"Like sands through the hourglass..." Dave's Sim's Blog & Mail #1

Hi, Everybody!

Your ol' Interim Editor Matt Dow here. Today, I thought we'd take a look back at Dave Sim's Blog & Mail. Specifically, the first one. With my then-commentary.

Preamble: Dave Sim's Blog & Mail ran on the Cerebus Yahoo group from September 13th, 2006 to December 26th, 2007. And...no, that's pretty much all you needed to know. I used to call it the "bloggymail" because in Spanish, "and" is "y", and I thought "Blog y Mail" sounded funny, or something. Dude, it was a decade ago. Wait do you want? Anyway,

Dave's text is in bold. 

And my comments are in not bold.

Hi Dave,

Since Jeff Seiler has made it clear that we (the yahoos,) are pretty much mandated to write in (hmmm...who made THAT decision?  Something smells fishy here...), here's my replies/comments/mad ramblings on the first weeks worth of "blogandmail"s.

On 9/13/06, Dave Sim <dsim@nonexistente-mail.net > wrote:

Wednesday September 13 – Hi and welcome to my Blog.

Hi.

I'm actually going to try to stay current with this on a daily basis, having noticed that I spent way too much time saying to myself while answering my escargot mail "I really should make a note of that and let the Yahoos know about it" and never, you know, actually doing it.  

Oh the things that never turned up here...

Even tried self-inducing a trance-like state and saying to a particular paragraph in a letter I was working on: "Go to Larry Hart (or Lenny Cooper or Jeff Seiler or Jeff Tundis or…you get the idea).   Go to him now and tell him what you have to say. Tell him to post you to the Yahoo discussion group. Go now"  You know, I figured if I had it typed on my computer screen and I just wanted it to go to another computer screen, maybe I could make it into a Lassie-type gig.   "Go to the Yahoos. Tell them you need help." 

Well, that explains that.  We've had about twenty border collies hanging around for the past month or so.  Nobody could figure out what they wanted.  It went kinda like this:

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Jeff Tundis: "What's that Lassie, Timmy fell down the well and has a compound fracture of the lower mandibula?"

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Lenny Cooper: "What's that Lassie, bootleggers are hiding out at the old Miller place?"

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Larry Hart: "What's that Lassie, The Highway Ghoul is really Smithers, the cantankerous old caretaker?"

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Jeff Seiler: "What's that Lassie, 'be sure to drink your Ovaltine'?"

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Margaret Liss: "Does anybody know why this dog keeps following me around with what looks like an old notebook that somebody drug through a creek?"

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Chris Woerner: "So Sir Gerrick was supposed to be a major presence in Cerebus, but Dave had to cut him out to fit in all the Cirinist stuff?"

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Jason Trimmer: "Why does a dog have original Cerebus sketches in it's mouth?"

Border collie: "woof-woof."

Me: "'Deep is the suede that mows like a harvest'?  What does that even mean?"

Jeff Seiler: "Hey look, this dog just pulled out a copy of 'Latter Days' and opened it to the sheep dog at the beginning."

Jeff Tundis: "Aww, he must think he knows that dog."

Border collie: "Grrrr."

Um... you get the idea.

(Say, since these are technically your dogs, could you kick in a couple bucks to pay for dog-chow?  Cause in a few months we're gonna have even more dogs around here.)  (It looks like somedoggy's been up to the devil's business.)

     Finally, I decided to make Uber Yahoo and Minister-in-Charge-of-Checking-Dave Sim-for-Hypocrisy-on-Behalf-of-Secular-Humanists-Everywhere Jeff Tundis

Ha!  Now I know Jeff's official title.

And knowing is half the battle.

(check out his www.cerebustheaardvark.com website, still in progress) my posting victim.  The nice thing about Jeff is, like me, he is always working so I never have any trouble getting him on the phone. 

Sweet.

The even nicer thing about Jeff is that even though he's up to his ass in crocodiles as a general rule, he's always glad to find out what it is that I want (or he's glad to pretend to be interested in finding out what it is that I want which is "close enough for government work" for me!).   

Remember Dave, don't abuse this awesome power.  Ya know, like by making Jeff go get you a turkey sandwich.   Okay, that'd be pretty funny.  But don't make him get you a turkey sandwich a whole lot.  Only on special occasions.

He pretty much put this format together while I was still talking to him on the phone and asking him if it was possible. 

Much like that lady who used to hang out with Helen Keller, Jeff is a miracle worker.  Like Scotty from Star Trek.

So I really found out that it was possible for me to do a Blog without actually being hooked up to the Internet and found out that I was now doing a Blog pretty much in the same moment. 

That sounds like it was fun.  Fortunately, Jeff didn't post THAT conversation as the first installment of blogandmail. 

You: "Jeff, it's Dave.  Is it possible to do a Blog without being hooked up to the internet?"

Jeff: "Sure Dave, I'm posting right now, what do you have to say."

You: "Um...'Hi, this is Dave Sim.'"

Jeff: "Anything else?"

You: "Yeah, 'Go get me a turkey sandwich.'"

  So, we'll launch the new "Blog & Mail" right after this brief commercial message.

Jeff's great.  Now make him cluck like a chicken!

The Blog & Mail is brought to you today by

  www.cerebusart.com

I've been, neat sight.  (Now if only that dump truck full of twenty dollar bills would crash in front of my apartment and make me rich enough to afford original Cerebus art...)

 Your "One-Stop Shopping Headquarters" for all your Cerebus Art Needs Well, okay, not ALL of your Cerebus Art Needs.   Let's say you NEEDED all of the interior pages for issue 8.  Well, we haven't got them.  SOMEBODY sold them for $10 apiece back in 1978 and spent the money on marijuana. Not naming any names.

Hey, somebody mentioned that somebody else was interested in getting a full recreation of issue one for the thirtieth anniversary of Cerebus.  And that that was gonna cost a small fortune.  Is there any interest on your or Gerard's part to do a "Special Edition" of Cerebus #1 for the thirtieth? (He asked knowing the answer's probably "not really" and "Where's that Tundis kid with my sandwich?".)

In the Blog & Mail today:

  IN TALES OF THE SILVERFISH #4 WITH CEREBUS ART AND DIALOGUE BY DAVE SIM  CEREBUS CROSSES OVER WITH THE SILVERFISH.    This was quite a bit of fun to do from John Q. Adams' layouts although I changed it from the regular old dying Cerebus of The Last Day to Cerebus' first post-mortem guest appearance at a comic book convention.

Neat.  (Of course now I gotta find a copy, but still neat.)

   The pages sat around here for a while as I tried to figure out how to put tone on Cerebus and still have the Silverfish in the foreground.   That was when I figured out they're just cartoon silverfish: draw a head and a body shape and people should get the idea from the context. People are, you know, pretty bright that way.

"Look Peggy, it's a little silverfish."

"Why that's real purdy Joe-Bob, I wunder how he does it?"

Even did my own (albeit second-rate on a Gerhard scale) backgrounds!

Aw come on Dave.  They can't be any worse then any background I've ever done.

   Some or all of the proceeds from issue 4 will be donated to the CBLDF [see www.SilverfishGallery.com or www.jqadams.com for details].  

Well now I know where to look for a copy.

And knowing is half the battle...

(The other half is gratuitous violence.)

The Silverfish Gallery features an extensive exhibit of silverfish cartoons done by a variety of comic-book big names and some little names.

Well Dave around here you'll always be a big nam...WOW, FRED HEMBECK!  AW, NEAT!!!!!

    It also took a while for the issue to get printed which is pretty much par for the course for rookies and folks for whom cartooning and self-publishing is not their regular gig. 

Are you talking about me?

  I tend to think about that when I'm working on a jam strip for somebody: I wonder what's going to be going on in my life when this turns up in printed form?   Sometimes the stuff just vanishes and I never get an answer to that question.

Okay, you're talking about me aren't you?

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If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc

P.O. Box 1674

Station C

Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

You'd think I'd have this memorized, but every time, I end up having to look it up.

Looking for a place to purchase Cerebus phonebooks?

Not really, I sorta have 'em all.  I mean I was thinking of finishing my best friend's set for him

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And that's it. Come back next week for the next installment of "Bloggymail Archives" or whatever I call this feature.