Wednesday 25 February 2015

Dave Sim Bulletin: Church & State TRAUMA ONE, TRAUMA TWO-- Cerebus Under The Knife


DAVE SIM:



While there are standard things we do to prepare every page of CEREBUS original art for print, some pages have sustained much more serious damage than the average page. Whether it's exposure to light, the effects of age, or just hard living, these pages have seen rough times, causing their tone to shrink, peel, rip, and buckle. The larger the toned area, and the more complex the tone, the more damage there is for us to repair.
Here are three suffering Church & State originals, in need of immediate medical intervention--




These pages need much more attention than the standard twenty minute checkup afforded the average CEREBUS page.

But with the proper medical care, and some major tone surgery, these pages have a good prognosis for recovery. Here are two before and after example from our recent surgical work on High Society.

Below: the white lines are exposed paper where the tone has shrunk and ripped. This much damage across a whole page can turn a clean, coherent design into a visual mess.


Every sponsored page will be sent directly to Dr. Mara for immediate tone surgery. Besides up to half an hour of work from myself, TRAUMA TWO pages will spend approximately one hour on Dr. Mara's operating table, and TRAUMA ONE pages a minimum of two hours. Once the procedures are safely completed, two beautiful before and after plates, signed by Dave and numbered "No. 1 out of 1", will be sent directly to you, and you will be thanked by name in the newly restored Church & State I book, in perpetuity, your name associated with that particular page.



Dr. Mara Operates, or, Cerebus Under the Knife.


Below you'll find a chart with the available pages. Please visit the Church and State I Kickstarter page to sponsor a page. We'll update the graphic as pages have been claimed. (Note: this reward will be added sometime in the next twenty-four hours. Visit soon, and visit often!)

Thanks everyone for your time, and all of your help in keeping this project moving forward!

Update:

Just received word from John re: the best way to make sure you get the page you want--

1) Post a comment claiming the one they want. First come, first served at AMOC, then
2) adjust their pledge AND send me a KS message confirming their pledge and the one they are sponsoring.


Thanks everyone!

Update Two:

Wow-- that was amazingly fast! Thank you so much for your support, everyone. We can't wait to get these pages restored and in your hands.

37 comments:

Margaret said...

Can I claim issue 66 page 01 and issue 80 page 15 now? Love those pages, want to give them some sweet sweet loving. . .uhh I mean money for their restoration. Yes. Money.

Sean R said...

You got 'em! :) Will update the graphic accordingly-- as soon as the reward is live, please update your pledge accordingly. And THANKS Margaret!!

Beanbag Amerika said...

Are we claiming here? I'd love issue 80 page 16, and issue 75 page 20.

Thanks!

Sean R said...

Beanbag (or Mr. Amerika-- if that IS your real name)--

You've got 'em! Please update your pledge as soon as you can, and let John know which pages you've claimed when you do so. :)

Sean R said...

Hey you two--

Just got a message from John requesting that you both do both adjust your pledge accordingly, and send a message to John via kickstarter confirming which pages you've selected :)

Thanks!!

Jeff Seiler said...

Hi, Sean. I would like to claim Issue 80, pages 8 and 9. I can make my full pledge late tomorrow, after I deposit the check I'm waiting for to arrive in the mail tomorrow. Hope that's okay.

Menachem Luchins said...

Issue 74- BOTH pages.

Sean R said...

Jeff-- got it!

Menachem--

Which ones? We've got 2, 4, 7, 11 :)

Damin J. Toell, Esq. said...

Darn, I misunderstood and claimed a page via comment on Kickstarter.

Damin J. Toell, Esq. said...

I want Issue 74, Page 02, assuming it's still available after Menachem's comment.

Sean R said...

Hey Damin,

You're in line for Issue 74 pg 2. As soon as we hear from Menachem whether he was indicating that page, I'll post it here!

Sean R said...

Feel free to put yourself "in line" for any other pages from issue 74, if you'd like them. I don't want to guess which two he was indicating :)

Damin J. Toell, Esq. said...

Great. If Menachem meant to claim Page 02 as one of his, then please just put me line for whatever 2 remaining Issue 74 pages are left. I already adjusted my pledge and sent John a message via Kickstarter before I realized my error of how to claim/comment, so I apologize to John in advance for any confusion.

Sean R said...

OKAY! Menachem is in for issue 74 page 4 and 11, which leaves issue 74 pg 02 to Damin! :) Happy I can make everyone happy. Updating the graphic now.

Damin J. Toell, Esq. said...

Yay! Confirming that I'm taking on Issue 74, Page 02.

Thanks Sean, and apologies again for the confusion.

Graphic Edge Print Solutions said...

Hi Damin, no apology needed. I just ran out to grab a bite to eat and am seeing the 'plethora of pledges' and the 'rewards of restoration' and the 'carnage of Kickstarter' and the...oh stop it John!

I'm tracking everything and watching as we go, so I'd better get an update out on KS seeing how fast these are going!

Hang on everyone, this one's a fast ride!

P.S. - Jeff, tomorrow is fine.

John

Andrew Lariviere said...

Issue 80 pg. 11 please!

Jeff Seiler said...

Aw, man! I was just going to add that one so I'd have a triptych.

Oh, well, enjoy it in health, Andrew.

Sean R said...

It's yours, Andrew! Thanks so much, and congrats!!

Bill Ritter said...


I'll take 74 pg 07, if still available.
Otherwise, I'll take 71, pg 16.

Sean R said...

Bill--

It's yours-- congrats, and thanks so much!!

gsquared said...

issue 71, page 16 please!

Sean R said...

Gsquared-- it's yours! Congrat, and thanks so much!

That's it everyone! Thank you SO much for your help, time, and generosity!

Jeff Seiler said...

So, (Mr. Greedy-pants inquires) will there be more?...?

Also, not exactly sure where on the KS page to make my trauma pledge...

Conrad F said...

Please forgive me, but I have several questions about all of this... any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

First of all, how is it that some donors are sponsoring pages that are not even showing as available? (In fact, at the moment there is but one page left to sponsor by my count.) How do those folks, or you, even know how much it will cost to 'restore' the page in question? Or am I missing something here?

Secondly, your current instructions state that interested parties should "visit the Church and State I Kickstarter page to sponsor a page." Not to be picky (well, perhaps just a bit!), but the title of that project is actually "Cerebus Archive Number Three" (aka CAN3). It would be really helpful and possibly less confusing if all parties used the same terminology here & elsewhere.

The thing is, that Kickstarter page makes NO mention as to how one goes about sponsoring a page (I assume by adding the required amount of one's existing pledge?). In fact, the word "sponsor" doesn't even appear anywhere ON that page (yet), despite your link TO that page. Perhaps an update is in process? (I hope?) As you can see, I'm just a tiny bit confused, and others probably are as well. So, like I said above, ANY help would be appreciated. Thanks!

gsquared said...

I wish I knew about this before there were only two pages left. And I wouldn't have known about those without the Kickstarter email from John. But I'm glad I got to sponsor a page anyway.

Sean R said...

Hey Conrad!

The costs are estimates of the amount of time each of these pages will take to restore. With C + S we're operating on a price-per-page basis, that assumes that the amount of cleanup per page averages to about twenty minutes of work for Mara per page. These pages, however, have extensive damage to the tone. I went through all of our C + S I resources and eyeballed (i.e. guessed, using my chart of our cleanup times on High Society) what pages would take significantly more than the norm. It's easy to identify-- "in the wild" pages, with really large areas of tone, which are intricately involved in the surrounding areas. Basically, every "in the wild" page with Jaka and Cerebus in the little room (big sheets of stipple tone), every "in the wild" page with the gold bags, every "in the wild" page with Thrunk. With a few well-preserved exceptions here and there.

My apologies for my difficult directions, and to people who wanted to pledge for one but couldn't. Coordinating between this many people (in this case, Dave, John, myself, and Mara) can be difficult, and the post ended up launching before the update was ready. Once again, my apologies!

Sean R said...

For comparison's sake, the Mind Game II pages in High Society took me between 45- 2.5 hours a page! That's some damaged tone.

I think it's safe to say we'll do this again for similar pages for C + S II, so don't despair anyone :)

Sean R said...

Oh, and Conrad, I was updating the graphic as people were claiming pages. Hence the graphic now saying none are available!

Sean R said...

(By the way, Conrad is the owner of an awesome original art page from High Society, which he contributed a scan of to the Original Art Dragnet. Thanks so much for that Conrad!)

Sean R said...

aargh, one more comment. That should be "45 min- 2.5 hours" above.

Graphic Edge Print Solutions said...

In response to Conrad and anyone else who may be chagrined (seething? too strong a word? not strong enough?) that they were not able to get in on this limited opportunity, allow me to add in a few words of my own.

Wow, we were totally overwhelmed by the fast and intense demand on this. We could not have come close to predicting how popular it turned out to be.

Dave, Sean and I have been in communication most of the past 36 hours on the details, how to price it, how we're going to co-ordinate launching it between two mediums (AMOC and CAN3 KS) while keeping the other balls that we juggle in our own businesses in the air. When Sean was ready to post this, I asked him to clearly state that it would take me up to 24 hours to get the information posted to Kickstarter because of some other commitments I've got going on (and he did post that statement).

Had either of us known these would go so fast, we would have held off launching this until we could co-ordinate our efforts better. Neither of Dave, Sean nor I could have imagined the high level of interest (in fact, we originally planned to add STAND-ALONE reward in addition to ADD-ON rewards, thinking it would take a lot of time to get the pledges). I likened it to the $99 Birthday Call and Card reward, which is 20 minutes of personal interaction on the telephone with Dave plus a personalised card with a small headsketch on it following in the mail. That reward has not had nearly as much interest over three campaigns as this did over about 90 minutes!

I feel for the pledge partners in the UK and Europe, where it is the middle of the night and most of them won't read this until morning, so they've also missed it. I guess that's one of the 'hazards' of dealing with limited quantities.

My last comment is that I think it's unfair to take umbrage by the use of Sean's project name/terminology. He had a hyperlink attached to every instance of using that title, so it was no mystery as to what he was referring to when you hover over or click the link. The first image also had the link.

We will do better to co-ordinate information releases on future rewards that have a limited quantity and hopefully we can find some more Trauma One and Two type pages in the future to offer.

Thanks,

John

Jake said...

Damn. I missed out.

Sean R said...

"hopefully we can find some more Trauma One and Two type pages in the future to offer"

I suppose that depends on if you're the one doing the cleanup on them!! :)

I kid, I kid.

There will no doubt be many more for C + S II. Just glancing at the scans today, there are a bunch of heavy cleanup pages involving the tower/ascension. More massive slabs of shrunken tone...!

Again, my apologies to everyone who wanted to participate but missed out this time. And a huge thank you to everyone for their interest and help!

Tony Dunlop said...

Oh my. #74/75 just may be my favorite back-to-back 2 issue sequence in the whole series, so it breaks my heart to see that damage. Thanks, sponsors!

Jeff Seiler said...

Sean, I posted a pledge over at KS today for $306, which works out to $166 for 2 portfolios with shipping, and two Trauma Two plates that I claimed yesterday. I assume shipping on those is included in the $70 per page. Right?

Sean R said...

That's correct, Jeff! Thanks for your support!