TL:DW, Please Hold For Dave Sim 12-6-2018 the transcript

Hi, Everybody!

How's ya doin'?

So the Kickstarter for the Postcard From Hell? is already funded, just under the wire with only... twenty-eight days left. Hoo-Boy, it's gonna be a long month...

Here's something that happened:

So I asked on the Kickstarter:

Hello Sean Michael Batman's-grand-son*,
Senior Edit-Man: Matt Dow for the Moment of Cerebus dot comma-comma-comma-comma-chameleon webysite here.
Questions: so, are these numbered cards, available like the other Kickstarters where we can get a certain numbered card? And are the "Beat to Hell" tier and the "'DON'T YOU DARE DAMAGE MY @#$%ING POSTCARD!'" tier numbered in the SAME batch, or are they two DIFFERENT batches? And if they ARE two different batches, what if you only buy the one and want your "fer-special number" in THAT tier, but not the other? Can Jeff Seiler (Hi Jeff!) come in and swipe it out from under you (that S!O!B!!!)? And if he does, would Ben Hobbs and Dave Birdsong travel to his house in a beat up Ford pick-up truck and beat him up for you "Any-Which-Way-But-Loose"style? AND, if they WOULD, which one would be the orangutan? AND and, where do you get off calling that one a monkey? The nerve of you. You're a disgrace to your grandfather Batman.
For shame Sean.
For. Shame.
Okay, now that I've overly complicated things, Bye!
Matt Dow-World's best Edit-Man, Precious Cerebus Moments dot commie-pinkos
*See, 'cause Sean's last name is ROBINson, and Robin is Batman's son (sorta), which makes Sean Batman's grandson (sorta). Say... has anybody ever SEEN Sean Michael Robinson AND Batvark AT THE SAME TIME?!?!?!?!?!?

And I also faxed that up to Dave, as one does, and Dave responded thusly:

 So know YOU know.
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And now for our regular scheduled posting:
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We once again have the return of the FIRST AMOC Special Friend Of The Day of 2019!

Jesse Lee Herndon!

Still, Suitable for framing...

You all remember how Jesse won such a Prestigious Award, right?

He transcribed Please Hold For Dave Sim 12/6/2018.

And here it is:
Please Hold For Dave Sim, 12/6/2018 recorded by Matt Dow. Transcribed by Jesse Lee Herndon, transcript reviewed and corrected by Dave Sim and Matt Dow.

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Matt: Hi Dave!…How’s it goin’?

Dave: …Can you hear me?

Matt: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Dave: I can hear you.

Matt: Alright! 

Dave: Okay! Uhh… thank you for sending me the fax with sort of an outline of what we’re gonna do. Talking about the Dark Class/Deadly Class thing, that was a weird one, because definitely I was talking to a guy that works on the show, and he was calling it Dark Class. So, it… you were the one who first identified it for me as a comic book. Have you been buying it all along?

Matt: My friend Nick buys comics by the… pretty much the truckload, and lends me everything.

Dave: So, how many issues has there been?

Matt: There’s six trades, I think it’s six issues per trade, so probably in the 30s?

Dave: Oh, how ‘bout that. Have you been keeping up with it?

Matt: I read the first one, and I thought, “Okay, that’s interesting”, and I thought it was a done in one and then he lent me the next volume and I’m like, “Wait, that wasn’t a six issue miniseries?” and he’s like “no, it’s an ongoing”, and I’m like “oh, okay”, and I haven’t gotten to the second one yet, but I have 2 through 6 on my nightstand.

Dave: Alright, well it’s interesting that Brent-Nancy talked about us on Comicshop website, it compelled me to go back and go, “When did The Comicshop advertise in Cerebus?” And it turns out I had drawn an ad for them that was in Cerebus from #14 through #20, of Cerebus, and then they decided to get someone… they got, I think George Metzger to do an ad for them and that was in issues #21 to #26, so they were there for one full year.

Matt: Okay.

Dave: And… it’s definitely a positive association comic book store for me. Always had good signings there. I was… you wrote on here Diana Schutz’s comments, “so make of that what you will.” I wrote my little note here, “what do you make of it”?

Matt: (laughs) I, I… It was one of those, somebody commented on it on a post on AMOC with a link to the Facebook group and I went to it and I’m like, “Okay. I don’t know that Dave would have a problem with this.”

Dave: No, no. It was a little odd in that sense, I mean, I do not associate Diana Schutz with The Comicshop. That was one of those, if you had told me, “Did you know that Diana Schutz worked at The Comicshop?” I would probably have said, “yeah I knew that”, but you never know if just you’re giving yourself a false memory of some kind. I associate Diana Schutz with Comics and Comix Berkeley. Because that was where I first met her, when Deni and I were on the US tour, and I went and checked that too, that was October 21st, 1982. And I got the photo of Deni and Diana and I at Comics and Comix Berkeley and I got Rolly to scan it and he will be emailing it to you.

Matt: I do have it! He sent it yesterday I think.

Dave: How about that? Man! We’re far more efficient than I think we are.

Matt: So I’m gonna put it below the video when I post this on Saturday.

Dave: Okay, okay great, yeah.

Matt: So everybody, look down.

Dave: (laughs) yeah, the other big association with The Comicshop for me is that is where I met Eddie Khanna. So, that’s one of those, you never know how your life is going to go. Eddie can tell the story far more accurately than I can, but I think I was just in the store, I think maybe when I was visiting with Diana, and going in to see Ron Norton, I think? And somebody said, “you’re a Cerebus fan, that’s Dave Sim over there”. And Eddie Khanna came over and got my autograph. One of those moments where, you don’t realize it now but twenty-five years from now, that guy’s gonna be your successor.

Matt: (laughs) 

Dave: But I would’ve gone, “NO WAY!”

Matt: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, I probably would’ve done the same thing.

Dave: Okay, and then skipping on to the next part, the demon heads and skulls, was the next one. This is one of those, I would like to get a phonetic translation of this, because I’m sure you don’t pronounce Eolake Stobblehouse “E-O-Lake Stobblehouse”.

Matt: Probably not, but that’s how I’ve been pronouncing it in my head when I read it.

Dave: Right, which is like the old John Buscema, “Sub Ma-reen-er”, all that kind of stuff… we all did as a kid. So, if you can ask “E-O-Luh-kay” or “A-O-Lah-key” or “E-O-lake” how we’re all supposed to pronounce that in our heads when we see it, that would be deeply appreciated.

Matt: Okay.

Dave: Also deeply appreciated is the fact that Margaret went and found the answer on the demon heads and skulls. I don’t have a lot to add to what she found, and that’s great to me, that’s one of those, I’m hoping we’re working towards the point where… with the old Blog and Mail posts and the Yahoo Group five questions, that we’re going to have the capability of doing word searches on that. So that you can just type in “demon heads and skulls” and Margaret doesn’t have to use up her valuable time going and looking for it.

Matt: That’s uhh… I did a post about the question we asked, I think, the wildcard question for Going Home, was about Jaka’s black furry sweater from “The Night Before” in issue 36. And I’m like, “I know it’s the wildcard question, but I can’t remember what month” and I went back through like six of em. Finally found em, okay, yup, here’s the information I’m looking for. I probably need to put all of that into one file and then it’ll be, like you said, just type “demon heads and skulls” and it’ll search and it’ll show up.

Dave: Yep, yep. See, I didn’t even remember that there were wildcard questions, let alone which ones they were. And what question period they were from.

Matt: Yeah.

Dave: The only thing that I have to add to that, in terms of updating because I have so completely immersed in comic art metaphysics at this point, that I thought, okay this wasn’t my intention, but I think that it could’ve been my unconscious intention, not knowing how far immersed I was gonna get in comic art metaphysics, that because Prince Mick and Prince Keef are based on real people, as far as I know, they were the only ones to comment on demon heads and skulls. Which suggests that there’s a possibility that you can only see them if you’re in our world.

Matt: Possible. I know that Oscar and Rick paint the one that broke off in Jaka’s Story.

Dave: Yes. Yes, that’s true. But as to whether…

Matt: …as to whether they knew it was a demon skull or just a rock?

Dave: Actually, that would apply as well, because Oscar was in our world. 

Matt: Oh yeah! You’re right.

Dave: So… and I don’t think Rick ever let on he even knew it was a demon head or a skull or whatever.

Matt: Yeah, I think he was just doin what Oscar was doin.

Dave: Yeah, yeah. He was just being the charming young neighbor.

Matt: (laughs) That’s… starting next year at the beginning of the year I’m gonna reread the series with a notebook and anything I find that I have questions on, anything that… odd coincidences or things that I forgot, I’m gonna start makin notes and I’m gonna do a reread of… okay, since I’m in charge now, everything I need to remember.

Dave: There you go. There you go. Yeah, if anybody is that curious about it, it would be interesting to see if we’re forgetting anybody that referred to the demon heads and skulls. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t until Mick said something about it, and then Keef said something about not being able to take a whiz on something that’s staring back at him.

Matt: (laughs) Yeah… I mean, the only other person who mentions them is Cerebus when he’s with the Carrot when they’re ascending, but at that point it’s earnest nonsense, so…

Dave: Yeah! Yeah. That was definitely “Through the Looking Glass”, I’ve got to find as many strange ways to cover for the fact that there’s no way to logically explain being able to go a quarter of a million of miles through a giant tube.

Matt: Yeah… that’s uhh, somebody asked…

Dave: Aside from, “ehh, it’s comics.”

Matt: Somebody asked about the Patty Cake backup that was in issue 200?

Dave: Right.

Matt: Where the Carrot shows up and takes Cerebus home and I’m… I had the issue never read it until somebody asked about it, and I’m like, “Oh yeah, I got this” and I open it up and I read it and I’m like, “That… kinda makes sense in the context of 104/105 of ‘yeah, that Carrot’s there now.’”

Dave: Yeah, yeah. Which is… that was odd that that’s what the day is, as far as I know, or the month is in the Deadly Class television show is December 1987 and they weren’t gonna have… and the last one that they have is 105 and then it was right in the middle of the Cerebus moon landing.

Matt: Yeah…

Dave: Spoiler warning!

Matt: (laughs) That’s… I know that the first trade’s set in 87, the second trade I think is 88. The premise is it’s a high school for assassins.

Dave: Okay.

Matt: And that’s why they’re the Deadly Class.

Dave: Ohhkay!

Matt: And apparently, Freshman year, bad things happen. And it goes… I mean, they’re assassins, they’re not nice people. They don’t have good backgrounds and mom and dad aren’t patting them on the head giving them, ya know, praise for their good grades. It’s you’re orphans that are gonna go kill people when you grow up.

Dave: I suppose that’s true, there’s no such thing as a nice assassin.

Matt: (laughs) Well, that’s not true, there’s a TV show called “Rick N Morty”, that… it’s a complicated show, but in one episode, Rick is the grandfather who’s basically like a drunk, evil Doc Brown from “Back to the Future”. And he’s selling weapons to an assassin who’s eminently polite and is giving Morty, the grandson, a business card of, “if ever you need anybody killed, let me know!”

Dave: Well, that’s just the civilization that we live in, I guess.

Matt: Well, it-it...

Dave: If you told people twenty years ago that that would be a television show it would be, “I don’t think so, civilization will come to an end before anything like that could happen.”

Matt: (laughs) It’s a very strange show that I probably shouldn’t watch in front of my kids, but I’m like, “Ahh, she’s two, she won’t understand it” and then she’s quoting the show, and they swear occasionally, and I’m like, “Ahh, I screwed up.”

Dave: You know better than that! Look at all of the stuff that mentally warped you when you were two years old.

Matt: When, for my birthday one year, Paula took me to a comic convention and Linda Hamilton was there and I met Linda Hamilton and explained to her that when I was five years old I saw “The Terminator” and she kinda looked at me like, “What is wrong with your parents?”

Dave: (laughs)

Matt: It was… it was a fun convention. Later on the next… in the weekend, like the next day, we were walking around and we walked past her and she stopped to say hi, cause she remembered Paula.

Dave: (laughs) She couldn’t forget that guy! Anyway… okay, and I see, that brings to EVS and Cyberfrog.

Matt: Right.

Dave: So, umm, it was interesting because you said that “the last Dave was involved was when he offered to go to Jersey to do a video with Van Sciver. Dave hasn’t heard back since. Meanwhile, EVS has announced that Dave’s coming and doing a video.” You said… I think, one of the problems that we might have here is the extra special treatment that I get from Bell Canada. (laughs)

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: …here at the Off-White House. Just a couple of weird phone things that have occurred, just in the last week. Blair Kitchen I had phoned him when he was doing his Kickstarter, and didn’t know if his Kickstarter was over, and we did a jam page together that was one of the last things that I’ve drawn. “Why don’t you offer that as a stretch drive thing if your Kickstarter isn’t over?” And then , I found out a couple of days later, yes, his Kickstarter was already over before I could get to him about that. But I didn’t hear back from Blair, and I thought, “Well that’s a little odd.” Ya know, one way or the other I would think that he would phone and let me know, “the Kickstarter’s over” or “yeah, that’s a great idea, let’s do that.” And then I just talked to Blair a couple of days ago, and he said “did you get my phone message?” And I said, “No, actually, I didn’t get a phone message”, he said, “we’ll I’m not surprised, because I tried leaving a message a couple of times and every time it sounds like the voicemail is full.” And it’s like, (laughs) “No, that’s… I know that that happens with some people, but believe me, Dave Sim… you’re never going to have a full voicemail tape for Dave Sim. Anything over three or four is just completely unheard of, and unheard of in any kind of given week [here Jesse was unsure of what Dave said, and Dave’s put “and Bell Canada will record and store an unlimited number of messages” which is DEFINETLY NOT what Dave said -Matt]. So, there is really no explaining how that happened. Another thing that happened, and has happened… I can remember specifically calling Michael R. in Easton, Pennsylvania, and calling Eddie Khanna, and in both instances, I thought, “well, they should both be there. But they’re not picking up, so I’ll leave a phone message.” Leave a phone message. And both of them, when I did talk to them said, “that was really weird, my phone didn’t ring.”

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: Then there’s also the fact that… I probably shouldn’t be talking about Rob W. in Texas, the one who leaves me phone messages when he’s drunk. I think the record so far as been nine Bob W phone messages? 

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: But he does have a valid point, that depending on what he’s leaving the message about, usually he’s building up to something. He’s gone through a whole three minutes of establishing the premise of what it is he’s telling me all of this backstory so he can tell me what it is he’s going to tell me, as drunken people tend to do. That’s when he gets cut off.

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: And the message is not only not three and a half minutes long, which is supposed to be the length of the time all of the messages are, it’s like 18 seconds. Which, I’m not complaining! (laughs)

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: Anytime Rob W gets cut off after 18 seconds, hey, I’m on board with that, cause I do listen to the messages, because I never know, okay, how many of these nine messages are Rob W and how many are somebody that I definitely need to talk to and I need their phone message. And it just seems to be part of being a famous person, if somebody is phoning you drunk and leaving you messages because they’re obsessed with your work and they’ve read it so many times, that they really got stuck on this point. Rob suggests that, what it is, he’s doing a podcast for me, a podcast for one person on my voicemail. He’s got this theory that anytime he’s doing impressions of somebody, then he won’t get cut off. And it’s true! Anytime… he did a “Stan Lee interviewing Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis” impression for me and it took up the whole three and a half minutes. And was actually very funny! That was one of the ones that I saved, and I thought, “Oh, I gotta send this to Matt.”

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: But then I thought, “No, what are the odds that as soon as you do that, send it to Matt, Stan Lee’s gonna die and I’ll be the guy that has the drunken guy doing the Stan Lee impression while everybody else is doing their honoring the passing of Stan Lee thing”.

Matt: Right.

Dave: So… long way around of saying, I don’t know, maybe Ethan did leave me a message and that’s what happened to it. It was the same thing that happened to Blair Kitchen.

Matt: Entirely possible. I know that Ethan does the Youtube videos. He did one, and it was 25 minutes and after 15 minutes I was like, “I don’t see the point to this, I think I’m done.”

Dave: Yeah, you said that… where is that? That’s here, “I’m not posting a link, because it’s 25 minutes long. Like I’m trying to stay apolitical on the whole Comicsgate thing, but damn! Dude monologues like he’s a Stan Lee comic villain. I’ve watched 15 and a half minutes of it. My only takeaway is that EVS is using his ComicArtistProSecrets Youtube channel as a forum to discuss pop culture and he has a new channel that’s gonna be promoting comics.” I do want to go down there and do a video with him because… my reaction knowing virtually nothing about any of this, was, “oh that’s good, that even the people that really really disagree with him, and are, ya know, trashing him out, he usually welcomes them to come on the show. Why don’t you come on the show and we’ll talk about it?”

Matt: That’s… it’s one of those… like I’ve said, I’m trying to stay apolitical, because I… there’s the one side is, “well everybody hates him because of his politics”, and it’s like, well… yeah, maybe? But, ya know, there’s a lot of people, and there’s a lot of reasons. Like, I was looking into it a little bit, he did an Indiegogo for Cyberfrog: Blood Honey #1 that got funded at the last day of July and was supposed to ship last month and as far as I know it didn’t, because it’s not done yet.

Dave: Right.

Matt: Which, okay, that’s fine, but that’s 97 days and if you’re doing a page a day and it’s 48 page book, the math doesn’t start to add up. But then I looked..

Dave: I was wondering about that too. I mean, when I was talking to him on the phone, it was “Ethan, can you send me Cyberfrog?” Because I had seen the covers that he had done. It looked like, pretty good Image style covers, just on Google Image Search. And it’s like, “Ahh, no, I can’t send you that.” It’s like, “I did that when I was 19 years old.” It’s like, “Ethan, I’m not gonna look at it and judge you. I would just like to know…”

Matt: Yeah, “what’s the backstory for the story I’m writing?”

Dave: What is the state of play on Cyberfrog? But, no, he absolutely did not want me to see the earlier incarnation of it. And it’s like, I’m going, “No! It’s…” To me, Ethan seems to be like the same category as Todd McFarlane, because everybody hated Todd McFarlane back in the early 1990s, particularly when Image started, it was “That guy was just a lightning rod.” Which I went, “No, this is probably the most intelligent thing I’ve heard of a comic artist doing. Leaving Marvel at the top of your game after your billion selling issue of” whatever it was, Spider-Man, for him?

Matt: Yeah!

Dave: You sold a billion copies, now you’re gonna go over and sell a million copies of your own book where you get all the money. It’s like, jeeze, good for you, kid. But he wasn’t getting a lot of that (laughs) from everybody else in the comic book field, “hey good for you kid.” Which I think was when he decided to go and get guest writers, it’s like, there was no way that Dave Sim was in the same category as Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore. But Todd can make Dave Sim be in the same category as those three guys. Cause I’ll have him write one of these things. And, the appeal for me on that was “I’ll draw whatever you write. If you want to do 22 pages of Spawny sitting on the toilet, I’ll draw 22 pages of Spawny sitting on the toilet.” Which is when I went, “Okay, that’s not what I’m gonna do, but boy does that open up the possibility of… hey, I’m gonna do something that I think is really cool, but is definitely not gonna be a big box office type thing.” And then that was the one that won the Wizard Award for best single issue. So… from… with my experience in that, that was the same reaction that I had to Ethan, was, “okay, I got no problem with doing comic book for Comicsgate, but if I do it, I want to do Cyberfrog. If I’m going to do an Image Comic, I want to do Spawn.”

Matt: Right.

Dave: Because, ya know, Spawn is the flagship title, nobody had any doubt or reservation about that. And, it would’ve made more sense for me to say, “Ger, we’re just gonna put Cerebus on hold for six months and do six Image comics. I don’t even know what they’re gonna be, but they’re gonna be superheroes, and they’re gonna sell a million copies, and that’ll be just this great payday.” It’s sort of .. it’s the same thing with this. It’s like, somebody who can raise half a million dollars for one comic book, “hey, good for you, kid.”

Matt: Yeah.

Dave: I’ll be happy to write it. And the way it stands now, it’s supposed to be that I’m script doctoring the first one. I said, “you do the story exactly the way you want the story to be done, and then I will come back with the same sort of suggestions as if we were doing a movie, where, okay, I’m script doctoring your movie, so here’s my version of your script. You can use all of this, you can use some of it.” And then, theoretically, after that one’s done, then I will actually be writing the three that come after that. That was the way we left it, I don’t know if that’s still the situation. I don’t know if Ethan went, “Dave Sim is too toxic for me”.

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: “I had no idea that people hated this guy this badly.” And, ya know, he’s a family man, he’s got like three kids, ya know, a wife and three kids…

Matt: And that’s… as a guy with two kids, I understand the, “hey yeah, this is a great idea” on Monday, then on Friday “I don’t know what’s going on”.

Dave: Right. And you always have to be thinking, if not at the back of your mind in the front of your mind, how is this going to impact my kids?

Matt: Yeah.

Dave: If it’s gonna impact your kids, that’s leverage that the mobbing community has over the Ethans of the world that it doesn’t have for the Dave Sims of the world.

Matt: Well, and that’s.. I mean, depending on who you ask, he was either chased out or he left DC, and it was one of those, ya know… it’s Todd and Image all over again, of okay, you wanna go do your own thing, do your own thing. But it seems like the “movement” is just so… there’s people on the, ya know… a lot of it stems, ya know, going back and forth lookin at stuff, it seems like these are young guys that don’t quite know the history of the medium, and they're making assumptions and when the old veterans say “yeah, no, you’re wrong” they’re taking it as a personal affront instead of listening to, ya know, like Bill Sienkiewicz, who’s saying “No, no no, this is what happened, I was there.”

Dave: Uhh, that tends to be a universal condition, as well. Those who don’t learn from George Santayana are condemned to… uhh err.. no, how does that go? Um. No, that was always my experience in comics, was most people didn’t know the history of the various things that happened. A lot of the reason I was able to do Cerebus and have it be the semi-success that it was, was learning from Jim Waley’s mistakes on Orb. Because I was there working at Orb, so it’s like, okay, don’t add a color section to your book. Don’t change the format. Don’t do an anthology title. Keep the logo the same. Don’t get rid of the letters page. But, ya know, that’s somebody who lost a fair amount of money making those mistakes so that I didn’t have to make those mistakes when it came time.

Matt: I run into the same thing at work at the machine shop, where the second shift guys are all like 19, and I look at them and I’m like, “I was you, I was as stupid as you are now, I’m telling you, the voice from the future, don’t do that!” And they just look at me like I have antenna and I’m turning green. And I’m just like, I think back to when I was 19, and it’s like, no, I was a moron, I was one of the stupidest people on Earth. And I learned. And that’s why now, almost, ya know, 20 years later it’s, oh hey, ya know, maybe don’t do that. [audio missing] …from the people that you gotta kick the chairs out from until you learn, “hey, when you kick chairs, people get mad.”

Dave: Yeah, yeah. The German expression is “we get too soon old, and too late smart”.

Matt: (laughs) Yes. I very much agree with that.

Dave: Okay. We’re sitting at… how long are we going to make these? This is uhh…

Matt: We can make em as long as you want. Cause I have a Youtube verified account. So they let me make as long a movies as I want when I put them on Youtube.

Dave: In terms of the Ethan situation, I don’t want to sound like I’m being evasive. Do you think I sound evasive?

Matt: No, it very much is a “this is the last I talked to him, I haven’t talked to him since”. It’s one of those, it’s not Dave Sim’s Cyberfrog, it’s Ethan Van Sciver’s Cyberfrog, so if you want to know about Cyberfrog you gotta ask Ethan.

Dave: Right. There is a quality of these people who do really, really phenomenally successful things that… (laugh) I definitely want to see them in person. It’s like, that was a lot of the thing with Todd that… when he was… is that when he was in? No, he wasn’t in Arizona, he was in Oregon then. And that was during the… 93 tour?

Matt: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Dave: Yeah, and I was gonna be writing the issue of Spawn, “why don’t I come over to your house and have dinner with you?” because, it’s like, what is this person actually like? And if you see him at home, you see him with the wife and Cyan I think was all of 2 years old at that point and I think they only had Cyan, they didn’t have their younger daughter yet. And it’s like, yeah this is just a regular guy. He’s making really, really good choices and ya know just absolutely major big box office. He was definitely the one who said, “this is the time to really crank these books out while they’re selling a million copies each”, the other guys didn’t do that and I think regretted it later because then the sales just started dropping and once they started dropping they started plummeting because there weren’t a million comic book fans in the world. I don’t think there’s a million comic book fans now.

Matt: That’s… one of the Comicsgate movement, the pro-side is that Marvel & DC are making business decisions that are costing them money, and ya know, we could sell a million books a month again. And it’s like, well, historically, no. Ya know, that’s where the old guys come in going, “No, no, ya know, print is dead has been somethin’ that people have been sayin for 20-30 years at this point”. And at a certain point the audience is fragmented so much that yeah, you’re not gonna sell a million copies, you’re gonna be lucky to sell 80,000.

Dave: Yeah, there was definitely more… or a big part of it was the collector thing. People buying 50 copies of the hot #1 when they were buying… Individuals were buying 50 copies of Jim Lee’s whatever it was, X-Men, he was that?

Matt: Yeah, X-Men, he was the X-Men.

Dave: X-Men #1, and Todd was the Spider-Man #1. Well, if everybody buys 50 copies (laughs) you’ve got a little bit of a problem.

Matt: There was an artist that (laugh) he took a toilet and wallpapered it with copies of X-Men #1, and sold it at auction and it sold for, I can’t even remember, it was, I think, it was a couple grand. Cause it was an art installation. And even Jim Lee was like, “yeah that’s what’s gonna happen to a lot of these copies cause there are way too many of them.”

Dave: Yeah. There are funny things that happen with that, like Pete Dixon of Paradise Comics getting me to sign Spawn 10 that he had located so that he could get them CGC graded cause he’s one of the guys authorized to do signature series for them. And he said there’s not as many mint copies of Spawn 10 as you would think, and I said, “well why is that?” And he said it’s because it had a mostly white cover and the back cover is black, so there’s a lot of smudging for those people who bought 50 copies.

Matt: Yeah, it’s… I’d have to look at my copy but I’m sure it’s got fingerprints.

Dave: There ya go. There ya go. So, yeah, I’ve also… because of the way I did comics I always did exactly what I wanted to do, I mean exactly what I wanted to do, and a lot of the fun in doing comics is doing something that… work made for hire, or whatever, that is just like, really cool. You can’t own this, but you did something with it that whoever created it went, “that was really cool”, which is a lot of the reason I wanted to write Spawn 10 and not do my own Image comic. I already had my own comic for doing what I wanted to do. Like, Ethan was really pushing for that, saying “make up a superhero! We’ll find you an artist and you can do it… ya know, a superhero. And I guarantee you it will sell…” whatever it was gonna sell and it’s like, that just didn’t sound fun to me.

Matt: Ahh.

Dave: Writing Cyberfrog, something that somebody came up with when he was a teenager, and being able to go, “oh okay, let’s bring my best writing chops to this and let’s see what we can do with it”. That was a lot of the appeal with Spawn as well, because Todd came up with Spawn when he was in high school.

Matt: That was Carson Grubaugh contacted Ethan, and I guess they had a phone conversation, and Carson reported back, saying, “Yeah, he keeps saying all Dave’s gotta do is make a hero and it’ll sell, ya know, like hotcakes.” And I was thinking about it today, and I‘m like, “ya know, I wonder if he’s ever read a copy of Power Comics #1.”

Dave: (laughs) Well, I didn’t write that one! I didn’t write that one.

Matt: Oh, I thought you had written that one. You just did the art on that one?

Dave: No, I did… the closest I came to superheroes was Phantacea. [Dave adds: I didn’t write that one either. -Matt]

Matt: Oh no, yeah! That’s it.

Dave: Yeah, Phantacea, and then Revolt 3000, [Dave adds: That one I wrote -Matt] which fortunately never got published.

Matt: Uhh, no… who published it? There was a guy that published Revolt 3000. I can’t remem…

Dave: Yes, yes. Or did I think the splash pages, and some of the… [In his copy of the transcript, Dave crossed this out and wrote: YEARS later. I drew it in 1978. -Matt]

Matt: Ahh… I can’t remember the name of the series-- I have it, cause my friend got me issue 2 of it, it was… Revolt 3000 was the backup, I think it was Deep Space? I’d have to…

Dave: That’s right. Yeah, yeah. [Dave also crossed out this and wrote: Otto Space I think it was. Jim and Ruth Keegan in 1993 -Matt. I checked my copy of #2, and Dave is indeed right.]

Matt: So it was published, you just forgot about it because you didn’t want to remember it, sorry.

Dave: I didn’t want to remember it, yes. I have got my copies of the pages completely buried where they can never be found again.

Matt: So, it’s basically like your version of Jerry Lewis’ “The Day The Clown Cried”?

Dave: Ahh… not quite that sensitive, this was just badly written and drawn, not over the edge into “I don’t think you’re allowed to do that.” Are we at the point where they’re gonna release that movie?

Matt: Uh… before he died he was asked repeatedly about it, because apparently there was a behind the scenes reel of, ya know, screen testing like the makeup and the costumes and stuff that surfaced. And somebody said, “well now that this is out, are you gonna release the movie?” And Jerry went, “No, it’s going to be destroyed when I die.”

Dave: Oh, I thought the idea was that it would be X number of years after he died.

Matt: That might’ve been what he said at one point, but towards the end he had said, no, it’s never gonna get released. Because somebody had asked if we’re ever gonna see it, and it was at a Q & A in public like they had showed some other movie and during the Q & A somebody said, “are we ever gonna see this?” and he went, “no, but I can tell ya how it ends!” (laughs)

Dave: (laughs) Great.

Matt: And it’s one of those, ya know, this is when I first heard about it and I looked into it and I researched it and I’m like, “yeah no that sounds like a movie that I’m okay with never seeing”.

Dave: Yes. (laughs)

Matt: Ya know, one of those movies, it was a great idea until they said action and started rolling film and then it turned into something that, no, no we don’t need to see that.

Dave: Well, I’m still trying to figure out how “Hogan’s Heroes” ever got made.

Matt: Uhh… “Stalag 13”, wasn’t it? 

Dave: Yeah… well, no I understood the premise, it was…

Matt: But the idea of let’s do a sitcom where half the characters are Nazis.

Dave: Right. It’s like, I don’t think you could do that now, how could you do that less than 20 years after the war?

Matt: Well, that was… I had a friend that got into… he was semiretired and he was gettin into watching “Hogan’s Heroes” repeats and he was like, “Did you ever know what Schultz did before the war?” and I’m like “no”, and he was a toymaker. And I’m like, “I never saw that episode.” And then apparently in the later seasons, Schultz knew about what the POWs were up to and just didn’t care.

Dave: (as Sgt Schultz) I saw nothing! Nothing!

Matt: And every time I quote that, all the people around me look at me like, “what are you talking about?” and I’m like, “it’s a tv show from the 70s that nobody remembers unless you’re above a certain age”. I just happened to have a subscription to Nick at Nite when I was a kid and saw all the repeats. I always liked the show, and now that I’m older, and I’m like, yeah no, you’re right, how did that get on the tv and much less stay on tv for more than a year?

Dave: Maybe we’re growing up?

Matt: That’s… ya know, that’s… (stammers)

Dave: I didn’t say “maturing” I said growing up.

Matt: When I get to the part when Cerebus throws the baby, if I am so offended I can’t finish reading the series and I have to quit the editor position, I’ll let you know.

Dave: Okay. Well, you’ve got my number, I’ve got your number.

Matt: I don’t think it’s gonna happen, cause I’ve read that a number of times and it always strikes me as being horrifically funny. We shouldn’t laugh at this, but at the same time, babies smell funny! (laughs)

Dave: Well, I did revisit that in one of the Cerebus In Hell? sequences, and if there’s any reason that Cerebus would be eternally condemned to being down with the rat-gnawed wretches, the baby throwing thing was it. And because of the fact that he’s still rationalizing it.

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: You’re infanto-throw shaming him.

Matt: I did read that sequence and it was one of those, I’m laughing at it going, “it’s funny cause it’s true”. I don’t think he would ever say, “well, ya know maybe I shouldn’t have thrown the baby”, it was more of a, “well if I pitched my arm better I could’ve gotten an extra five yards.”

Dave: You’ve got to be able to rationalize right down to the fine print. How can you throw a baby? Same way you throw a football, you just line your fingers up along the laces and let it fly.

Matt: (laughs)

Dave: There’s very few people that are willing to do comedy like that.

Matt: And I did enjoy when you revisited in Cerebus, with Todd “Farlane” McSpawn and Magenta and “aim for the big pile of dead ladies”. 

Dave: (laughs)

Matt: That still makes me chuckle. 

Dave: “Be vewwy vewwy careful with wittle Magenta.” (laughs) Yeah, never heard back from Todd on that one.

Matt: (laughs) I’m thinking he either didn’t see the issue or saw it and went, “I’m just gonna walk away… that’s a can of worms I don’t wanna open…” 

Dave: That could be it. That could be it.

Matt: I mean, he did do a book about a guy that escaped from Hell and who was stalking his ex-wife, I mean. At a certain point there are certain questions about, “well what was goin’ on there, Todd?”

Dave: Yeah, yeah… let’s not go there.

Matt: (laughs) Like you said…

Dave: Okay, Matt, I think we’re gonna wrap it up there.

Matt: Yeah, that’s good for me. We’ll do this again first Thursday in January. 

Dave: First Thursday in January.

Matt: And everybody gets to see it the first Saturday in January.

Dave: I will meet you back here in the same spot.

Matt: (laughs) Okay, take care, have a merry Christmas!

Dave: Say Hi to Paula, and Janice Pearl, and Natasha, I’m even gonna use her correct name. It’s Bullwinkle, cause I always call her Bullwinkle.

Matt: That’s… Last night, she wanted to watch a movie, I’m like, “you wanna watch Thor?” cause we’re watching the Marvel movies. And she said, “yeah!” and I walked away from it and came back and she had the Avengers and she’s, on the top of her lungs, slamming her finger on the cover, going, “that’s me! That’s me! That’s me!” I’m like, “yes. That’s Natasha” and then she’s, “you’re the Hulk!” (laughs)

Dave: (laughs)

Matt: Like, okay!

Dave: Let’s not go there!

Matt: (laughs) I haven’t turned green in months.

Dave: Have a good night, Matt.

Matt: You too, Dave! Bye.

Dave: Buh-bye.

Matt: Alright, everybody, see you back next… well, you’ll see me on Monday, you’ll see Dave…