Where I stole this from.
In examining my first draught of ”Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark Vanaheim” (the more avid reader will recall that I said that the original piece had “gone off in too many directions at once”), it sees clear that I was labouring under the same schism which existed in my life at the time — the war between my “comic-book life” and my “real life.” It is significant that the former has always been more real to me than the latter. Viewed accurately, my comic-book life predates my real life by many years. My encyclopedic knowledge of comic-book history (in its seminal aspect concerned with the first appearances of various characters, later with the careers, styles, and development of writers and artists I admired) occupied a disproportionately large percentage of my memory and thought processes. These elements which make up a “real life” (as in “get a life”) —job, girlfriend, friendships — existed in the outer fringes of the theoretical. At the age of twenty — getting my first apartment, meeting Deni, holding down a part-time job at Now & Then Books, moving into a new apartment with Deni, entertaining her brother and sister and friends on a regular basis — real life became an accompaniment to my comic- book existence (albeit a minor key in the larger musical work). Comic books still dominated. My first apartment was all drawing board and art supplies, promotional brochures for my studio which I had christened COMlCgraphics, tear sheets and news clippings filling the corkboard wall which separated the single living room/bedroom from the kitchenette, the limited drawer and cupboard space occupied by comic books and reference books; clothes I had owned since high school were an afterthought jammed into leftover corners and secondary spaces.
In a short space of time Deni was pressed into service as an agent for my commercial art skills, her brother collaborated with me on a handful of comic-book stories, our apartment was the studio and Aardvark-Vanaheim fanzine-publishing office. In retrospect it was the stuff of situation comedies — relatively normal French-Canadian family runs afoul of obsessive comic-book person, his-world divided into That Which Will Advance the Career and Everything Else. The square peg met the round hole and began chiseling right angles into the curvilinear symmetry in the name of the Higher Calling.
It is recognized that those human elements — the situation-comedy episodes which tended to degenerate into minor tragedies mid arguments, numbing in their relentless. . . relentlessness? — are doubtless of interest to the general readership: First Love Gone Awry, Portrait of the Artist as Young Suitor, etc., etc. It is one of the false directions referred to in the admission of the first failure. It was a story, but it was not the story which concerned me.
The reader had been left with the dawning of my insight that Gene Day’s career (my primary template at the time) had jumped the rails of real progress in my view) and left casting about for my own natural “next step.” Gene’s rationale for his career course — his obligations as husband and homeowner informing the largest part of his motivation — fueled the first insight that “real life” and “comic-book life” might exist in diametric opposition to each other. The Big House on First Street with its Big Mortgage took center stage in my mentor’s life. Divided into two dwellings -- one for his studio and residence, the other rented out — his goal was to unite the two. The many rooms would reflect his varied interests — a Second World War diorama, a studio to practice guitar, a library to house his enormous comic-book, magazine, and sci-fi collection, a House of Shadows publishing office, his studio. The steady paycheck from Marvel became the means to achieve the end — keep Marvel happy and the cash flow could be maintained; a maintained cash flow made the Castle Day a genuine possibility.
The discerning reader will recognize a large measure of Viktor Davis’ genesis in the above — in this case the marital residence itself serving as a creative void to devour his energies and idealism. Unfortunate, because Gene’s marriage (on the Viktor Davis scale) was good one. Gale was always understanding and indulgent of the time and energy required for his artistic priorities. . .and contributed equally to their shared life.
As the young Dave Sim of twenty-odd (some very odd) summers surveyed his own circumstance, the Big House on First Street became a thing to avoid. He had no intention of becoming a slave to the large expenditure, making career choices on the basis of “real-world” givens and requirements. As he eyed his lifemate (measuring her against Gale’s contribution to Gene’s career), he could congratulate himself that he, too, had chosen wisely. He intended to conquer the world, to become indescribably wealthy and equally famous, and made no secret of that ambition with his wife-to-be. For her part, had it not been an article of faith with Deni from a very early age that she would someday (as she considered her future) be the Woman Behind the Great Man? How suited they were to each other! Two halves of an equation, each biding their time until the opposite number could be located and Real Life (as opposed to “real life”) could begin in earnest. If her premonition had fallen more along musical lines, if the “other half’ she anticipated was perceived to be more on the order of a George Harrison or a Stephen Stills, her flexibility in giving her ardent young comic-book suitor the benefit of the doubt (she asserted that he had “George Harrison's eyes” — fortuitous happenstance to be sure!) spoke to his belief that rock ‘n’ roll had had its day, and the wisest and most alert of the late-Twentieth-Century Muses and Significant Others were placing their bets on those Young Lions of Sequential Art as the brightest of the bright, young men.
Does my pen drip irony here? Not at all, not at all, dear reader I enunciate my misapprehension of the time. There is no difficulty in perceiving the flaw in retrospect, touching as it does on the hidden realities which constitute love and marriage at odds with creative ambition. Not for small reason did a significant part of my ex-wife’s interview in The Comics Journal on the subject of the notorious issue 186 center on my assertions regarding John Lennon. She opined that I had switched philosophies in midstream — denouncing the ex-Beatle icon for wasting much of the last years of his creative life holed up in the Dakota, smoking pot, compulsively channel-surfing, baking bread, and minding the kid.
We were all, you see, John and Yoko back then.
One of Lennon’s spiritual offspring had been inspired — as a likewise halfhearted inmate of an archetypal English art school of the time —to abandon the safety and insular security of his circumstance and (in answering the clarion call of his creativity) to set his course for North America and the selfsame metropolis where the Beatles had debarked a handful of years before. Though the Marvel offices of the day were a far cry from the Ed Sullivan theater and penciling assignments on moribund titles like X-Men. (deader than a doornail at the time) a more flaccid pass at the brass ring even than singing background vocals on a Tony Sheridan single, still the metaphor sustains itself. Barry Smith (pre-Windsor) constituted the whole of the 1960s comic-book British Invasion. Beatles, Stones, Animals, Dave Clark Five et al. rolled into one (as Stan Lee, christened him) Bashful Brit.
Meeting Barry Smith for the fist time in 1973 when he was riding the wave of success that his work on Conan had conferred upon him— no, more accurately, cresting upon the tsunami of his “Red Nails” adaptation which hurled him, in one go, from the ranks of the relentlessly progressing talent into the Pantheon of the Indisputably Great — I met his “Yoko” as well: colourist and Gorblimey Press business manager, Linda Lessman.
memoir
WHY AN AARDVARK?
part three
In examining my first draught of ”Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark Vanaheim” (the more avid reader will recall that I said that the original piece had “gone off in too many directions at once”), it sees clear that I was labouring under the same schism which existed in my life at the time — the war between my “comic-book life” and my “real life.” It is significant that the former has always been more real to me than the latter. Viewed accurately, my comic-book life predates my real life by many years. My encyclopedic knowledge of comic-book history (in its seminal aspect concerned with the first appearances of various characters, later with the careers, styles, and development of writers and artists I admired) occupied a disproportionately large percentage of my memory and thought processes. These elements which make up a “real life” (as in “get a life”) —job, girlfriend, friendships — existed in the outer fringes of the theoretical. At the age of twenty — getting my first apartment, meeting Deni, holding down a part-time job at Now & Then Books, moving into a new apartment with Deni, entertaining her brother and sister and friends on a regular basis — real life became an accompaniment to my comic- book existence (albeit a minor key in the larger musical work). Comic books still dominated. My first apartment was all drawing board and art supplies, promotional brochures for my studio which I had christened COMlCgraphics, tear sheets and news clippings filling the corkboard wall which separated the single living room/bedroom from the kitchenette, the limited drawer and cupboard space occupied by comic books and reference books; clothes I had owned since high school were an afterthought jammed into leftover corners and secondary spaces.
In a short space of time Deni was pressed into service as an agent for my commercial art skills, her brother collaborated with me on a handful of comic-book stories, our apartment was the studio and Aardvark-Vanaheim fanzine-publishing office. In retrospect it was the stuff of situation comedies — relatively normal French-Canadian family runs afoul of obsessive comic-book person, his-world divided into That Which Will Advance the Career and Everything Else. The square peg met the round hole and began chiseling right angles into the curvilinear symmetry in the name of the Higher Calling.
It is recognized that those human elements — the situation-comedy episodes which tended to degenerate into minor tragedies mid arguments, numbing in their relentless. . . relentlessness? — are doubtless of interest to the general readership: First Love Gone Awry, Portrait of the Artist as Young Suitor, etc., etc. It is one of the false directions referred to in the admission of the first failure. It was a story, but it was not the story which concerned me.
The reader had been left with the dawning of my insight that Gene Day’s career (my primary template at the time) had jumped the rails of real progress in my view) and left casting about for my own natural “next step.” Gene’s rationale for his career course — his obligations as husband and homeowner informing the largest part of his motivation — fueled the first insight that “real life” and “comic-book life” might exist in diametric opposition to each other. The Big House on First Street with its Big Mortgage took center stage in my mentor’s life. Divided into two dwellings -- one for his studio and residence, the other rented out — his goal was to unite the two. The many rooms would reflect his varied interests — a Second World War diorama, a studio to practice guitar, a library to house his enormous comic-book, magazine, and sci-fi collection, a House of Shadows publishing office, his studio. The steady paycheck from Marvel became the means to achieve the end — keep Marvel happy and the cash flow could be maintained; a maintained cash flow made the Castle Day a genuine possibility.
The discerning reader will recognize a large measure of Viktor Davis’ genesis in the above — in this case the marital residence itself serving as a creative void to devour his energies and idealism. Unfortunate, because Gene’s marriage (on the Viktor Davis scale) was good one. Gale was always understanding and indulgent of the time and energy required for his artistic priorities. . .and contributed equally to their shared life.
As the young Dave Sim of twenty-odd (some very odd) summers surveyed his own circumstance, the Big House on First Street became a thing to avoid. He had no intention of becoming a slave to the large expenditure, making career choices on the basis of “real-world” givens and requirements. As he eyed his lifemate (measuring her against Gale’s contribution to Gene’s career), he could congratulate himself that he, too, had chosen wisely. He intended to conquer the world, to become indescribably wealthy and equally famous, and made no secret of that ambition with his wife-to-be. For her part, had it not been an article of faith with Deni from a very early age that she would someday (as she considered her future) be the Woman Behind the Great Man? How suited they were to each other! Two halves of an equation, each biding their time until the opposite number could be located and Real Life (as opposed to “real life”) could begin in earnest. If her premonition had fallen more along musical lines, if the “other half’ she anticipated was perceived to be more on the order of a George Harrison or a Stephen Stills, her flexibility in giving her ardent young comic-book suitor the benefit of the doubt (she asserted that he had “George Harrison's eyes” — fortuitous happenstance to be sure!) spoke to his belief that rock ‘n’ roll had had its day, and the wisest and most alert of the late-Twentieth-Century Muses and Significant Others were placing their bets on those Young Lions of Sequential Art as the brightest of the bright, young men.
Does my pen drip irony here? Not at all, not at all, dear reader I enunciate my misapprehension of the time. There is no difficulty in perceiving the flaw in retrospect, touching as it does on the hidden realities which constitute love and marriage at odds with creative ambition. Not for small reason did a significant part of my ex-wife’s interview in The Comics Journal on the subject of the notorious issue 186 center on my assertions regarding John Lennon. She opined that I had switched philosophies in midstream — denouncing the ex-Beatle icon for wasting much of the last years of his creative life holed up in the Dakota, smoking pot, compulsively channel-surfing, baking bread, and minding the kid.
We were all, you see, John and Yoko back then.
One of Lennon’s spiritual offspring had been inspired — as a likewise halfhearted inmate of an archetypal English art school of the time —to abandon the safety and insular security of his circumstance and (in answering the clarion call of his creativity) to set his course for North America and the selfsame metropolis where the Beatles had debarked a handful of years before. Though the Marvel offices of the day were a far cry from the Ed Sullivan theater and penciling assignments on moribund titles like X-Men. (deader than a doornail at the time) a more flaccid pass at the brass ring even than singing background vocals on a Tony Sheridan single, still the metaphor sustains itself. Barry Smith (pre-Windsor) constituted the whole of the 1960s comic-book British Invasion. Beatles, Stones, Animals, Dave Clark Five et al. rolled into one (as Stan Lee, christened him) Bashful Brit.
Meeting Barry Smith for the fist time in 1973 when he was riding the wave of success that his work on Conan had conferred upon him— no, more accurately, cresting upon the tsunami of his “Red Nails” adaptation which hurled him, in one go, from the ranks of the relentlessly progressing talent into the Pantheon of the Indisputably Great — I met his “Yoko” as well: colourist and Gorblimey Press business manager, Linda Lessman.
In my casting about for a more solid, more viable template for my efforts, this seemed ideal. For had Barry Smith not transcended the cul-de-sac of the career of the Marvel freelancer? Did he not represent the Next Best Step for the Gene Days of the comic-book world? If it was true that he was fully engaged in the making of pictures which became prints and so - outside of the comic-book field (except for the promised Robin Hood graphic novel inching, one supposed, towards completion), still the structure was sound. John and Yoko, Barry and Linda, Dave and Deni.
Life is nothing without its intrinsic ironies. On the only occasion when the paths of Barry-and-Linda and Dave-and-Deni crossed (a convention in Albany in 1980 or ’81), I remember being sought out by Linda, who had just finished a conversation with Deni in which the Aardvark-Vanaheim publisher and minority shareholder (49% to my 51%) had laid bare the entirety of her spouse’s cherished template – giving credit where it was due at the least, but more likely surrendering to excess and paying homage to Linda as the Spiritual Role Model of her professional existence.
The distortion was too great for someone of Linda’s intrinsic honesty to accommodate or dismiss offhandedly. So there I was, being read chapter and verse on the reality of the situation. She was not Barry’s business manager – “helper” struck closer to the mark. She did the bookkeeping, the banking, wrapped and mailed packages, kept track of invoices. I understood. It was impossible not to, since it was important to Linda that the truth be known. It would be clear in later years that I had been guilty of a fundamental distortion at a critical juncture. At the time, however, Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark-Vanaheim were embarked upon a course which compound the misapprehension – seeking out other talents whose work we would publish, or, more accurately – the amendment is critical to the point of my thesis – talents whose work Deni would publish. It is too oblique to assert that – as a spiritual grandson of John Lennon – I had decided that my Yoko would have less in common with Lennon’s first wife Cynthia than with Beatle manager and guru Brian Epstein?
Revelation awaited even as I – we – pursued a course doomed to failure. While we didn’t have the monetary resources necessary to attract the brighter lights of the comic-book field after the fashion of the failed Apple Corp. experiment (it would be left to Kevin Eastman and his Turtle Millions to reinforce the lesson with Tundra Publishing), still it had the excruciating lure of the logic of the next step.
Life is nothing without its intrinsic ironies. On the only occasion when the paths of Barry-and-Linda and Dave-and-Deni crossed (a convention in Albany in 1980 or ’81), I remember being sought out by Linda, who had just finished a conversation with Deni in which the Aardvark-Vanaheim publisher and minority shareholder (49% to my 51%) had laid bare the entirety of her spouse’s cherished template – giving credit where it was due at the least, but more likely surrendering to excess and paying homage to Linda as the Spiritual Role Model of her professional existence.
The distortion was too great for someone of Linda’s intrinsic honesty to accommodate or dismiss offhandedly. So there I was, being read chapter and verse on the reality of the situation. She was not Barry’s business manager – “helper” struck closer to the mark. She did the bookkeeping, the banking, wrapped and mailed packages, kept track of invoices. I understood. It was impossible not to, since it was important to Linda that the truth be known. It would be clear in later years that I had been guilty of a fundamental distortion at a critical juncture. At the time, however, Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark-Vanaheim were embarked upon a course which compound the misapprehension – seeking out other talents whose work we would publish, or, more accurately – the amendment is critical to the point of my thesis – talents whose work Deni would publish. It is too oblique to assert that – as a spiritual grandson of John Lennon – I had decided that my Yoko would have less in common with Lennon’s first wife Cynthia than with Beatle manager and guru Brian Epstein?
Revelation awaited even as I – we – pursued a course doomed to failure. While we didn’t have the monetary resources necessary to attract the brighter lights of the comic-book field after the fashion of the failed Apple Corp. experiment (it would be left to Kevin Eastman and his Turtle Millions to reinforce the lesson with Tundra Publishing), still it had the excruciating lure of the logic of the next step.
The lessons I would learn would come hard and fast, fast and hard. Even as the Dakota Acolytes began leaking word of what had actually gone on — Lennon channel-surfing as Yoko, in Studio One, spent endless hours on the phone "making all her nowhere plans for nobody" — the irony was compounded and compounded again.
With the publication of Neil the Horse number one, the seeds of destruction had been sown, fertilized, and watered.
It is left to left to the next installment to describe how this particular garden grew.
Next: Business versus Creativity
With the publication of Neil the Horse number one, the seeds of destruction had been sown, fertilized, and watered.
It is left to left to the next installment to describe how this particular garden grew.
Next: Business versus Creativity
______________________________
Sean Robinson is your Huckleberry:
Hello everyone,So, GIT YER SURVEYS IN!!!! (Please.)
Please allow Carson, Dave, and myself to thank you one more time for contributing to such a fantastic campaign. We're over the moon with the response to the book, and are quickly moving forward with the next steps.
In the meanwhile:
Digital Stretch Goal ... Almost?
We got so close to our digital stretch goal of $58,000, and even closer when we add up all the post-campaign emails asking for a few more items to add, so we're going to honor that goal. Which means everyone who pledged to the campaign will receive a digital download of the Preliminary Strange Death. In addition, everyone who pledged for a book tier will also receive a digital download of the finished book. We hope you enjoy!
Secondly, and most importantly from a time perspective: You should now have your rewards surveys in your email inbox! This is a quick questionnaire we put together to gather the data we need for campaign fulfillment. It's important you fill this out as soon as you can! Fortunately, about 2/3s of your have already taken care of it. If we can get 100 percent of responses by the end of the week, that would be tremendous. Among other things, this enables us to set our print runs for the supplementary books correctly, and not be short on any of the items you've ordered.
Thank you again!
And ALL the Hardcover Swords of Cerebus in Hell? are gone. Yay Hobbs!
AND, Friend to the Blog: Steve Peters has a new Kickstarter. There's no real Cerebus/Dave Sim connection, But it's got Art by me. So back it. I insist.
For "Sin Kevitch", Steve drew a number of versions and got friends to draw some as well. Guest participants in the challenge were James Windsor-Smith, Lee Thacker, David Branstetter, Michael Anthony Carroll, Anthony Casperite, Matt Dow, and Corey Bechelli. Steve did drawings in the styles of other artists like Michael Golden, Shannon Wheeler, Brian Payne, Dave Sim, Jim Woodring, and Moebius.Well hump-a-duck, I guess there is a Dave Sim connection. Groovy. Buy two.
Next Time: Hobbs
16 comments:
Very funny to compare what Dave said at the time, what he said here, and what he says now!
Dave speaks of "the war between my 'comic-book life' and my 'real life'. It is significant that the former has always been more real to me than the latter." It is quite significant; it's one of the keys to understanding Dave. This is a point I've made before: Dave does not live, and never has lived, in reality. One the one hand, it's interesting to read his work as reports sent back from the alternate reality he lives in. On the other, it's very funny (but explicable) that this individual who claims he tries to describe reality accurately is so bad at it.
-- Damian
No, Dave Sim does not live in reality. He lives in your head.
Is that you, Brian W.?
-- D.
No.
Now, you have TWO occupants living in your head, Damian.
Oops. My bad. Better make that THREE occupants. No telling who anonymous might have been there. Probably was not Dave, and it sure as hell wasn’t me. So, best to count it to three.
All right, sure; no skin of my rosy nose if you want to believe that. I'm not really sure what you mean by "living in [someone]'s head". Do you feel that's a good thing, a neutral thing, or a bad thing?
-- D.
Oops! Typo. (Sorry, Jeff S.!) That should be "off my nose", of course.
-- D.
That's between you and anonymous, Damian. You can keep me the hell out of it.
Believe that.
If you want to be kept out of it, why are you butting into it? Intellectual consistency is not your strong suit, is it, Brian W.?
-- D.
Because you asked me a question FIRST, Damian. You butted me into it.
Hmm ... all right, I can concede that that is a legitimate reading of the thread. It looks to me as if you answered a (rhetorical, joking comment -- but I guess you wouldn't necessarily assume that) question, then went on to volunteer additional "thoughts".
As this "living in [someone]'s head" bit is a feeling you have attributed to me multiple times, my question is legitimate. You seem to think that it's weird that someone, when commenting on a blog dedicated to Dave Sim and including comments from his fans, would think about Dave Sim and comments from his fans. That seems a bit off to me, and I'm willing to credit you that I'm not understanding what you mean. From the tone of your comments, I infer that you feel this is some kind of "Gotcha!", but I don't see how. Can you explain?
-- D.
No, I don't think I will, Damian.
All righty. It was a faint hope; you don't usually have a reason for the things you say. Have a good day!
-- D.
Peace.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/living-in-your-head-rent-free-is-the-perfect-insult-of-our
Ah, thanks, Anon! So it's an insult coming from a place of vulnerability. I thought it was intended to be an insult, but couldn't quite figure out how; now I know! Meh.
-- D.
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