As the story goes, the pages to all these stories (except the page 1's from Stargazer One and Hybrid) were "rescued from a dumpster." Presumably, the rescuer contacted Dave years later (unless the pages all changed hands in one lump), and the 11 page (minus p1) Stargazer One and Hybrid stories appeared in Otto Space #1 (1993) and #2 (1995), presumably because these two were more of the scifi genre.
Sometime after that, all the pages appeared on eBay (late 2003/early 2004). I missed out on the 12 page Crimson Alpha story to eBayer Zerbutz, but did snag all the rest. I figured I would commission Dave to re-do the two missing page 1's. When I wrote to him, he told me most of this story... and sent along nice photocopies of the missing page 1's, which he had, and some other stuff related to Revolt (the cover, some ads, etc). I now had a bunch of pages that he did not have copies of, so we swapped copies and now had as complete a version of Revolt 3000 and Blue Dynamo as had existed for almost 30 years. There was another story, The Masque, which he did not recall at all.
There was a full-size set of photocopies of the Crimson Alpha story, which included a bit of a surprise that I have never seen discussed anywhere. OK, more about that in a moment.
I posted all this stuff, and copies of the correspondence from Dave (including his hand-written scripts from the Revolt 3000 books) at my Art Site, along with the statement that " if you have "Crimson Alpha" or you know who does... I would be extremely eager to buy these pages and reassemble the existing bits of 'Revolt 3000.'"
And then, a week or so ago, Zerbutz put Crimson Alpha up for auction.
eBay item no. 400010651898
Seller: Zerbutz
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $666 (of all things)
And now we need to know the rest of the story, kids.
On page 11 of the Crimson Alpha story, drawn in early 1977, there is a most curious plant stand.
Here, let me blow that up for you:
When I first saw the photocopies from Crimson Alpha, I went a little googly over them because (at least by definition) this has to be an early (early) drawing of Cerebus.
We know from what Dave has said before that the first drawing of Cerebus was the logo for Deni's never-published "Cerberus" (sic) fanzine, and that this was done in early 1977 (as reported in part 2 of the "Why an Aardvark? memoir).
No one knows where that original drawing is as "the magazine and the money vanished without a trace."
Again, from Dave: "In the first weeks after creating the aardvark mascot, I had done a single comic-book panel — just to see what he would look like from a different angle. Some months later, after the loss of the originals and printing bill for Cerebus No. I, the digest-zine, I drew a sample page, incorporating the original logo. It sat on a shelf in my studio in Deni’s and my first apartment — 48 Weber Street East — through the spring and summer of 1977."
So the presumptive second and third drawings of Cerebus were this single panel and then the sample page.
The fourth drawings come after the commitment to the Cerebus the Aardvark book, which is the style sheet I picked up years ago.
And then the next drawing of Cerebus is atop a horse... page #1 of issue #1.
Where-oh-where does this drawing from Crimson Alpha fit into the chronology?
Is it the drawing referenced here?: "In the first weeks after creating the aardvark mascot, I had done a single comic-book panel — just to see what he would look like from a different angle."
I sure hope so.
