Thursday 5 November 2015

Weekly Update #107: Everything Must Go!


Want some free Cerebus comics? Thousands left! Head on over to Recker Distribution in Leamington, Ontario and take what you want! First come, first serve...

IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?
Are you a qualified medical practitioner? If so, here's A LINK to Dave's recent MRI and X-Ray of his damaged right hand. It's a zip file with two folders (MRI and X-Ray). Each one has some a small proprietary viewer with which you can see the files. Note, it's PC only. Send in your diagnosis to: sandeep.s.atwal [at] gmail [dot] com

14 comments:

Tim P said...

Hi,

Is there anyone who's organising 'orders' for those who couldn't make the giveaway? Trying to track down a particular issue, but based in UK.

Cheers
Tim

Anthony Kuchar said...

I just want to decry something for a moment and then I'll of said my piece. The public transportation to Leamington is terrible. And by Terrible I mean NONEXISTANT. There is no way to get in to Leamington without a car (except by Taxi which would be ridiculously expensive).

I called up Leamington city hall and they said that Greyhound used to have a route that went through there but they cancelled it for some reason(possibly low attendance). But for crying out loud, it's a small town halfway between London(Ont) and Windsor/Detroit City. It's not like it's some isolated Northern Ontario mining community!

Okay, rant over.

Sorry I couldn't make it.

iestyn said...

Word is getting out there - Comics Reporter has this up on his site today

* Sean Michael Robinson talks us very slowly through the restoration work being done on Cerebus artwork; this is in case you were on the fence, perhaps by my putting you there. I think there's enough information there for you to make a decision. I hope these books exist in the best possible form.

It has a link through to the 4th November post.

That's the 3rd mention in as many weeks!!

I think that, if you put out Aardvark Vanaheim press releases linking to some sort of summary page detailing the amazing work Sean and Mara have been doing, you'd get a lot more play out there in the comics press.

iestyn said...

In answer to

'Michael said...
mental or physical?'

from yesterday - I meant physical I have heard of no mental health issues for Dave. I also find the flippant way people throw these statements around pretty frustrating - being the father of someone who genuinely does have mental health issues.

Unknown said...

Not wanting to distract from my own point -- this is BULGE time when we're going to need the most money to keep things moving forward, so please support the current Kickstarter campaign -- I think one of the ultimate legacies of CEREBUS will be having been the first environment to warn about the excesses of feminism: and the populist destruction of my career which resulted (which, if we can keep CEREBUS itself from being eradicated by feminism, I think will make an object lesson of where feminism implicitly leads). I think the LATEST warning comes, inadvertently, from Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton and his wife Anne Case with their "White Plague" research. White people are dying at an elevated rate.

You can't have 86% of your women (and still climbing) out in the workforce -- which is what a feminist society, now worldwide in the G7 IS -- because your replacement birthrate plummets. Basically, what you're doing as a society, is committing suicide. Which is, as we've seen, is no problem in a democracy. All you need is the votes and there are WAY more than enough votes now and for decades/centuries to come to maintain that steady suicidal downward trajectory.

Feminism is an invention, almost wholly, of white women. The cohort Deacon and Case examined was basically white children either born INTO the Feminism or pre-adolescent in 1970. Again, all you need are the votes.

I do feel obligated to point these things out because I'm one of the few people who doesn't have a female HRD ready to fire me for expressing viewpoints contrary to the Feminist Theocracy.

Unknown said...


My PRIMARY legacy, I think, will be having been the first to suggest that if you read the Torah and the Gospels and the Koran with the idea in mind that it's a tripartite dialogue/argument/chess game between God and the YHWH -- God and God's first, disobedient creation -- the three texts make sense as a perfect unity. The Off-White House will be the first place where all three faiths were observed in that context...and that will be of great value to future generations I think.

IF we can survive the Feminist Theocracy, long after I'm dead. IF we can keep enough money coming in.

"Damning with faint praise" such as that cited by "Comics Reporter"...

...well. That's why I'm going to be here, God willing, every day through the Kickstarter campaign making other suggestions that I think MIGHT actually work.

Unknown said...

Tim P - We will be SELLING back issues by mail order once we have the new storage space/office/mailing room set up, but that's going to take a WHILE!!!! And it's going to be expensive. There is no cheap way to move things around the planet by traditional means. The "giveaway" -- which ends Friday the 13th -- was intended for people who could get there BECAUSE there were no shipping costs. We even let people grab free trade paperbacks because there were only a half dozen people there. AND we -- me and your CEREBUS fan money -- bought them dinner Friday and Saturday night. Cheapest labour costs going! :)

Anthony K - I hear you! Ontario is a mess of socialist idealism and practical capitalism. The "unprofitable" routes became unprofitable because the province subsidizes GO Transit -- which is a lot cheaper -- so everyone takes GO and Grey Coach starves to death. Far more intricate than that, but unsustainable in either incarnation. I speak as someone who ALWAYS takes the bus inter-city. Routes are evaporating permanently.

iestyn - We are ALL on the same page, I think: we need to "DE-Dave Sim" our fundraising efforts. CEREBUS IS Sean Robinson and Mara Sedlins. The point is that there is this giant YUCKY MESS of non-computer stuff done WRONG back in the pre-computer days because they didn't have computers and brilliant computer people like we do today who can FIX THE YUCKY MESS.

In 2015, THAT'S the CEREBUS story.

I'm basically crossing off my list "possible hidden vein of potential pledge partners at AMOC" as a possibility by posting here every day of Kickstarter. The AMOC Matrix model is far more sustainable.

If pledges continue to erode, we can rule out me posting anywhere for any reason and get more serious about "de-DAVE SIMing" CEREBUS. And "de-CEREBUSING" the world's longest English-language graphic novel.

Which, God willing, I'll talk about tomorrow.

Tim P said...

Cheers for the reply.
All the best
Tim

Anonymous said...

Happy Friday, Dave:

I for one visit AMOC primarily for your insights, and would miss them. Might I petition any other visitors who agree to add their voices here, to help you (Dave)get a sense of whether it's worth time spent away from SDOAR? Just post a simple, "I like hearing from you too, Dave" or thereabouts?

Regarding the issue of birthrates and dual-income couples: Being the sole breadwinner of a family with two kids on Earth, one in Heaven, part of me understands why both spouses in other families work, but what we go without in terms of income and options is made up for in actually affording our children a childhood with a measure of stability. Having been a latchkey kid myself, I've no doubt we've made the right decision.

Not that I begrudge my parents their choices - for a while we would garbage-pick on trash night for furniture and clothes DESPITE both my mom and dad working because the money still wasn't enough after rent came due. Rather, looking back at my parents digging their way out of poverty, me not following in their footsteps seems the surest way to honor what we went through in the 1980s.

I say this to make the case that you are not alone in holding conservative values and would (again, as in previous letters and calls) encourage you to keep your voice in the public sphere to the extent that you find it interesting, constructive, and helpful in developing/promoting your work or personally fulfilling.

The current political environment in the U.S.A. (which is quickly being replicated elsewhere) is proof positive that liberalism is not embraced by all, and understood to be destructive by many. A cohort of science-fiction writers is challenging its liberal peers at present, making a stand for free speech and conservative (or at least not mandatorily and herd-approved liberal) values. An old Army buddy of mine is helping lead the charge. I can put you two in touch if you'd like to compare notes.

Remember your Mount Everest analogy: Your honest, decades-long quest for Truth, executed via your writing of Cerebus, brought you to a belief system and faith that your younger self mocked (I can tell you that as a Catholic, being on the receiving end of Church & State around 1986/1987 wasn't completely comfortable). Not everyone has trod the same path as you, but some were born into similar beliefs, or have found their own way to them. The point you've reached, intellectually and spiritually, was hard-earned. Your work itself still serves as a map for those who would follow, and has value - not just for future generations, as you frequently make reference to, but right now.

Rather than de-Cerebus and de-Dave Sim any environment in response to those who disagree with it or you, remain engaged - again, to the extent that you find value in it. You are appreciated.

--Claude Flowers

iestyn said...

As a non-liberal, firmly left wing, (not Marxist - anarchist if you want to know) solidly atheist individual I have always seen a GREAT sense of irony in Dave's belief that the world is becoming Marxist and Feminist led.

I for one see the world as heading in the exact opposite direction. The UK has just voted in a SERIOUSLY right wing tory group and seen a SIGNIFICANT upturn in the popularity of a FAR RIGHTWING (read borderline to full on racist) political party.

By the way - I would argue it is not Feminism that has seen women move wholesale into the workforce, but good old creeping consumerism. It may wear feminist drag, but it's still good old fashioned money that has forced this situation.

As we're bringing this up, it's also a VERY middleclass opinion that states women weren't in the workforce, most working class mothers would have been working, it would just have been from home taking in washing or ironing. It's the change in working options that has led to the move into the 'out-of-home' workforce.

Hey ho. Rant over. Sorry.

BTW - I STILL think Cerebus, art and STORY are genius and have a lot to tell us about the world despite my left-leaning feminist ways.

Iestyn

Jeff Seiler said...

I had the best of both worlds, growing up as a pre-teen prior to 1970 (born in '62): My mother owned a boarding kennel, so she worked from home but was there every day when we got home from school on the bus. Dad drove us to school every morning. The only drawback to this arrangement was that we kids were, essentially, free labor for several years, working in the kennel.

But, hey, 3 hots and a roof over your head with two parents who were married for 43 years until (my mother died) is a pretty good trade-off against having to shovel dog poop a coupla hours a day.

Don't know that advances the discourse, but there it is.

Tony Morris said...

I know conventional wisdom is that the early Cerebus material is the easy sell and it's all downhill support-wise after Church & State, but I just wanted to stick my head in to say that this is the first of the kickstarter campaigns I've contributed to (and what's lured me in earlier than I'd planned is vol.3 of the collected letters).

That's because it's the later material that I'm most interested in - I started reading Cerebus when Jaka's Story was running and while I then went back and read the earlier material (and have been buying the remastered collections) it's the final 100 issues that are my favourites.

I may be an isolated case, but it's at least possible that there are others out there for whom the later campaigns will hold more interest.

Jeff Seiler said...

Stephen Colbert referred, though not by their names, to what Dave refers to above. Colbert, a Hollywood feminist, one presumes (he works for CBS), said that the "researchers" linked global warming to "reduced coital frequency".

No mention by Colbert of feminists.

He did mention that there was also a link between marriage and "reduced coital frequency".

He added that the researchers must be right, because everyone knows that the Sourthern temps of Spring Break always leads to "reduced coital frequency".

Ba-dump-bump.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the Cerebus marketing should be directed at those who share Dave's main interests.

One prong of the marketing could be directed at Men's Rights Activists. Promote Cerebus as Dave suggests -- an early, bold and prescient critique of feminism for which Dave has suffered martyrdom. Dave's story and his views could resonate with the MRAs. Probably more for the MGTOW crowd, since that is essentially what Dave has done. Perhaps he could even make some money as a speaker at some of their events, and at the same time hawk Cerebus, with a focus on Tangent and 186.

Another prong of the marketing could be directed at Muslim peoples. As I understand it, Dave's views hew closest to the Muslim faith and he views Muhammed as the last prophet. He might market Cerebus as his exposition on a viable modern interpretation of Islam. There might actually be a market for Cerebus as an illustrated study of the Abrahamic religions, as Islam has been a hot topic since at least 911. The main difficulty I see is that Dave would essentially be trying to convert others to his views, whereas I think he is already in agreement with the MGTOW crowd.

For me personally, the religious exposition and "anti-feminism" are my least favourite elements of Cerebus. But for Dave, it seems the opposite. Yet, his marketing is heavily directed at longtime Cerebus fans or the comic book reading public in general, who, as Dave repeatedly points out, are ill-disposed to his favourite themes.

So why beat a dead horse? Perhaps Dave would have more success marketing to more like-minded folks, in addition to people like me, whose support is in good measure based on nostalgia and enjoyment of originally serialized comics.

- Reginald P.