Saturday September 16 -

Claude Flowers (Sergeant Claude Flowers—congratulations on that promotion, there, "SARGE") has been working tirelessly on future volumes of COLLECTED LETTERS since he returned to Seattle from army reserve duty at US Central Comand in Tampa, Florida (or "Tampastan" as they evidently call it down there). That's right. All the tires were stolen off his car. NYUCK NYUCK NYUCK SHMECK OW! He has persuaded me that the second volume (JUNE 2004 TO ?) should have a colour cartoon cover. I'd rather have a colour photo and the same "real world" look that we had on the first one, but he's right. It's going to sell a lot better with a drawing than a photo (especially now that I've firmly entered the "my face is melting" years of my life) (HEY! LET'S BUY THIS BOOK WITH THE PICTURE OF THE SAGGY-LOOKING OLD MAN ON IT!). Since we have no room at Recker distribution to store COLLECTED LETTERS volumes in addition to the trade paperbacks, THE COLLECTED LETTERS volumes (which we hope to offer at $22 cover price for 250 pages) will be strictly print-to-order—one printing and that's it until there's enough demand to go back to press however-many-years-down-the-road. They will be offered through DIAMOND PREVIEWS and I'll let you know when you should be telling your local stores to order them as we get closer to the date.

WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER THIS SHORT COMMERCIAL MESSAGE:

PLUG! Mel Smith of Walnut Creek, California's WILDCARD INK (who turns out to be a huge Cerebus fan) was kind enough to send me copies of the first issue of the revived GUMBY comic book written by Bob Burden and drawn by Rick Geary. If you've been "jonesing" for new Bob Burden stories, look no further than www.wildcardink.com or www.gumbycomics.com "for more fun and adventures" (and who couldn't use more of those?). It features guest appearances by Bob Burden creations Invincible Man and Nifty Boy for those of you who couldn't afford to buy their first appearances in Bob Burden's unique (as opposed to trend-setting) $100 COMIC BOOK (have you seen any more $100 COMIC BOOKS since then? No, I didn't think so). I heard from Bob a while back when he got out of the hospital after he contracted something unbelievably grisly ("took-surgery-to-rid-of-it" grisly) on a visit to post-Katrina New Orleans a few months back. Still waiting for him to send us pages on the Flaming Carrot/Cerebus Crossover (as opposed to the Cerebus/Flaming Carrot crossover in issue 104). Oh well, I'll gladly take a few more issues of GUMBY as good as this one ("HERE'S THE JEFFERY HOUSE! EVERYONE THAT LIVES HERE IS NAMED JEFFERY!") while we're waiting.

___________________________________________________

previous posts:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/message/95679

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/message/95745

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/message/95847

___________________________________________________

This may also be viewed at http://davesim.blogspot.com/

___________________________________________________

If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

Looking for a place to purchase Cerebus phonebooks? You can do so online through Win-Mill Productions -- producers of Following Cerebus. Convenient payment with PayPal:

http://spectrummagazines.bizland.com/cerebusgn.chtml

Or, you can check out Mars Import:

http://www.marsimport.com/display_series.php?ID=142

Or ask your local retailer to order them for you through Diamond Comics distributors. Here are the Diamond Star System codes:

Cerebus #1-25 $30.00 STAR00070

High Society #26-50 $30.00 STAR00071

Church and State I #52-80 $35.00 STAR00271

Church and State II #81-111 $35.00 STAR00321

Jaka's Story #114-136 $30.00 STAR00359

Melmoth #139-150 $20.00 STAR00431

Flight #151-162 $20.00 STAR00543

Women #163-174 $20.00 STAR00849

Reads #175-186 $20.00 STAR01063

Minds #187-200 $20.00 STAR01916

Guys #201-219 $25.00 STAR06972

Rick's Story #220-231 $20.00 STAR08468

Going Home I #232-250 $30.00 STAR10981

Form and Void #251-265 $30.00 STAR13500

Latter Days #266 - 288 $35.00 AUG031920

The Last Day #289 - 300 $25.00 APR042189