Cry For Dawn / Dawn Appreciation Thread 6 6

[divad]

Well done, fine sir, well done! (thumbs u

[Dr. Balls]

Recently picked up a CFD #2 solicitation sheet which was a nice little find. These are really a lot of fun to hunt for and collect, only because it's likely that not many of them survived all these years, because they are just photocopied flyers.

 

I have no idea if there was ever a CFD #1 solicitation sheet, but outside of that, I'm only missing two others for all nine issues (and the 2nd print of #5). When things slow down, I'm wanting to rescan each one individually like this one.

 

 

[Silver]

Can I ask a stupid question? What are the stories about? Are they good reads? I have never read one, but obviously the covers catch your eye.

 

 

[asteroid-comix]

Can I ask a stupid question? What are the stories about? Are they good reads? I have never read one, but obviously the covers catch your eye.

 

They are pretty good reads, but not for everyone. They are somewhere between twilight zone and an x-rated version of creep show.

[randyp]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dr. Balls]

Can I ask a stupid question? What are the stories about? Are they good reads? I have never read one, but obviously the covers catch your eye.

 

They are pretty good reads, but not for everyone. They are somewhere between twilight zone and an x-rated version of creep show.

 

+1

 

Even recently, I really enjoyed The Swordmaster's Daughter. It was a great story that had some Eastern philosophy influence to it. If you're not familiar with Linsner's writing, the early CFD are great horror reads, and if you just want to jump into his style without needing to know a lot of backstory, The Swordmaster's Daughter is a great one-shot.

[Dr. Balls]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite covers

[randyp]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite covers

 

Mine too Love his covers

[asteroid-comix]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

Love this cover

[asteroid-comix]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

Love this cover

This is on the wall of my office.

[Dr. Balls]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

Love this cover

This is on the wall of my office.

 

 

Ok, so I've figured it out. The pose is what does it for me. I'm still waiting to find my Linsner original...

[The Kaptain]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite covers

 

Is that cover by Linsner? Dawn's face looks distinctly different on this cover than any other I have seen.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Kaptain Kollektor

[maloney414]

I'm comparing these two side-by-side and the differences are really apparent - but with that being said, it's actually a very competent counterfeit. Once of the really interesting things about it is that the color is *almost* identical. There are some variances that are subtle, but could easily be chalked up to being early or late in the print run. The counterfeit copy is missing a lot of yellow throughout the cover, which makes it appear to have a red color cast, rather than a nice natural skintone.

 

To begin with, my best guess is that the authentic CFD #1 was printed on a sheetfed offset press because of it's low print run. In my experience, you would not print 1500 copies on a web offset press because the amount of setup it takes for the run. Web offset printing is for high volume printing, utilized by larger publishers like Marvel and DC or anyone else with print runs upwards of 10,000 or more. Old indy publishers who didn't print much kept costs lower (although per-piece cost was higher) by going to sheetfed offset printing.

 

The counterfeit is definitely sheetfed offset along with (what I believe) are photocopied interiors. Not cheap photocopies like you get at Kinkos, but off a higher quality copier from that era. I'll explain my reasons below.

 

So, let's get started with this rambling post!

 

Under a 10X loupe, you can see the counterfeit was printed with a tighter linescreen (higher LPI number) than the authentic one.

 

Starting with the cover - the counterfeit copy's cover is printed on a heavier stock. I'd estimate that the authentic is printed on 80# text weight, and the counterfeit printed on 120# text - which, if you are familiar with paper products, this is a noticeable difference.

 

If you look, the counterfeit cover is slightly larger than the original. You can see this by comparing the size of the Linsner signature in relationship to the corner of the book. The reason for this is that the counterfeiter needed to enlarge the artwork to accommodate for the extra bleed area he would need on his new cover in order for it to trim properly all the way around the book.

 

 

Take a look at the blue lines drawn on the second example. This will better show the enlargement of the cover, as the masthead, issue number and signature get closer to the edge, proving that it's not a simple mis-trimmed book - it has been enlarged overall. This is evident throughout the book where the black ink had to bleed off the edge on the authentic version, the page was slightly enlarged just as it had been on the cover. (see the last example)

 

 

The most telling attribute is the one that gets discussed the most: the crosshatching pattern in the sky. This is called a mioré pattern. Any image printed on a printing press is printed with halftone screen patterns. The printed image is composed of a pattern of dots. These fine dots cause optical problems in a scanned image because the scanned image is also composed of fine dots - that optical problem that results when scanning a printed item (like a comic book cover) is the mioré pattern.

 

Any scanner will do this - people have been trying to clean up mioré patterns in Photoshop for two decades, back in the early 90's this was much more challenging. Nowadays, scanners have the ability to minimize the mioré pattern much more so than they were able to back then. Plus, comics are printed with much higher linescreens now than they were in the 90s. For example, the original CFD was probably printed with a 110 or 120 LPI linescreen - you can actually see the printing rosettes in the authentic version, and the counterfeit was probably printed with at 133 LPI, which was a much more common "higher quality" linescreen of the era. Compare that to the comics now which are probably in the 200 LPI range.

 

 

The cover type is also not as crisp and clean as the original, which is another indicator that it's a copy.

 

The inside paper is also of a heavier weight in the counterfeit compared to the authentic one. The authentic book's interior pages have a more pulpier and more supple feel to it. Overall, the counterfeit actually feels much heavier than an authentic copy.

 

Going to the inside cover of the counterfeit, the letter from Monks has significant type "grow" which happens when you make a copy or reproduction of an original. The type on the copy appears to be bolder than the original. This is because upon making a second generation copy, the crispness of the typography is compromised because of variances in the exposure of the method that they are capturing the image with (either a scanner or camera).

 

 

And lastly, the inside pages. Many of them also have the appearance of being much darker than the authentic one, again because they are a copy-of-a-copy. The darkness variation is much more pronounced on the inside pages, and to me - that typically means that the inside was reproduced on a copy machine, rather than by offset printing. Copy print quality of that era is much lower than the quality of an offset print.

 

 

And with that, those seem to be all the differences between the counterfeit and authentic Cry For Dawn #1s. Yeah, a little nerdy, but with my job background, this was actually a lot of fun to go through. I worked as a prepress technician in the mid-90s, so I am familiar with the limitations of the equipment from back then, and the counterfeiter really put some effort into the fakes - and I believe that he worked at a print shop where he would have access to print these under the radar. And if I recall, these books were getting $75 or so, so spending the time and money to do this would have made sense in the early 90s.

 

Special thanks to Ryan. for hooking me up with the counterfeit!

 

Awesome! Thank you for the info!!! (thumbs u

[Dr. Balls]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite covers

 

Is that cover by Linsner? Dawn's face looks distinctly different on this cover than any other I have seen.

 

Yeah it is - but I can see the differences you're talking about. She may have lost some weight and grew her hair out - her cheeks aren't as rounded and hair not as long in his other renditions of her. Maybe it's a different incarnation of her in the book. I haven't read Three Tiers yet.

[asteroid-comix]

Here are a few of my favorites

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite covers

 

Is that cover by Linsner? Dawn's face looks distinctly different on this cover than any other I have seen.

 

Yeah it is - but I can see the differences you're talking about. She may have lost some weight and grew her hair out - her cheeks aren't as rounded and hair not as long in his other renditions of her. Maybe it's a different incarnation of her in the book. I haven't read Three Tiers yet.

 

Joe often pulls un-published art that he's already created and uses it in a published work (con programs, covers, sketch books, cards, etc.). I'm not saying that's what he's done with this one. However, Dawn was much more slender in the face and hips during his early work, like she is in this cover. Could be art that he created in the mid 90's that got used on this cover (2003/2004?) .

[Dr. Balls]

Here's the Drama mini-comic - another nice pen and ink piece by JML:

 

 

[jgallo]

Is there a good listing of info on all the Dawn books. Needless to say overstreet is lacking in both information and listings.

 

James G

[asteroid-comix]

Is there a good listing of info on all the Dawn books. Needless to say overstreet is lacking in both information and listings.

 

James G

JML used to have a very cool checklist of all of his work on his site. Hope he puts it back out there when and if he ever gets the new site done.

 

I don't know of any other resource.

[Dr. Balls]

Is there a good listing of info on all the Dawn books. Needless to say overstreet is lacking in both information and listings.

 

James G

JML used to have a very cool checklist of all of his work on his site. Hope he puts it back out there when and if he ever gets the new site done.

 

I don't know of any other resource.

 

I've got one here on my Church of Dawn site - it's got most everything, but I apologize for a lot of it being out of order. I'll be straightening it out now that I'll have a bit more free time to focus on it.

[Dr. Balls]

These are two low-level variants that fly under the radar because it's kind of a drek book. Prototype cover (top) with a different masthead, production cover on the bottom.

 

Even though the production cover features a bigger image, the color on the prototype is much better and not blown out.