December 31 2007

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #1 p 6
July 15, 2003
Selling Price: $2587

This one, and the page from yesterday, would be nice to reunite as a pair. Even at $5K in 2003 dollars, though, it would be a pricey proposition.

December 30 2007

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #1 p 5
July 13, 2003
Selling Price: $2300

December 29 2007

The cover to issue #49 re-appeared in another Heritage auction just a year later and went for less (unfortunate for the seller... lucky for the buyer - that ol' rascal alchemist57, as it turns out)

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #49 Cover
August 13, 2003
Selling Price: $1667

December 28 2007

I was cruising the Heritage Auctions archives yesterday (because, apparently, a 15-urgent-item to-do list is not enough to keep my attention) and there was a bunch of Cerebus pages from the 2002-04 time period that I had never archived here. Info about the buyers and sellers is missing, but I can record what I know.

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #49 Cover
March 15, 2002
Selling Price: $2127

December 27 2007 Cerebus #17 Cover Prelim

December 27 2007

eBay item no. 260195918701
Seller: angelina-steven
Buyer: davidb1193
Price: $760.00

December 26 2007 Glamourpuss

Dave Sim's "Secret Project #2" revealed...

Glamourpuss

I'm pretty sure I'll not be starting the "Glamour the Original ArtPuss" blog, y'all; just saying...

December 24 2007

December 22 2007

December 20 2007
eBay item no. 260193750447
Seller: angelina-steven
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $109.16

Although it is not dated, I agreed with the seller that this was from the ca. 1979 era (compare the style of the Cerebus drawing with one from my collection, just below it; the way Dave drew Cerebus can probably peg a drawing from the 1978-81 time frame to within a few months, I think)

December 21 2007

December 20 2007
eBay item no. 260193751312
Seller: angelina-steven
Buyer: stayhome32
Price: $359.96

This was definitely a nice drawing; the kind you would like to see Gerhard take his watercolours to.

And, welcome to the gentle readers over at the yahoo group, who posted for the first time yesterday about The World Without Cerebus commissions.

December 19 2007 Gerhard... Revealed!

I just got the "Torn Asunder" original this morning, and it is exquisite.

And, to top it off: the return address label with Gerhard's full name.

You ready?








Really?







OK...






Don't say I did not warn you...



























Bwah hah hah hah

December 18 2007 The 2007 Market Report

Before I get to that, another big muchas gracias smooch to Tony over at tiptonepresents.blogspot.com for the ver'nice coverage of "The World Without Cerebus."

http://tiptonepresents.blogspot.com/2007/12/30-years-of-cerebus-speaking-of-which-i.html



And now, back to our regularly scheduled feature...

In October 2006 I issued the first "Cerebus the Original Aartvark" Market Report on Cerebus art prices (published pages only) recorded in public auctions (figuring that private sales were not really indicative of market prices). Even then, if the price paid was an obvious outlying point, I pulled it and reported it separately.

December 2007 Market Report


I. The Outlying Pages

LAST YEAR: 2005-2006 (October) outlying pages:
Cerebus #59 p10 (the big penis joke): $1760
Cerebus #132 pp 12-13 (jaka at door): $1652
Cerebus #103 pp 8-9 (in the tower): $1125
Cerebus #7 p3 (an elrod page): $1035

THIS YEAR: 2007 outlying pages:
Cerebus #189 p 16-17: $1550
Cerebus #2 p 14: $1358.33
Cerebus #74 p 12: $1136.11

(the double-pages are really tough to arbitrarily split in half to create a per-page number, so I left them out; if you do split them, they also pretty much come into line with the averages, interestingly enough)


II. The 2007 Market report

LAST YEAR: For 2005-2006 (October), (40 pages total):
from issues 1-100 (pre-Ger): ave = $527 (N=21)
from issues 1-100 (post-Ger): ave = $725 (N=6)
from issues 101-200: ave = $729 (N=5)
from issues 201-300: ave = $578 (N=8)

average for the 40 pages = $592


THIS YEAR: For 2005-2007 (December), (53 pages total):
from issues 1-100 (pre-Ger): ave = $542 (N=27) +$15 (price/page ave 2007: $596)
from issues 1-100 (post-Ger): ave = $768 (N=8) +$43 (price/page ave 2007: $898)
from issues 101-200: ave = $693 (N=10) -$36 (price/page ave 2007: $657)
from issues 201-300: ave = $578 (N=8) no new public sales

average for the 53 pages = $610


Early pages went up, both pre-Ger ($527 to $596), particularly the early Ger pages ($725 to $898). The mid-series pages went down ($729 to $657).

Missing from the 2007 market is the input from one new buyer (ME) who invested quite a bit, off-line, to build a small but select collection. The prices for the individual pages was not revealed, but 4 covers were purchased for $5-6K each. Open market covers went for $1300 and $2673.

So: I hereby declare the 2007 market value for the average Cerebus page to be unchanged, at $600. Pages from before issue 100 with Gerhard are the hawt tickets.

December 16 2007 "Collateral Damage"

Muchas Gracias to Margaret for pointing me to another nice endorsement of "The World Without Cerebus" project.

http://savagecritic.com/2007/12/all-that-we-see-or-seem-douglas-reads.html

Nice! Thanks.

And now, a reminder - At the end of issue #29, Cerebus and the (not real) Regency Elf were playing wickets in the Upper City. Cerebus lined up a shot and "CRAK" ... his red-striped wickets ball went flying over the wall. The WWC moment here - what happened to that ball when in careened into the Lower CIty.

"Collateral Damage"






































And, lest we forget:

"Torn Asunder"













"Fallen Idol"

December 15 2007 Cerebus #23 p19

December 9 2007
eBay item no. 280178467179
Seller: dp banks seller
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $255

Definitely the sort of page that adds character to a collection rather than becomes a centerpiece. It's from a memorable moment, involves characters who are both more interesting later, and there was always something so EEE-vile and ominous about this character - you knew that something was a little "off" with her. And in accord with the generalization about pre-Ger, non-Butz pages, it doesn't break the bank to pick it up.


















by the way, dpbanks picked this up a couple of years ago...
see the blog entry from April 2006...

September 7 2005
Cerebus #23 p 19

eBay item number: 6552738835
Seller: jjonahjameson1
Buyer: dpbanks
Price: $499.99

December 14 2007 Cerebus #9 p16

December 8 2007
eBay item no. 280179875791
Seller: edcoyote
Buyer: kgmason
Price: $499.99

I think it might be time to go back and have a "Greenspan Moment" and update the statistics on Cerebus original art based on the public prices paid for it.

December 13 2007 CBLDF

OK, it is marginally off-topic cuz there's no Cerebus or Cerebus-related action going on here, but inquiring collectors need to know what's up with the DVS market... eh?

December 9 2007
eBay item no. 140184679986
Seller: cbldf
Buyer: none
Price: ($810) did not hit the reserve

"Drawn exclusively for the CBLDF's news magazine Busted! by Dave Sim. Ink on 11 x 17 artboard."

December 12 2007 Epic Illustrated #16 p 43 (III)

And now, I hold in my hand, the last panel...

November 17, 2007
eBay item no. 160179071300
Seller: tannerrocks
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $405

"Arnold the Isshurian" from Epic Illustrated (panel 6 of 6)
Image area: 13x5" (done on a standard board)

December 11 2007 Epic Illustrated #16 p 43 (II)

November 17, 2007
eBay item no. 160179071211
Seller: tannerrocks
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $405

"Arnold the Isshurian" from Epic Illustrated (panel 5 of 6)
Image area: 13x5" (done on a standard board)

December 10 2007 Epic Illustrated #16 p 43 (I)

November 17, 2007
eBay item no. 160179071084
Seller: tannerrocks
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $405

"Arnold the Isshurian" from Epic Illustrated (panel 4 of 6)
Image area: 13x5" (done on a standard board)

December 9 2007 Epic Illustrated #16 p 42 (III)

November 17, 2007
eBay item no. 160179069380
Seller: tannerrocks
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $405

"Arnold the Isshurian" from Epic Illustrated (panel 3 of 6)
Image area: 13x5" (done on a standard board)

December 8 2007 Epic Illustrated #16 p 42 (II)

November 17, 2007
eBay item no. 160179069241
Seller: tannerrocks
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $405

"Arnold the Isshurian" from Epic Illustrated (panel 2 of 6)
Image area: 13x5" (done on a standard board)

December 7 2007 Epic Illustrated #16 p 42 (I)

November 17, 2007
eBay item no. 160179068110
Seller: tannerrocks
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $405

"Arnold the Isshurian" from Epic Illustrated (panel 1 of 6)
Image area: 13x5" (done on a standard board)

December 2 2006 A few tentative plans

I floated a shorter version of this to Gerhard last night. Once I slept on it, some of the ideas got a little better.

(Ger: See below)

Next on "The World Without Cerebus" ...

I've had this scene in mind for a while, although there are two different takes on it. And while we (heh... "we," as if...) might decide to do both, only one of them is really consistent with the genuine "World Without Cerebus" motif.

The first one, as I say, is on target ("Twenty-Seven"), the sorta second one ("Thirty-Eight," see below) is not quite.

"Twenty-Seven"

At the end of issue 12, Cerebus has a boat full of gold as he travels along that canal in Beduin (part of the Feld River) next to the Merchant/Cockroach's house. Then the bottom drops out (of the boat, literally), and a ton of gold coins (and his original grey sword... note!) fall to the bottom of the canal. It would be cool to have a POV in the water, seeing the pile of coins and the sword, where we're looking up, somehow, into the night sky, with the lighted windows and moon showing up out of the water. Some of the wood from the boat would be floating on the surface, if not the remains of the boat's shape. The buildings and docking areas of the canal are laid out in the issue, so there is a lot of reference to work with. Issue 152 also shows the bottom of the river where a couple of the coins are.

The meaning of the title ("Twenty-Seven") will be obvious to the Aardvark faithful.

...

OK, before I talk about "Thirty-Eight," let me connect the dots. Ger's been pretty speedy on getting to these, so let's preview the obvious follow-up to "Twenty-Seven."

"Rough Trade"

Once I remembered "Twenty-Seven" was an actually an iconic scene with the grey sword (I was only thinking about the gold, initially), the next in the series occurred to me: I now wanted to find the key scenes involving the helmet and the medallions.

And... viola... it only takes one composition: Cerebus sold/traded his helmet (off screen, somewhere between issues 3 and 4). In some respects, this is the premiere "World Without Cerebus" scene, given the significance of his not having his helmet in issue 5... because of this sale/trade, the world was definitely without one version of Cerebus. And as I recall, the helmet was sold for the paint that was used to make the medallions more fashion-sensible to the city, so one composition picks up the helmet and the medallions. I need to check if DVS said it was a direct trade, or if the helmet was sold, outright, in order to purchase the paint. Whatever, I can imagine ways for them to be there, together.

...

"Thirty-Eight"

An interesting composition would also be a view of the city block where the Merchant/Cockroach lived (issues 11/12), with the goal of having a "cutaway view" of the building (a la Kirby-esque Baxter Building exterior/interior shot) that reveals the location of the pile of gold that was dropped down a shaft from the 2nd floor of the Merchant's house, and for which there was an exit that could be made where the gold would drain into a boat on that selfsame canal (all depicted in these two issues). It could be interesting to do, but it is not obviously within the "effects of Cerebus' passing" theme (although given another day, I might be able to come up with something).

Green Stamps to the person who can tell me why I am proposing this title; bonus points for guessing how I think "Thirty-Eight" might be integrated into the drawing.

...

Feedback from the peanut gallery would be welcomed. "Twenty-Seven," "Rough Trade," and "Thirty-Eight"???