"Passage"

"Passage", page 1

"Passage" is a six-page story by Dave Sim. It features the earliest appearance of Cerebus' vest.

Summary

Aboard a merchant vessel on the Sofim River, Cerebus aids his fellow passengers in repelling an attempted invasion by Borealan renegades. That night, the Captain lets the barbarian know he's aware he's not a merchant, but is gracious to have him on their side. Cerebus warns of impending danger, he's smelled sorcery ripening in the waters since the day before. The Captain denies this, claiming he's overtired. The aardvark concurs and gets some sleep.

The next morning, though, the smell of magic is nearly overpowering to Cerebus, who complains to the Captain about the fact they were supposed to be in port the day before. The Captain points out that telling customers the journey takes two days less than it actually does makes for good business. He assures him that there's no need to worry about sorcery, since the nearest Sorcerer is a customer of his in Serrea. The crew complains of a big white rock rotting below decks, cargo intended for the Serrean wizard. Cerebus realizes the smell of sorcery isn't coming from the sea at all, but from the ship itself. He rips off a plank and leaps off the deck, much to the Captain's surprise. The aardvark swims away from the ship, cursing himself for not seeing it sooner. The ship and all those on it suffer for the Captain's skewed arrival timetable, when that white rock, actually an egg, hatches into a huge Gargoyle, ripping apart the boat as it soars skyward.

Characters

• Cerebus (last seen in issue 3; next appearance in issue 4)
• Ship's Captain (only appearance)

Objects

• Cerebus' vest
• Cerebus' medallions
• Cerebus' sword
• Gargoyle egg

Locations

• Sofim River

Notes

• "Passage" was drawn almost three years ago, just after Cerebus #4 was finished. It was sent to David Cothran for his magazine, Faerie Star. Faerie Star was never printed, and Cothran disappeared without returning "Passage". After so long, the Simses have given up hope to recover the original art. Their only copy was a very poor Xerox, far too bad for professional publication. A patchy attempt was made on the first couple of pages to ink in the faded Xerox areas. - Fred Patten

Dave Sim on "Passage"

• I must not have been paying very close attention at the time to what I told Fred (or, more likely, what I had Deni relay to Fred), but I'm quite certain that the story was drawn between issues 3 and 4, not between issues 4 and 5. As the introductory caption to issue 4 (informing the read of what has taken place since issue 3) reads: "Using Henrot's gold, Cerebus bribes his way onto a merchant vessel on the Sofim River...'" (emphasis mine). I wasn't exactly a scholar of Robert E. Howard and Conan, but I was aware of the controversy -- as regards the sequence in which the Conan stories took place -- that has swirled around them since REH worte them, so once I knew that I was past the three-issues trial period I had given Cerebus, I was very careful to maintain the sequence of the completed stories both on paper (avoiding backtracking in the chronology on the outside stories that I did -- since the story for Faerie Star was the next thing I had to do after issue 3, I set the story on the Sofim River between Tansubal, the locale for issue 3, and Serrea, the locale for issue 4) and in my mind. I maintained that forward momentum for pretty close to eight years until Ger and I did the Young Cerebus stories in Epic Illustrated and Cerebus Jam. It took me a little longer to get used to Cerebus referring to himself in the third person, and you'll notice he refers to himself as "I" and "me" several times in the course of the story.

The story was intended for Faerie Star #2. Faerie Star #1 actually did come out in 1977.

It's true that David Cothran disappeared without a trace and the original artwork with him. The quality of the photocopies can be attributed to the quality of the photocopier at the Kitchener Public Library at the time. This was back in the dark ages when photocopiers tended to print only thin lines. Solid black just tended to get burnt to a light gray with a patchy darker gray perimeter (which was all you needed for most library photocopies that consisted mostly of basic text).

As Fred mentions, I attempted to darken the pages manually and realized that it was an impossible task. The line-work only looked black by contrast with the areas that were supposed to be solid black. As you can see, where solid black was added in various areas (the cloud of smoke on page one panel 2, the silhouette on panel 4, half of Cerebus' vest on page 2 panel 1, the shadow under the arm, page 2 panel 2, the railing in page 2 panel 5) it was so much darker than the linework that the whole thing was irretrievably unbalanced. The problems were compounded with the results I was getting on most of page 3 and the bottom right panel of page 4 where I attempted to re-ink the lines in question and realized how different my drawing style was from three or four years before. As you can see, the story looks like very early Cerebus, and suddenly that panel looks like it's from the Palnu Trilogy era. Which raised the question: am I destroying the only example of a given artifact by updating the style of it, and how far do I want to go in that direction? I decided to stop and leave bad enough alone. It would be interesting to see if computer technology has come far enough to darken all of the linework and fill in the gray areas that were meant to be black without adding or subtracting anything, and I welcome anyone who wants to take a try at it to give it their best shot from these reproductions here.

Annotations

• This story features the first appearance of Cerebus' black vest. It serves a particular purpose here, stated to have sewn into it the remaining gold he obtained from Henrot (p. 1).
• This is also the first story to not feature Cerebus' helmet. Yet it will later be revealed in issue 196 that he traded his helmet for the vest after this story.
• Cerebus will again encounter trouble at sea in the Silverspoon story.
• (p. 2) Cerebus uses the Earth-Pig Snout Flip, a variation on the Earth-Pig Snout Punch, for the only known time here.
• (p. 3) Cerebus again, as he has before, such as in issue 2, displays an ability to detect sorcery from his first-hand knowledge of it.
• This story features four uses of Tarim as an oath.
• (p. 6) Cerebus appears to have left his sword behind, but it will be in his possession when we next see him.

Printings

• Cerebus the Newsletter No. 2, April/June, 1981
• Following Cerebus No. 2