“Cerebus Art Dragnet (Logo)” (2014)
by Dave Sim (1956-)
11 x 17 in., ink and tone on board
Coppola Collection

There is a digitization project underway (2014) to gather original art pages that are “out in the wild” (e.g., the 200 or so pages that I possess) and get high-res scans of them for future digital versions of the Cerebus collective volumes (as opposed to trying to scan the crappy printing done on newsprint, of the originally printed books).

The restoration project, being run by Sean Michael Robinson, has been dubbed “The Cerebus Art Dragnet.”

The original art for the “badge” logo and an illustration of Jack Webb (Dragnet!) as a Aardvark, above a couple of 2014 head shots of Cerebus, was auctioned.

For my inscription, I asked Dave to be creative with the classic noir intro narrative motif used in the Dragnet series: “This is the city… we wear badges…” … This is what came back. Pretty cool. You can see the art as it was auctioned, also, to see what was added.

The fact that I won this auction and ended up with this personalized piece kicked off an interesting firestorm within the community of Cerebus fans (which is an interesting story) and ended up doing some good for a great guy (which is another interesting story). Only three people actually know the full story – me, Dave, and Ger… and one of the conditions I put on the telling of this tale was that it was our business and not anyone else’s. I’ll put it in my memoir.