Cerebus Archive Report #5

July 2005

(The entire text - comment and response - is included. Dave's words are in bold italics.)

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<< June 4th, 2005 >>

Just to update: Dan Parker is working on the software to do the actual archiving "keyword" inputting, I've return the first two notebooks to Dave and I've gotten the third and fourth notebooks (Albatross Encore).

--
Take care,
Margaret
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Okay,

So there IS gonna be a color volume.

If the decision is to reprint "The Animated Cerebus Portfolio" as it  originally appeared, and Dave needs a copy, he can borrow mine  (trust me, I owe him more than this.)

I'd lean towards a direct reprint for two reasons.
1. It's how it originally appeared, so for completists, it should be  reprinted as is.
2. It's 46 plates. That plus 10 pages for "His First Fifth"  (including the intro page), plus 5 pages for "Selling Insurance/ The
Girl Next Door", plus X pages for "Arnold The Issurian",

DAVE: “Arnold the Isshurian” is in black and white

plus (what  else is there?) My point being that a minimum of 61 pages would  make for a nice thick volume as opposed to a slim one. Depending on  the price, why not go all out?

Matt
(more later...)
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--------- That's not the problem. The problem is, in order for the  reproduction to be as good as possible, Dave would need to  reconstruct some of the work. Simply photgraphing the plates as  printed, and then re-printing them might have undesirable results.  Grainy, incorrect colors, etc.

--------- Indeed. And seeing as how it's apparently going to be done  by Erik Larson and Image Comics, the quality should be good indeed!

-Jeff

DAVE: Haven’t heard a word from Erik Larsen since he agreed to do discuss creator’s rights in a dialogue format.  He posted what he had to say, I posted what I had to say and that was the end of the dialogue.  I also haven’t heard from Bob Chapman at Graphitti Designs.  I don’t mean to be offensive, but this happens a lot with me.  People say that they’re going to do something and then they don’t.  A “disconnect” point is arrived at, I suspect, when they realize what the consequences to their reputations are in actually dealing with Dave Sim.  I’m certainly open to any other interpretations that people would like to suggest and I realize that actual liberals think I’m being paranoid, but as far a I can see it’s an unwillingness on the part of actual liberals (that is people who are open-minded enough to understand that it’s not intellectually valid to shun people with whom you disagree politically) to understand that people they see as being like them are not actually like them at all.  That is liberals think that Marxist-feminists are liberals. They aren’t. They’re Marxist-feminists.  If you don’t toe the party line, you get shunned and part of the party line of Marxist-feminism in the comic-book field is Thou shalt have no contact with Dave Sim. I think liberals get the message pretty quickly once they try to have contact with me and realize that it’s an either/or proposition:  either shun Dave Sim or be shunned like Dave Sim.  Most of them toe the party line pretty quickly after that.  

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-------- L nny should be posting the new poll for Minds soon, but  there's been no Policy discussion lately, so... does anyone have any  thoughts they'd like to share?

-------- I was looking at the policy database just now. 2 things  struck me:

**Physical Aspects of the Cerebus Legacy: The trade paperback on  newsprint with square-bound black and white covers is Dave's  preferred format for presenting the Cerebus Novel. He is, however,  open to people presenting it in defferent ways - that's why he's  leaving the negatives with Preney and designating that anyone who
wants to do an individual volume on their own or a series of volumes  are welcome to do so if they pay up front to have the negatives  reproduced and for their first few printing jobs. (Dave to Group 12/04)**

-------- OK, so... does this mean someone can do a hardcover version now, while Dave is still alive? Or is this strictly after Dave  passes, and the Legacy passes into the public domain?

-Jeff
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I thought it was when Dave and Ger both passed on and Cerebus was left in the public domain.

-Margaret

DAVE: Yes, strictly after Dave and Ger pass.  We have the sole publication rights as long as we’re both alive to the entirety of Cerebus.

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-------- I was toying with the idea of a bunch of us pooling our money, and getting a limited hardcover printing in the works. Could have a cool seal on the cover "Endorsed by Aardvark-Vanaheim and the Cerebus Legacy Society." Get some kind of name recognition out there so maybe it might actually mean something in the future, when Dave's
not around. Donate profits to the CBLDF or something.

-------- The Cerebus Legacy Society. I like that:)


-Jeff
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That does sound nice.

-Margaret

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**Physical Aspects of the Cerebus Legacy: The Cerebus novel proper should not be translated from its original English into any other tongue. (Thought expressed by Dave in a letter to myself (Billy), to be discussed.)**

-------- I'd like to know more of the context of the statement. Billy?

-Jeff
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I thought Dave had talked about this in an interview somewhere - one of the longish interviews, say the TCJ, Feature, etc. I don't have time to look it up now (gotta go to work, gah!) but if I recalled correctly Dave said he didn't want them translated into other languages purely because he would not be able to know if the translation was correct, that something would be lost in translating the story from English, and that it should be read in English only - so nothing is lost. Maybe someone else recalls this interview and can get a quote from it.

--
Take care,
Margaret
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Dave acknkowleges that since he doesn't know Greek or Hebrew, he has to read Scripture in his native tongue, but doesn't that apply to Cerebus as well? Ideally, it should be read in English only so nothing is lost (just as the Bible should be read in Hebrew and the Koran *spoken* in Arabic), but when such is not possible, is a translation worse than nothing at all. Is a German-only speaker better off not reading Cerebus than reading a flawed translation?

- Larry Hart

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-------- My first reaction is dissent. It seems to me that if you're going to thoroughly promote Cerebus, and try to cement it's place in the lexicon of "literature," you would want the work disseminated as much as possible. Would this not, logically, involve translation into other languages? I will certainly post this question to Gerhard, and hope Dave will explain his position further.

-Jeff

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I actually agree with Dave here, even though I would be without any real knowledge of some of my favorite authors if they felt the same way. But think about the one thing even Dave's most serious detractors agree is a strength: his lettering. Sure, you can translate the words, but then what -- are you going to reletter?

Steve Bolhafner

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---------- The easy out there is to turn all of Dave's lettering into a computer font, and re-letter at will. Sure, it's not as perfect as Dave re-lettering all the pages himself, but that's an unrealistic ideal. Too much work, I would think!

-Jeff
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I'm sorry, but I think that's just absurd. Sure, you can do that for the "normal" lettering, but the many, many, many examples such as the one I gave just flat out won't work that way. Thatcher's speeches in "Guys," for instance. I could go on and on. Dave's lettering isn't just carrying the verbal information, it is part of the picture, an integral part of the picture that could NOT be re-MOTE-ly duplicated, in many, many instances, by a computer font that resembled the way Dave usually makes letters (which varies more than you notice, if you begin examining them closely).

Steve Bolhafner

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---------- Yeah, I was flipping through some pages, and you're right. There's a lot that would have to be done by hand (or at least warping text to fit the balloon, which would be time consuming). But more could be done than you suggest, I think. It could be done, and in lieu of doing it all by hand, this to me is better than the "footnote" option. Like I said, this was the "easy way out" and far from perfect. All conjecture of course, if Dave doesn't want to do it:)

-Jeff
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You say the balloons would be untouched, but translations tend to be longer than the original -- how are you going to fit them in there? Even if you do, the letters will now be smaller, which has an effect on the visual impact.

Steve Bolhafner

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---------- Less of an impact than shrinking the whole page, and having to look elsewhere on the page for a translation, IMO!

-Jeff
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And there are "fonts" that Dave uses esentially once -- how are you going to "imitate" them?

Steve Bolhafner

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---------- I would have to go through every book, but the unique fonts are a very small percentage of what would need to be translated. Not that big a deal when you look at the size of the  *whole* project. And some of the later fonts are, I believe, actually fonts (some of the "Biblical looking" stuff).

-Jeff
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I don't agree that footnote-type translation glosses wouldn't work, but you'd have to have a very large page size, at least 20-25% larger than the phone books, and then reduce the original page size to maybe 75%, then use the side margin and bottom created thereby to translate the balloons and captions in script format. It wouldn't be great, but I don't see any other possibility that would even be remotely acceptable.

Steve Bolhafner

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----------- As I stated above, I think this method is *far* more disturbing to the flow of the page, not to mention the added cost of production and distribution for such a large volume.

-Jeff
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We won't even mention the fact that I'm fairly certain the words "computer font" would resonate with Dave about the same way "work for hire contract" would . . .

Steve Bolhafner

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----------- On that, I totally agree!
----------- I'd have to see more of what he said to Billy, but I'm  guessing that another reason for non-translation would be people not "getting it" as far as parody goes. All the celebrity stuff is based on English speaking people, right? Many of the jokes would be lost, I guess (no offense), unless the reader had extensive knowledge of North American pop culture. And at that point, said reader probably already reads English. Hmmm... maybe just certain volumes, like Jaka's Story ( I don't think understanding the parody of Wilde is needed to enjoy the book), and Reads;P

-Jeff
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The problem is that with a comic book -- and especially with Cerebus, more perhaps than any other comic book I can think of offhand, the words are themselves visual elements as well as syntactic units, and indeed sometimes convey the primary visual "punch" or a panel or page.

Take for example Jaka's "I said I'd wait for you to remember! Well you did remember, and you DIDN'T COME BACK!" in #75 (?). I don't remember the exact issue number or even the exact words, but I can see the basic shape and form of those word balloons just as clearly in my mind as Jaka's face when she says those words (or something like them).

Steve Bolhafner

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--------- Agreed. But with the computer font, the word balloons would be untouched. Onlly the letters themselves. And with enough examples, everything could be imitated.

-Jeff
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If someone is genuinely interested in translating Cerebus, the only *possible* way I could see it being done that wouldn't seriously detract from the book (and therefore the only way Dave, certainly, and most of us I would hope if we outlive him, would allow it) is to present the pages untouched with a corresponding "gloss" below translating in script format or some such. Such a book would have to be a very large page format to keep from reducing the original page size too much to be practical, and I don't think even facing pages, the way poetry is often presented, would work, because the page flow becomes important at some point and occasionally includes double page spreads. Facing page translations would work for the first volume, possibly, because Dave started out working one page at a time -- indeed the pages in the first few issues were presented with their odd-even polarity reversed from the original in the Bi-Weekly reprints, starting with what had been page 1 on an even numbered page after the intro. But I think that by the Palnu Trilogy Dave was already experimenting with using page turning as a rhythmic factor, and certainly by High Society you wouldn't want to do, say, original pages on the even-numbered pages and translations on the facing page. It just wouldn't work.


See? I told you all my next post would be on-topic!

Steve Bolhafner

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A more-expensive way of doing it would be to include the translations as a... what's the term, lay-over?  Those plastic sheets put over the original art, often how lettering is done anyway, with the translations overlapping the English word-balloons.

I'm not sure how binding would work, and it's probably unworkable anyway.

-Chris W

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--------- Agreed. Sub-text or footnoting would just take up too much space on the page.

-Jeff
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You're thinking 20th Century. ;)

It'll be on a DVD. You look at the original (English) pages, but you can click on each word balloon or sound effect for a pop-up explanation. Or you can hit a "translate" button and the words themselves are translated on the page into your language--which doesn't look quite as good as the English version, but you can click back to that version at any time to see the real thing.

- Larry Hart

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---------- Actually, that's very do-able. It could be as simple as a Flash menu interface. Roll the mouse pointer over a word balloon, and a seperate text box appears with the translation in plain text.

-Jeff

DAVE: On the subject of translations, this came up a while ago in correspondence with a reader who was eager to do a translation.  As with everything else in my life the overwhelming sense I get is that I am making everyone’s life miserable by being completely uncooperative with what they want.  I don’t know why I don’t just actually have the “screw you” mentality that everyone attributes to me, but I don’t.  I always try to figure out how I can make people’s lives less miserable by finding some measure of cooperation.  The best that I could come up with was that any individual who wanted to could start their own website of Cerebus in, say, German.  And they could just start with the first page of the first volume and start translating into pure German text and keep going.  If you only spoke German and you wanted to read Cerebus, all you would have to do is get the first volume, click on the guy’s website and read along.  Where I saw the website as having an advantage would be because you could refine the translation as more people became aware of it.  Other bilingual people would be able to say, “I think a more accurate translation for panel 4 on page 87 would be…” and then fill in the blank with what they think would be a preferable translation.

      I suspect that you would get into unresolvable arguments for the same reason that if I suggest a different way of phrasing a sentence in Neil Gaiman’s new book, Anansi Boys (which I did as a matter of fact) there is no way of determining whether my version or Neil’s version of that sentence is the better one.  In that case Neil decides because it’s Neil’s book (and a really good one, I recommend that all of you pick it up if inclined to do so).  In this case you would have to establish at the outset that the guy running the website did not have pre-eminent authority just because it was his (or her) website.  How awkward does it get to have two or three different translations for a given panel? The impression that I get from the translation biz is that you actually create a different story more attuned to the language and consequently each translator becomes a new author creating something grounded in the original material but drastically modified to resonate with the new language and that this verges on psychosis with romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian) just because that’s the way those people are.   I don’t think, as an example, that Woody Allen was actually as much a fan of Fellini as he was a fan of Italian theatrics and mongrelized English subtitles and dubbing.  He liked the exotic quality that you only get from bad translations. 

    So, the problem as I see it is that as far as I’m concerned I’m not really giving anything away by saying it’s fine by me if someone wants to do a website translating Cerebus into German (or Spanish or French or whatever), if their actual motivation is to do the best possible translation.  If it’s a website with a discussion group attached and everyone gets to hash out what the best choices are, I think that would be great. As I say, gradually refining the translation and getting it as close to the original as possible.  But I think you have to take it as a given that if Freud X starts such a website, in a short space of time Jung Y is going to decide that Freud X has completely missed the point of Cerebus and will feel compelled to start his own website with the way Cerebus would actually sound in German. Unlike these policy discussions I can’t adjudicate because I don’t speak German so I have no way of determining whether Freud X or Jung Y is closer to my way of expressing things.  I would be supportive as long as anyone starting such a thing or developing such a thing understood that they didn’t own anything out of the deal.  That a big part of the deal is that anyone can take the existing translation and tweak a bunch of phrases and then start their own website and let the best website win. To me?  That’s completely kosher, yes, for that I definitely give permission.  I think if nothing else, over the period of twenty years or thirty years it would probably actively demonstrate just how nebulous and ultimately futile a field translation is. And I imagine you would eliminate the people with the wrong motivation—the ones who want to corner the Cerebus market for themselves or be known as THE authorized translator of Cerebus into German.  At least I hope you would.  But in terms of the material actually being re-lettered, it’s an arduous task for someone who doesn’t speak the language and I think the intonation comes a lot from the look of the letters.  Peanuts wouldn’t read the same lettered by Ben Oda, even though Ben Oda was a brilliant letterer.  Way before that could be considered as a separate discipline, I think it would have to be debated at the websites.  I mean, then you’re not just talking about what specific German words should be used, but what Germanic dialect, what Germanic inflections and what Germanic slang should be used and where the emphases fall in that Germanic dialect—first syllable, first two syllables.  Since no one has even attempted it yet, I would say let’s wait and see if you can get a consensus on the words—I’m betting you can’t just because of the nature of translation—and then move on to different dialects.  I suspect that the words alone are going to be more than a full-time occupation for a sufficient number of decades for any number of participants and that dialect, inflection and slang will get left by the wayside by anyone but trained linguists.

This is apt to be taken the wrong way, but what the heck, as long as we’re discussing it openly—I think most people who have an aptitude for languages are largely humourless individuals and that you need a sense of humour to translate Cerebus.  Writing comedy isn’t just a matter of finding the right words, but the right combination of words and the right sounds.  There are phrases that are funny and there are phrases that aren’t funny.  If the translator has no sense of humour he or she isn’t likely to know the difference.  They’ll be laughing at the joke in English and then murdering it in German. Again, this is why I think it would have to be a communal effort with a lot of give and take.  I suspect one translation will become four translations, will become eight translations with a lot of acrimony and back-stabbing and then one of them will just gain wider acceptance and the others will become marginalized possibly on the basis of merit but more likely on the basis of societal shunning and acrimony unrelated to the actual work.  That’s just how people are, now.  The advantage of the Internet is that it lends itself to the emergence of a preferred translation structurally.  The website that gets the traffic wins.  It’s not a matter of who has the biggest printing presses or who controls all the newsstands in Berlin (Today the newsstands, tomorrow the comic-book shops!).  German-speaking people would vote with their feet or their mice or their mouses or whatever you call it when you choose something on the Internet.

Anyway, I never heard back from the reader in question so I assume that his interest was in becoming King of the Cerebus Mountain in German or making some money on the deal which, as you can see from my torturous description, isn’t the direction I lean in when I try to come up with a workable compromise. 

But, for what it’s worth (presumably very little), the offer is out there.      

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But what about all of Dave's non-Cerebus art?

Do the Beavers become public domain when Dave dies, or does Ger take control (presuming he out lives Dave,)?

If someone (no names, but I'm looking at you Jeff,)

Matt

________________________________________________________

------- Ahem! Wha? Who. Wha?!

-Jeff
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wanted to do an Art Of Dave Sim collection of all of Dave's non-Cerebus art, could
they?

Just something I thought of the other day.

Matt

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------- Good question. Dave's pretty disgusted with some of that early work, so don't hold your breath;P

-Jeff
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But, Dave's value of the work aside, there is still the possiblity of someone *koff, koff* wanting to do it. And it'd be nice to know what Dave's stance is NOW, so we know for LATER.

And I think that the first Beavers strip from Quack #5 is important to Cerebus, because it contains the statement, "I'd hate to see a real Canadian barbarian."

Matt

(And I'm only talking about the work that Dave claims ownership of, any colaboration that he gave up the rights too doesn't count.)

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---------- Sure, fair enough.

DAVE: Well, the mind fairly boggles.  My impression is that we are all of us hanging on by our fingernails with a one-in-ten million shot of Cerebus lasting five years after Ger and I are dead against the relentless onslaught of Marxist feminism and its ability to revise out of existence those things which don’t kowtow to it and you want to know if The (for crying out loud) Beavers go into the public domain.  Actually the mind doesn’t boggle at all. I appreciate your loyalty and unwillingness to recognize the situation in which we find ourselves. 

     I would assume that they already are because I’ve made no effort to sustain the trademark and copyright over the last nearly three decades.  I mean, The Beavers seems to me an interesting story in itself.  Because the pre-Cerebus part of the Archive was the first part that I did, I was able to follow along on all the documentation and I thought, “You know you could get a nice little book out of this” reprinting all the Quack material and the 104 strips as well as Mike Friedrich’s correspondence and all the rejections from the various Canadian newspapers.  I was thinking of calling it The Beavers: Portrait of A Canadian Failure.  I think the time to discuss that would be up ahead after Margaret has finished scanning however many notebooks there are and can actually start in on the Archive itself and less prejudicial eyes than my own can look at the material and see if it warrants anything besides oblivion.  I would assume that everything that I did would be in the public domain and fodder for the Jeff’s and the Brian Coppolas who are actually interested in the pre-Cerebus material and willing to do hardcovers with a print run of two—one for each of them.  But, I do think a reality check is called for here.  The consensus among retailers, the comics press and the comic-buying public on Cerebus at this point is that everything after Jaka’s Story is useless garbage.  My own impression is that that view is becoming more rather than less firmly entrenched as each day goes by, so I would really recommend that you prepare yourselves to pile sandbags around volumes 6 through 16 in the event of Ger and I both dying and let The Beavers fend for themselves.  The Marxist-Feminists are capable of making people believe that a giant red rectangle with a yellow slash through it is art, so they should have no difficulty in supplanting Cerebus volumes 6 through 16 with The Beavers particularly if they have inside help from Cerebus Legacy. So a word of warning on that score.  Whatever you don’t actively protect, they will actively destroy and they will attempt to enlist your support in doing so.

       As with everything else, Ger has control over it if he outlives me.  It could be one of those Mordecai Richler trips where as long as the guy is dead and can’t say anything that upsets people anymore everyone could suddenly decide that I was A-OK (which was the case with all the Marxist-feminist hypocrites who actively shunned Mordecai Richler for the last two decades of his life, scrupulously asking, “Are you SURE he’s 100% dead?” before they, you know, go out on a limb and then deciding to create a Mordecai Richler renaissance once he wasn’t there to correct their misapprehensions) and Gerhard could suddenly be sitting on a goldmine of Dave Sim material.

   But, personally?  I think you should save the sandbags for volumes 6 through 16 and the one in ten million shot that they can be saved from the Marxist-feminists.  


---------- So, any other issues anybody wants to bring up?
---------- Margaret, any update on the Albatrosses?

-Jeff
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I can't remember my last update so here is what I've done so far: Scanned in notebooks one and two, I've received notebooks 3 & 4, and I'm halfway thru #3. I'm scanning them in now as colored png files at 600 dpi resolution. We are only scanning at this point, as Dan is working on the software for the database.

--
Take care,
Margaret

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Subject: Policy: Miscellany database addition

Category: Iconic, High
Title: Rabbit Hell vs. Cerebus
Published: (1997/11) Awakening Comics 2
Placement: n/a
Notes: Crossover/Jam with David Nowell and Steve Peters. (originally
done in 1992). Only Cerebus (silhouette) drawn by Gerhard?
Chonological Order: N/A

-Jeff

DAVE: Yes, I would agree. High iconic.  I think Steve Peters did the silhouette but I might be mistaken.
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Hey,

Over at the Creator's Bill Of Rights site.

(Where Dave posts his thoughts on the Bill and related topics)

Dave said Aardvark Vanaheim sends Bob Burden a check for $800 every time they reprint Church & State II. And they send Rick Veitch a check for his work in Guys.

As policy, does Dave wish for people to pay Bob Burden and Rick Veitch (or their estates,) when Cerebus becomes public domain and people reprint that work?

Matt

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An interesting question. I would say no, Dave doesn't expect people to pay Bob Burden and Rick Veitch if they reprint the parts of Cerebus with their work in it. Public domain is public domain, after all.

It leads me to wonder, though, do Dave and Gerhard have the authority to put work into public domain that includes other creators' work?

Dan Parker

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Depends on the nature of the contract (assuming they had one). What does the copyright info say in the relevant volumes? If it's just copyright Dave Sim and Gerhard (i.e. if Burden and Veitch bascally did work for hire in Cerebus), then it's theirs to control. If Burden and/or Veitch are indicated as copyright holders for their portions of the work, that's a different story.

Dom
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I've wondered about that. Other than ownership of Cerebus the character, Dave by his own stance has no right to that BWS "Cerebus Dreams" story.

Chris W

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That sounds right. If Burden/Vietch assigned the copyright to Dave (who just refuses to make money off it w/o including a share to them), then Dave could turn it over to the public domain. But if it's not his to give away, he can't.

e
L nny

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There's no way Dave would do work-for-hire, and he's not a contract
sort of guy (see: TMNT #8). In the absence of a contract, it would
seem to fall back on standard copyright law. Dave would probably let
them reprint the sections of Cerebus containing their work without
his permission. But can he put it in the public domain? I checked my
copies of Church and State II (3rd printing) and Guys (2nd printing)
and there's no mention of Burden or Veitch as copyright holders.

Dan Parker

<< July 12th, 2005 >>

 

DAVE: Well, this gets into legal vs. ethical areas which—if you’ve been following the debate on the Bill of rights—is really the core of the whole thing.  Legally, if I was to sue Bob Burden for the right to reprint the Carrot crossover, the fact that he has a history of cashing the cheques would mean that I was on solid ground in claiming ownership of the material.  Territorially, it’s called “easement” which Chet and  I discussed in the “Getting Riel” dialogue.  If you conduct your business in a certain way for a period of years, you can’t legally suddenly change your mind. 

 

As you’ve seen in the Bill of rights debates, the problem that I have with it is that I am picking an arbitrary figure out of a hat and sending Bob a cheque and sending Rick Veitch a cheque.  Why $800 and $100?  Why not $900 and $50?  It’s one of the reasons that I would like to see some guidelines evolve along the lines of what you owe someone on a 20-page collaboration in a 600-page book with a cover price of $35 and a print run of 4,000 copies rather than just “Hey, whatever you want. You’re the publisher. He’s just an artist” undercurrent which still dominates the comic-book field. I would also specify that Bob and Rick would be allowed to reprint the issues in question if they thought they could make money on them.  It’s their work on there so, in my books, they have the right to reprint it anytime they want and should be supplied with a set of negatives at cost just by requesting them at any time. 

 

I’m not real big on estates.  If Bob’s alive and Rick’s alive, yeah, send them a cheque to the nursing home so they can play three bingo cards on Tuesday night and, you know, really live it up or go on a bus trip to the local casino and blow it all on the slot machines or buy Good ‘n’ Plenty by the carton or whatever it is that they’re into at that age.  In Rick’s case, I can see sending the cheque to his son Kirby after he’s gone.  Rick’s a dad and most dads are like that. But, after Kirby’s played his last game of shuffleboard?  Mm. No. At that point I think you’re really stretching a point and dragging people into the game who have no business being there.  But that would be up to the individual publisher depending on what he or she thought his or her ethical obligations were to Rick and Bob. Or, more likely, it will be up to Canada’s Marxist-feminist social engineering Supreme Court (let’s not forget THEM!).  It’s quite possible that they’ll just mandate that Cerebus gets carved up and given to any female (or her relatives and descendants) who was in Dave Sim’s vicinity for longer than two weeks.  They’re already changing the laws in Ontario so there’s no such thing as a closed divorce agreement.  Any ex-wife who wants to re-open her divorce and claim more money even decades after the fact and even contrary to prior legal judgements will soon be able to do so in the People’s Republic of Canada.  Spousal support in Canada will be the only legal agreement in the Western world dating back to 1066 that will be deemed to be unilaterally non-binding, presumably superseding all laws governing prenuptial agreements as well. You’ll have to pay whatever the Marxist-feminist courts tell you to pay but you’ll have no legal recourse that would cap or end those payments.  

 

    You GO, girl!!

 

    And that’s just what the sows are snuffling at it in the trough right now.  God only knows where we’ll be in thirty or forty years.

 

    Actually, Ger and I are mulling over a possible work-made-for-hire offer right now.  Bill Willingham has expressed an interest in having us do a story for an upscale Fables book that Vertigo is planning.  The big reason that I’m inclined to do it is that Bill Willingham was the only person who contacted me when I was getting ripped to shreds by the Marxist-feminists on the Internet after 186 came out.  Now it wasn’t much, but he did phone to say, “Uh, Dave?  Are you aware of how badly you are getting ripped to shreds on the Internet right now?”  which he didn’t have to do and which certainly no one else did. Bill was barely an acquaintance at the time albeit one whose company I had enjoyed in several bars at several conventions back when he was still doing The Elementals.  That and Chester Brown’s “He’s fun to jam with” comment were the only direct and indirect professional support I got from anyone for a number of years, and both of them came right at ground zero, so certainly Bill Willingham and Chester Brown get more than a fair hearing from me where few others get the time of day.

 

Of course, again, Bill Willingham is a genuine liberal which I assume the people at DC/Vertigo aren’t in which case he’ll find his suggestion of a collaboration with Dave Sim and Gerhard conveniently overruled and forgotten—and possibly used against him so he gets the idea.

 

     Either shun Dave Sim or be shunned like Dave Sim.