It's the last Wednesday of the month! Time to roll into your LCS and DEMAND the newest CIH? one-shot. This month's entry: The Aversions #1. Available both signed and unsigned:
Now available to order from Diamond: Aardvarkian Splendor #1. Signed by Dave and not signed by Dave:
Also available, The Last Day:
We're thinking about doing Aardvarkian Splendor variants. The two tiny covers featured on the regular cover. But as full covers. Let us know in the comments if you'd be interested:
Wait, what's with all the text? I thought Jen was going to crush Manly in the next installment of SDOAR 2023? What's going on here?!? First Succession ends, now this?!?
It's all good. I just wanted to have a word with the AMOC readership before returning to our regularly scheduled entertainment.
<ahem>
Dear Readers of A Moment of Cerebus,
How's it going?
Let me cut to the chase... these Tuesday SDOAR 2023 updates are supposed to be an attempt to raise awareness for The Strange Death of Alex Raymond and the GoFundMe campaign I launched to help Dave not only continue work on SDOAR (not SODAR, Manly), but hopefully, one day, God willing, as he would say, finish it. (In fact, you can check out the GoFundMe at this handy-dandy link right here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/sdoar-2023)
Along the way, I thought it might be fun to have a few laughs. Poke fun at myself and others as off-screen and Emo versions of ourselves. The reason I chose Emo Dave, Emo Carson and now Emo Manly is that they are not actually those individuals, but mini-caricatures that run rampant across the SDOAR 2023 comic strip. When it first started, folks seemed to enjoy it, donations picked up, and some readers even called for a a comic book collection of strips (UPDATE: Or not 🤦♀️). I gotta admit, that was cool. And, perhaps, the strip went to my head.
Since then, I feel (yes, feel, dammit) like a mini war has developed between Manly and me, which I tried to deescalate with the "Mistakes Were Made" original art by Dave Sim as an olive branch to Manly and an acknowledgement to the AMOC community that any awkward tension felt by readers was something that I was the sole progenitor of. Mea culpa and all those other pretentious latin phrases, etc.
Audience reaction? Crickets. Comments either non-existent, critical, or let's face it, bidding on some one-of-a-kind Cerebus item. All those lovely tweets that used to go up after my posts have come to a shrieking halt. All the while, understandably, Manly keeps upping the ante every week -- the red highlighter/Seiler impersonation added to my published post, retaliatory/preemptive posts on Monday nights (meaning my in-kind responses need to be thought up and executed overnight), and this week, copy that I wrote for today's post appropriated by Manly for his post yesterday AND artwork that I commissioned from Dave and had not yet used, used with his admittedly funny strip AMOCnutz strip on AMOC yesterday.
<ahem>
Are mom and dad having a fight?
<sigh>
I don't mind keeping this rolling. Really, I don't. I like sarcasm and barbs. Parry, riposte. Check... um... check? To ensure things don't get prematurely appropriated again, I can compose my posts away from AMOC. I can work with Rolly to ensure SDOAR art reward and commission scans go only to me. I mean, once I post them, they're fair game. And the art is Emo Manly. If anyone has the right to abscond with that art for their own comedic devices, it's Manly. I mean, it's his giant freakin' head.
But here's my thing. I don't know if the AMOC readership is enjoying the tit for tat. The anything-you-can-do, I-can-do-better, point-counterpoint comic strips. I also fear our responses are about to get out of hand (if they haven't already).
This is Manly Matt Dow's A Moment of Cerebus. He owns the joint. The AMOC landlord, if you will. I'm merely renting. On Tuesdays. And he's got the keys to my proverbial apartment.
What's my point? Well, I could be off-base. This slow-motion train wreck could be the most fun AMOC readers have had since Reads! (That's a joke, son).
Or, enough is enough!
Which is why I am asking AMOC readers to add in the comments what they think.
"Keep it up, Jen and Manly!"
"Tone it down, y'all!"
"The ribs! Hit 'im in the ribs!"
"Can mom and dad please stop fighting?"
"Jen, you really are too sensitive. Less with the feelings and more with the jokes!"
It'll be like that time readers decided to murder Robin. Or when that polar research ship got named Boaty McBoatFace.
Okay, maybe not the best examples, but let us know what you think!
In the meantime, I'm going to put the SDOAR 2023 comic strip on the back burner (with the stove off), and not add any more gasoline to the fire whilst I wait on everyone's vote, something I like to call:
"Having been a long term Patreon supporter I figured it was time to donate here and unlock another page." - Dion Turner, GoFundMe Donor
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| It ain't hard, she's pretty easy on the eyes... |
Shipping for international is:
International Surface = $35 Canadian dollars - takes 1.5 - 3 months to get
or
International Air = $75 Canadian dollars - takes 1 - 2 months to get
Hey Matt!Could you add a link to SDOAR 2023 GFM at the bottom of your posts on AMOC?Thanks!Jen
Shipping for international is:
International Surface = $35 Canadian dollars - takes 1.5 - 3 months to get
or
International Air = $75 Canadian dollars - takes 1 - 2 months to get
Hey Matt!Could you add a link to SDOAR 2023 GFM at the bottom of your posts on AMOC?Thanks!Jen
Shipping for international is:
International Surface = $35 Canadian dollars - takes 1.5 - 3 months to get
or
International Air = $75 Canadian dollars - takes 1 - 2 months to get
Hey Matt!Could you add a link to SDOAR 2023 GFM at the bottom of your posts on AMOC?Thanks!Jen
MARGARET LISS:
Last week in What Happened Between Issues 20 and 21 we look at pages 70 and 100 of Dave Sim’s second notebook used in the production of Cerebus. We’ll continue to look at this notebook this week with two pages that show Dave’s first sketches of Astoria.
Wait a second, this isn’t Astoria. Well it doesn’t really look like her.
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| Notebook #2, page 66 |
On the page prior to the above one, Dave had written a bunch of dialogue for the character who would become Astoria. On the above page he had this to say about it in the digital High Society collection:
“Mary Astor doing Brigid O’Shaughnessy in THE MALTESE FALCON and Cerebus. . .instead of Humphrey Bogart doing Sam Spade. “I’m begging you for your pity. I can tell by your face. . .I can sense that he’s done something wrong. . .” NOW I had something to work with. But she looked too much like Katherine Hepburn. Without Spencer Tracey there is absolutely nothing funny about Katherine Hepburn.”
On the next page we see Astoria as she appears in High Society.
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| Notebook #2, page 67 |
Dave said this about the page:
“I got the look I needed pretty quickly. She had to be a serious character but she also had to be able to chew the scenery as Brigid O’Shaughnessy when required.”
Here's an entire page of panels, grabbed from a variety of (theoretically) public domain romance comics. I enjoy how the hair styles of the woman look close enough to one another that they start to look like the same woman. The word balloons were drawn the size they were on the swiped panels. Therefore, they differ in size a lot. I'm inclined to remove them and add new ones digitally, as is the CIH? way.
Next Week: It's the last Wednesday of the month! New CIH? at your LCS!
"Dave Sim has brought much joy to me with his creations." - Bob Zupancic, GoFundMe Donor
