Cerebus 33 p 2

Cerebus #33 p 2
eBay 120953075459
July 25, 2012
Seller: wmprod1959
Price: $860

In which the FInal Five... oh, wait...

In which Robots 11-15 make their debut...

In which Robots 6-10 Appear...

In Which I Have Cute Forgotten Robots...

A while ago, I saw a blurb on this guy's damned cute little Forgotten Robots, but he was not making them at that moment. I bookmarked the site, anyhow, and stumbled back on it last week.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/forgottenrobots/sold?ref=shopinfo_sales_leftnav

Now I have my first set of 5... and yes, indeed, that is only the first set.

Like the Cylons: I have a plan.

Each robot is between 3 and 5 inches ( 7.5 cm and 12.5 cm) tall, not including antenna. There is an US nickle in each photo for size reference.

The heads, bodies and base are wood. The arms and legs are made from wire and sculpey. All other parts are found objects made from wood, wire or plastic. Hand painted.

In which I give unsolicited advice...

I call your attention to a new episode of CerebusTV, featuring some nice reflections on the artistic genius of Wally Wood, and an explanation for one of the things I never understood in Wood's "22 frames" advice (as well as cameo appearances - scroll to the end - by Gerhard and Max). 

Now, as long as I have your attention, here is what I would have advised as a successful crowd-sourcing project involving Cerebus the Aardvark (nobody asked me, mind you, and given the road they're on now, there is no way, no how, this could ever take place, even in theory).

When it comes down to it, Digital Cerebus is a reprint project aimed at $1 issues. Sure there will be audio features and other visual goodies, but I think we went down this road with the Cerebus Reprint series, years ago. A reprint project is a reprint project, and it seems to me that it ought to be less work, not more work, for the people involved in it. They put their chips on over-producing something (digital editions) that most people might well be satisfied with if it was done in the traditional way (make nice scans from the most convenient source material you have; minimize the work, maximize the profit). 

What most people want, who want a digital copy, is the convenience of not schlepping books around. To this point, while the total amount of money raised by the Kickstarter campaign (or, as a dear friend calls it, the Headscratcher campaign) exceeded the original objective... the original objective was clearly too low to get the job done. And as another friend asked, immediately: "Did Dave incorporate A-V in the US so he would not get raped on the taxes?" But I digress; I've made this point already. 

At the end of the day, 1140 people were willing to provide $56 each in order to see something produced that will cost everyone else $25 to buy. So here is what we learn: you might be able to count on about twice the retail amount of crowd-sourced money from those who will pre-buy an enhanced reprint project. Hold that multiplier in your head, for a moment, while I get back to the original subject.

At the end of its run, at least according to the Intertubes, Cerebus had about a 9000-copy circulation. At $2.25 a pop, that's about $20K gross per issue. And we know a goodly hunk of that did not go to A-V. Twenty-five issues grosses in at $500K (old school numbers; I'll get back to that, too).

Here is what I would have advised: new content, pre-sold in a 25-issue limited series that was topical to some era of Cerebus' life. 

Vol 1: Cerebus: the teen years

Vol 2: Cerebus: the tax collector

Vol 3: Cerebus: adventures in Boreala

Vol 4: Cerebus: politics in Palnu

Vol 5: Cerebus: the conquest of Iest

You get the picture.

Package up pre-sold subscriptions through the Print-on-Demand people ($4 an issue for 20 pages of new content). 

Twenty-five issues retail for $100 (throw in the postage & packaging).

Now let's back up to the crowd-sourcing, and my provocative question du jour: if 1140 will pay twice-retail to buy this $25 enhanced reprint item, do you think that 2000 people would pay twice-retail for new content that is part of the Cerebus mainstream continuity?

Sonny, that is what I call a no-brainer.

That's $200 each for pre-buying a 25-issue series. That's twice the retail, per issue, and 3-4 times the retail on the anticipated phone-book. On the other hand, you only need 2000 people to buy in (betcha a buck they're out there) and if you figure out your premiums the right way, I think you can actually expect a higher buy-in.

So, that's $400K gross for 2000 guaranteed sales without the hit taken out of the $500K on the 9000 circulation (old school). Set up the crowd-sourcing the right way so that you are not paying half to the US Treasury, and you're back in the funny book business with actual lures to the older material through this new content. 

I'd buy in. 

How about the numbers?

Glamourpuss is selling somewhere between 2200-4400 of each issue (the comichron.com data are weirdly inconsistent, but my point - pre-selling 2000 people on new Cerebus content - is made even at the low end of the Glamourpuss numbers). Hit 50% of the circulation from the end of the Cerebus run and each of these proposed 25-issue series is a million dollar property. Do it on a bi-monthly schedule: that's 4 years per series at $250K gross income per year. And I'll betcha that's a somewhat conservative estimate. 

We all know (based on previous Q/A) that Dave has a lot of the back-story in mind already, and (frankly) I'll bet he can still write and draw satire and parody as well as ever because (frankly) it's in his bones. 

And it would HAVE to be more interesting to work on this than an audiobook project, and engage the first and best skills that Dave has: writing pictures, drawing words.  

As another friend said: Dave's denial of his identity being intertwined with "Cerebus the Aardvark" (I'm done, I'm moving forward) is more or less exactly what Leonard Nimoy did in his 1975 autobiography "I am not Spock." We know how this turned out. 

If, that is, anyone asked me for advice, which they didn't.

The biggest down side? I mean... the really REALLY biggest downside?

No Gerhard on the pages. 

Cerebus 21 p 6 (no sale) plus media recs

eBay 190695306254
Cerebus 21 p 6
Buy It Now: $1199.00
Opening Bid: $999.00
No takers

Things I read and watched while I was relaxing in China:

Most of the last season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine holds up, I think. If you feel like downloading a few days worth of viewing, I'd go with Season 6 (episodes 19 & 26), then Season 7 (episodes 1, 2, 4, 12, and then 15-25).

I sat down and watched the full first season of Falling Skies about a week before the premiere of the second season. I enjoy this show.

I had a hankering for catching up on some time travel movies that I had not seen in a while and that could deserve re-watching, so if you are looking for a trifecta that you might not otherwise put together, try these:

Peggy Sue Got Married: Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage in a surreal trip back to high school. Turner's performance is really good, and the movie is probably underrated.

Time After Time: Malcolm McDowell as HG Wells and David Warner as Jack the Ripper travel to 1979 and encounter Mary Steenburgen, long before she started hanging around with Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown. 

Somewhere in Time: Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour - You don't realize how caught up you have gotten in Reeve's role until he sees the penny. 

This all got kicked off from reading Stephen King's new time travel novel "11/22/63" which revolves around an attempt to prevent President Kennedy's assassination. King explores themes familiar to fans of "LOST" - particularly the stubborn nature of the past, and the questions of destiny versus free choice.