Last April Ponent Mon released the High Society in Spanish, and this month they released the Spanish translation of Church & State I. At the Ponent Mon website they are selling copies for 34 € plus shipping – and yes, they do ship overseas. (If you would like to buy a copy from them, use the ‘comprar’ button at the page linked to above, it’ll send you to your shopping cart, click on the ‘return to shopping’ button and then on the horizontal menu along the top click on ‘tienda’ and you’ll see two options for shipping. For shipping outside Europe click once on ’12 Euros por libro” for each of the number of books you’ve ordered. )

This translation is the same basic configuration as their last effort: a hardbound book with no dust jacket and a slightly smaller size then the original phonebook.

As you can see in the above picture (click to be able to see a larger size), the Ponent Mon translations of the phonebook are the same length and width. There are some graphical differences – the spine has different graphic and the artwork on the cover of the Ponent Mon is cropped when compared to the AV version. Looking at the inside you can see how the Ponent Mon version’s artwork is all there, but just folded up and inside in order to make the hardcover:

Also the artwork itself appears. . .muddy. Look at the above picture: on the bottom are the original C&S I from AV (left) and the Ponent Mon translation (right). You can see the skulls and Gerhard’s other fine line work on the AV version. On Ponent Mon’s version, Gerhard’s fine line work is indiscernible.  Unfortunately, that also holds true on the inside artwork as well. The artwork is approximately the same size even though the phonebook is slightly a bit larger as the Ponent Mon version reduced the size of the margins a bit. You can see the difference in the printings here:

This is the first translation of a phonebook with Gerhard’s fine line work in it, so it is partially expected that there might be some difficulty in reproducing it exactly. I would imagine however the publisher gets a proof copy to review prior to going to print to see if there is anything that needs to be corrected prior to publication. Perhaps this printing will serve as that and Iglesia Y Estado II will better showcase Gerhard’s fine line work.

Finally. It only took me what, 4 months? 6 months? Too long.

Cerebus the Newsletter #20 is now on sale at the Friends of Cerebus website for only $1.50 plus shipping:

The second installment of Dave Sim and Steve Peter’s “God Talk” wherein Dave talks about the two different Jesus figures, an article on translating High Society, an essay entitled “READing Viktor Davis by Menachem Luchins, art by Daniele Tomasi and byEverton Veras, a cover by David Branstetter, an article on Cerebus the Newsletter #1 – 13, and more!

I updated the FoC site to have a shopping card method of buying the newsletters rather then a ‘buy it now’ option. Since the back issues from #14 up are still in print, the cart will (hopefully) make it easier for people to purchase the issues they don’t have yet.