This is the thread where I try and summarise Cerebus

fwiw I don't think the first volume is bad or anything - it's enjoyable and absolutely gets better as it goes along, feel like it really hits its stride when Lord Julius enters the picture. But if you aren't familiar with 70s sword n sorcery tropes or have any idea where the book is headed a new reader might be befuddled at what the fuss is all about.

The old "Swords of Cerebus" version of the first volume is cool with Sim's original commentary from then (and before he went down that path). The Beguiled knock-off is great.

Right now is all of it even properly in print?

Nope, several volumes are out of print. Sim has been Kickstarting limited edition prints of original art to fund restoration work on High Society and Church & State.

Dave talked about a deal with Kim Thompson to republish but that died when Kim did I guess.

No, Dave publicly dicked Kim around for weeks, making him jump through ridiculous hoops and negotiate in public (while also ignoring Eric Reynold’s upfront offer to publish the Death Of Alex Raymond book), at the same time that he was privately negotiating with Ted Adams to reprint the work that Kim was pitching to print. The IDW deal was announced 8 months before Kim’s death.

There's probably too much water under the bridge with Gary Groth - I have memories of TCJ being a real bone of contention because of an interview? - for it to happen with Fanta without Kim.

Sim always noted how he and Groth enjoyed each other’s company while they were tearing strips off each other in public; if Groth was interested in publishing Cerebus, I don’t think that would be an issue. He’s not, though.

The last Sim interview in the Journal was by Tom Spurgeon in 1996; this was some months after the “Dave Sim: Our Hitler?” op-ed under a Bill Willingham painting of Sim that Sim purchased and framed.

I think Dave's legacy will be as maybe the greatest letter that wasn't Eisner, and maybe even better than him.

Eisner or Kanegson?

Maybe if you started with HS and then did a prequel volume like they've done with Walt & Skeezix?

This is exactly what Kim Thompson was pitching; Sim instead, partway through the weeks of negotiations, insisted they start with Going Home, and get it a good review in the New York Times*, before he would allow them to reprint another volume of his choosing.

*or get it on the NYT bestseller list and displayed in a NYC gallery, or something – Shakey may remember better.

i would guess dave puts the whole thing up on the web for free when he dies, the end.

a) Considering how badly the “putting High Society in digital / on the web” went, there is no possibility Sim will develop a plan for this in the next few years.

b) Anyone in the world will be able to reprint it, because:

Cerebus will move into the public domain after Dave's death (or Dave & Gerhard's deaths, by another account).

Gerhard sold his entire interest in Cerebus back to Sim several years ago, in order to not have to deal with him in business again.

Access to the (surviving) Preney film will be a big question mark.

The digital restoration project that’s been going over the past year will obviously supersede this. Maybe the guy that owns most of the original art but won’t allow it to be scanned will open a gallery in his house, to compete with the one in Sim’s house.

It'll go on the web. And it absolutely won't (and shouldn't) be forgotten. It's too unique. Too exciting. Too problematic. It's the perfect book for the cannon.

http://www.umich.edu/~csie/comicart/Cerebus61p18.jpg

Gerhard sold his entire interest in Cerebus back to Sim several years ago, in order to not have to deal with him in business again.

Did he relinquish his copyright in the work or just sell back his half of A-V? Dave's wiki page says public domain after his death; the Cerebus wiki page says after Dave AND Ger's deaths (citing a 2004 Village Voice story, which may have been sloppily fact-checked).

Well, 2004 was before they split, anyway. Not certain if they now pay each other a royalty-like share of C&S -> Last Day trade sales (for Ger from Dave) and art prints with characters, not backgrounds, in them (for Dave from Ger), but AIUI the intellectual property is 100% Sim’s now. (Hence him building a museum in his house, setting up trusts for his lawyer to get fans to run it when he dies, etc etc.)

Dave Sim Responds to Expressed Publishing Interest from Fantagraphics

Mea culpa sic, I had forgotten how one sided the 'deal' negotiations had been. That said, as that link shows, a lot of it is Dave indulging in Dave Classic Whataboutery - "Based on what I think about Fanta I think they'd only be looking for this market, and if they're looking for this market then this is the most obvious book if they're only willing to do a one book 'suck it and see' deal based on sales, which I assume they are, because why wouldn't you, right? And then if that was their logic, here's some other books published in that same ball park by other people and here's what I think is wrong with them; and I'd probably get treated the same way, so I don't think this is something I'll go along with."

Yeah, Ger sold everything to Dave. AIUI there aren't any royalty payments.

The Sim kickstarters aren't about funding reprints, they're about him living hand to mouth. The targets for income from each one were set on what he needs to get by and the extra raised has gone on other 'needs' - the first one paid for him fixing the foundations to the Off-White House, for example. The restoration is being done as a favour by fans with one exception thus far; some special prints were sold as part of the most recent one (CAN3) to fund some of the most time consuming work for 9(?) pages in very poor condition.

It's one fan and one person who's never read Cerebus, and they're being paid.

They had to raise the very cheap rate for those 9(?) pages, hence the additional specific funding.

lol at whataboutery summary.

haha yes

which volumes are out of print? feel like I still see new copies of a bunch of these at the shop

re-reading these from the beginning (I'm such a sucker) I never really noticed the implication that Bran becomes a Cirinist after he disappears in High Society.

Sim still can't draw, and writing even is a struggle. He's just pulled out of doing anything other than signatures - which will take an unbounded length of time and some of which may be left-handed - on CAN3.

OTOH (no pun intended) if he didn't have to find someone who could do an MRI without a doctor's referral then maybe he'd make some progress.

does he not have a doctor's referral because he has eschewed the advice of all general practitioners?

Yes, that's why he doesn't have a doctor's referral.

sigh

Whoa crazy http://www.momentofcerebus.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/weekly-update-93-fan-bequeaths-500000.html

1. make a complex and flawed monolithic masterpiece
2. wait a decade for insane fanbase to metastasize
3. profit or maybe don't

that is insane

tbh every time this thread is bumped I expect it to be because Dave has died

If there is going to be a museum rather than the off-white house it should be a Ghibli Museum-style reproduction of the hotel/house Cerebus occupied while Pope. With a statue of him on the roof speechifying

tbh every time this thread is bumped I expect it to be because Dave has died

― Οὖτις, Friday, July 31, 2015 5:52 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

Thirded

https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/760564344232882176

surprised he didn't make the Hillary:Cirin connection (and given the state of things recently I would be inclined to throw in Putin:Lord Julius as well)

Well, Hilary is Cirin if you're Dave Sim. Not sure otherwise.

Did Sim ever reference the Clintons in Cerebus?

In the comic, I don't think so, in text pieces, yes.

Well, Hilary is Cirin if you're Dave Sim. Not sure otherwise.

well, yeah. this is all in the context of the comic. I'm confident Sim would equate Hillary with a vindictive, ideology-bound grandma in charge of a nanny/police state

I just finally got around to reading "Reads" (thx to a certain unnamed online resource), which I had avoided for years, and man this really was the point of schism wasn't it. Although I think not so much the raging misogynistic content (though that is definitely unappealing) as for the injection of Dave Sim Omnipotent Author into the narrative. As parodic and self-referential as the series may have been up to that point, it was still functioning within an established, consistent storytelling framework - and the whole abrupt breaking of the fourth wall that extends into "Minds" and reappears periodically not only seems totally unnecessary it actually derails a huge part of what was interesting and appealing about the book. Just.... why. Such a terrible aesthetic decision. And reading these issues with all of the "Letter from the President" and other marginalia included really does make the comic content feel like just a small part of a picture of a guy losing his mind than a coherent piece of artwork. Such a bummer.

feel more like a small part

that should say

also afaik Dave Sim is not dead yet

Incidentally, I think introducing himself as a character was the biggest mistake of the series, and probably heralds the start of the "I'll just make this shit up as I go along, plot resolutions are for voids" era of Cerebus -- altho' as Aldo sez, Guys is still quite fun.

lol aldo otm 10 years ago

er Chuck Tatum I mean

Am tempted to buy the first couple digital phonebooks, the early art looks so beautiful here: http://cerebusonline.tumblr.com/archive

I picked up a phonebook at my folks' house a few weeks ago and forgot how annoying Roach and the two moustache brothers are (I tended to skip over their panels). Though Astoria is still an incredible character, even if the idea of Dave writing an interesting female character now seems mindblowing.

"SMASHIE BASHIE BAF BAM" from when the brothers are getting pummeled by sacred wars roach is still funny to me, idk why

All the Kitchen Staff Supervisor stuff is still classic (Sewage, sewage, sewage)

I'll probably recommend HS and both C&S volumes for a while to come

And I always liked the stupid accents, especially "smartaguy aardawark"

Such a terrible aesthetic decision.

Inclined to agree in hindsight, though at the time I really really enjoyed Minds - maybe because his smaller-scale aesthetic decision making was about as good as it had ever been at that point. A really technically accomplished, beautifully rendered book, whatever the shortcomings of the storyline/themes.

the artwork/lettering/everything is certainly incredible

"SMASHIE BASHIE BAF BAM" from when the brothers are getting pummeled by sacred wars roach is still funny to me, idk why

FONFLIF

builds character

Did his smaller-scale aesthetic decision making ever dip? Even during the unbearable Koningsberg stuff it was well drawn and lettered (you could argue that walls of text meant less space for his amazing Big Letters...)

Eh I think in later books his layouts can be too busy and he can sometimes overdo it a bit with the wacky lettering.

When else am I going to get this much uninterrupted time for a re-read?

Just finished the first phonebook and I think I enjoyed it more than I ever have. The characters are solid, the dialogue pretty taut, the stories have momentum and the art improves markedly until it's pretty much as good as it gets pre-Ger. A really unexpected surprise and now don't know how going to react to what's coming.

in a fortnight you’re going to be posting about how the concept of the feminine void is a good one, actually

I'm definitely going to do the text in Reads and g_d help me to try and read the Torah commentary for the first time ever (it was just too small in the floppies, and DO I LOOK CRAZY?).

I may do a running commentary on that bit because I don't think any of us ever read it?

best of luck to you and may g_d have mercy on yr soul

i reread this when i got the torrents maybe five years ago; i was shocked by how generally badly written and well crafted it was.
good luck

High Society definitely feels like a warm-up and Dave still hasn't found his feet yet either in his art or storytelling. Lord Julius is still a bit too much of a parody and the return of Elrond and the Roach seem like an attempt to use familiarity to get readers onside.

But.

The McGrews are Dave's first great self-created side characters. And Astoria - although better is yet to come from her - is thoroughly developed from the outset as the manipulative, scheming equal (superior?) of any other character in the series. It's the Elf that is the master manipulator though and Cerebus starts on his lifelong quest of trying to get things he doesn't want in the forlorn hope it will make him happy.

I again enjoyed this more than I expected and it's hard not to see parallels for the current political climate here, with a buffoon propped up by a Machiavellian idiot who isn't as clever as he thinks he is, elected only because the alternative is even less palatable to the public.

C&S Volume 1

Gerhard joins and it's the missing piece. Everything suddenly gets 10x better through Dave concentrating on the important stuff. Cerebus gets to be the shape and form we know later. The actual main plot is a bit of a duffer if I'm honest, and the Countess is probably the least vital of all the Cerebus Women (which is probably why she doesn't really - at all? - come up again).

Plot be damned though, there are brilliant moments throughout this.

On page 59 there is a panel which is just an eye but between that and a speech bubble you're exactly with it.
Mind Game IV is as good a study of a depressed alcoholic as there is.
Odd Transformations near the end is a 40 page dream sequence with 4 pages of taking a piss in the middle, but we also get Young Cerebus looking exactly like his later portrayals. And this is the first time I've noticed the first time we see Young Cerebus he's up to his ankles in water, like in the stream with the knife.

Then amid all this we get the unheralded introduction of Bear, arguably the love of Cerebus' life.

I keep waiting to be let down by this re-read but it looks like the time I spent since the last read was long enough.

nothing that's happened in the last 3 decades has diminished my desire to do a reread of High Society through Rick's Story. I just keep putting it off.

I had been putting this off for at least 5. I just realised exactly what I had at the moment was time.