Contributed by Maggie Thompson

With just over two weeks to go, Dave Sim’s Kickstarter for Cerebus Archive Number Seven has already reached roughly twice the backing required to meet the goal. Nevertheless, it’s a project of which you may not yet have heard. So…

The first issue of Cerebus was dated December 1977: a seemingly simple satire on swords-and-sorcery-focused barbarian comics. Hah! How long could anyone expect writer-artist-letterer-publisher Dave Sim to keep the story coming?

We know the answer now, four decades later. Cerebus was groundbreaking: a massive literal epic with beginning, middle, and end, as Sim demonstrated increasingly advanced skills in art, script, and plot.

Of course, as the series progressed, the issues were comic books: traditionally sized and printed in black and white, as were many other independent comics Back In The Day. The opportunity to study the mastery of detail on display in every issue was something fans relished year after year, as Sim’s skills developed and he was joined in production by fellow artist Gerhard.

Now, fans old (and, it is to be hoped, new) can get a closer look at the artistry of individual pages, as Sim’s Cerebus Archive Number Seven is in the midst of its Kickstarter drive.

Oh, and by the way, Sim is also working on what he has termed the “massive task” (It must be!) of restoring and preserving Cerebus. (In a personal note: I bought a page of original Cerebus art decades ago and recently provided a high-dpi scan of that page to that project. One page. Out of—no, I’m not going to try to compute the size of the challenge that still faces him.) The Kickstarter page adds an opportunity to help fund that endeavor. No printed archive for that sort of contribution—but a worthy cause!

There’s a better look at Sim’s work and an idea of what Cerebus Archive Number Seven will bring at Kickstarter.com.