This December will be the 40th anniversary of Cerebus The Aardvark, which must be the longest running self-published comic in history, at 300 issues. When I started rereading the series lately I found something not directly related to Cerebus that I had completely forgotten about.
The entire series is now available as 16 trades (except for five issues collected as CEREBUS #0 in 1993), but the early issues were reproduced several times as the print runs of issues in the 80's increased and new readers seeking out the scarcer early issues saw their prices rise. From 1981 to 1984 the first 25 issues were reprinted as a series of thin trades under the name SWORDS OF CEREBUS. Each volume would present the stories from four consecutive issues with introductory essays and a new story or feature of some kind. Those extra short stories were collected as CEREBUS WORLD TOUR BOOK in 1995. The indicia of some issues of CEREBUS published while SWORDS... was in production stated that the series was published fifteen times a year, meaning the twelve monthly issues of the original series plus three issues of SWORDS... It didn't work out that way in the long run. After the first three volumes came out in 1981, only one volume per year came out for the next three years, unless you count the second or third printings of the earlier volumes which occupied those spots on the release schedule. From 1982 to 1984, Aardvark-Vanaheim had added comics by other creators to their roster, briefly publishing under the imprint Renegade until the early 1985, after which Renegade became a separate publisher.
After a year of publishing only CEREBUS, creator Dave Sim took up two new ventures: a new imprint, Aardvark One International, to publish a new series PUMA BLUES and a trade paperback collection of the story arc HIGH SOCIETY, from CEREBUS #26-50. His decision to sell the trade by mail order only was initially ignored by comics distributors. But when it was followed in January 1987 by a trade of the first 25 issues (again) and in June by a trade of the third arc, it became obvious that the trades were selling and not just an indulgent vanity project. The distributors wanted a cut and in 1988, Diamond Comic Distributors decided to take a hostage. They threatened to stop distributing PUMA BLUES, cutting its sales by roughly a third, unless Sim used their services to distribute his trades. To keep their audience, PUMA BLUES moved to Mirage, the publisher of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. To fill their spot on the schedule and mollify Diamond, Sim created CEREBUS BI-WEEKLY, which would reprint the entire series from the beginning, including the editorial content and cover art in color and anything else ordinarily forgotten when the stories were compiled in trades.
By making the reprint series bi-weekly, distributors would be able to offer twice as much Cerebus back catalogue material as new material every month, not just twice a year. It would take about a year to recreate each trade, by which point the reprint series would possibly reach the point where the main series reached its peak sales and print run and the demand for reprints would dwindle. Realistically, it would never catch up to the main series.
The first issue of ...BI-WEEKLY (December 2, 1988) reprints the first issue of CEREBUS in its entirety, right down to the opening editorial and indicia (with the exception of the original address for the publication offices, which had since changed, to avoid confusion). Even this ad, which appeared on the inside back cover of the original, was reproduced with an added annotation above it.
I checked, and sure enough the entire portfolio could be seen on Pinterest and Flickr, which wouldn't even exist until after CEREBUS ended and a couple of decades after Sim began distributing his trades on the direct market. I don't know how many "personal copies" Gene Day held onto but now the whole world has copies, in a sense. As detailed as the art is, it isn't nearly as good as Day would become in just a few years. Despite being shut down by Lucasfilms, Day went on to ink the authorized Marvel STAR WARS series less than a year later. But he was probably first noticed for inking Mike Zeck on MASTER OF KUNG FU and, like Steranko inking Kirby on S.H.I.E.L.D., eventually taking over the pencils as well as his talent developed exponentially. Shortly before he died in the fall of 1982, he began pencilling the STAR WARS series but only completed two issues (#68-69) with Tom Palmer. One of the first new titles Renegade published after splitting from Aardvark-Vanaheim in 1985 was GENE DAY'S BLACK ZEPPELIN, compiled from small press and unpublished stories with the cooperation of his brothers Dan and David. Although some of the stories involving other creators have been included in their own trades, the exclusively Day material isn't and is overdue for reexamination since it spans his earlier, cruder underground origins as well as his better known professional fantasy work. It's just a few more years until his 70th birthday, and it would make a fitting commemoration to finally curate his work.
The entire series is now available as 16 trades (except for five issues collected as CEREBUS #0 in 1993), but the early issues were reproduced several times as the print runs of issues in the 80's increased and new readers seeking out the scarcer early issues saw their prices rise. From 1981 to 1984 the first 25 issues were reprinted as a series of thin trades under the name SWORDS OF CEREBUS. Each volume would present the stories from four consecutive issues with introductory essays and a new story or feature of some kind. Those extra short stories were collected as CEREBUS WORLD TOUR BOOK in 1995. The indicia of some issues of CEREBUS published while SWORDS... was in production stated that the series was published fifteen times a year, meaning the twelve monthly issues of the original series plus three issues of SWORDS... It didn't work out that way in the long run. After the first three volumes came out in 1981, only one volume per year came out for the next three years, unless you count the second or third printings of the earlier volumes which occupied those spots on the release schedule. From 1982 to 1984, Aardvark-Vanaheim had added comics by other creators to their roster, briefly publishing under the imprint Renegade until the early 1985, after which Renegade became a separate publisher.
After a year of publishing only CEREBUS, creator Dave Sim took up two new ventures: a new imprint, Aardvark One International, to publish a new series PUMA BLUES and a trade paperback collection of the story arc HIGH SOCIETY, from CEREBUS #26-50. His decision to sell the trade by mail order only was initially ignored by comics distributors. But when it was followed in January 1987 by a trade of the first 25 issues (again) and in June by a trade of the third arc, it became obvious that the trades were selling and not just an indulgent vanity project. The distributors wanted a cut and in 1988, Diamond Comic Distributors decided to take a hostage. They threatened to stop distributing PUMA BLUES, cutting its sales by roughly a third, unless Sim used their services to distribute his trades. To keep their audience, PUMA BLUES moved to Mirage, the publisher of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. To fill their spot on the schedule and mollify Diamond, Sim created CEREBUS BI-WEEKLY, which would reprint the entire series from the beginning, including the editorial content and cover art in color and anything else ordinarily forgotten when the stories were compiled in trades.
By making the reprint series bi-weekly, distributors would be able to offer twice as much Cerebus back catalogue material as new material every month, not just twice a year. It would take about a year to recreate each trade, by which point the reprint series would possibly reach the point where the main series reached its peak sales and print run and the demand for reprints would dwindle. Realistically, it would never catch up to the main series.
The first issue of ...BI-WEEKLY (December 2, 1988) reprints the first issue of CEREBUS in its entirety, right down to the opening editorial and indicia (with the exception of the original address for the publication offices, which had since changed, to avoid confusion). Even this ad, which appeared on the inside back cover of the original, was reproduced with an added annotation above it.
I checked, and sure enough the entire portfolio could be seen on Pinterest and Flickr, which wouldn't even exist until after CEREBUS ended and a couple of decades after Sim began distributing his trades on the direct market. I don't know how many "personal copies" Gene Day held onto but now the whole world has copies, in a sense. As detailed as the art is, it isn't nearly as good as Day would become in just a few years. Despite being shut down by Lucasfilms, Day went on to ink the authorized Marvel STAR WARS series less than a year later. But he was probably first noticed for inking Mike Zeck on MASTER OF KUNG FU and, like Steranko inking Kirby on S.H.I.E.L.D., eventually taking over the pencils as well as his talent developed exponentially. Shortly before he died in the fall of 1982, he began pencilling the STAR WARS series but only completed two issues (#68-69) with Tom Palmer. One of the first new titles Renegade published after splitting from Aardvark-Vanaheim in 1985 was GENE DAY'S BLACK ZEPPELIN, compiled from small press and unpublished stories with the cooperation of his brothers Dan and David. Although some of the stories involving other creators have been included in their own trades, the exclusively Day material isn't and is overdue for reexamination since it spans his earlier, cruder underground origins as well as his better known professional fantasy work. It's just a few more years until his 70th birthday, and it would make a fitting commemoration to finally curate his work.
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