Please Hold For Dave Sim 6/6/2019

Ah, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The look on your faces...

Anyway...

Hi, Everybody!

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.

If you're in the market to dress like Dave Sim, you can buy a "Matt D's A Moment of Cerebus" t-shirt right here. Or, if you're one of those nostalgia buffs who likes the earlier funnier A Moment Of Cerebus posts, the Tim W. Logo is available too.

If you want this:

Bidding's at Thirteen bucks, thanks to Jeff Seiler!


If you got a couple of extra bucks and want to do a fellow Cerebus fan a solid, Friend of the Blog Mike Battaglia has a go fund me here.

All the Postcard from Hell? #2 surveys are in, and the cards are at the printers.

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I came. I Held. I recorded (and edited and posted and stuff).

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What the hell were we talking about?

Heir to the Throne: Eddie Khanna send me:

First I ever heard of this. Just faxed it to Dave as well. The article was originally published Dec 23 1975. The interesting thing  (well, to me, anyways), is in the Province, it's called "CEREBUS", but the other articles list it as "CEREBUS I"

Click

For

Bigger.

 And then, we discuss an email I got from Byron Dunbar:

Hi there,

I follow your blog because I am a big fan of the Cerebus the Aardvark comic series and I like to keep up to date with any news regarding it and Dave Sim’s other work.

Recently, it’s come to my attention that there are two books called Dave Sim: Conversations and Cerebus the Barbarian Messiah: Essays on the Epic Graphic Satire of Dave Sim and Gerhard. I would be most interested in reading both of these books. tried to order them through my local comic shop. However, they are no longer available to order from Diamond Distributors and while I could buy digital copies, I dislike reading anything longer than a blog post on a computer screen, preferring to read physical books I can hold in my hand. Therefore, I am writing to ask if either of these books available to order from Dave Sim directly or from AMOC. 

AMOC? Nope. And as Dave says in the video, not A/V either. Amazon's got 'em (They got everything, even Cerebus in Hell shirts.) Cerebus the Barbarian blah blah, and Conversations. But if you're against Jeff Bezos and his monopoly, I got you covered too ya lil' rebel. Conversations, and Cerebus: Rock Reflections of a Super Hero (I think that was the title...) And Cerebus in Hell? stuff too. (Stick it to the Man!)

I would fax Dave Sim myself to ask, however, I think I may have come off poorly to him in a series of faxes I sent trying to convince him that there are still what I considered to be “many people” who enjoy his work. However, to me, “many people” just amounts to maybe forty-to-fifty comic book fans I’ve interacted with online, at work, or at comic book shops. Now in retrospect, I realize that Cerebus was at one point the top-selling comic outside of Marvel and DC, and to me, having a mere 130 subscribers on YouTube seems like a lot of people, so we simply came at it from different perspectives.

However, I am not sure if it would be appropriate to contact Sim again directly about this matter, in the event I came off like I was attacking him. I am aware Sim is often attacked by various groups and I should have been more careful about how I came off, as if I were in his position as if someone was insistent and socially awkward as I was, I would likely assume they were trying to pull some kind of game on me as well.

Anyway, if you are able, please let me know if there is any way I can order print copies of these books from Aardvark-Vanaheim.

Best,

So, that's part one covered, and now:

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Dave's talking about this letter I got:

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Hello Dave Sim,

First, I believe I am #2025 on the petition. I only signed this silly thing because I thought it was fair that if I am going to send a letter (even an electronic one, and not to you directly, but through your supporters), I follow the rules you stipulate for reading it.

I have only met you in person once, APE in 1993? ’94? Somewhere around that time. You were incredibly gracious and did a head sketch that I still have in its sketchbook somewhere (thanks again). I first bought (and read) an issue of Cerebus in or around 1988 (at the ideal age of 13), and read it monthly for the next decade (at least), and occasionally until issue #300. I have read every issue through at least 210 (ok, I’ve skimmed some of the text), and some modest chunk of the remaining 90. Judenhass was better than any issue of that last 90.

There is no question that you are one of the great comics makers of all time.

I abstained from signing the petition since learning about it in (my memory and a cursory internet search fail to turn up an estimated date). The very important reason that I never signed it before today is this:

I do not have any way to gauge what lies in the hearts and minds of others, so how would I know if anyone, much less Dave Sim, is a misogynist. I don't even know if I am a misogynist.

I signed it today because I am a master of denial, so I will, through mental gymnastics, reconcile that previous sentence with this one:

I do not believe Dave Sim is a misogynist.

I won’t even try to back out with some linguistic traps, like “I don’t believe Sim is a misogynist, I know it,” or, “I don’t believe Dave Sim is a misogynist, but he sure looks like one.”

I am writing this letter instead to say, I don’t care if you are a misogynist.

I believe that the comics you’ve created are worth my time in reading. Issue #75, for example, is the issue I’ve read the most, and the emotional truths demonstrated in it are numerous. It is a masterwork of character driven storytelling. Issue #112/113 are some delicious cartooning, with you and Gerhard working in symphonic resonance with just four hands. Issue #66 has one of my favorite cartooning gags ever (and yes I’m considering Don Martin and John Kerschbaum and Al Jaffee and Peter Bagge, my humor comics Rushmore group). Issue #152 has some amazing action layouts. Issue #…well…you get the point.

I’ve decided to stop worrying whether the artists whose work I enjoy are scumbags. I think that just about each and every one of us humans are flawed and have done terrible things. (At least those lucky enough to survive past toddlerhood). 

I’ve never sexually assualted anyone, but I still enjoy Chinatown.

I’ve never encouraged white supremacy, but I enjoy Lust for Life.

I’ve never exposed myself to anyone, but I still find Louis CK funny.

I’ve never taken coke or speed, but I love Folsom Prison Blues.

I’ve never called for the denigration of black people, but I think Gandhi was impressive.

I’ve never taken credit for the work of others, but I still enjoy reading Amazing Spider-Man #33.

I’ve never taken heroin, but I still enjoy Appetite for Destruction and “Brown Sugar.”

I’ve never molested a child, but I still enjoy “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.”

I’ve never been called a misogynist, but I still enjoy Church & State, and Melmoth, and, well, you get the point.

I’m sorry your hand hurts. That sucks. I hope you get better.

Be well,

Josh Leto

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And now the Moment (heh.) you've all been waiting for: Dave answers user questions:
Steve Peters asked: Ask if he got the birthday card Gabe McCann and I sent him!

and,
Dion Turner asked: Just for an update of the Cerebus Archive for ‘Women’. Last we heard there was a bit of a stumbling block over the first 10 pages in the archive being Punisheroach’s misadventures in love and the Oprah parody. Is it worth considering maybe including one each of those pages but moving on to other scenes over the first couple of issues? We have Sophia & Henrot-Gutch in one of the Oprah pages, Cerebus and Serna/Cirin, Swoon & Snuff. I realise this breaks the ‘first 10 pages’ rule, but I thought it might be worth considering the change. Relaxing this further to ‘iconic’ pages you could even consider something like the page where Cerebus, Astoria and Suenteus Po meet.... naturally this is all dependent on what is in the archive.

Last suggestion, keep the earliest pages but do a couple of the covers to fill out the numbers 166 & 169 are particularly glorious.

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More questions: 
Jesse Lee Herndon asked: There's a lot of characters in the book that are parodies, homages, or references to people, both real and fictional. One that I've never been able to figure out the source of is the Countess's friend, Vichy DuPris, from early in "Church & State I". Was he a reference to anyone in particular? The way he was drawn was very distinct, and his accent seemed to be akin to the McGrew brothers.

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And then, Your Pal and Mine: Sean Michael Robinson asked: I have a question for Dave--we've seen how far ahead and how thoroughly you planned Cerebus from all of the samples from your notebooks over the years. And we've seen from your interviews, your general creative process, and even from the handful of rejected in-process Cerebus pages you posted about on AMOC, how often you improvised images, story details, and huge segments of each book. 

Given this, were there ever any story elements that you regretted, from a plotting perspective, including? That is, regretted while still in the process of the book. Or times when an improvisation or less-planned element made your job harder for the duration of a book or the series? 

It was very interesting to me to do a deep read of both Volume One and Minds essentially back to back and see how you incorporated all of those monthly one-shot elements into the greater whole. Just curious if any of these story points ever derailed any of the planned elements, or threatened to.

Hope that's open-ended enough!

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And then Jeff Seiler brings it all home:

So, Dave, since I received that Cerebus page [Issue 17, page 14-Matt] from HA today and went to look at it in the remastered CEREBUS edition, I decided to reread SMR's excellent discussion of "Cerebus" and I came across your 1996 comment about how your original artwork and Deni's writing had been, essentially, stolen by the fly-by-night publisher. So I wonder, in the ensuing 23 years since that happened, have you ever seen or heard of it up for sale? Today, that would be worth some major bucks, but do you think it just disappeared in a firesale, or something? 
If it were to magically show up, would you want to buy it or have it purchased for you?

I mean, in the 23 years since you told the story about what happened, not since, you know, it *actually* happened.

And, so, did the scribe *actually* kill Krull, or was he just knocked out? 'Cause the following page leaves that a little unclear, I think. Of course, a large rock to the head should do it, even for Krull, the (I think) actual toughest guy you ever drew. On which character, other than...duh...did you model him? The art you did of his face was some of the best you had done up to that point, IMHO. [I actually answered this one, Krull escapes after Cerebus gets “Mind Gamed” and helps defeat Gudre’s army. Weissthaupt mentions it in the Captain Cockroach issue-Matt]

(And then Dave talks about Steve Swenson's counterfeit signature on his counterfeit #1.)

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Next Time: The Genesis Question Grande Finale!