Two good bits of Cerebus tonight:

The Cerebus Digital: 6,000 kickstarter campaign ended tonight with 1,140 backers and $63,634 which is 1,060% of what they set their goal. Dave had set the goal of $6K to digitize the phonebook High Society. Within 9 hours it had shot pass that and kept growing. Dave was thinking that $100K would be needed to digitize all of the Cerebus epic. . .$63.6K is a decent start to getting that done.

I finally managed to track down a Melmoth first printing. It arrived a day or so ago and I finally got it in my hands today. w00t! Cross that off the list. That was the last of the first printings that I was missing.

For the Cerebus Digital 6K kickstarter and it is up to 870 backers and a hair over $48K. Dave originally had asked for $6K to digitize High Society, but now the stakes are higher – if we can get to $100K we could have all of Cerebus digitized. Dave even continues to up the ante, as he talks in his latest update:

 Along with multiple formats, your generosity makes new features possible (and thank you all again).  Sandeep has just finished scanning all of the back-of-the-book material for HIGH SOCIETY DIGITAL.  It’s close to another 250 pages.  500 pages is just the STORY material.  The total page count is close to 750 pages.

It’ll be nice to have all the little extras digitized as well – though part of me wishes it would be in a format that would be searchable – so in case I wanted to see where there is talk of say, Sir Gerrick, I could easily find it by doing a quick search.

Another good bit of news from another of Dave’s updates regarding him signing contracts with several of the large digital comics companies:

I can say, having had some very good conversations with David Steinberger of Comixology, Ron Richards of Graphicly, Steve May of iVerse and Bill Schanes of Diamond Digital (I’ve signed non-exclusive, finite, term multi-year contracts with three of them and will soon sign with the fourth for HIGH SOCIETY digital only– my thinking being that a multi-year contract will give me a chance to find out which operations are a “good fit” for my work and give me an overview of how good they are relative to each other for future digital books) that each company has a very different plan and a very different mental image of where we are and where we’re going, none of which I can really discuss publicly because of confidentiality clauses in the contracts.  I think I’m safe in saying the next year in particular is going to be really, really, really interesting in digital comics.

He also mentions in that same update that the release date is either going to be Oct 3 or Sept 19, he is debating tying in the release of several issues to the US presidential election. . .my thoughts? Take the time to do it right, if you need the extra couple of weeks lead time, use them. Also, if you have a piece of original art from the series, Dave is asking for your help. Now I need to figure out how to get the one page I have out of its frame. . .

From 1979 comes this homage to Batman #9 cover, a Dave Sim pin-up of the Cockroach and Cerebus entitled:

“Cockroach and Aardvark the grey wonder”. For comparison, Batman #9′s cover:

So in update #16 for the Cerebus Digital: 6000 kickstarter, it was revealed that the monetary goal that will get the entire sixteen phonebooks digitized:

The Ultimate Goal here is to, of course, digitize ALL 16 of the CEREBUS phone Books. Which would come out to approximately $96,000 (without the 10% loss or taxation. So we’d be looking at around $120,000 – more or less. Let’s just kick it to an even $100,000 as THE DREAM GOAL!! if this fund is met — BANG! whole series in the works!!! We’re grateful beyond belief for every single dollar that has come in and blown away by the response of all the fans! it means everything!

Currently the project stands at just over $37K with 686 backers with twenty days to go. In update #17 Dave reveals that he has “THREE contracts in hand for digital download launch (still on track for October 1st) and another on the way.” So not only is HIGH SOCIETY due to be complete and ready for download by October 1st, but Aardvark-Vanaheim has three contracts for digital downloads.

And if you read the update regarding the negatives being scanned in, but didn’t see that the pictures have been updated – then go check out update #14: pictures of Dave with the negatives have been added to give us a better understanding of what is involved in this project.

So Dave Sim’s kickstarter campaign is up to 518 backers and $28,230 as I type this, after only a couple days – reaching his initial goal of $6K in just 9 hours. He even has some celebrity backs, as seen at the ‘A Moment of Cerebus‘ blog.

Though that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t need your support – for the more money collected, the more funds to digitalize more of the Cerebus epic:

If more than $6,000 is raised (this is where I suspect John is pulling my leg: MORE than $6,000???) then the money would be put aside to do e-books/audio books/digital graphic novels/oral history/weekly serializations of ALL OF THE CEREBUS BOOKS, Beginning with CEREBUS (500 pages), CHURCH & STATE vol. 1 (600 pages). CHURCH $ STATE vol. 2 (600 pages), and JAKA’S STORY (500 pages).  

The kickstarter continues to morph in both content – as Deni Loubert is now participating by doing the audio for her ‘Note From the Publisher’ entries – and rewards – as Kevin Eastman agreed to do a print with Dave & anyone donating over $50 will automatically get one.

We also learned about what formats this digital content is going to take – there will be DRM free PDFs, CBR or CBZ files available for download which will be approximately 35 MB each. And this was this bit of info also:

Only Kickstarter backers will be getting both the High resolution scanned (regular-you-read-it-yourself-version) and the Bells and Whistles Special Audio/Visual Edition. 

Those files will be roughly 60 – 70 MB. Those are the files I’m looking forward to. It’ll be nice to get the digital Cerebus, as I won’t have to lug around a huge phonebook. But the bells and whistles will provide even more entertainment on top of that.

I’ve put a link to the Cerebus Digital 6000 kickstarter in the sidebar of this blog, so just in case you want to dontate or up your pledge, it is there.