HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #26

What is Gerhard's second name? Why is it/has it been a secret? Is he embarrassed by it or something?

Yes, it's a funny sort of name. It was my suggestion that he just leave it off and just go by Gerhard and he was pretty relieved to do so, having lived with it for as long as he had to that point. Everyone has things that they're embarrassed by. I find that the older I get the less embarrassed I get.  I'm a decrepit old man, pretty much indistinguishable from the derelicts that populate most of downtown Kitchener.

I remember walking into the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto when I was staying there and I had gotten a message that I had a fax. So I went up to the desk and said "Room -- whatever -- I had a message that I had a fax?"  And they wanted photo ID. The Metropolitan is in a dodgy area of downtown TO... lots of shootings, junkies, street people. And the thing was I wasn't even embarrassed, I just gave them my passport and got my fax. This is what I look like. I'm not going to suddenly look better someday, I'm going to look worse. I get my head shaved because it means I can go a month without a haircut. No one looks at old men if they can help it. With good reason. Old men don't look very good. They look like old men.

I'm hoping Gerhard is getting to the point where he isn't embarrassed about his last name, but in case he is, I'm certainly not going to tell you what it is. And I'm telling you that not being embarrassed by things is one of the big pluses of getting old. I used to get really stressed about my appearance, how I seemed to people. People are usually so concerned about how THEY appear that they don't even register what someone else looks like or if they have a tiny stain on their jacket or something.

Okay. There's quite a back-log building up of your questions at the HARDtalk Tour's sponsor websites, so let's take a couple of those today.

First up is James L. Sarandis at MILLAR WORLD:
What comics are you reading right now?

And then Matt Tauber at BLEEDING COOL has a couple of questions:
Dave, what's the best way to contact you for commissions? 
Will you do any more headshot auctions via Ebay?  

Hit the links to MILLAR WORLD and BLEEDING COOL for the answers to those questions... and I'll be back tomorrow for more HARDtalk.