SOME FINAL NOTES ON THE CEREBUS COMPANION by Jerry Sweet December 16, 1991 Introduction The Cerebus Companion is a 130-page book that I wrote in 1989. It is a reference work that may be used to supplement readings of the comic book and graphic novel series entitled Cerebus. The Cerebus Companion is a bibliography, an episode guide, and a glossary. Copyright and Permissions I emphasize that in releasing The Cerebus Companion to FTP sites on the Internet, I nevertheless RETAIN COPYRIGHT on the book. Individuals are authorized to print one copy for personal enjoyment. Neither mass-producing nor selling copies in any form is permitted. I specifically permit the case of making the files available for FTP from an Internet site. If you want to distribute The Cerebus Companion further, for example, by including The Cerebus Companion on a set of floppies or on CD-ROM, then I require that you gain my written permission (on piece of paper signed by me) to do so. In requesting my permission, you must explain the exact method of copying and distribution that you plan to employ. I realize that this FTPable version of The Cerebus Companion is subject to easy abuse, much as is shareware. Neveretheless, I trust in the honesty of the vast majority of Internet users. The Cerebus Companion and Dave Sim What about the book and the author of Cerebus, Dave Sim? There's not much to tell, really; I've never met the man, and have had only limited correspondence with him. The story of my attempts to publish The Cerebus Companion and Dave Sim's involvement is this: - June, 1989. When the book was close to completion, I returned home to Irvine from a consulting job near San Francisco to find a letter from Dave Sim. In that letter, he gave me permission to publish the book myself and to use one representation of each aspect of a character. I was not too enthusiastic about publishing the book myself, but I did, in a very limited run. Dave Sim printed my letter about the project in Cerebus #122. - August 1989. I took a few copies with me to the San Diego Comics Convention with the idea of showing it around and perhaps interesting a publisher. *Bad* idea. I wandered around pretty much dazed and confused, never having been to such a convention before, and roundly failed to interest any publishers. Two reactions stick out in my mind: on the strength of a mention of Flaming Carrot, Bob Burden, author of Flaming Carrot, flipped through the book briefly---probably looking for unauthorized artwork of Flaming Carrot---and suspiciously asked me whether Dave Sim knew about the book. Then Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics refused to talk to me, except to push a copy of Eightball #1 on me. (A good rag, by the way.) So much for the San Diego Comics Convention. - September 1989. The publisher of a comic book trade magazine wrote to say that he'd be interested in publishing the book...but only if I could get definitive permission from Dave Sim to do so. At about the same time, Dave Sim wrote me to tell me that he himself might be interested in publishing the book, which I thought was a great idea. But Sim wanted some changes... - December 1989--July, 1990. Eventually, I think that Dave Sim lost interest altogether in publishing the book. Seeing this, I lost interest in keeping after Dave Sim about the project, and I came to believe that I should only do such work on "properties" that I control fully. Ah, well, perhaps that was the lesson I was supposed to learn. And it was fun while it lasted. No hard feelings; it's just the way things go sometimes. I have lots of other things to keep me busy. My last letter to Dave Sim mentioned a pretty Swedish woman acquaintance and my sunburned feet, but not much else of substance. - December, 1991. So...rec.arts.comics continued to remind me that I had unfinished business regarding the book. Dave Sim never withdrew permission for me to publish the book myself. Here it is, published in electronic form, although sans artwork. If Dave Sim, as promised, visits San Francisco in January during his 1992 U.S. Tour, I may wander on up to The City and attempt to get his autograph on a copy of Jaka's Story. I'll keep reading Cerebus as long as he keeps cranking it out, but I'm not presently planning to add to The Cerebus Companion. Technical Notes & Credits I produced the camera-ready hardcopy version of The Cerebus Companion on "lurker", the ISI machine then owned by my good friend, Greg Moulton. I supplied the laser printer, an HP LaserJet Series II, on which I had to do my "previewing", as I didn't have a bitmap display with which to work. The artwork, which is NOT included with these files, was manually organized, shot, and pasted into the camera-ready hardcopy by the Laguna Beach graphic arts firm 20/20, run by a business acquaintance, Monica Merz. I would have liked to have digitized the artwork, but I lacked the necessary software and equipment, and, eventually, the time necessary to mess with it. The files included with the distribution are these: -rw-rw-r-- 1 jns 31200 Jul 13 1989 cerebus-companion.idx -rw-rw-r-- 1 jns 20190 Jul 12 1989 cerebus-companion.ind -rw-rw-r-- 1 jns 234941 Jul 13 1989 cerebus-companion.tex -rw-rw-r-- 1 jns 2641 Jul 13 1989 cerebus-companion.toc -rw-rw-r-- 1 jns 38076 Jul 13 1989 cerebus-glossary.tex -rw-rw-r-- 1 jns 1129 Jul 3 1989 cerebus.sty -rw-rw-r-- 1 jns 484 Jul 12 1989 cover.tex To produce a printable version of the book requires LaTeX 2.09 or later, and a dvi back end processor, such as dvijep or dvips. Instructions are provided elsewhere in this note. LaTeX styles used are "12pt" and "twoside". A local style file, "cerebus.sty", is also used. TeX and LaTex are freely available markup language systems. There are implementations both commercial and public-domain on just about every kind of computer I've ever heard of. UNIX TeX can be FTP'd from the site labrea.stanford.edu. Be forewarned that you'll need lots of disk space (like, tens of megabytes) to deal with UNIX TeX and LaTeX if you don't already have them. To obtain a previewable copy of The Cerebus Companion, do these things on a UNIX system, where '%' is a csh prompt: % latex cerebus-companion.tex You may need to run latex a second time to get all the section and page references correct, although it shouldn't strictly be necessary: % latex cerebus-companion.tex At this stage, you can use a previewing tool such as xdvi for viewing the cerebus-companion.dvi file with the MIT X Windows System. To obtain a printable copy of The Cerebus Companion for an HP LaserJet, do this on a UNIX system, where '%' is a csh prompt: % dvijep cerebus-companion.dvi If you don't have this command on your system, then you must have some other similar dvi command, such as dvips. If you use dvips or some other PostScript back end, and you have a system that supports Display PostScript, then you might want to run your previewer on the PostScript file produced by dvips instead. To print the final result, you're on your own. Ask your system administrators. There is no standard way to do it, but if your system administrators are any good, they've set it up so that you can use the "lpr" command with some simple switch or other, or a "dvilpr" command. I apologize that I was unable to provide a DVI file of the book with this release of the files; I deleted all the copies of the DVI file a long time ago, and I no longer run TeX on any of the machines available to me. Perhaps some kind soul will include one with the FTPable files. Errata for The Cerebus Companion I have lots of handwritten notes for additions and changes to the book, but I only have time to mention the most wretched typos and factual errors in the first and only version of the book. Ugh. I hate pointing out these horrible, embarrassing errors, but it must be done. I haven't gotten around to correcting the source files because (a) I *don't* really have time to do that at the moment, and (b) I don't have access to a system running TeX so that I can check the corrections, nor do I have the time or to bring up TeX for myself. Feel free to tip in these corrections yourselves if you wish. Section 3; page 4; paragraph 2; sentence 8; should read: "Cerebus has been seen to use his tail and snout as auxiliary fists when his arms are otherwise occupied." Section 4.4.5; page 14; paragraph 4; sentence 3; should read: "He slams the bag down in front of a small group of children and with a menacing glower, holds out his hat." Section 6; page 58; paragraph 4; sentences 4 and 5; should read: "A battered Commander Pinshaw informs Cerebus that the Lower Feldans have driven out the Iestan forces. Cerebus signs a treaty in Lower Felda's favor." Section 8; page 82; paragraph 5; sentence 5; should read: "Posey, listening to this, gets sick in the bushes." Glossary; page 109; definition of Corn-King Rituals; should read: "A collection of ancient religious rituals". (But should say more about probably involving human sacrifice.) Definitions needed: Devotionalists Dimedes Fort Maines Fort Peren [end]