Monday 19 October 2020

Some Spawn #10 News.

Hi, Everybody!

______________________________

You can order HERMANN #1! (The NEW CiH?), and on the last Wednesday of the month (the 28th), pick up the Vault of Cerebus, And when you're there, you can buy Batvark: PENIS (in stores NOW! (Possibly along with the "Censored For Grandma" Variant, Batvark: XXXXX.).) If you're in the market for a "Virgin" Batvark: Penis (limited to ONLY 253 copies!), you need to track down Benjamin Hobbs and pester him until he throws one at you...(hopefully, he had it slabbed by CGC first so it doesn't loose any of it's value...'course then it'll hurt more when it hits you...) And, signed copies of Vark Wars: Walt's Empire Strikes Back (Signed by Dave, Signed by Dave and me, Signed by me after I scribble out Dave's name, Pretty much available Signed only...). 

As you all know, Wilf Jenkins was the Aardvark/Vanaheim lawyer for years, and during that time he was on the comp list. Wilf saved all his copies. Dave and Wilf have signed them, and there's a certificate of authenticity. The books will be available from Looking For Heroes, for $10 (CAD) plus $4 dollars shipping to Canada and $5 dollars shipping to the USA. All the money goes to the Food Bank of the Waterloo Region.

And another You Don't Know Jack Update:
Hello backers!

This is just a quick note to let you know that MOST (not all-- see below!) packages have been shipped, and have been confirmed to arrive as far-flung as the UK (Thanks, Richard!). If YOUR package has shipped, you will have received an email from us with your tracking number and shipping information. (Thanks, Stamps.com!). 

There are however, a few (approximately 30) boxes that have not yet shipped!

CATEGORY A-- about fifteen shipments are awaiting a single replacement book! One of our boxes of Hermitage Awesomes books was waylaid, but has at long last made its way to its destination, Carson's House of Shipping in Alabama. These fifteen shipments will go out tomorrow, so look for your tracking info then!

Our apologies if you're one of the fifteen pledgers impacted by this. We really appreciate your support, and hope that you'll be holding your books in your hands very soon! Domestic shipping has been surprisingly fast so far, so that could be as soon as Saturday for some of you.

CATEGORY B-- about fifteen other backers STILL haven't filled out their survey, or sent us their address. Please please pretty please, fill out your survey!

I got a message from somebody who was looking for their package, and it turned out that they had filled out the survey, but hadn't submitted it. 

So, if Mr. Postman hasn't gotten you your rewards, maybe check to make sure you submitted your survey: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1349357665/you-dont-know-jack


Lastly, I wanted to let you know this is likely our next-to-last update for this project! The very next update will contain your FREEBIE GOODIE DIGITAL DOWNLOADS. And following that, targeted downloads will be sent to the groups of you who pledged for additional digital rewards.

We wanted to wait until everyone had a chance to see these books in print, as they were designed to be seen, before you peeped at them on a screen.

Carson and I have been discussing different possible follow-up projects to this, including the Big One-- a completed(ish) Strange Death of Alex Raymond! That's right, the 500-pound gorilla is on the horizon. More on this as soon as we have more info for you!


All the best,

Sean
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"Hey where's the link to The Spawn #10 Kickstarter, you long eared galoot?" you ask.

Hey screw you! My mom says my ears are perfec...I mean, I'm getting to it, I'm getting to it...

Well, the Remastered Spawn #10 Kickstarter is $1,805 dollars OVER the Kickstarter for the Remastered Cerebus #1, with 245 LESS backers, and twenty-four days to go. Speaking of the Remastered Cerebus #1, limited overstock is still available at cerebusoverload.com, of the book and the goodies.

And speaking of Spawn #10, in the FIRST update, they let us know that:
We just added a limited number of original copies of the 1993 edition of SPAWN 10 for those of you who don't already own this issue. It makes the perfect companion to this new edition of the book.
Somebody on the Faceybook Group commented on this turn of events:
Wow, 15 bucks for the original Spawn #10 as an add-on? You can buy them all day long on ebay in mint condition for 2 or 3 dollars. Are the "add-on" ones signed or something?

Welp, what do you think Bunky:

I kept the pictures large so you can click on them and obsess over the background details...

You're welcome Margaret...

And just for giggles, the "abandoned" Spawn #10 Cover:

Well, it WAS a cover, then I added to it and made it PERFECT!

Next Time: More Spawn #10 silliness?

19 comments:

Margaret said...

Thank you Matt, you know me so well. And what is that pile of Cerebus The World Tour Book I see? Also, I'll take that gray stamp by the window, that looks like the AV embossing stamp.

Birdsong said...

Just launched: Another ultra rare Virgin Batvark...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Batvark-Penis-Virgin-Cover-RARE-Cerebus-In-Hell/124395921362?hash=item1cf6931fd2:g:YVQAAOSw0X5fjfFD

or just go to eBay and search for Batvark Penis Virgin.

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Dave, a mama's boy himself, is really fulfilling the "self-projection as god" trope with his latest biblical misreadings. I think it's pretty funny! Who else gets a larf from these "Monday Report" routines?

-- D.

Anonymous said...

Only thing I'll get a "larf" at is reading your obituary, Damian.

Brian West said...

Tomahawk chop to the kisser of D.T. Lloyd by Anonymous @22:19pm. If that joke were any sharper I would have mistook it coming from Don Rickles, but, as some here may know, Mr. Warmth is deceased (May his memory be a blessing).

Seriously, I enjoy reading Dave’s exegesis of Scripture. Privileged to be able to read his weekly Gospel commentary for FREE. I wish him nothing but success in his attempt to share his own inference of Scripture for weeks, months, possibly years to come.

Anonymous said...

These days, everything Dave does is a joke.

Anonymous said...

48,000 dollars US raised in 5 days ain’t nothing to laugh or “larf” at here, Anonymous @616.

Anonymous said...

It is pretty interesting. The Bible is pretty definitive on how you treat your parents; Dave does the opposite; but wait! the Ten Commandments were the YHWH, not God, so it's okay. What a convenient interpretation.

"If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself."

Alright,
Mitch/Grady/whc03grady

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Dave's always the measure of all things. Whatever he feels must be right, so it's just a matter of inventing an argument (rational, logical, not -- it doesn't matter) to justify that.

Brian W.: Your mind must be exceptionally flaccid if you feel a) that was a devastating joke (aw, Anon 22:19 (no "p.m." required in 24-hour time, Brian), whatta ya tryin' ta do, hurt my feelings?) or b) that Dave has anything profound to say about the bible. His one tactic is to wander through the text and discard anything that doesn't jibe with his feelings.

Dave knows a lot about North American comics from the 1930s to the 1990s, but when he steps outside that he ... does not show himself to good advantage, let's say.

-- D.

Brian West said...

Your attempt at ridicule and provocation aside, you do remind me of a bigger issue which I think Dave’s Monday Report seems to raise within the comments here with regularity, something I had wanted to ask you specifically: do you believe that there is a disconnect between those who study and/or enjoy Cerebus who are monotheists and those who do likewise with Cerebus who are secularists?

Tony Dunlop said...

Actually, Brian, I've been both of those. Thoroughly secular - it's the environment I grew up in - when I started reading Cerebus in the middle of "High Society," which put me, no doubt, right about where Dave was at the time - to the extent religion interested me at all, it was in terms of how it wielded power over believers and, through them, over society as a whole. So one can see why I took to Cerebus so enthusiastically at that point in the series!

Some time in the late '90s, I used to know the exact month and year but these things fade over time, I had what I can only describe as an encounter with the One Who I now know as the risen Christ - although I probably didn't use that term at the time. I can't explain it, but I've been a Christian ever since - but reading "Latter Days" as a believing Christian - well, Dave knows full well his view of Scripture is sui generis, sui maxima generis...as Dave the Editor once said in one of those little boxes at the bottom of a panel, "Lives in a world all his own, folks."

What I do not know is how I would have responded to Dave's (and Cerebus') conversions had I still been a secularist - because I wasn't one. But "giving equal weight to Judaism, Christianity and Islam?" They are mutually exclusive of one another. Sorry, but no.

Tony the zealot said...

Mitch said, "If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself."

This is actually why I had to leave Protestantism - so much of it is deciding what you believe, then convincing yourself that "The Bible" supports whatever it is. Both sides do it. (Dave just takes this to an extreme by declaring that anything he disagrees with either isn't really Scripture, or is "The YooWhoo.") I became Orthodox precisely because I'm fearful of worshipping my own opinions, which is really what all idolatry boils down to. We even have a line that appears in several of our prayers, along the lines of "Deliver me from the slavery of my own reasoning." Amen.

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Interesting question, Brian W. Are we going by the actual definition of "monotheist" -- believing that there is only one god -- or the Dave-world definition -- belief in the specific one god of the Abrahamic religions?

(Related: the Dave-world definition of "atheist" seems to be someone who does not believe in the specific one god of the Abrahamic religions but may have other beliefs in god, gods, or supernatural forces. The period when Dave called himself an atheist and the period when he believed there's "something out there" seem to overlap. Dave also seems to think that atheists walk around saying, "There is a god, in whom I do not believe.")

I am not a believer in any god. There ain't no such animal. I find it funny to watch all y'all argue over whose imaginary friend is best. This is no impediment to enjoying creative works that do not share my perspective, thanks to the technique of "willing suspension of disbelief". When I watch Star Wars, for sure I accept the existence of The Force in that universe. When I watch The Lord of the Rings, for sure I accept the existence of magic in that universe.

But I've been fortunate to share an appreciation of Cerebus with several friends who are believers of one sort or another. And there's not really a disconnect between them and me.

I have observed some common traits shared by people who take Dave Sim's phoolosophy seriously: 1) They've usually had their hearts broken by a girl, and never got over the phase of whining "They're all bitches!" at the strip club their friend took them to in an attempt to snap them out of it (Dave took his wife leaving him very hard); 2) They've often had a significant personal experience they interpret as coming from beyond (Dave himself, Tony D. above); 3) They usually have no knowledge of Biblical scholarship beyond catechism class in their particular sect (Dave denies the validity of such scholarship entirely); 4) They're usually politically conservative (and recall John Stuart Mill's famous dig); and 5) They're usually not very smart (sorry, there's no other way to say that, but I mean it descriptively, not pejoratively).

(Continued ...)

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

(... continued)

(That's another of the things I find funny about Dave: for someone who repeatedly claims that he tries to describe reality as accurately as he can, he is incredibly bad at it. That gives me a larf. But I really like creators -- such as Dave, or Steve Gerber -- who seem to be sending back reports from the world they live in, which ain't this one.)

It is Very, Very Important to Dave that he be unprecedented. It's not enough that he be good, very good, or even the best; he has to be unique -- sui generis, as Tony D. put it. (Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!) So Dave has to claim he's the first person to truly understand the Bible, the first person to come up with the Unified Field Theory. Of course he is neither. (Who is this "Mitch" to whom you attribute that very apt quotation, Mr. the Zealot? Ms. Google tells me that Timothy Keller said that.)

Dave never originated anything in his life. He didn't invent self-publishing, or TPB collections of comic-book arcs, or creators' rights, or graphically-integrated lettering, or stealing characters from other works, or photorealistic comics art, or masturbating without fantasizing, or misogyny, or right-wing reactionary politics, or picking and choosing which Bible verses he accepts, or any of the other accomplishments he's claimed or had imputed to him.

This is in no way to diminish Dave's very real accomplishments! He didn't invent self-publishing, but he certainly was the most vocal champion of it. Neal Adams did more for creators' rights, but Dave championed them in deed as well as word. He's not as good at caricature as Mort Drucker, or as good at photorealism as Alex Raymond, but he's a master at deploying other artists' styles at just the right moment in his own story. His use of layout to control pacing, the way his characters "act" their roles, I've said before that Dave was at one point the English-language cartoonist most in control of the medium.

So to bring it back around, I think the disconnect is not between "monotheists" and "secularists" (to use Brian W.'s terms), but between those who share Dave's prejudices and are not especially bright and those who do not and are. The former will agree with Dave (and agree that Dave is not a misogynist) and find him profound; the latter will disagree with Dave (and think he is a misogynist), and find his "thinking" to be (shall we say) flawed. The former believe he's a Great Thinker; the latter think he was a great cartoonist.

-- Damian

Antonius Minimus said...

Damian wrote (disclaimer: he may not have originated it), "(Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!)"

If that means "Your command of Latin sucks" then he's absolutely right...

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Mea culpa. I only ever took Latin 100, and that was a long time ago. I stole it from the Internet, which claims it means something like, "Everything sounds better if you say it in Latin." If you can translate that more properly, I'd be most appreciative. Thanks!

-- D.

Tony again said...

No no Damian, I was referring to my command of Latin. I was attempting some self-deprecating humor (sorry, that's "humour" up where you live).

I only know pithy phrases, picked up from pop culture and friends who teach/taught high school Latin (yes, there is still such a thing). I can't translate if my vita depends on it.

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Tony: Ah, sorry! Missed yer point. Sometimes I'm not the sharpest cookie in the drawer. I see I spelled "videtur" wrong, so the joke's also on me; a wise-ass remark is less successful if you're not wise about it. High-school Latin? I went to some pretty good schools, and some not-so-good schools, and none of them offered that. Wow.

-- Damian

Antonius Won't-go-awayicus (apologies to Chuck Jones) said...

This is a private, Christian school - Latin was still required in high school when my parents went in the late 50s, but was long gone from the public school curriculum, even as an elective, by "my day," circa 1980.