Please Hold For Dave Sim 2/2021

"oh $#!* he's gonna keep doing this?"
Yes, yes I am...
(Thanks to Ben Hobbs for assistance with the blacks.)
((The color in the image, not the people.))
((Racsists...)))

What? I think it's funny...

First up the Audio, for you people who enjoy that kind of thing:

And then the videos for you people who enjoy seeing part of the AMOCave, and my fun drawings

Part 1: Dave has a special message for everybody who has a damaged Halloween Edition from cerebusdownloads.com:

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Part 2: Dave answers Paul Slade's question:

Dear AMOC,

Greetings. Hope everyone’s safe and well.

It’s been a while since we’ve had an update on remastering and release of the phonebooks, and I’m very curious to know where that programme stands at the moment. Here's my questions:

Which volume is now at the front of the queue for release and what’s the best estimate on when that release might come? Is it weeks away? Months? Over a year? I realise the scheduling of these books is a complicated matter at the best of times, relying largely on Diamond’s existing stock of each un-remastered volume, but any indication you can give would be good to have.

I ask because it’s the remastered trades which interest me far more than anything else AV is putting out at the moment. I get the impression that the focus has now drifted away from that programme, which would be disappointing if true.

Cerebus in Hell? doesn’t appeal to me, but I’ve been buying every issue anyway in the hopes that this will help to raise money for the continued remastering of the trades (which I think was the book’s original purpose?). Personally, I’m not interested in the remastered original issues either, but a lot of other people clearly are, so I’m hoping they might be helping to finance the future trades programme too. Is that the case?

I’ve already got a near-complete Cerebus collection in the original issues, plus all eight of the remastered trades, and it’s these trades which I’ve found to give the saga’s most satisfying reading experience. It’s also wonderful to see the art with Sean’s meticulous restoration and reproduction work, of course.

I’m looking forward to Carson's expanded edition of SDoAR too, though I don’t think I shall bother with YDKJ.

Thanks very much.
Paul

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Part 3: Dave answers Rich L's question/comment: 

Ideas for t-shirt designs, a bit of philosophy at the end, and declaration of non-ownership.

Hi. Hope your bone fragments are starting to settle into their new homes.

I think he meant my finger, but Dave didn't. 

While I think Springtee (I think that's the name) is pitching you a load of sales PR, like a car sales man. Hey are some design ideas that can help get the number of designs (that will push you over the top into real folding-money profits).

He means The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe, which is on sale:

Your store will be on sale:

Feb 10-12

Feb 24-27

Tell your fans! Remind them that everything will be up to 35% off! That means $13 tees, $20 phone cases, $30 hoodies, and way more. 

Feel free to share these with Dave. Something might tickle him. The tourist designs of places from the phonebooks and of Dave's environs seem like a really good idea the more I think about it and roll them around in my mind.

Anyway:
1. A design with Jaka. So obvious. Maybe a super pretty/sexy version. Maybe another with a shy look. Maybe one with an "I just destroyed the world?" look...an innocent look of evil. Beatrice, Jaka is not...regardless of CIH?
2. I would like to see a subdued design of when Dave showed up in the book. A design as subtle as possible.
3. A pretend bar shirt like you see in real life. Living in Wisconsin you must see these several times a day. At least one tavern on every street corner...a Wisconsin true-to-life fact.
4. I am sure there must be other taverns and businesses in the book. Prime material for a slow-roll out campaign in the store. Add a new one every other month or so.
5. An F. Scott Fitzgerald design would capture people who aren't fans yet. A design for Zelda would work. An innocent, destroyer-of-world-that-is-Woman design. Allowing Dave to pound a theme of his but subtle so that the Zelda fans will overlook the evil she represented in their "fiction." The boat would make a design for the places collection. S.S. Gilded Cage with a port of Xanadu (I can't remember their name for that unachievable paradistic land. Or the boat.)
6. A Hemingway design with him sitting with one of his six-toed cats. Carefully drawn so you don't notice Hemingway's lack of pants. A potential for less funny Hemingway designs for non fans as well.
7. Any design that captures the weight of the snow. Bonus points for capturing Dave's theme for the snow.
8. A design capturing the moon scenes and the starscapes.
9. A simple one color line drawing of the "hero" Dave hates so much. Maybe with a few words capturing Dave's distrust of his fuzzy-bear creation that stole his life.
10. A fictitious pizza place with an aardvark and turtle logo. Part of the places series.
11. There's potential for a phonebook design. The weight of the work. "It took 24 years, 6,000 pages, and an uncountable number of lives to bring you the story of the most-hated man in comics." More or less. Pair that with "Cerebus doesn't care" and a drawing of Cerebus with a Kitchner phone book. Another line sticks up in my mind..."You can't create 6,000 of work without knowing what you're doing." Or, "Twenty- four pages is all you need to tell any story...it takes 6,000 pages to run away from your story." Near-like.
12. A Che-shirt of Dave. I've got a set of these of the Austrians (Von Mises, etc.). A flat, minimal image of Dave's face with a quote from Dave. Near-like "You hate me because I'm right." I can send photos of the shirts I have so you can not make look like a Che knock-off.
13. Canada's favorite son and his pet aardvark. One dimensional cutout out of cerebus from that strange Maple Leap confederation logo.
14. Kitchener, Ontario: Aardvark Capital of the world. With a Kitchner landmark and a hidden Cerebus.
15. An Off-White House designs: where dreams come true and turn into nightmares. Better idea would to make a tourist sort of design like the Kitchner idea.
16. I don't remember the name of Dave's museum but a tourist design for that.
17. A design of a bunch of real-life-style aardvarks with Cerebus standing among them with a mug and a cigar with a bemused look on his face. Or maybe a dismissive look to better match Dave's themes.
18. "Quality comics are measured by the pound. Give me my Eisner already."
19. I think you could needle Margaret in a way she'll love with an official archivist design. "Studying the unknown, Finding the Nobody-Wants-to-Know." Or some inside-baseball you guys are better equipped to express.
20. Would love to see a Beagle Boys design of you cover credited CIH? creator folks. Your names on the prisoner caps.
21. A must have design...A CIH? design that captures the existential crisis that drives/drove the development of the idea. Not just the "what comes next" of Cerebus that laid the skeleton but the angst that is motivating Dave as an artist. Again, not mortgage payments. A Dore cutout, a Cerebus, and a few words capturing how the fuzzy bear ruined Dave's life. Art is a motivation expressed to be shared with people who, even if they cared (and they don't), can't understand your art anyway. One you open yourself to the muses you lose control of your work/mind/life. The weight of your creation never leaves your shoulders. Everyone wants to know what it means, but noone believes. And of course it stopped meaning that before the ink dried on the first (transformative) issue. Art doesn't exist. What we call art is recreated everytime it is viewed. Even those hairy guys blowing mud over their hands onto cave walls. How did I get off into philosophy?

I can rough up some of these designs if you want. Used to be good at it until I got eaten-up by disease and pushed out on medical leave.

Rich.
P.S. These ideas are shared with no intention of recompense and no claim of ownership. R.

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Part 4: Jeff Seiler left another phone message:

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Part 5: Dave answers a question from Please Hold Virgin: Gary Boyarski!

This is my first time writing in for the Please Hold For Dave Sim. I confess, I haven't listened to them all either, so apologize if this one has already been asked.

Here goes...

Hi Dave, the Waverly Press reprinting was exceptionally well done, and I hear you have plans to do the same with issue two.

Alot of people always ask when, if ever, the "young Cerebus" stories will ever be collected. Is that something you may consider for a future Kickstarter project? Either as single issues with multiple covers, or a one volume collection?
-Gary Boyarski

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Part 6: Dave answers Michael R., the Pride & Joy of Easton, Pennsylvania question:

Hi Matt! Questions for Dave.

Hi Dave!

I'm not sure if this was ever asked of you about Cerebus' name.

In the Latter Days phone book on page 15, Mrs. Gursky told Mr. Gursky that if he wasn't man enough to " Scratch my hitch! Maybe I'll go and see Fred!" And in parenthesis, "Cerebus was going by the name "Fred" since "Cerebus" had been dad's last name which -- for obvious reasons Cerebus didn't feel entitled to use anymore."

So my questions are if Cerebus' dad's last name was Cerebus and Cerebus was using "Fred" because Cerebus wasn't "entitled" to use it anymore, was Cerebus' first name "Fred"? What did his dad call him?

Also, I know how you accidently came up with the name Cerebus, But is there an origin on why Cerebus' dad had the name Cerebus? If that makes sense.
Michael

And then I FINALLY tell Dave about a character that exists only in my head, but who's probably coming to Cerebus in Hell?: Fernando the Aardvark!

Speaking of Cerebus in Hell?:

Cerebus in Hell?

Order now:

Cerebus the Duck

Swords of Cerebus in Hell? 

Available in stores now: Cerebus in Hell? 2021 (the cover screw up delayed it a week...)

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Part 7: Dave answers Official Scribe of Please Hold, Jesse Lee Herndon's question:

Hi Dave,

Hope you're doing well. I have three questions for you this month:

As the unofficial transcriber of Please Hold for Dave Sim, I must ask, what do you recall about the transcriber of Cerebus' commentaries in "Latter Days"? He is only referred to as "me", both in the text and on the covers. There's never any visual depiction, just like there had not been for the prior Legion of Substitute Wise Fellows who did the same job, and I presume that was so as for there to be just one less character to have to draw.

Since the Waverly Press remastered edition of it is coming soon, what's the story of your personal copy of Cerebus #2? I remember seeing it in an episode or two of CerebusTV, and noticed how bad the condition is. It seems very "lived in". How did it end up in such a state, when your copies of surrounding issues (that I've seen in those videos) didn't look nearly as worn?

As someone whose only real Will Eisner experience is through a reprint of The Spirit #1 and his story with you and Gerhard in Cerebus Jam, what books of his should I start with? Obviously "A Contract with God" is the big one, but what others?

Thanks,
Jesse Herndon

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Part 8: As I say in my notes "And the rest..."
Dave answers:

Hi Dave. I recently finished reading all of Cerebus. I kinda liked it.

Anyway, I was going to ask, "Was the mention of Mary Hemingway (as opposed to Ernestway) on page 117 of Latter Days a typo, or something with a hidden meaning?" But then I checked and saw page 128 had it as "Ernestway." So I'll just ask the less interesting question, "How about that typo on page 117 of Latter Days?"

It'd make for good small-talk, at least.
-Dan

These images:

Dave Kopperman asked:

Matt: I got a 'please hold-um' -

Dave: I realized just a little while ago that "Glamourpuss" and Crumb's "Art & Beauty" are, on a fundamental level, twinned enterprises. Both feature their respective creators doing their best pen & ink work of women, using photographic resources, and in both cases these pin-up drawings are paired with a somewhat ironic narration as if written by a third-person for a traditional lifestyle publication (ie, these aren't personal essays, but commentary written from the POV of a fictional or distanced persona).

And as near as I can tell, the inspiration was similar for both artists - wanting to just do 'pure' drawing, and then contextualizing it with text and marketing it as a comic publication.

It's a little difficult to figure out exactly when the two stand-alone Art & Beauty issues were released or even if that was the first iteration, but I think it was in the early 2000's (2002-2003). Were you aware of it when you conceived of Glamourpuss or at any point during the lifespan of that book?

And on a higher level, as someone who really REALLY knows how to analyze linework, what's your take on the differences in approach between yourself and Crumb?

Thanks!

And Tony Dunlop asked:

Tacking onto Dave K's question: Has Dave read Crumb's (wonderful and surprisingly respectful, if not reverent) illustrated "Book of Genesis?"

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Hemingway in Comics: https://www.booktable.net/ https://www.centuriesandsleuths.com/

Heritage has some interesting "Dave Sim" bits

Nah Iguana, this is the end of the rigamarole...

That's code "IEST" for 10% off at cerebusoverload.com.  Good through February 14th.

Next Time: Will AMOC News invade Oliver's weekly round up?