Cerebus Archive (1977) #1-10 by Dave Sim
Back when I was doing the mop-ups for my Aardvark Vanaheim/Renegade Press blog series, I just couldn’t find my copies of Cerebus Archive — not the original Cerebus Archive series, but the series of portfolios that followed afterwards. I looked everywhere I could think of — these things are pretty big, almost tabloid size, so they should be easy to find, after all — but I had obviously stashed them Somewhere Special™, so they were lost for all eternity.
But last week, I got a shipment from Mile High Comics… and in that shipment was Cerebus Archive Number Ten! What the fuck! But but but
And then I realised what must have happened: I had a subscription to the original Cerebus Archive series, and that must somehow have “carried over”, and they’d ordered my a copy of the most recent portfolio.
*sigh*
But since I finally got my hands on one of these, I thought I might do one final A&R blog post… and now that I had a copy in my hands again, I was reminded of how they looked like, and what do you know:
I found the two issues I already had! They were half a meter from where I was sitting! Pffft!
OK, enough with the comicsplaining… let’s have a look at the three issues I have, which is #2, #3 and #10.
They come in very sturdy envelopes, but not sturdy flaps, and I seem to have a habit of tearing the left flap when opening them.
This is the second portfolio, but they all follow the same format: There’s ten large reproductions (I think they’re done in actual size drawn? I may be mistaken) of the first pages that Sim still has in his possession from whatever volume we’re looking at. So here we get ten pages from High Society.
But what pages are in Sim’s possession? Sim would sell off his original artwork, so the most popular pages are gone, of course. Left are the, er, how to put it: Less iconic pages. Ahem. There are many text heavy pages, and many pages that are plot dense.
They’re printed in colour, so you get to see the bluelines that Sim hasn’t erased.
And also paste ups and stuff. The reproduction is pretty nice, but the less-than-thrilling selection of pages makes these very niche items.
There’s nothing on the back of the ten pages.
But! Then there are notes!
So many notes. We get three of these oversized sheets with text on both sides, so we’re getting a lot of text.
And Sim goes through the ten pages and gives an in-depth talk about each one, explaining what he’s doing and what he thinks about what he did and stuff. If you’re into reading Cerebus liner notes, these are really good.
But what about the tenth portfolio, the one that I got the other week? I think the first handful of portfolios were released over a few years (starting in 2015, using Kickstarter, I believe), but then they petered out. I don’t know how big a pause there’s been before this one, but:
Somebody’s scribbled on my portfolio!
And *gasp* I got copy 100 out of 150. I bet this one is worth all the money.
I’m more surprised that they’re selling this many copies, really…
The pages are now in a plastic zip-lock-bag inside the cardboard envelope.
The format is the same as before, but Sim has apparently kept more “key” pages, or people had stopped buying his artwork by this time. Because there’s more striking pages here.
On the other hand, there’s some that perhaps people won’t be framing and putting on their walls.
And instead of three sheets densely filled with information about the pages, we get one sheet that is, er, less densely filled.
There’s some talk of what we’re seeing in these pages, but it’s trending towards gibberish if you don’t already know what Sim is talking about.
And much of the text is about Sim’s religious beliefs, which have something to do with particle physics and the bible, apparently.
So… it’s not very interesting, is it? Nope. At least the first portfolios had some pretty interesting texts…
And now dawn is approaching, and I really should send an email to Mile High Comics so that this subscription is cancelled once and for all. (How many copies were sold by mistake, I wonder… probably, er, not all of them.)
Ah, this one was done via Kickstarter, too.
This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.