Hi, Everybody!
As we do:
Mondays!
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As you all should know by now, Dave's CONTINUING the Please PAY For Dave Sim format. If you want more '82 Tour Book discussion, go HERE, and pay for "Dave Sim 82 Tour Book". But if you'd rather hear more stereotypical Please Hold (*shudder*) "content", go HERE and pay for "Please Hold For Dave Sim".
Speaking of Please Hold...
Jesse Lee Herndon has caught up to Dave and I on the Please Hold Transcripts, And since I'm out of Proto-Strange Death of Alex Raymond pages, I may as well start knocking out these transcripts.
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Matt: Hello, Dave!
Dave: Hello, Matt! How are you doing?
Matt: Alright! Let me move things that fell as I was plugging the phone in. All right, I'm ready if you're ready.
Dave: Okay, all right. Okay, starting with, “You know what they say, April questions bring May the answers. Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.”
Matt: I was particularly proud of that horrible gag.
Dave: [laughs] I liked it. I liked it. It's got a certain lilt to it. Do you want to do the next part, or do you want me to do the next part?
Matt: I printed out all 18 pages so I can do the next part.
Dave: Okay! You do the next part.
Matt: Last time on Please Hold for Dave Sim, Dodger found out about Elisa's affair with Trevor but hasn't let on that he knows so is to lull her into a false sense of security until after the big chili cookoff. Jen discovered that the ancient Pict dagger she won at the charity auction was a fake and the real dagger was swapped out by Christen, who unbeknownst to Jen needs the dagger to trade for Margaret's life. Meanwhile, it turns out that it's not really Margaret that's being ransomed by Phillip Frey's evil twin but actually Margaret's semi-evil twin who was separated from Margaret’s family at birth and raised by circus clowns. The real Margaret is on her way to the airport to stop Glen and Glenda from eloping to Paris, as it turns out they're actually first cousins and that would be gross. But in reality, it turned out that…
Dave: Hold on, hold on, hold on! At this point I have to go, gasp! Okay.
Matt: But in reality, it turned out that the genetic testing results were forged by Cecilia to try to pay off the debt she owes James Banderas-Smith that he's been threatening her with for like three seasons at this point, and Glen and Glenda could totally get married without producing aberrations the likes of which haven't been seen outside the freakshow Margaret's semi-evil twin grew up down wind of, and all this while Lee Thatcher prepares to break the World Record for fastest land speed on a tricycle. Before any of this could be resolved, Michael R burst in from Easton, Pennsylvania with an urgent message about Dave Sim’s Collected Letters, and we ended on that cliffhanger. So what the heck is going on, Dave?!
Dave: [laughs] Well, it wasn't that much of a cliffhanger! But it's definitely a cliffhanger. Okay, so moving over to Michael R’s Sunday February 4th 2024 digital Collected Letters fax, “Hi Dave, enclosed is a physical check for the digital copy of Collected Letters 2023.” Thank you very much for that, Michael. “I was, and I am still, digging around in my digital stuff, and found your first Kickstarter ‘Cerebus High Society Special Audio Visual Digital Edition’ PDFs of all 25 comics, and found not only the Albatross One Notebook, but the first five Notebooks linked, I believe, to the High Society comics.” Let me just interrupt to say , that wasn't the first Kickstarter, that was IDW. I don't know if IDW did a Kickstarter with them, but High Society Special Audio Digital, which is an amazing package, there's just absolutely no question about it, that was published by IDW.
Matt: But, wait a minute, before it was published by IDW, it was a Kickstarter where you got digital copies of everything.
Dave: Oh, was it?
Matt: That was the first Kickstarter, I know cause I have it, and every now and then I find the folder with all the files, go, oh yeah, I have this. And then I go back to taking my 17th Printing High Society and chopping it up into six page bits to put on as six images on the blog.
Dave: Completely unnecessary.
Matt: Well, I started it five years ago, and I'm only on page 463.
Dave: Room for improvement there. Okay, I stand corrected. I stand corrected. Where were we here? Michael R goes on, “Here's my dilemma for your solution. You really went to town with all the extras that came with the ‘Cerebus High Society Special Audio Visual Digital Edition’ bonus materials. You included the letters from retailers, there's invoices, sketches, and drawings from you and others, plus the ballpoint pen sketches from the Kickstarter backers. But, what I think what made it all worthwhile is that you comment on the Notebooks! Wow.” And he goes on, “What if you create, or Studio Comixpress, a master Deluxe Albatross One with all the other Notebooks that came with High Society Digital versions into a hardcover and a slipcase to match my High Society Remastered hardcover with the slipcase. As much as that cool factor that Rob Snell got maybe the one and only near-perfect replica of the Albatross One Notebook, how cool would it be to have the whole remastered High Society shebang in a hardcover with a slipcase?” [laughs] This is one of the great punchlines of all time. “I know I couldn't afford it! But would consider making payments on it. Would be AWESOME next to my 16 volumes of all various phonebooks. Plus I could actually hold it in my hands instead of fussing with whatever device I am holding at the moment to view or read it. If ever would use ‘Swordfish’ for personal gain, this would be it. Sorry, Rob Snell, I hope I spelled his name right.” Okay that's a little bit dated because, yes Rob Snell did get the first one, but there's been nine more since then, maybe 10 more. I think we're up to 11 orders on the Albatross Notebooks. Anybody who sent in a cheque for $100, I haven't cashed the cheques because I wanted to make sure that the Albatrosses actually went out to the people, and were likely actually arriving before I actually cash the cheques. So if you're wondering why your bank account doesn't balance because it's a $100 short, it's Dave hasn't cashed the cheque yet. But I think that's going to be next Thursday. Okay, in a nutshell, Michael, this is the situation that I'm in with having just a little under a 100 financial backers left, where something that sounds absolutely perfect to you, this is something that Michael R would definitely buy even if he couldn't afford it, and he would make payments on it. Which is very very generous of you to, let's say, let's just go crazy and say it's a $400 book and you could pay it in eight $50 monthly installments, or something like that. The problem becomes it's not really possible or feasible for me to put in time putting something like that together that you think is really cool, and maybe two other people think is is really cool, but that's it. So that, even if I did the payment plan thing, we would still be looking at maximum revenue of $1,200 and probably cost to produce of $600, and as limited as my options are of ways to make money right now, there are much easier ways for me to make $600 US. So that's in a nutshell.
Then Michael wrote, “Or somehow included in the Dagon James 1982 Cerebus Tour Kickstarter. Hey, when is that coming out, by the way? There might be others who might want it, as well. It might really decrease the price of something that a few might actually want.” Situation with the Cerebus 1982 Tour Book is pretty much the same. Dagon told me at one point that as far as he's concerned it's almost done, needed some more work done on it. I said okay, have Studio Comixpress print out a copy, and I'll take a look at it, and I'll take take a turn putting stuff together on it, and then back over to you. One of the problems is the photographs from the 1982 Tour. Everything is done on the Cerebus Archive photos finally, except for the 1982 Tour, because it's one big photo album, and all of the photos were put in order in the photo album from the beginning of the tour through to the end of the tour, immediately after the tour. And then, I had whoever was working here at the time type up my tour diary, and then produce that as text for a comic book sized publication. And then took those blocks of text and took photos out of the album any time that I came to a part in the text where I went, okay, I've got a picture of that, so that picture should go in here. And Dagon got that. Dagon got the printed text with the photograph inserted. But the situation as it stands, is all of those photographs were taken out, obviously from specific places, and consequently I'm kind of loathe to just turn over the photo album to Rolly. I'll have to give him special instructions on it and say, when you pull the photograph out, make sure that it goes back into the exact block that it came out of, and if there's a blank protector in the photo album, mark that as being “this was between this photo and that photo” which means Dagon would be able to cross reference that and say, “Okay, these are the photos that I haven't seen before, now I've got them. These are the photos that I have pasted up with the text, so it's like a jigsaw puzzle.” So I don't really want to mess that up, because I really don't want to try and reconstruct the 1982 Tour from memory 42 years later. So that's where the Tour Book stands, it's definitely in the category of, I think it is a Waverly Press book, because it's probably not going to make very much money. It's not going to sell very many copies, each of the copies will cost way too much to produce, but it is something that I'm personally interested in, personally invested in. It was certainly the high point of Deni's and my marriage, from my perspective. Marriage coming to an end before before the end of the following year. So I think it's a valuable document in that sense and it's got a lot of cool stuff in it, but it's still in raw form, so if it is a Kickstarter, believe me it's not the next Kickstarter, and it's probably not the next Kickstarter after that, or the next Kickstarter after that. Okay! Go ahead.
Matt: Dagon sent me digital files of all the photos that he's got, and I will send a copy of that to Rolly when you finally get a laptop, so that you'll have, “these are the photos Dagon definitely has.”
Dave: I'm not going to be participating on that side of it. We're definitely trying to limit Grampaw's participation to what Grampaw actually has to do. That was what happened with the photo archive, that was a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head from the time I started putting the Archive together, which is 20 years ago now when “Cerebus” came to an end. There's a bunch of photographs in here that, probably 30% of them, 40% of them, I’m the only person who knows what's in those photographs. So the priority wasn't me having access to the photographs, it’s the same as, now that it's going over to Rolly and he's scanning all of them and sending copies of every photograph in the Cerebus Archive to you, you'll have all of them for Please Hold for Dave Sim or wherever you might use them. I'll have the physical copies in the comic book size Stayflats, separated year by year. This is getting into answering it another question, but separated into year by year, which is already working really really well. In terms of, they're all just in ordinary business envelopes right now, but I'm doing the notes for CAN 11 and I needed the picture of me and Eddie Campbell out front of Comics Plus in Australia, which a great poster advertising the appearance, and that's February 1994. I know that because I just went through all of the photographs, so I just had to go through all the 1994 envelopes, and peek inside each one of them, and there it is. Which is a big Improvement on the giant Canada Post shipping box that had all of the photograph in it, and anytime I had to look for one, I had to go basically through the whole box going, well, it's in here somewhere, because it is a photograph, but I'm not going to find it in five minutes. Okay.
Alright. So, moving on from there, that brings us to Kevin Alexander. And this is the fax that he sent, “Any chance you'll sell digital versions of all your ‘Cerebus in Hell?’ issues? I'm going to buy your 300 issue digital issue series my next payday and I would love to get the ‘Cerebus in Hell?’ series too.” And I faxed back to him, this was back on March 9th that he faxed it, I didn't get back to him for about two weeks after that. “Hi Kevin! Sorry to be so long getting back to you, Many many thanks for the payday investment! I'm relaying this through Manly Matt Dow at A Moment of Cerebus that will be answering your question on Please Hold for Dave Sim, God-willing air date April 6th as well as everyone's questions Manly sent through to me today. See attached, hope to ‘see’ you then!” And then you wrote, “And since ‘past Dave’ wrote ‘ the check, ‘today Dave’ can cash it. And of course, because I shone a light on something people weren't paying attention to, they want to complicate it. Case in point number one.” I still don't know how to pronounce Mile’s name, whether it's Mile or Meil, but I'll say, “Mile Lui actually asked me, ‘I noticed finally the offer of a copy of Dave Sim's Albatross One Notebook for the payment of US $100 to Dave. Sending US $100 is a pain here in the UK, it would be far easier to pay Dave via PayPal if that is an option. For example, would Dave accept Canadian $140 donated to him via CerebusDownloads.com, whatever the exchange rate is in Canadian dollars at the time of payment. Additionally, shipping to the UK is going to be eye-wateringly high, so the price would probably be higher. Any chance you could find out from Dave what the price for Albatross One is for those who are outside North America? Finally, in what form is the ‘copy’ of this Notebook? Photocopies bundled together? An actual printed book?” Uh, well, I can say without fear of contradiction that apart from the coil binding on the copy of the Notebook, it's a different heavier coil than is on the original Notebook, which is just thin metal like you would find in any Staples or store like that that sells notebooks. But literally side by side, you couldn't tell them apart. And if you weren't looking at the coil binding and just opened up to two random facing pages, and I had the Notebook sitting next to it, you definitely couldn't tell those apart. I can't tell them apart. So Mile concludes, “Thanks for your help.” And thank you for your interest, Mile. And then Matt writes, “I told him that paying through CerebusDownloads should be okay as long as lets me, Eddie, or you know that that is what the payment is for. He estimates $50 USD for shipping. Does that sound right?” And the short answer to both of those questions is, no, you can't order it from CerebusDownloads, and no, $50 US for shipping, that isn't right. We'll get to that. “Case in point number two, Al Roney said, ‘how about a PDF option on the Notebook as well? I mean, presumably this could be an option, but would it still be $100 or less since it's digital and not physical?’ Case in point number three, Lee Thacker said, ‘Would $160 Canadian dollars cover the book and postage to the UK?’” At that point you interrupt and go, “Uh see, it's about 140 Canadian for just the book, and I don't think $20 Canadian is going to cover shipping to His Majesty's Kingdom. Okay, Lee’s house, but it is in His Majesty's Kingdom.” Good point, Manly Matt Dow. “Case in point number four, Glen said, ‘Could some of the pages of Dave's Notebooks appear in the Remastered trade paperbacks, or Cerebus #1 or #2 as bonus content? That being said, I'd be interested in the best of Dave's Notebooks in a comic, like ‘Pieces of Turtles 8,’ with commentary by Dave.’” I think that's the end of the cases in point? Yes that's the end of the cases in point.
Uh okay, let's start with Glen, and no, there isn't going to be commentary. That's one of those things that, at least for the foreseeable future, the only commentaries that I'm writing are going to be in the CAN portfolios, and that's because I'm trying to do an explanation-ectomy on my business life as the President of Aardvark-Vanaheim, where I know the answer to these questions but explaining them gets complicated. As we will see here, as I move on to explaining. Like I say, I’m going to try to conduct as much of AV business right here on Please Hold for Dave Sim as possible for the foreseeable future. The reason for that is, one, it qualifies as content, which is what you definitely want when you're trying to keep A Moment of Cerebus supplied with daily posts. Number two, it's easier to explain something verbally than to type it up. And three, I think it's a good business idea generally. It's one of those, probably Dave Sim is the only person on the planet that thinks this way, particularly as someone who owns a business, but we're in a time period where openness and transparency are buzzwords, but they're actually the best policy that you can have as well. If you do everything openly and in front of your customers, then they're not going to get this suspicion that they're getting the wool pulled over their eyes. Believe me, with 96 paying customers left, I'm not pulling the wool over anybody's eyes. I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing, and I'll tell you exactly why I'm doing it, and you can either go, “Well, that makes sense to me” or go “Well, you know, I wouldn't do it that way, but it's Dave’s company”, and it is at least all of the cards are on the table, all of them are face up to the extent that that's possible for me to do that. So let's take this out for a test drive.
Addressing this to George Gatsis and Eddie Khanna, what I really need is a fee splitter at CerebusDownloads. Right now, Gerhard is getting 25% of the Dave Sim Patreon money, which I'm sure he doesn't want, and doesn't feel entitled to, and I don't want to be the CerebusDownloads bookkeeper. When I get in the list of customers for CerebusDownloads, which Eddie faxes me every month, I don't want to sit down and say, okay, here's the formerly two different descriptions of what it is the people are buying, and now there's eight different descriptions, and each of these have to be divided up different ways. I don't want to do that, so it's easier to just pay Gerhard 25% of the total, rounding up. IE, CerebusDownloads for March brought in $1109 Canadian, minus [???]Vitas P’s $140 Canadian that he donated hoping to get an Albatross One, which isn't being offered at CerebusDownloads at the moment. So, Gerhard got a cheque, I try and cut him a cheque as close to the beginning of the month as possible, so Gerhard got $250 out of $860, which is more than 25%. So I always try to air on that side, it's, you know, this is not happy days are here again money for Gerhard, so to whatever extent that I can round it up to a larger amount that still makes sense, I try to do that. So, public AV meeting number one, George, is there an app for separating the payments into two separate accounts? I.E. Scott Y in Hawaii this month ordered digital Cerebus, High Society, Church & State 1 and Church & State 2, and thank you Scott Y, if you're listening in. Gerhard should get 25% of any book Church & State 2 and forward to The Last Day, and 12.5% of Church & State 1 since he only worked on the second half of it, and nothing on Cerebus, High Society. Not being a tech guy, that's my question. If there's some really simple way to do that, to just say, “Okay, I just have to put this in this category, this in that category” and ideally there would be a Gerhard account at CerebusDownloads.com that, “here's the money that goes to Gerhard already separated out, based on what the person ordered.” Eddie, the fall back position would be, you being the CerebusDownloads bookkeeper and emailing Gerhard his cut every month. I'm hoping we can avoid that by automating it, if there's an easy way, or even a slightly complicated way to automate it, since you already have enough on your plate without having to sit down with CerebusDownloads revenues at the end of every month and figure out all of the stuff. But I definitely wanted you included on this, because this is obviously, after Dave Sim dies and you're the president of Aardvark-Vanaheim, you need to you to know that this is the structure for all of the material that “Cerebus” per se, the 6,000 page graphic novel, this is how it breaks down, and this is how how the compensation is supposed to go, with these monies going to Gerhard, and these monies going to Aardvark-Vanaheim. This is the reason that I said I would sell Albatross One by mail, if you send a cheque for $100 US, and it's the reason I sent Vitas P of Walton, Massachusetts a refund cheque for $100 US when he paid for an Albatross One with a $140 Canadian donation at CerebusDownloads. We aren't there yet, Vitas, but we are working on it, starting here, and hopefully it's not something that's going to stretch into weeks or months to accomplish, but if it does, I still think it's worth doing. So, addressing everybody listening to this, generally, if you want to know how does this apply to me, if you really really have to pay at CerebusDownloads for Albatross One, and you really really have to do it now before we get all of this worked out, until or maybe unless, we get a fee splitter structure operating, it's going to be $140 Canadian plus a 25% Gerhard tax, $35 Canadian. I had Rolly look into international shipping, which is actually is not that much more, it's $35 Canadian surface to the UK. So what you're talking about is, if you paid $35, Canada Post wouldn't even consider the package to be missing for, I think it's, two months? Two and a half months? So, [laughs] you know, if you want to go for the 35 bucks, it'll get there, but it'll be an enormous surprise just about the time that you're forgetting about it. $70 Canadian by air. So, bottom line, CerebusDownloads right now, if you're in the US $140 Canadian plus $30 Canadian postage plus $35 Gerhard tax would be $205 Canadian, that's what you would be donating if you absolutely have to have an Albatross One now before we have the fee splitting going on. Or you can just send a cashier’s cheque or money order for $100 US payable to AV, and it's all covered. So, the difference is between $100 US and $205 Canadian. If you're outside the US or Canada, it's $140 Canadian plus $35 Canadian postage, plus $35 Gerhard tax, $210 Canadian, that's with Surface Post delivery. The platinum option, if you're outside the US or Canada, $140 Canadian, plus $70 Canadian postage, plus $35 Gerhard tax, $245 Canadian by air mail. My best advice is, wait and see if we can come up with a fee splitter structure sometime in the near or foreseeable future, and Eddie, if you can just give George Gatsis a heads up on this. I don't know if George has been listening lately, but if he is, well, there's your mission, if you decide to accepted it, Mr Phelps. Okay, same problem with a digital Albatross, if the revenues on Albatross One can be split directly into the AV account, there's no need for a Gerhard tax, so best be patient until I can set a solo Dave Sim/AV price on it.
Which brings us to Kevin. Hello, Kevin. This is compounded with “Cerebus in Hell?”, where the fee splitter would have to route each of the 12 volumes into AV, Sandeep Atwall, David Birdsong, Benjamin Hobbs, Laura McFarland, Matt Dow, and Sean Robinson accounts. Ideally, each person would have access to their own account which, let's face facts, is going to be minuscule. But they would have access, and whenever there is a worthwhile amount to be transferred to their own PayPal account, I.E. more than the fees PayPal is going to charge them for the transfer, they could transfer it. Which brings us I think to Eddie. Hello, Eddie! CerebusDownloads was asset accompli when you became the AV presidential successor. You're on the internet. You use websites of one kind or another, which I don't. Can we treat this as an opportunity to create a creator’s rights style template website? CIH?Downloads.com. Whatever fee splitter structure you or George can come up with as a formula as to how that's set up. And if this isn't something that you or George can do easily, can you quarterback somebody who does websites, setting up a website like that. AV will pay for it. Again, less for the millions in filthy lucra it’s going to generate, and more for the necessity of a template creator’s rights website structure for publications with multiple contributors. I've already talked to Rolly about looking at the credits in each of the 12 volumes and counting the number of pages written by each contributor to that volume, so that anyone buying any given volume for, say, $8 Canadian, that $8 automatically gets routed into the appropriate accounts. Right now Rolly's priorities are getting caught up on me finishing the Cerebus Archive. At the moment, scanning all the photos and descriptions for the photo archive, packaging them in manga plastic bags and backing boards, and packaging those in Stayflats with Cerebus Archive stickers with the years on 1972 to 2010. And he's making pretty good progress. He was already up to 1988, I haven't been back to Camp David to see exactly what he got done today, but now the Kickstarter 10 is over, he was able to put in a good part of his day on it. Our theory, Rolly and mine together, being that it's better to finish all of one thing than to try to move everything forward simultaneously. This will be followed by Rolly scanning The Latter Days original artwork and negatives, a higher priority than my “Cerebus in Hell?” website. If there is a “Cerebus in Hell?” website, we could also sell physical copies of “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” with different shipping costs, depending on how many volumes they're ordering. Which could make for a great digital sales pitch right there, since digital would be a lot cheaper than shipping even individual books or a complete set of 12 books. Moving stuff around is getting very expensive. I think I mentioned when we were talking about Kickstarter 10 last time, that I noticed that there was 4,000 US for the shipping charges, and I went, that's an awful lot of money. I think we're probably overcharging, and I think we’ll cut that on the next Kickstarter. Now that I've just paid the bill for the shipping, it worked out to $4,900 Canadian, so it's definitely within the ballpark. I was thinking, this has got to be at least $1000 too much it's like, it's much later in the day than that, Grampaw.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, now I'm gonna go to the March 24th fax from Eddie Khanna. “Hi Dave, Remastered versions of Form & Void and The Last Day are now up on CerebusDownloads.” Yay! “Also, Sean was wondering, ‘I had been just completing books as I go and waiting for Dave to need them for printing, but if you would rather, I can take some of the books that I have already banked that have not been printed yet and start preparing those for screens as well. I've got Melmoth, Guys, Rick’s Story, and I think one other, ready to go.’ This would mean Remastered ‘Computer Screen’ versions of these books would be available on CerebusDownload before the Remastered print version.” And he says, “I don't see a problem with that, but wanted to run it by you first in case there's something I'm missing. Note, for the record, don't make the same mistake that I did, that the CerebusDownload Remastered screen versions would work as files to submit for print versions. Dave has these files specifically for screen. Eddie.” And I did not know that! I had no idea that the scans at CerebusDownloads on the Remastered are specifically intended for screens, and are not intended for print. So that then leads to Sean, can you please produce screen versions of all of “Cerebus in Hell?” to date and bill AV at your hourly rate? Because, those are going to be needed, whether they just go on a CerebusDownload site, or whether they go on a Cerebus in Hell? site. Definitely we're in the situation where we don't just want to do 12 volumes of “Cerebus in Hell?”, we want to do the 30 or so issues that came out after that, and make those available as one giant digital package at a Cerebus in Hell? site. I would qualify that by saying, Sean's rate is the highest rate of anybody getting paid by Aardvark-Vanaheim on and that was two years ago, three years ago, so I assume it's even higher than that. If you can start the process and send an invoice for, let's say, uh $1000 US, and with a time span on it. ”This is when I started doing it, this is how long it took me to do these, here's what you're paying the $1000 for.” Then I can look at it and say, okay, here's your $1000 . Can you do one of these like every two months, or every two and a half months? So AV isn't paying you $1,00 every two weeks, or every every eight days, or however long it takes you to do that. And also, Sean, continue to remaster the trades as physical books, but I'm going to qualify that as only as he's getting paid by Patrons for whom it's a priority to have the remastering done for print books, and here I'm definitely thinking of Dan P who sent in $4000 and some odd dollars US specifically for the remastering. I'm going to be giving Dan P Sean's address and saying, this is going to between you and Sean, where anytime you think you have some left over money, maybe not the the 4000 but even a portion of that, and you want it to go directly to remastering, there's no point in sending it to me, because Aardvark-Vanaheim Administration 1 isn't in charge of remastering. Now there's no way I can foresee doing “Cerebus” trade paperbacks from now on. So it's completely Administration 2, which is why this is all getting addressed to Eddie and Sean. I really don't have any any hands on participation with that. And I would include for Sean, including your commentary. The commentaries, I don't think will be in the digital versions, but the commentaries are a major part of the Remastered print editions, even though Remastered print editions aren't being done. So the sooner, the quicker on getting those done, and at that point, Eddie as the second Administration president of Aardvark-Vanaheim will have all of the trade paperbacks ready to be printed if it makes sense to print them. I have no idea what the post Dave Sim Aardvark-Vanaheim situation is going to be, and the demand or “demand” for “Cerebus” trade paperbacks.
Okay! [laughs] At that point you go, “You see what happens when you try to make one guy happy?” and it's like, yes, but it's not altogether less difficult to make 96 people happy, which is definitely the job one for first Administration president Dave Sim, try not to lose any backers if you can help it, and try to make as many of them happy as possible with what you're doing. Okay! And then you say, “Sorry for making a simple plan unintentionally more complex, but I figured you weren't going to say no to easy money. So let me know what the Aardvark-Vanaheim president wants to do about any of this.” Well, there you go. So, any comments from you? That's the longest preamble to Please Hold we've ever had. We're up to 40 minutes here.
Matt: Uh, I made a couple of notes when I send Sean a message about, hey, we specifically addressed you, here's the audio clip of what Dave's talking about, I'm also going to send it to Hobbs because Hobbs may have screen ready versions of the issues he's working on, or it may be as simple as go into the file, futz around for five minutes, and then it's done.
Dave: Right, and we don't know that because that's not something that we traffic in.
Matt: I mean, I know that it's been brought up behind the scenes when we're emailing back and forth about, are we ever going to do digital versions? And the big stopping point for the guys on the back end is just, like doing them as like a Kickstarter extra or something was,”How do we keep these files from ending up on the bootleg sites?” and I keep thinking, guys, nobody's scanning these comics and making bootlegs. That was years ago that was an issue of, it was Birdsong going, “I keep checking the bootleg sites and nothing's there” and I'm like, you really want a bootleg? And that's when I started the “Batvark” bootleg that I was drawing. That's on my “okay you should get around to this eventually” list.
Dave: Right.
Matt: So I don't think it's really going to be as big of a problem as three year or four years ago CIH? team thought it was going to be of, “Oh if we give one guy a copy of ‘Sim City,’ that he's going to put it up and then we're not going to make any money.” I'm like, guys, we're not making any money now.
Dave: [laughs] Exactly! Exactly. And the other, I'll interrupt but we'll get back to your notes, this is the only person who's ever expressed interest in it to me, so Kevin might be the only customer, and this could end up costing Aardvark-Vanaheim 3,000- $4,000 to put together a “Cerebus in Hell?” website and all I'm going to do is sell $40 worth of digital files, and you'll get 79 cents, and Sean Robinson will get 32 cents, and Benjamin Hobbs will get $2.12. And it's like, mhmm, okay, if we knew this was going to happen, we probably wouldn't do this. But it is, to whatever extent it's possible to make the stuff available to interested buyers, once the “Cerebus in Hell?” website exists, if we can get it together, the feminist dictatorship isn't going to last forever, where people know you don't read “Cerebus in Hell?” and you don't recommend it, and you don't review it, and you don't say anything nice about it, and you hope nobody ever finds out that you actually buy it. 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years from now, when the wheels have completely come off of feminist dictatorship, this is going to be, “Cerebus in Hell?”, I think it's going to be a definite iconic early 21st century “this is what actually was going on, this is what these people were making fun of.” And once again, it was, “this can't even be alluded to in poite company and how did we ever let that happen as late as the beginning of the 21st century?” So back to your note.
Matt: The other note is, and I'm going to get this done. When we're done, when I go down and start loading up everything to start the long arduous process that that the podcast portion of Please Hold, they keep trying to make it impossible for me to do it, and I think I figured out my final work around which is, I'm going to record using their stupid app, I download the files, and then instead of reloading them onto their website and using their tools, because they took all my tools away, I'm just going to start with the video portion, and I can rip the audio from the video to put onto the podcast. The app I used was called Anchor, Anchor got bought by Spotify, and Spotify has slowly taken away any reason to use this app.
Dave: Really?
Matt: Yeah, the latest is, they took away the editing tools, and the editing tools was pretty much a “play, fast forward, pause, trim right here.” I mean, they were very simple and basic, and now they want me to go through another app that's AI enabled, and can do this, and do that, and makes a transcript, and all this “neat stuff”, and I used it last month, and I'm like, this is stupid as hell. I can do this easier by avoiding them.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: But, as I upload everything, I'm going to print out a waiver and mail it to you, and I'm going to fax it, of, I waive any money from “Cerebus in Hell?” unless we sell… I want to say, High Society volume one first printing money.
Dave: Okay.
Matt: Like, concord money comes in, yeah sure, cut Matt a check, but if it's $2.08, you can hang on to the 2.08, I don't need it that badly.
Dave: Okay. But again it's, you know, somewhere up ahead, Janis and Bullwinkle could be 90 year old women going, “Well, Dad had this cut of of this issue, and right now it's worth a billion dollars. Granted, a loaf of bread cost a billion dollars, but it would be nice to have that.”
Matt: Well, like I said, I mean, if it's High Society money, yeah sure. Remember that I wrote like 35 strips.
Dave: Okay, alright. Okay! And then you say, “And now that we have all of that out of the way, let us move on to the business at hand. My turn to remember Jeff, but I can't find my postcards from Olean. They're here somewhere. Say, Dave, now that you finished the Cerebus Archive, want to come to my house and help me organize the AMoC-ive?” and you've got three ellipses here. I was thinking, if you just plug in the sound of the teacher on the Peanuts cartoons in that space, because then you go on to say, “Jeeze, you know children might be listening to this. There's no call for that much profanity!” Uh yeah, you're on your own with the AMoC-ive there, Matthew.
Matt: Well, I know, it's one of these, oh they're here, and I looked, no, not there. And then I'm like, okay, they're here, and no, they're not there. I'm like, I know I didn't get rid of them. They gotta be here someplace!
Dave: That's the most annoying thing when you're picturing them you're going, “Oh, it's got to be here.” It's because you're picturing a kind of location, and you're going, “Uh, well, this is where they would be because this is where I picture them being.” And then you go and look and they're not there, and you just drive yourself crazy. You're describing the last three weeks of my life with this Archive. Okay, your memory of Jeff Seiler.
Matt: Well, I was gonna do the postcards, cause, oh, I'll scan these, send them to Dave or through Rolly, it'll be great! And it's like, yeah, no, they just aren't here. So the other memory, cause I'm going, what am I going to think about? I got to have a memory of Jeff, and I got a number of memories, but this is one of them memories where you go, Jeff doesn't look the best in this one, but it is something that did happen, and it is something I remember. So he used to do a column on A Moment of Cerebus before I ever got involved, which was, I believe it was titled, “Me and Dave Sim” and it was his letters to you and your letters back.
Dave: Oh! Right! I forgot that.
Matt: And, I don't know if Tim got these from one of the Kickstarters, but the letters would also include head sketches you had done, and I mean there were a number of them, so I don't know if Tim was just collecting head sketches that he found on the internet or what. But at one point, Tim got miffed, cause he is British and I think it was a very English “I'm offended on your behalf” thing, because before he became the photorealist try-out winner and did Strange Death of Alex Raymond, Carson was doing reviews of each phonebook and putting them online, and he's an art teacher, as a professor he's looking at these books as works of art, at literarily and artistically, and examining them and it's college level analysis…
Dave: Right.
Matt: And around the time he had gotten selected to do Strange Death of Alex Raymond, one of his reviews came out, cause he wasn't done doing them yet, and whatever book phonebook it was, he had kind of sort of implied that Gerhard wasn't that great. And Jeff got really annoyed, because he would turned into full Jeff of, “How dare you say something bad about Gerhard? How dare you say something bad about Dave? How dare you say something bad about…” You know, sort of stereotypical for Jeff, Cerebus Uber Alles, Dave Sim Uber Alles, Gerhard Uber Alles. “The three greatest things in the universe are Cerebus, Dave Sim, and Gerard. How dare you think otherwise.” And so, in the comments, because Carson had just been announced as “The new Gerhard” and it's like, well, no, that's not the relationship at all. This is, he's doing a specific job based on this. I mean it's getting the Strange Death done, you know, Jeff. He's not going to be the new background artist, he's going to be the artist, that's how this is going to work. But because, in Jeff's mind, Carson was slagging on Gerhard, the comments on the various posts got kind of nasty, and Tim had enough and basically said, “That's it. Your column's done. I'm not posting this anymore.” And at the time it was one of those like, seems a bit of an overreaction, but at the same time we all said, hey Jeff, you're sort of being a complete dick about this. Carson wrote this months ago before he got the job. This isn't him slagging on Gerhard because he's “the new Gerhard”, this is him saying, as an art professor, “I'm not seeing the quality of Gerhard that” you know, and I forget which phonebook it was, but it was probably one of the ones where, one of the later books where there was probably a sequence where there weren't a lot of backgrounds, or the backgrounds were very minimal.
Dave: I know that there was a situation where Carson said that he could tell, in the Africa sequence, which animals I drew and which Gerhard drew, and that my animals were better than Gerhard.
Matt: And that might have been the comment that set Jeff off.
Dave: I think that might have been it, yeah, which was one of those, that's a subjective kind of thing. My animals are my animals, Gerhard's animals are Gerhard's animals, my backgrounds are my backgrounds. It's two different qualities, and Carson's going to have a preference in that, and I think preferences are preferences. It's all pretty subjective. But I agree with you that it was Jeff trying to make sure that everybody who's important to him gets defended here, and that didn't include Carson.
Matt: Well, so when I took over Jeff very much had the attitude of “hail, strike up the marching band. I'm-a coming home” and it's like, well, Jeff you got your column cancelled by the previous editor. I'm the interm editor. He's the editor emeritus. If his dictate was “okay, don't run anymore from Jeff” well, I, as your friend would say, oh well, don't worry about that. I, as the caretaker of A Moment of Cerebus, which everybody that's listening quit laughing, okay. Yeah, I am taking care of it. I may not be doing the best job, but come on, it's been six years, guys. At a certain point…
Dave: Right. Yeah.
Matt: I mean, you can only post the same picture of an aardvark wang before everybody goes, “Okay Matt, knock it off.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: But anyway, so Jeff, multiple comments of, “Hey, I got a two foot stack of letters” and it's like, okay Jeff. I was still trying to get my bearings on what do I have to do every day to get this done, and Jeff's going, “Okay, I'm back, right?” I said no, Jeff. Just calm down. I'm not saying no, but I'm not saying yes. I'm saying give me a minute to catch my breath.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And after a little while, I think that either Jeff started getting sick and wasn't able to be around as much, or it was just Jeff realized that… I mean, the biggest problem that a lot of people had with Jeff's letters is they were very inside baseball, in some cases literally inside baseball, where he's talking about baseball, and you're answering, and you can tell from your answers you don't really pay attention to baseball anymore. You understand that Jeff loves baseball, but it's not… again, Dave Sim Uber Alles, Cerebus Uber Alles, Gerhard Uber Alles, Baseball Uber Alles. Jeff your hierarchy of needs is not the same as everyone else's.
Dave: Right. Right. And they were very long letters too, like that was, I think, part of what he was wanting to show off was, “I sent a 10 page letter to Dave Sim and I got a 10 page letter back.” Because, a lot of that was happening post-”Cerebus,” once I entered all the mail, and published that as Collected Letters 2004, it's, answering a 10 page letter with a 10 page letter is no big whoop for me. All that I'm doing is part from putting the Cerebus Archive together, but you would have to be really really keen to read Jeff's 10 page letter and my 10 page answer as entertainment. As, “Oh hey, this is my second favorite thing after Margaret's notebooks” kind of thing.
Matt: Well, and the other problem with Jeff's column was, invariably it was, “I don't have a copy of my original anymore but I'm pretty sure I was talking…” It's like, Jeff, we're getting Dave's response, if we can infer what you're talking about from that, that's enough. But if you don't have your letter and Dave's response is very not respondingB maybe we can leave this one out of the stack, huh? [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Right. Right.
Matt: So, yeah, that's my memory of Jeff is that, I'm trying to think of a good analogy from the series. It's very much the beginning of the Palnu Trilogy, where I take over and Jeff thinks it's going to be all ticker tape parades and it's like, no, Jeff, not quite. It's going to be a lot of hard work and a lot of going, “Oh God, why did I say yes to this?”
Dave: [laughs] Exactly. Exactly. Moving on, “the questions from our long suffering… wait a minute! I don't get paid the pittance I used to make doing these things anymore. They're getting this for free! Questions from these schmucks, you want politeness, you got to pay me!” You've been known to get a little irritated yourself.
Matt: I freely admit it was a lot more fun doing Please Hold for Dave Sim when I was getting paid a penny every time someone listened to it. So they'd be like, “Hey we owe you $30!” and then it stopped and they still owe me $30, but I'm like, hey man, that was like two years ago, what the hell!
Dave: Really?
Matt: I've never cashed out because I'm like I'm gonna wait till it's a big check, and then they took away, because we don't have enough subscribers to justify them paying us.
Dave: Right. That's what they're saying, anyway.
Matt: Well, they're like, “You gotta have like I think it's like 70 more subscribers” or something stupid like that, and I'm like, no, I'm not in this for the internet, “like, share, subscribe” lifestyle that everyone in the internet's supposed to have that attitude. I'm doing this because Dave isn't going to be typing, we're gonna answer questions. It's fun! The actual phone call part is fun, the work afterward, well, you know, that's why I don't sign up to work on the weekends when we do this.
Dave: Right. Right,
Matt: But, yes. Yes, we used to get paid for this, technically.
Dave: Anyway, Dodger likes to get his questions in before he has his breakfast. March 17th, 2024. “Hello there Manly Matt and the brilliant and humble Dave Sim,” [laughs] when I've got a lot to be humble about. “When I first picked up ‘Cerebus’ 48 back in the late 1980s, it was my first experience with a sideways comic. Famously “Fantastic Four” 252 stole, um, homaged your idea a few months later. Question for Dave, where did the idea come from?” We'll get back to that, “Bonus potential firecracker question, John Byrne is famously, shall we say, opinionated. Did he ever admit he shamelessly stole your idea and did you ever discuss it with him? Thanks, Mike ‘Dodger’ MJ Sewall Esquire III.” The only time that I would have any contact with John Byrne was at the Mid-Ohio Con, and I don't think I was going to Mid-Ohio Con at the time. My recollection of the sideways issues thing was that they came out roughly at the same time, if you factored in the lead time on producing a Marvel Comic, and the much shorter lead time for a “Cerebus” issue. The “Cerebus” issue that I would get done, would have been completed two weeks before it was in the comic book store. And obviously that's not the situation with a Marvel Comic. So we could, if the information exists somewhere with John Byrne’s archive, that would be the situation as we picture it is, what month did “Fantastic Four” 252 come out? And what month did “Cerebus” 44 come out? Which was, I think, November 1982. It was the one that I worked ahead on so that Deni and I could do the 1982 Tour. But it was definitely a question or something that was being talked about in certain circles by the beginning of 1983, “Who stole the idea from who?” And somebody started talking about it at the Now and Then Books opening, where Harry moved across the street from 103 Queen Street South to 90 Queen Street South. And it came up as, “Okay, who came up with the sideways issue?” And P Craig Russell was there, I think he was making some comment about it. Richard Pini was there, think he was making some comment about it. Arn Saba was there, he made some comment about it. [laughs] And Michael T Gilbert was there, and Michael T Gilbert said, “I did it with the Wraith in ‘Quack’ like four years before that.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So that was one of those drop dead kind of things of, well, in that case, I stole it from Michael T Gilbert, because obviously I was in “Quack” and I was reading “Quack” and that would have registered at least subconsciously, hey, sideways pages, there's an idea. But, beat, beat, beat, Michael T Gilbert then goes, “Actually I stole it from Alex Toth. So there you go, Dodger!
Next, Zipper gets more questions since he's been hanging off a cliff by his fingernails for a month. “Hi Matt, I hope you enjoy your Easter holiday with your family.” Did you enjoy your Easter holiday with your family?
Matt: Well, my Dad called me a month ago and said, “Hey, Janis' birthday's on Easter!” I'm like, yeah. “Well, maybe I'll come up for her birthday and for Easter” and I'm like, alright. So he bought a train ticket, and I got off of work that Thursday, and went down picked him up, brought him up back home, and he spent the weekend, and it was great. And Sunday, his thing was, “Hey, what are we going to do for Easter? We can go buy a ham, I'll make a ham, we can make this.” Like, or we could go out to eat and I don't have to worry about cleaning the kitchen! And he went, and I could tell he was kind of like, “Aw okay” cause he's thinking back to when he was a little kid that they used to go to my Great Grandma's house for Easter, and there would be ham, and there would be this, and there would be that. I'm like, yeah Dad, that's great, but I have three cats and a small kitchen. No, I don't want to make a ham.
Dave: Right.
Matt: So, we went out to eat and we asked Janis, what do you want for your birthday? She’s like, “I want to go to the Supper Club”, where I had my wedding reception actually, and because they do a buffet every weekend, and she wants to go there, and, okay. And went, they're not open on Easter Sunday! It's like, “Okay.” So we found a different buffet, and herding cats trying to get my brother and his family, and my nephew's girlfriend, how many people are there? 10? No, 11. No, nine. It's like, Paula finally made the reservation, and after we made it, it was, “Oh wait, no, my nephew's girlfriend can go, it's 11.” And it's like, or 10, and I'm like, great! You guys can call them and tell. And it turned out it was fine, they put us at a table for like 12. But it was very much a, okay, here's Easter, and then of course we sang Happy Birthday to her in a crowded buffet ballroom, and I'm going, thought we were going to wait, but alright…
Dave: There you go. There you go. Ahh, buffet. Buffet. Sorry, there's only like five, six days left in Ramadan.
Matt: I was thinking that you're probably thinking, “Buffet sounds like a good idea!”
Dave: It's amazing the stuff that I see in the newspaper and I'm going like, wow, look at what that person's eating in that news photo. And it's like, “That's not the reason behind the news item, Dave.” Well, it is for me! And it will be for the next five days. Anyway, “Hi Dave, it's been practically one year since the release of The Last Day Remastered misprinted spine. My, how time flies. One, how’s sales been with The Last Day Remastered with the applied spine sticker through Diamond?” Same as pretty much all of the trade paperbacks, definitely just trickling up. On the weekly list that Eddie Khanna faxes me, Diamond inventory, it's like there are odd weeks for each of the trade paperbacks, where they might sell seven copies, and you go, oh what happened there? Why would seven copies sell this week? No answer to that. The rest of the time the average week for any of the trade paperbacks is maybe one or two copies, so it's not as if the comic book Direct Market had its tongue hanging out desperate for The Last Day to be brought back into print. That's just the situation that we're in. “How’s sales been with The Last Day Remastered Remarqued Edition on CerebusDownloads?” I don't think we've sold any. Or if we did, I think we sold one of the Remarqued Edition. That's the downside of having 96 paying customers left is, if it doesn't work, it's not going to work for everybody. So it's, well, at least we got a consensus of it. The situation with The Last Day Remastered Remarqued Edition was that I sent one of them to each member of the Brain Trust, going, I think you'll remember, what should this go for? And can we arrive at a consensus on that? If I hadn't done that, I would probably have sold seven of them. But because I did that, I didn't sell any of them. “Number three, I've seen them being auctioned on Heritage Auctions. Most have been similar, but the last one seemed a newer design with more orange color. Have you added new ones not available from the catalog?” I haven't added new ones. That was, the orangish tinge was me going, well, okay, I'm doing these Cerebus heads with the Sharpie silver ink pen, doing the actual head that way, and then inking on top of it. Why don't I try the bronze pen, and the gold pen, and see what I can do with that in terms of drawing on top of it? Which, it was a nice effect. I wasn't really happy with the first one that I did on it, which is, I think the one that Heritage Auctions auctioned off, and it did go for 100 US without the buyer’s premium, so probably 140 US, somewhere around there. It was one of those, this would be a really interesting thing to explore if it had velocity to it, if it was one of those “I just can't keep up with demand at CerebusDownloads for these.” So, this is what I'm going to be doing every other week, or every other Saturday, or every third Tuesday, or something. And that'll be fun, to see, okay, here's the template. Where does this go when I start getting comfortable with the materials, and getting comfortable with the colour. This is good for these effects, and this is is not so good for these other effects.
“Have you been able to sell all or most from the Widescreen Remarqued Auction Catalog?” And no, I don't think so. I know where the box is at Camp David where Rolly keeps them all in one place. That's something that, like I say, I know where they are, it might be a Kickstarter thing for people who haven't seen them. It is, like you, say a year ago, and people do come and go at A Moment of Cerebus, and you do get new Kickstarter and returning Kickstarter customers. Somebody's apt to see one of them. If I just put one of them up and go, “I really want that.” So, well okay, keep your eye on the Kickstarter, and when it comes up, it's a foot race between you and and anybody else that might be interested in it. It is something that I like doing. Every time I go downstairs and I see the the spray can there, I think, that was just getting interesting as I was producing all the ones in the catalogue of, how far away do I hold the spray can in order to get the proper “Going into the Light / into the Afterlife” effect? How do I goose it up without really doing a surface that can't be inked on? How laissez-faire can I be just doing a spontaneous Cerebus on the surface, either without penciling, or doing very very limited penciling, because I can't trust it not to cut into the paint? And it's one of those, even if somebody was to say, “Hey, that sounds really interesting. I'll give you $500 to do one of those.” It’s like, I’d happily do it for the $500, but I'd have to relearn everything right from the ground up again. I'd still be making all the same mistakes that I did on the early ones. I think that the actual catalouges, I think we've got more of the third printing of the catalouges than we have of any others. That's probably going to be an offered item on the next Kickstarter, along with other, “Here’s stuff that's rare for everybody else and pretty common around here” and just see what the catalouges do. There's like a little stack of “Pieces of Turtles Eight” with the the gold covers ,which look really good. If you didn't see them when they came out, and you see them on a Kickstarter, you might be out to go, “Uh, yeah. I'll pay $50 for that.” It'll be more than everybody paid for the ones that they got at the time, because I like to have that confirmation bias for the longtime customers. “I got mine for $25 and now they're $50 on Kickstarter, so good for me.”
Moving on. James Banderas-Smith sent, “Good morning, Matt. I faxed Dave last night about the model for Jeffrey Catherine Jones’ ‘Idyl.’ She was a woman named Sandi Zinaman, and was inker Dan Green's wife. I tried faxing the image, but the faxing app I was using just digitally distorted the image. So I thought I'd save you time by sending it over in case he's interested.” And I was very interested! It's definitely amazing seeing the image that they used on the cover of my “Idyl” collection, and from one of my favourite “Idyl” strips. That this is the photo that Jeff Jones worked from. “If he's not, disregard this email, or enjoy yourself as a new ‘Idyl’ fan.” Are you a new “Idyl” fan?
Matt: The book that I bought is “Idyl” and “I'm Age” combined.
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: And the description said that it was missing the “I’m Age” strip that appeared in Heavy Metal, and I'm like, okay, whatever. When I read the book, one of the “I’m Age” strips is printed twice. And not like, you know, one page, you flip it, it's the same page. It's like, it's like the third or fourth strip and then 10 more strips on it's the same strip and I'm like, wait a minute. I flip back like, okay, that's what they're saying. It must be misprinted somehow. It's one of the, I'm reading it going, I can tell this is very much a late 60s, early 70s comic strip. Like, I know it appeared in National Lampoon. As a story, obviously, because they're one page gags, they really don't. It's not like it's got an ongoing thing, but I appreciate them for what they are. I'm blown away by the minimalism of it. Like the old Robert Crumb line, it's just ink on paper, folks. At this point, the best way to describe is, I'm an infant Dave Sim going, “How does he do that?” knowing there's no way I'm ever going to get to that level, I mean, short of somebody inventing a way to like put a chip in your head and go, “Okay, now you can do whatever that guy did.” There's no way that my cartooning skills will get that good. I know that they say it's 10,000 bad drawings before you get a good one, I'm pretty sure I got somebody else's 10,000 too.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: But I mean, I read it and went, I'm going to end up rereading this over and over again. Because it's one of those, the first time through it was, okay, part of me's going, oh this is the strip that Dave did the “Akimbo” cover based off of. And another part's going, this is my new favorite strip. And then you flip the page, no, this is my new favorite strip! And then you flip the page, no, this is my new favorite. It's like, they're all pretty good, and they get better, cause it's one of those he figured out, cause I know some of the earlier ones had a lot more backgrounds than some of the later ones. Like, I think he figured out the minimalism of, “I can do an establishing panel, and then not have any backgrounds for the rest of it, but everyone will understand that these characters didn't just disappear into fog. Here's where they're at, here's what I'm trying to get at.”
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And I also made the mistake when I bought this of buying a a copy of “Frankenstein” that's illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, because I've seen the Bernie Wrightson Frankenstein images, and I always go, how did he do that?!
Dave: Right.
Matt: And so they came in the same package, and I opened it up and I went, there's a part of me that wants to read both of them at the same time, and I know I can't physically do that, but I want to look at this, I want to look at that. And 21st century humanity is going, “Well, you can have two screens.” It's like, no no no no, these are the kind of things that you look at, you don't just kind of stare at for a minute and then move on. You look at this.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: So, it wasn't one of those where I got and went, what the hell does Dave see in this? It was very much a, oh, I see what Dave sees. I don't see it how Dave sees it, but I see what he sees. That's the other part is that I know that there's a level that I'm not at that I could maybe study to get to, but it's not one of those immediate things of you look at and you go, oh okay, I'm seeing this the way Dave sees it. It's, I'm seeing it the way I see it. Eventually, I could maybe get to where Dave sees it.
Dave: But it's analogous, I think, to my situation with the audience where, how many Jeff Jones “Idyl” fans are there? Like, people who are really really keen on “Idyl”? And how many people say, “Yeah, it's a brilliant strip,” but it doesn't really do anything for them. Because the only thing that I've ever read about “Idyl” was in the magazine… I forget what magazine it was, but they do… it was, uh, oh it slipped my mind. But the whole issue was dedicated to the National Lampoon Funny Pages, and discussing National Lampoon Funny Pages, and discussing National Lampoon. And there's like maybe half a paragraph in the interview of the editor that Jeff Jones liaised with at National Lampion on Idyl, and basically saying they were about the only two people that liked it, but the editor really really liked it, and definitely got a lot out of working on it with Jeff Jones. Basically, over many editorial meetings, “What are you going to do next? What are you thinking about?” That kind of stuff. It's like, unfortunately, I think it's a small enough fandom that, as an example, Sandi Zinaman. If she was the model for Idyl, what does she remember about the experience? Or was it just, “Jeff Jones needs a model. He's asked me if I'll do it. I go sure and I just go to his studio and he says, you know, look like this. Okay, look down a little further. Okay, now look up through your eyelashes. That kind of thing.” And that's all it was for her, like I would assume that she would buy National Lampoon because it's got the strip in it where she was the model. But what did she think of “Idyl”? Was Jeff still with Louise Jones at that time? I'm fuzzy on those dates, but I know that they did have the first Friday parties where it was all comics professionals, was at their place, and I'm pretty sure that was “Idyl” time period. What does she remember about it? Did he did do a strip and then show it to her and go, “What do you think?” And she read it and sometimes went, “That's really good. That's funny” and sometimes went, “I don't really get it, but you know it's it's beautifully drawn and I'm sure other people will like it.” Did Jeff Jones even talk about “Idyl“, or did he just do it? When you're as much of an “Idyl” fan, Dave Sim is an “Idyl” fan, I look at the “Aristotle” strip. Ya know, “Oh, barrels!” “Nothing in this one” [laughs] and she walks away. And I think I know that Neal Adams phoned Steve Ditko at some point, knowing that Steve Ditko was in the phonebook, and said, “Hi Steve, it's Neal Adams. I was phoning to ask you, I don't know if you're aware that there's a first Friday event that all of the comics professionals go to at Jeff and Louise Jones’ place. Are you interested in coming? Here's the address. I already talked to them, they said that's fine. Sure, Mr Ditko.” I'm wondering if “Aristotle” came out of a conversation between Steve Ditko and Jeff Jones. Does anybody know that? Dose anybody from the first Fridays, Bernie Wrightson, who's dead now, BWS, Mike Kaluta. All of those people, Howard Chaykin, everybody that went to the first Friday, did anybody say or look at that strip and go, “Oh, that's funny. That's Jeff and Steve Ditko having their chat in the kitchen at the first Fridays thing.” And who would I have to go and find who would care about that? I don't know. I think it's one of those microscopic fandoms where the information is still out there, all the people who are privy to it are getting older, and older, and older. Present company included. So thank you James for the question. Anytime I get a chance to talk about “Idyl” I love being possibly the only person on the planet who does that.
Then we come to Daniel who asks, “Hello Matt! Dave, I was looking at some of the Kickstarter rewards from the previous Cerebus Archives. I noticed that some of them had a backer reward option for a tour of the Off-White House, along with what was essentially a, ‘bring your kid to work day.’ How did those tours go?” There was only the one, which was Gabe M from Australia, inherited, not a giant pile of money but relative to what he used to a giant pile of money, and decided, “Okay, this is the only time I'm ever going to have this much money. I'm going to take a leave of absence from my job, and go to North America and do all the North American things that I've always wanted to do, and never could do, and never will be able to do again.” And one of those was the Off-White House tour. He was actually even nice enough to say that he paid something like 100% more for “Hamilton” tickets on Broadway than he paid for the Off-White House tour, but the Off-White House tour was better. “Would you bring the option back for future Cerebus Achive Kickstarters? Thanks, Daniel F.” And yeah, I stopped offering it because I think that Gabe was here 2018? I think it was 2018. and then didn't have a Kickstarter, I don't think, in 2019 and then COVID hit. And it was, well, you're not going to get anybody flying from anywhere to come and see an Off-White House tour until this craziness is over with. And that craziness has now been over with for two years. So, yeah, definitely I would be willing to offer it again on the next Kickstarter for Cerebus Archive portfolio #11 and “Narutobus”. I'll have to get somebody to check and see what was I charging for that, and see what that would translate into in 2024 dollars, which I'm still getting used to, we're all still getting used to. How badly eroded is every currency? We know how every currency is doing relative to every other currency, that's what the money markets are all about. But seriously, how much is inflation affecting that? So actually, Daniel, if you want to do the research on that, just go back to the Cerebus Archive Kickstarters and see what was the charge that I had on the last one. I will say, again, this is why it's worthwhile to listen to Please Hold for Dave Sim, even if the price goes up 25% from that price, I'll let you have it for that price, whatever it was that Gabe paid for it, if you are actually interested.
Matt: Without looking, I'm fairly certain it was $900.
Dave: Was it 900? Okay.
Matt: Pretty sure. I'd bet your house on it!
Dave: What's that?
Matt: I bet your house on it.
Dave: [laughs] Well, fortunately, it's not my house, it's Aardvark-Vanaheim’s house. I did that from the from the out set. No, this is, I want to give myself a poison pill here. If your corporation owns the house and you sell it, you have to pay capital gains on it, and that will keep me from ever being tempted to sell the Off-White House. This is the Cerebus house, this is the Cerebus Archive house. I just happen to be the guy what's livin’ here right now.
Matt: 900, because I remember every time it was on the Kickstarter I'm like, one of these days I'm gonna have $1,000 burning a hole in my pocket. I'm going to go do this. And every time the Kickstarter comes up, I'm like, hey, let's see if I have 100 bucks to just back the regular Kickstarter.
Dave: Right. Right. I appreciate your interest, Daniel, and yeah, I'm sure that we can work something out because it's definitely in the category of in terms of just keeping my head above water, and Aardvark-Vanaheim’s head above water, there are very few things that I could do in the course of 12 hours that would that would bring in $900. So, $900 US. [laughs] I'll qualify it at least that far, but feel free to call and leave a message at (519) 576-0610, or anybody else that is interested in the Off-White House tour. Gabe and I, I gave him the tour, we sat and talked for about an hour, or an hour and a half first, just to find out what he was most interested in, what aspects of Cerebus interested him the most. And then, after the tour, no photography. I prefer that if somebody's paying to see the stuff, somebody else doesn't get to see it online for free. And then we did the driving tour, took a taxi, and drove around to Forest Heights Collegiate, where I went. Which was interesting, as the taxi was going past Forest Heights Collegiate, Bryan Adams “The Summer of ‘69” came on, and of course, I started at Forest Heights Collegiate in the Summer of 69, September of 1969. And then around the corner from there to Lynn Morrison's house, who was the basis for Jaka. And then around the corner from there to Cherie Hayden's house, who was my first crush when I was like eight, nine years old, and which I made use of in Going Home. 282 West Mount Road East, where I lived with my parents from 1958 to 1976. The apartment building where Deni was living on Weaver Street, where we lived on Weaver Street on the other side that no longer exists. The house that I was living in when I first moved out of my parents place and where I actually first drew “Cerebus”. The former locatios of Now and Then Books, both of them are closed and shuttered, 103 Queen Street South and 90 Queen Street South. So it is a full day. The only drawback would be if I'm really in the middle of something on Strange Death of Alex Raymond, I might have to take… how would I put this? We'll still sit and talk, as I did with with Gabe, for like I said, about an hour and a half just trying to find range on his interest. But I might be turned around looking at the drawing board, because, particularly with Strange Death of Alex Raymond, if I'm working on a page and I'm still just working out the the composition, sizes, proportions, all kinds of stuff like that, I need to have staring at the page time. So it'll seem rude, like I'm really not paying attention to you. I am paying attention to you ,it's just that my eyes and my creative part of my brain have to be looking at the drawing board. That would be the only thing different now from from when Gabe was here.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: And, moving on! “Hola, e Matt El Manley. Dave, I have a two-tier question for you. What do you consider the most pivotal crucial moment In the saga of Cerebus? And also, what could be your favorite part? Could it be ‘When Wakes The Wanker!’? I shall be eternally amused by the Wondrous Wanker. Also, one must find glorious irony in my enjoyment reading a graphic novel about a character's reading enjoyment of his graphic novel, or graphic read . Christon Hunwardson.” Okay, going back to pivotal crucial moment, I would say all of the interactions with Jaka. Anytime Jaka came into the story, and she and Cerebus actually communicated. They're right there, face to face with each other, and it's just the two of them, and they're just talking to each other. Those were all pivotal moments, just because of the nature of Cerebus and his completely misguided perception of Jaka. In so far as if you look at the 6,000 pages that way, and you chart who Cerebus is and where he's going and what he's doing up to one of those points, you see that he always goes off on a tangent on an oblique angle from that. And then his nature tries asserting itself and starts getting back onto who he is and where he's going, and then when Jaka shows up again, it just knocks him off at a 45 degree angle. Which always fascinated me because I don't have that. I don't have an Other in my life who is in that category, and it it always interests me when there are people who are like that. So I would say, from the standpoint of really high altitude mapping, looking at the 6,000 pages per se, those are the pivotal crucial moments. And then of course, illustrating exactly how crazy that is, then when it's just someone who looks like Jaka, New Joanne, it still has the same effect, which shows, okay, this is a problem that Cerebus just has, but he's never going to get this figured out. My favourite part, it's still always the Africa sequence in Going Home. Just really challenging to get it all in there, and the material itself, the photorealism, editing, cutting, and coming up a little short, and being very very satisfied with the result. Yeah, I wouldn never want to walk across that tight rope again, but look at that. I walked across that tight rope and maked it looked as if I knew what I was doing. I'm going to make a note here of the “When Wakes The Wanker” because that page was the second version of that page. I actually did another one that looks a lot more like period Steve Ditko Spider-Man, and went, mhmm, it's just a little too simplistic. If I knew how to do Steve Ditko without making it look too simplistic, I would do that. The way it came out, it made it look as if I was making fun of Steve Ditko’s simplicity and Don Simpson's “Bizarre Heroes” simplicity, and I just definitely didn't want any compelled inference in that direction. Because I admire both of those guys a great great deal, and particularly their ability to do things in a simple way that definitely conveys all of the meaning that that you need to have in both the case of the first 38 issues of “Spider-Man” and Don Simpsons with “Bizzare Heroes.” I know the page is in the “false start” pages, which, there's about a dozen of those. Most of them from Guys and Rick’s Story, for some reason. And if you remind me, we'll just have a Christon Hunwardson bookmark, remember Dave, when you are actually finishing the 11 by 17 Archive in chronological order, when you find that page, get Rolly to scan it and post it to A Moment of Cerebus. It might be two years from now, but we will get to it.
Matt: Well, I was going to say, if you dug it out special, and had him scan it, you could make it a “Swordfish” offer for the Guys CAN, because isn't Guys the next one?
Dave: No, this was… yeah, Guys is an next one. I'm already working on it, so it's this one for me. Yeah, yeah that's definitely an idea.
Matt: If there's a dozen pages from Guys / Rick’s Story, you could just do a CAN and make it CAN 11.5 of these aren't the pages you're looking for.
Dave: Uh no, when I say false start page it's, I ditched before it got too far along. There's a point with a page where you have to just keep going, it's, uh no, this isn't quite what I wanted this one to look like, but I'll just try harder on the next one. These are ones where I got part of a panel penciled or a face penciled and just went, mhmm, no. No, I have to ditch now because now I know how not to do this page, but I want to do this page the way this page needs to be done, and no two ways about it. There's actually a “glamourpuss” #1 zombie cover that I don't remember starting, and getting part of the figure done, and then inking part of the face and going, no, I'm trying to live up to Bernie Wrightson, and Ghastly Graham Ingles here. This is not in that category. This is toast. Time to start over and and bear down on that side of it. I think there's a couple of pages in there that would maybe make a good “Swordfish” freebie, but I'd be really uncomfortable charging anybody for that.
Matt: You know at this point people are going to be commenting, going, “I'll pay! I'll pay!”
Dave: [laughs] That's right, and then when they get it they'll go, “This is all that is on here? And it looks like crap! Why are you offering crap for money!”
Matt: Well, I mean, if you're clear about, “These are the parachute pages.” What do you mean? “Like, this is the one where I pulled the ripcord and got out before I landed behind enemy lines.”
Dave: [laughs] Right. Right. I'll have to take another look at them. I don't know if, I mean one of the things is that we're getting really good at the Kickstarters. That comes up, up ahead here. But I looked at the notes for CAN 10, and I finished those December 9th, and I just finished the CAN 11 notes and that was April 5th. So that's just about exactly four months from one to the other. I think there's still areas where we can speed up the productivity and the fulfillment, but at least we know at this point, a four month window for the next CAN is really what I'm going to be doing from now on. It's the Aardvark-Vanaheim business model.
“Meanwhile the not-a-semi-evil-twin Margaret Liss, she signed a sworn affidavit to that effect and everything, asks…” did she sign a sworn affidavit? That was very nice. “’Hey bossman, could you take a look at the Notebooks post for this upcoming week, April 4th, and ask where was this story intended to be published? Why didn't he finish it?’ Which I replied, that sounds like work. Anyway she's asking about the ‘Howard the Duck’ story from pages 61 to 65 of Albatross #1, available as a facsimile, based on the answers you gave up there.” As I recall, and it might be a false memory I had done the frontispiece for the ‘Howard the Duck’ magazine #8, and that was pretty much on my own initiative. Hey, are you guys interested in publishing this? Yes, they were interested in publishing it. And then thinking, okay, I'm doing “Cerebus” and “Cerebus” is now my full-time job, but I do want to do other comics. Having had smooth sailing on doing the inside front cover frontispiece for “Howard the Duck’ #8, it was, what if I do a three-page filler story? And do that, and send that to them, and would they be inclined to say, “Well, you know, we've never really had that many pages left over, but there's the first time for everything. Yeah, what the heck, here's this amount of money for the story.” And I think, pretty much at the same time, somebody contacted me to ask me if I was willing to write “Howard the Duck”. And it, mhmm, that was one of those, well, this is in one sense opportunity knocking, on the other hand, I've already done 18, 20 issues of “Cerebus” and I like the autonomy, and I like doing my own character. So it's not the the opportunity that the average person would think that it is, and no, I'm not really interested in writing, as doing outside stuff. It's, I would be interested in writing and drawing a short “Howard the Duck” story a lot more than I would be interested in writing “Howard the Duck” as the regular writer. But that wasn't on the table and you don't really come back and say, well no, this is what I'm interested in doing. So, at that point, it was, well, no, having turned them down for writing “Howard the Duck” and that's what they wanted me to do, I don't think they're going to be open to me writing and drawing really short “Howard the Duck” stories. So I think, this is just the end of the line for this one. Would have been fun, would have enjoyed doing it as a sideline to “Cerebus”, but not as would have been the case with writing “Howard the Duck” a complete alternative to “Cerebus” and taking up a good chunk of my creative time, my writing chops, I want all of those going into making “Cerebus” the best book that I can make.
Okay! It's 25 to 8, and my next prayer time is 7:52, so I'm going to read, “And finally Travis asks, ‘I'm almost certain someone would have already asked Dave about his thoughts on Ed Piskor’s suicide, but if not” and no, no one has. I appreciated that Sean Robinson left me a phone message, obviously deeply affected by the situation, and thank you Sean for doing that. “But if not, Dave, what are your thoughts on Ed Piskor’s suicide? It would be interesting to hear the opinion of a comic book professional who is not on the internet. This went from internet allegations to death in only nine days or so. Thank you respectfully, Travis ‘Not the one who owes money to Matt’ H.’” And Matt says, “Ah jeeze, I'm-a gonna have to explain this, aren't I? And are we sure this Travis doesn't owe me money? Like, we checked all the invoices?” Okay, I appreciate you doing the Readers Digest on it there, Matt. Definitely a very, very grim situation. So what I did was Dave Sim's Top 10 Things That Ed Piskor’s Suicide Brings to Mind. One, there but for the grace of God go I. The only thing that saved me in 1994 was that I wasn't on the internet, to the point where Bill Willingham felt compelled to phone and ask, “Are you aware of how badly you're being tarred and feathered on the internet right now?” Two, Malcolm Muggeridge’s paraphrase of what he saw as Dostoyevsky core theme in his work, “Accept suffering and be redeemed by it, not by the suffering, but by the acceptance of the suffering.” Three, if you think you have friends, you haven't been cancelled… yet. I'm a very matter of fact kind of guy, so it was a matter of moving to an adjacent reality-based square. None of my peers are friends, but I still have their work. Which, reality check, is all that I ever did have. Four, never commit suicide. Always make them kill you. Committing suicide is doing the work of evil beings for them. Five, repent and atone. We've all done bad things. We all have skeletons in our closet. That's forgivable if we stop doing them and stay stopped. The longer you stay stopped, the more you atone for what you did. Six, if you aren't a husband or a boyfriend, stay away from women, except for being humanly courteous to them as neighbours, strangers, and acquaintances. Seven, the Job rule is always an effect. If something terrible is happening to you that you think you don't deserve, God is testing you. You're expected to pass God's test. Eight, complete isolation is the best thing for creativity and there's nothing closer to complete isolation than being cancelled. Nine, as Truman Capote said, citing a Roman proverb, “The dogs howl, but the caravan rolls on.” Ten, if you think you can't be cancelled, you're delusional.
Okay, so that'll do it. Just in time for prayer time, Manly Matt Dow. I want you to say hello to Paula, and Janis Pearl, and Bullwinkle. [laughs] And Buddy and Bonnie and Clyde. That'll take you most of the rest of the night right there.
Matt: Earlier one of the cats was pawing at the door of the hallway going, “Let me in, let me in!” and I'm like, I'll give this a shot, so I open the door and Clyde came running in, and he's, “I love you” and I'm like, you can love me as much as you want, just do it quietly. I'm on the phone. And then he got into the bedroom door, which was closed but not closed, and I'm like, okay, you're in the bedroom. I don't care. You can't get out. And then Bonnie followed him and was like, “Oh, I love you too but not as much as him” and I'm like, alright, just be quiet. I don't care what you two cats do, just shut up!. So now he's back at the door going, “Let me in! Let me in!” and it's like, cause I scooted him out eventually, and it's like, no, you're done, cat. I'm not letting you in. The door is closed for a reason. But he's so well…
Dave: You're winning temporarily, Matt. I gotta go! I got the prayer time coming up.
Matt: Well, I will talk to you again, God willing, next month.
Dave: Yes. Take care. Buh-bye.
Matt: Bye.
Next Time: Choose Your Own "Jen"venture, part the second
