Saturday 28 December 2019

Cerebus: And Yoda!

Hi, Everybody!

The Silver Cerebus (I think ya got until tomorrow to get your order in...)

The Varking Dead (Wanna hear the theme song?)

Friend to the Blog, Greg Hyland is running the next volume of The Monster Atlas on Kickstarter. (He ONLY needs another hundred and five bucks (CANADIAN! Not even real monies...) and it'll have Gerhard art. Well, heckfire, I just backed it, so it's fifty bucks (Again, CANADIAN, not even proper money...).)
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So what have I got for you today?

Well, I just watched Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker again, and Eddie sent in this awhile back, so MOMENT:

Eddie found it here.

Where Brian has this preliminary sketch as well:
Funny story about this piece, from Dave's Blog&Mail:
Thursday July 5 –
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25 JUNE 0731 EST - Well, it had to happen eventually. The NATIONAL POST finally printed one of my letters to the editor. The subject was actually a pencilled commissioned drawing that I did for Mark S. (a copy of which Jeff Tundis has been patiently sitting on for a couple of weeks now waiting for me to mention it) of Cerebus and Yoda. Mark had sent an e-mail to Ger with the request and Ger had told him that he thought there was a very slim chance given my opinions of Yoda as a character (that I thought he had pretty much ruined STAR WARS in the second film by attempting to make me believe that Fozzy Bear – with a less intelligent command of the English language -- could also be a Jedi Master). That of course is my AUDIO opinion which is different from my VISUAL opinion. My VISUAL opinion of anything having to do with STAR WARS is that Al Williamson used his best stuff on the comic strip adaptation so even if I haven't seen what he did, I know that I'm competing with him when I draw anything related to STAR WARS. So, um, "bring it on". Particularly when you're paying $400 US for pencils only 9" X 12".
http://www.cerebusart.com/Commissions/Yoda.htm [This link is SO broke it's silly... -Matt]

ALTERNATE CAPTIONS:
[This picture is missing, so who knows what they were...-Matt (really wish I had an archive of all the IMAGES from the blog and mail...)]
Margaret here. . .guess who has the pictures? If ya want more, you're going to have to pay. . .teehee:

 
My biggest mistake was in thinking that I would use Canada Post instead of FedEx which is the hard and fast rule about commissioned drawings around here. "When It Absolutely Positively Has to Get There the Next Day" being less of a concern in a country dominated by Marxist State Monopolies than "When It Absolutely Positively Has To Get There Period". I had actually talked myself into using Canada Post, reasoning with myself that I was being way too hard on our Marxist State Postal Monopoly which is more of a last refuge for overstuffed labour unions (even though postal traffic is only a fraction of what it was before the advent of FedEx and the Internet, if the Canadian Association of Inside Postal Workers and the Canadian Association of Outside Postal Workers has laid anyone off in the last ten years despite eliminating Saturday delivery and expanding the length of time it takes to deliver a letter from one Metropolitan area to another I'll buy each of them a donut) than an actual public service. Hey, unreasoning grasping Marxists are people, too, right? They have families to feed, too, right?

So, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and make full use of the House Than Andre Ouellet Built (or, rather, found more interesting ways to overstuff). Canada Post USA Expedited here I come (to the opening martial strains of "O Canada"). Mark S. (famous last words on the phone the weekend of March 30): "I can't wait to see it."
23 May 07
Re: Ignorance is Canada Post's bliss, Andrew Coyne 23 May 2007 
The situation is worse than Mr. Coyne portrays it. 
On March 30 I mailed a standard business envelope to Camden, Maine that weighed 314 grams via Canada Post's "Expedited Parcel – USA" service, purporting to take seven to nine business days at a cost of $12.14. When it hadn't turned up by mid-month in April, I was informed that the Expedited rate "isn't guaranteed" and the package wasn't deemed to be officially missing until April 22nd. All hope was given up on that date. 
My Maine correspondent notified Canada Post—by e-mail, fortunately—that the package had finally arrived this week, seven weeks after departing Kitchener, Ontario, with no sign of tampering, being detained at Customs or any indication where the package had been all that time. 
Canada Post, in turn, notified me—by phone, fortunately. I was gratified to find that they didn't request the $32 back that I had been paid for my "missing item" claim two weeks ago. 
Dave Sim
Kitchener, ON
25 JUNE 0751 EST – Okay. Time to hit the showers and then it's (coincidentally) off to Canada Post for my once-a-week visit. When I get back, I'll type the letter as the NATIONAL POST printed it for your compare-and-contrast dining and dancing pleasure here on the Blog & Mail.

Okay, I'm back with a short sidetrack to address my David Peterson MOUSE GUARD fiasco (see July 2 entry for details)

25 JUNE 1112 EST – Here's how the letter appeared on the NATIONAL POST editorial page (right under one from Robert E. Waite, senior vice-president, stakeholder relations and brand) (seriously, that's his title) (Canada Post):

The situation with our postal service is worse than Mr. Coyne portrays it. 
On March 30, I mailed a standard business envelope to Camden, Maine, which weighed 314 grams, via Canada Post's expedited Parcel-U.S.A. Service. When it hadn't turned up by mid-month in April, I was informed that the expedited rate "isn't guaranteed" and that the package wasn't deemed to be officially missing until April 22, three weeks after it was mailed. All hope was given up on that date. 
My Maine correspondent notified Canada Post that the package finally arrived this week, seven weeks after departing Kitchener, Ont. There was no indication where it had been during that time. 
Dave Sim, Kitchener, Ont.
I thought it was probably a mark of how wealthy the average POST reader is that the reference to $12.14 was dropped. I'm probably just old but the idea that 12 bucks doesn't get you guaranteed delivery to anywhere in anything less than three weeks is really the thing that boggles my mind.

After a month of the piece being MIA I called Mark and told him I was doing him another one, traced from the photocopy I had made of it. He said he'd pay me something more for the second one if the first one turned up and I told him, basically, don't be ridiculous. It was my choice to use Canada Post and if I was going to learn my lesson it was better to do so on a $400 pencil sketch than on a $3500 painting. I told him to frame them together if the second one came in and will them back to the Cerebus Archive where – as I hope they would for Mark – they would make a nice conversation piece. When the letter was printed, I also sent Mark a tearsheet suggesting that he frame the whole page (there was a nice nearly full page shot of Miss Canada in a skin-tight Toronto Maple Leafs outfit right next to my letter) (hubba hubba and Go Leafs Go!) and include it in what is now becoming, I'm sure, the Cerebus and Yoda Room in his house.

Okay, back to the overnight cable traffic at

Tomorrow: YIKES! 25 JUNE 1134 HOURS EST
Okay, that's a more in-depth Moment than I expected... you're welcome...

Next Time: Oliver and "another Fine Mess"...

6 comments:

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Ha ha hah! Dave doesn't know what "Marxism" means, but he knows it's a bad word.

-- Damian

Mouse Skull Entertainment said...

Damian,

This is the part where I point out that this is from twelve years ago, and we ignore that because Dave most likely stands by what he wrote.

Matt

Margaret said...

whooo! I just backed it and took it over $4K CAD. Time for Gerhard art and monsters! Weeeeee!

Margaret said...

Oh, and that oh so broken link? Well, yeah, it is broken. . .but the waaaaaaaaayback machine has a "copy" of it. Just click here.

The link just has the pictures that were in the blog & mail entry. . .

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Matt D.: I am not certain how necessary it is to point out in comments that this is from twelve years ago, as you already pointed that out in the post itself.

You demonstrate that it is necessary to correct Dave's factual errors when you say, "Dave most likely stands by what he wrote." He could hardly have picked a worse example of Marxism if he tried. Canada Post has had a very ... combative relationship with its workers, and is hardly the socialist workers' paradise that conservatives fear lurks under every bed. For at least the past 30 years, the union has accepted lower wages and fewer worker protections. One could make a much stronger argument that Canada Post's woes are the result of 1) the reduction in people's use of physical mail, and 2) Mismanagement of the corporation by those at the top.

As is usual with Dave, if the facts do not comport with his feelings ("Nobody defended me!"), the facts are wrong.

-- Damian

Brian West said...

Hi Damian, Margaret, and Matt! Thanks Margaret and Matt for sharing this on the blog. Pretty neat!

P.S. Thanks to resident Yoda at Aardvark-Vanaheim, Eddie Khanna, as well for this post.