Tuesday, 7 June 2022
Monday, 6 June 2022
Death's Dark Tread, the update
Page two: First appearance in the series proper of Cerebus' black vest (Passage was never printed, so this is it.). The "iconic" look the character would return to again and again. (Including in issue #300 after he died...uh, spoilers for a comic that came out eighteen years ago...) Also, the first appearance of the black symbols on Cerebus' medallions. If Oliver had $2,000, he'd want this page because of the resonance with his Cerebus movie (The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark which is currently available "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi".)
Page three: at first glance, this is a "lesser" page, but than you get to the "death crawler" and DAMN if that ain't some fine art right there...
Page four: first appearance of "Death". Plus, there's more of that sweet "death crawler". I'm not taking a page, but IF I was...this'd be on my list of picks...
Page five: Aardvark in action. Action pages are worth more. I read that in an old issue of Wizard magazine in the late 90s. So it must be true.
Page six: Another aardvark in action page. Plus look at the detail on that tentacle. Hentai fans would be all over this page.
Page seven: First appearance of "Death"s throne (partial). First use of "Death"s "telepathy"
Page eight: First appearance Elrod (partial) (hey man, if The Incredible Hulk #180 has an increased value for a partial Wolverine appearance, then this page is the more valuable than all the other Elrod pages except the next one.
Page nine: First appearance of Elrod the Albino (full). First mention Melvinbone. First mention "Bunny suit". (Little known fact*: Dave based Elrod of of Barry Windsor-Smith's Elric from Conan #14, which was based of a book cover by I-forget, who did NOT use the actual descriptions of Elric from the Michael Moorcock stories, and consequently, Moorcock hated the way Elric looked.)
Page ten: the "Status" page. J. Michael Straczynski had this panel on the door to his office for years. I put it on a t-shirt. You can get one from The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe
Page twelve: First appearance "Death"s throne (full). First mention The Chaos Gem. First appearance twelve powerful succubi (uncredited).
Page thirteen: Destruction of Seersucker. First use of Elrod's powers of ironic prophesy (Latter used in High Society. Page 177. Among other places...).
Page fifteen: It's just funny.
Page sixteen: Capture of Cerebus. Capture of Elrod.
Page seventeen: First appearance jail cell. (Later never seen again after this issue. Oh wait, maybe Gerhard used it as the basis for Jaka's cell at the end of Jaka's Story...maybe.)
Page Eighteen: First appearance of "Dave" in Cerebus storyline. WAY before Minds...
Page nineteen: Last appearance of jail cell if that "hunch" about Gerhard is wrong...
Page twenty: Another fantastic Cerebus escape.
Page twenty-one: Fourth "Square One" Cerebus in silhouette ending. Last appearance "Chaos Gem"
Page twenty-two: Last appearance of "Death" until Flight. First "Square One" Death ending...maybe...I dunno, dude wears all black, isn't he always in silhouette? First mention "Death"s bed.
Sunday, 5 June 2022
The Please Hold Afterparty aka: I post Dead People...
Hi Matt, The waves of nostalgia I feel for that Applebee's near St. Bonaventure are profound. Thanks for including the pictures, which include a couple I've never seen before. I actually remember very well signing that copy of Collected Letters. I felt FAMOUS! I tell you! FAMOUS! I have another angle of that shot somewhere on my backup hard drive. Good times.
As a resident of that area of Western New York for a few years, I am obligated to mention that Olean is pronounced oh-lee-ann. Sorry to be "that guy"
Jason!
Long time, no see!
Unfortunately, I'm not gonna apologize to anyone from New York for it, until they apologize to me for numbering their highway exits stupidly.
Also, the Ice Cream Sundae was invented in Two Rivers Wisconsin. SUCK IT ITHACA!!!!
Manly
| Yeah, my camera sucks. But it WAS seventeen years ago... |
| The aforementioned Mr. Trimmer (on the right, guy in the center is an artist or something...) |
| That artist chap and a partially obscured Mr. Trimmer. That MIGHT be Dave in the back on the right-ish |
| Dave, that artist chap, my wife, and me. |
| A couple of kids who HOPEFULLY have paid off their student loans by now, Mr. Trimmer, Jeff Seiler, Me, and John L. Jeff and John are dead now. |
| Me, Jason signing L nny's book, John's forehead, Dave, the AMAZING chandelier at Applebee's, Ger, Boe's head |
And...uh, Please Hold For Gerhard:
And Please God Why In The Name Of All That's Holy, Why Must I Watch This!?!?!?!?!:
Thanks Jeff!
| Jeff Tundis: Filthy Hippie... |
Hobbs' Kickstarter for the HARD COVER Swords of Cerebus volumes 9 & 10 ended, get your surveys in.
Saturday, 4 June 2022
Please Hold For Dave Sim 6/2022
Part 2:
Oh I forgot to mention; this might make a good question for the next PLEASE HOLDWhich leads to the Death’s Dark Tread Auction. Which my brave band of Rebels is, as of this writing, winning. But, there’s 14 days to go. And the deal has evolved to: SINCE A/V has the scans regardless of if we win or not. AND, I’ve gotten four “high rollers” who have pledged at least $2000 apiece, I’m letting people claim a page if they pay. The $2000 guarantees a person a page (one guy pledged $5000 for two pages and the recreated cover). If we win with less than 21 people, everybody that kicks in gets a page. And if THEY want to send the page back to A/V, that’s what we’ll do. Otherwise, we’ll NEVER win. Of my four High Rollers, two want their pages, and two wanted the art to go back (that may change after we win…). So, if nobody swoops in and takes us out, that’s where I’M at. (And if some rat-bastard outbids us (highly probable.) then nobody gets nothing…)
From our man at the High-End art auction site:
"This may be common knowledge but Dave’s earliest pages appear to have been cut by hand, because a few of the page edges for issue 4 weren’t perfectly square. I noticed because they wouldn’t line up exactly with the edges of the scanner. I wonder if Dave cut them himself to save money."
Part 3:
Part 4:
Mark is looking for the Guide to Self Publishing. Dave's got some.
So CerebusDownloads.com does NOT have PDFs like I thought. And a copy is going on Amazon for $80. So, whatever Mark offers Dave for one of the A-V copies, I hope it's more than ten bucks...
Dion Turner asks:
G'day Matt,
Question for Dave (or at least an idea for discussion).
Great news of the '82 Tour book, it's very cool that this sort of historical project is spinning out of the relationship with Waverly Press. Don't get me wrong, the remastered issues and phonebooks are great, and I hope they continue. But this type of book with rarities and items from that era will be a cool time capsule.
Something that popped into my head after the last 'Please Hold' is the current popularity of 'Artists Editions' books reprinting the original art at it's original size. The Archive Portfolios have done this with the earliest pages from each book that are still in the archive (Which is great! We Cerebus fans have an embarrassment of riches in those portfolios).
What might the chances be for a separate 'Artist's Edition' book with pages that fall outside of what is in the Archive Portfolios?
Pages which you might have something to say about (influences, techniques, style?) in adjacent essays - or just put in the pages that you would think benefit most from being printed as the original art. The most interesting ones I've seen are where you can see the different layers, types of ink/brush/pen and those fine little lines that no-one else would ever see (Neal Adams lines!). It becomes very forensic. Technically satisfying which adds to the appreciation of the beauty of the work.
Now absolutely that's not a cheap item, oversized as far as books go. The paper quality needs to be top notch and we know how those prices are changing month to month. Postage would be a nightmare, I know this better than most. So that likely impacts on the number of pages. But maybe Waverly Press would have a feel on what the sweet spot might be?
Like the Cover Art Treasury, I could see this becoming something comic stores want to get on their shelves.
All the best to you both,
Dion
Nick asks:
Hello, I'm a longtime reader of your website and I just had a quick question. Is there any way to order the remastered edition of Reads? I have searched around and it doesn't seem to be available anymore as far as I can tell. If you can tell me anything about this it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much! Keep up the awesome work with the site.
Nick
So, wondering if Reads is still available through Diamond, or if it needs a new printing? Also, Nick where you at? I know a guy, but it depends on where you are…
Michael R. (who was the ONLY person to comment when I asked the peanut gallery where I should have Dave put the “Adventures of Cerebus #500” on my PoT8.2. He said front, so front it is. I already told Eddie, so it should be on the List that way.) oh, right: “Michael R. the only one home in Easton, PA.” asks:
Hi Matt!
I hope you had/have a wonderful Memorial weekend. Here's my question for Dave.
Hi Dave!
I know now you're in the beginning stages with a possible 1982 U.S. TOUR 40th ANNIVERSARY BOOK, but has there been anything going on with possible CAN10 -Minds Kickstarter?
The only thing I got from 1982 U.S, TOUR was that I was 15 and not reading Cerebus. I started with issue 67 and never looked back. If you ever do a 1992 U.S. TOUR 30TH ANNIVERSARY BOOK, I was at 3 stops. I believe you did a signing at Midway Comics on a Friday in Manhattan, Saturday was a comic convention and Sunday you were in Staten Island, New York at another comic store. I got a bunch of signed, bought page 20 of issue 159 and a phone book or 2. AAAAAARGH!!! ... but no photos!!! It's probably a good thing that you never relied on me to archive anything from way back then. Names and dates ... ummmm, what's dat? LOL! I'm a little better now archiving my Cerebus stuff. And stuff in general.
Michael R.
Of many stunning covers, Issues 23 - 35 are up there as favorites. How did the painted covers for Cerebus happen? What prompted the decision? When did you know you had this amazing skill set? Have you done any painting since?And Nadab Art asks:
Thanks! M J (Mike) Sewall
Hi Dave,
Starting on page 92 of FLIGHT we see K'Cor thinking in diamond-shaped thought balloons. That usually indicates telepathic communication, but it's almost exclusively women who can do that in the series. Cerebus is also capable of it (for a while), but I'm more curious as to how Mr. K'Cor seemingly has that ability.
Thanks,
Nadab
And a lil' sumthin' sumthin' for the L.OA.S.S.
Hobbs' Kickstarter for the HARD COVER Swords of Cerebus volumes 9 & 10 ended, get your surveys in.
Friday, 3 June 2022
LT early retirement, onward & upward! (Dave's Weekly Update #443)
Hey,
Here are some photos from POT8.2.
Comics have been printed, some comics have been yellow posted-noted and then signed by Dave. The signed and numbered comics have been bag and board from the people that have sent in their information to us (around 60% or so).
There are still a good number of people that have NOT given their information.
We need to know your address; also we need to know if you like your comic to be signed and numbered, signed and numbered with CAN#, or signed and numbered with being personalized (CAN# can be added too), or unsigned and unnumbered.
The sooner you do it, the better it is for you and everyone else. We need the info so we know how many unsigned/unnumbered copies there are going to be - as Dave is having a certificate made for the unsigned/unnumbered copies.
Thanks so much for your support. Have a great day,
Dave and Rolly
Greetings backers,
This update is for the good folks in New Zealand who have been patiently waiting for their packages.
The shipping restrictions have been lifted and your books are going out today.
For your wait we have included a little something extra in your packages.
Thank you again for your support and patience and keep an eye out for our next Cerebus project with Dave Sim coming soon!
Have a good weekend everyone!
Greetings backers,
The bookplates signed by Dave Sim and Gerhard have arrived and look great!
At this point everything has been produced except for the actual books.
We are wrapping up the final edit and design and coordinating the production schedule with the printer.
Our next update will outline our final production and delivery schedule.
Have a good weekend!
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| NEAT! |
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Hobbs' Kickstarter for the HARD COVER Swords of Cerebus volumes 9 & 10 ended, get your surveys in.
Thursday, 2 June 2022
Cerebus #74 Page Thumbnails
MARGARET LISS:
Dave Sim’s eighth Cerebus notebook covers Cerebus #70 through 79 and had 86 pages scanned in. Last July is when we last saw pages from it in Layout for Cerebus #73. Page 51 of the notebook has a listing of issue numbers, dates, potential titles, and bits and pieces of what would be in that issue. Like issue #77, August, being called Odd Transformations and the note “asleep and dreaming”.
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| Notebook #8, page 51 |
The thumbnails at the bottom of the notebook page are indeed pages 18, 19, and 20 for Cerebus #74 or if you’re following along in the Church & State I phonebook, pages 470 – 472. The dialogue around the thumbnails in the notebook is the same as the dialogue on the finished pages, but the layout varies a bit as you can see:
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| Cerebus #74, pages 18 – 20 |
I’m a bit curious why Dave wrote ‘issue three hundred’ near the top right corner of the page. Or down the bottom right corner of the page: “The kid from the milk carton, Craig, Lisa, Tom, Norma, Biff, Janine, Jolie, Karen, The demon, Lady Jane, Kim.”
Wednesday, 1 June 2022
#ReleaseTheDowCut
Benjamin Hobbs:
The Vark Wars trading cards went to the printer this week. A couple week's ago Matt Dow wrote alternate text for the back of the cards. This isn't the text that will be on the printed cards. (Sorry Matt!)
So far as I've heard, #ReleaseTheDowCut didn't take off on Twitter, so the prospect of printing Alternate Dow Cut Cards is bleak.
However, presented here are all four card backs, so you can print and clip and collect your own set! Enjoy!
Matt Dow's Cerebus Fanboy™ card back:













































