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Speaking of the Please Holds, let's fill a day with one of them there transcripts Jesse made me:
Jesse Herndon has been continuing the Herculean task of transcribing Dave and I's Please Hold for Dave Sim conversations so people who can't stand the crap audio can understand what the hell we were talking about. And then he sends them to me and I forget they exist.Which is a major disservice to Jesse, and you the AMOC reader.Sorry Jesse.Sorry AMOC reader.MY long term plan was to publish a collection of these with added bits from myself that clarify/expand/wrap-up/whatnot the topics discussed. The first batch of transcripts is 505 pages in Word. And there are more transcripts after that.SO, the question is do people actually want a physical Phonebook sized collection of me prattling on while Dave waits for me to shut the @#%& up?OR does everybody just want me to post the transcripts here and call it a day?While I await your comments either way, let's continue catching up on Jesse's excellent work.Here's where I'm at (blue link means it's been posted):1/2021 2/2021 3/2021 4/2021 5/2021 6/2021 7/2021 8/2021 9/2021 10/2021 11/2021 12/20211/2022 2/2022 3/2022So, Here we go:
Part One:
Matt: Okay, we are recording.
Dave: Alrighty. Okay, off the top, I want you to thank Janis Pearl for my birthday card.
Matt: I will. I would let you thank her personally, but she’s outside playin’ with her best friend.
Dave: Well, good! Good. Outside getting some vitamin D from the sun. Which, we need more of that. I mean, there’s Grandpa talking, but Rob Walton said the same thing when I talked to him on the phone. “You know, I’ll go outside and get some vitamin D” and it’s like, well, anybody who’s not as old as we are goes, “oh no no, that’s skin cancer.” But, I don’t think so. But anyway, we have, yes, Janis Pearl with my birthday cake, which is green and orange and purple and red and blue, which are all my favorite icings, and a genuine fire hazard, because she’s got all 64 candles on there. That’s why Grandpa can never have an actual birthday again.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Ever try to put that many candles on the cake? We’re gonna have to phone the fire department ahead of time.
Matt: That’s why in movies whenever somebody is hittin’ the big milestone they always have a giant five-tier cake, so that they have enough floor space for candles.
Dave: Right, right. [laughs] That would take up most of the Off-White House right there.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Uhh, I think what we’re gonna do is, like you said, everybody was sort of tiptoeing around what’s going on right now and then, everybody lobbed in a little bit. So I think what we’re gonna do is we’re going to deal with this, by starting with Jeff Seiler’s “V for Vendetta” question. And what we’ll do is, if you really want to know what Dave Sim, who no one absolutely no one ever agrees with about anything under the sun, thinks about what is going on. Okay, listen to this. But seriously, give your head a shake. Absolutely no one is interested in my opinion about what’s going on, but I do have them here, because it did come up with David Birdsong, in the last couple of days he sent me, what I thought was kind of a funny fax for like the downstairs neighbor going, sorry about the noise we’re… [laughs]
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: They’re causing down here. But, please, by all means never apologize for the United States of America to Dave Sim. So, we’ll get to that, I’m just chipping through all of my pieces of paper going, did I bring into the rectangle office or did I not? I maybe didn’t. But anyway, we will start with Jeff Seiler, and he still has a question in both sections. He asked me another question that was strictly a, “can you tell me about Cerebus” which was kinda close to your question, and then he also asked about the “V for Vendetta” thing. So, we will hear from Jeff from both sides now. “My question for Dave: Is not so much a question as it is a point of discussion. Whereas, there is increasing evidence that the rioting, looting, arson, and destruction of private property (around the country but especially in Minneapolis) is being instigated by organized anarchists, and; Whereas, the official website for DC Comics lists no direct corporate contact phone number (thus prohibiting direct oral feedback or questions) and; Whereas, DC Comics and Warner Brothers published "V For Vendetta", a very popular and widely lauded comic book (and movie) about anarchism, that was set in the near (or past) future, therefore: Should not DC Comics (and Warner Brothers) release a statement which would clearly, definitively, and vociferously denounce the anarchistic actions of a relatively small group of *organized* outsiders who have attempted to overrun the great metropolitan areas around the country, most notably the beautiful city of Minneapolis, Minnesota?” and I can vouch for that, I think, I haven’t been in Minneapolis since the 90s, but it was definitely one of the highlight spots. “(Apologies if DC and Warner Brothers have done so, but, if they have, it is not readily apparent.) And, for that matter, it might be nice to get some input from Alan Moore. (I don't know his website address [if there is one]), so maybe he has spoken out and I'm not aware of it. I freely admit that. This is just a curious (and somewhat invested and concerned) Minneapolis resident's take about these interesting times, as well as the people with whom he shares space. Thoughts, Dave?” And, I can only speak to the Alan Moore that I knew, which is going back a good 32 years now and not a lot of extensive contact, interesting contact. Alan was always definitely in the, “one big shove and up and over” sort of category of that’s what we will have to do as a society at some point because the whole thing is just way too corrupt and something has to be done in the end “one big push, up and over”. That always struck me as very naive in the sense that anytime the intelligentsia, and I think we have to include Alan in our intelligentsia in the comic book field, adopts those kinds of viewpoints, as happened in Russia at the end of the first World War and as happened in Weimar, Germany. You find out that it goes in a pretty predictable fashion, which is the intelligentsia managed to get everybody to the sticking place of making that happen, and as soon as the all the way up, all the way over and done, is accomplished, then the intelligentsia are locked up, or executed or hanged from lampposts. That’s when the [inaudible] takeover, whether it’s the Bolsheviks or the Nazis, so I don’t think it’s viable, although I do understand a lot of people in very good conscious at having got things through in their own frame of reference and their own ideas of what’s right and wrong, believe that that’s what you have to do. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. A revolution is not a tea party. All that stuff like that. But, as I say, that’s also 30 years ago Alan at the this point, more than 30 years ago with some of the contact that I had with him. I have no idea what his reaction is, in terms of the link to “V for Vendetta”, uhh…
PART TWO:
Dave: It’s come and gone, and then come back again and been gone again, of the people who are of an anarchistic frame of mind using the Guy Fawkes mask from Alan’s story. I don’t think you can lay a particular level of blame with Alan for that. I mean, if you’re documenting anarchy and you’re saying, well, okay, this is what anarchists do, yes, there is a slippery slope where you start doing their planning for them. But nobody knew that in the space of like three months we would go, ”no, everyone in a democracy has to show their face. This is our problem with Muslims, no covering up your face, Muslim women, because that’s just not a civilized thing to do. And unfortunately, we’re going to have take draconian measures to make sure that no one under any circumstances ever covers their face.” [laughs] Now we’ve got everybody running around with medical masks on. It’s like, be careful what you try to establish as an absolute viewpoint, because God’s clockwork mechanism does have a way of throwing a custard pie in your face. In terms of what Jeff’s talking about, I think probably the most extreme example of that, where… again, I don’t know Alan well and I don’t know Alan now, but I don’t picture Alan as being in that category. Anthony Burgess intentionally wrote “A Clockwork Orange” in the hope of fomenting this droog revolution in the United States. He didn’t want it circulated in the UK where he lived, but evidently his wife or his girlfriend or his ex-wife or whatever it was was gang raped by a group of American soldiers at some point, and this was going to be his revenge. He was going to write “A Clockwork Orange” and turn it loose on the United States and consequentially all of the wives and girlfriends of Americans would get raped the way his wife did. And it’s like, that seems really… first of, a really really low motivation for creativity. To attempt to do that, is as close to infertile as you can get without taking anything away from Anthony Burgess’ prodigious writing ability, which I don’t think anyone can do who has read him at all. But I don’t think the world actually works that way, as certainly as that was his plan, I don’t see any evidence of droogs taking over the United States. Which gets into a linked question, and this is… one of the problems that I’ve had to hear is anonymous posted about organized anarchists. Well, that’s kind of a contradiction of terms, that’s like military intelligence. You don’t organize anarchists because anarchy is supposed to be anarchy. But I don’t really don’t want to address what this individual said, because they’re posting anonymously. Jeff Seiler is saying, “I’m Jeff Seiler, this is what I have to say as a Cerebus fan and as a Minneapolis resident and inhabitant for a number of years now.” So consequently I see it as Jeff being a stand up guy. Put his money where his mouth is, he says what he thinks and he thinks what he says. Somebody posting anonymously, I think that’s one of our major problems and that’s one of those, sorry if you’re in a job somewhere where if they find out that you’re posting to A Moment of Cerebus you might get fired or called to HR or whatever the reason is you’re posting anonymously, but I don’t think anonymous benefits anyone in a democracy. If you’re not willing to put your name to something, then I’m just not going to deal with your thinking. If you want to resubmit the same opinion with your name attached to it, then I would have been happy to include this individual in the discussion. But that’s just a personal preference on my part, having been anonymously attacked by everybody in the comic book field for 26 years now it’s… I’m sorry, I understand the people who think this is a specific rule that yes, we have to just deplatform this person and destroy their career because that’s what social justice is all about. I can’t go along with that. That, to me, is totalitarian. That’s definitely far more Beijing than Washington. But in terms of what the individual is discussing and what Jeff Seiler is discussing, there’s really no way to prove or disprove that situation. Are these provocateurs, who are taking these peaceful protests and after sunset turning them into violent demonstrations, property destroying demonstrations, are they false flag warriors? Not even getting into what is their actual flag? You know, are they Russians, are they with the CIA, are they with the FBI? There’s certainly a history that we know of, which Ed Hoover’s FBI where that was done. They’d get infiltrated by someone who would then move everything over into a violent direction, so that they could be stepped on. And, is that still going on? It’s like, I have no idea. None of us know that. It does seem odd that suddenly someone shows up on May 26th… ya know, the situation with [inaudible] happened on the 25th and someone’s in Minneapolis from Houston fomenting his [inaudible]. How in the hell did you get all the way from Houston to Minneapolis in the first place, in that short a space of time? And what business is it of yours? It’s one of those, I was supposed to be in California right now if that had still happened, if you’re being interviewed on the radio or you’re being interviewed for the newspaper, and they say, “so what do you make of what’s going on?” And it’s like, well, ya know, if you’re asking me as an interviewer on a radio station, then, you know, I’ll answer that. If you’re asking me just as a visitor from another country, it’s really none of my business. It’s American thing, it’s a California thing, it’s got nothing to do with Dave Sim from Canada. But in terms of, who are these people and are they actually purport to be or are they just provocateurs trying to compromise the movement? Well, there’s the problem when you’re just using mobs. When what you’re doing is saying you want everybody to pour out into the street and protest this. Well, unless you’ve got everybody under control, X number of people are just going to say, “Okay, I have to try and light the fuse here. Because just having a peaceful protest march, that’s not gonna get us anywhere. We need violent upheaval." And it’s like, for them, they’ve arrived at that conclusion as the most sensible response. It’s like, you can’t use halfway measures once you’ve gone halfway there, because otherwise you’re just frittering away your opportunity. Again, I don’t agree with…
PART THREE:
Dave: I like democracy to be democracy. Freedom of expression, you’re free to express whatever you want. You’re free to protest, you’re free to make your choices as long as everybody else is free to make their choice. So, I don’t… I think, between, if you do a triage on all three of those, there’s the extremely nebulous answer of, what is the answer to anarchy? Can anarchy be allowed? And it’s like, the [inaudible] of anarchy? Yeah, definitely. The imposition by violent means of anarchy? No, no. I don’t think anyone can justify violence, particularly the kind of property destruction going on. I did phone Jeff, because he had left a phone message saying Minneapolis is on fire on May 26th, so I phoned to talk with him about it. And my question out of that, once I got a better idea from somebody who was actually there, and Jeff is actually downtown, was, okay, who gave the order to abandon precinct 3, which is, as Jeff explained it, a full city block. It’s not just a little station house somewhere. It’s a massive building. And the precinct captain, the precinct commander wouldn’t have had the authority to do that. Nobody at the police level would have the authority to say, “we have to abandon precinct 3.” Now, there are instances on the police side in various jurisdictions over the last 100 years or so where they intentionally will abandon, say a police car, and get the mob to engulf the police car and set it on fire because that’s usually the tipping point for most civilized democratic-loving people is, “no, burning police cars, that really seriously troubles me.” Consequently, it’s one of the most methods by which, I don’t think it’s used in North America, or has been used extensively in North America, but it’s definitely a way to turn Democrats into Republicans. So you have to be cautious about that. Would they abandon an entire multi-floor precinct for that purpose? To have that torched by the mob, which is exactly what happened? It’s like, why I have trouble picturing that and I also have trouble picturing, okay, who’s going to be culpable for this? Like I say, it’s not going to be the chief of police, it’s not going to be the precinct captain or the precinct commander. That has to come from a civilian level above them. Either the mayor or the governor, or someone appointed by the mayor to make those kinds of decisions and that just seemed to me a really really bad decision. You at least, as a police force, need to defend your own headquarters and your own… this is where we work. This is where we function out of. The number of different layers of tear gas and everything else from the bottom up, that they would have available to them at a precinct house city block square and having a playbook that says, okay, nobody comes in the building. We’re not going to fire on unarmed civilians, hopefully, we hope that it doesn’t get to that. There’s nine, 10 different levels that you go through before that, including please disperse in 15 minutes, we’re gonna start firing tear gas. We want everyone out of here at least as far back as wherever it is we want them that far back. And then it’s up to the crowd whether they do that or whatever they [inaudible]. At the same, ya know, I keep going back and forth from, okay that’s the police side, and then going to the protesters side, and it’s… I think, I’m not following this third degree murder, second degree murder thing, from the moment that I got the facts on the ground that we’ve all got, it’s like, no, that’s murder one. It’s premeditatedly using a completely invalidated police tactic. You’re not allowed to do that, you’re not allowed to do that anywhere in the world. I don’t know, maybe they’re doing it in Bolivia or maybe they’re doing it in Brazil, East Asia, they’re still using it in Saudi Arabia. But they said, no, you can’t do that in North America. We don’t do that. Unless you make that murder one, I think you’re just gilding the lily. You’re trying to fudge something that’s completely unfudgeable. Which is, if you’re kneeling on a guy and he’s saying, “I can’t breathe” and you’re kneeling on him for 9 minutes, that’s murder one. That’s premeditated. A policeman is not going to take him 9 minutes to figure out, “okay, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with this guy, but I can’t keep doing this” which wasn’t the reaction. It was “I’m going to keep doing this.” Well, okay, then that’s premeditated. It’s not extensively premeditated, he didn’t decided to do that, he was going to the site. But having arrived on the site and having chosen to do that, then, no, that’s a very bad decision.
Matt: Well, that’s…
PART FOUR:
Matt: …A case of, ya know, tryin’ not to, but at same time, ya know, it is the dumpster fire next door that you just can’t stop lookin’ at. They didn’t charge ‘em with murder one because murder one, the legal requirement, the threshold is that he left the station house that day intending to kill somebody. And I read that and I’m goin’, the fact that we have to guild the lily about, somebody died, ya know, at a certain point we have 15 different levels of you killed somebody but it wasn’t this it wasn’t that, it’s like somebody died on your watch. You’re responsible. That’s my take. And I understand why legally we have, ya know, layers upon layers upon layers, because, ya know, guy breaks into your house and you shoot him well it was self defense, yeah but you still killed a guy, I mean. This isn’t one of those slap on the wrist don’t do it again, there should be some form of, hey, we as a society don’t want this, but…
Dave: We the people decide collectively, no, we understand that this has been finessed by everybody all the way up to the Supreme Court. But there’s too much finesse and not enough justice there. One of the examples that I use, and again, you’re talking to somebody who has a complete unique take on this, the guy that… the incel that drove the van down the sidewalk in Toronto, Young Street, and killed like 15, 17 people. It’s like to me, okay habeus corpus, you have to present a given series of facts, they have to have their moment in front of the judge, decide whether they need to be incarcerated or they need to be let go, because that’s what separates democracy from [inaudible] totalitarian outfit. But at the same time, when they invented habeus corpus, they didn’t have cellphones, and they didn’t have a closed circuit TV, and they didn’t have 24/7 CNN, so in a situation like that, it’s like, okay, there’s a guy who has just drive all the way down Young Street, intentionally driven over 15 or 20 people. 8 or 10 of them are dead, a bunch of them are gonna be paralyzed, the van finally stopped for whatever reason and the guy got out. To my way of thinking, that calls for summarily execution. It’s not, here’s the alleged perpetrator. It’s like, no, I think there’s only one white man driving down the Young Street sidewalk and killing people, so, pull him out of the van, put a bullet in his head, and you’re all done. It’s like, that’s the justice there. It’s, no, you don’t want to have a trial for that person. You don’t want this remanded and moved forward for having this appeal and that appeal’s being made and all of these people who are paralyzed and seriously wounded for life are having to keep going to the same courthouse and sitting there all day and finding out, no, they had such and such piece of paper presented, so he’s not gonna be showing up and now it’s been remanded to five months from now. It’s like, you can’t… it’s not a matter of blame the victim, you can’t torture the victim, which is what we’re doing with this habeus corpus thing. The same thing in this situation with officer Chauvin. You have disgraced your uniform, you have disgraced yourself as a police officer, you have disgraced policing worldwide. There used to be, if you have even a scrap of personal honour left, here’s a .38 revolver, go back to the station house and get rid of yourself, because we don’t need you and there’s no reason that we have to go through anything on your behalf. We saw what you did. It’s all on the cellphone footage. Here’s the 9 minutes, it’s not a matter of, “no there’s two different sides to this one.” No, there’s not. So, if there isn’t, then, I think it’s time to get back to summary execution in those situations. But that’s just me. It would have to be in a situation where, no, there’s no question, this is the person and this what they did. The best thing that you can do is just get rid of them like the mad dog that they are and spare everybody a lot of grief and a lot of money and a lot of time that could be used elsewhere.
Matt: Well that’s, I mean, I’m just thinkin’ about, ya know, Charles Manson got the death sentence and then California repealed the death penalty after they had sentenced him and he lived for what, 30, 40 years on the taxpayers dime? Ya know, everybody agreed, no, he was supposed to, ya know, go and I mean… I understand that most capital cases nowadays there is so much… it’s so drawn out and we want to dot every I and cross every T, beyond a reasonable doubt that no, this guy did that, but like you said, there’s like 9 minutes of cellphone footage of this guy kneeling on somebody’s neck. I mean… I don’t think it’s gonna take 12 people very long to go, “oh yeah, no, he did it.”
Dave: Right. Well, you would hope not, but that’s another problem entirely. It’s like, I think there’s a crowd culpability as well, like when you do have cellphone footage, I think that you are obligated to bring out your cellphones and photograph that along with everybody else. They need it from as many different angles as they can possibly get it from in order to establish definitively, yes, this is what this situation is like. I would never carry a cellphone for exactly the reason that I don’t like what cellphones are and what they represent as this really really creepy totalitarian thing that everybody’s just viewing as a toy. I mean, I wouldn’t carry a cellphone for that reason, but I think that, in a situation like that, okay, here’s all the people who were standing in the vicinity, who, first of all, didn’t pull out their cellphones. So consequently, you can track them. You can say, okay these people were in the vicinity and didn’t do anything about them. I mean, if a guy is being knelt on his neck for 9 minutes, there’s 9 minutes there to go, “everybody keep filming this, don’t turn off your cellphone no matter what. But I’m taking this fucker out.” And probably getting the crap beaten out of me by four cops, but at a specific point the cops are… brains are going to get out ahead of adrenaline and they’re gonna go, “no, everybody’s filming this and now we have not only just killed this guy, or almost killed this guy, now we’re trying to kill the guy who saved his life.” So it’s one of those, we the people. We the people, we’re not… you don’t wanna go around tackling cops as a habitual thing, but if you see a cop kneeling on somebody’s neck for 9 minutes and saying, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe”, then, at a specific point, you have an obligation to do something or you become partly culpable in the homicide. Sorry, you didn’t go to that location to have that happen and to go, “wow, what am I supposed to do now”. Well, the right thing. The same as Officer Chauvin did the wrong thing for 9 minutes. Well, everybody who didn’t tackle Officer Chauvin…
PART FIVE:
Matt: Yeah, I agree with that. I mean… it goes back to the good guy with a gun theory of ya know the pro-gun people are like, “the good guy with the gun will stop it”, not always! In fact, the vast majority of the time, the good guy with the gun is standin’ there shocked just like everybody else.
Dave: Right. But at the same time, after 9/11 and after the flight that went down in the farmer’s field in Pennsylvania, it’s, “let’s roll”. We the people. You have to do something about this. You can’t just say, oh well, this is the police’s job, or we’ll have to wait for someone in authority to do something about this. No, if somebody’s being killed you’re expected to keep that from happening and, again, it’s like, most people don’t think that way. Most people just say, well no, we can’t have that. And it’s like, well, I would assume that the victim in this case would’ve been pretty grateful if somebody had done that. Just anytime in the 9 minutes, “I’m sorry, I’m not gonna let you do this. I’m going to tackle you and if you want to pull out your pepper spray or your taser or whatever it is that you’ve got on it that you use on people interfering with arrests, go ahead, but this isn’t an arrest. I’m looking at this and I’m seeing institutionalized murder.”
Matt: Yep! I totally agree.
Dave: Okay, well, let’s see where… Oh, I loved your stories. I guess, could we hear this? “In my motorcycle club, I inherited it. My Dad put me in charge. I am the president. It’s a long story. We had a guy who was the Rabbi, he was Jewish, his name was Jeff Melcher. I say was, because he died. Anyway, Jeff was at a family function when someone told this joke. This is where we start getting into, what are you allowed to say and what’re you not allowed to say. An 80 year old Jew wins the lottery and it was a record breaking jackpot, like $200 Million dollars, just huge. And a young female reporter sent to interview him she asks him, ‘Mr Feldstein, what are you going to do with all that money?’ and Mr Feldstein replies, ‘the first thing I’m going to do is build a big statue of Adolph Hitler.’ The reporter is taken aback, she quickly recovers and asks, ‘Adolph Hitler? Why would you do that? You’re Jewish.’ And Mr Feldstein pulls up his sleeve and says, ‘because he gave me the winning numbers!’” [laughs] And it’s like, that’s a very funny joke. And everybody laughs and Jeff notices his uncle sitting there with a physical look on his face. And he asks his uncle what’s wrong? The uncle pulls up his sleeve and says, ‘damn, too many numbers.’ which is how Jeff found out his uncle was a holocaust survivor. The family had never talked about it. As Mark Twain is quoted as saying, ‘humor is tragedy plus time’. But that is one of the jokes that you’d better be Jewish, and you’d better be a holocaust survivor to tell that.”
Matt: I can’t remember when Jeff told me this story, if, who told the joke, was it one of the members of his family or it was a family friend or something, but he said, I mean, his uncle was sittin’ there for a little bit and he was kinda worried cause his uncle, he kinda chuckled but then he kinda was actin’ weird, and that’s when his uncle pulled his sleeve up and I went, “ya know, you’re not supposed to joke about the holocaust. There’s nothing funny about the holocaust. Jerry Lewis proved you can’t joke about the holocaust. And yet, here’s a joke about the holocaust that because of that situation is just absolutely funny to me, everytime I think of it. I always chuckle because, damn, too many numbers is just the perfect punchline. And you can only do it once!
Dave: That happened to Harvey Kurtzman as well with one of his fumetti books, where he tried making an Adolph Eichmann joke in one of his, “here’s a photo of Adolph Eichmann and he’s a funny word balloon” and everybody pleaded with him, please don’t do this, please don’t do this. It’s gonna work, it’s not possible. And Harvey went ahead and did it, it’s one of those, even when Art Spiegelman participated in it, because, [inaudible] was doing a “let’s make fun of the holocaust” sort of thing and Art Spiegelman went, “okay, I’ll do a funny holocaust cartoon” and it’s like, mm, you really don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t wanna go there. Some people, it’s just moths to a flame.
Matt: Well, there’s a difference between you shouldn’t make a joke about that, and you can’t make a joke about that. Shouldn’t implies that yes it’s possible but really, if you’re in good taste, you won’t. And can’t is the challenge of, I am sure I could.
Dave: Right. And also, I live in a democracy. You have to be very very careful about deciding what people can and can’t say because it’s not really any of your business. I don’t go snooping around what you read, going, “this shouldn’t be allowed to exist” it’s like, it’s a democracy, if somebody thinks it needs to exist, it needs to exist. If that… gay people normalizing homosexuality to 9 year kids in a library setting, which happens, is… well, that’s living in a democracy is about. You can only have Washington or you can only have Beijing. There really isn’t… Justin Trudeau is trying to find a way to sit on the fence between them, so you’re getting along with Beijing and you’re getting along with Washington, and it’s like, mm, not gonna happen. You have to know the difference between freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of belief, freedom from belief (if you’re somebody who doesn’t want to believe, definitely doesn’t want to be forced to believe). But, it’s… they’re two completely different things. Just ask the people of Hong Kong right now, whether they think that there’s a different between Washington and Beijing. If anybody trying to draw a correlation between the two, no, I really don’t think that you thought that through very very effectively.
Matt: Right.
PART SIX:
Dave: Okay. I liked your cartoon this time. Boy, you’re getting good at drawing Cerebus.
Matt: I sent it to David Birdsong and he said the exact same thing, and I’m like, “yeah, I’m really gettin’ good at Photoshop.”
Dave: [laughs] You actually Photoshopped it right out of volume one?
Matt: I took my copy of volume one, and I went, I know there’s Cerebus with a bunch of gold, this’ll be the perfect image, and I got to issue 11 and I’m goin’, there’s two panels that’ll work. One of them is gonna require a lot more work than I want to put in, so we’re gonna go with the other one.
Dave: We’ll go with this one, there ya go. There you go.
Matt: In the original, there’s white spots from the light source and I learned how to use the clone tool to clone the tone and I’m like, this is really neat! I’m so happy now.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: In about, oh, 80 years I’ll be almost as good as Sean.
Dave: Well, I’ll tell ya, and Janis Pearl and Bullwinkle will be way behind on their studies because Dad’s using the computer for drawing aardvark comics.
Matt: [laughs] No, no, we have multiple computers, so they can still do it. But they’re out of school now, Janis’ teacher came by today and gave her her end of the year goodie bag. So she’s officially graduated and goin’ on to the 4th grade.
Dave: Congratulations. Congratulations. Okay, I think that covers, as far as I know, that was all I had to say. I really think the only thing that has changed in terms of jurisprudence going all the way back to the Magna Carta is the cellphone thing. The fact that the more cellphones are used publicly to establish, “this is what actually happened. This is what this person was saying, and this is what this person is doing,” because you can’t fake the kind of cellphone footage that you’re talking about in this situation. Then, I think, that changes habeus corpus. There’s no point in going through a trial and we need to get as many witnesses as we can and we need a prosecuting attorney and we need a defense attorney and we need a judge and we need a jury and we need an 8 to 10 month trial to determine guilt or innocence. It’s, no, the guilt has already been established. You don’t have to show that footage with a little subtitle on it, “alleged perpetrator”, it’s not an alleged perpetrator. He did it. We’re looking at, this is a snuff film, which is, back in the 1970s it was banned. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to get to the point as a society where you actually had snuff films, and it’s like, you could probably fill up a number of hard drives just with the snuff films that actually exist. Even just trying to catalogue. This is somebody actually dying and you’re watching it, and it’s desensitizing and a really bad idea, but you’re talking to somebody who’s still never been persuaded that the internet itself is a good idea.
Matt: My newest “the internet is a great idea on paper” is Sean asked about, you wrote somethin’ about when you found the original art to the cover of Cerebus #1 at Preney and he’s like, “hey, does anybody know where this is?” and I’m like, “uhh, can start to look, you got any idea…” and he’s like, “I’m pretty sure it’s in the notes to CAN4” and I went, “I have CAN4!” and I pulled it out and read the notes and I’m like I don’t see anything about Preney in here at all. So then I’m thinkin’ is it in one of the other CAN notes or was it a Weekly Update or was it… ya know, the mountain of stuff that is there, it’s just siftin’ through it.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Like, do you remember when you found it? Like, maybe where you wrote it down? [laughs]
Dave: Uhh, it was way late. I know I just sort of despaired of the fact I would ever see the Cerebus #1 cover. I think it was close to the end of Preney, which would’ve been 2005, 2006, around there. Kim just said, “I’ve got this cover of Cerebus #1, I’ve had it under lock and key in my office since you sent it to me.” I sent it to him because they were doing Cerebus Biweekly. So it’s like, here’s the best cleanest copy of the cover of Cerebus #1, for doing the cover of Cerebus #1, the little inset in 1988. So, 18 years? “Yeah, Kim, I would kinda like that back, thank you! Thank you. I had no idea that that was there.” I just heard from Kim’s nephew, left a phone message, asking if I would come to a convention in Windsor, Ontario, which is where Preney used to be, and it was one of those weird situations where, okay, well, you can tell me about it and I’m just going to tell you, look, I’m not a feminist, so I’m not considered a human being in our society and you will find out that is the situation and he wanted to do it as… it was linked to a benefit for, I think, Easter Seals? And it’s like, well, okay, you’re going to have to go to the Easter Seals people and say, “this is this guy that I want to invite to my comic book convention and here’s his name, you can Google search him and read as much about him as you want.” It was very nice to hear from him. It’s like, Kim Preney’s nephew, Kim’s retired, he and his wife are both retired, they play a lot of Maj Jong, and because he prides himself as Kim Preney’s nephew, it was, okay, so you’re on Kim’s wife’s side of the family? And but he says, “no no no, I’m in Kim’s family” and I went, okay, well, who’s your Dad, Dick or John? And it’s like, “John!” And he was like completely astonished that I knew who John Preney was. He thought, “oh he’ll know who Kim Preney was, because that’s who he dealt with all the time”. And it’s like, no, I remember John Preney. I remember Dick Preney. It’s just a very very weird situation. And I said to him, you go ahead and talk to the Easter Seals people and everybody else and I can tell you right now, I am never going to hear back from you again about this, because as soon as they Google searched Dave Sim, it’ll just be, “ah, no, we can’t have, the Easter Seals, [inaudible] anybody in this category. Anybody who says things like this. Anybody who has articles like this written about him.” And it’s like, it makes my life very very straightforward. Like I say, it was nice to be talking to somebody who, whatever he is now, he’s probably 30s or 40s and still remembers going to Preney and you would get free comic books, cause Dad printed comic books. Some of the comic books you couldn’t get because Dad didn’t want you to have those comic books, but these comic books you could have. That kinda thing.
Matt: Oh…
PART SEVEN:
Matt: …kay. I have a surprise because Janis really wants to talk to you quickly, with her best friend Alayna, so we’re gonna do “Please Hold for Dave Sim Jr” for a couple of minutes.
Alayna: Really?
Dave: Alrighty.
Alayna: Is that even a thing?
Janis: Now it is!
Alayna: Okay.
Janis: Hi Dave!
Alayna: Hi.
Dave: Hi! Is that Janis?
Janis: Yeah!
Alayna: Actually, there’s two of us now.
Janis: And that’s my best friend Alayna.
Alayna: He can’t really tell the voice difference.
Dave: Hello, Alayna!
Alayna: Hello.
Dave: E-l-e-n-a?
Alayna: No, a-l-a-y-n-a.
Dave: A-l-y-n-a.
Alayna: A-l-a-y-n-a.
Dave: A-l-a-y.
Alayna: Yes!
Dave: Girls, you never spell your names the same.
Matt: I’m gonna tell ya right now, this is turnin’ into third base. Okay guys, ask your question.
Dave: Are you all done in school?
Alayna: How old are you?
Dave: How old am I?
Janis: Yeah!
Matt: That’s Alayna asking.
Alayna: Yeah.
Dave: Well, Alayna, I’m 64 years old.
Alayna: You don’t sound like it, you kinda sound like you’re 30.
Dave: [laughs] Well, thank you, that’s very nice. [grandpa voice] I have days where I sound more like a grandpa than other days. No, I’m 64, 8 times 8.
Janis: Okay, so now this is Janis, how are you doing during quarantine?
Dave: I’m doing fine. I’ve been quarantined since 1994 when everybody decided that I hated women and consequently I couldn’t be allowed to go out in public and associate with anybody and ya know be treated like a human being and that’s been going on for the last 26 years, so it’s more a question of, how’s everybody else doing? Because I’ve been living this way since about 1998 and everybody else is having to get used to it. And I do remember it took me a while to get used to it. But, I’m trying to be as cooperative as possible. I don’t think things are as bad as everybody says that they are, but you get accused of making everybody sick. “If you’re going out of the house more than once a week to get groceries, then you could be making everybody sick with COVID so that they die.” No, I don’t think that’s the case, but, I was always trying to be at least somewhat of a human being so I would at least know the checkout people at Shoppers Drug Mart or whatever else, and then it was, “no, you’re gonna make people sick and they’re gonna die, so you can’t do that anymore.” So it’s like, oh okay, that was me trying to be a nice person, but I will stop being a nice person and I will be a good lockdown inmate for as long as Canada decides nobody can go out and nobody can do anything. Unless there’s left wingers in the protesting, in which case we had 10,000 people downtown yesterday, who, evidently nobody worries about whether they’re going to make people sick, whether they’re gonna make people die, but they don’t want me out there making people sick and getting them to die. When you’re older you’re going to have to figure all this stuff out for us, because, everybody’s crazy right now. You’ve probably noticed that.
Matt: You guys can answer the answer.
Janis: Okay, yeah. So we just wanted to say we love you very much!
Dave: [laughs] Well, thank you! I love you both very much, too! Thank you, thank you for the candles on my birthday cake.. birthday card.
Alayna: I’m gonna melt into a [inaudible].
Matt: Hear that?
Janis: Yeah, you got it?!
Dave: I got it!
Janis: Yes!
Dave: And I counted all the candles, there’s 64 of them there alright, it’s a fire hazard.
Janis: Yeah, there are 64, I made sure. Many times.
Dave: [laughs] Okay, well you have a good day Alayna and you too Janis Pearl.
Alayna: Okey-dokey.
Janis: Yeah!
Matt: Say goodbye, goils.
Janis: Bye!
Alayna: Goodbye!
Matt: Alright, now go away, goils.
Janis: Bye!
Dave: Bye.
Matt: [sighs] Back when we were bein’ real serious, she was creepin’ up the stairs, goin’ “can I ask Dave now” and I’m like, not right now, now’s not the best time to take a pause.
Dave: [laughs] Okay. Alright. Ahh, let me…
PART EIGHT:
Dave: Oh, let’s go to Jeff Seiler’s comics question. “Dear Dave”, this is from May 10th, so about two weeks before Minneapolis went on fire. “Hope you’re well. I continue to spend about 23 and a half hours a day inside, as do you, I suppose.” Well, as I said, I was doing 24 hours a day inside and going to Shoppers Drug Mart three days a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and then Richard, who works there, was giving everybody a hard time about coming coming in way too damn often, and we’re supposed to have a lockdown, and blah blah blah. So, now I just get Roly to take me up to the Frederick Mall and buy groceries, which I did today. And I buy a whole week’s worth of groceries. “I just finished listening to this month’s conversation with Matt and your answering my question has immediately sparked another question for me for June’s edition, should we all still be around then, in shallah.” Well, so far, so good. “To whit, you answered my question about Rick with an elaborate response, the gist of which was, one line in ‘Jaka’s Story’, ‘Where’s that nice stationary your mother gave us?’ spoke volumes about Rick’s relationship and Jaka’s relationship with his mother. So what other examples of seemingly throwaway lines in Cerebus also spoke volumes about relationships or events that went essentially untold in the text of the book?” Uh, see, the problem is, it doesn’t work that way. The only reason that that worked this time, was because I had just finished proofreading “Jaka’s Story” however many times I proofread “Jaka’s Story” about half as many times as Sean Robinson did and I think maybe a 10th as many times as Eddie Khanna did, because I can’t read my work anymore than 500 pages of me anymore often than three times without my brain during to cream cheese.
Matt: I know exactly how you feel.
Dave: What’s that?
Matt: I know exactly how you feel, I was reading “High Society” to read “High Society”, then I was rereadin’ “High Society” and lookin’ for specific things. Then I was readin’ “High Society” as I was postin’ six pages at a time of “High Society”, and then I got all done, ya know, just about done with the phonebook, and Sean sent the proof going, “can you guys take a look at this real quick”, so I really quickly reread “High Society” on the computer with my print copy in front of me goin’, “okay, is this in both versions?” and then I got all done and today I got an email from Dagon goin’, “hey, do you have any Cerebus pull quotes from ‘High Society’?” and I’m like, back on the computer, scrollin’ through, goin’ yeah that’s funny, write it down, yeah that’s funny, write it down, yeah that’s funny. It’s like, I don’t want to read “High Society” anymore! [laughs]
Dave: No, no. This is going way beyond the call of duty at this point. I wouldn’t do that! Which is why Dagon’s asking you.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: He’ll try to ask me and it’s like, “ah no, I’ve got other fish to fry now. That’s Matt Dow or Eddie Khanna or Sean Robinson or Margaret Liss that you’ll be wanting to talk to about that one.” So, yeah, getting back to the question, each time when I was proofreading “Jaka’s Story” and I came to that line, it was like, that’s really nice that that’s in there. I know that I put that in there intentionally to be like the tip of that iceberg, so consequently when Jeff asked the question that was centered on the relationship between Rick and his Mother, it’s like, if I hadn’t been proofreading “Jaka’s Story” I would never have remembered. But because I had read it three times and each time it was one of those, yeah, that’s nice, I’m glad that that’s in there, I’m glad that I took the trouble to go, this will be really good. Maybe someday I can tell somebody this story. “But, failing that, it’s like, ya know, going on I’m guessing maybe a line or two from Bran Mak Mufin or from Bear, and certainly from George Washin… uhh Weisshaupt. But can you name specific instances? Sorry if this is too much to ask.” No need to apologize, but yes, it’s too much to ask. “But an inquiring mind wants to know. I mean, if your story about Rick’s backstory isn’t comic book metaphysics, then I don’t know what is. Sorry I skipped Matt on this, but I hope you will include this in June. Relying on your kindness and remaining yours beyond everything, Jeff.” So, thank you Jeff for that one and yeah, that’s… I mean, I do think that’s really a comic art metaphysics thing that you asked that question at the specific time that you did. Grandpa’s memory isn’t what it used to be, so if you had asked the question, four months later, five months later, I might not even have remembered that reference from the book, but you asked it when you did, and it was like, oh I know the answer to that one. I know exactly what I’m gonna say to that one. So, yeah, it sort of ties in with… yes, this is, “I”, capital I, underlined, “I wanna know more about the Cerebus Debris Field. When I read that Cerebus was going to chuck it all and sail to the New World, my jaw hit the floor. The three other things I know that are in the debris field is: Harpo playing the harp in #300,” I read that one and went, oh, that’s right, I remember that. But if you had asked me, as Jeff just did, “do you remember any other things like that?” it would have been, I’m sure there are some of them and if I happen to be reading one of the books three times I can maybe cite a few of them for you. “Old Cerebus dreaming he’s sailing down the river Styx and seeing Cerberus” I don’t remember that one at all. Where did I say that one?
Matt: Uhh, the annotations for “The Last Day”.
Dave: Was it?
Matt: Yep! You’d said that you had… you had for a long time… you implied it was years, you’d been plannin’ on, Cerebus is dreaming, and he’s on a boat on the River Styx and he goes past a three-headed dog, and that was gonna be your subtle, “see, this is the real one”, but you knew that all of your liberal readers would think, “oh the ending is all just a dream then.”
Dave: Right, right. I mean, there’s a lot of problems with that one. Also bringing in Greek Mythology at that late a date where it would be, “wait a minute, I thought this was supposed to be pointing in the direction of monotheism, so are you saying that Cerberus really exists?” So it’s like, no, no, that’s not what I was doing, that wasn’t my intention, although it’s something that definitely appeals to the artist in me. And I think Gerhard would have done a bang-up job of his side of doing the River Styx and we could have taken turns on different parts of the three-headed dog. No, you can’t undermine everything that you already did for the sake of one good visual. You can do that if you’re doing an artist’s book, but Cerebus was really a writer’s book with…
PART NINE:
Dave: The two artists working on. That ties in with, “older Lord Julius and Baskin in Palnu bottling liquor.” That was one of those where it was a good funny line, where basically, they’re sitting there bottling different kinds of liquor. And it’s like, “what’s this stuff?”, “I dunno, it’s clear, we’ll call this gin.” and it’s like, “what’s this stuff?” “well its kind of cloudy and yellow, so we’ll call that the whiskey” and it’s like, if they were actually, and we definitely, the idea is conveyed that this is what Palnu does now, it basically just manufactures all of the alcohol for all of the bars where all of the single men who have refused to get married or have gotten divorced or are otherwise really really bad Cirinist men are expected to drink themselves to death 24/7. Presumably, you wouldn’t be doing exclusively hooch. You would be doing good alcohol of some kind. I mean, even Cirinists, you could explain to them, no, you can do some of that, you can use grain alcohol and this entire bar everybody goes blind, or something like that. Which would then make everybody else in every other bar drink that much more and that much faster 24 hours a day. It just undermines the structure of what I was doing. Again, it would make one very very funny sequence, of just bottles and bottles and bottles and Lord Julius and Baskin are the only guys making alcohol for the entire Estarcion continent and basically just trying to decide what each of the bottles is contained. If it’s clear, it’s gotta be gin. If it’s kinda cloudy and brown, we’ll call that whiskey.
Matt: The sad part is, I’m shakin’ my head cause I realize where the beginnings of that idea of Julius makin’ all the hooch comes from. There’s a bit in “High Society” when Blakely’s meeting with the candidate before he becomes the candidate and Lord Julius walks in and says, “can I use your bathtub, cause there’s still a ring around mine from the Black Sun” whatever “that Elrod mixed last night.” And you’re sayin’ this, and I’m goin’, ding! Wait a minute, I remember where this idea came from.
Dave: Yes, yes. Well, it’s one of those, if you’re going to do what Lord Julius is doing, you need a lot of alcohol to lubricate things. It’s the same as my take on the Bible that, once it sinks in that people are calling on the name of the YHWH and choosing YHWH over God, then it’s, “okay, well, we’re gonna have a flood and we’re gonna have to start things over with the three sons of Noah. And the three sons will be the he, she, it.” And that was when Noah became a husbandman and figured out to ferment grapes and make wine, because it’s like, God was going, “okay, this is gonna get really really complicated and really really messy in a hurry. Let’s have a round of drinks for everybody!”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: “As matter of fact, let’s teach everybody how to make rounds of drinks and we’ll see where we are on this in another 6000 years.” And, here we are! [laughs]
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, so, “Any other major debris hunks you sorta remember?” No, I really don’t. Again, it was… it’s a very difficult process to describe, where… like I say, between the time when I was doing the “Chasing Cootie” issues, like issue 30, 31 and still getting used to Cerebus being the ranking diplomatic representative and all that sort of stuff. And then going, well, okay, how many issues is a plausible political campaign going to take? I mean, it has to be stripped down to its bare essentials, but you gotta have enough campaign stops so people get the idea, yes, it is a political campaign. Here’s the different factions, here’s how many delegates each province is going to send, all that kind of stuff. And it’s like, well, I think we’re looking at like a minimum of three or four of those. And it’s, okay, at that point, everything was just falling to crashing ruins. Everything that I had pictured in my head of how this was going to go. It was, okay, if this is what it takes me to downscale a political campaign to four issues, how long would it take me to do all of these other things that I’m intending to do? And it’s like, this has gotta go, this has gotta go, this has gotta go, this has gotta go. The ocean voyage to the new world really got distilled down to Issue 51, the exodus issue. Okay, we’ll just have to have them in the hold as in, I think that was in “Duck Soup” where [inaudible] Marx Brothers are in their barrels being with each other. When you’re having to throw that much away, you can’t be falling in love with it, or going, “oh, I’ll have to really remember that. Maybe I’ll get to use that somewhere else.” It’s like, no, you’re starting to figure out what a 6000 page graphic novel is and it’s not “Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov” and “The Idiot” with a couple of little purgatory books stirred into the mix. It’s like, you might be able to “The Idiot”, a 6000 page “Idiot”, so start getting your brain wrapped around that. Stop thinking that this is going to be a series of Russian novels. This will be one very very small, stripped down, Russian novel and it’s gonna take you 6000 pages to do that.
Matt: One of my Christmas cards, I think it was the first one I did, I had this really great bit where, ya know, cause they’re standin’ in line to see the baby Jesus and they’re singing “the Little Drummer Boy”, and the whole gag is that when it gets to “on my drum” in the original song, Iguana’s goin’, “I play drums.” and I’m drawin’ it, and I get to this panel where it’s Iguana, they get to the front of the line, and he points to the baby and says, “that’s the Elvis of the Jews?” And I thought it was really funny! But as I’m inkin’ it, I realize, lettering wise, this is the part where Iguana has to say his one line in the song, and I’m like, okay, well that’s gone. I mean, as funny as it is, blasphemous but funny, I’ve gotta throw it overboard because the whole structure hinges on him saying this one line.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And it’s like, well, I can use that joke somewhere else. Well, yeah, you can, but you can’t. I mean, at a certain point… you’re gonna throw the baby with the bathwater cause you’re gonna have a whole lot more bathwater and a whole lot more babies.
Dave: Right, right. Well,and that’s also, just to be forensically accurate here, it’s very hard to tell whether that’s blasphemous or heretical. It would depend on whether you’re talking about God, which obviously is the core Christian teaching that Jesus is God, so consequently anything that you did like that would be blasphemous. But it’s not as cut and dried as that. Whether that’s blasphemous is an opinion, and whether that’s heretical is an opinion. Possibly it could be either one, or it could be both, or it could be half of each one. This is what most of Europe and Asia Minor’ve been saying for 1500 years…
PART TEN:
Dave: …Definitively. And it’s like, pretty much the same thing as the COVID-19 thing where, I picture God going, “how would you know? How would you know any of this? I mean, I can sketch the rough outline, the broad strokes for you. But really, you don’t know dick about anything. How long is it going to take you to figure out that you don’t know dick about anything?” I mean, that’s really one of the problems I have with the whole COVID-19 thing. Newton’s laws of motion, ya know, an object in motion or at rest tends to stay in motion or at rest unless acted on from an outside unbalanced force. That’s fine. That holds up all the way out into the universe until you start getting into Einstein’s relativity and stuff like that. But here on this chunk of rock, no, that’s fine. This is how this works, we know this isn’t how this works. Epidemiology is more like astrology. It’s like, “I consulted with my epidemiologist and their best guess is that this is what’s going on.” But there’s 150 epidemiologists who’ll all disagree with them on that. And these are the people that we’re looking to for answers, and it’s like, you might as well be asking them to give you a shopping alert. It’s like, no, you’re okay shopping between 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock in the afternoon today, but only for food and gas, cause that’s all that they know. That they ran their astrology charts and that’s what they told them. But if you want to talk to another astrologer, they’ll tell you something completely the opposite. Because it’s not a science, it’s, “this is what we believe. These are our theories. It could be this. Or it could be this over here. This could be the reason that more black people get it than white people. This could be the reason the north of Italy is a basket case and southern Italy isn’t. This could be a reason. This is why people are asymptomatic.” It’s like, okay, let’s take that set of facts and we’ll all write science fiction stories about it and we’ll try to figure out who wrote the best science fiction story about COVID-19 because that’s what you’re doing. You’re writing science fiction stories, cause, unless, you’re like Newton’s law of motion, it’s not a science. It’s a “nah, it could be this, it could be that, it could be this thing over here.” Nope, terribly different from theology. I’m happy to explain my theology to people if they’re interested, which most of the time they’re not, but the rest of the time I read John’s Gospel aloud and start putting the pieces together as I see them and going, “oh I think this is related to this. This thing hinges on that.” But “we have to dismantle the entire Catholic Church, everybody has to believe what I believe” well first of all that’s not going to happen, and second of all, it probably wouldn’t work very well, which is why I tend to individualize my theology. Alright, let’s get back to the Cerebus stuff, “were Weisshaupt and Cirin”… this is really tough to read on the fax. But they both, uhh…
Matt: It’s the bit about the Ascension when Cerebus is talking to Tarim and Tarim tells him that Weisshaupt and Cirin found the same passage in the same obscure text on the same day thousands of miles apart.
Dave: Right, right. And that’s just me making a point of what actual knowledge is. You would need to have that level of omniscience and connectivity with everyone and everything, which I presuppose God has, to say, how ‘bout that? That is definitely how God’s clockwork mechanism works, where really really inexplicable gears grind with other gears thousand and thousands of miles apart and God’s the only one that knows that happens because God’s the only one who has the overview of that. I didn’t realize that that was what I was talking about at the time, but that’s what I was talking about at the time. And then when you say, “did the Artist Chap with the Hair find it on the same day too? What about Henrot, the Magicking, the Roach, Elrod, Astoria, and Necross?” Uhh, possibly. They could have found it in an interesting sequence where, if you plotted an exponential curve, 2 becomes 4, becomes 8, becomes 16, becomes 32, it could’ve been two days after Henrot found it, it occurred to the Magicking about four days later, and then eight days after that the Roach experienced it, 16 days after that Elrod experienced it, and if you’re the person who designed the clockwork mechanism, you’re God, you’re the one who looks at that and says, “yeah, everything is unfolding exactly as it should.” It looks chaotic to people who are in the middle of it, but that’s part of the point of it, I think, that how reality is unfolding looks chaotic. The same as if you look at a fire, like a campfire, and there’s all of these curves taking place within the campfire and rising in a swirl and then just dissipating. And it’s like, well that’s essentially what we’re doing as human beings, we’re just doing it a little slower and more physically incarnated. It’s the same that’s happening on the surface of the sun. It’s like, you couldn’t look directly at the sun and you couldn’t perceive the interaction of hydrogen and helium and how it’s enacting with each other and why that solar flare occurs there on that day and why it’s 50,000 miles away and suddenly it flares in exactly that pattern but 200 times the size at this specific point later on in history. Well, okay, that’s another part of God’s clockwork mechanism, is that did that there and that does that over there because that’s what that does. That’s what God designed that. That looks chaotic, I'm sure hydrogen and helium are just another red state/blue state thing, but instead of taking place on a chunk of rock, it’s taking place in a giant nuclear furnace. But…
PART ELEVEN:
Matt: Well, then… reading, cause I just finished “Church & State II” and “Church & State I”, and as I’m readin’ it, ya know I’m thinkin’ the Artist Fellow with the Hair bein’ with Fred & Ethel kinda doesn’t make sense. In my head, I’m startin’ to go, okay well, what if it’s this, or this or this, and I’m like, then I stop myself. It’s just a comic. Yes, you have to talk about it but you’re not anywhere close to postin’ about your reread for “Church & State II” on AMoC, you’re still in the middle of “High Society” so just mentally file that away. Because, it kinda would make more sense if, instead of being the Artist Guy it had been Claremont. Cause Claremont was between Fred & Ethel when they got smooshed together.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And he exhibited powers. So then I started thinkin’, well, what if the Artist Guy is actually the part of Claremont that got kicked out of the Roach?
Dave: Right.
Matt: And then I’m goin’, ya know, it’s one of those, the elaborate backstories of things that weren’t on the page. And I’m goin’, well, I’m gonna ask Dave eventually but let’s, again, file this away for the best use.
Dave: Well, yes, and we don’t really have a language for things like that. Like, is this an enactment, or is this an incarnation, or is this a metaphysical adjacent thing? It’s like, I can come up with terms like that because this is the kind of stuff that I think about. Like, what is that? In the same sense that just reading “Sparring with Gil Kane”, and Kane did “Blackmark” which was a sword and sorcery paperback comic book and he thought, okay, “His Name is Savage” didn’t work as a magazine and it tanked, what if you did a comic book that was a paperback and tried to ride the popularity of Conan that was happening at the time. And it’s like, no, because you’re not Frank Frazetta and Conan is associated with Frazetta and the Frazetta riff. So, Gil Kane wasn’t associated with that, although he did Conan covers and he did work on several Conan stories with Roy Thomas. He wasn’t associated with Conan in a way that would make people buy this Gil Kane swords and sorcery paperback novel. That was an adjacency that wasn’t a close enough adjacency to take, at the time, to have that actually viewed properly. But up ahead, we had Barry Smith, and later Barry Windsor-Smith, doing Conan, and me looking at Conan, and doing, “okay, I’ll do a funny animal Conan and I’ll make it as close as I can to BWS.” Which wasn’t very close at all because I didn’t draw very well, but, ya know, I had the idea and at that case the adjacency was close enough where people who read BWS’ Conan and didn’t have any anymore BWS Conan to read because BWS left Conan, here’s a guy doing BWS, doing a funny animal Conan, close enough for me. $1 for 20 pages, that’s pretty pricey, but I’ll get in on this. Hey, that made me laugh a few times, and that almost goes as good with smoking pot as Robert E Howard. So, yeah, I’m in. I’ll go with this. Gil Kane didn’t have that with what he was doing, and then, as I said on the Kickstarter, then you had the Kevin & Peter going, “what about Frank Miller Ronin Turtles?” and it’s like, there, that’s a perfect fusion. That’s not only an adjacency, a metaphysical adjacency, that’s an enactment but also a separate incarnation. Well will incarnate Frank Miller somewhere otherwise than where Frank Miller is, because Frank wasn’t gonna do “Ronin” again. It’s like, “Ronin” really got panned it didn’t do what DC wanted it to do. And that was when Frank went to “The Dark Knight Returns”, but it’s not as if there were no “Ronin” fans, and Kevin Eastman is one the biggest “Ronin” fans, so it’s like, “we need more of this” and it’s like, “well, I’m going to do for Frank Miller’s ‘Ronin’ what Dave Sim did for Barry Windsor-Smith Conan, which is mutilate it embarrassingly but very very lucratively.”
Matt: Uhh, I think it was “The Toys That Made Us” episode about the Turtles where they’re interviewing Kevin and he says that if he had been thinkin’ about it, they wouldn’t have killed the Shredder at the end of the first issue. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Like, if they could go back and do it over, yeah, they wouldn’t have killed the big villain right away. And I just laughed, cause I’m like, yeah, now you’re back to how do you bring him back? You gotta bring him back, cause this is, ya know, it’s the Turtles versus this guy. No other villain they introduced went as big as the Shredder.
Dave: Right. Right. And it was exactly the same thing that I was doing with BWS. It’s like, I’m not that good, but boy it’s a lot of fun sitting here trying my best to do by best BWS riff on Cerebus and that same thing to Kevin, it’s like, “next issue? I don’t know if there’s gonna be a next issue! Pete and I are sittin’ around and we’re drawing ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ because I get to do my Frank Miller ‘Ronin’ riff and Peter gets to do stuff that he wants to do”. And it’s like, no… by the time they were doing that, everybody had used up every kung fu and martial arts figure and posture that you could possibly come up with and all of it had become a cliche. And if you don’t draw very well, and none of us drew very well, it’s, “wow, I get to do that cliche. Here’s Michelangelo and he’s doing a flying drop kick just like Frank Miller would do.” Just like Frank Miller would draw, I don’t think even at the time Frank was able to do a drop kick, but that might be prejudicial on my part.
Matt: That was… I went to a convention where Frank was signing when he was doin’ the Batman book with Jim Lee, and they announced over their loudspeaker that in the autograph area it’ll be Frank Miller as a surprise signing and I managed to get in line, and all I had to have him sign was “John Carter, Warlord of Mars” #18 which is one of his first Marvel works.
Dave: That’s goin’ waaay back.
Matt: Well, I was a John Carter fan. There was a John Carter comic? I didn’t know this! So I bought a bunch of issues, then I’m flippin’ through and I’m like, wait, Frank Miller? And then I looked it up, and oh yeah, this is one of Frank’s first jobs for Marvel. So, I took it up to have him sign it, and he looks at it, he goes “oh wow, I have seen this in a while”, he’s flippin’ through it, he’s like, “yeah, this is back when I all I really cared about drawing was scantily clad girls!” and he paused for a minute, looked me in the eye, and went, “I still do that.”
Dave: [laughs] That’s great. That’s great.
Matt: I laughed and got my signature and meanwhile there’s a guy behind me with every “Daredevil” book Frank had ever written type of thing, and it’s like, yeah, I’m not gonna be that guy. I just want one signature, I’m good.
Dave: Right. Right. Yeah, and you’re pretty much guaranteed Frank’s not gonna say to that guy, “wow, I haven’t seen these in a long time! ‘Daredevil’!”
PART TWELVE:
Dave: David Birdsong, “For Dave: My wife asked me if we were going to address the current situation with the daily strips.” Ah, no. “I told her that I didn't see any humor in watching a police officer murder someone on TV. I don't find righteous protest funny either (if you start protesting something silly? "Trees are ALIVE! They have feelings!" or "I need my zebra on the plane! It's a service animal!" Then you are fair game).” Ha! Fair game, I get it. “Rioting, wanton destruction and looting are about funny as a brick to the face. So no, I don't think I can come up with anything very funny right now. Which begs the question - am I wrong? Is there humor to found here? There are jokes about Christ on the cross ("Peter, I can see your house from up here"). There are jokes about how jokes about Lincoln's assassination aren't funny.” Yeah, apart from that, [inaudible]. “I'm sure someone has made jokes about the Holocaust. We make comics about how suffering for all eternity in hell is kind of funny because when someone has done so poorly at life that they end up in the Infernal Realms and they still don't get it, they are still ruled by their id?” I think so. “That's a gold mine of opportunity for funny comics, but there are some subjects that are too off limits even for me who told someone that Princess Leia jokes were ok even if Carrie Fisher had only recently died. Even a jerk like me has his self-imposed limits. Having said that, Dave has told us if we find something funny we should go with it. After all, laughter is a human response to something we find funny. It's a sense of humor. You SENSE that something is funny whether you THINK you should or not.” And then he wrote to you, “Sorry to keep this going. I really don't think AMOC is the place for discussion about the current mess our country is going through.” Blah blah blah, and then back into the George Floyd tragedy. Yeah, I tend to go with the fact that, if you make yourself laugh, if you think of something and you go, “oh that’s funny” and you laugh before you censor yourself, you shouldn’t censor yourself. No, I’m a big believer in what the aliens told Woody Allen in “Stardust Memories”, “tell funnier jokes.” If you think of something funny, use it. I’m just finishing up the Rapist Virgin gag, a shaggy dog story which is like, just getting longer and longer and longer because I got determined to go, “okay, I’ve got a plot for this.” I always tell you guys and I always tell myself, don’t bog yourself, just tell funny jokes. Change the premise if you find a funnier joke to get to. But I had a bunch of what, to me, were funny jokes that needed a lot of work. It’s a lot of egghead Dave stuff to try to make this sound reasonably plausible what it is that I’m talking about, as well as being a shaggy dog story, as well as being funny. And boy, did I get bogged down in that. “Rick O’Shay”, which is a comic strip from years ago, he used to do that. It’s a western comic strip, and it’s a dramatic western story for the most part. But each strip also has a punchline. He gets away from the punchline sometimes, but you could see that he’s trying to go, “look, I’m just doing a John Wayne kind of oatburner western story with these touchstone points. Just to make it a challenge, let’s put a punchline on each one so people are actually getting a funny comic strip as well.” Stan Lynde was the cartoonist. He does an amazing job on it. With this one, that’s what I tried to do, was, okay, that strip doesn’t have a punchline on it, so I think this needs to become two strips, so that both of them can advance the plot and both of them can have a punchline on them. So, you find out that you’ve been unconsciously writing... your subconscious mind has been writing strips up ahead and working on stuff that you didn’t know it was working on and you surprise yourself with humor. Like, the latest one, I think I already faxed it to you, Dante watching the goings on at Potemkin Acres and he’s watching it in one of the reopened [inaudible] Apple Stores. And coincidentally, the salesman is a Virgil lookalike.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: A self-hating Italian. And it’s like, that’s funny. That was making me laugh. That getting that bubbling up in your stomach, oh I’m gonna start giggling any minute now, kind of thing that tells you okay, well, we’ll put that in, cause you’re laughing. But then, it’s like, okay, he’s a self-hating Italian who hates Dante being in his store because Dante is Italian, and it’s like, can I have him thinking that Dante is this terrible dago? Like, can I use the term “dago”? And it’s like, well you kinda have to because it’s funny, but then it’s like, ahh we’re in a completely different time period now. There was a time when you could an Italian a dago. [laughs] It’s not now, but I was thinking, well, at the same time, it’s a thought balloon. He’s not saying it to him, but he’s thinking it because he’s Italian but he hates Italians. He’s a self-hating Italian. And I wrestled with that for a while. I ended up not using “dago” but I did use “greaseball”.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: It’s like, is “greaseball” okay but “dago” isn’t? It’s… I don’t know. It’s like, things that I think are funny and I come from a completely different time period. One of my cousins married a guy who was talking about prejudice, they’re like… this was my Dad and my Uncle, who are both Scottish, talking about this guy, talking about the different ethnicities and nationalities that he didn’t trust, or he doesn’t like to deal with. And my Dad went, “ah, he’s a hunky himself, isn’t he?” [laughs] And it’s like, I’m going, “a hunky? What is a hunky? I’ve never even heard that.” And he’s going, “oh, it’s a Hungarian.” And it’s like, oh, okay. I understand they’re trying to lose this stuff out of our society, but that was funny to me. “He’s a hunky himself, isn’t he?” And it’s like, where does this weird pecking order of, who are the decent people and who just isn't up here on the scaffold, high enough up on the scaffold with the rest of us? It’s like, well, you’re Scottish. It’s not like you’re English or something, it’s not like you’re from an SW1 address, what are you doing calling somebody a hunky? And that’s why, those things, I do think are funny. Well, ya know, if you’re offended by those things, and you’re going, “oh you can’t do that. That’s just cruel. That’s just being prejudiced, that’s just hurting people’s feelings intentionally.” That’s not why I’m doing it, I’m doing it because I think a self-hating Italian, thinking to himself that he’s really really annoyed with this “dago” with this mop in his store, that’s funny to me! It’s Virgil! Virgil is Italian and he’s calling Dante in his head a “dago”! It’s funny!
Matt: That was… one my one Christmas card where Iguana and Beer visit Santa’s workshop and it starts off with the scroll sayin’ 1951 and gives the little bit of the exposition that a four-page card is gonna have and at the bottom I have Iguana and Beer and Iguana is goin’, “I don’t think this is gonna end well”. And Beer’s goin’, “who cares? It’s the 50s, I can be sexist and racist and it’s okay!”
Dave: [laughs] Not only okay, it’s mandatory!
Matt: And then, then on the back of the card, it’s a little one page strip of Iguana goin’, “well, you were sexist, but you weren’t racist”.
PART THIRTEEN
Dave: Ya know, there ya go. If you don’t like that kinda humor, definitely don’t buy “Cerebus in Hell?” comics and don’t read them on A Moment of Cerebus. Read my conversation with Adam Beechen about the Cerebus debris field and “Sparring with Gil Kane” and stuff like that. It’s not as if that’s all that I do, is sit around trying to think of offensive things to call people, but the snowflakes really do see it that way. Unless you’re treating everybody with absolutely immaculate dignity, except old white European men, then that’s just it. You’re not entitled to live. You’re not entitled to be a human being. You’re not entitled to create the work that you wanna work. And it’s like, wait a minute, you threw me out of your f’ing society 26 years ago, and now you’re going to tell me that I can’t even entertain myself? And people who think that I’m entertaining? Who died and left you king? It’s like, get a grip on yourself. I’m not going to suddenly turn back into some sort of liberal. It’s just not gonna happen, and I’m not going to play your liberal reindeer games, cause I think you’re all nutty as fruitcakes. But, ya know, as they call that in the diplomacy biz, that’s a frank exchange of viewpoints.
Matt: In the script for “Vark Wars 3”, cause Beatrice was the Leia stand-in for the first couple of them, so I’m continuing that motif and of course, it’s the third one ,and in the third one Leia wears the gold bikini, so there’s a couple of strips where somebody shows up and is like, “hey”. It starts out with Beatrice is there and there’s a couple guys by her and she’s goin’, “can I help you?” and they’re like, “well this is the third one, right?” and she’s like, “yeah?” “And you’re the Leia stand-in, right?” “yeah?” “Okay, so we’re just waitin’ around” and then she’s like, “get away you pigs” and there’s a couple of ‘em with different characters, and finally, it’s her with the Whore of Babylon goin’, and she’s complainin’ about all the men objectifying her and it’s nice to talk to a woman who knows that we’re not just tits and ass, and the punchline is the Whore of Babylon going, “Yeah, so when are you going to put that little gold number on?”
Dave: [laughs] There you go, yeah.
Matt: I thought of it, it made me laugh, and I’m goin’, I’m sure this is somethin’ that when it’s done Dave’s gonna laugh, and David Birdsong and Ben Hobbs and Sean are gonna laugh, and I’m sure the readers out there are gonna laugh, and somebody’s gonna get offended, but I don’t care, cause it’s just lines on paper.
Dave: Yeah, yeah, we’re just making jokes. That’s how you do humour, you make yourself laugh, and the stuff that makes you laugh that’s what you do for a living is making people laugh. You can’t self-censor. That was my experience on “Guys” in particular, where, having practically lived at Peter’s Place for as long as I did, ya know, “never fall in love with a bar”. It’s like, I would go, okay, here’s a bunch of guys in a bar, and it’s Bear and Mick Jagger and two of the Beatles and Marty Feldman, and it’s like, okay, they’re all stuck there and drinking themselves to death and trying not to drink themselves to death. Let’s write possible jokes for them. Actual conversations, here’s how guys talk. And then I would do that, like method acting the whole thing. Yeah, I could use this line from this, I could use this thing that such and such said at Peter’s Place, and whatever else. And then step back and look at it, and go, whoa! I don’t know if you can publish a comic book with this in it! Well, wait a minute, why wouldn’t you be able to if that’s how people are? If that’s something that actually happened and that was funny, and now I’m putting it in there because it’s funny and because all of these guys laughed when it happened. Then it’s obviously funny. I’m not doing it to upset my sister, who thinks everybody should be kind all the time, 100%, and not hurt anybody’s feelings. I’m not doing that, that’s not my job description. My job description is to make myself and people like me laugh, so I won’t send you my comic book, but I will send you a birthday card every year, and you’ll send me a birthday card every year and that’s really how that goes. That’s the extent of the involvement, because I’m way way way way over here and you’re way way way way over there. What rankles me is when they go, “we’re all in this together” and it’s like, no, we’re not. All of the blue state people are in the blue state things that lockdown together, and all of the red state people are in the red states locked downed together, and there is absolutely no communication across that divide between those groups. It’s the “My Fair Lady” line, where his mother says, “I suggest you confine yourself to two topics: the weather and your health.” And it’s like, that’s a good rule of thumb. Cause you never know if you’re talking to somebody who’s in your sandbox or who’s in their sandbox. Everybody’s experience the same weather and everybody’s got different things going on with their health. Exchange some pleasantries, and spend the rest of the time just being with your group.
Matt: Yeah, that’s not the worst advice.
Dave: No, I hope it isn’t. I hope it isn’t. It’s like, ya know, Rick Veitch is definitely far far far over on the left-wing side of things, he’s just taken over as the Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont from Alison Bechdel, who did “Dykes to Look Out For”, so it’s like, he still sends me his work. It’s definitely Rick Veitch, it’s not Dave Sim, but everytime he sends me a Rick Veitch thing I read it and he’s getting really really good at doing Rick Veitch and then I send him back my Dave Sim thing and I hope he reads it and goes, “Yeah this is really really good Dave Sim.” It would be nice if that happened more, but I don’t think it’s going to.
PART FOURTEEN
Dave: And eventually, as it creeps up on 7 o’clock, which means I’ve been doing this for 2 hours again, there comes a time when you go, [sings] “I’m so glad we had this time together, just to have a laugh or sing a song, seems we just got started, and before you know it, comes the time we have to say, go away Matt.”
Matt: Well, okay, I got one last, really quick thing that… I had a comic book metaphysics moment that was just really weird for me. I’m scanning all the issues of “Following Cerebus” into my computer, and turning them into a PDF so that I have digital copies of ‘em, and then I’m gonna put ‘em through a scanner so that… through a reader, so that they’re text files you can actually search. That’s step 2 of the project. But I read, Roberta Gregory’s letter to you and your response to her, and then I had to go to my Mom’s house for something, and she’s like, “Hey, there’s this Roberta Gregory book up on my bookshelf” and I’m like, “yeah?”, she’s like, “do you know what that is?” I’m like, “you got that for like your 40th birthday”, somebody gave her a copy of “A Bitch is Born”. And, it was either right after her 40th birthday or right after her and my Dad got divorced, and she’s like, “oh, well, if you want it you can have it” and I’m just thinkin’, “I literally was just readin’ this work 30 minutes ago!”
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: So I took the book, cause I’m like, oh yeah, ya know, I’ll take this. I mean, it’s not the worst thing. It wasn’t necessarily appropriate for me to read when I was 13.
Dave: But it’s really good!
Matt: But but, yeah, I’m gonna reread it now as an adult and I’ll probably understand 90% of it.
Dave: Oh, sure.
Matt: I mean, when I 13 and I got, cause I’m pretty sure that’s where she talks about when she first got her period, and I was 13, and I’m like, “I dunno what this is about, this doesn’t make any sense, why would they give this to Mom?” And my Mom’s like, “I have no memory of this book existing in my life at all” and I’m like, “Mom, it’s been on that bookshelf for 30 years.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: But it’s suddenly, ya know, hey I got a copy of this book now. And it showed up like literally 30 minutes after I read her strip to you and your strip to her.
Dave: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Yes. Did she try reading it, or did she flip through it? It’s very funny!
Matt: I think she read it when she got it, but my Mom, ya know, she’s turnin’ 70 in September so it’s one of those, yeah, it’s gone. If she read it, she doesn’t remember.
Dave: Right. Right. Yeah, it was interesting, Gerhard used to say when you meet Donna Barr and you meet Roberta Gregory, you have this impression that Roberta Gregory is a lot more like Donna Barr’s work, and Donna Barr is a lot more like Roberta Gregory’s work. Roberta was very very quiet and amiable and placid sort of thing, and Donna Barr was the firebrand, and it was like… you really thought, “where is Bitchy Bitch coming from inside of Roberta Gregory?” But, I used to look forward to them. I mean, I still have them in the Cerebus Archive and I still reread them if I happen to run across one of them. Marcy, who worked in Bitchy Bitch’s office, and was a born again Christian with a southern accent. I mean, I’m a monotheist, but boy did she nail the type.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Nailed the… you really, if you’re not a Christian you would not want to be working at the next desk over from Marcy, and that’s what happened to Bitchy Bitch. So… well, thank you for that story. That was great.
Matt: Well, I figured you’d appreciate it. But yeah, I think we’ve hit the wall of, “okay we’ve talked about everything we could possibly need to talk to.” Or talk about.
Dave: And if we haven’t destroyed my career by now, well, I just don’t think that’s going to happen.
Matt: [laughs] C’mon, Dave, you’re not self-destructive. It just happens!
Dave: Yes! Yes, it just follows me around like a copy of a “Bitchy Bitch” trade paperback.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Have a good night, Matt.
Matt: You too, Dave! Bye!
Dave: And to Paula, and Janis Pearl, and what’s her friend’s name?
Matt: Uhh, Alayna.
Dave: Alayna, and Bullwinkle, for me.
Matt: Will do.
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