Thursday 25 October 2012

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #33

Winters Spawn has a question for me over at MINDLESS ONES:
Hi Dave. How come Collected Letters 2, comes in the smaller book-format and not in the phonebook-format? It looks really dwarfed and kinda ugly next to the other volumes. Stay cool!

...and Mint City Comics at BLEEDING COOL asks:
Hi Dave, This is a question about the innate artistic spark. Do you believe that all artists contain a "finite" spark of creativity? In other words, there is only so much greatness in each individual to create "transcendent" works. I remember studying literature in college and several professors commenting that many American authors seemed to create their greatest work at a very early stage in their careers; they quickly flamed out in regards to high artistic quality. Hemingway was one of those authors mentioned. How do you see this concept? Thank you, sir.

...Cory Foster at BLEEDING COOL asks a follow-up question:
If I might be permitted a second question (you needn't send another comic for an answer, I'm just curious as an artist): Was there any conscious impetus toward the evolution of Cerebus' design as a character? The transition over the years from an aardvarkian elongated head and snout to a more circular and pig-like design is one of the more interesting in the comic. Was this just a natural evolution, or did you find drawing his head as a circle to be easier and less time consuming (important for a 6,000 work)?

...and its Gabriel McCann again (!) over at MILLAR WORLD with multiple questions for me on religion:
Politics tends to bore me after a while as I'm sure it does you but religion I find more interesting as it asks big questions as opposed to how is our party going to get re-elected and how can we slag off the opposition to the utmost without ever bothering to let people know what we actually stand for.

You've probably answered this before somewhere else but Did you have a Road to Damascus moment and if so can you describe it in any great detail? or point to wherever you've already answered this question before.

How do you react to Richard Dawkins and all the other Atheism as the new religion viewpoint? (ie. God doesn't exist. It's bloody obvious and anyone who doesn't get that is just an idiot so I'm going to express this as much as possible to get a reaction and piss off anybody with any sort of religious beliefs).

Before your converison (whatever you like to call it) how did you think of yourself from a religious point of view? Were you an atheist, and agnostic, didn't really think about it. Did you have any sort of religious upbringing or were you raised liberally.

Is religion all that imporant and is it really worth bothering trying to convert or ever explain your point of view on the subject to people out there who clearly aren't all that intersted in spiritual development, mysticism or whatever  you like to think of as What is the meaning of life and how can we think about it from a non-scientfic point of view.

Hit the links to MINDLESS ONES, BLEEDING COOL and MILLAR WORLD for the answers to those questions, and I'll be back tomorrow to answer more of your HARDtalk questions.

8 comments:

Gabriel McCann said...

Sorry I've been asking so many questions and such longe ones too but it took a while for Dave to answer my first one so I kept posting to different places in the hope he would eventually get around to answering one. I'm really glad he's answered so many of them. I just hope it's not distracting him too much from doing more important things. Anyway the Virtual Tour qeustions are almost over and in future I'll just snail him to catch up on a few unanswered things.

Gabriel McCann said...

PS I meant answers to questions Dave asked me not more questions I have for him :-)

Anonymous said...

Good questions, Gabriel. I would love a blog full of questions and answers like that. Someone try to convince Dave to do it. I don't have the audacity to ask him for any favors.

David Birdsong

Gabriel McCann said...

Hey DB
You can always read Collected Letters. He answers a lot of questions from people there. But updated issues would be nice too

:-)

Gabriel McCann said...

PPS Maybe Cerebus Fangirl or someone who knows her and has the free time could put a link on her site somewhere to all of the Q&As that Dave has done that are availble online somewhere. I think that Dave has much better things to do with his time than to do that himself.

Margaret said...

Gabe - I think this is what you're thinking of: CFG Artist's page, which has the bios of Dave & Ger, but also many of the essays Dave wrote, and his online Q&A sessions, along with some interviews all hosted on the CFG site. For other interviews, podcasts, etc with Dave, check out the Links page section on Dave.

Gabe McCann said...

Yup that's the one I was thinking of. I also just noticed you've linked to one of my small Q & A's I did with Dave at http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/links.php
from back in the days when I used the pseudonym Eroom Nala :-)

Slumbering Agartha said...

"Eroom Nala" = best. pseudonym. ever.