Hi, Everybody!
Mondays!
So no more of this for a month. (Remember that when you don't get a scan of the Monday Report this week Matt...)
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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.
Here's where I'm at (blue link means it's been posted):
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[guitar music]
Matt: Hello, Dave!
Dave: Hello, Matt! How are you doing?
Matt: Better since yesterday.
Dave: Why, what happened yesterday?
Matt: Well, yesterday they put in my new air conditioner, but for the past, ahh, week or so I haven't had AC in my house because my air conditioner was 23 years old and had no refrigerant.
Dave: [laughs] That kind of defeats the purpose!
Matt: The breaker kept tripping and then I called my Dad, you know, cause it's an electrical thing, he's an electrician, and he's given me a couple of ideas, and then I'm like, okay, I'm thinking about I'm like, nah, I'm just gonna call the number that's on the furnace for the guys that installed it. And the guy's like, “Well, it's $105 an hour for us to show up.” I'm like, that's fine, just come take a look at it. You know, I'm hoping it's a five minute fix. And pulled in the driveway, walked up to it, went, “It's 23 years old and has no refrigerant.” I'm like, okay, how do I get a new one? And he's like, “Well, let me get you a quote.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: So yesterday they came and installed it, and now the house is not hotter than outside.
Dave: Terrific! Terrific. And what did it cost for the visit in that case, at $105 an hour?
Matt: They did not charge me for that visit cause they were only here for five minutes, and they knew they were going to get a lot more money when I buy the unit.
Dave: Wasn't that nice of them!
Matt: Service with a smile.
Dave: There you go. Are we recording?
Matt: We are indeed.
Dave: Okay, we are recording. It's summer, which is not really peak Please Hold for Dave Sim season, and I decided, well, what the heck, nobody's listening anyway. I have missed doing my Walter Winchell voice that I was doing for the “Cerebus in Hell?” and miss writing my Walter Winchell voice. So here's my Walter Winchell intro for Please Hold for Dave Sim, August 2023. [as Walter Winchell] It's Manly Matt Dow, the Ron Essler lookalike of the Baby Yoda generation! Scrappy center for the AMoC amok. Ensconed in Wisconsin’s, not one but count them two, two rivers! Testosterone-powered metaphysical counterpart to the vivacious, curvaceous, but genetically unrelated, DNA Delta November Alpha tests do not lie, Paula! The buck stops here! Loud and proud. I done it, and I’m proud I done it! You want to make something of it? Progenitor of, come on, take another little part of my adolescent heart now baby, Janice Pearl, and prepubesent Malibu Barbie got nothing on me Natasha! Reprobate, nere-do-well, vice regent in residence, and Grand Lord of stately Dow Manor. And now, here is! With Dave Sim.
Matt: [laughs] That's better than the intro I wanted to do.
Dave: [laughs] I was thinking it would make a very nice business card, but it would be a very large business card.
Matt: Or really small type.
Dave: Really small type.
Matt: I was thinking, I'm like, you know, I kind of want to do the opening of the 70s “Incredible Hulk” show, with Dr David Banner and the whole thing. And I'm going, I don't think Dave would get it, so nah, I think I'll let it go. But no, yours is a lot better!
Dave: [laughs] No, I would have absolutely recognition of the Hulk show. I only know that Bill Bixby was was Dr David Banner, and he was from “My Favorite Martian” first of all, and then “Courtship of Eddie's Father.”
Matt: My favorite part, a couple Please Holds ago, or maybe it was just through AMoC, uh, oh yeah, it was through AMoC, somebody bought something, and his name was David, I forget the last name, but it sounded like one of the Bill Bixby… because the deal with the Bill Bixby Hulk was he was David Banner not Bruce Banner, because as Stan Lee kept telling everybody the story, it was Bruce isn't a macho enough name to which Stan replied, “What about Bruce Lee?”
Dave: [laughs] Oh, I never heard that one before.
Matt: And then later on it was, “And what about Bruce Willis?” But so, they changed it to David because Bruce was too effeminate. And so every episode he was David, and he would use a pseudonym, and every single one of his pseudonym’s last names started with B. Like he was Bennett, and Benning, and I'm trying to… and like I went on the internet and found a list of them. Because the guy who bought whatever, I'm like, I'm pretty sure he was a David Banner alias, and I looked, I was surprised, nope, it was not one. It was close, but it wasn't exact, and I emailed and he's like, “Yeah, I haven't heard that since I was 12” but I'm thinking, I don't know if that's an insult or a compliment.
Dave: [laughs] Probably a little of both, if I had to guess. If I had to guess. Okay, as you've written here, “I believe it's your turn to reminisce about Seiler.” It is, indeed. And long time listeners will remember the cliffhanger that I left on this one, which was the karaoke bar reopened in Minneapolis during lockdown. And this is, the more I try to tell this story, the more I go, uh, this is all pretty idiosyncratic Dave Sim thinking stuff, so I'm gonna have to go like just a bit at a time. So the karaoke bar reopening, and Jeff making a point of it to me, and Jeff being himself an exception in the sense that, of the Cerebus readership that I have, and that I had at that time, Jeff was my most frequent phone correspondent in terms of leaving phone messages. So that's one of those, when you live the kind of life that Dave Sim has lived and that Dave Sim is living, all of these things take shape as, well, okay this is what makes this thing distinct from that thing. This is what makes this other thing distinct from these other things. That's what I watch for is, one of these is not like the other, so it's sort of calling attention to itself in that sense. So the frequency of phone messages that I would get that started, “Dave, it's Jeff.” And then Jeff would go on to [laughs] basically be annoying, or at least sometimes irritating, most of the time he had sort of an annoying edge to him, but I just didn't give it any toehold with me. But I was always aware, okay, Jeff Seiler is the exception to my readership, who are usually very very very good about leaving me alone. It's “If I'm gonna phone and leave a phone message for Dave Sim, I'm gonna make sure that I have something that I really think Dave needs to know, not something that starts, ‘Dave, it's Jeff’.” So, coupled with the karaoke bar reopening, which already we were in a year into, in fact, the exceptionalism of what the response was to the pandemic. It's like, karaoke bars were completely out of the question, because as you will remember from our previous episode, droplets were going to kill us all. This was why all of us had to be locked into our homes and hide under our beds, and if we did, God forbid, go out somewhere, we had to make sure that we were all six to eight feet apart, and if we were indoors even more than that… do you remember this? Do you remember the debate about how far apart people needed to be to be safe? That some people said, “Like six feet is fine” and it's like, “No no, they got video of the droplets and the droplets can go up to, you know whatever, 30 feet.” And it's like, well okay, but you can't have a metropolitan area where everybody has to be 30 feet apart. So, already for somebody who thinks the way I do where it's like, well okay, if things are going to change that drastically overnight, that calls attention to itself. I have no idea what's going on here, and I'm happy to speculate on what's going on here, but the mere fact of this is what we're suddenly obsessing about for no discernible reason that I could see, this is interesting to me. Like I say, the Draconian social distancing that I wrote down here, and then again another element to it is the subjective angle of it. The fact that this is happening to me. Jeff Seiler is happening to me in a way that isn't happening with the other Cerebus fans, and isn't happening between Jeff Seiler and everybody else. So that kind of calls attention to itself. And Jeff is from Minneapolis, and Jeff makes a point of telling me that Minneapolis has okayed the reopening of either karaoke bars generally, or Minneapolis' one karaoke bar. Do you remember Jeff talking about that like the karaoke bar was a big deal for him?
Matt: There were times where he would post things, and he would say, “Okay, I have to go because my my car is coming to get me to take me to karaoke tonight.” And it was one of them, it was Jeff, there's always a little detail that nobody's really gonna care about but you know he's going to make a point of saying something so that when it comes up later and, “Well how could you guys forget that I like whatever.” And it's like, well, Jeff, you know none of us really care.
Dave: [laughs] But you take my point. Exactly, that these things call attention to themselves, that karaoke suddenly loomed large in Jeff Seiler's legend ,and like you say, he would make a point of it where he didn't really need to make a point of it. Just, you know, if you're done writing your post, just stop writing and go and do something else, don't say, “I have to go to karaoke tonight.” So there was that element to it, so the way that my mind works with those sorts of things is, okay these are in a specific category. We've got Jeff Seiler, we've got Minneapolis, and we've got weird karaoke exceptionalism that has now asserted its existence. And it's like, I'm not curious enough about it to, like you say, research it in depth or anything, it's just, this is calling attention to itself. Duly noted. For some reason Minneapolis in a distinction from every other city that I could think of in North America that I was aware of, certainly of Kitchener, nobody was reopening for karaoke at that point. So you have, okay here's the inexplicable lockdown in the first place. I don't really think the droplets are coming to get me. But we can explain that away as feminist hypochondria, all of the health authorities are now, at the highest level, are mostly occupied by women and they tend far more towards hypochondria than men do, and consequently this is the best reason that I can come up with for what I consider this extreme overreaction to COVID-19. But it's not something that I'm really obsessing about, it's just, the whole world's going kind of strange, and definitely at least 180 degrees of separation from how Dave Sim thinks and perceives reality. What followed from that was the George Floyd situation, where definitely a terrible racist tragedy, but in terms of my mental filing system, where I'm putting things, particularly at that time where everything has been reduced to a virtual standstill, you know, a lockdown is a lockdown is a lockdown. It's a prison term. It's like, okay, for some reason we have now turned all of the G7 countries into prison camps, and we are now using prison camp terms. That’s fine! I’ve lived with weirder things in my time, and I can adjust to this. As long as nobody's coming into the Off-White House to get me who’s a health authority, I'm more than happy to just let this play itself out at whatever level , feminist hypochondria at that level, that universal level is going to play it out. But it isall bookmarked, so when the George Floyd thing happened, I think the most noteworthy thing about that, apart from the horrific episode itself, was the fact that suddenly the same people who had been telling us that we all have to be at least eight feet apart from each other because being any closer than eight feet apart means we have these dangerous droplets flying all over the place, and consequently people who don't stay that far apart are committing acts of genocide against their fellow citizens. Or potentially committing acts of genocide against their fellow citizens. All of those same same people suddenly poured out into the streets en mass bunched together and marching in Black Lives Matter protests. [laughs] And it's like, okay, again, in my frames of reference, I go category by category. This category, Jeff Seiler is the exception and is contacting me. Jeff Seiler is from Minneapolis. Jeff Seiler is calling attention to the fact that the karaoke bars are opening and he is now going to karaoke definitely in violation of what I understand is the spirit of the of the COVID-19 lockdown. And now what we have done is leveled up. We've gone up a level from that where that exceptionalism that I've noted, Jeff Seiler Minneapolis karaoke bar, is now Jeff Seiler Minneapolis George Floyd and now worldwide lockdown violations, that the people that are doing that conscious violation seem to have no conscious awareness of the irony of it and the hypocrisy of it. That you can't believe this thing over here a 100% at this moment and then 24 hours later go, “All of that's off the board. We have to go and do this thing that completely violates all of that, and do it in such a way that everybody that's going, ‘WTF’ can't say anything because it's like, if you say anything about these people violating the lockdown so egregiously, the only explanation for you doing that is that you're a racist.”
Matt: Right. I'm just thinking back, because I remember when the social distancing was six feet, and they came out with this diagram of “stay six feet apart from everyone” and it had an equilateral triangle where all three sides were labeled six feet, and somebody made turned into a memm(sic) of that diagram and then Pythagoras giving a “what the hell?” look.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: Because, the Pythagorean theorem, it's six feet, six feet, and 8.25 feet. So that's where we were telling everybody 8.25 feet, that way you're safe.
Dave: Right. Right. And it's like going, this is really basic geometry. You're trying to tell everybody on the planet how they have to live their lives different from how they were living their lives 72 hours ago, and you can’t even get the basic geometry right.
Matt: And then I remember my brother took my niece to a protest and I'm like, what? You're doing what? He's like, “Well, yeah, they're having a protest and you know, and if you don't stand up, you'll” blah blah. I'm going, okay, how are you gonna stay six feet away from everybody? It’ss, “Well we're gonna wear masks.” I'm like ‘kay. You're gonna not come near my house for a couple of months. I mean, let's just be realistic here. I mean, I understand bad things happened. The right to protest, you know. Yes I can understand the impulse to want to do that. I just, I'm the guy that showed up at work wearing a mask and everybody said,” Why do you got a diaper on your face?” And I'm like, um, because my wife's a nurse, she does home care, she's got elderly patients that if they get this they'll probably die. Technically, if I don't wear a mask, and I catch it and I give it to her, and she gives it to them, I'm an accessory to murder.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And like my boss got in my face about that like, “That's not true” And I'm going, okay, legally, maybe not, but morally, I mean, I could have prevented… you know, it's the Spider-Man thing of, you could have stopped the burglar who ended up killing your uncle, but you decided, “Eh, I'm looking out for number one.” Well, now what are you gonna do, Pete?
Dave: Right. Right. And it's also the, there's never a control group. It's like, you make your decision, you make your choices and you take your chances, and there's no, well, what if I had done this? What if Matt Dow had said, “No, I'm just not going to wear wear a mask.” And well, we don't know because Matt wore a mask.
Matt: I mean, it was getting kind of funny too, because like TeePublic site that that we have the AMoC store through, started selling masks, and I'm like, oh cool, I can buy a nice mask instead of having the one that my Mom made out of an old pair of my sleep pants. Because that was, I needed a fabric mask, and my mom found the patterns and she had a bunch of scrap fabric. Well she had this pair of pants that I had outgrown that had devils on them, so I was walking around with devils on my face.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And I'm like okay, you know. But it doesn't look the greatest, and it's not designed 100% of the way. So I'll buy one of these pre-made pre-printed masks. So I got a Miracleman one with the Miracleman logo, and it showed up, and it was a little too small for my face. So I'm going, okay, that's six bucks I'm never getting back.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And then at work they gave all of us, as a safety bonus, they gave us tumblers and masks. And it was slightly bigger than the Miracleman one, and I'm going, okay, did you guys think about this when you put the order in? Like, some of us have fat faces. Maybe you want to get the big masks.
Dave: Right. Since we're all gonna be living this way from now on.
Matt: I mean, the AMoC TeePublic shop pretty much started with, I wanted to make a Cerebus mouth mask, because I thought that'd be funny. And I'm like, this is the kind of thing that, everyone's got to wear a mask, people are starting to sell them where the mask looks like a face, let's just do the whole nine and see how many of these we can sell. And, yeah, it sold some. But by the time I got them up there, it was, “Well are important, but not really. It's August, it's hot, do we really want to cover our faces?”
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And that's, I mean, I do enjoy that COVID, it, “ended”, and I'm going, no, it didn't end, we just kind of all stopped caring.
Dave: Yeah. Yeah. And it was that same consensus thing. The consensus has been arrived at, and I don't remember anybody discussing this, I don't remember anybody voting on this, I just remember that, “No, masks don't do any good.” And that lasted for about three months, and then, “No, masks are mandatory.” How did you go from he first rationale to the second rationale without letting any of the rest of us know that this was taking place. Again, on the assumption that we're all going to be living this way from now on.
Matt: And it was weird too, because like, I wore a mask up until the vaccine came out, and then I got vaccinated, and I'm like, okay two weeks after my vaccination, or the second shot, because it was, you know, had to get the one shot and wait a little bit, get a second shot. Two weeks after that it's, okay, you in theory are fully vaccinated and you no longer have to worry about it. I'm like, well, I don't have to wear a mask anymore. And somebody at work was like, “Well, how come you're not wearing a mask?” I’m like, I'm vaccinated, and they just kind of looked at me like, “Why would you do that?” It's like, well I get the flu shot every year for the same reason, because, my wife's in healthcare. This is the decision that I need to live with. And the best part was the people that were going, “Why would you get the vaccine?” I'm like, because you know, vaccines work. I didn't get polio as a kid, I didn't get smallpox because there's vaccines. And the people that were most anti-vax at work within two weeks caught COVID. And I'm going, see? Yes, needles suck, there's very few people who are like, “Oh needles are the greatest thing in the universe” but at the same time, you get a little poke, you feel a little sick for a couple days, and then you get on with your life.Or you isolate.
Dave: Or you die, or whatever else. Again, there's no control group where you go, okay, how would my life have gone in my case if I had gotten vaccinated? And it's like, I don't know, because I didn't get vaccinated. I didn't really didn't think about it. It just wasn't on my personal radar. Again, this would be a different story if the police came to the front door with the health officials and broke in and went, “I'm sorry, you have to be vaccinated.” It's like, oh okay, it’s like I'm not gonna try and fight you guys and whatever else. But as long as I'm in here and you're out there, you can do whatever you want, and I'll do whatever I want.
Matt: Well that's kind of what I'm saying…
Dave: So, I'm gonna leave it at that, because again, I'm trying to tell a specific story. So that's the first part of the, how I react to things category by category, and to me it was the karaoke situation that then escalated dramatically into the George Floyd situation, from my experience centered around Jeff Seiler. So that's my that's my Jeff Seiler story for August 2023.
Matt: And in October, we're all gonna put on our fake vampire fangs for the next part!
Dave: [laughs] You're getting ahead of the story, Matt.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: “And then if there isn't anything in the ‘Matt doesn't know about this that Dave's got a thing we need to mention’ pile,” uhh, we've got that, but that's coming up with… what’s uh? Oh, Dodger! With Dodger’s question, Mike Sewall, which is next . “Over on X, formerly the Twitters,” how's that going? Since I'm not online or anything, it's like, now that it's called X, are people calling it X?
Matt: [laughs] Somebody posted a thing saying, “Now that they've changed Twitter to X, that means that all the Twitter employees are either Ex-employees, or X employees.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: It's like watching a dumpster fire, or a train crash. You know this isn't gonna end well. And like, Tuesday there was a push on Monday of on Tuesday “don't anybody use X/Twitter as a sign to the advertisers that hey you're not getting any engagements for 24 hours, what's going on.” So I deleted it off my phone, and I'm debating putting it back on, because it's one of those I go on, and it's five people that I follow that I actually care about, and a bunch of crap like ads, that I hide the ad because I don't care about whatever the product is.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Or it's a friend of a friend of a friend, or it's just the algorithm breaks and all of a sudden it's “hey you're interested in this aren't you?” It's like, no, not at all, why are you showing me things I don't care about? And so yeah, I've kind of pulled back, I'll go on for every day when I when I have a post I go through the Moment of Cerebus Twitter account… or X account, I guess. It just sounds weird. “It's the Moment of Cerebus X account.” You mean Deni?
Dave: Right. [laughs] Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!
Matt: But yeah, so I'll post the link to whatever today's blog post is, and whatever day it is. So like you know Monday and then the link, or Tuesday and then the link. And then there'll be a little button that's, or a little notification thing that says, oh you have notifications, and I click on and you know a bunch of people followed me, okay, great. Or my other private personal account liked something that the Moment of Cerebus account posted, because you know, that's how the internet works.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And then like this question came up, and I'm going, okay, this is something that, yeah, okay, I will shuffle into the pile. And I left the window open for a week just to remind myself, hey, this guy has a question, make sure that we ask this question of Dave, because otherwise I'm gonna forget it's gonna be one of those, I swear I had more questions. Where are all these questions? And I can't find them because it's the internet, if it's not right in front of you, it wasn't really important.
Dave: So you go through the A Moment of Cerebus X feed…
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: And look for something that's in the question category.
Matt: Well, if someone specifically tags the account and asks a question, that's a really good way of me going, oh yeah I have to ask this. If--
Dave: Oh okay! That's what the “@MomentofCerebus” is about.
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: That they asked the account, and that's you.
Matt: Yeah, because Tim gave it up, and because Tim was doing it for a while, and after a year he's like, “Well, I should probably just turn this over to you” and I'm going, ‘kay.
Dave: [laughs] “Thanks I think.”
Matt: I'm just old enough and just luddite enough to go, you know, like they come up with a new app and it's “this is the new hot app that all the kids like” and I'm going, I'm not a 13 year old girl, what do I care?
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: That was Twitter to me when it first came out. I'm not a 13 year old girl, what do I care? On my personal account, I have a pinned tweet where it's an image of a poster my Dad has of a urinal with a bunch of graffiti. And I mean it's a funny poster, and I've seen bathrooms in the real world that look like that.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And if a tweet is pinned, when people go to your profile, it's the first thing they see. And like, for A Moment of Cerebus, the pinned tweet would be a link to the website. For some artists, it's a link to their online portfolio. Well, my pinned tweet for my personal account is this image, and it says, “This is how I see Twitter. If you didn't like something I posted, next time I'll try a limerick.”
Dave: [laughs] Okay. Alright. See cause, the only thing that came to mind for me when I read about the X thing in the newspaper, because in the newspaper anytime something happened on Twitter that had to do with writing, or it had to do with writers, and suddenly it generated this huge outpouring of comment section or whatever. You knew the scale of the importance that this holds in our society, because it was responded to by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Margaret Atwood. Those are the only three writers that, something came up like some poor writer had some, what was it? It was nobody showed up at their first signing, and immediately, like practically within moments, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King and Margaret Atwood had all posted stories about signings they had done where nobody had showed up. And it’s like, I’m going, it's very nice of them to do, for somebody who's on Twitter and a writer and going, “You know, I feel like killing myself” kind of thing. But why is it just those three writers?
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So I was curious if [laughs] this is now a situation because of of Neil Gaiman's high standing on the site, is he now Neil Gaiman X-Man?
Matt: I should ask him that.
Dave: That's a thought.
Matt: I've had interactions with Neil every now and then where he'll tweet something and you know he gets 5,000 responses, and sometimes he sees them, and sometimes he doesn't, and I've had a couple. Like when the ComicsGate thing blew up, I had said something about it to him, and his response was that the little interaction he had was people who are part of ComicsGate trying to tell him he didn't know anything about his own career.
Dave: Okay. Right.
Matt: And that was when he went, he washed his hands with them. He's like, “I'm not dealing with you people anymore. You're literally telling me I don't know what I did.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: “How I broke in you know” the dues he paid, all that stuff, you know. They're telling him he doesn't know “Sandman” when it's like, pretty sure Neil's the guy that knows “Sandman” better than anybody else.
Dave: Yeah, but at the same time, Kevin Eastman makes the point that he tried to change his entry on Wikipedia because they had him born in the wrong city in Maine. He was born in Portland and they kept changing it back. So to this day, he's now, I forget the the other location, but they're quite insistent, “No, you weren't born in Portland, and we would appreciate it if you'd stop messing around with our absolute truth here.” Anyway! Okay, moving on to iestynp (aka zinelove (aka iesorno zines)) @iestynpettigrew. So that’s their handle? That’s them contacting @momentofcerebus, I got that right?
Matt: I was gonna just say “a guy on X/Twitter” and I'm like, nope! I'm gonna put what it actually says the name is, because I looked at it and went, Dave's gonna have fun with this.
Dave: [laughs] Well, Dave’s definitely going, all right and how much time do you people spend on this? Not pointing fingers, I spend three hours reading John's Gospel Monday and Wednesday and you obviously think that's lunatic behavior.
Matt: No…
Dave: Anyway! Okay, “Someone on Facebook was asking a question about ‘glamourpuss.’ They know that there were different versions sent out, a retailer version, and a regular version. There was also mention of a fashion industry version being sent out. Did that happen?” And yes it did. Yes it did. And as a matter of fact, like I never think about this because you know “glamourpuss” is definitely in my rear view mirror at this point, but it was, there were two versions of the fashion industry version And I got Rolly to take a picture of me today holding one of them up. He'll be emailing that to you along with the stayflat that they were mailed out in, which had a stamp in the corner with, picking up right here, this was the Jet-Con self-sealing corrugated mailer, and I got a stamp made up that says, “Your glamourpuss platinum VIP access pass enclosed.” And that was on the front of the stayflat, and then I got the addresses printed up. This was one of those, boy did this look like a great idea on paper. This was, this can't possibly not work. What I did was… where are we here? I’ve mislaid it. Have I mislaid it? I just turned it upside down, or what have I done?! Where is it? Where is it? Anyway, yeah, the fashion industry edition. I'll read the back cover of it. Like I say, you'll have a photograph of the front cover and I'll talk about that in a moment. “This special fashion industry Limited Edition version of ‘glamourpuss’ #1 in (which doubles as your platinum access or gold access VIP invitation to all glamourpuss events in 2008) has been mailed to the glamourpuss guest list, a select group of executives and editorial personnel employed by hese fine North American fashion lifestyle and women's magazines.” And like I say, this is on of the back cover. [coughs] Excuse me. And then the list is “Chatelaine,” “Elite,” “Fashion,” “Blair,” “Glamour,” “Harper's Bazaar,” “In-Style,” “Lulu,” “Lucky,” “Nouveau,” “Nylon,” “Redbook,” “Self,” “Style,” “The Oprah Magazine,” which was still coming out at that time, “Threads,” “Vanity Fair,” and “Vogue.” “To find out more about your glamourpuss VIP platinum or VIP gold access, visit www.glamourpusscomic.com.” And as you will be looking at right now because Matt Dow has skillfully put in these visuals, I came up with the idea of going, if I took the the foil seals that that lawyers use on legal documents, which were being phased out but they still were using it at that time, and if I got a template made that said “glamourpuss Platinum Edition” and bought the silver seals and then press that into the silver seal, and then put it into this circle on the cover, that's going to look really impressive to people in the fashion industry who are civilians and don't know really what it is that they're looking at. It's like, “Wow, that's got raised lettering and everything. That's really really cool” was the idea. And the idea was that I went and bought a copy of each of those magazines that I just listed, counting them real quickly. [counts one to eighteen] Eighteen fashion and lifestyle, and women's magazine. Went and bought a copy, and tore out the masthead, which is the list of everybody that works at the magazine. Fashion magazines are kind of notorious for not paying people real well, so one of the big job perks, particularly for the lower orders, is that you get your name in the magazine. Practically down to intern, and that is, “Well, you know, at least I can get a copy of the magazine or buy a copy of the magazine and show all my friends and relatives, here! Here's my name down here.” And arbitrarily I would go, okay, publisher, editor-in-chief at the top, how far down do I go to the bottom of the platinum level, and everybody below that is gold access level. And did the gold foil for the the gold foil level. And basically got mailing labels printed for each of the magazines that had the magazine's name and address on the label, and then went through and hand wrote each individual person's name who was getting an individual copy that would go with their complimentary copy of the fashion edition to their place of employment. I forget how much it cost. I'm blanking intentionally on how much it cost to press all of those labels, print an entire run of fashion industry preview editions, package them up, buy the stayflat mailer, put them in a plastic bag with a backing board, put them into the mailer, and then take them to the post office and mail them. Ballpark at that time, 2008, I think it was at least at least four or five dollars to mail each one of them. And the idea was that however many people that I heard from, I could just send them invitations to events at comic book conventions, which wouldn't be at the actual comic book convention, it would be at a fashion industry style bar in proximity to the comic book convention. Basically, find a place where they're not doing exactly land office business, can I hold a “glamourpuss” party here? Explain the concept to them, I figure, well yeah, you know, we're at a place that's just opened or whatever, but is pretty well upscale and have business attire invitations. The only place that that happened was at The Last Signing in 2010 ,which Margaret and any number of people who were at The Last Signing and we’ll have photographs of everybody in business attire at the upscale bar that Calum arranged, Strange Adventures store owner, for everybody to go to. That was the only “glamourpuss” party that happened. Darwyn Cooke and his wife were there. So it was, the concept was, people that aren't afraid to wear business attire and actually think, “Oh, this would be pretty cool. I'll go to upscale bar, wear business attire.” Would mix and mingle with people from the fashion industry, and we would get some sort of cross pollination going on around “glamourpuss.” And like I say, ballpark, how much did all of this cost for me to put together? $12,000, $14,000? And then we get to, I'm obviously mispronouncing this, but iestynpettigrew, “Do you know whether Dave got a reaction from any of the fashion copies that were sent out?” And no. Zero, zip, no responses to the website. One of the things that I was hoping for was, since everybody at the fashion magazine that's on the masthead is going to get one of these, and fashion magazines were still pretty thick at that time and they all had like potpourri pages where, “Here’s 15 or 16 different products that got sent to the office and somebody thought that this was really cool, and somebody else thought this was really cool, so we're throwing it in here. And go and buy this at your local comic book store, it's ‘glamourpuss,’ we think it's funny.” No, absolutely zero. In retrospect, the fashion industry takes itself very very very seriously, and the idea that you would parody a fashion magazine? “Well there's nothing funny about fashion magazines.” [laughs] And it's like, well au contraire if you're asking me personally. But that's the problem, is I was the only one that you could ask personally. Only after I went through all of that, did I remember that “Harvard Lampoon,” the precursor of the “National Lampoon” had the same problem happen when they did their “Vogue Magazine” parody. It's like, nobody who read “Vogue Magazine” wanted to read it, and nobody who would ordinarily read the “Harvard Lampoon” was interested in fashion magazines. So it also tanked. I remember one of the headlines from the “Harvard Lampoon” Vogue parody was “15 ways to decorate your uterine wall.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: See that's funny! I thought it was funny, but it's like anybody that saw that on the newsstand who was a fashion person went, “That's not funny!” And anybody who was going and buying magazines and isn't a fashion fan, went, “I don't buy magazines like that. I wouldn't buy ‘Vogue’ and why would I buy a a parody of ‘Vogue’?” So there you go. There's the response to that one. The mental image that I had was the dumpster out back of the Conde Nast building, because what I found out researching all the fashion magazines is that almost all of them were either published by Conde Nast, or were in the Conde Nast building. Consequently, I pictured the dumpster in behind was just absolutely chock-a-block full of what are now ultra-rare platinum and and gold edition exclusive fashion industry preview copies, of which, as far as I know, the Cerebus Archive has the only copies. If anybody wants to take issue with that and say, “Uh no, I got one of them.” I might have sent one to Margaret Liss.
Matt: You sent me a gold one.
Dave: You got a gold one, did you? Okay.
Matt: And then another gold one turned up at the store my buddy was working at, and he's like, “Hey do you want one of these?” And I'm like, “glamourpuss” #1? No, I ordered like eight copies trying to goose numbers up and and ended up buying them all. And he said, “Well it's a gold one.” Oh yeah that one I want! He's like, “What?” I'm like, well they're all serialized, so technically if we have the list of who got what we can track down who had this and decided they didn't want it anymore.
Dave: Right! Right right, and you did that?
Matt: No. No, it's on my to-do list.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: There’s only one guy who would have the list and I’m talking to him!
Dave: I was just kidding! I knew you didn’t do that.
Matt: My all-time favorite was the glamourpuss website, if you had access you could vote on article titles for the covers of upcoming issues. And you could submit article ideas if you had them. And the only title I could come up with that I was gonna submit that, it was one of those, by the time I thought of it and was going to submit it the website had kind of sort of gone away. Like it was there, but it wasn't active type thing. Was “babies versus puppies, what's the fashion accessory this season?”
Dave: Good one!
Matt: And when you pitched me on, “Hey do you want to pitch stories for ‘glamourpuss’?” That was an article that I'm like, I really should try writing that article. I'm like, the problem is it's just a headline, there is no substance that would make it funny.
Dave: Oh, again, au contraire. All you'd have to do is read one of Paula's fashion magazines and go, “I can do that voice.” It does have a a manner that begs to be torn apart but it certainly doesn't perceive itself that way.
Matt: Well, that's, when I was doing my research for trying to write for “glamourpuss,” I bought an issue of “Vogue,” and it was, okay, I'm gonna take this apart and go through, find all the pictures, cut all the pictures out, try to figure out what kind of voice I want and stuff. And the big thing that blew my mind was for the same price of a regular floppy newsstand comic, I could get something the size of the phone book for the town I live in.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And now granted, 90 ads, but when you're looking for images, the ads would still work. I'm like, why can't we have comics this thick for this price? And the answer is, because nobody's gonna pay for an ad in “Superman” what they're gonna pay for an ad in “Vogue.”
Dave: Exactly. Exactly. And the fashion magazine model collapsed because of the internet. It was, you want to know what the fashion show that's going on in Milan right this minute is like, just go to this feed and you can watch it on your High Definition television if you want. You don't have to wait two months for somebody to print a postage stamp sized photograph from it saying, “Okay, here's one of the dresses.” I don't want to see one of the dresses, I want to see all of the dresses! And the internet is far more capable of doing that than fashion magazines were. They're still holding their own, but it's the same thing that happened in newspapers. The license to print money, because of the money that came in on the classified ads. As soon as you've got Craigslist, the classified ads have just been knocked out of the batter's box. That's it! That doesn't change back the other way at any time. One of the things I've been thinking about as a fundraiser for the last four or five days, because I actually went, okay, I don't know if I have to start selling artwork, if the situation is getting that grim. So I started looking at the at the “glamourpuss’ artwork, and it's always difficult, because it's like, I'm looking at the artwork going, okay, which one would probably bring in the most money? And it's like, oh I really like this one. And it's like, yeah, but would it bring in the most money? And it's like, I don't know, I really like this one. And the more I look at it, it's you know, like a bird’s egg. You're sort of like tilting back and forth and going, I can't see this through the eyes of others. But one of the things that happened was, there have been two or three occasions in the last few years where I've gone through all of the “glamourpuss” artwork that I still have, and doing that. Which ones am I going to sell? Which ones are am I going to start with? And which ones do I want to hang on to? And I'm going, I can't find the Beer and Iguana page.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: And you know what I'm talking about, because that was one of your, “I will try writing a ‘glamourpuss’ page” thing.
Matt: I was just thinking, like, well, you know, that if you're gonna try to sell a page from “glamourpuss” that'd be in my top five of trying to sell, cause it's got famous pretty girls that are still famous on it.
Dave: Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift when she still ringlets, no less.
Matt: I mean, the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen pages would be also. There's probably going to be, I don't know if there's as big of an interest in the two of them, but at the same time it's like, there's a famous girl. We recognize it's a famous girl. This is a page that you don't have to wonder, “What the heck is it?” Well, it's a famous girl.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: I mean, the Sarah Jess--
Dave: What I was going to do was try to leverage the fact that, exactly as you say. I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it, and I couldn't find it every time that I went through it, I’m going like, what did I do with that page? I didn't give it to somebody. Because it's like, I really really like it. It's really nice page. I thought particularly the likeness on Avril Lavigne was good. You did point out that Colt 45 isn't a beer.
Matt: It's a form of beer, but it's not beer.
Dave: Right.
Matt: I mean, I grabbed the concept of generic beer from the movie “Repo Man,” because in that movie, all the food products are the store brand from this store in California where it's a white can with blue printing. So like, pasta, you know it's spaghetti, it's a white box, blue writing, and says spaghetti.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And in the movie, they drink beer.
Dave: Ah-ha.
Matt: It's a white can, blue printing, says beer. There's some kind of cocktail in a can that looks, it's a smaller can, but it's the same concept. And so like, okay, it's beer. So when I created the characters, it was, okay, it's Iguana and Beer and the beer is going to look like that but I made it black because it's a black and white book, that makes more sense. Well, I went on the internet and bought three generic beer cans so that I would have them. And after the Colt 45 thing and the other two times that you've done Beer and one time you created your own logo, and it looks amazing and I'm going, but it’s off-model.
Dave: [laughs] Right.
Matt: I was gonna send you one of the three because I have two that are identical, just says beer on the front and the back, but then I have one that is the most Beer beer can in the world, because it says beer on the front, and on the back there's this two paragraph rant about buying American .
Dave: Really?
Matt: And I got it, and I'm going, yeah, no, that tracks. You know, it's the kind of thing of, it's Beer, you know he's gonna go on a stupid rant that in hindsight you look at, you're like, well that's kind of jingoistic.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And I keep coming back to, it's such a simple design, and I'm going, but when the Kitchen Brothers, Mike and Blair did the crossover, they they had mugs of Beer, and I'm going, that's neat, but it's off-model.
Dave: Right. Right. Don't try telling me about my character. But anyway! Getting back to the page, now that I know that it exists, and I, like I say, I really like it . It's a very nice looking page. It's a very very good looking Iguana, even though Colt 45 isn't an actual beer, it does look like a can of Colt 45, and your gag is funny! Because it's the two of them talking about doing a benefit concert for Lindsay Lohan, and by the time they did it Lindsay Lohan was “like already out of prison, eh, so we decided to party in Cabo instead.” [laughs] And it's like, I went, that's a great page. That's a great page. You sent it to me as a story idea, and it's like, I don't really see a multi-page strip in this, but it’d definitely make a funny one-page inside joke. Now my question is, the deepest-pocketed Cerebus fans who listen to Please Hold for Dave Sim, and are A Moment of Cerebus devotee's, how much are you people willing to scrape together between you to buy Matt Dow the Beer and Iguana page?
Matt: [laughs] That was on my list of, okay, I win the lottery and I have more money than brains, I would call up, hey Dave, I have more money than brain-- you know, it's, all your troubles are over! Our ship’s come in, but I want to buy that page. At what point do I pry it out of your hands without you going, “No no” and ripping it in half? And that’s one of those…
Dave: [laughs] If I can't have it, no one can have it!
Matt: It's one of those, a million dollars? Half a million dollars? I mean, at a certain point, you know, my ego goes, well it's got to be in the six figures. And then the little voice goes on of, Dave probably could sell it for a thousand dollars right here right now if somebody had the money. It's like, yeah yeah, but no, that page is really nice. I mean, I have the tracing papers for it, and even the tracing papers look really really nice.
Dave: There you go. So it's, what I'm trying to do is, like I have no shame, I'll leverage anything at this point. So if you're listening to me, you are already A Moment of Cerebus devotee, you are already a Please Hold for Dave Sim devotee, and you know how tirelessly, and how thanklessly, and how relentlessly, day in and day out on your behalf Matt Dow labours, time taken away from the bosom of his loving family. All right, that's a bit of a stretch, but you see where I'm going with this. It's like, Matt gives, and gives, and gives, and gives, without asking any reward whatsoever! Which I do as well. It's like I give, and I give, and I give, and so many of you say, “We really really appreciate how much you give, Dave.” And I appreciate that! I really do appreciate that. But it's like, okay, in terms of dollars and cents, how much in the same A Moment of Cerebus esprit de corps that you exhibited when issue #4 was going up for auction at HeritageAuctions.com, and you all pulled together as a team, apologies to Pink Floyd.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: You see where I'm going with this.
Matt: Well, the footnote on the #4 is we pulled together as a team to get blown out of the water in literally 30 seconds.
Dave: Right. Right. But, that has, because it was a pretty significant amount of money, I mean, to get blown out of the water in 30 seconds.
Matt: I'm just, there's a part of me that's going, well Dave, you have the art, you have a scanner, we have access to a printer, we could do prints of that page and sell them for… and that's the part where it’s, okay, you know, a stayflat, Rolly’s time, the printing cost, signing them. You could you could put platinum seals on them if you had platinum seals left. But then, it's, okay, it's one print. It's not gonna be a 10 pack, you know. At what point does it sound like we're no longer pigs, we're starting to turn into hogs? And I'm thinking, $50? $60? I mean, you know, there has to be a profit here, but you could sell a print and I would, scout’s honor, print out for everyone that buys them, a copy of “Time Machine and a Coat Hanger”, the making of the page, the “glamourpuss” archive ashcan that I made years and years and years ago. And I've posted parts of it, but I don't think I've posted the whole thing. Mainly because it was one of those I have to go back and page seven has half a blank page just because of the formatting, so I was gonna put a funny cartoon in there. But I will finish up the “glamourpuss” archive ashcan and offer it to anybody that offers to buy a print, if Dave wants to sell them. Just to see what kind of interest there is, and this is the part where Michael and Michael and Margaret and Jen go, “We'll do it” and that's the end of the income. So Dave wants to know, how much money for the actual art, with his fingerprints on it and the pencil smudges. And…
Dave: Actually it's pretty clean. I was surprised tha, but I forced you to digress right there. We're gonna leave it at that. I think everybody knows exactly what we're talking about. It's Merry Christmas for Dave and Matt, and massive, massive guilt for everybody else.
Matt: [laughs] I mean, I still like the print idea, just because I'm a big fan of, hey we should do prints. But I also understand that prints is a pain in the butt.
Dave: Yes. Yes. If this doesn't gel, if this doesn't coalesce into something resembling a mutual Christmas, at the very least, I get Rolly to take it up to Alfonso and do a full-size scan for you.
Matt: Okay, I mean that's, technically the page before it, we need to get a full-size scan to Eddie, since that's the first appearance of Eddie in an Aardvark-Vanaheim book.
Dave: Rare, rare, rare, rare, rare!
Okay! “A couple of guys on the Cerebus Facebook Group are looking for ‘Guys: Party Packs’. Does AV have any in stock, and how much should they send you?” As a matter of fact, the questions came in, when did you fax me? You faxed these over yesterday.
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: So, I read all of the questions, and then when Rolly was here, because Rolly's the guy who knows where all the bodies are buried, and I was out back at Camp David, I said, Rolly, I know we have “Guys: Party Packs,” do you know A), where they are and how many we've got, and found them right away, and there's 21 of them.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: Took a close look at them. I would say, like they're not slabbed and they're not bagged and boarded, but I would guess that even the worst of them’s probably 9.6, 9.8. I can get Rolly to go through and go, okay, first come first serve gets the best condition copy, or copies. And I would leave it as, well, what's it worth to you? This is Facebook Group guys and I guess a couple of them were talking about it. If you were talking about it in terms of, “I haven't been able to find one of these and I really really want one,” it's like, well, I really really like money.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So, you generate as much guilt inside yourself as you can, and the easiest way to do this is make a donation to the CerebuDownload, just click on the Dave Sim fund button which allows you to enter an amount, and then leave a phone message, 519-576-0610. Don't worry, you're not going to interrupt my work. You're not going to wake me up. The ringer is always turned off, it's 24/7, if you decide to do this, you can do it at three o'clock in the morning, you can do it at two o'clock in the afternoon. Doesn't matter, I'm not going to hear it. Also, I'm the only one here who does hear the phone messages, so there's no danger of it getting lost or anything like that. If you're one of the usual suspects on other Cerebus Facebook Group, we probably already have your address. Just leave a phone message saying, “Hi, it's Craig,” or whoever it is, ”and I know you've got my address. I would like it personalized please, and I've already paid for it at CerebusDownloads.” And then I will either just sign it, or sign it and personalize it to you, and then get Rolly to mail it to you when he comes in on Thursday. But that's really the only delay that you'd be experiencing. If you do it when you hear it now, it'll be Saturday, and it won't go out until the following Thursday. But it will go out the following Thursday. There's no problem with Rolly pulling out the box again, pulling out the best condition copy of “Guys: Party Pack,” me signing or signing and personalizing it, him wrapping it up, taking it to the post office. Boom, you'll have it a week later.
Matt: Ironic that there's 21 of them.
Dave: Why is that?
Matt: Cause you gotta be 21 to drink!
Dave: Ahh! [barks like a seal] [laughs] I never even thought-- well, you don't have to be 21 everywhere, there's different drinking ages in different environments. But yes, typically you have to be 21 to drink. So, okay. Oh, that's good.
Okay! We are moving on to the Dodger, Mike Sewall. “Okay, questions, sorry my question is so late this month.” And before we get to that, I want to thank you Mike for your phone message the other day, where you had contacted Dagon to tell him how jazzed you were about your “Turtles” 8 package which had come in, and Dagon said, “You should call Dave and leave a message for him.” And that was the first that I knew that we had crossed the threshold of, my central criteria is always we don't do the next Kickstarter until the previous Kickstarter items start arriving. And I was hoping to hear from somebody, since Dagon's in Pittsburgh, I was thinking, well, I'll hear from Michael R or somebody else in in Pennsylvania or New York state or whatever, and that's when I will know, okay, we're off to the races. But I gotta tell you, Lompoc, California, and it already is there? That means we are definitely in a complete safety zone, and I can now definitively say that Dagon has to go-ahead to launch “The Last Day” hardcover Kickstarter, where “The Last Day” hardcovers are all already printed and are ready to ship. So it'll be a very very short Kickstarter, and the absolute record shortest fulfillment time. To the point where, this is the first time I can look down past the present arrivals, “Turtles” 8, the next arrivals, “The Last Day,” and say, as I have already told David Birdsong, you're gonna be next with the “MiracleManVark” Cerebus in Hell? First one that we're gonna Kickstarter on that, and David Birdsong gets to try his hand at, “This is my book. Dave did some tweaking on this, but it's almost all my own material. Here's how David Birdsong does a Kickstarter.” So, we will see A), first of all, how long it takes David to get his Kickstarter up after “The Last Day” hardcovers are arriving. And, looking forward to hearing about that, so that I can go, well, I'm not sure what I'm gonna contribute to it from the Cerebus Archive of Cerebus in Hell? material, but definitely a Kickstarter devoted to “MiracleManVark.” That's a place that I'm gonna sell that stuff, and just waiting to hear from David Birdsong on that.
Matt: The T8 Kickstarter, there's a slight snag with the “75 More Sleeps” book, “Pieces of Turtles 8.3” and one of the other supplements. Those are getting delivered, I believe, within a week. So, we’re waiting on those packages, you got to wait, but those are going out as soon as they come in. If anyone's getting original sketch covers from you, or the other artist that was on the offer, those are completely not tied into anything else. Like, I believe the way it was worded is, you'll get everything else and then those will come when they come.
Dave: Right. Right. I actually did those. There was five of them on the sketch cover and those all went out as well the trading cards, last Thursday. So those should be arriving in Pittsburgh either today, tomorrow, or early next week at the latest.
Matt: And then “The Last Day” hardcover Kickstarter should be going live August 8th.
Dave: August 8th, is that what he’s saying?
Matt: Yeah, last I heard, I believe that was the tentative. It was all ready to go, you know, it was all systems, ready to launch, type thing. And that was the date that I remember. So I'm thinking, if I hear different I'll let everybody know, but yes, the eighth is when it should go live.
Dave: And I think, I'm not sure how long Dagon was talking about doing the Kickstarter, but it wasn't much more than than a week or two. So we're talking about “The Last Day” clinching the deal by, okay, you're saying the eighth, add two weeks to that. We're talking the 22nd of this month! This is scary. This is absolutely scary for the obsessive Cerebus collector.
Matt: So I've been posting in the rigmarole, I was doing the various versions of “The Last Day” and various descriptions of what was going on. And finally, I was just getting tired of doing the same thing over and over, so I just, it's “The Last Day”, and it's with nothing, and it's the link to Previews to order the re-solicitation of it. With an old Cerebus Remarque and it's a link to CerebusDownloads, and then it was with, I forgot what the third one was, but then, and it was “The Last Day” on the top line and then the next line it was, quotes under each word so I didn't have to type it again, and there's like five of them and the last one was, “As a hardcover” and it was a link to the pre-launch page for the Kickstarter. And they also have it on the Cerebus overstock or overload, I always forget which one it is.
Dave: Overload.
Matt: Okay, so CerebusOverload, they already have a page on the site to order it after the Kickstarter, when the extra stuff funnels through and they're selling it there. So I had a link to that for a while. You can get “The Last Day “in any format you want, any way you want, you just kind of got to look around.
Dave: And it's all happening, August 2023! So thank you, Mike for, like I say, giving me the the segue into this. Now we're going to get to Mike's question. “Dear Dave and the oft-rumored Manly Matt. I read blogs and watch online interviews with other comics creators. Many mentioned the independent-focused comics conventions as their favorites. Like the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, S.P.A.C.E., in Columbus, Ohio. Can you please talk a bit about that movement and your experience?” I'll be happy to. I have to say, as soon as I saw the word “movement” it's like, 30 years of of bad vibes [laughs] flooding back, and it's like I'm learning to work through this so that it doesn't do that. The reason that I say that, and that I'm laughing, and the reason that “movement” causes that problem, is that this was the giant schism that occurred in the situation where, it was Steve Bissette who was calling it a “self-publishing movement” because that was the way he saw it, and in his mind, movements are a great idea! [laughs] I won't make the obvious jokes attached to this, but Steve Bissette’s definitely over in the “movement” camp, where if there's something that you're doing or you're wanting to do or you're getting people to do, and it's a good idea, and you start getting more and more people doing it, call it a movement so that you can accelerate the process. Everyone loves a movement! Somebody who didn't love the idea of a movement, and didn't love the idea of calling something a movement, was Jeff Smith. This definitely raised his hackles of, “I don't really want to be part of a movement.” And it's lik,e this all occurred external to me, because my take on it was, I had been successful at self-publishing, and I'm a paying it forward, paying it back kind of guy, to this day. So that was my side of it. And anybody who was self-publishing or wanted to self-publish, and wanted my help, I was always very emphatic to them. It's, I'll help you when the time comes, and it will come for you if you're successful, you help other people. I'm not going to charge you a consultant fee, I'm not going to ask for a percentage of your sales, none of that kind of stuff. It's like, here's the information that I have, here's what I know, here's my experience, and I'll be happy to walk you through all of it. I remember Carol West was still here, and I was trying to get work done, and I had been sort of up to my eyeballs with self-publishers asking for help. And I’m down in the studio, Carol comes to the top of the stairs, and she says, “Jeff Smith’s on the phone.” And I said, ask him what it's about. [laughs] And she goes away for like three seconds and comes back and goes, “He says ‘Bone.’” And it's like, okay, yes, very good point. I was looking for, you know, give me a snapshot of what it is that you're asking about, and I can maybe just relay the answer through Carol. No, this is Jeff Smith, this is “Bone.” There is only one Jeff Smith and there is only one “Bone.” Hi, Jeff. What's up? And then talk for whatever, 40 minutes, whatever it is that he wanted to talk about. Sometimes it was, “Well what about a movie? What about merchandising? Have you signed for a movie? Why would you sign for a movie? What do you think is wrong with movies?” And it's like, okay well, I'll be happy to answer that, there's no short answer to that, but again all of this was, I'll do this for you, you do this for others when your turn comes. And it's taken close to 30 years to get to the point of going, okay, I think I can understand a lot of what was happening there, that there's only so much that you can do. It's like, I'm keeping a monthly comic book on schedule, and flying out to 26 different cities on the weekend to promote the book, and do interviews and all that kind of stuff, and comic store signings. And helping all of these self-publishers, where it's like, I've already explained this probably eight times in the last week, and certainly 10 times at the last convention that I was at, but this is the first time that you’ve heard it. So yes, let me try and erase my page, or put in the panel boarders, or spot solid blacks, while I listen to you explaining at length. And I already know what you're saying, what you're going to say, where it's going to lead to, but I have to be patient and let you go through all of that and then say, okay, A, B, C, and D. That's all I have to say about it. Those are the options, I picked B, you can pick anyone that you want. And it's like, okay, that would usually take care of it.
Jeff was in the situation of being the biggest self-publishing success since the “Turtles”, and the “Turtles” have been the biggest self-publishing success since “Elfquest.” “Cerebus” was never anywhere near that category, and it is a different category, which is why I I cite the story of, ask him what this is about? He’s like, “’Bone.’” And it's like, right, okay, he's Jeff Smith and you know, I knew Kevin and Peter, not right at the onset of the “Turtles” thing. I knew Wendy and Richard a year and a half into the “Elfquest” situation. It's a much scarier thing. It's really really elevated tension. And one of the things that was happening to Jeff was, everybody [laughs] not thinking what this sounded like, was talking about, “Right. We have to find the next ‘Bone.” And it's like, Jeff didn’t want to hear that! “We don't need the next ‘Bone.” We've got ‘Bone.’ Let's work on ‘Bone’ first, and I'm working on ‘Bone’ first, and how does this work?” And it's like, I could help with that, but I could only help indirectly. I wasn't at Mirage, and I wasn't at WaRP Graphics, and I didn't see the “Have a Cigar” Pink Floyd thing, where everybody wants onto your boat, and everybody's trying to be your best friend. So there was a specific tension there. And then I came to understand, this was why the movement thing bothered Jeff so much, because it sounded like, “This is starting to take off. I want to do the best thing that I can for this. I want to be John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I want to be Elvis. I don't want to get so subsumed in with all of these second and third stringer people who aren't in that category, and I have this awful feeling that this is what you people are all trying to do, is to, you know, ‘Let's subsume ‘Bone’ within this ‘movement’ and find a bunch more of these.’” And it's like, if I had been at the center of that, I would be saying, that's not what we're talking about doing. It's like, “Elfquest” was 1978, was when that took off . The “Turtles” was 1984. And you can go looking for the next “Bone”, you're not going to find it in three months no matter how interesting ways you have beating the bushes. There's gonna be years before another one of these turns up. But like I say, the guy that's going through it doesn't want to hear that.
My experience, getting back to the question and trying to explain, okay, this is why “movement,” anytime it's attached to self-publishing, Dave Sim goes, oh God, not this again. Looking at the back cover of “Cerebus” #160, if you're asking about the secret origin of independent-focused comics conventions, it was a Comic Art Metaphysics thing, I think, where I didn't create it, but it happened. And it happened October of 1992, when I was doing the the Great Eastern conventions, 92 US tour, which was taking everything that I learned from the 82 Tour and going, okay, let's do this more sensibly. It was Fred Greenberg's Great Eastern conventions. He was holding conventions in probably 15, 16 different cities, and he had gone, “Let's keep this really basic. Keep it simple stupid. It's you want to rent a large size meeting room, or a small ballroom at a affordable hotel, near the downtown. You want to put in 30, 40 tables. You want to charge a reasonable amount for them. You want to do a one-day show. They set it up early Sunday morning, late Saturday night, convention goes all day Sunday, they're breaking it down by Sunday at eight o'clock.” And wanting to expand that. And I got hooked up with Fred and went, okay, you're in this number of cities, you want this more cities. You want to add like eight or nine more cities. Can you do a year's worth of me being the guest? Because that was the other element of the Great Eastern convention, gonna have one guest, and he gets one of the tables, the rest of the tables are dealers. And it's like, we just don't get off message, we don't get off of our game. This is what we're doing. I can make $2,000, $3,000 a weekend doing this. Let's not overthink it. And I'm going, oh okay. You're already having to fly in a guest. If you fly me in to the cities you're already doing, and the eight cities or whatever that you aren't doing yet, but you want to do them in, then that's all taken care of. I get to piggyback on what you're doing, and I had added in what I wanted to do to promote “Cerebus” was, okay, we'll get the publicity team Lekas & Levine that Larry Marder turned up, and they will do the publicity, which they know how to do locally. Here's this guy coming into town, here's his story, 300 issues, Cerebus the Aardvark, blah blah blah. Here's publicity photos, etc etc. Send it to all of the local media. Figure out five weeks ahead of time, okay, this radio station wants you, this television station wants you, this newspaper wants you. Do all of the interviews, or as many of them, ahead of time as possible. Work on a monthly comic book, fly out on the Wednesday or the Thursday to the city, run around doing all of the publicity Wednesday or Thursday. Thursday night do a comic book store, and after the comic book store on Friday, do another comic book store if possible on Saturday, then do the comic book convention on Sunday. Out to the airport, back home, back working on “Cerebus”on the monthly book. 26 cities. And what happened was, Seattle was one of the cities that Fred hadn't done, but went, “Seattle's a great comics town. This should be an easy slam dunk.” So, booked, I looked it up, Red Lion Inn. 18740 Pacific Highway South, in Seattle. And like I say, not overthinking it, small ballroom, 30 tables, Dave gets one of them. We're ready to go. I was doing publicity the Wednesday before the show. We had done, the Seattle Post Intelligencer was still being published at that time. You should be able to find a scan of the drawing that Gerhard did. I did the Cerebus, but he did the giant distinctive spike on top of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the globe that was on top of the building. Cerebus holding it up. And it's like, it was a full-size piece, which is, this should work. And sure enough it did, “Yes, we want this for the Seattle Post Intelligencer. We'll give you the whole front page of the entertainment section.” Gee, thanks. That's great.
Zanadu, Perry Plush's stores, he had two stores by that point, one downtown, one out in the University District. I was doing those on the 16th and 17th. So now it would have been Wednesday the 15th, I'm all packed, ready to go to Seattle, Fred phones and says, “I haven't sold a single table. And I've been holding off till the last minute, but even at the last minute, cutting all the prices, nobody in Seattle wants a table, so I'm not doing the show. But I still have to pay for the room because I've left it too late. What do you want to do?” [laughs] And I said, well okay, I'm still coming out there. I still got to do the two Zanadu stores and I still got to do the, I had like two radio interviews, and I had an alternative paper interview that I was doing when I was there. I'm still coming. I said, I'm gonna phone a couple of cartoonists. I think I phoned Gary Groth, and I said, here's the situation. Fred's still got to set up the room, so the tables are all gonna be set up. Any cartoonist that wants to come out and set up, you get a free table, and you can sell all your stuff all day, and it's just gonna be cartoonists there. There won't be there won't be any dealers there. [laughs] Another one of those crazy Dave Sim things, and it's like, “When's this happening?” Uh, Sunday. And it’s like, “Why are you just telling us now?” I'm just telling you now because I just found out about it. I'm on my way to the airport. And went there, and it's like, I got on the plane, I had no idea. Is this gonna work? Is anybody gonna show up? I know I phoned Colin Upton, Vancouver's Mini-Comics Legend, and told him, he said, “Well, I'm gonna be there.” So I said, well, at the very least, it'll be me and Colin sitting there reading each other's comic books, and staring at each other in a room full of the 30 Drake tables. But I forget how many cartoonists showed up, it was sort of like half of the room, it wasn't the full room, but it was half of the room. And in terms of attendees, I think there was about 50? At the peak, only about 50 people all standing very politely and watching people doing sketches, and buying their comic books, and [laughs] really really quiet! Which was one of the funniest things, because it's like, all the cartoonists are really quiet, they're all sitting there doing sketches. All of the fans are real quiet, because they're watching cartoonists doing sketches. But I forget, it was Donna Barr or Roberta Gregory or somebody went, “It's so quiet.” [laughs] And it's like, everybody laughed, and I said, yeah, we should sing. And it’s like, “What are gonna sing?” I said, well, we’re in the United States, why don't we sing the Star-Spangled Banner? So we all started singing the Star-Spangled Banner, and it came to a really rousing conclusion. And Colin was there, and I yelled down to Colin, okay, Colin, it's our turn. O Canada! So Colin and I made our way through O Canada, and that was really the start. That's the earliest one as far as I know, and it wasn't set up as an independent-cartoonists-only convention, it was, that's what it turned into. And it was like, everybody when it was over, it was just one day, you came to the end of the day and everybody went to the same restaurant. And it's like, “That was really cool. That was great. That was just us and all of the attendees had a good time. We had a good time. Somebody should do these!” [laughs] And it's like, well, no sooner said than done. Well, it was a little sooner, because it was like 1993 before the next one was actually intentionally done.
But there you go, Dodger. That's my reminiscence on how that all came about, and the same thing, when I was telling the story and I'm mentioning Larry Marder with his connection to Moondog’s and Lekas & Levine. It was Larry Marder who said at the Capital City trade show in 1993, Jeff Smith came over to Larry's table, and was looking at “Beanworld” and really liked “Beanworld,” and gave him whatever it was, I think it was three issues of “Bone”? Maybe four issues of “Bone” were out at that point. And this was, Jeff was on the ropes. It was, “Either this trade show does some good, or something has to do some good, because I'm not making money on this and I don't really know how to get people to even know that this exists.” And it's like, Larry Marder is flipping through it, and he's going, “Okay this is somebody who knows how to rIff on Walt Kelly, we haven't had this before. This is definitely a guy who cartoons far above what I'm doing on ‘Beanworld,’ but over in the same category,” and said, “You have to show these to Dave Sim.”And it's like, he goes, [laughs] “Okay, how do I do that?” He goes, “Well, that's Dave Sim over there with Martin Wagner, they're in front of this giant lineup they've engineered by deciding that they're going to do sketches for all of the retailers,” which nobody had passed a law against it. So consequently the Capital City trade show consisted of a giant lineup for Dave Sim and Martin Wagner, and across from us was Mr T, who was doing his his “Mr T” comic book. So it was a competition as to, who would have all of the retailers in their lineup, Mr T or Dave Sim and Martin Wagner? And Capital City’s pulling their hair out, going, “It's a trade show! They're supposed to be looking at other people's tables, not just yours!” So Larry told Jeff, “You have to show these to Dave Sim,” he said, “Just don't stand in the lineup. Just go to the front of the lineup and say ‘Larry Marder told me that that I have to give these to you.’” And it's like, oh okay, thank you. And took them and put them in with the pile of loot. And so that was the situation where the self-publishing, doing a table with Martin Wagner who was doing “Hepcats” and doing the Capital City trade show, Martin had already done that and was saying, “This works really good.” And he was right. It's like I'm sitting there going, this is like the difference between smoking pot and mainlining heroin. These are all retailers! They don't just buy one copy of a comic book, they buy 10 copies, 20 copies, or 50 copies. And it's like, Martin, get a business card from everybody that comes to the table. Get a business card so we can contact them directly.
But Jeff Smith, he wasn't in the middle of that. It was, “I really want to do this comic book. Like, I’m three or four issues into it, and I managed to persuade Vijaya that this can work, but Vijaya is going, ‘No, I got to see a business plan for this.’” You know, she was working at a computer job, a very high level Silicon Valley computer job, and “If you're going to not do animation, which is where you're making your money, and I would have to see you making money, at least, in that kind of category.” And by the time they're going to the Capitol City trade show, it's like, “This is just not working. I sold this many of #1, and then as always happens, half as many of #2, half as many #3. Why is this happening? Why, you know, it's a good book. People are telling me it's a good book. Why isn't it happening?” So that's the story on that side of what was happening there. It was all very interesting happening simultaneously and me having to sort it all out. And then, I go out to the airport, because I was only at the trade show for the one or two days, and in the departure lounge and okay, I've got stuff in my portfolio. I've thinned out all the loot I got that, I'm not really interested in this, or I can ship this back to Kitchener, and going, well okay, this is Larry Marder said that I needed to see this, and if Larry Marder said that, okay, I did need to see this. So I'm sitting in the departure lounge, I read the first, like I say, three issues of “Bone”, four issues of “Bone”, and I'm going, this is really really good, but can it sell? It's like, the same thing that Larry saw, this is Walt Kelly. This is like Pogo, but it's not it's not political Pogo, t's like Pogo but charming. It's just a charming sort of part-cartoony, funny animal strip, but it's got Thorn in it, and it's like, can this sell? And the retailer question is always, “Wo do I sell this to?” And it's like, “Cerebus,” if you don’t have the Wolveroach in there, you don't really have the connection to the comic book store thing. “Oh, I can sell this to my ‘X-Men’ customers if it's got Wolveroach on the cover. And then, tell me the next time you’re doing a superhero.” There was nothing like that involved. So it was like, well, it's really really good. I'm definitely going to do a preview of it, and I'm gonna talk it up, but is this gonna work? Same thing again that Larry must have seen, it's like, Larry never expected that “Beanworld” would have a worldwide billion dollar movie premiere, and it's always been in the category that it's been in. Is “Bone” in that category, or is “Bone” not in that category? And it's like, no, “Bone” was, whoa, way way way way above that. It was, yeah. There's no connection, no entry point that we can see into the Direct Market, but just took off like wildfire. Because it was a lot like “Elfquest” that way. You look at “Elfquest” and go, umm, comic book fans don't really read this kind of stuff. Well, they read “Elfquest”! And they read “Bone,” which were again in different circumstances than “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” where it's like, they love Frank Miller. They love ninjas. This is gonna be mother's milk for them.
“Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch always mentioned these conventions in interviews. In fact, I just ordered some excellent books directly from the Rare Bit Veitch himself. It's one of the cool things about the modern world, connecting directly with creators like the super famous Dave Sim!” [laughs] Uhh, no, it’s not the super famous Dave Sim, it's, as I say to anybody who says, “Oh you're famous.” It's like, no, I'm notorious. There's a big difference between being famous and notorious. I'm sort of famous/notorious. Definitely far more down towards “Beanworld” than anywhere near “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Elfquest,” or “Bone.” I appreciate the sentiment, Mike. “The famous Dave Sim?” Nah, I've seen the famous. I know famous. I'm not famous. “And question, do you still talk to Rick and Steve by phone, mail, or the famous Dave Sim fax machine?” Again, notorious Dave Smith fax machine. People in 2023 do not trust people who use fax machines. If you aren't already notorious for your opinions on gender, the fact that you have a fax machine and aren't on the internet? Buddy, you're just asking for trouble. You've got nobody to blame but yourself. Uh, no I only contact with Rick is, when Rick gets a book done, he sends it to me, and I read it, usually the the same day that it comes in. Either part of the “Maximortal” series, the Heroica thing, or the Rare Bit. I never know when the package comes in which ones it’s gonna be. And I wrap up whatever is the latest thing that I've got after doing that, and send it to Rick. Rick usually writes eight words? “To Dave, eight words, Rick Veitch.” Or Rick, Roarin’ Rick. And I would write wholesome, you know, four or five paragraphs on the front of the trade paperback, and then I go, why am I always the one doing this? Okay, Rick, you're sending me your book, and all you have to say to me is eight words. Well, okay, here's my eight words back. And then, so, that's the situation that we're in. As I said to him, he finally did send a letter after I sent him “The Last Day” trade paperback, and said… I faxed it, or emailed it to you, so I don't know if you ran it on A Moment of Cerebus, but my letter to him was, I think, “35 years after the Creator's Summit, what we have to say to each other is…” and this is saying to each other, I'm saying this to Rick, and Rick is saying this to me. “I think your beliefs and ideas have capital Z, capital V, Zero Validity, but I will always read anything that you send to me and I would never want to see you canceled, or your book deplatformed under any circumstances, even though I think your ideas and beliefs have Zero Validity. And I wish we could have some more of that in our world. And it's just, man, I don't know. I spent all the 1990s fighting the religious right for freedom of expression, and since then I've spent 30 years fighting the lunatic left. It's just, what do you people not understand about freedom of expression for everyone, not just for the people that you agree with?”
Notice how I didn't take a single breath through any of that?
Matt: [laughs] Uh, it's, I mean, it always boils down to, there's a reason there's an off button on the TV.
Dave: Right.
Matt: My friend Nick, he has a bookcase in my basement that I call the massive because it's just huge. I had two bookcases that were full of his stuff, and they were getting to the point where they're full, and I'm like, I'm gonna build a bookcase that'll hold all your stuff. Cause he's got an apartment, I got a house, I'll store stuff for him.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And my brother ended up having metal bookshelves, and they fit in my basement where I wanted to build a bookcase. They're not quite as big as I wanted it to be, but it's close. And it's full. Every shelf is full, and he still is bringing me stuff and, “Oh yeah, can you store this for me?” Yeah, I can store it for you. And I feel this obligation to read whatever he's giving me, and it's like sometimes I pick it up and I read the back and I'm like, I have no interest in this. This can just go on the shelf! And other stuff it's like, yeah I want to read Conan! Let's read Conan! I read Conan and I'm like, eh, it's Conan.
Dave: [laughs] Really? The Robert E Howard Conan?
Matt: It was the, he's been buying, Marvel lost the rights to Conan in the 90s and it went to Dark Horse for a while, and then Marvel got the rights back and they reprinted. Because Dark Horse reprinted all the Marvel stuff, and now Marvel's reprinting all the Dark Horse stuff, and Conan has now left Marvel and gone to Titan Comics and they're starting their run. But he's lending me collections that I believe are Marvel's collections of Dark Horse’s Conan stuff. And it's not bad, it's just Conan. I mean…
Dave: Oh okay, I was thinking that there was like books mixed in with this, and you were reading Robert E Howard's Conan text stories.
Matt: No, I want to because, like, my friend Kevin, when he was years ago like, “I'm gonna read ‘Cerebus.’” Okay. “I'm gonna do a column for you for the blog.” Alright. “And I'm gonna do it issue by issue!” Okay. “And I'm gonna read all the stuff that ties into it” so like he doesn't just read issue one, he reads the Robert E Howard Conan story that you're parodying in issue one.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I'm going, that's great! How's it going? And like, after 20 issues he's just like, “I can't do this anymore.” I'm like, well you don't have to read the other stuff. He’s like, “It's not even that it's just writing a column is getting to be too much.” And I'm like, alright, fine. And it's funny, cause he was working at the comic book store and he had “Guys” with him, and his co-worker put a post-it note next to Cerebus on it going, “Did you get your column done?”
Dave: [laughs] Right. Right.
Matt: And I want to read the original Robert E Howard stuff, but I also know that there's rough edges to those stories that modern sensibilities will be like, you know, like, the story goes netflix wanted to do Conan as a TV series or a movie. And the president of Netflix canceled the project because Conan is too misogynistic. It's like, what were you thinking Conan was gonna be?!
Dave: [laughs] Right.Right.
Matt: He’s Conan The, (I'm not making this up, lady), Barbarian. He’s not Conan the Cuddler, he's not Conan the Caregiver, he's Conan the Barbarian.
Dave: So you're making the point that you look at the back of the book and it's personal taste. A lot of times you don't know until you read a book that, okay, that was worth it. That's a half hour of my life I'll never get back. That's, well, you know, personal taste, I really really don't like that kind of stuff. But it's freedom of expression. And everybody is entitled to it.
Matt: Yeah. There's never been a comic where I've went, I wish that didn't exist. There's been comics where I've went, I wish I didn't spend my money on that.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: There's comics where I've gone, hey, this can go bye-bye! Even Marvel's biography comic of John Paul II, you know, might not be your cup of tea, but hey, they did it. It's sold a bunch.
Dave: Right.
Matt: The classic “it sold a bunch” that I love is, so there's a book I bought called “The League of Unfortunate Superheroes.” And it's Golden Age to Modern Age, just superhero characters, it was a good idea at the time but it didn't quite work. And like, I mean there's Golden Age characters in there that are just, you've never heard of them because they kind of, it was, they threw it against the wall to see if it would stick, and it very much fell off.
Dave: Right.
Matt: But in the Modern Age/Bronze Age section is a Neal Adams book called “Skateman”.
Dave: Right.
Matt: He's a guy who fights crime on roller skates. And it's one of those, I read the book and I went, well that’s, whatever, it's an interesting concept, but then I was at the comic book store and they had a copy for a dollar in the dollar box, and I'm like, oh I am buying that. And I bought it, brought it home and read it, and went, yeah, “Skateman.” He fights crime on roller skates. Like, you could tell that this was the beginning of the next superhero universe, and no, no it wasn't. [laughs]
Dave: Right.
Matt: But my local store had Neal Adams come. He came the first time, and I had him sign my copy of “Following Cerebus” 9, and my “Anything Goes” #3, and he had such a great experience at the store, at the end of the signing, he said to the owner, “When can I come back?”
Dave: Oh, you told me about that! Yes. Right.
Matt: So the second time he came, I went, and I got Paula and Natasha with me, and I'm getting the Green Arrow/Green Lantern print for you and for Jeff, and I'm getting my copy of “Skateman” signed because, when is Neal Adams going to see this book at a signing? Like, no one's gonna bring him “Skateman,” they're all gonna bring “Batman” and “Green Lantern / Green Arrow” and you know, it's only the hits.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And he sign… actually because you got one free signature and then you had to pay, and so I had Paula get it signed because I had something else I was getting signed. And he hands it back to her and she goes, “’Skateman’? Who thought this was a good idea?” [laughs] And Neal Adam, without missing a beat, goes, “Well, we sold 80,000 copies.” And I'm just kind of looking at her like, you can have an opinion, but that's the one time you need to not say your opinion!
Dave: Right.
Matt: When the guy that crated the book is right across the table from you, you don't want to be like, “Well, this looks stupid.”
Dave: Yeah. Although having been on the other side of the table, that does happen.
Okay, we've still got Michael R. It wouldn't be a Please Hold for Dave Sim without Michael R. “My answer for this month is, Reed Waller's birthday.” And I have a question for that, but I'm still working on it. That was, I ended up having something else that I had to take care of today. So that will be postponed, the question that the answer is “Reed Waller's birthday,” I will get to that, Michael. “My question is, I noticed all the pages that were unlocked through Jen's SDoAR 2023 GoFundMe that there were no pages drawn by you that incorporated or bridged the story with you Emo Dave, Carson, or Jack. Are you going to move away with that sort of interplay and strictly go full speed ahead with the SDoAR storyline? I haven't read any of it yet, just glanced over it. I'm waiting for the giant-sized ashcan to come out to go back and do a thorough reread.” Uh, yes. That was the plan all along actually, was, in terms of trying to attract people's attention, and trying for general popularity on Strange Death of Alex Raymond, I explained this before that, the situation with Jack was this book needs some estrogen, and of a specific kind. Which, I think the bridging material with Jack definitely provided. But the plan was also, okay, at some point, either this works or it doesn't work, and it didn't work. It definitely hasn't attracted a wide audience, and it certainly, again, on the distinction of a scale of zero to ten, from “Beanworld” up to ”Bone,” we're probably down around a one or two. We're definitely far closer to “Beanworld.” So whether that was the situation, or it became this raging box office success, the plan was still the same. I'm gonna ease away from that, because I am trying to tack towards Truth. Capital T Truth. This is how reality works in my frames of reference, and I want to show you a specific examples of it. I don't mind playing the clown and being entertaining through the first part, once I’m past this point, and I had an arbitrary mental point of going, it's right about here, then I'm not doing that again. And I'm not doing that anymore, however, I did want and do want to, if I, God willing, can get to the end of Strange Death of Alex Raymond and I'm definitely at the point of either I finish the book or the book finishes me. What I would want to do, whenever that is, like let's say that it's September 2034 is when Dave Sim finally gets Strange Death of Alex Raymond done. When I know that I'm coming up on that point, and yes it is just up ahead, and I'm pretty sure I'm still able to work at the level I want to work at, and I know how the last 50 pages go, 75 pages go. I want to try, and we'll probably have to try through Carson, can we find Jack again, and take pictures of Jack, and do the same thing that we did with “You Don't Know Jack”, where it's, she didn't write the comic book but we just took stuff from her social media posts and made a comic book about it. But do something a little closer to Strange Death of Alex Raymond, a photorealistic, here is Jack Van Dyke today and here's the post-game show. Here's the epilogue to Strange Death of Alex Raymond and writing Jack Van Dyke. And obviously, because I don't know when that's going to happen, or if it's going to happen, it's impossible to write ahead of time. It's, no, the point of it will be, how does this resonate? And I assume it'll resonate in Comic Art Metaphysics fashion, Jack in that year, and all having been said on Strange Death of Alex Raymond. And here's the last whatever that involves, the last 15 pages, the last 20 pages. I don't do spoiler alerts. [laughs] It's so unlikely that I'm actually gonna get through this in one piece, and that I'm gonna be able to do it at the level that I do it at, I might as well just tell people. It's the same thing with the fact that I've gotten 15 pages of, starting the 16th page of the Many Deaths of Margaret Mitchell. “Oh! Don't you want that to be a big surprise for people?” I'd love it to be a big surprise for them, the odds that it's actually gonna be printed before the 2030s? Uh, no. This is a different category of creation. You might as well, everybody just crowd in here backstage, and I'm just gonna… you know, you don't want to see what's happening in progress, how I'm making this sausage, then you don't want to come backstage. But if it's just too much time in between pages and you want to see the different components, you might as well see exactly what I'm looking at, and that's just the way Dave Sim’s doing this one. Because I have trouble picturing myself living long enough to finish it, and I have trouble picturing myself living for any length of time after I finish it, if I do finish it. I'm not working in a conventional sense. Wait till you hear “Chinese Democracy.” It’s like, this puts Guns N Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” to shame in terms of how long it's going to take for this to actually appear, if it appears, having started back in in 2008.
Matt: You'll get there, Dave. You'll get there. No, really, you really you will.
Dave: Ahh, it’s, uh, I'm fine either way. It's like, I can't think of anything that I could enjoy more than getting up in the morning and doing Strange Death of Alex Raymond all day for 12 hours, and then going to bed. And when I'm trying to finance Strange Death of Alex Raymond, doing “glamourpuss,” like the manga parodies with the cosplay girls, which “Akimbo” hasn't even come out yet, we haven't even done the Kickstarter for it. Who knows? That might work, but if I can just get my creative life down to doing those, which is, this is the tenor of your question, Michael. “Are you are you going to move away from that sort of interplay and strictly go full speed ahead?” Yeah, it's, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. This is what I'm doing, this is all I'm interested in doing. Like, apart from my religious observance, [laughs] the rest of the world, no offence to everybody else, it's like you people are just getting way way too weird. You've let the internet drive you insane, is my personal opinion. But this is fine! It's like, everybody's insan, so nobody's insane. Don't really worry about it. Nobody believes anything that Dave Sim says. But in terms of, is there anything that I would like to do in addition to Strange Death of Alex Raymond? Can I do a creditable version of Alex Raymond, and Al Williamson, and Neal Adams, and Stan Drake? UH, no. No. I understand there's a big music festival going on downtown. It's like, I've been to those, and it's, no, no, only so many hours in the day. Getting one good Al Williamson face down is more important to me than all of the music in human history. So, we're gonna wrap it up there, and thank you as always, Matt, for your patience and all your due diligence.
Matt: The one last question we had was Steve wanted to know if you kept any of the #1s for the Six Deadly Sins or the gold cover “High Society.”
Dave: No. No. I think I might have the gold “High Society” but I'm not a hardcover guy. So it was, knowing how happy that would make somebody else, it was, I really can't hang on to this. And Craig, I think we can agree, was reet chuffed about getting “The Last Day” hardcover #1. Michael, I'm sorry you didn't get it. I hope you're happy with what you did get. But we will do another “Deal or No Deal” somewhere up ahead, and it might just be the box full of clothespins with the name “Cerebus” written on them.
Matt: Ah, Michael did comment after the nightstand item was revealed, saying that he really was tempted, but he's glad with what he got, and he really is. And he's happy on Craig's behalf that Craig got what he got, and I'm going, yay! Happy fandom.
Dave: Finally! Finally. Every once in a while it happens. Have a good night, Matt!
Matt: Have a good night, Dave.
Dave: Take care.
Matt: You too.
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| Like the logo? I stole it... |
The next Dave Sim eBay Auction is live:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/267576287026
Dave Sim NINJA HIGH SCHOOL / CEREBUS (#1) Signed 8/12 (#95/199) 9.8https://www.ebay.ca/itm/267576287026
Next one:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/127695779028
Dave Sim SECRET ORIGINS OF CEREBUS IN HELL? (#1) Signed 1/5 (#113/189) 9.8https://www.ebay.ca/itm/127695779028
Dave's heritage stuff:
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And, coming inFebruary, who knows. Who. Knows. The 1982 Tour Book (click the link to be notified on launch, ya know...eventually...). They've been sharing updates on the Instagram.
And Tyrant. Don't forget Tyrant. Sean's remastering it. I've been sending sketches and jams I find. I should look through the Spirits stops in the AV Family Photo Album...
And, coming in
And Tyrant. Don't forget Tyrant. Sean's remastering it. I've been sending sketches and jams I find. I should look through the Spirits stops in the AV Family Photo Album...
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The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. OR(!) you could buy Bill's book with the Dave backcover. I have discovered links:
Wanderland (Paperback)
Wanderland (Hardcover for the guys who get "hard" for hardcovers...)
Wanderland (Paperback but slightly more expensive...I dunno why...)
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:
Hardcover
Paperback
And if you wanna see how the book looks in Real Time...
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Larry Shell could use a hand to keep his house.
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Dave also wanted me to post this:
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. OR(!) you could buy Bill's book with the Dave backcover. I have discovered links:
Wanderland (Paperback)
Wanderland (Hardcover for the guys who get "hard" for hardcovers...)
Wanderland (Paperback but slightly more expensive...I dunno why...)
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:
Hardcover
Paperback
And if you wanna see how the book looks in Real Time...
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Larry Shell could use a hand to keep his house.
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Dave also wanted me to post this:
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Up to 35% off February 25-March 1.*
*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.
Speaking of Merch, if you want a strange near-antique, shoot an email to momentofcerebus@gmail.com, and I'll tell ya where to send the $20USD I want for these. No shipping charge in the States or Canada. Everybody else add $10USD for shipping. I'll send 'em anywhere the postman is willing to go...
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| Back and front. |
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You can get all 16 volumes of Cerebus, many of them Remastered for $99CANADIAN at CerebusDownloads.com (More if you want the Remastered Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing...)
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Heritage has: (I talked about this up top...)
And ComicLink (remember ComicLink? Seiler brought us ComicLink. R.I.P Jeff.) has:
- Cerebus #39, page 8 currently selling for $950
- And a list of ALL the issues they got (including a couple of slabbed #1s)
Thanks to Steve for sending the links.
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Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
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