Monday 31 May 2021

For the FIRST TIME EVER(!): Why an Aardvark? Part 5, "The Final Chapter"

Hi, Everybody!

And now,

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Well, Mags can't find the issue part five is in because it never was written or published. 

But Dave sent it to me and now I can give it to all of you...

Warning:


Having re-read all of Why an Aardvark?, I realized much, if not all of it, was reworked into The Many Origins of Cerebus

And (apparently, I don't have more than two issues of the series) in Cerebus Archive:
Dave & Deni: "Hi, Are You Harry?"
Dave & Deni: First Date
Dave & Deni: Parental Approval
The Cartoon Mascot Logo That Started It All!
(Thanks Tim!)

Anyway, there ya go Margaret...
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And Dave's most likely calling on Thursday, so get your questions in for Please Hold For Dave Sim 6/2021 to momentofcerebus@gmail.com.

Heritage has some interesting "Dave Sim" bits (Page from issue 5, and two (count 'em) TWO! Beavers strips!)

Up to 35% off site-wide:
Ends today, May 31
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!

Next Time: Why a Vanaheim?

9 comments:

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Always interesting to see how this individual who claims to have such a firm grasp of reality chooses to re-edit his own past to comport with his current feelings -- and, as usual, gets verifiable facts wrong.

1) Dave didn't leave Deni; she left him -- and he was devastated. Indeed, one could make an argument, after examining his writings since, that he never got over it. 2) Why should these cartoonists contact Dave about their own comics? He wasn't their publisher or editor or collaborator or anything. He claims now that was an illusion, but (even if you accept that, and you're under no obligation to) it was one he enthusiastically promulgated at the time. 3) Renegade referred to deserting the then-dominant (and certainly exploitative) practices of the comics industry -- a mission Dave spent years promoting. 4) Dave wasn't A-V, he was half of A-V, and it sounds like the division of the business's assets was handled pretty smoothly. 5) His third paragraph is a just a jumble of non sequiturs that presumably reflects his confused emotions and his schizophrenic apophenia. We see that again at the end -- "Just sayin'." 6) His sixth paragraph is simply wrong. Women abandoning their marriages (for any reason) were a minority in the '80s, and remain so today.

Cat Yronwode was (and is) a doofus, but blaming her solely for Eclipse's collapse is ... well, let's just say that, to Dave, it's always the girl's fault (those inferior beings who defeat men in every battle). Jan and Dean M. were doofi themselves in a different way. And, unlike Dave, Dean did leave his wife (does anyone remember who that was?).

And Dave's got some new magic words of his own: "compelled inference". I gather that he chants this to stiffen a flaccid argument, like rhetorical Viagra for his intellectual ED. The things that compel Dave are not things that exist in reality, they exist within him; he just can't tell the difference. Going through the Bible and saying, "This feels good to me, so it must be god ... Ooo, that feels bad to me, so it must be the living being at the centre of the Earth," is hardly theologically, critically, or scientifically sound.

-- Dame

Brian West said...

Damian, what are your proofs for points one and three thru four?

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Point 1 is confirmed by contemporaneous accounts from Deni (her Note from the Publisher said she was having second thoughts about the marriage, Dave (who has said multiple times that Deni left him, eg. in discussion the I Have to Live With This Guy book), and Dave's cousin (who said he took his divorce pretty hard). Point 3 I'll have to find a source for (TCJ? Sorry, this'll take me a while; I'm having the library painted, and everything's in boxes), but that was the contemporaneous understanding. Point 4 is from Dave's statements at the time, since, and now; he and Deni each owned half of A-V (more specifically, he owned 51 percent and she owned 49 percent). When the owners of a corporation decide they must part, dividing the assets of the corporation is often delicate and sticky; Dave and Deni seemed to handle it about as well as most I've seen.

-- Damian

Brian West said...

Thank you, Damian.

Jeff said...

Dame, why do you have such a hard-on for Dave? You don't even support his work (not on the published list of 642 supporters of TSDOAR). Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, Dave has never suffered from schizophrenia. He was once misdiagnosed as having borderline schizophrenia, but odd behavior under the influence of hallucinogens (in his case an LSD flashback) does not equate to borderline schizophrenia. As for apophenia, I will grant that Dave, as do many intelligent, creative people, sees patterns in unrelated things. Apophenia is defined in part as a precursor to schizophrenia, but I believe that the vast majority of people who exhibit apophenia do not experience schizophrenia. Tell me you've never seen shapes in cloud formations. If, indeed, you have, that means that you've exhibited apophenia. I can say that you seem to have a lot of problems, but schizophrenia does not seem to be one of them.

Could you just give the Sim character assassination a rest, please?

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

"Hard-on for Dave" is funny, considering the source harbours the most overtly homoerotic devotion among Dave's fans. Pointing out someone's lies is not the same as character assassination. As for Dave's mental health, I will always take the word of a doctor who's examined Dave over an academic fraud who hasn't, no matter how insistent said fraud becomes.

-- Dame

Tony Dunlop said...

I just knew "compelled inference" would catch Damian's attention! Deft rhetorical sleight-of-hand or ham-fisted rhetorical scaffolding (to mix a metaphor)? You decide!

And yes, he's our resident curmudgeon, but he does get to the heart of the matter sometimes; case in point, Dave's hermeneutical lens: "This feels good to me, so it must be (G)od ... Ooo, that feels bad to me, so it must be the living being at the centre of the Earth(...)" just about sums it up.

Jeff said...

Dame, I am not an "academic fraud". Quit posting lies about me. I never said that I had two Master's degrees in psychology. I said that I have the equivalent of two and I was referring to my classwork.

Also, Dave has never suffered from schizophrenia or the borderline variety. Acid flashbacks do not equate to schizophrenia. And, M.D.s (especially M.D.s making psychological diagnoses) misdiagnose all the time. Differential diagnosis is a time-consuming bitch of a process and most doctors think that it is beneath them. The "God Complex" makes that viewpoint de rigeur.

Besides, have you ever spent time in Dave's company? Are you a psychologist? I have and I am. And, I can say that a person who owns and manages his own company, and works 12 hours a day, six days a week, is demonstratively not suffering from schizophrenia.

Please stop trolling.

Anonymous said...

Hi Dame,

I have a few comments regarding your initial post:

1) "Dave didn't leave Deni; she left him" - I read the whole thing and I don't see any statement to the contrary. It SEEMS you believe he was stating HE left Deni, but I see nothing like that in the whole piece. ???

2) "Why should these cartoonists contact Dave about their own comics?" - Well, before the split he DID own 51% of the publishing company, and they WERE known to be a couple. If I were a comic artist intending to have my comic published by a couple's company, and I heard from either of the couple that they were forming a new entity - well, I wouldn't want MY comic to be caught in personal split/divorce crossfire. But Dave's words are pretty clear - he is saying Deni went behind his back and got the A-V roster to come with HER to a NEW company she was forming. And by what I read, it's matter-of-fact: since no one called DAVE, he did not fight for HIS portion of the contracts with those artists. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply regarding this point.

3) "Renegade referred to deserting the then-dominant (and certainly exploitative) practices of the comics industry -- a mission Dave spent years promoting." - And he's using an actual definition (admittedly not a flattering one) for contrast. Not sure what it is that's not transparent here.

4) "Dave wasn't A-V, he was half of A-V, and it sounds like the division of the business's assets was handled pretty smoothly." - The way I understand it, when he states "I - that is, AV" is referring to the split - he gets to keep Cerebus and AV, Deni got to form her own company with the rest of the former AV roster. I see no intention to mischaracterize, as you seem to imply.

5) "His third paragraph is a just a jumble of non sequiturs that presumably reflects his confused emotions and his schizophrenic apophenia. We see that again at the end -- "Just sayin'."" - This is just straight up Ad Hominem. If you read the Gaiman story, you'll realize the story is about cats making the world the way they want it by dreaming. If the term "Tabby Dreams" reminds him of a story where cats want to change reality by dreaming makes someone schizophrenic whatever, I won't be surprised if, TO YOU, EVERYONE'S schizophrenic. As for the "Just Saying" - it's so obvious it's hard to believe you are being serious here: can you HONESTLY say you DON'T see the implication that Preney went out of business *because of* the Renegade inventory fiasco? I reeally have to question your reading comprehension if you don't get that. Just saying.

6) "His sixth paragraph is simply wrong. Women abandoning their marriages (for any reason) were a minority in the '80s, and remain so today." - Uh, NO. The only way what you say is true is if you INTERPRET "abandon" as just up and leaving, never to be heard from again, which is just - well, disingenuous. He uses the word "abandon" to refer to "renegade men like [himself]." So it should be clear this is not the correct interpretation. Women are the main filers for divorce, 70% to 80% depending on the community you study. I don't know if they always leave for "feminist autonomy" but "reasons" I personally am cognizant of include: "I'm not happy" "I was bored" "He didn't earn enough" "the house wasn't clean enough." However, I don't see a reason to malign Dave Sim if it so happens he was not accurate in his OPINION on such cultural matters. Guess he needs feminist concentration camp to arrive at the "correct" viewpoints, yeah?

-JV