Thanks Mags! And Jesse!
This post originally appeared on the Cerebus Yahoo!Group way back in December of 2004. Since that time, the Yahoo!Groups have been dismantled, all the posts are gone. Except that some of them live on in my Gmail archives. So as I was looking into some information on the BRGWST in my gmail archives I came across this "phone interview" (as I had originally labeled it) between Jesse Lee Herndon and Dave Sim. Jesse said it could be reposted here - thanks Jesse! So the I in question below is him.
2pm on Saturday, I got the call. My caller ID said "Aardvark Vanaheim". It's one of those the reads it aloud, so it actually said something more like "A-Aired Vark Vah-nah-im" or something else incomprehensible. Upon answering, Dave immediately greeted me with a hearty "Merry Christmas!". I returned it, he confirmed who I was, and there was more exchange of pleasantries, ending with his asking if I had a happy Christmas. I said that it was good, but it's really different once you get older. He sympathized with me, talking about how his visit with the Kitchen family meant a lot to him, having a wonderful holiday meal and seeing the season through the children, it puts a different perspective on the Christmas season.
I asked how his lip was doing. The swelling went down after three days of repeated soaking in rubbing alcohol, which he mentioned to the effect that this is one point where if he had a wife she would've told him to go to the hospital. The scab is all that remains, giving him a, as he said, "Hitler mustache". I made the comment about how the Comics Journal would probably want that for their cover, which he laughed about. Then I repeated the "Jeff Smith paying the pavement" joke, which he also got a chuckle about.
I relayed to him my earliest Cerebus memory, which was a price guide mention of the counterfeits in Comics Buyer's Guide, which he mistook initially for my having discovered Cerebus via the Silverspoons strips. I then revealed to him I was born during the release date of one of the strips, which surely made him feel even older.
I brought up the wiki and how I'd been helping to work on it. He thanked me for it, having not visited it in some time, but recalling a lot of blank pages on the site way back when. I expressed my gratitude to Margaret for the wiki and her regular website, which he echoed, finding them valuable resources. Concerning a question I had related to work on the wiki, I asked him if he had a particular name for the stone floor in outer space dimension from "Magiking" (and repeated in issues 81 and 92), but he didn't recall off-hand ever having one in mind. This lead to a discussion of the BRGWST, that he only called it that because he needed to give it a name to have something to call it as it repeatedly appeared. He also talked at length about it. I wondered to him what the "Ignore it, it's just another reality" cover comment was about, and he explained about how BRGWST was another echo of the big bang and the universe. I brought up the "Reads" mention of our universe resembling BRGWST when seen from afar, and he relayed that it had a lot to do with the whole "expanding" away from God to turn away from God. He went into much detail about the subject, but stressed that as much as he knows, there's still a lot he probably didn't get "right". So I'm not doing his explanation justice whatsoever. I was surprised to hear he pronounces YHWH exactly as Y-H-W-H (I knew he didn't go with the "yoowhoo" one, but I just assumed he went with the common "yahweh" one).
I asked about the Issue 300 in the windowbox of the Off-White House. I've noticed it in the issue 301 picture from way back, and saw it still there on CerebusTV. Turns out, Dave recently switched it out to an issue of glamourpuss. It used to be the place for the most recent issue of Cerebus to go, and had been there since 300 came out. So now that it looks like glamourpuss is indeed sticking around, he's finally got the most recent one of those up there. I talked to him about glamourpuss, and how on CerebusTV it seems he really is enjoying working on it. He's actually happy with his work, and how I think it's great he's gone into "retirement" to do something he loves, especially after sticking with Cerebus way past the point of his own enjoyment (which he felt would be a good tagline "Cerebus: Way Past Enjoyment"). I mentioned how many reviews, people expressed their main interest in glamourpuss as being the historical sections. But with Dave, it's the fashion parodies at the front that he loves to do, the stuff he truly enjoys working on during each of the bi-monthly work cycles (which go something like every ten days per project). I also discussed my own view on photorealism getting a bad rap these past few years (I was thinking Greg Land, for instance), and how much the book deals with deconstructing the artform and showing better what it's capable of in storytelling. It's what he's always been interested in, and this isn't really something that had been getting such focus and discussion done on it in the comics realm in a while. He's glad glamourpuss is now getting attention, since it hadn't for so long, which is pretty much what happened with Cerebus.
Talked about Cerebus Archive. He's working on issue 12 now, which will be all about T. Casey Brennan. Going a little out of order for a reason. Well, twofold reason, of course. There's always a natural segue way to the skipping around in dates, but in this case, it also works since this'll involve two of his earliest bits, "A Boy and his Aardvark" and "Picture This". He said that he intentionally held off putting those in the first issues of CA, since they're so badly drawn he didn't want to run off too many readers right off the bat! I complimented him on his art and how much it improved over the years, yet even in the earliest work of his, even before his training with Gene and his own experience, there was something there that surely looked like his work (I can see Elrod's lankiness exactly in his Mister Miracle cover from his fanzine, for instance). He appreciated it.
Let me take this time to thank Brian Coppola for making this phone call possible. He had a question he was curious about, so I brought it up to Dave: about Crimson Alpha, from Revolt 3000, specifically the Cerebus stone plant holder and how it related to the chronology of Cerebus' evolution as a book. It was apparently drawn concurrent to Cerebus, either while issue 1 was being done, or exactly right after, as Crimson Alpha was the last of the four done (and he also mentioned Phantacea). He began mentioning aspects from that period, how it was being drawn in October 77 and how Deni took it to get something done or something... Needless to say, it's not the "comic panel" second drawing of Cerebus mentioned before. That was done before finding a comfort level with the character, which the planter bit would've come afterward. I'm sure we'll hear more about it eventually when Cerebus Archive gets to the Cerebus #1 era (which I didn't ask when that would be, but most likely within a year or so).
I asked about question that came up in relation to the wiki, about how Elrod was "poit"ed out of existence during "Reads", but showed up in the afterlife, and how that involved Joanne talking about him as her neighbor during "Guys". It goes like this: To make the "married to Jaka, living next door to Joanne" thing happen during "Minds", even to just Cerebus, "Dave" had to actually make it happen. He couldn't exactly un-make it. As such, Joanne became real, where she lived became real, and her neighbors had to be filled in to make up the fact Cerebus and Jaka didn't live there. Elrod was basically pulled back into existence to fill the gap, and as a result, he ended up married to Red Sophia (interesting observation, if only to me: Dave pronounces her name as "Sof-fi-ah" instead of "So-fee-uh"). And because of that, he was able to eventually end up in the "light". The "filling in" bit relates to how he figures God probably would have to do it, and why God doesn't do it, which relates to his view that there are no parallel realities (which he discussed during the start of "The Last Day").
As the call stretched close to an hour, Dave's 3pm prayer time was coming up. I made the Bissette reference of "Just one more thing, and then I'll let you go". He laughed. Dave makes me laugh my ass off every week on CerebusTV, so to make him even chuckle meant a lot to me.
I told him about much I loved CerebusTV. He stressed that if us fans want to see the older episodes become available on DVD or whatever, the best way to is to donate! It only barely squeaks along as it is, even just a couple of bucks once in a while would help to get expansions of it to branch out eventually. I told him I loved the C-Minus Kid, he told me he'll be back on the tentatively January 7th show. Then I brought up how I was the Cerebus Power Rangers headsketch guy, and Oliver (I'm pretty sure that was Oliver on the Cerebus Film FB page) had mentioned to me he'd seen it and it was hilarious. Dave was surprised to discover it was me, but confirmed that yes, C-Minus Kid rocking out to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers theme had been cracking up everybody for some time now and to look forward to it.
When talking about the wiki, I had brought up how it later appeared, to me at least, that Cerebus & Jaka's night together in issue 6 was later fleshed out retroactively to imply they'd slept together. Dave said he wouldn't go that far as to say that. Which makes me wonder if I misunderstood the later elaboration, and something I need to check up on eventually to see why the heck I got that wrong.
I told him how I felt "Guys" was my favorite of the stories, and how it had the most realistic, such as it was, depiction of what it's like to talk to yourself, at least for me. He talked about how there are a lot of people who don't do that sort of thing at all, never having internal monologues and the like. I also mentioned I liked "Melmoth" the least, and I explained why. But I did compliment him on his annotations, so much that I made sure to get the phone books for "Latter Days" and "The Last Day" just to read them, comparing the enjoyment of reading them to the similar ones in "From Hell", which he thanked me for the comparison.
I also mentioned how I had read the whole of the series over the past year, having started with the Bi-Weeklies and onto the original issues, because I wanted to read the Aardvark Comment and related back-up material. He seemed interested in my decision to do this (namely the condensing of 26 years of his life into pretty much a year of my own), and asked what my thoughts were on the experience. I said that it was fascinating, seeing how his views evolved over the course of the run, and how they shaped the book itself in the course. Dave, at one point, mentioned he'll probably "smoke a turd in Hell" for something. I can't remember what, but it may have been when the discussion went to how he lived over the years. I asked what had happened to "apricot brandy", which stopped being mentioned, and he discussed how when something that's an inside joke becomes a motif, he made a conscious decision to stop "overdoing" the recurrence. I brought up the "buggid o' scotch", and he talked about how much of a bad idea that was in practice. But Matt Dow used to have a toy bucket he'd carry around at parties, and I guess that alone was pretty much a lot of scotch, even as a gag.
As I've done here, I complimented him on the Torah commentaries. He talked about how during his Sabbath readings he keeps notebooks of comments he has, that he'll write down from time to time. He's got Genesis pretty much "thought out", but the later books, he's still figuring out and may never fully grasp them. He talked about how in "Latter Days" he knew he wouldn't get all the way through Genesis, even at such a small font. There was only so much space and so much he could ask of his audience to put up with.
It ended up running just a few minutes after 3. Dave wished me a Merry Christmas again, I returned the wish, and I thanked him for the call.
So, there you have it, with a few gaps, but pretty much covering all Dave and I discussed. It was a great conversation. He's just as loquacious and verbose as he is in text! Definitely a great Christmas present. Endless thanks to Dave for taking the time to talk to me.
1 comment:
Neat read!
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