Dave Sim's Ethical Railroad

Hi, Everybody!

Got a fax from Dave:

There's quite a bit going on in this fax. And it's a nice lead-in to something I've been meaning to post about for awhile. So, let's get into it.

Going back to the top: There's a bunch of numbers, and I, personally, would like to read the Too Long version. Because the numbers there confuse me...

1) It's a neat idea, but I DO wonder if Dave has the authority to do it. (I mean I'M not ratting him out to Viacom, but I wonder what they'll do if Sean/Birdsong/Hobbs makes digital files available to all the participants. I mean can Carson print up a run and sell them? And can I get a copy gratis for pimpin' it here on AMOC?)

2) I was initially confused by these numbers, but rereading it a fourth time, I see what Dave did. He sent Peter & Kevin 4% of the $80,000ish raised by the Kickstarter. Which is probably a foolish decision, but an extremely ethical one.

That's where the title of this post comes from. I was reading this fax on my phone in teeny type, and my brain "autocorrected" when Dave wrote "this is definitely not a viable business model." as "this is no way to run a railroad". 

Which is true. But IF Dave were running a railroad, he'd be running it as ethically as he could. Which means paying 4% to two guys who maybe don't NEED the money, and maybe don't even WANT the money, but it's better, ethically, to pay them then to just think "I hope those guys are doing okay..."

(I've recently began to frame Eastman & Laird as "What if Siegel & Shuster had managed to keep the rights to Superman?" I think that most of Eastman & Laird's decisions regarding the Turtles and the Empire they spawned, are what Siegel & Shuster would have ultimately decided to do with the Empire Superman spawned if they had had control (There are a number of parallels: the studio Shuster set up to help produce Superman, and the studio Mirage became. I think Shuster may have sold his half to Siegel, if DC didn't screw them... I think S&S would have managed to keep Superman as a merchandising juggernaut. But I digress...).)

To that end, 3) I've known about Dave paying Gerhard the 25% on "found money". I could quibble over whether Dave didn't "do" anything on The Last Day. I won't, but I could. I'm sure Ger can use the scratch...

But, it turns my mind back to The AMOC Rummage Sale. I sold two of the T8 packages I got from Dave, and was wondering how to give Dave his "cut"? I asked Eddie Khanna:

Eddie!

So, I'm on the horns of an ethical dilemma.
I sold two of the Turtles 8 packages from the AMOC Rummage sale for $270 USD.
I was gonna give Dave $270 CAD, and keep the rest to cover shipping & handling plus, ya know, my time and effort since I'm an unpaid volunteer.
But the question is HOW to give Dave his cut.
If I donate through the GoFundMe, it'll unlock another page and I could get a reward drawing of Jen, Margaret and you "Peanut-fied".
The issue is: Is it ethical to give Dave money and get rewarded for it? Or does that make me a slimy scum@%&*?
(This also leads into a future blog post about how to give Dave money and which ways get the most cash in his hand. What % of the Patreon goes to fees vs how much gets to Dave (Same question with the GoFundMe, CerebusDownloads and just Paypaling him money.)?)

Anyway, since I'ma not get any sleep over this, I thought I'd burden your conscience too.
Thoughts?
Manly

Eddie  answered:

Hey Matt,
I know the best way that Dave prefers is a cheque: no processing fees charged as is the case with:
GOFUND ME, (not sure how much they skim)
PATREON (Payment fees and Platform fees add up to about 9%)
CDL/PAYPAL (3 -3.5%)
The problem is, unless you have a chequing account, it's getting harder to send cheques internationally (e.g. the US POSTAL SERVICE doesn't do INTERNATIONAL Money Orders any more. The green US ones they issue can only be cashed in the States. They stopped issuing the international pink ones a few years ago.). (I'm sure the fact Canadians spell it 'cheque' and not 'check' didn't help any either).

I can hear the response now:

"But what about buying Dave's works through my local comic book shop?"

Yeah, as implied in the Fax, publishing isn't bringing in the money it used to. Which leads to:

INCOMING #1 IS DEDICATED TO MARGARET "BEHIND THE SCENES" LISS

CEREBUS No.1 pg. 1 RECREATION/RE-IMAGINING

OVER-EXPLAINED BECAUSE ONE THING THAT I DO KNOW IS THAT CEREBUS NO. 1 HAS A MYSTIQUE TO IT THAT NO OTHER CEREBUS THING HAS. YOU CAN NEVER GO TOO FAR WRONG LINGERING OVER CEREBUS NO.1

After working on it for two days + under the magnifier lamp (trees vs. forest)…

(I realized late that I couldn't "wait and see" how the WOLVERROACH TRIPTYCH 

 

did in the November 19 HA.com SIGNATURE AUCTION without bumping over into late Spring 2024 on any possible CEREBUS PAGES 1, 2, 3 TRIPTYCH since the HA.com consignment deadlines are now pretty much right on top of the previous auction's completion. That is, the consignment deadline for Feb 2024 is going to be IN November 2023 which means a CEREBUS PAGES 1, 2, 3 TRIPTYCH would need to be done BY November to be in the Feb 2024 Auction. Starting it in November would push it to June 2024 at the earliest. )

…I thought "Okay, it's more a re-imagning than a recreation because I fixed too many things" and a re-imagining isn't going to sell for nearly what a recreation would. Seeing it through fresh -- i.e. forest vs. trees -- eyes this morning, I thought, "Well, no, it's still within recreation limits because everything is still in the same place, just with more baroque 'Red Nails' detail incorporated." It's no small question. Assuming it takes me two days to do each of the other two pages then you're talking about six days total working time. Which, at recreation prices is apt to be good money. At re-imagining prices it could leave me going "If I knew it was going to go for that little, I would have hung onto it and done the whole issue and auctioned that." But there you're talking about 6 weeks plus of working time. How much would the whole issue have to auction for to validate 6 weeks of work. And where is the $-return-on-time-invested Goldilocks Spot between 3 pages and 22 pages?

So those are the two extremes between which I find myself stuck. With plenty of time between now and the end of page 3 to figure out where that is and where I want it to end up being. Possible intermediary step: do CAN 10: MINDS and offer however-many-#-of-#1-pages-I have-done-by-then as Bonus Prints

WHAT I LEARNED AT THE ISSUE #1 PG.1 RECREATION WARS

1) the horse only has one eyeball (the right))

2) the Kirby Krackle on the shadow in panel two and the tiles in panel 3 were actually pretty intelligently intuitive, harkening back to the early Kirby Klone BWS. Intelligently Intuitive because no one was going to be fooled into thinking that there was any danger of my displacing BWS (then or now). "A man's reach should always exceed his grasp or what is a heaven for?" But! Know Your Place. Well down the ladder with the Kirby Klone Barry.

2) Cerebus' medallions are actually rings -- which you can see on any copy of the splash page (particularly by the shadow on Cerebus' right bicep). It looks as if I got to the toning point and then went, "Uh, even theoretically do I plan on cutting out tone on microscopic rings panel after panel and page after page?"

As far as I've been able to reconstruct, the A-V logo came first, then the "Step forward…" sample panel, then page 1, then the model sheet (which had been more of a professional affectation to show Mike Friedrich while pitching CEREBUS to him for QUACK! -- preferable to drawing more than page 1) (proving my "affectation" memory/theory: the upper left Cerebus has what appear to be a combination of rings and medallions but without the character's outline "showing through"; the rest look like medallions: the purpose of an actual model sheet being to settle those questions). On the original A-V mascot logo and sample panel they look more like a necklace. Rings or medallions? I opted for historical accuracy.

3) There's probably more white-out than ink on panel two as I tried to figure out what I was doing. Besides Rendering to a fare-thee-well. Which seemed faithful to my original intention: really overdoing the BWS "Red Nails" inking riffs.

[which I hadn't really Studied to that point. More just, "Wow! Lookit thet thar"(1973 when "Red Nails" was serialized to 1977 when it was my clearest BWS reference, having been printed in black & white). I would definitely learn a lot more from actual Study and what I knew from Barry from my fan days -- i.e. that the deadline had been excruciating as he painstakingly did his best and most uncompromising work on Part One which was only -- ONLY! lol! -- 20 pages long. So he knew the style needed to be modified on the longer Part Two. Which "worked" rather than Worked since he still ran out of time with the threat of Marvel Bullpen "gang inking" hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles the whole time.]

[Of which I was definitely mindful since I had never done a 22-page story before and certainly not on a bi-monthly schedule. "More Part Two than Part One, Dave -- you really don't know how to do this…yet". So, that became another re-imagining instead of recreating riff: more Part One than Part Two. How the 1977 Dave would have overdone the "Red Nails"riffs if he hadn't had Deadline Production -- QUACK! first, then self-publishing -- "front of mind" throughout the development process.]

[When I finally got my sweaty little hands on the superlative RED NAILS ARTIST'S EDITION my first thought had been "THIS would have helped A LOT". My inner 21-year old with his jaw hanging open. Primary lesson: the thin lines are a lot thinner than they appear in the original SAVAGE TALES printings. So More! Thin! Lines!]

4) The CEREBUS logo is hand-drawn which is more than can be said for the original issue #1 page 1 the last time I saw it (35 years ago) where the logo was a badly yellowed reverse stat. I even did the "the Aardvark" in a close approximation of the Letraset typeface Busorama Bold (which I did on the original cover and should have done -- and looks as if I started to do) on the splash page. The reason? Even back then Letraset was selling for roughly $7 a sheet and it would have cost another $5 or so to get a reverse stat done.

INCOMING #2 POSSUM AT LARGE VS. SPIDER-VARK SPIDER-VARK FIGURE

The idea is to give anyone who is doing a CIH? book -- in this case Chad Lambert and Joe Gravel -- hands-on self-publishing experience. The only (even theoretically) successful model being a money-making KICKSTARTER followed by break-even DIA solicitation. Win-win in the sense that the former is up to you to construct so that it turns a healthy profit for you (the creator compensating or not compensating A-V at their discretion -- and giving all other CIH? creators, cough, including me, cough, concepts to steal shamelessly IF they work) and the latter guarantees that you and A-V make nothing but it does get your work into comic stores and into the hands of comic-store patrons. Now if you could only figure out how to do this MONTHLY.

Doing CEREBUS, SPIDER-VARK and LAST DAY CEREBUS variants is me responding to the sweat equity Joe put into copying Terry Austin's SUPERMAN VS. SPIDER-MAN bird's eye Empire State Building cover. Amazing piece of work. Which is how I picture this working "going forward". You (CIH? creator) get out of it -- from me -- what I see you putting into it. Taking it as a given that it will likely be years rather than months before Launch. My part is done. Unless I get the first 10 pages in the mail and it's comparable to faithfully copying something as elaborate as Terry's cover. Okay, HERE's what you get in exchange for the sweat equity I see in THAT.

The original art for the CEREBUS, SPIDER-VARK and LAST DAY CEREBUS figures is "on the table" and I'll leave it up to Chad and Joe to decide what that means. Best -- as in "most lucrative" -- practices.

Bottom line: CIH? is the opposite of a "closed shop". If you look at HELL?BOT as a template, CIH? is the most accessible entry-level title on the market. In cartooning terms, it makes SOUTH PARK look like FANTASIA. HELL?BOT is one (count 'em ONE) image. My HELL?BOT drawing copied 24 times on one (count 'em ONE) Gustave Dore print. Everything after that is just Joe Kubert Font word balloons and Bookman Old Style 9 pt. "Aftergags". In the beginning I used to mock up six or seven pages a day. Jack Kirby Pace. Why make it more complicated than that? Not a rhetorical question. GUYS. WHY. MAKE. IT. MORE. COMPLICATED. THAN. THAT? And yet everyone does. So far.

Ordinarily I would be working on NARUTOBUS #1 pg. 9 today, but this segues into another announcement. NARUTOBUS is going to be the first 16-page $5
A-V comic book sometime next year. Needless to say, the world isn't holding its breath for the first 16-page $5 comic book but we've "eaten" as many paper price increases as we can to the point where a 24-page $4 comic book is strictly a break-even proposition and has been for the last year or so. Something Has To Give and "page count" and "cover price" and "CIH? loyalist wallets" are elected! It's a ways off since MARVELMANVARK #1 and AKIMBO #1 (in association, I think with CAN PORTFOLIO #10) (Some people: "Oh, YAY!") come first.

This part. Cerebus in Hell doesn't really bring in money. (And at this point the phonebooks don't really either...) So while Dave REALLY appreciates everybody ordering CiH? Presents Spore Batvark #1 & CiH? Presents Spore Batvark #1 SIGNED by Dave, you'd be better of bidding on the latest eBoner auction. 

Sorry, I interrupted Dave...

Optimistically? Next summer sometime?

SDOAR 576 is done. Now comes a tough "Gravitt's POV" stretch of 2? or 3? pages. The dashboard and front window of a 1949 Ford and Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh facing each other in the middle of the right lane on Peachtree. I can picture it in my mind but I do have some missing pieces before I actually get to the "but what does that actually LOOK like?" stage. And then to the "how do I make it look like that?" stage.

INCOMING #3: Shortcut week on the Photo Archive. Went through ALL of the photos and pulled out the ones that had a note attached or a description written on the back. Which was a good quarter of them. The best news is a) large chunks of the Photo Archive are still in order and b) there are very few photos that I have no idea what they are. And with recourse on many of those:

i.e. Stoo Metz's photos of THE LAST SIGNING and glamourpuss party in 2010. I

think Rolly can e-mail them to Calum Johnson at STRANGE ADVENTURES and ask him to identify the locals and Margaret and Nate and Eddie can maybe identify the others.

NARUTOBUS page nine coming up.
Dave

Speaking of the Last Day:

The Last Day Without nothing.

   "      "     "        "  Dave's signature.

   "      "     "        "  an Old Cerebus Remarque

   "      "     "     Auction catalog for the Panoramic Remarques. 

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Oliver's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video". 

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Next Time: Steve Peters Week 2023!