Saturday 19 October 2013

Weekly Update #1: "Cerebus" & "High Society" Reprinting

Previously on 'A Moment Of Cerebus':
Dave Sim, working with George Peter Gatsis, has remastered the first two collected volumes of Cerebus to restore details and quality in the artwork lost over the thirty years since they were originally published (as detailed here and here). After Cerebus' original printer Preney Print closed its doors, Dave Sim moved his printing to Lebonfon in 2007 as at that time they were still capable of working with photographic negatives and making printing plates as Preney had done. And then Lebonfon switched to digital scanning and printing - a technology which could not faithfully reproduce Cerebus' tone without creating moire patterns (as detailed in Crisis On Infinite Pixels). Dave Sim continues to work with Lebonfon on the quality of proofs he has to approve prior to commiting to the printing process (as detailed on Dave Sim's last update Collections Stalled). Now read on...
WEEKLY REPORT ON CEREBUS (16th PRINTING) &
HIGH SOCIETY 30TH ANNIVERSARY S&N GOLD LOGO (11th PRINTING)

DAVE SIM:
(by fax, 18 October 2013)
Lebonfon has said that "If the Kinko's proof is accurate and reflects the moire we will see on the press we will accept this proof."

I'm not sure that this is progress. It could be read as Lebonfon saying "if there's a moire we'll blame the Kinko's proof for not having it on there." Which is basically what they've been saying all along: the proof basically isn't a proof in the traditional sense so they just ignore it and expect indy comics publishers to accept whatever printing they get even if it doesn't look like the proof.

George Gatsis is going ahead and getting all 111 digital files printed at Kinko's, including the 35 substandard printing files from the unbound books stage. Our position will be: this is what we expect the printing to look like. If you are unable to make the printing look like this, please let us know what the problem is and George will recalibrate his digital files to take care of the problem.

Also, Lebonfon has indicated that they have a 600 dpi XEROX printer, whereas previously they said that their XEROX printer could only do 300 dpi.

On October 16th, George emailed Patrick Jodin asking "Have you now gotten a new printer that can do higher resolution" and received no reply.

cc:
Matt Demory, DIAMOND COMIC DISTRIBUTORS
George Gatsis, THE BLACK DIAMOND EFFECT
Patrick Jodin, IMPRIMERIE LEBONFON

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry if I'm missing something but shouldn't the printer be providing the proof that then Dave accepts prior to production?

Michael

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Hi Michael,

Exactly.

If I'm reading all those prior articles I've linked to in the intro correctly, the proofs supplied by Lebonfon have the moire patten in the Cerebus zip-a-tone on 111 pages and Dave is relucant to accept their assurance that the final printed copy will be okay at face value. The 'proofs' should be what he signs off on.

Meanwhile George has been able to create his own 'proofs' from his digital files at Kinko's without a moire pattern, and suspects Lebonfon simply aren't using a good enough printer for their proofs.

Stay tuned...

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know what simteevee is?

Dominick Grace said...

As I understood mit, the problem is that the Lebonfon proofs (which ought to be EXACTLY what the final version looks like) did not have the moire, but the actual printed pages did. That is, the proofs were not really proofs in any meaningful sense.

Oliver said...

@anonymous Simteevee was a youtube addition to Cerebus.TV

Michael Grabowski said...

This is the sort of thing that reminds me that if the ancient Egyptians had had computers, they never would have gotten the pyramids right.

@Chris_DFS said...

Wow! Patrick is still with them.

Anonymous said...

I work in publishing and have learned that any reliable printer should be able to provide "Match proofs" which would basically demonstrate what the printed page would look like.
There'a also the option of actually plating a few sample pages on a smaller press and running tests that way which wouldn't cost much at all.