or not, can be a healing experience if you’re having it with someone who’s understanding and compassionate, and many sex-workers are understanding and compassionate.

A-M-O-C regulars made comments that I could respond to, but I’d be quibbling. I think we’ve gotten as far in the debate as we can go without getting a bit repetitious. I’ll let A Fake Name and Erick and Tony Dunlop have the last word, at least for now. (They could probably draw me back in if they wanted to by writing something outrageous, but I suspect they’ll resist doing so.) Thanks again to Barry Deutsch for his contributions to the discussion. I had the pleasure of meeting Barry at T-C-A-F, and he gave me a copy of his How To Make A Man Out Of Tin Foil, which I enjoyed.

There’s some old A-M-O-C-related business that I’ve been meaning to get around to, so I can finally do so now. Back on March 14th, in response to something Carson Grubaugh wrote, I noted:

“I seem to remember that there are stories of Diogenes visiting brothels, although, flipping through my books on the Cynics, I can’t locate them at this moment.”

As I’m sure most of you know, Diogenes was an Athenian philosopher who lived from around 404 to 323 B-C. Since March 14th I’ve browsed through Robin Hard's Diogenes The Cynic: Sayings And Anecdotes with a bit more care and found this:

“One day […] when he had arranged for a courtesan to visit him and she was slow to arrive, he grasped his sexual organ in his hand and contrived an emission through masturbation; and afterwards, when the woman arrived, he sent her on her way, saying that he had already sung the marriage-song with his hand.”

(The marriage-song — that’s an interesting euphemism for sex.)

According to Hard:

“The Cynics were hostile to [courtesans] not because they had any moral objection to mercenary sex, but because [courtesans] were associated with luxury, expense, and refined sensuality."

I located this anecdote online:

Diogenes stood outside a brothel, shouting, "A beautiful whore is like poisoned honey! A beautiful whore is like poisoned honey! A beautiful whore is like poisoned honey!" Men entering the house threw him a coin or two to shut him up. Eventually Diogenes had collected enough money, and he too went into the brothel.

From the recently-published Book Of Greek And Roman Folktales, Legends, And Myths, edited by William Hansen:

“When someone was chiding Diogenes the Cynic philosopher, saying that he saw Diogenes coming out of a brothel, Diogenes said, 'Why, should I have been coming out of your house instead?’"

It would seem that Diogenes’ sex-life was confined to prostitutes, although he didn’t necessarily always pay for sex; there is an anecdote about how a famous courtesan had so much respect for him that she slept with him for free. (Which courtesan it was varies from account to account.)

I can’t resist returning to Hard’s book for two more Diogenes lines:

“Love is the occupation of the unoccupied.”

“When asked what is the right time to marry, he replied, ‘For those who are young, not yet, for those who are older, never at all.’"

Chester Brown has been writing and drawing comics and graphic novels since the 1980s: Yummy Fur, Ed The Happy Clown, I Never Liked You, Louis Riel, Paying For It, Mary Wept Over The Feet Of Jesus. You can help provide him with a stable source of income while he works on his next graphic novel by donating at Patreon.

Batvark #1-- Hell? Is Underfoot and Overhead, the Last Wednesday of Every Month!

Order at your Local Comics Shop now! Diamond Order Code: JUN171076

Dave Sim: "I Am Not A Feminist"

Mrs. Thatcher

Cerebus Vol 5: Jaka's Story (1990)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(Note From The President, Cerebus #140, November 1990)

I just had a check-up. I'm not dying. I'm not even sick. I walk up nearly twenty flights of stairs a day. I exercise for an hour and a half every night. I don't smoke drugs any more. I don't drink alcohol anymore.

I feel like a big bag of shit.

It's probably just today (September 19). But I don't know. Just finished answering the mail that came in which took most of the day. Almost every letter was in reference to the end of Jaka's Story and Jaka's abortion. All the letters from women offered their opinions on the abortion debate; praised my writing and the artwork Ger and I do. And usually mentioned "Boy, get ready for an avalanche of hate mail." Oddly enough, it was only the male letters that lectured me on my politically incorrect positions, my "anti-feminism".

I am not a feminist.

Last time I checked that wasn't against the law. I used to be. A real Alan Alda type type. Have you noticed that the more intelligent women aren't feminists either? The ones who were feminists when that meant the advocacy of freedom (women's lib) and fairness? That's when I was a feminist. When the goal was a level playing field. Equal opportunity. Affirmative action pushed me part-way out the door; divy up the jobs so women get half of them. Like the Ontario College of Art which will not hire any men until the faculty is 50% men and 50% women. Affirmative for whom? At the expense of whom? National day-care in political platforms pushed me a little further out the door. Spending $10,000 in taxpayer's money to take care of a waitress's kids for a year while she goes out and works, paying $4,000 a year in taxes. Margaret Thatcher authorizing widescale death in the Falkland Islands. Excuse me, but wasn't the idea of female leaders supposed to be that they would negotiate instead of using violence to settle things? I'm almost all the way out the door on that one.

When I heard Cokie Roberts mention that she has two teen-aged children (I would still do it until her eyes changed colour); one male and one female. The male had to register for the draft at a specific age by law. The daughter doesn't have to, but must be allowed in the army if she chooses . . .well, that's not fair! They should both have to register or they should both be allowed military service as an option.

At that point I realized Cokie Roberts and I were both out the door and down the hall, discussing fairness in a world gone politically correct.

Barbara Amiel (another good intellect I admire, though I frequently disagree with her) joined us, pointing out that if you are going to force a man to spend most of his adult life financing a child he helped create, it is not fair to say he has no choice in whether that fetus is aborted or not. To which I add; if I own something, I pay for its up-keep. If I own half of it, I pay half of its upkeep or I pay its upkeep half the time. If you own something you should pay for its upkeep. We've already established through our laws that a baby is an enlarged female organ completely under her control. Why do I have to spend eighteen years financing a part of your body? It is the law yes but it is unfair - which was what feminism, women's liberation was about when I was in favour of it; making that which was unfair fair or at least fairer.

"Take back the night" marches. Take back the night? The night belonged exclusively to women at one time, did it? Like the letter-writer who suggested all men should have a ten o'clock curfew so women can walk the streets safely. That's fair is it? How about "Share the night"?

I have been a white anglo-saxon protestant male all of my life and from the time I was fourteen (1970) I have been told just how wretched and unappealing and monstrous and vile a thing that is to be; in entertainment, newspapers, television; everywhere. And now I have other white anglo-saxon protestant males writing to tell me to change the way I think. I don't like it any better than women or minorities liked it.

And even if they make it illegal to not be, I still won't be a feminist.

Because the quest for fairness has gone elsewhere.

In my opinion. 

The inside front cover of the monthly 'Cerebus' comic-book (1977-2004) often included an editorial by Dave Sim titled "Note From The President". In these 'Notes' Dave wrote about anything that captured his interest at the time, and the editorials comprise an impressive (if eccentric) body of writing. You can read all of the editorials here...

Weekly Update #190: Cerebus Meets Fireball Boy!

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Purple Unicorn

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 Sim's notebook #11 covers Cerebus issues #96 through 102 and had 114 pages scanned. We've looked at seven times already the last two times being in 2016: The Unknown Given and Not The Trial. With the many times we've seen pages from it, the cover has never been shown here:

Notebook #11, front cover

A purple Mead notebook with a unicorn? Not your standard Hilroy notebook.

On page 43 of the notebook, we see a full page sketch of Cerebus #98's first page:

Notebook #11, page 43

Compare that to the finish page with Gerhard's backgrounds:

Cerebus #98, page 1

Aardvark Comics #1--Hellfire is Forever, the Last Wednesday of Every Month!

Order at your Local Comics Shop now! Diamond Order Code: JUL171242.

Steve Bissette's Tyrant

Tyrant #1

by Stephen R. Bissette 

(Spiderbaby Grafix, September 1994)

DAVE SIM:
(from 'A Cerebus Preview' in Cerebus #184, July 1994)

Stephen R. Bissette's TYRANT has been in the works for a long, long time. I don't know why it was, but I took to Steve in a big way after meeting him at a UK Comic Art Convention in London. Through financing the first volume of TABOO, we discovered together the inherent impossibility of successfully publishing an anthology of that kind. It was also my last experiment in publishing someone else's work (apart from these Previews). As Steve drifted towards Kevin Eastman's ill-fated Tundra experiment, our friendship became an ongoing phone debate about the possibility of running a publishing company on an ethical basis. It took many, many years and every permutation of the Advance Game, the Royalty Game, etc, etc, for Steve to arrive at the conclusion that it was not possible. Different things went wrong, but something always went wrong and his only choice was to capitulate or walk away. Halfway through TYRANT's first issue, Steve told me that he had worked on a page and for the first time since the early days on SWAMP THING, he felt himself giving one hundred percent. It wasn't until that moment that he realised the price he had paid in dealing with traditional companies: he had closed off a vital, creative part of himself as a defense mechanism. For the first time since his early twenties he had his full enthusiasm back and was hitting on all cylinders. It wasn't until that moment, when he told me, that I  was certain my advocacy of self-publishing was not just the egocentric ravings of a provocateur. Dave Sim and Cerebus were not an exception to be explained away (it works for Sim but no one else can do it, as publishers big and small were fond of saying in the pre-BONE days). If the Cerebus story-line is forgotten two weeks after it is completed in March 2004 I can safely say that that moment made it all worthwhile.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the comic book Stephen R. Bissette was born to draw: TYRANT!

Steve Bissette self-published four issues of his comic book Tyrant between September 1994 and January 1996, before retiring from the comic book industry. He currently teaches comics at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.

Swords Of Cerebus Vol 6: The Supplement

The first printing of Swords Of Cerebus Vol 6 contained a printing error. Swords 6 was intended to reprint 5 Cerebus issues (#21-25) instead of the usual four issues per volume, however, in the first printing, #25 was omitted in error. A 24-page supplement was printed in an attempt to rectify the problem, as explained in Deni Loubert's inside cover 'A Note To Our Readers' reproduced below.

Batvark #1--Purchase Upon Pain of Torment, the Last Wednesday of Every Month!

Order at your Local Comics Shop now! Diamond Order Code: JUN171076

A Night On The Town

A Night On The Town

by Dave Sim & Gerhard

(first printed in Swords Of Cerebus Vol 6, 1984)