Reading Cerebus #3

Hey look kids! It's "READING CEREBUS" time!

Kevin Kimmes:

Welcome back to “Reading Cerebus”, a new weekly column here at A Moment of Cerebus. The goal of this column is to bring a fresh perspective to the 300-issue saga of Cerebus as I read through the series for the first time and give my insights into the longest running independent comic book series of all time. Think of this as part book club, part lit-crit, and part pop culture musing. Oh, and they told me Dave Sim himself may be reading this, so I hope I don’t screw this up. Let’s continue.

Issue #3 – “Song of Red Sophia”

Cerebus #3: Song of Red Sophia

Issue 3 introduces us to the busty Red Sonja parody, Red Sophia. Just like her titular counterpart, Red Sophia is a fiery warrior, but unlike Sonja, this gal knows how to shake a tail-feather! Before I get too far into this weeks plot, let's throw the switches on the WABAC machine and look at the history of Red Sonja. And away we go!

"Gee Mr. Peabody, isn't this gonna get somebody sued?" "QUIET YOU!"

Is it Sonja or Sonya?

Well, it depends on if you ask Conan creator Robert E. Howard, or Marvel's Roy Thomas. See, technically they are two separate characters, each with their own unique spelling and era of existence.

In 1934, Howard created a female swashbuckler named “Red Sonya of Rogatino” for his story “The Shadow of the Vulture”. This story takes place in the 16^th century and features a fiery, red haired gun-slinging woman warrior protagonist.

Years later, Roy Thomas would adapt Sonya for addition to his and Barry Windsor-Smith's run on Conan, moving her out of the 16^th century and placing her squarely in the Hyborian Age. A quick name change to Sonja and the addition of a chainmail bikini, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Thanks, Mr. Peabody!

Now Back To The Preceding Column Already In Progress

As our issue opens, we find Cerebus has made his way to the coastal port of Temza where the Borealan gold mines are failing, leading the local government to press mercenaries into service on pain of death. Desperate to find safe passage east, Cerebus heads to Tansubal where he meets Henrot the Wizard and takes on a new assignment: Torture, then assassinate the man who besmirched his daughter's honour. The daughter in question? Red Sophia.

Henrot sends Sophia along with Cerebus so that she may see the man die slowly for his transgressions, but it doesn't take Cerebus long to figure out that something foul is afoot. See, while Sophia is handy with a sword and seems to be more than capable of taking care of herself, she is also bat-shit crazy!

Accused of besmirching her honour (See a pattern here?) mere yards into their journey, Cerebus is forced to match metal with his companion. Seizing on “ample” opportunity, The Earth Pig Born connects the flat of his sword with the buxom posterior of Red Sophia sending her sprawling into the bushes nearby.

Image courtesy CerebusDownloads 

Bested, Sophia throws herself at Cerebus and declares, “I am yours to command! Let me do your bidding, oh short grey master...my body is yours!” Not one to miss an opportunity, Cerebus takes Sophia up on her offer and saddles her with the task of carrying the party's supplies. 

That evening the pair decides to visit an inn where, wait for it, Sophia again has her honour besmirched. While all Cerebus wanted was to drink an ale in peace, Sophia manages to drag him into a skirmish with Thugg The Unseemly, a fight that Cerebus ends with one well placed bonk of his sword hilt. Seeing this fight as finished Cerebus grabs Sophia and leaves the inn, but Sophia has other ideas, you know, because of the besmirching and the honour and what-not. She heads back in and puts a whupping on Thugg, after which the two travelers head off to make dinner and pitch their tent for the night.

One thing worth pointing out at this point is the increase in humor in this issue, in contrast to the more grim storytelling of the first two issues. While issue two offered up a few laughs, this issue sees jokes-a-plenty surrounding Sophia and her delicate disposition, as well as her lust for Cerebus and his indifference in return. We also get some good gross-out humor regarding Cerebus and his carnivorous appetite, and Looney Tunes style physical comedy as Cerebus and Red Sophia make their way to their destination.

Upon reaching the besmircher, Tanes Feras, Sophia flies into a tizzy attempting to kill him herself, but knowing that gold is on the line, Cerebus does the only thing he can do at this point and knocks Sophia out with his sword. A short interrogation later, we find out that Tanes gazed upon Sophia while she was bathing causing her to feel besmirched, and him to fall madly in love with her. Cerebus, always the opportunist, decides to use this situation to take care of both of his problems at one.

In the epilogue, Cerebus returns to Henrot to tell him that his quest is complete and that Feras has been sufficiently punished. When pressed on how, and the whereabouts of the absent Sophia, Cerebus tells him the following: “I told her she would make Cerebus very happy if she married Feras...” He goes on to say, “I have no doubt that the marriage of your daughter and Feras will last many years and if you can think of greater suffering than that, you are welcome to try them on your new son-in-law, Henrot...”

Image courtesy CerebusDownloads 

A few final notes regarding this issue of Cerebus: 1) The likeness of Henrot is based on Frank Thorne, who is one of the best known illustrators of Red Sonja, and someone who Dave corresponded with regularly. 2) This issue marks the point at which Dave had committed to doing Cerebus as a bi-monthly comic. Up to this point, the plan was, “We'll put out three issues and if it doesn't go so good, we can always back out and I'll have three sample issues of a comic book when I look for work.” Thankfully, for us, it all worked out.

Join me back here next week as we look at Issue 4: “Death's Dark Tread”.

Currently Listening To: “Bald” Bill Hagan and his Trocaderons “Music to Strip By”

Kevin Kimmes is a lifelong comic book reader, sometime comic book artist, and recent Cerebus convert. He can be found slinging comics at the center of the Multiverse, aka House of Heroes in Oshkosh, WI.

"so too are the days of our lives..." Dave Sim's Bloggymail #2

Hi, Everybody!

Your ol' Interim Editor Matt Dow here. Today, I thought we'd take a look back at Dave Sim's Blog & Mail. Specifically, the second one. With my then-commentary.


Preamble: Dave Sim's Blog & Mail ran on the Cerebus Yahoo group from September 13th, 2006 to December 26th, 2007. And...no, that's pretty much all you needed to know. I used to call it the "bloggymail" because in Spanish, "and" is "y", and I thought "Blog y Mail" sounded funny, or something. Dude, it was a decade ago. Wait do you want? Anyway,


On 9/14/06, Dave Sim < dsim@nonexistente-mail.net> wrote:

Thursday September 14 – UBER-YAHOO MARGARET "MAGGS" LISS IS IN RECEIPT OF THE LAST BATCH OF CEREBUS NOTEBOOKS AND, IN HER NOCTURNAL AND WEEKEND YAHOO IDENTITY AS CEREBUSFANGIRL (AS OPPOSED TO HER "MAD CHEMICAL ENGINEER" CIVILIAN IDENTITY AT [redacted for super secret identity]) (NOW APPEARING ON YOUR MONITOR WITH THE UBIQUITOUS "SOMEWHERE IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSSETTS" SUBHEADING), HAS BEGUN OR IS ALMOST DONE SCANNING THEM.

And this is why we like Margaret (I'm not allowed to call her "Maggs").  She does all the hard work.

A good example of how unbelievably efficient is Margaret is that the last batch of notebooks came back with their respective computer disks before Gerhard could get back from vacation and post this first week's worth of BLOG items.   I'm now awaiting word whether she wants to take a break or dive right into scanning the Archive proper starting with all the pre-Cerebus documents.

How much stuff is that?  I may end up owing her TWO cokes.

  SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE SHE AND HER TEAM OF CRACK VOLUNTEERS (NO, THEY AREN'T ON CRACK, THEY'RE ALL JUST GOOD AT WHAT THEY DO)

This reminds me of the comic my brother created when we were kids.  The "Butt Crack Commandos".  He never did anything other then make up the title.  I should mention it the next time I see him.

WILL BE PRODUCING A COMMERCIAL PACKAGE ON DVD FOR CONSUMPTION BY…WELL…PRESUMABLY MOSTLY YOU FOLKS, THE DEVOTED CORE CEREBUS READERSHIP

Margaret has teased us with some of the notebooks contents, but are there a lot of "by the wayside" ideas and concepts.  I remember that in "Church & State", there was mention of a lot of background stuff that you didn't have the space to touch on.  Was that all written down, or was that all in your head?

Just wondering.

(OR AS YOU'RE MORE WIDELY AND POPULARLY KNOWN IN COMIC-BOOK STORES AROUND THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD: "THAT WEIRD GUY/CHICK WHO ACTUALLY LIKES THAT CEREBUS CRAP.")

My local retailer read my copies of the last dozen or so issues of Cerebus (he never ordered extras, and he read them out of my pull file.  Say, what's a guy got to do to get a "Ceribite Kick-Death Assassination Squad" to rough up his local retailer?)

WE WILL KEEP YOU POSTED AS BULLETINS ARE ISSUED FROM THE CEREBUSFANGIRLCAVE. 

I'd ask where that's located, but I'm afraid of the answer.

LATEST WORD AS OF 8 SEPTEMBER IS THAT THE MATERIAL IS ALL SCANNED AND NOW JUST NEEDS TO BE TWEAKED AND NEATENED UP A BIT. 

Yup.  And she's looking for volunteers to help.  And if I had ANY computer skills, I would.

ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN TO THE www.cerebusfangirl.com WEBSITE KNOWS THAT MAGGS NEVER DOES ANYTHING SLOPPILY. 

*offensive joke deleted*

     SAY DOES THIS ALL-CAPS FORMAT LOOK LIKE I'M YELLING AT YOU

No, but you do yell at me in my dreams.  It's weird.  On a half dozen occasions you've shown up in a dream and yelled at me.  In the second or third one, my mom was getting led to some sort of death camp, and you were trying to warn me that she was in fact being led to some sort of death camp.  And playing "Pole Position".  Yelling at me and playing video games.

Weird.

Of course, my mom is fine (she says "Hi.") ((Ok, not really.)) (((but if she knew I was writing this, she'd probably say "hi.")))

OR DOES IT JUST GIVE EVERYTHING A NICE "THIS CALLS FOR AN EMERGENCY!" QUALITY?

Sorta...

COME TO THINK OF IT NEVER MIND EITHER ONE IS FINE WITH ME!

...then nevermind.

    We'll be right back after this short commercial message:

Ok.

Today's Blog & Mail is brought to you by All 16 Cerebus Trade Paperbacks!

Neat!

Remember! With Halloween coming up that Cerebus trade paperbacks make an ideal "treat" for your neighbourhood "trick-or-treaters".  

Yeah, they'll rip the bottom out of the bag, and you can get all the candy.  Sweet idea Dave!

Through until October 31st we'll be offering four dozen copies of Cerebus, High Society or Jaka's Story for only $2,000 US. Get 48 of one title or make your own Party Pack mixing all three! Watch their faces light up when you answer the doorbell with…Cerebus Trade paperbacks!

Wait a minute.  2000 divided by 48 equals...$41.67!?!  Is that $2000 with shipping included, or extra?

Cerebus Trade Paperbacks! Any pins or razor blades just drop right out when you fan the pages! That's why choosy Moms who REALLY LOVE ALL CHILDREN EVERYWHERE are choosing Cerebus Trade Paperbacks This Halloween!

Plus, if some Micheal Jackson type tries to seduce your kid with "Jesus juice", said kid can just hurl the Cerebus Trade Paperback at his freaky deformed nose. 

Cerebus Trade Paperbacks: Like Mace, but with prettier pictures.

When ordering from www.followingcerebus.com be sure to

Mention that you read about this Special Halloween Offer

 at the Blog & Mail because we

Haven't told Craig a thing about it!

This is gonna be interesting.

TONIGHT IS THE DOUG WRIGHT AWARDS IN TORONTO.  THE LEAD-IN EVENT IS SETH INTERVIEWING CHESTER BROWN AND I'M HOPING TO GET SOME PHOTOS AND MAYBE EVEN SOME FOOTAGE OF BOTH EVENTS.   I'M ALSO GOING WITH JOHN AND SIU TO A FILM AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL THIS MORNING, MOSTLY JUST FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTUALLY WATCHING A MOVIE ON A WEEKDAY MORNING.     

How was the movie?

PLUG!  ACADEMY X (ACX) VOLUMES 1 AND 2 WRITTEN BY ADAM CADRE AND DRAWN BY ROB WHEELER. ROB SENT ME A PRINT-OUT OF THIS ON-LINE STRIP (260 PAGE SO FAR) AND IT'S REALLY QUITE GOOD.   JIM SHOOTER GOT HIS START AT AGE 13 (YOU READ THAT RIGHT) DRAWING SUPERMAN AND LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES STORIES ON NOTEPAPER AND SENDING THEM TO MORT WEISINGER AT DC WHO SAW THAT THE STORIES WERE "ALL THERE" AND JUST NEEDED TO BE SENT TO ARTISTS LIKE JOHN FORTE AND CURT SWAN AS BLUEPRINTS.   ACADEMY X IS SORT OF A STEP UP FROM THAT IN THAT ROB JUST NEEDS TO DEVELOP AN INK FINISH TO MATCH HIS LAYOUT AND COMPOSITION SKILLS AND THEN WATCH OUT, WORLD! AND ADAM CADRE'S STRAIGHT-AHEAD SCRIPT MAKES YOU LONG FOR THE DAYS WHEN THE X-MEN WAS, YOU KNOW, COHERENT.  SIX ON-LINE ISSUES SO FAR.  I SENT ROB A LETTER AUGUST 30 TO HAVE HIM POST DETAILS HERE SO HOPEFULLY HE SHOULD BE TURNING UP ANY MINUTE NOW.  AT LEAST THREE LAUGH-OUT LOUD LINES AND HEAVY ON THE "AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?"

I'm pretty sure Rob did indeed show up.  Haven't had a change to look at his webbysite yet.

___________________________________________________
previous posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/message/95679
___________________________________________________
This may also be viewed at http://davesim.blogspot.com/

Jeff made you an actual blog.  Wasn't that nice.  Say, speaking of this; did you want Jeff to allow comments on the blog?  The actual blog, not the Yahoo postings (we'll comment if we damn well want to around here!  "You'll get our keyboards when you pry them from our weak girly-like fingers.  Probably while we weep.")  You should let Jeff know.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

And that's #2, there was a picture in there of...something, but it's been lost forever...or, at least I don't know where it is.

Next time: the next one!

Vark Knight Returns, Watchvark, and Diamond loses their Minds! (Dave's Weekly Update #214)

Hi, Everybody!

Heeeeeere's Dave:

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

A Friendly Reminder

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 last looked at Dave Sim's seventh notebook used in the production of Cerebus back in January of 2017's Talking to Muffins. Notebook #7 covered Cerebus #59 through 70 and there were 160 pages scanned.  Looking through the pages to notebook #7 I saw several that covered the story Dave and Gerhard did for Marvel's Epic Illustrated title.  This Cerebus short story is entitled A Friendly Reminder and appeared in Epic Illustrated #28.

On page 21 of the notebook is the title 'A Reminder' and then the list of 12 items is the outline for the three page story.

Notebook 7, page 21

There is even two small thumbnails of the first two pages, and then the larger thumbnails are page 3.
On the next page of the notebook, the final title 'A Friendly Reminder' is down at the bottom of the page. There are also thumbnails for each of the three pages.

Notebook 7, page 22

The picture of the shadow of a shaking person on the door and dresser was not used for the first two panels, instead there was a close up of just the door as Cerebus smashes it down.

A Friendly Reminder 

Cerebus Anniversary-- Forty Years of a Cantankerous Aardvark Part the Third

Sean Michael Robinson:

Greetings!

I wanted to use this week's post to bring some attention to a so-far-unheralded milestone in the world of comics. This month is the fortieth anniversary of Cerebus #1, first published (according to the cover date, anyway!) in December of 1977.

So as of yet, no one's thrown Cerebus a party. No one's baked him a cake. But to celebrate in a smaller, less icing-involved way, over the next few weeks we'll take a look at a few excepts from the essay I wrote for the newly-restored 17th printing of Cerebus Volume One, released January 2017. If you enjoy the excerpt, or really, even if you don't, I'd recommend picking up a copy of the printing, which is remarkably better than any of the preceding printings. (Easily identified by the increased cover price, and the giant REMASTERED EDITION banner on the top!)

The previous installment.

And the one after that!

***

It was basically the repercussions of being the first person to stand back and say, “Why not stop doing this on a temporary basis? Why pretend next month I’m going to go and do something else?” I started thinking what a horribly futile thing that Superman was up around issue #250, or whatever it was at the time, and it wasn’t 240 issues of one story. It’s an immense, complicated, self-contradictory mythos, blended by five or six individuals primarily, with a lot of other individuals who had no real interest in [...] adding to it. The nature of the production presents its most ardent fans with the immensely complicated  tasks of trying to weave a coherent background for it. It occurred to me, since I’m only at #11, and it’s reasonably coherent so far, why not have a consistent viewpoint, a consistent story? And be the first one to do it?.... All around me I could see people trying to fit it together and refusing to acknowledge it’s a hopeless task, because it wasn’t put together that way.— Dave Sim, in interview with Kim Thompson (1982)

Some things work better in lists. 

Brothers, both Warner and Marx. Groucho  in his Duck Soup persona. Bugs Bunny in his Groucho Marx persona. Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck. Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, as filtered through Barry Windsor-Smith and Roy Thomas. Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad. The aforementioned Frank Thorne and Red Sonja. Michael Moorcock. Christopher Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men. The Batman, Captain America, Bucky. Prince Valiant. Deadman. Swamp Thing. Man-Thing. The 1971 Clint Eastwood vehicle The Beguiled. M*A*S*H*. Hogan’s Heroes. Comic artists Neal Adams, Gene Day, Jeffrey Jones, Marshall Rogers, Jim Steranko, Bernie Wrightson. 

Mechanical tone, in 10, 20, 30, 35, 40 percent, at various LPI ratings. Fleck tone and other patterned tones as well, creating a variety of background textures. At first, dead line weights from a random assortment of squared lettering nibs—later, under the tutelege of Marshall Rogers, Hunts 102 crow-quill nibs and series 4 Windsor-Newton brushes, the deadweight animation line giving way to a line with bounce and snap, taking more advantage of the inherent properties of the medium. Layouts borrowing from the innovations of Steranko and Adams and Krigstein gradually giving way to a panoply of storytelling techniques almost wholly Sim’s own. 

And this is the other critical reason to place these comics in historical context. Because the innovation and development of the first 1,000 pages of Cerebus would have been perfectly impossible outside of the new direct-market stores. Had Sim been dependent on newsstand distribution, it’s most likely this project would never have existed.  The second page of the entire series features a fleeting act—Cerebus cutting off the hand of a man who accosts him—that would have been impossible to depict under the Comics Code Authority, the supposedly self-regulating censorship board that imposed absolute governerance over newsstand-distributed comics. Additionally, although charming and effective within his story, Sim’s early artwork was too inconsistent from panel to panel to have been picked up by any of the publishers at the time. He might have ended up as a writer for one of the major publishers, but his path towards visual expertise—essentially practicing and honing his abilities in public, funded directly by those most enthusiastic for his work—was only possible through self-publishing.

Self-publishing, which ensured that every dollar earned would belong to himself and Deni, his wife and publisher. It was this security, this ownership, that allowed Sim the writer/artist to flourish, to innovate, and enabled him the thousands of hours of public practice that would eventually turn him into one of the greatest cartoonists of the twentieth century.

I don’t have any doubts that, were it not for Sim’s rapid development as an artist, and the sheer magnitude and brilliance of the later work, the twenty-five issues under this cover would be mostly forgotten today, an oddity of the time relegated to the dollar-bins of the future, pulpy entertainments of another time found and enjoyed and discarded like most other newsprint products, the acid content of the very paper they’re printed on betraying their disposable nature and likelihood of long-term retention. But Cerebus lived on, continued to be produced and published for twenty-six years by Sim, who was later joined by draughtsman extraordinairre Gerhard: and the quality of the book only increased with the complexity, until—a decade or so in—it was both formally and narratively one of the most unique visual stories ever created. Periodic injections of new fans by successful commercial comics crossovers (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8, 1986; Spawn #10, 1993) served to rerejuvenate the pool of readers who had trickled off over time. The book’s momentum was changed forever by Sim’s great retail innovation—comprehensive chronological collected volumes that ensured that new readers could catch up with the series at any point. This is de rigueur these days, but prior to Sim, no one had made compulsory reprinting a cornerstone of their business. In fact, during several stretches of the series, the monthly issues functioned more as a loss-leader, the actual income coming from the collected editions only.

Of course, the superhero storytelling mode of monthly contained stories that continually reset to the status quo looks fairly ridiculous when bound together, rather like binge-watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show and pretending that it resembles the life of an actual person. Man, why are Mary and Rhoda complaining about not having any dates when they each have a new boyfriend literally every episode? Jeez, why hasn’t Spiderman collapsed from exhaustion yet? Didn’t he break all of his ribs last week? Why do all of these dudes in pajamas hate him so? Likewise, as the scope and ambition of Sim’s project changed, so did the pacing and the very nature of the stories themselves. 

But as the reputation and readership of Cerebus grew, so did the reputation of the early issues—specifically, their reputations for visual crudity.

Partial blame for this can be attributed to Sim, who spared no detail in publicly dissecting his own flaws and documenting his improvements, most notably in the introductions to the early stories that he wrote for the Swords of Cerebus reprint collections. But I believe a large part of this reputation is squarely due to the reproduction. Namely, since the original monthly printings, almost none of these issues were reprinted from the original negatives.

There’s something Faustian about the parameters of being an artist working for reproduction. On one hand, pen and ink is particuarly economical medium, where thirty dollars worth of art supplies is still more than enough to put together an entire comic. And because line art has historically been easier and more accurately reproduced than color work, one line art original can spawn a hundred thousand, a million, reasonable faxcimiles, each copy identical to the next, that can be distributed all around the world to every conceivable potential audience. But that artist is at the mercy of those same reproduction technologies in a way that, say, an oil painter almost never is. And as technologies change, others are abandoned.

The first twenty-two issues of Cerebus had their guts printed by Fairway Press, the Kitchener printer that was responsible for the daily newspaper, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. Each month the original artwork was delivered to the printer, where it was shot and reduced to 6” x 9” by a massive stat camera loaded with high-contrast orthochromatic film only sensitive to portions of the light spectrum. The resulting at-sized negative film was then developed and ganged up on film assemblies, or flats, where they would be used to expose the printing plates that would then be used to print the book on Fairway’s web offset presses.

Although there are still web presses today—still used for any large run where economy is the chief consideration—all the other stages of printing mentioned have now vanished, leaving a very different print experience in its place. Plates are now created solely from digital files, in almost all cases delivered ready to go by the client, with only the pagination and last-minute prepress suggestions left up to the printer. 

Which puts older books printed by traditional means in a print purgatory. Computer-to-plate (CTP) print technology had tremendous practical advantages over negative-to-plate (NTP) technologies, namely, its speed, economy, and ability to forego the generational loss inherent in photographing and creating negatives. Because of these advantages, it was rapidly adopted, and printers that stuck with NTP soon found themselves unable to compete. 

These shifts both coincided with and were related to the closing of long-time Cerebus printer Preney Print and Litho in 2006. Cerebus printings after that date were completed by Lebonfon, a Québecois printer capable of doing both CTP and NTP work—they oversaw the digitization of the Cerebus Volume One negatives that same year, after which the negatives were discarded.

next week... one last excerpt!

Tales from the AMOC mailbag

Hi, Everybody!

I'm back from my mini-vacation (you have no idea how stressful this Interim Editor gig can be...)

And now: From The A Moment Of Cerebus Mailbag (momentofcerebus@gmail.com) recovering Cerebus Yahoo, Chris Woerner:

Hey Matt, comics!  These are two pieces I did sometime last year when Dave started his "Cerebus In Hell" strips.  Feel free to use them to fill up a day on A Moment of Cerebus.  Or not.

The kid in the bunny suit will come back soon, Disney's too weird a place for him.

It's probably just the cheese popular in this region...

So, there ya go.

Next time: Anybody up for some Transformers fan-fiction?

Under the influence of an Aardvark: Kurt Ruskin

Hi, Everybody,

So, got an email at momentofcerebus@gmail.com, from Cerebus fan and professional artist Kurt Ruskin.

And here's Kurt:

A steel sword shoved into a red hot furnace.
As I sit down to write this, that is the image that flashes through my head of the Cerebus comic book and the progression of the art as it evolved. The very early stuff looked like crap ONLY when compared to how great the stuff eventually looked (then again I only have the old copies before they were remastered so who knows). Dave and Ger kept shoving that steel sword back into the fire and hammering on it, sparks flying everywhere. Constantly refining it until it was Cerebus.
Everything about the art got better. Dave got better at anatomy, faces, design, and storytelling. The contrast got dialed up. Gerhard went from supplying the backgrounds to creating the world. Sometimes they would seem to drop what they were doing and run in wacky artistic directions. Sometimes they would run down the coast of fine art and then round the corner into silent film. One page is pure cartooning the next page is photo-realism. Even the lettering became art.
The general thrust of this post is supposed to be about the artistic influence of the work of Dave Sim and Gerhard. I can't see how you could look at more than a few pages of it and not be influenced by the work. And it just kept getting better.
My first introduction to all of this stuff was the 112-113 double issue. It was a used quarter bin copy found around 1991 or 1992. There was no deeper contrast between the pile of everything else I had off of the comics rack and that one issue. I think most people here can probably picture 90's comics accurately. While I have a whole lot of love for the comics of the 90's the difference was night and day.
No dialogue but somehow there was more story. There was an atmosphere no matter where that curious little grey guy went. It was like watching a fascinating silent film. A note from "B." Who's "B."? Where is everybody? There's a dead body on the floor?!? Who is that guy? He grabs a sword. Is he expecting trouble? Then he walks out into the rain and sits down on a ledge. This stuff is beautiful! Why is that mountain shaped like a screw? The kicker dialogue was at the end of the book. I may have not had an idea of what was happening throughout most of the story but I felt like the writer did.
So they started appearing. Little lines. Everywhere. I would be drawing a head or a figure and the lines would start showing up. Stonework in the background with lines all over it. Batman prowling on an old building... with lines all over it, and him. I didn't know what I was doing. I probably still don't. But the influence was definitely there. What was next? Time to violate Dave's copyright on Cerebus and advertise!
My Catholic grade school had a bake sale and I have to admit I was quite taken with that little grey bastard. They rounded up all of the artists in the grade school and made us create all of these posters for the school's bake sale to be plastered on the walls of the school, church, meeting hall, and whatnot. So I started drawing all of these posters of Cerebus behind a podium telling people about this bake sale. Yes, that's right. Cerebus, talking in the third person and pushing his cake.
Before you ask, I have no idea what I was thinking.
Anyway the bake sale got called off because all of the cake's were homemade and that violated some health code or something. I'm not sure. Either way all of those posters presumably got chucked into the furnace along with a lot of cake. Something about the image of a slice of cake on top of a poster Cerebus burning in a Catholic furnace... There's an allegory in there somewhere.
Moving right along.
You know what? Let's just fast forward to the present. So I can just show you some of the obvious influence of Dave and Ger on a lot of my art.
These are the some of the most recent images from Star Wars The Last Jedi. These are sketch cards drawn on 3.5" x 2.5" cardstock.
Thanks Dave! Thanks Ger!

And also thank you to Tim for running this blog! 

And he send some Star Wars art too:

Thanks Kurt!

Next time: I dunno, wanna see pictures of my Crystar the Crystal Warrior figures?

STAAAARRR WAAAAARRRSS, nothing but STAAAARRR WAAAAARRRSS, please don't let these STAAAARRR WAAAAARRRSS go awwwwaaaaaaayyyyyy....

Hi, Everybody!

Are you ready for Star Wars:The Last Jedi? I'M ready for Star Wars: The Last Jedi! I bet EVERYBODY is ready for Star Wars:The Last Jedi. Because EVERYBODY loves Star Wars!

Well...ALMOST everybody:

WILDCARDa: What's your take on the Star Wars saga?

DAVE: I went to see Episode Three a week or so ago, not having seen any of the films since the second one. I sort of wondered to myself about that. Why didn't I go and see any of the other ones? As soon as Yoda came on the screen I remembered. A Muppet with Fozzie Bear's voice. It just blew the whole thing out of the water for me. I had forgotten the skewed syntax to his sentences as an alien motif but I'm sure I found it as sincerely irritating twenty-five years ago as I did this time. It's Fozzie Bear. How do you expect me to take a muppet who sounds like Fozzie Bear seriously as a Grand Master Poobah type. It was silly. Ger lasted one more movie and then had the same reaction, he informs me, to teddy-bears saving the universe.

That's Dave from the Cerebus Yahoo group's Cerebus Re-Read Q&A (specifically the one from "Reads".)

The Vark Wars print (blatantly stolen from Jeff Tundis' cerebustheaardvark.com site. I'd sue, really, I would. It's...just...so...BLATANT!)

And, from Dave's Blog & Mail #155 (February, 13th, 2007) (Which I can't find over on http://davesim.blogspot.com/ ...):

It's certainly interesting doing these commissioned pieces. I mean, on the one hand it makes me feel like a much older artist than the fifty year-old that I am. Commissions are sort of an Legendary Veteran kind of thing, but then being the Pariah King of Comics puts you in various contexts that you might otherwise not be in. Producer of Commissioned Work being one of them (although I've yet to tie it in with my discussions with Chester about prostitution). The interesting part is that I end up drawing things that I would never in a million years choose to draw on my own. It's no big secret that I am definitely not in the Star Wars fan category. I had gone to see the first film when it came out and loved it (more vicariously through Gene Day who L*O*V*E*D IT) and then went to see the second film when it came out and, well, that was it for me. I went to see the last instalment when that came out a couple of summers ago, part of me wondering, "How did I get so easily put off by these things? Wasn't there enough Gene Day Juice in the first one to keep me coming out to see every one of the films the day it was released?" The answer came at some point in that final instalment when Yoda showed up on the screen. Oh, right. Fozzy Bear. Frank Oz doing his Fozzy Bear voice with that strange syntax. That was what had done it all right. My willing suspension of disbelief went from willing to unwilling the moment I was being asked to accept a Muppet with Fozzy Bear's voice as a Jedi Master. Mm. Sorry. No can do.

No offence to all the Star Wars fans who are legion in the ranks of the Cerebus Yahoos, but that was it.

So it was interesting going to get reference at the library for the piece. There was a picture book that was just tailor-made for my purposes, Star Wars The Visual Dictionary (D.K. Publishing Inc.). Big display publicity shot of Harrison Ford from the first movie looking as if George Lucas is somewhere off-camera explaining to him exactly how to pose as Flash Gordon as drawn by Al Williamson. This was one of those "luck of the draw" things for John H. that he was asking for a Star Wars commission and that Al Williamson had drawn the original Star Wars newspaper strip. I would get a chance to do my best Al Williamson impression on the page and John was pretty much guaranteed to get a much nicer drawing as a result as I tried to impress my inner Al Williamson.

I had already warned John over the phone that Cerebus as Han Solo was going to pose some difficulties since Han Solo is a distinctly vertical figure. The more vertical a character is, visually, the more difficult it is to compress him to Cerebus size. The leg holster was a good example. It was either going to be too large if I drew the blaster accurately, taking up most if not all of Cerebus' leg, or it would look like a toy if I drew it to Cerebus scale. The Flash Gordon jackboots are a big part of the look and there was no way to do them on the shape of Cerebus' leg. The best I could manage was shiny leggings. John expressed confidence in whatever solutions I came up with. "At least he has the same vest," he said hopefully. Han Solo had a Cerebus vest? Sure enough when I got the book out—cut differently but definitely a black vest.

Anyway, this serendipitous publicity shot of Harrison Ford looking exactly like an Al Williamson Flash Gordon pushed me in an entirely different direction. I just HAD to use the whole thing and traced it off in short order manufacturing my rationalization as I went. What if Cerebus is using the legs as stilts? That way I could draw the legs and boots as much like Al Williamson as I wanted and it would look kind of funny to have Cerebus' own legs bulging up Harrison Ford's svelte waistline. I even decided to include Harrison Ford's hair as if someone had taken extraordinary pains to make this aardvark character look as much like the actor as possible. I tightened up the figure in pencil on tracing paper and got out a sheet of 11 x 17 S-172 artboard to figure out how much space he was going to take up.

That was when I noticed that the book had a nice Star Wars logo in gold against a white backdrop, which meant that I could trace it off without even shooting a photocopy. It only took a few minutes to change Star Wars to Vark Wars. Then it was time for Jaka as Princess Leia. I tried the traditional all-white robe and the hairstyle that looked like two cheese Danish stuck on either side of her head from the first movie. It just didn't work for me somehow. It was hard to tell why. The basic answer is that the outfit is pretty much featureless—a nun's habit is more distinctive!—and it was pretty much tailored to Carrie Fisher's body type which is very different from Jaka's body type. I could trace off the publicity photo in the book, but pretty much everything would have to be redrawn anyway including the posture of the figure. What a strange outfit. Did they cast Carrie Fisher before they designed the costume? These are the sorts of questions you find yourself asking yourself when you're hip-deep in a strange commission and mentally analyzing the physical components. Under what other circumstances would Dave Sim find himself asking himself if Carrie Fisher or her costume came first in the first Star Wars movie?

On the facing page was a smaller shot of Carrie Fisher dressed as Jabba the Hutt's slave girl. It certainly seemed more suited to Jaka with her dancer costumes (and I suspect if your average Star Wars fan was to choose a favourite Princess Leia outfit the slave girl outfit would be the one) (I wonder how many slave girl publicity stills Carrie Fisher sells versus the other publicity stills at show signings these days?). This raised even more layers of speculation that I had no idea I had inside of me. How did George Lucas talk Carrie Fisher into the slave girl thing? I mean, that was pretty far along in the series and presumably Carrie Fisher was still thinking and hoping that this Star Wars gig might be a stepping stone to other roles in "major motion pictures". "Barely there" costumes are not exactly something with which actresses with hard-won screen cred are known to willingly associate. Did he just blindside her with the script? Throw it onto her front steps in the middle of the night? PRINCESS LEIA DRESSED AS SLAVE GIRL ENTERS FROM RIGHT OF SCENE. When did she first get a good look at the costume? Did she call George Lucas up screaming? Can you even do that to George Lucas or did everyone have a "Whatever George wants George gets" clause in their contract? That might explain my favourite Harrison Ford quote where he said that George Lucas should be tied to a chair and forced to read his own dialogue out loud.

 Where was I dredging all this stuff up from?

Were there negotiations about how much skin would be showing? Or was the outfit just presented as a fait accompli? I mean, it's a very good costume, based solidly in the Alex Raymond/Dale Arden mode (I assume it was one of the things on George Lucas' mental checklist) but with all of the high-end Hollywood costume artistry brought to bear. "Here's Alex Raymond/Dale Arden and here's Carrie Fisher's body type. Now, how do we do work them both in?" Pretty flawlessly, I would say. In the publicity shot she certainly doesn't look very happy (which I suppose could be just "in character" for a slave girl). Looks like she had to work out pretty hard to get that toned. How old was she at that time? Early thirties? No love handles, no pot belly. She did a great job.

As I say, it's bizarre what goes through your mind when you actually work on something like this. In the same vein, it was an unexpectedly happy nostalgia jolt to have John Williams' Star Wars soundtrack running through my head for days on end. Took me right back to 1978-79 when that was what you listened to most mornings at Gene Day's studio in Gananoque. "What'll it be? John Williams' Star Wars soundtrack or John Williams' Superman soundtrack?" It certainly made writing and drawing comic books seem incredibly heroic at the time. 

I really have to give George Lucas credit as a thorough-going storyteller, assuming that all of the detailed information included in this book came from him personally. I mean, I'm probably just outside the loop, but I had no idea that that broken red racing stripe on the side of Han Solo's pants is a "Corellian blood stripe" or that his belt is equipped with a Droid caller and blaster power cell. Or that the blaster consists of a scope, enhanced blast delivery circuits, power pack release lever, low power pulse warning, power pack, cooling unit, final stage collimator (with "puree" setting?) and flash suppressor. Or that it's officially a DL-44 pistol. I think I managed to get them all on there, although I'll frankly admit that the proportions are probably off by quite a bit. 

Anyway, I did a quick Jaka as Jabba the Hutt slave girl drawing on tracing paper and then reduced it a bit on the photocopier so she didn't look TOO much larger than Han Solo (although I did want her to look larger—this is, after all, Cerebus and Jaka), turned over the photocopy on the light table to trace off onto another piece of tracing paper… 

…and the next day promptly fell ill for nearly a month.

Next time: "I bent my Wookie..."