For my money, few comic books has been as thrilling and interesting as Dave Sim’s Cerebus — and no other comic has been as infuriating and disappointing in the end. Here are some of my favorite covers, drawn by Sim and Gerhard. (Sim does the figures and lettering, Gerhard does backgrounds, objects and colors).
 Issue 87. The cover, depicting two characters falling off a cliff during a blizzard, is lovely in its own right. I liked it even better once I realized that it was a parody of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight cover — but Sim and Gerhard’s version looks better.
 Issue 123. I love this cover portrait of a character who seemed simple, but turned out to have many sides, some of them quite ugly.
 Issue 140, one of many nice Cerebus covers in this period featuring small figures in front of amazing Gerhard drawings of architecture. This cover stands out to me because of the subtle but perfect body language; Sebastian sick and exhausted and facing a long climb still to go, and Robbie so worried for his friend and eager to help.
 Issue 206. I wanted to include a cover from “Guys,” because I really liked the way that the covers were just additional pages in the comic, and fit into the paperbook book collection seamlessly — but are still lovely cover designs in and of themselves. Also, these covers feature Sim drawing in his Drucker-influenced caricature style, my favorite of Sim’s drawing styles.
 Issue 96, probably my favorite of any cover to an individual Cerebus issue. This was the second of a series of five covers featuring tight close-ups of Cerebus, all drawn in a rough cross-hatched style. It’s a powerful image, and a great use of cropping to create drama.
Then there are my two favorite phone book covers:
 High Society. A stunning pen-and-ink drawing of a small Cerebus climbing the steps to an enormous hotel. Click on the image to see it larger, or see a huge, high-quality scan on Cerebusfangirl’s Flickr page.
 Click on it to see it bigger! As I said, I love Dave Sim in his Mort Drucker influenced mode, and the huge crowd scene on this cover certainly gives me a lot of that. A zillion elements — the insane crowd, the overwhelming mountain and architecture, and the little tiny Cerebus making huge gestures on top of the building — are held together by Sim’s solid design sense, and form a perfect illustration for the story inside.
 This is a wrap-around cover, by the way. I couldn’t find a really great scan of the whole wrap-around, but here’s the best I did find (click on it to see it larger).
I don’t think this is a cover, but while looking for Cerebus covers, I came across this impressive painting by Sim and Gerhard of Cerebus having a nightmare. And I have no idea where the painting came from! So if you know, please leave a comment.
I will be appearing at Mockingbird Books in Seattle tomorrow (Thursday the 11th) at 6:30pm. I’ll be presenting a slideshow about Hereville (including a reading), answering questions, and signing books. If you’re in Seattle, please come out and see me.
This Monday, me and 19 other Portland cartoonists attended a dress rehearsal of the Portland Opera’s production of “Hansel and Gretel.” We were fed and wined, given a backstage tour, and then allowed to sketch and doodle during a full dress rehearsal. I had a great time.
Anyway, here’s the drawing I made, based on my sketches that night:
I’m hoping I’ll have time to do another drawing, this time of the witch, but I’m not sure if I will.
A few other cartoonists have also posted drawings and sketches: Jenn Manley Lee, Indigo Kelleigh, Jonathan Case, Emi Lenox, and (even though he wasn’t there) Mike Russell. I’m sure more sketches will be appearing; on twitter, watch the #pdxoperacomics hashtag.
I love Rhoda. Although I wonder how many Hereville readers will know who she is without having to click on the link?
On November 3, 2010 · Comments Off on Interview, interview, interview!
There are three (!) new interviews with me available online:
* On the Blog of the Association of Jewish Libraries
* On Graphic Novel Reporter
* And on The Portland Examiner (part one of a three-part interview!)
Goodness! Thanks to all three interviewers for talking to me.
On November 2, 2010 · Comments Off on Video of me drawing Mirka
Here’s a video I made of me drawing Mirka. I’m not very happy with how the drawing came out, to tell the truth, but the video might still be fun to watch. The video is speeded up to ten times the actual speed I drew at.
And part two:
On November 2, 2010 · Comments Off on Hereville reviewed on “Attempts”
I’m a fan of Stephen Frug’s blog “Attempts,” so I was delighted that he wrote an in-depth review of Hereville (and relieved that he liked it!). Here’s a sample:
In both his page layouts and lettering, the largest influence on Deutsch’s work appears to be Dave Sim’s Cerebus. I checked, and he admits as much in his post on the completion of Cerebus, but honestly I think I would have seen it anyway: the lettering and page-layout in Hereville is simply and unmistakably very Simmesque. But since Sim is a quite extraordinary cartoonist, one of the best to work in the medium (if also possibly the craziest and most misogynistic), this is by no means a bad thing: indeed, a fair amount of Hereville‘s stylishness and formal inventiveness can be traced to a thoughtful absorption of Sim’s lessons. (Plus, y’know, it’s shorter, and feminist rather than misogynistic.) Deutsch learned from Sim, but the work is his own, and is very well done.
Another influence, I think, is manga: he uses a lot of manga-esque motion lines and the like to convey action. — And actually, I’m guessing here — or perhaps only showing my own limited cultural frame — but I suspect that another influence was Scott McCloud: Deutsch’s use of motion lines, of what McCloud would call aspect-to-aspect transitions, and the like, strike me as ones that betray the influence not only of the sort of comics McCloud talks about but McCloud’s own specific analysis as well.
Stephen is right about the Dave Sim influence on my cartooning — I think I might now be the third most Sim-influenced cartoonist in print, after Troy Little and Alex Robinson. (I’m not counting Martin Wagner since he seems to have retired from comics, at least temporarily.) He’s also right about Scott McCloud’s influence on my work. Although I’ve read and liked some manga, I think the manga influence mainly comes through McCloud’s work (as Stephen suggests).
The other major influence on my cartooning (that I’m conscious of, anyhow) is Will Eisner’s work, especially his graphic novels in the 80s and 90s.
There’s much more, so go read the whole thing.
On October 28, 2010 · Comments Off on Horn Book reviews Hereville: “Unique, laugh-out-loud funny, and thoroughly engrossing.”
From Horn Book Magazine:
Eleven-year-old Mirka Herschberg is not your average dragon-slaying heroine. For starters, she’s a Hasidic Jew. Then there are the crazy quarrels with her stepmother, Fruma, who defends one side of an argument, then, in a heartbeat, switches to the other. Case in point: “You want to slaughter innocent dragons? How could you?” quickly morphs into “Mirka! You mean you’d let a dragon devour me and the whole town? How could you?” With her ankle-length skirt and long-sleeved shirt, Mirka certainly doesn’t look like she’s ready to take on a fire-breathing monster.
And that’s a large part of this graphic novel’s charm: the very traditional versus the super fantastical. It’s a contrast that Deutsch plays with in both his story line and his illustrations. His Shabbat-observing protagonist (who first appeared in a shorter webcomic) soon finds herself up against a talking pig who vows: “I will rip the chupa at your wedding! I will take your firstborn child! I will knock over the casket at your funeral!” The source of all this porcine fury? Mirka stole a single grape from the pig’s garden. After besting this very non-Jewish foe, she’s in for another adventure. What’s involved? A troll, a knitting contest, and a sword fit for a dragonslayer.
Deutsch’s graphic novel is unique, laugh-out-loud funny, and thoroughly engrossing. Sequel, please!
—Tanya Auger, Horn Book Magazine
Information about purchasing Hereville can be found here.
Here’s a preview page from “Hereville.” These preview pages can have spoilers, so don’t look if you’d rather not see!
This time I’m showing one of the pages that got redrawn between the first version of Hereville, and the graphic novel. I show both versions, so you can see how they compare.
(Info on buying Hereville is here.)
Page 107 from the graphic novel:
Compare that to page 27 from the earlier, self-published “Hereville”:
Mostly just a new inking and coloring job, plus I did a fair amount of redrawing heads and faces in minor ways. But I also made a big change, replacing four panels from the original with one larger, rewritten panel.
Why the change? First of all, the way the cut panels were written felt a little “out of character” for Mirka — that kind of over-the-top sarcasm doesn’t seem like her. Having her yell like Lucy yelling at Linus seemed much better.
Secondly, to me having lots of long narrow panels on a page indicates tension. But having that many long narrow panels on this page struck me as going over-the-top with the tension for this point in the scene, and didn’t leave much room for building up to more tension later on in this scene. Cutting down from 9 to 6 panels “relaxes” this page a lot, to my eye. (So did getting rid of the not-very-meaningful trailing of Mirka to the edge of the page in the bottom row of panels).
Plus, I love the “pushing Zindel with the word balloon” effect (something I swiped from Dave Sim’s comic book Cerebus, although many other cartoonists have done it — most famously Charles Schulz in Peanuts). The new panel is one of my favorite panels in the entire book.
On October 18, 2010 · Comments Off on Preview: Page 72
Here’s a preview page from “Hereville.” These preview pages can have spoilers, so don’t look if you’d rather not see!
(Info on buying Hereville is here.)
Continue Reading…
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High Society. A stunning pen-and-ink drawing of a small Cerebus climbing the steps to an enormous hotel. Click on the image to see it larger, or see a huge, high-quality scan on Cerebusfangirl’s Flickr page.
Click on it to see it bigger! As I said, I love Dave Sim in his Mort Drucker influenced mode, and the huge crowd scene on this cover certainly gives me a lot of that. A zillion elements — the insane crowd, the overwhelming mountain and architecture, and the little tiny Cerebus making huge gestures on top of the building — are held together by Sim’s solid design sense, and form a perfect illustration for the story inside.
This is a wrap-around cover, by the way. I couldn’t find a really great scan of the whole wrap-around, but here’s the best I did find (click on it to see it larger).
