Dave: Hello, Matt! How
are you doing?
Matt: I’m here. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs]
Interimly.
Matt: It’s been one of
them long months, this week, again.
Dave: I hear ya, I hear
ya.
Matt: I’m not even
talking about the outside world, I’m just talking about going to work, coming
home, and doing stuff.
Dave: Yeah! Yeah, why is
the real basics getting so difficult?
Matt: Because it’s 2020,
in 2022 we’ll all be fine.
Dave: Yeah, it’s a
theory. [laughs] I’m not one of those people who’s looking ahead expecting this
to get any better, but I certainly admire the optimism of the people who think
we’re gonna get back to normal at some point.
Matt: We’ll be AB
normal.
Dave: That’s it. That’s
it. I gotta try calling you back, because you’re getting really warbley on this
end.
Matt: Uhh, lemme try
something else…
Dave: Okay.
Matt: Am I better now?
Or is it still warbley?
[silence]
Matt: Hello?
[more silence]
Matt: Huh. You still
there, Dave?
[yet more silence]
Matt: Cause I’m no
hearing anything.
[son of silence]
Matt: Hello?
Dave: Hello?
Matt: Ahh! I
accidentally hi the mute button, can you hear me now? [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Yep, it’s
a little, sounds like squirrels scampering up and down the line, but I can work
around that.
Matt: Okay, I can hear
you fine, so.
Dave: Okay, that’s the
important thing, I guess. Okay, we’ve got some clean-up from last month. This
is a fax, October 3rd, from David Birdsong, “Cerebus in Hell?” team
member in good standing. “I had a different question for this month’s ‘Please
Hold for Dave Sim’, but thought it might be too big an answer, but if you want
to answer it next month. So, what is for children, and what if is for fools. So
the saying goes. But as comic book people, I feel like we get a bit of a
mulligan. It’s Stan Lee’s fault, or whoever came up with Marvel’s ‘What If?’.
You have spoken and written a bit about how you began reading the Bible as
research for the latter part of Cerebus. We know how that turned out. But here
it comes, what if you had not had the experience reading scripture as you did?
What might the end of Cerebus been like? I won’t ask you to speculate on your
personal life, it’s probably not hard to figure out, but that kind of what if
is pretty meaningless. You can’t go back and change it now, so why waste time wondering
about it. If only, if only, if only, is a good way to get stuck in the past.
But it does seem like you did have a different plan in mind for Cerebus.” And
thank you, David, I would answer that… an elaborate question, by saying, I
think that misunderstands the extent to which predestination figured into
Cerebus. That I’m not sure… we assume on a conventional basis that Dave Sim
came up with the idea for Cerebus and Dave Sim came up with the idea for 300
issues of Cerebus, but I don’t know that… the misses the point that God, the
appeal of Cerebus and the appeal of Dave Sim coming up with Cerebus, or whoever
came up with Cerebus and implanted it in Dave Sim, the appeal was that this was
the first time, as far as I know in history, where a writer said, “I’m going to
tell a 26 year story. It starts here, and it goes for 26 years, and then it
stops.” And the appeal of that was, I think, the same kind of Book of Job wager
between God and his adversary was, how do you picture… [glitch] and for the
adversary who doesn’t exist entirely in fourth dimensional space but I think
exists sort of incrementally in fourth dimensional space, was like, “uh, what
is this? A trick question? This guy’s gonna be a mess. Here it is 1977 and he’s
already pretty well addicted to drugs, and he drinks a fair bit, and started
committed adultery before he was married, and while he was married, and
basically really doesn’t think of anything in terms of conventional good and
evil. So I bet on this guy ending up well on my team at the end of the 26
years. Whereas, I think, God knew, being omniscient, this is how this is going
to go. That me coming up with a 6000 page graphic novel, and then starting with
the barbarian stories and then going onto political storyline, and then going
to an organized religion storyline “Church & State”, etc etc. And doing
literary treatments of Oscar Wilde, and then F Scott Fitzgerald and then Ernest
Hemingway, the natural step at the end of that will be, okay, then he’s going
to have to take on the Bible. Which he ended up doing, and for God it was just
a slam dunk. “If he goes in the natural sequence that he has to go in, and it’s
predestined that he’ll end up on my team. As unlikely a candidate for devout
monotheism as this guy looks like in 1977, that’s exactly how perfect a
candidate for monotheism and being a servant of God as he’s going to turn out
being.” So, the answer is, it was predestined that it was going to go that way,
so it was really out of my hands, even though it was completely in my hands. I
built the structure so that I had complete autonomy, nobody was going to
interfere with what it was that I had to say. And that could only end one way.
Man is basically good and will aspire to be good and improve if he’s given
autonomy. It’s usually, people choose evil because they’ve got external
influences that they’re prey to. They made a choice, and now this entity is in
control of them, whether it’s a boss at work or a Fortune 500 company, or
dictatorial parents, or doctrinaire organized religion. That’s where evil comes
from, autonomy and complete freedom of choice. God’s point is, everybody ends
up being good in that context. We’ve just got too much of the adversary dicking
around with people on the edges and then saying, “look, look, this person is evil.”
Well, no, they weren’t evil until you started dicking around with them like
that. So, there you go, David Birdsong! That’s my best answer to that one. So
the other one leftover from last time, and I just got to grab my… “Bartlett’s
Book of Familiar Quotations” and we were talking last time about Robert Graves
and “The White Goddess” and I just happened to run across Robert Graves’
relatively short section in Bartlett’s famous quotations, and it’s a quote from
“The White Goddess”, 1948. “The reason why the hairs stand on end, the eyes
water, the throat is constricted, the skin crawls and a shiver runs down the
spine when one writes or reads a true poem is that a true poem is necessarily
an invocation of the White Goddess, or Muse, the Mother of All Living, the
ancient power of fright or lust—the female spider or the queen bee whose
embrace is death.” [laughs] And it’s like, I read that and I go, well wait a
minute, the Mother of All Living is a biblical reference. That’s what the
meaning was of Eve’s original name, Chavah, means “the mother of all living”,
and to me that’s just the adversary. There’s no such thing as a White Goddess
or Muse or Mother of All Living. I think Graves is on the wrong track there,
and he’s on the right track when he talks about the female spider or the queen
bee whose embrace is death, which, to me, is YHWH, God’s adversary. So there
you go, [laughs] now we’re all done with last month’s, now we can start with
this month’s. Brian West asks: “Questions for Dave: How's Cerebus Campaign 2020
going? Have all the results for the "RED STATE," "BLUE
STATE," and "I VOTE FOR CEREBUS" editions of HIGH SOCIETY been
tabulated yet? If not, which edition is in the lead so far?” [laughs] And you
added to that, “Good man Brian. We should give him a raise…”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Or pay him! Either
one would be fine. That was all settled, Diamond decided, because of the
complications of it, that the “High Society” Red State, Blue State, and I Vote
for Cerebus campaign was just going to be a single straw poll, a one and done.
So those orders all came in, I believe in May? May or April. [sneezes] And as
it turned out, Red State won by, I believe by two or three copies, over Blue
State, but I Vote for Cerebus beat both of their asses all hollow. I think it
was about a two to one ratio of I Vote for Cerebus over Red State and like I
say, Red State beat Blue State. So, I’m taking it under advisement. I might go
to court and say, look, according to this straw poll in May, Cerebus is the new
President of the United States. And for the moment, legally, I will leave it at
that.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: That okay by you?
Matt: That’s fine.
Speaking of voting, I got an email from Eddie, the current Spawn 10 vote for
the Halloween Edition is, yes 18, no 1, abstain 3, and not voted so far 6.
Dave: Yes! Yes, I was
wondering whether I was going to mention that, so thank you [glich; sneezes].
Matt: Well, I responded
to him, going, did people change their vote or is the Russian election
interference I heard so much about? [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] It’s very
difficult to hack Dave Sim because he doesn’t have internet access. Not
impossible, I’m sure they could stick a bunch of stuff in my laptop of they
wanted to. That was people changing their votes because what I suggested was,
instead of just diluting the pool, which was 54 signed and numbered copies,
what we would do is add artist’s proofs. If you ordered on October 31st,
then you get a numbered copy between 4 and 54, signed, and it will say on the
comic book itself, on the back cover, “limited to 54 signed and [glitch]” and X
number of artist’s proofs. AP’s, which will be unnumbered. But on those comics,
they will be signed and I will write AP next to my name, and to the people who
ordered the Halloween Edition on October 31st will get a free
artist’s proof in addition to their numbered copy. So, for most of the people,
that was persuasive, but I would say, most of the votes were, look, the idea is
to try and make some money for Aardvark-Vanaheim, so let’s stick with that. You’re
still diluting the rareness of what I’m getting, but, ya know, this is an
equitable solution, it means the people who absolutely weren’t aware or weren’t
notified of the October 31st edition will be able to get a November
10th artist’s proof. And the way I look at it is, it’s the same
comic book because, it would be the same as a portfolio. If a portfolio has 54
signed and numbered copies, and then 25 or 50 or 100 artist’s proofs, if it
says that in the portfolio, it’s still the same portfolio. I mean, nobody would
be the kind of completeist who goes, “I have to own all of the signed and
numbered copies, and I have to order all of the artist’s proofs.” If you want
be that kind of a completeist, that’s insane.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So, if you’ve got
an artist’s proof, you’ve got the comic book in question.
Matt: It’s one of those,
I suggested one comic with both covers and you just put whichever comic on the
outside depending on who paid for it, because how many people need how many
additional copies of the Violator wearing a billion dollar dress? I mean, you’re
getting the same comic 17 times.
Dave: Right, right.
Which is just one of those, this obviously makes sense to people in 2020 in the
way that it doesn’t do baby boomers like myself and sub-boomers or whatever you
are in your weight class. But we’re all playing along! We’re going, “uh, jeeze,
this is just like being 22 years old all over again.” My concern with your
solution was, if somebody is getting the book slabbed, you wouldn’t be able to
see the interior cover [glitch]. With this one, because it’ll be on the back
cover specifying this is how many APs there are, so if you’ve got one it says
AP on the front, this is how rare it is, and if you’ve got one that’s got a
number on the front, this is how rare that is. So, it’s one of those
unfortunate situations, but as I explained to one of the Spawn fans, Steven G,
who I think has even posted to AMoC, I said, you can go on there and beg people
who have the..
Matt: Uhh, on Tuesday’s
post, I was doing the rigmarole of… everyday I put the same links, like the
link to the Kickstarter, some of the Spawn’s stuff’s come up on Heritage so
I’ve got a link to that, I got the link to the Previews webpages for the newest
issues of “Cerebus in Hell?” and there’s like 12 links, I repeat them everytime
and people miss stuff. Okay, if you’re only going to read one post, maybe
you’ll catch up on whatever it is you’re missing.
Dave: You’re a good
planner.
Matt: Well, sometimes
it’s at the beginning, sometimes it’s at the end, but I always call it the
rigmarole, because it’s, yes, you’ve probably read this a hundred times if
you’ve been following along. But for the one guy that it’s your first day… when
I did the post, I was putting stuff up and I was putting all the Heritage Spawn
art and the four original pages from Cerebus that are up, currently. And when I
went to the Spawn stuff, I interrupted it with Steven’s comment and I put what
he posted, and it was all in italics, and at the bottom it said, “I’m Steven G
and I approve this message” and the next line is me going, “what the hell was
that?
Dave: [laughs] Yeah, as
I said in my fax to Steven, we sort of went back and forth on this, is that,
look if you I wanted to be really provocative about this, I could print four
Halloween Edition red covers. That were like solid red, three for the Cerebus
Archive, and one I would put up for auction. [laughs] And he goes, “oh no,
please, don’t do that, because I’d have to get that one!” It’s like, well okay,
let’s try and meet each other halfway on this.
Matt: I’ve come to the
realization that it’s a Todd thing, because, “Spider-Man” #1 when it first got
released, I think, had four covers, four or five. There was the regular cover,
the platinum cover, and then I forget what the other two are. I own the platinum
and the regular, because as a kid I’m like, “ah this is neat”, and I’m like,
“oh, there’s another one”. Like a year or two later, I found a five pack of the
first five issues, and it was a collector’s pack and the cover is gold ink
instead of platinum ink, but it’s just like the platinum cover. And it turns
out, it’s a second print and was only available in limited quantities, yadda
yah, and that apparently is the one that’s worth money because it’s so rare,
and I’m like, it’s a Todd thing. The rarer it is and it involves Todd, the more
people want it.
Dave: Right, right.
Steven was telling me that actually he’s more of an expert on Spawn than Todd
is! They ended up turning over the Todd McFarlane book to him to put together
because he had more stuff and he knew more about the stuff than the people at
Todd McFarlane Productions did! And it’s like I’m going, I think this is a
syndrome in comics. The same as Matt Dow and Margaret Liss are the custodians
of my brain cells. The same sort of thing with Todd, “Did I do dat? Dat sounds
like a really good idea. I’m glad I came up with dat, I don’t want remember
nuffin’ about dat. So I think I was lookin‘ at my hockey cards dat year.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, back to the
questions, Steve asks, “And my Please Hold questions: 1) Why was the cover to
Swords vol #1 changed from the first to second printing? (...I may have already
asked this and forgotten Dave's answer...)” Yeah, we’re all getting to that age.
“(...and as a former pressman, I have to say: knockout text like what's on the
back cover is an absolute BITCH to print on a one or two color press!!...)”
Boy, tell me about it. That’s one of those, I know exactly what I want this to
look like, but no, you need a much bigger press and a much bigger print run to
be able to do that kind of knockout type. It was changed because I didn’t like
the cover. I knew what I wanted the cover to “Swords” Vol 1 to look like, a
cross between Bernie Wrightson’s “Bad Time Stories” cover, with the watercolor
quality to it, and the first or second “Flash Annual”, which had close-up
pictures of Flash at the bottom of these vertical columns, and each column was
a different story. And boy, the way it looked in my head was really really
good, and the way it actually came out was as a piece of artwork was, ehh,
really really only a fraction of that. And then as usually happens with
something that I’m not happy with, with the drawing or the painting when I get
it done, the printing did it no favors. The printing on the “Swords” Vol 1
cover was really, really bad. And it was like, no, this was gonna be my Dave
Sim “Bad Time Stories”, a $5 square bound, relatively thin book, but something
where I was just absolutely jazzed by how the colour came out and how I put the
whole cover together. So it was, forget it, let’s rethink that right from the
ground up. “2) Were any changes made to the art / dialogue / etc when going
from the original 'floppies’” God, I hate that word. [laughs] I really hate
‘floppies’. Anyway. “to the initial phone book printings?” Not that I’m aware
of. I think… Cerebus “High Society” when Cerebus is changing into his suit for
the first time, and the lead in to the page has a conversation from outside. He
goes into the room and closes the door on the conversation that Astoria is
having with somebody. And the way I emphasized that was having part of the
bottom of the word balloon cut off, so that the words were amputated on the
bottom line horizontally. And somebody at Preney went, “oh jeez, Dave made a
mistake here and the letters are missing here. Let’s put the letters back in.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] So for
the longest time, that really really good page, I mean that’s right up in the
record setting category for Cerebus original artwork. Somebody at Preney tried
to just fix my lettering, and that was one of those, ahh, I can’t even be
really bothered to fixing this. I don’t think it was until one of the later
trade paperbacks that I went, “okay, okay. Time to fix this. The age of the
Preney Print & Litho dicked around with world balloon, I am declaring
officially at the end.” I think that’s about the only thing I can think of, in
that category. “3) What issues during the original 300 run had a second
printing, and were all those issues so designated on the front cover?” [makes
buzzer sound] Time’s up! I have no idea. No, actually, it’s… issues 151, 152,
153… 154 possibly, that’s when my memory gets kinda fuzzy about it and yes, all
of those on the cover where the number is, where it would say “151 Oct”, it
says “151 2nd Printing”. So, if you’re a Cerebus completeist, you
can’t just have an issue 151, you’ve gotta have a 151 and a 151 second
printing. “4) Why the investment in Canadian price variant comics (multiple
copies, at that), titles like Ms. Tree, and whatever else? Is this an
investment you think could later be sold to help finance the Archive? Simply
want some clarity on your thinking.” Says Steve. Both, actually, and for
different reasons. “Ms. Tree” I didn’t have any of the Aardvark-Vanaheim issues
of “Ms. Tree” and the fact that Wilf Jenkins collection had them, I thought,
well okay, there’s a situation where I’m probably overpaying buying these for
$10 Canadian, but this is a chance for me to complete the Aardvark-Vanaheim
collection of stuff that we actually published. This many years later on, it’s
kind of one of those things that I want to do. The Canadian Price Variants,
that’s definitely building insulation around the archive. I do have a pecking
order of, if I get to the point where I have to start selling artwork, just to
be paying bills. Which, I was getting to that point, but now it looks like I’m
not at that point. It’s, what can I purchase that I think is going to go up in
value exponentially, and that will become the canary in the mine shaft, where
if I go, “okay something’s happened to the worldwide economy. Something’s
happened to Canada’s economy. Something’s happened to me personally and I need
to turn stuff into money, I think that a Canadian Price Variant of Spider-Man
252 is pick to click for that kind of exponential growth in value. Just because
they were newsstand copies. The number of them that are in great condition is
very very low, the number that didn’t get the covers stripped off is very very
low, and it’s a key Marvel book, so a Spider-Man completeist 20 years from is
definitely going to want to have one of those and will be paying a premium
price because of the CGC census, we know how many there are. We know how many
have been slabbed, and compared to the number of newsstand copies of 252 and
the number of direct market copies of 252, it’s a minuscule quantity. Bob
Overstreet is very very cautious guy about this stuff, and has been very very
slow to acknowledge the rarity of the Canadian Price Variant. So that’s why
Dave got, this is my one chance to buy Apple stock. This brand new Apple stock
that’s going for $8 or $9 and I know this is going to go up to Apple style
levels, so let me buy these right now. The one that I’m working on right now,
talking to Doug Sulipa, is the Archie “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” #1, which
I think is in the same category as Spider-Man 252, but on steroids because it’s
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is definitely competitive with
Spider-Man in terms of general public awareness. And most people didn’t see the
Mirage Turtles. Like the Mirage Turtles sold really really well for the direct
market, but it really wasn’t until Archie did a licensed Turtles comic book
that it got up into, by comparison, astronomical numbers. And again, a
minuscule percentage of those are Canadian Price Variants. And I don’t think
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is ever going to go out of popularity,
particularly for the generation that was 8 or 9 years old in the 1980s, 1990s.
So that’s what’s where I’m probably going to be doing my purchasing with Doug
Sulipa. We’ve actually worked out, I think, a deal where instead of taking $100
Canadian off of the Aardvark-Vanaheim company Visa every month, which I
authorized him to do, now I’m going to be trading him “Cerebus in Hell?” #1s as
they come out. He will be getting “Cerebus in Hell?” whatever the latest #1 is,
#51 through 75, and we will be trading dollar for dollar. So I will be getting
$100 US in trade from him, and he’ll be getting numbered copies 51 through 75,
unsigned. Because, as we’ve already found out just in the last couple of days,
if you don’t have it authenticated as a signature series, it gets a purple
label. It’s just writing on the cover. And we don’t know who wrote on it, but
that brings the value down.
Matt: I gotta look into
that, because the shop that I buy comics from does do signings and when they do
the signings they do do CGC witnessing, and I gotta talk to the owner about,
okay, how does that work if we witness it and I don’t send it to get slabbed, is
the witnessing still valid? Like if I have the paperwork saying it was
witnessed, could I then sell it to somebody who then gets it slabbed? Because
if that’s the case, then you could always set it up so that you’re doing a
signing with someone who can do witnessing so that, you know, here’s 30 copies
of a book, they’re not slabbed, but they have the paperwork so that you could
get them slabbed.
Dave: Right. Right. And
what did he say?
Matt: I haven’t asked
him yet, it’s on my to-do list.
Dave: Okay, alright.
Matt: But as soon as I
find out, I’m gonna fax somebody in Canada! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Okay,
well I will be breathlessly awaiting that.
Matt: Speaking of
breathlessly awaiting, Hobbs sent me the 10 copies of the virgin “Batvark:
Penis” and when I found out you only got three copies for the archive and
that’s it, I already decided that two of them are getting away to the box of
stuff that I have to send Dave, so that you’ll have two copies you can either
trade or sell.
Dave: Great! Thank you.
Matt: It’s one of those,
yeah I can auction them off and get between $25 and $500 depending on what the
market is that day, but it’s like, if I send it to Dave, you can get it
slabbed! [laughs]
Dave: Yes! Yes. One of
the things I would like to get sorted out, and I have been meaning to get in
touch with Paul Litch, who’s a longtime guy at CGC and I used to see him at
conventions and stuff like that. And say to him, is there some way that CGC can
come up with a thing where I can vouch for myself? Like I can say, I’m Dave
Sim, and yes, I actually signed this. Because, I really don’t have a vested
interest in saying that I signed something that I didn’t actually sign, and
it’s one of the reasons why I did the Wilf Jenkins collection the way that I
did it. If you have a colour photograph of the comic book with the signatures
on it, that’s very difficult to fake in any way. Is there some way I can do
that and the authenticity photograph would get included in the slabbing that
CGC would put it in the back over the back cover? But, with this COVID-19 thing
having absolutely devastated the worldwide economy, in particular the American
economy, CGC is up to their eyeballs in comic books getting slabbed, because
everybody’s doing the, “okay, this is the most valuable thing that I own. Or
the 10 most valuable things that I own. I gotta get ‘em slabbed.” Everybody is
sending them to CGC simultaneously, and at the same time, the CGC, I don’t know
how big their facility is in Florida, is having to do social distancing, so
they can’t have everybody doing the slabbing and grading that close together.
So I can’t even imagine what their backlog is, and me wanting to vouch for
myself, I think would be very very low on Paul Litch’s priority list right now.
“Dave, you’re the only cartoonist who would be interested in doing that, and
there’s no real money in your stuff compared to all this other stuff that we’re
doing. Please, just go away.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Michael R of
Easton, Pennsylvania. It wouldn’t be “Please Hold for Dave Sim” without a,
“Michael R of Easton, Pennsylvania asked on Saturday (I don't know if he sent
it through Birdsong after I went to bed)”. Yes he did. “Hi Dave! OK, I'm all
caught reading all your posts as of 7:58PM. Unless I get REAL crazy tonight. I
might. It is a full moon tonight. I may go for 2 copies. Having the #5 copy is
enticing,” That’s how quick Michael R was to order the Halloween Edition that
he got #5. “But having #26”, which is what Michael R has of everything else,
which is one of those, I knew that was going to happen. Michael R would be
tempted to buy two copies for that. “will be TREMENDOUS. 5 is the month I was
born.” Most of us call that May, but Michael R was born in 5. “So having 5 and
26 (the day I was born) is REALLY enticing. I can't get too greedy, who knows
what you and Dagon have planned for the end of this Kickstarter? AAAARGH!!!
LOL!!! One ... more ... question. Was Gerhard ever considered inking and backgrounds
Spawn 10?" I did answer that, and said, 1993, actually late 1992, [coughs]
Excuse me. That was still in the aftershock area of Gerhard and I going to
Hawaii and doing five issues in three months, as the perfect form of aversion
therapy. Don’t ever, ever get off schedule again. Yes, it’s nice to do this in
Hawaii, no you never never want to draw five issues of Cerebus in three months
again. So, when the offer from Todd came up to do Spawn 10, it was, I’ll do a
script, but I’m not drawing Cerebus that way I did in “Turtles” #8 and I’m not
lettering Cerebus the way I did in “Turtles” #8. I think if I sit down and
apply myself, I can do a script in two or three days. I know exactly what I
want to do. I have a pretty good idea of what an Image comic reads like. I
think I can put those two together. And that turned out to be the case, so
that’s definitely a record for me in terms of earnings, that even beats your
$27 an hour and $33 an hour on Sunday record all hollow because I got somewhere
around $92,000 for two days work.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Mind you, I’ve
never had that kind of work again…
Matt: And you never had
that kind of money, cause you gave it to charity! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] That’s
right. That’s right. But it looks really good on the resume, as they say. And
yes, Jeff Seiler, I know that it’s résumé , I was just pronouncing it funny. I
like to call it a resume. And speaking of Jeff Seiler (nice segue, Dave), Jeff
[sneezes], “Question Of The Month From Jeff For Dave: I never noticed it
before, but when Cerebus returns to his Regency Hotel suite, in HS, after
battling with the Moon Roach and he's doing his diatribe about the Bug, the Elf
(Fake Elf?) is wearing his medallions. Is this, as I think, another example of
how Cerebus ceded his control to a female, and was him allowing Elf to wear his
medallions related to Cerebus' inability to rein in the Bug?” Uhh, yes.
Actually, on both of those questions, and it was also a 90s kind of thing… or a
1980s sort of thing that I was commenting on, that I didn’t know at the time if
it was a 1980s thing, or this is a general truism about human beings, that
girls like to wear guy’s stuff and guys are not so big on wearing girl’s stuff.
I don’t know too many guys who go, “I’m gonna go take a look in the wife’s
closet. We’re about the same size. See if she’s got any nice little frock that
I can wear out tonight.” But, on the other hand, women do like men’s shirts,
women do like men’s stuff. Which is one of the reasons that one of things I had
Roly email to you today, scan and email to you today, because I just happened
to see the photograph and thought of it when I was thinking about Jeff’s
question. It’s a picture of Judith Bradford and her friend Shannon in the lobby
of the Atlanta Merriott in the 1980s, and Judith is wearing my Rod Stewart
jacket. [laughs] And it’s like, that did happen with, I wouldn’t say terrific
frequency, but often enough that it’s like, what is up with that? It’s like,
yes, you’re an astonishingly pretty young lady, in her teens, and everything
looks good on you. And yes, you do look better in my Rod Stewart jacket than I
do. But no, you can’t have it. It’s my Rod Stewart jacket! [laughs] I really
had to fight to get that one back. I think, that’s one of those things that we
can maybe open up for discussion. Was that a 1980s thing, and was that at least
partly my fault for buying more androgynous clothing? Like, it’s not a regular
guy’s sport jacket, it’s a Rod Stewart jacket, which, I don’t even know what
they actually called them, but we all called them Rod Stewart jackets, they
were sort of like waist length, looked like regular sport jackets but cut off
at the waist and Rod Stewart popularized them. So it’s like, no, guys, wear
guys clothing. Wear a sports jacket, wear a shirt, wear a t-shirt, wear jeans,
wear dress pants, wear a tuxedo if you want, but don’t wear things that a
girl’s gonna go, “that would look really good on me.” So… go ahead, go ahead.
Matt: I was gonna say,
what you’re describing that men don’t do, they did in the mid-70s [laughs].
Dave: Right. Right. It’s
like, if you go over into that really sloppy gray area, don’t be complaining if
your society is going all sloppy and gray. Don’t do that. Stay over on your
guy’s side of the fence, and have the girls stay over on their side of the fence.
She’s still going to wear your shirts, and wear your t-shirts, and find things
that would look really good on her, and are masculine because masculine is good
because it’s just another kind of dress-up for women. But, yes, Jeff, that’s
definitely what I was making reference to, that I couldn’t picture Cerebus
going, “does the Regency Elf have any of these little dress jobs hanging out
that she’s not using? Maybe I could wear one of them.” But, if she finds his
medallions lying around, “gee, what would Cerebus’ medallions look like on me?”
is pretty much a slam dunk. Jeff goes on to say, “Also, when is the Regency
Edition of High Society going to be offered for sale? I call dibs on copy
#301.” Well, we’ve got a problem right there, because there’s only 150 of them.
If we work something out, if you actually get one of them, I will be happy to
give you a tipped in plate or something that says, “ignore the number on this
copy of ‘High Society: Regency Edition’, it’s not that number, it’s actually
#301 and it’s #301 because Jeff Seiler owns it. And if Jeff Seiler owns it,
that makes it #301.” Right now, Dagon and I are still talking about it, but my
take on it is right now he’s got a waiting list of, well we haven’t talked
about it in a few weeks, but the last time that we talked about it, I think
there was 240 people that wanted 150 “High Society: Regency Editions”, and it’s
like, there’s not too many ways that you can handle that, that everybody’s
gonna end up liking Dave Sim out of this. And I’m starting to develop the
instinct to, let’s avoid these. Like the “National Lampoon” cover that had
Uncle Sam and Tommy the Tooth on the prow of a ship, pointing towards foreign
entanglement and tooth decay, and going, “let’s avoid these.”
Matt: I was gonna say,
there’s 240 people that want 150 copies, I vaguely remember the Judge on the
Moon describing what happens to Cerebus.
Dave: Yes, yeah.
Matt: When Suenteus Po
took his army and showed him all the suits of armor and there wasn’t enough
armor. The guys figured out what to do.
Dave: [laughs] Right!
You take my point. So, trying to figure out how to keep this from blowing up in
Dave Sim’s face again, Dave Sim is saying, why don’t we auction the “High
Society: Regency Editions”, there’s 150 of them, we’ll start with #150 and
we’ll auction one of them a week for three years. Which means, everybody’s
gonna get really used to whatever is going to happen, because they’ll be able
to see it in real time every week for three years. It’s like, okay, if you want
one of them, here’s what #150 went for. You have to come up with your own
strategy on them, of going, “I think the price will come down on these. Like a
year from now, people are not going to be paying attention to these auctions,
and instead of going for this much money, it’s gonna go for half that, or for a
quarter that”. Okay, I can certainly understand that theory, and I wouldn’t be
surprised to see that happen, but at the same time, if it’s down to the last
70, and the last 60, and then the last 50, and that hasn’t happened yet, when
do you go, “okay, I’m just gonna have to spend way too much money on a ‘High
Society: Regency Edition’ hardcover, because there’s fewer and fewer of these,
and if it looked like the price was stabilizing, it’s now going back to hockey
stick territory. And I’ll just have to bite the bullet on it.” I’m hoping the
fact that this would take place over three years would mean, uh, don’t look at
me! [laughs] This is the most equitable way I could think of to allow 250
people the same opportunity at the same 150 books and this is just how it ended
up going. I didn’t know how it was gonna go, you didn’t know how it was gonna
go, Dagon didn’t know how it was gonna go, Mr eBay didn’t know how it was gonna
go, but, son of a gun, this is how it’s going. So, you’ll just have to adjust
to that. Corollary to that, and I haven’t even talked to Dagon about this, but
Dagon listens to the “Please Hold for Dave Sim”s, so this is a good chance to
talk to Dagon about it, we were talking about doing extra stuff with the “High
Society: Regency Editions”. [audio repeats from a few minutes ago from “The
last time that we talked about it, I think there was 240 people” onward] Things
like Iest currency, Iest coins, Diamondback decks, Regency Hotel notepads. I
designed a Regency Hotel notepad that would be the notepads that Cerebus and
Elrod were doing their bunnies and trees on, which is a very light blue R for
Regency watermark in the back of it and a little line at the bottom, “The
Regency Hotel, Upper City” in really tiny tiny type, that you wouldn’t be able
to see in the comic book, but you can say, oh okay that’s it. And then I would
do a [audio missing] and a Cerebus tree on the front of one of these notepads.
And what I was thinking was, if we just had this pool of add-ons. Here’s what
you can get if you win one of the “High Society: Regency Editions”. You’re not
done yet! [laughs] That’s just what the book cost you. Because you got one of
them, you now have the option of buying all of this Regency Hotel merch and
Iest merch that we will do our level best to make it look like, here’s your
bundle of bank notes and it looks exactly like the bank notes in “High
Society”, but in real time, taking actual vintage bank notes and rare bank
notes and modifying them into Bank of Iest. And whatever we would charge for
the bank notes, like here’s a bundle of 50 and you can have that for $10 or
whatever, if you want a giant pile of bank notes, all you gotta do is say, “I
want a giant pile of bank notes.” or “I want Uncle Scrooge’s money bin full of
Iestan coins.” If that really floats your boats, and you’ve got room in your
house for that kind of stuff, and you’re willing to pay us to turn a profit on
that, whatever you want. You want 16 cartons of Iest notepads? No problem, it’s
just a matter of putting the order together. You will get them because you are
one of the lucky winners. “Lucky” if you look at how much this is gonna cost
you, of one of the “High Society: Numbered Regency Editions”, this was your
week. Michael R of Easton, Pennsylvania is gonna be having kittens the week #26
“High Society: Regency Edition” is going up for auction. Michael really really
wants it, but presumably when we’re down to #26, so do a whole bunch of other
people. I just want to keep it from blowing up in my face, and I want it to
make as much money as possible, so there you go. That’s my story and I’m
sticking with it.
Matt: It kinda reminds
me of the Green Bay Packers, which is the football team in Wisconsin. It’s like
hockey in Canada at this point, it’s the state religion in Northeast Wisconsin.
And they have season tickets, but when you buy season tickets, you get them for
life. You’re the season ticket holder until you decide you’re no longer gonna
buy tickets.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And there’s X
number of seats in the stadium, so there’s a waiting list. And I believe the
last time I heard about it, the waiting list is like a 20 year wait.
Dave: Yep! Yep.
Matt: My Uncle had this
idea of a murder mystery where people are randomly dying around the country in
sort of similar ways, and it turns out the only thing they have in common is
that they’re on the waiting list to get season tickets for the Packers.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And the guy that’s
8000 in line is tired of waiting, so he’s bumping everybody off ahead of him.
Dave: [laughs] Okay, I
think we can say that everybody that’s planning to bid on the “High Society:
Regency Edition” has been warned. [laughs] There might be somebody out there
that goes, “don’t get in my way. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
Matt: When we get down
to the last 10, that’s how, it’s gonna be one of those, “what happened to him?
Well, somebody pushed him into an elevator shaft and he was wearing a t-shirt
with an aardvark on it.” [laughs]
Dave: That’s right. In
the library with a candlestick holder. It’s like, ahh man. Okay, we’re getting
silly now. See, it’s funny to me, because I’m not gonna be bidding on them. I’m
the guy that’s going to be making the money, and Dagon’s going to be making the
money.
Matt: And it’s one of
those, as much as I’d love a hardcover “High Society” I have a box of five of
the 12th printing that I’m like, I’m keeping one and now I have four
of them that I figure out what I’m going to do with.
Dave: There you. There
you go. “I posted the page in question recently. And I don't think he can do
that last one… He also asked (in relation to the hands-through-the-bars Spawn
#10 cover): Way back when SPAWN #10 came out, I and (I think) a coupla other
guys did a key to all of the caged superheroes, based on the look of their
gloves, drawn by Todd. I wonder whether Dave changed any of them for this
cover?” And it’s like, Dave’s level of interest in superheroes is way, way, way
down on his list of priorities, so I have to say, of the visible hands on the
Spawn 10 cover, a bunch of them are just, “okay, what does a superhero’s glove
look like?” “It’s got, ya know, a lightning slash on it.” “Okay, put the
lightning slash on it.” “Well whose glove is that?” I have no idea. Make it up
for yourself. The foreground I stuck with ones that I knew, like Superman,
Batman, the Hulk. Todd did Wonder Woman on the two page spread, I think that
was the only female superhero of all of the caged heroes, so I thought, well, I
can be enough of a feminist to do that. [laughs] I had no problem with putting
Wonder Woman in jail. But it turns of the obsession of, these have to be
specific superheroes. No, I didn’t do that. I think Sean might have done some
of that, so you might ask Sean, looking at Dave’s superhero gloves, were there
any that you said, I think this is so and so, I think I’ll do it this way. To
me, a superhero’s a superhero. But I do have to say that I did make a point to
just do superheroes. And to just do made-up gloves that could be superheroes
was just don’t know about. Superheroes that haven’t come out yet, or something
like that. Looking at Spawn 10 while I was working on the cover, I noticed it’s
got like Doctor Octopus’ arm coming through the bar. [laughs] And I’m going,
wait a minute, Dr Octopus isn’t a superhero! You’ve got a villain here. And
then I go, he’s got the Joker too! The Joker isn’t a superhero, he’s a villain!
This is the complaint that I have with Todd’s generation. No, it’s good versus
evil, not good and evil together and we’ll just have to find something new to
call it. Let’s call it gevil. So, there you go on that one. Ralph S sent me
“For his 'coal entrance' (that he apparently wants to keep but has given up on)
Saw the design on Belmont (street) in Kitchener, just now… Four by fours;
stout; handy if a baby elephant drops in? (that's what I thought)” Anyway,
yeah, I phoned and left Ralph a message letting him know where the Off-White
House is, and feel free to just drop by, as often as you need to, looking at
the outside and figuring out what needs to be done. I wasn’t clear about the
coal entrance, which is what it would have been back in the 19th
century when the house was built. That was where the coal was delivered
downstairs next to the furnace. I was going to turn that into a separate
entrance for going in downstairs, so if Roly is working at Camp David and he
needs to get something downstairs, he doesn’t have to knock on the door and I
don’t have to go downstairs, he can just let himself in. But I’ve given up on
that, it’s like, mmm, no. I don’t want just sort of, make due steps, and I
really don’t have the kind of money that you would need to do Off-White House
steps out of stone or whatever, so that’s just going to get filled in. We’re going
to seal up the entrance completely and just turn it into part of the foundation
and then fill in the steps going down and just level it off and plant flowers
on it or something like that. So, Ralph, if you want to come by again sometime
and look at it from that vantage point and say, okay what’s the easiest,
cheapest way to do that? That’s what the Dave Sim administration of
Aardvark-Vanaheim is about, is cheap and easy. Hopefully, there’s a sudden
outpouring of Cerebus mania that takes place after I’m dead, and millions and
millions of dollars come in, and then Eddie can do that kind of stuff. He can
excavate where the steps were and put in solid gold steps if he wants. [laughs]
That will be a second administration kind of thing. Or if Eddie just has to
limp by as I did and then when he kicks the bucket, the third president of
Aardvark-Vanaheim experiences Eddie mania, or Cerebus mania, or Dave mania, and
billions of billions of dollars come in, then the third president will be able
to do that. Fortunately, that will be completely off of my sleeve. I am very
very pleased to say, very pleased to contemplate. Gives me a warm feeling
inside.
Matt: Okay. [laughs]
Dave: Okay! Uhh, Tony
Dunlop, boy, I gotta tell you, this time around with the questions, it’s like,
I know the answer to that question, and I know the idiosyncratic Dave Sim
answer to that question. Boy is there no way to explain this, but if you ask a
question, I’ll do my best to explain it. We might be breaking up this “Please
Hold for Dave Sim” into two sessions, if you’re okay with that. Because it’s
already 8:14 and I’m just getting to the Amalekites question of Tony Dunlop and
going, ohhhh right. And we haven’t even gotten to a couple of the really
elaborate questions that I go, I know what I have to say about them. There’s no
easy way to say this. “Tony Dunlop askeDave:
So, regarding Damian's link” and you wrote, “he’s referring to this comic that
Damian T Lloyd posted a link to”. “Don’t idolize yourself, don’t hurt people,
blot out the memory of all amalekites, don’t break promises, don’t punish
without trial, set aside food for the poor, and destroy all Canaanites and
enslave them forever.” And yes, good encapsulation of YHWH lawmaking. But back
to Tony Dunlop’s question, “I just happen to be in " Exodus" right
now in my daily Scripture reading, and got to the "blot out the memory of
the Amalekites" bit...and I couldn't help but wonder… Why, if their memory
is to be "blotted out," are they being written about in Israel's
sacred history? Maybe Matt can ask Dave what he has to say about that little
paradox in next month's "Please Hold?" And yes, but in order to
explain the reference to the Amalekites, you have to go back to who the
Amalekites are, which goes back to Genesis and the split between Esau and
Jacob, that when Jacob supplanted Esau. Esau was the older brother, Jacob was
the younger brother. Ordinarily, the Issac’s birthright, which Issac got from
Abraham, would have gone to Esau as the older brother. But Jacob fooled, or
tempted Esau into selling Jacob his birthright for a mess of pottage, which is
where the expression comes from, “you’ve got a mess of pottage for that.”
Pottage is stewed vegetables, and this was red pottage. Which resonates with
Esau coming out all red and hairy-bodied when he was born. [laughs] This is too
many digressions already. Believe me, I’m trying to stay on subject here.
Anyway, so Jacob supplanted Esau and took his birthright, and then fooled his
father Isaac again and got Esau’s blessing, so the younger brother ended up
getting what the older brother was supposed to be getting. And Esau, not taking
this very well, realized that his parents, and particularly his mother, hated
the Edomites, which was a pagan civilization adjacent to the Israelis, the
Hebrew people, the Jews. And decided that he would fuse himself to the
Edomites, to the extent that Esau became Edom, and so he went from being the
person who would have been the successor to Isaac, and the heritor of the
Jewish nation, to the founder of the Edomites. Amalek was the name of his
grandson, that he progenited after he became Edom. So, this is one of those,
Esau chose to corrupt himself, realive to monotheism, and this is now, Amalek
is the second generation of pagan corruption and consequently, everyone in
Amalek’s tribe that was born became the Amalekites. Jacob is traveling with his
two wives and all of his children, and all of his flocks and herds and everything,
and find out that Esau is coming toward him, and is coming toward him with like
400 armed men. Jacob was really something of a coward, so he basically puts all
of his flocks and herds in front of him, and a giant chunk of the flocks and
herds that he’s going to offer as a bribe to Esau to not kill him and not kill
his family, and all of his tribes, he was father of all 12 tribes of Israel,
and then put Leah and her children, which was one of his wives but not his
favorite wife, in the next rank, and then Rachel, his favorite wife, and Joseph
and Benjamin, her sons ahead of them, and then Jacob in the back. And that’s
[laughs] you want to talk about leading from behind. Well, Jacob set the tone
for that. Anyway, he’s definitely afraid that Esau is coming to kill him, and
basically goes toward Esau, driving this giant herd of cattle and sheep and
whatnot ahead of him, and bowing himself to the ground as he’s walking toward
Esau, which is, ahhh, you don’t want to be doing that. If you’re a monotheist,
you don’t want to be bowing to a pagan, and your brother has chosen to be a
pagan. Very much to his surprise, Esau just sort of says, “what’s with all
these cattle and sheep and everything that I passed on my way over here?” And
Jacob says, “to find grace in the sight of my lord Esau”, again, calling him
lord is not a particularly good idea. And it’s like Esau sort of goes, “it’s
okay my brother, I have enough. What’s yours, you keep yours. I got mine, I’m
keeping mine.” It’s like, still not a lot of love lost between these people.
Like,” you supplanted me in monotheism. I don’t want a bribe from you. I’m not
gonna kill you, but really let’s just leave bad enough alone.” And Jacob is so
relieved, okay this is idiosyncratic Dave Sim interpretation of it, is so relieved
that Esau isn’t gonna kill him, that he insists, “no, please, take this.” And
it’s like, Esau goes, “well, whatever, okay, I got probably as many flocks and
herds as you do, but thanks. Okay, now I got some more.” And then they’re
traveling for a ways together, and then Esau says, “actually, why don’t I take
some of my people and give them to you. Give you some of these Edomites” and
Jacob goes along with that. And it’s like, okay again, bad choice. That’s two
different thing, accepting a chattel and sheep at auction as a bribe or relief
or gift of some kind from your estranged brother, but taking pagans from a
pagan tribe and grafting them into your monotheistic context, bad choice. Very
bad choice. And in matter of fact, if you look at the subsequent chapters to
that, that enacts [inaudible] in very bad ways. Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, ends
up, she’s just going to look around the new land that they live in, and gets
kidnapped by Shechem and raped by Shechem, and Shechem says to Jacob, “I really
like your daughter, so I want to marry her.” And it’s like, you just kidnapped
and raped her. And it’s like, well yes, that’s an implication of you allowing
Esau to plant Edomites in your monotheistic context. That’s a bad choice,
that’s why that happened. Okay, that’s kind of a digression. The other thing
that Jacob did was exactly what Tony’s asking about. Why, if their memory is to
be blotted out, are they being written about in Israel’s sacred history? That
was one of the things that Jacob did and was again, to me, really really
stupid, but I can understand why he did it. He was so relieved that Esau wasn’t
gonna kill him, that he went, “okay, we’ve got all of these genealogy of
so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so-and-so begat
so-and-so. All the way back to Adam in the Garden of Eden. As my of going,
isn’t this great that Esau isn’t going to kill me, let’s incorporate the
Edomite genealogy starting with Esau, and you scribe, you sit down with the
Edomites and get their genealogy and we’ll include it in the Torah.” And it’s
like, mmm, bad idea. Coincidentally, that’s Genesis 36, which is the Edomite
genealogy. I have the Torah in Hebrew, and John’s Gospel and Revelation in
Aramaic, and the Koran in Arabic, are the only things that I’ve got on iTunes
on my laptop, and I have those playing continuously while I’m asleep or while
I’m doing things that I don’t have to completely focus on, when I’m back in the
residence part of the Off-White House. And coincidentally, Genesis 36, with the
Edomite genealogy, is one of the only ones that I recognize when it’s playing
as, “oh, it’s Genesis 36”. Most of the time I’m just listening to Hebrew
scripture, and unless they’re using a formal name that I know is in a specific
chapter, I don’t know what chapter it is. So, the reason that I know it, is
because everybody was called a duke in the genealogy, or a bunch of them were
called dukes. Duke Teman, Duke Tebah, Duke Zepho, Duke so-and-so, Duke… and
that’s like the KGV. Englishmen in 1611 going, “Okay, what is this Jewish term?
Or was is this, I think it’s probably an Edomite term of an honorific for the
people that are being cited. What’s an equivalent of that? Well in England,
that would be a Duke. So that’s what we’ll call them, Dukes.” The Hebrew word
is Aluph, so here’s Genesis 36, just a few seconds of it, with the Aluph in
sequence… lemme just get it cued up here, where are we? Here we go. [audio
plays in Hebrew, “Aluph” said a bunch] Well there ya go. Could you hear that?
Matt: Yeah, yeah. I
heard it. That’s a lot of Aluphs!
Dave: I had it all the
way cranked up and I was holding it as close to the speakerphone as I could.
So, that’s the explanation for that, to me, was bad choices on Jacob’s part,
and that’s why the Edomites lasted a lot longer as a pagan society than they
would have because they were incorporated as Jacob’s not very bright idea as
Genesis 36 and it did take a while, if you just sort of search Amalekite as a
term, it definitely lasted almost until the Jewish monarchy. The advent of the
Jewish of the monarchy, which is a long time from Genesis, a good 2000, 3000
years. Just a bad idea, don’t do that. Don’t put pagan stuff in the Torah, just
put monotheistic stuff. But then, that’s my argument is, you’d have a much
better Torah if you just took the YHWH stuff out and then just had what God had
to say. God didn’t have too much to say, but all of God’s stuff is good stuff,
in my frame of reference. It was interesting because when I looked up aluph,
which is actually spelled A-L-L-U-P-H in my Strong’s Concordance, each term has
it’s own number, and you look it on by number to find out what it’s origin was.
Aluph is term #441, as Eddie Khanna who is listening right now would know, 441
was Alex Raymond’s favorite license number. So there’s about the weirdest comic
art metaphysics you could possibly, possibly imagine.
Matt: Right.
Dave: You’re struck
speechless!
Matt: Well no, I’m
actually making a note about that, okay at 1:26 the SDoAR… I’m gonna make a
note when I’m splitting the videos up of, hey, if you’re really into the
“Strange Death of Alex Raymond”…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Here’s a teaser
for Volume Three! [laughs]
Dave: It would certainly
make the strangest “Jeopardy” answer that you could possibly imagine. “Remember
the answer has to be in the form of a question.” Uhh, “Steve asked (after I
posted pictures of you signing some CiH? books): So, I try to be an astute reader,
to pay attention, not interrupt when the adults are talking, watch and listen
for subtle verbal clues and mannerisms. But for the life of me I have
absolutely no recollection of ever hearing what's the deal with all the signed
by Dave “Cerebus in Hell?” issues as pictured here and elsewhere: where do they
go, who gets them, how.. So please, help a wandering, wondering poor soul out
and fill in the gaps in my thinking caps.” [laughs] Well, thank you Steve. That
was very nicely phrased, and Roly got a good laugh out of that today, because
today “Spider-Whore” came in, so they were all getting laid out so that I could
sign them. [laughs] And I said, “ya know I’ve been always reminding you, ‘oh,
oh, I’m signing the books. Take a picture, take a picture for A Moment of
Cerebus and email it to Matt Dow. Okay, got that done.’” And you’re right, we
never explained why I was doing this. The Cerebus Archive copies of the
“Cerebus in Hell?” books. As the circulation dropped lower and lower on the
“Cerebus in Hell?” books and I was going, okay, I’m gonna have to do something.
If these drop below what I was sold on “Cerebus” #1, I mean, 40 years later and
I can’t sell what I did when I was 20 years old and a complete rookie. What I
thought was, okay, I’m always at cross purposes to most people’s way of
thinking, while everybody else is saying these are becoming less and less of
interest to anybody, which is why we need fewer and fewer of them, my reaction
is au contraire. I think these will be very valuable social commentary at a
time when everybody else was just genuflecting to the feminist dictatorship.
Only one guy was saying, uhh, no, this is getting really really funny now. So
I’m going to do a very humorous comic book about how this ridiculous society I
find myself in is conducting itself. And I think these are actually going to be
a really hot commodity for that reason. So as the circulation is going lower
and lower, I’m gonna order more and more of them for myself, or the Cerebus
Archive, so that I’ve pretty much cornered the market compared to everybody
else. Everybody else it takes them four months to sell the four copies that
they bought and they’re very relieved. “Okay, I never have to even think of
that comic book again.” So, yeah, I was getting 30, I think back when Sandeep
and I were starting “Cerebus in Hell?” and I went up from there to about 50,
now I’m up to 105. It’s like, no, if you really think that year four of
“Cerebus in Hell?” is only going to be of interest to 1800 people in
perpetuity, however long the Cerebus Archive lasts, uh no, I think I’m gonna
bet heavily on myself. At least numerically, there’s fewer copies of this than
there are of “Cerebus” #1 and we know what that’s going for in pristine
condition. So, apart from this new wrinkle of not signing Doug Sulipa’s books,
and signing all of the Cerebus Archive books, I also sign three copies to Eddie
the successor. Eddie gets three copies of each “Cerebus in Hell?”, “to Eddie
the successor, Dave Sim”. Sandeep Atwell, as the co-creator of “Cerebus in
Hell?” Even though he’s not here anymore, he gets five copies of each “Cerebus
in Hell?” numbered Atwell #1 out of 5, Atwell #2 out of 5, Atwell #3 out of 5…
And hopefully, somewhere down the line, he will be able to say, “okay I’m going
to auction all of my #3s, or this particular #1” or whatever. That’ll be up to
him, I hope he makes a million dollars, because it’s definitely an invaluable
contribution to “Cerebus in Hell?” It wouldn’t be the same book without Sandy
Atwell. I also… Kevin Eastman. It wasn’t actually Kevin Eastman, it was his
wife Courtney who does his tweets, tweeted about “Cerebus in Hell?” when I sent
them a couple, so now they’re on the freebie list. So they always get a signed
copy, “to Kevin and Courtney.” Rick Norwood, who still sends me “Comics Revue”
for free, even though I have time to read very very little of it, it’s very
nice of him to do that, so he gets a copy personalized to Rick Norwood. And
that’s the extent of the comp list. Everything else goes into the Cerebus Archive,
and anytime I want to surprise somebody or I have to make up something to
somebody, as is going to happen with these Halloween Editions to the people who
have voted yes to allow artist proofs to be offered for sale. When I send them
their numbered Halloween Edition and their artist proof, they’ll probably be
also getting some signed “Cerebus in Hell?” #1s. So that’s always handy. Nice
surprise for a Cerebus fan, and if you have to make up something to somebody,
there’s boxes and boxes of them at this point with 105 each. We’re having a lot
of trouble in this age of shortages of longboxes and bags and boards. Roly’s
always having to keep them on order with Lookin’ For Heroes and Studiocomix
Press. And boy we had a real run there with [laughs] “You Don’t Know Jack” came
in, “Cerebus in Hell?” came in, all of the proof copies for “Cerebus” #1 came
in, proof copies for the Spawn 10 ashcan. Man oh man, we go through enough bags
and boards and boxes as it is! I’m hoping that will calm down a little bit.
Matt: Well, the reason
Steve asks is cause I’ve been getting the photos, it’s like, well I dunno what
I’m supposed to do with these. So I was kinda just, okay I’ll put them up, and
other things came up, and it go to the point where in the rigmarole where I say,
“hey, don’t forget to swing by the store and pick up ‘Batvark: Penis’” and I
specifically remember “Vault of Cerebus” was one of them where it was, oh yeah,
I got those photos of Dave signing them, so I put the photos up, because it
was, “speaking of ‘Cerebus in Hell?’, don’t forget to pick up ‘Vault of
Cerebus’. Hey there it is now!” and the three photos of you signing them.
Dave: Right.
Matt: I did that for a
couple of covers, and that’s when Steve’s going, “okay, why are we doing this?”
And it’s because I’m getting stuff from Dave, and it’s a moment I can use it!
[laughs]
Dave: Right, right. To
me it’s a really cool thing, because I would never in my life have 100 copies
of my own of “X-Men” #1 in pristine mint condition. But I did have, and do
have, a giant pile of “Cerebus vs LGBTQ Etc.” #1, which looks a hell of a lot
like a “X-Men” #1, particularly if your eyesight isn’t as good as it used to
be. Same thing with “Fornicators Inc.”, wow, this is just like having 100 mint
copies of FF #1! This is so cool! Uh, Damien T Lloyd asks, “How much goo would
a guru spew if a guru could spew goo? (Sorry; I think the edibles are kicking
in.)” [laughs] It’s… okay, yeah, we got I counted three cannabis stores opening
in downtown Kitchener. Theoretically, I dunno. Putting up a storefront is very
different from having a functioning store in this day and age, but it’s like,
no homey don’t do that anymore. It’s not a matter of “if it’s legal, it’s
okay”, you can make cannabis, edibles, and smokeables, and hash oil and
everything else, as legal as you want it. It’s still stupid. I deeply appreciate
the fact that you’re not allowed to display cigarette packages in stores that
sell cigarette packages. You have to have little doors over the top of them, so
people can’t see cigarette packages. It’s like, that’s very very good. I have
no idea where the Viscount 1s are in there, and I haven't smoked a Viscount 1
since the last century, but homey don’t do that no more. Walked past a couple
of neighbors who were smoking a doob when I was going downtown to a get a
pizza, and it’s like, the old Dave Sim would’ve gone, “hey there’s a great
idea! Let’s take a couple of horks off the doob, and then go and get the
pizza.” And it’s like, nope, just, hi folks! They said hi, I kept going, and it
was, nope, nope, never again. Never again.
Matt: Or take a couple
of hits off of it and then go buy two pizzas! [laughs]
Dave: Right, yeah. Or
pizzas and the two bite brownies. Gosh, those Doritos are looking good too.
Matt: It makes me laugh
when you said that they’re opening up the cannabis shops cause, it’s gotta be
like six or even seven years ago I was visiting my Dad with Paula and Janis,
and we’re out and about grocery shopping, doing whatever. I’m driving, and he’s
telling me where to go, “okay park here”, and it’s kind of a crap park job,
like on the side of a building on the corner of this block. And he’s like,
“c’mon, let’s go”, I’m like what’s going on, “just come in” and we go up and
it’s, okay go down the steps into the basement, we go in the basement, and it’s
a head shop. And I’m like okay, why are we…? And my Dad’s taking care of
something and Paula and I are kinda, okay, it’s a head shop. I have my two year
old or three year old daughter with me, and she’s walking around looking at
stuff, whatever. Well it’s one of them head shops that’s a head shop on the
east side, but it’s kind of an adult bookstore on the west side. And she walks
up and there’s a bunch of sex toys, that you really can’t tell they’re sex
toys, but she sees something and she goes, “balloons!” And I look and I’m like,
no, that’s an inflatable thing that’s not a balloon. Let’s walk away from this,
kid.
Dave: Ohhh God! Ahh man.
Matt: We get out, and I
turn to my Dad, and I’m like, why did we stop there? “Oh, I just thought you
might wanna see a head shop.” I’m like, you do realize the three year old’s
with me, right?! [laughs]
Dave: Your Dad is a
caution, I tell ya.
Matt: He’s a fun guy at
parties, but every now and then, I’m like, Dad, you’re forgetting, it’s not you
and I having a boy’s weekend, I have the family with us. [laughs]
Dave: Man, oh man. Okay.
Alright, well…
Matt: She was young
enough that she didn’t know what she saw and she doesn’t remember it, so I’m
happy about that part. But it was just afterward I’m like, Dad, next time you
wanna go to the head shop, maybe give me a head’s up and we’ll drop the wife
and kid off at home, and then we’ll go to the head shop. You can do whatever
you need to do, and I’ll be like, “hey, do you have any underground comic
books?”
Dave: Really. They used
to be in here. Okay, John Christian asked, “Did he ever give a name to the guy
that had "Filbert" (Sump-Thing) back in issue #25?? The artist guy
that was unafraid of the Woman-Thing??” Uhh, no No, I think… I always called him
the Little Artist Guy, or the Guy with the Hair, and I am still convinced that
as part of the zeitgeist that is part of comic art metaphysics, I was the one
who got to tell people that Alan Moore is on his way.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: You have no idea
what that means right now, but here’s a mini-me version of the guy who is going
to completely transform the comic book field. And I think that might be part of
the reason why I didn’t give him a name. Whoever gave me the advance look at
Alan Moore went, “ahh, no I can’t give you a name to go with that, because that
would be just too potent. You’d blow up real good at that point.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: And yes, you point
out, “There is a great page from that issue coming up for auction soon.” That’s
the November 19th to the 22nd Heritage Auction and I just
got the catalog in and I thought, yeah if you were gonna get a page and you had
the bucks, that would be a really good page to have. Even more amazing is the
three pages from 112/113 that they have at the front of the catalog. I think
it’s pages 2 through 4 of 112/113. Because it’s a silent issue and there’s no
word balloons and no captions, and really going to the moodiness of Cerebus’
isolation, boy if you want probably three of the best Gerhard background pages
that have come to market as a package. If you don’t have unlimited funds, or
pretty close to unlimited funds, you’re just going to be a spectator along with
the rest of us, but if you have a semi-bottomless bank account and no way to go
out and spend it because airlines have been made history, nobody can travel
anywhere. You’ve just got all of this money piling up in your bank account, I
don’t think you were ever find a better Gerhard deal than those three pages.
Some nice Cerebuses, too, but by that time doing Cerebus was pretty much a slam
dunk for me. Margaret Liss asks, “From tomorrow's notebook entry, a question
arose. I looked up Superman”, oh okay, this is the notebook page. Okay, let me
flip to my notebook page so that I’m looking at that at the same time. “I
looked up Superman ##165, the title of which is ‘Beauty and the Super-Beast’,
and for volume one, that was published in November of 1963, so I’m not sure why
Dave wrote down 1979 beside it. I had to look up what the Heatwave Festival
1980 was a reference to. And amazingly enough it has its own entry on
Wikipedia.” I’m not surprised. It was a very big deal in southern Ontario, “A
music festival held in Bowmanville, Ontario – a town on the other side of
Toronto from Kitchener, about a 1.5 hour trip (according to Google Maps).
Sounds like a question for Matt’s next call to Dave, as I don’t remember Dave
ever mentioning it before.” Okay, let’s start with “Superman” #165. You should
have gotten an email from Roly of the scan of my copy of “Superman” #165. Did
you get that?
Matt: Uh, not yet, but
usually those come at about 9 o’clock at night, my time.
Dave: Okay, alright.
Matt: So I’m sure it’ll
show up tonight.
Dave: Okay, when you get
it, I’ll grab the copy right here. And when you’re posting the “Please Hold for
Dave Sim”, you will be able to just post the scan of the cover, and then people
can listen to this really really strange story while they’re looking at this,
[laughs] and go, “okay, I’m looking at it. This is pretty unbelievable, but it
can’t be completely unbelievable, because I’m looking at this.” So yes,
“Superman” #165, “Beauty and the Super-Beast” and Carson Grubaugh is gonna love
this, because it’s the Circe cover of Superman and Carson’s definitely got a
thing about Circe, particularly since he found all of the Circe references in
the “Rip Kirby” sequence “Terror on the Thames” and will be doing a whole chunk
on that for “Strange Death of Alex Raymond”. As Margaret says, it’s dated
November 1963 and we know the significance of November 1963, so this was the
first Superman comic book I ever bought, or got bought for me by my Dad at
Heck’s Variety Store on Highland Road here in Kitchener, so it would have been
late summer of 1963. And the cover is Circe stepping out of her cask that she’s
been in, and saying, “You were a fool to think only Kryptonite can effect you,
Superman! With my mighty magic, I now turn you into a beast! And the spell will
remain until you agree to marry Circe!” [laughs] And it’s like, uh okay, Mort
Weisinger was all over the map on this stuff and, okay 1963 was a whole
different time period and it was a specific Superman Family time period. So
anyway, this copy that’s scanned, this isn’t my original copy. That was gone a
long time ago, but I was somewhere in a used bookstore or something like that
and they had old comic books and I went, “oh, it’s a ‘Superman’ 165. It’s in
really bad condition, but it’s ‘Superman’ #165, which has this amazing
sentimental attachment to it for me. So I’ll buy this.” Okay, flash forward to
1979, which is why this is listed in 1979, and why it’s at the top of the list.
The list that Margaret is looking at is significant life changing, mind
changing (which is how I looked at it at the time, soul changing is how I’d
look at it now) events and let’s write them down and the years that they
occurred. Let’s write them down in what I would say is the order of
significance and then attach a year to it, which is why “Superman” 165 is at
the top of the list for life changing. Flash forward to 1979, where Michael
Loubert, my brother in law, had give me, I think, four or five hits of acid for
my birthday. A bad idea. I was barely okay with buying a hit of acid and just
doing that hit. Any drug that I had, I wanted to do it until it was gone. You
can’t really do that with acid, but anyway. I had taken a hit of acid and was
working on “Cerebus” #11, pages 236 to 241, the first appearance of the
Cockroach, and was penciling pages, and the pages were coming out really good.
But I wasn’t really registering the fact, well, you don’t do pencil pages, you
don’t do multiple penciled pages. The way you do your work is one page at a
time so you know, okay I’ve got a page done today. Because this page I haven’t
started on and now it’s done. That was the only way that keeping “Cerebus” then
bimonthly was going to work. Working on those, and took a break, it’s the
middle of the night and I’m flying on this hit of acid, and glommed onto this
copy of “Superman” 165 that I had sitting out for some reason. Sort of looking
at it, and looking at Superman changing into a lion, and sort of going back and
forth between looking at this as an acid experience and remembering what it was
like when I was 7 years old and had this comic book bought for me. And reading
the dialogue and looking through the book, like reading it and quasi-reading
it. You’re also gonna get scans of interior pages where, whoever owned the
comic book before I owned the comic book, had written numbers. 6 + 6 = 12. And
then the next number after 6 is 7, 12 + 7 is 19. Next number after 19 is 8,
adds to 27, next number is 9, adds to 36, next number is 10, adds to 46, and
then for some reason, did 10 again. [laughs] And it’s like, being on acid it’s
like I was really really focused on this and going, well wait a minute, why are
there two 10s? I won’t go anymore elaborate on that, but it was, no it’s
definitely in a child’s handwriting, but what is it that the child was doing?
What is it that they were seeing, and why were they writing this next to this
Superman story over the course of two pages? And then flipped back to the cover
and I looked at the cover and I went, oh, this just looked like a blue scribble
on the front of the comic book, but I can see now with my sharper focus, my
focus is like incredibly intense at this point, and I’m going, oh, it’s
actually an M and A in the blue ink. M-A. And I’m going, whoever owned it,
wrote the first half of magic M-A, and was anticipating that at some point
someone was going to figure this out and write the G-I-C. And I thought, well
okay, I’ll do that. And I went, okay, it’s in blue, so it would make sense,
let’s do the reciprocal, I’ll grab my magenta magic marker, I had a set of markers
in the studio and I will write G-I-C. This thing finally got accomplished
after, well it would have been 16 years at that point. And wrote the G and
suddenly felt this massive presence take over my body and my mind, and suddenly
I had to take this magenta magic marker and mark the line in between the M and
the A and following the line of Circe’s magic wand, and I had to cover all of
that up with the magenta. And then I did that, and I went, no, what I have to
do is cover up the half of the cover, and it has to be the bottom half of the
cover, and I have to cover it with my magenta magic marker. Which, as you can
see, doesn’t work as well sideways as it does up and down. And got that done
and went, okay, I’m gonna have to go with this a lot more carefully in order to
cover up the actual image, and it’s not actually covering up the image. The
vertical one is, but the horizontal one is. I’m probably going to have to go
and buy a new magenta magic marker and this all took place in about the space
of 10 minutes. And then I went, what in the heck am I doing?! Where did this
come from? And I still have no answer for that, but vividly remember this… I
have never been that far removed from my conscious mind and possessed by some
other entity that had this definite, definite priority. “This is what needs to
be done”, and then “no, that’s not what needs to be done. This needs to be
done”, and then I was able to get myself back and go, what am I doing? Why
would I do that? It’s, like I say, it was… I just got the G done. It was sort
of years later that I went, oh what the heck I’m just gonna take the magic
marker and write the IC, and it’s [laughs] at some point I want this
accomplished. So I got this accomplished. So there you go, that was the reason
that was on this list. Are you okay for time? Like, you gotta get some sleep at
sometime, right?
Matt: Oh no no, I’m good
for time.
Dave: Okay, as long as
you’re good, it’s like…
Matt: As long as you’re
good is what, I worry about your clock more than mine.
Dave: [laughs] Okay. I’m
actually fine, because with the prayer times migrating backward with the
Daylight Saving Time, I’m now done prayers and I actually had something to eat
before I phoned you, so this is the magical part of late fall and winter, when
you’re observing Muslim prayer times is, man oh man, I’ve got like the whole
night to myself.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, so the next
one after that. “Gene Day, I think we both know that neither of us is going to
set the world on fire.” And that was a profound experience for me. A life
changing thing because I knew what he saying. You gotta lower your expectations
and say, I’m making a living in comics, or I’m making a living in comics and
doing some commercial art, whatever it is, don’t think of yourself as a world
beater, and don’t be trying to be a world beater. I took, not great offense or
great umbrage at this, but was definitely going, no, I haven’t conceded that
point, personally. I had no idea you were in that category, but to me, Gene Day
was the guy who, he worked that hard, had so many books in the water, because
he did think he was gonna set the world on fire at some point, and he was just
waiting to see which one that it was. That’s what I learned from him, was do
lots of stuff. Don’t sit and wait to see what’s going to happen with this. Do
something else, and then do something else right after that, and do something
else after that. Try and get as much done in the day, you never know, one of
these is going to catch fire. And that, I think, was definitely a seminal
moment for where Cerebus came from, was going, I didn’t know this about Gene
Day, and I’m astonished to find out Gene Day thinks that way. That he takes it
as a given that he’s not gonna set the world on fire. I had no idea that I
still considered myself a person who could potentially set the world on fire
and that sharpened up that side of me. The part that went, uh no, that’s what
I’m watching for. I’m not just going, okay I’ve gotta find somebody else who’ll
pay me to draw comics. I gotta find somebody else who’ll pay me to do a drawing
of Conan. I gotta find a business in town that will let me do advertising for
them. No, I was gonna do all of those, but I was always looking for Cerebus
from that moment. So that’s why that one was on this list of incredibly
important life changing events. You can see that the “Superman” 165 has a check
mark next to it, Gene Day has a check mark next to it. “Deni, hi are you Harry?
1976.” It was, yeah, that was the transformational moment. If she hadn’t come
downstairs at Now and Then Books, it’s hard to picture Cerebus happening. The
first one was transformative of I have never been in this completely altered
state of being even in all of my drug experiences, and I never have since then,
had an experience like that. Gene Day, I’ve never had that experience in
conversation with somebody. Deni, I had no idea how important that was. It was
just, wow, a girl is talking to me! Let’s see how long I can keep this girl
talking to me. “Dave Dwyer, 1976” was my gay landlord at 279 Queen Street
South, and that was a transformative moment in time because he was obviously thinking
that he was going to take this, I will flatter myself, very pretty 20 year old
boy with neatly cropped little beard and is going to help him learn that he’s
actually gay, and become a gay man. That happened in two stages, going to his
Christmas party, when I had first moved out of my parents’ house, and then a
week later, discovering him dead in his office. That was transformative in
terms of, I have never had the experience of seeing someone transparently
trying to transform me into somebody I absolutely wasn’t, and being 100%
confident that’s what he was going to do. And then being the first dead person
that I ever saw, outside of a funeral home, where somebody came to my door and
said, “you know the guy in the office around the side?” I said, yeah, Dave
Dwyer. They said, “I think he’s dead.” I was like, dead? No, I was just at his
Christmas party last night. I go around the side of the house, and yes, he’s…
“Dave?” tried to shake him. When I actually touched him, to try and wake him
up, I thought he was just dozing at his desk. When I touched him, I got these
two electrical flashes through my wrist, and definitely noticed that as a, okay
I’ve never had something happen like that before and I have no idea what that
is, and it’s very weird that it happened in this situation. So that’s why
that’s #4 on the list. [laughs] “Heatwave Festival, 1980.” That was Sally, who
was my mistress when I got married, was getting married herself. Deni was
invited to the wedding, but obviously I wasn’t. Like, you don’t want your new
wife’s former lover at your wedding. It’s just one of those things that… and
that was part of the transformative nature of that, was, okay, I had no idea
that these sort of things exist in life. No, I would have been comfortable
going to the wedding, but I’m pretty sure Sally wouldn’t have been comfortable,
and I’m pretty sure Bill, who she married, wouldn’t have been comfortable. So,
okay, I’m not going to the wedding. And Bob said, “there’s going to be a music
festival, it’s called the Heatwave Festival, it’s got all these bands and stuff
like that, and it’s the same day. Why don’t we just make it that Deni and Karen
go to the wedding, and you and I go to the Heatwave Festival?” I thought, okay,
I’ve never been to a big outdoor Woodstock-style festival. Why not? It’d give
me something to do. And then Karen, she and Bob were married at that point, I’m
pretty sure, went, “well, if you’re going to the Heatwave Festival, I want to
go to the Heatwave Festival instead of the wedding.” And it’s like, uhh, you’re
Sally’s best friend. Sally was the maid of honor at your wedding. And I’m
sitting there going, this is really my fault. This is spinning badly out of
control, and it’s like, yes, this is what fornication as entertainment and
adultery gets you, is these really really bad complications, so, as it turns
out, Bob, and Karen, and I went to the Heatwave Festival and Deni went to
Sally’s wedding…
Matt: So, trying not to
ruin the wedding by showing up, you ruined the wedding by taking somebody else.
[laughs] At that point in your life, were you living “Three’s Company”?
Dave: Uh, you definitely
understand it better. It’s one of those, it’s much more entertaining watching a
movie and on television than actually trying to live through it.
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: When you’re going,
well, okay, what are the rules here? And it’s like, there are no rules. That’s
what you’re not understanding, kid. That’s what turning your back on God gets
you, is going, “I need some rules here. I need some guidelines.” No, you’re already
well over into Bob Dylan, “you have to be honest if you live outside the law”
territory and it’s like, newsflash, you can’t be honest if you live outside the
law. And that’s one of the reasons that the Heatwave Festival is on there, is
going, that experience of going, “this is my fault, and this is getting worse
and this is going to have a permanent effect on four people’s lives, and that’s
a really bad thing. This is very very bad karma.” So that was transformative,
in terms of I have become something that I can’t control, and it’s having
negative effects. And having to study that as scrupulously as possible for
years until I went, oh okay, it’s just good and evil. There are good things
that you can do, and there are evil things that you can do. The Ten
Commandments are a very good shopping list for good, and it says, “do not
commit adultery”. And the reason it says “do not commit adultery” is because
bad things happen when you do bad things, which is like, duh! [laugh] But, if
you’ve been raised in this completely libertarian, sybaritic kind of household,
relatively speaking, relative to a religious household, that’s the things that
is going to happen to you. So that’s why that one is on the list, but at that
point I’m not having check marks next to them. It’s really a shopping list of,
okay, if I’m gonna talk about myself and I’m gonna do autobiographical, these
might be a little too potent. This is like trying to use an atomic bomb to
clear tree stumps off your land.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] But let’s
write these down, so that I do have a shopping list for Dave Sim’s
autobiography. What made Dave Sim into Dave Sim? What were the transformational
moments? Then I’ve got the John Lennon quote, “Elvis died when he went in the
Army.” And Victor Davis’ reply to that, “John Lennon died when he met Yoko
Ono.” And I would still [gap in recording] To the same extent that John Lennon
looked very vulgar and very insensitive and not deferential and all of those
bad things, saying when he was told Elvis had died, “Elvis died when he went in
the Army”, that’s the same situation that Victor Davis and Dave Sim were in
saying when John Lennon died, “John Lennon died when he met Yoko Ono.” Another
transformative thing of, you can transform yourself and transform general
reality by just being the only person to say what you think is the best actual
assessment of a situation that puts you at odds with everybody else. So that
was a transformational moment. Next one, ahh, “Pedophilia”. Okay. And I wrote “1969,
1970, 1971”. Now that was two incidents, and I’m not sure what year it was, it
was those are the three years that it possibly could be, 1969, 1970, and 1971,
where Steven Dick, who was… [laughs] boy, you want to talk about a comic art
metaphysics resonance name. Steven Dick, who was my closest friend and about my
only friend 1969, 1970, 71, and his middle name was Ernest. Steven Ernest Dick.
[laughs] You couldn’t make that up. He was four days older than me, May 13th,
1956. And we were both babysitters, and that was a new situation. That was
something that happened at the same time feminism was starting to happen. Girls
were babysitters, boys were not babysitters. My sister and I had only had
female babysitters. You wouldn’t think… girls looked after babies and small
children because one day they would be a mother and this is a good way for them
to learn. Boys and fathers aren’t in that category, so, no, they’ll do
something else. Anyway, as I say, we were both babysitters, and one time when
we were walking up to Forest Heights Collegiate for school and Steven said, “I
was babysitting on Saturday.” Neighbors of theirs on Shadywood Crescent. And it
was two girls, and the one girl just all of a sudden says to him, “My father
has a big penis. How big is your penis?” [laughs] And it’s like, Steven looked
at me like, and it was like his jaw dropped open even remembering it and saying
it to me. And it was a weird friendship that we had, because Steven was from a
very strict religious family. Strict Baptist. And I was, of course, a complete
atheist, so we never had a shortage of things to talk about. But this question
being posed to him had obviously flummoxed him and I don’t even remember where
the conversation went from there. I think he just changed the subject, and,
“okay, let’s not talk about that”, but me being an atheist and coming from a
far more sybaritic kind of family, certainly relative to Steve’s family, by
1969, it’s like my father wasn’t hiding his “Playboy” magazines. If you had a
“Playboy” magazine, you had a “Playboy” magazine. “The boy wants to look at
‘Playboy’ magazine, that’s up to him.” Which now I don’t agree with, no, 13
year old shouldn’t be deciding, “yeah, I want to look at ‘Playboy’ magazine and
actually I want to spend a lot more time in the washroom than I used to”.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So, looking at
that, I went, okay, I think there’s kind of a legal obligation on Steve’s part,
and was I going, is this a father molesting his daughters and he needs to be
reported? Because, even at the age of 13, like I say, coming from this
sybaritic ultra-liberal kind of environment, I knew that one of the signs of
incest molestation is too much of an interest and too much of a focus on things
having to do with sexuality and genitalia, way under the child’s experiment. So
it’s like, part of me’s thinking, and it’s like I don’t know if I want to have
this conversation with Steve because obviously he decided let’s just change the
subject and that’s what we’re going to do here. But I was thinking, if he even
said to the little girl, “when you saw your father’s penis was it hanging down
or was it sticking straight up?” and it’s like I’m going, okay what’s the legal
culpability there? But at the same time, that would certainly tell you, okay
this isn’t just a peculiar curiosity on the part of this little girl, this
child is being abused by her father and I have to report that, and I’m only 13
years old, now the next question was, who does he report that to? Do you go and
tell your parents? Do you tell the father and mother when they get home,
wherever they are, “your daughter asked me this”? How dicey does that situation
get in terms of, “I don’t want you having conversations with my daughter about
that”, “well believe me, I didn’t initiate the conversation”, and then I’m
going, yeah, in order to have that “I didn’t initiate the conversation” you
can’t continue the conversation. So that’s on the list because this was the
first time that I looked at transformational situations where, okay, you don’t
know what that is, but it could be any number of completely nondescript things,
or something really really evil and if it’s really really evil you’re kind of
obligated to do something about it. I wouldn’t have thought of it as evil, I
would have thought of it as illegal. Somebody, when that’s happening, should be
reported. And then shortly thereafter, which is again why it’s 1969, 70, 71, I
don’t know which one it was, Craig Dawson, who was a classmate of mine, I don’t
have my high school yearbook, so someday maybe a Cerebus fan completeist can
get 1969 to 1972 Forest Heights Collegiate yearbooks and will be able to
establish, okay, when was I in a class with Steven Dick and with Craig Dawson?
And Craig Dawson was talking about having had sex, and having had sex with what
was pretty clearly a woman and not a fellow classmate, but a woman. And me,
again, the 13 year old who had read Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy Philosophy” and a
good chunk of “Playboy” magazine, talking about all of this stuff, going, well
okay, that’s illegal. Or is that illegal? This was early enough where
molestation was just something that happened with little girls, as far as we
knew. I mean we didn’t have any clear grasp of the fact that this is, there’s
homosexual pedophiles and there’s heterosexual pedophiles, with all of the
implications of that. So, and this happened hard on the heels of Steve telling
me about his experience, and me essentially washing my hands of it, going,
well, okay, he changed the subject, he’s a nice Baptist kid. Just stay
completely away from this, it’s none of my business. That wasn’t the situation
with Craig Dawson, cause I’m going, well what is the situation with that? Can
an older woman have sex with a 13 year old boy, legally? And it’s like, my
reaction was, like I hope so!
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: You know, this was
a couple of years after “The Graduate” had come out, and all of us 13 year old
boys were looking around for our Mrs Robinson. How many of these are there and
how do you get one that just says “uhh yeah, okay, I’ll be your sex toy”? And
it’s like, no, we know now, no, that’s molestation and child abuse on both
sides. That’s why it’s called statutory rape. A child can’t give consent, so
consequently it’s rape, because rape is sex without consent. That’s getting
lost, and this is what I was wrestling with. The thing that we’re still
ignoring as a society, where we’re talking about child’s rights. “Children are
people too. Well, if children are people too, then you’re gonna have to revisit
statutory rape. If a child wants to have sex, that’s up to the child.” And it’s
like, mmm, no I don’t think you want to go there as a society, and the whole
LGBTQ thing doesn’t help with, ya know, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”, it’s like,
no, if you take “Born This Way” and child’s rights, and put those two together
with sexuality, that’s a real devil’s brew mixture. You don’t want to go
anywhere near that. So those two things happening that close together when I
was 13, 14, or 15, and I don’t know which it was. Grade 9, grade 10, and grade
11. The first time through grade 11. That was seriously transformational. Uhh,
“CosmiCon 1972” was transformational in that that was the first time that comic
books were alive. Like, apart from going to Captain George Henderson’s Memory
Lane in Toronto, and it’s a store full of comic books and there’s a guy that
runs the store who knows about comic books. When I talk to him about Detective
27, he knows what I’m talking about. That was transformative, and should
probably be on the list. CosmiCon with dealers and that’s actually Neal Adams.
That’s actually Joe Kubert. That’s actually Jim Steranko. They’re just walking
through the dealer’s room, and I can walk up to this guy that I know is Jim
Steranko and say, “hello, Mr Steranko, can I ask you a question?” and he says, “Sure,
what?” It’s like, this is unbelievable, because comic books were always like
this shining city on a hill over here, and I had this horrible horrible life
over here. Suddenly, it was, talk about crossing over. I crossed over into
those both exist in the same place. They both exist on the same planet. You can
get them together as a fan, but what you want to do is get them together as a
professional. And that was definitely transformational in terms of, I had never
realized that that was possible. I had never realized, yes, the world is
changing itself in such a way that York University, Winters College for three
days in March 1972 is going to be like this meeting place of the world. Just
completely mind-boggling. “Marijuana. 1976”, was the first time that I had
smoked marijuana, but I had never inhaled, just like Bill Clinton. You have to
know how to get the stuff into your lungs in order to get high, and I smoked,
but I only smoked drawing it into my mouth and then exhaling it. And you’re not
getting high that way. So, that was transformational because it was really
really good pot, and that was the first time that I had, actually one of the
rare times that I had an actual voice in my head that… I was walking around the
neighborhood. I used to go for long walks in Forest Hill, just as a matter of
habit at night, and I was high and going through all of these time lapse things
and everything, and I suddenly, walking down Queens Boulevard, I got this voice
in my head saying, “you have all of the pieces, you just have to put them
together.” And it’s like, [laughs] okay, I don’t know who that was, it didn’t
sound like me, but it was definitely inside my head and it was definitely in a
tone of, “you have to listen to this and you have to remember this. This is important.
You have all of the pieces, you just have to put them together.” “Sally”, okay,
this was before Sally and I started having an affair, which went from July 1978
to January 1979. I was over at Deni’s parents place, Deni’s parents were away
somewhere and [laughs] like all good lapsed Catholic children, as soon as the
parents were gone, time to have party. So everybody was over having a party and
drinking Baby Duck wine and all those kinds of things, playing music too loud,
and having all the lights turned way down. And I was sitting in Deni’s dad’s
armchair, drinking whatever I was drinking, and there was two candles on the
floor of the living room. And Sally came over and sprawled down in front of the
candle, and was taking the tips of her hair, she had reasonably long hair, and
getting them close to the candle, so that they sort of ignited, and sort of
didn’t ignite, and trying to figure out where that spot was. And I said to her,
“if you play with fire, you can get burned.” And she said, “I don’t mind.” And
at that point, we both knew what we were gonna do. And it’s like, that was
transformative in retrospect of going, okay, anytime that that happens where
I’m not saying what I’m saying, and she wasn’t saying what she was saying, and
you go, uhh, that’s not the way that conversation should have gone. I shouldn’t
have said what I said, because then she wouldn’t have said what she wouldn’t
have said, and we wouldn’t have both been inside something. Anytime that
happens to you in your life, run away from whatever the situation is.
“Gananoque, January 1976”, January, February. That was me going up and staying
with Gene and Gail, that was my first time living in a comic book environment,
because Gene Day was the same kind of comic book nut that I was, and he had two
drawing boards, and instead of being at my parents’ place, which was I’m the
only weird person who is interested in comics this obsessively, and everybody
else in my family, everybody else that I knew looked down on it. Here is the
next step after the CosmiCon experience, the same transformational quality of…
this is what it would be like to get up in the morning and live comic books all
day, and go to bed at night, and then get up in the morning, and live comic
books all day. Do other stuff, like visit with Gail’s family, with Gene’s
family, go out up street to a movie or watch something on television or
whatever. But mostly, this would be your life, where all you do is comic books.
And that is definitely what I wanted, and as soon as I got, I’ve never let go
of it!
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: That’s what my
life consists of. I get up in the morning, and everything that I do is oriented
towards comic books, with minor intermittent excepts, and then I go to bed, and
I know the moment I get up the next day, it’s gonna be all comic books. Okay, I
skipped one of those, “Christmas present cardboard file boxes” we’re going to
leave that for next time. We left David Birdsong for next time, so we’ll leave
that one for next time. That’s an interesting, and especially complicated
story. But I’ll be happy to tell it, and why that was transformational. So,
thank you Margaret for finding that page. There’s very few pages in the
notebooks that I remember consciously and that was a page where I went, you
know if I ever did write my biography, not just I will do a fictional proxy as
I did in “Reads” and let’s put this stuff in order. That would be a very good
list to go back to, because that would tell me exactly, not only what those
seminal events were, but where they were in the pecking order in my mind back
in the atheist days. [laughs] And then I started thinking, does that even
exist, or am I just picking that I did that? No, I’m pretty sure that I did
that because I remember some of the stuff that’s on the list, but not all of
the stuff that’s on the list. Okay, where are we now? We are at 9:43, so that’s
as long as anybody should have to hold for Dave Sim! We gotta let go for Dave
Sim, now.
Matt: We got one more
thing we gotta talk about real quick.
Dave: Sure, no problem.
Matt: Which is
“Hermann”.
Dave: “Hermann”? Okay.
Matt: “Hermann” is sent
to Marquis, it’s at the printers, there’s no way we can change the book,
correct?
Dave: Uhh… keep going
with that.
Matt: Ben Hobbs sent out
the final proof and we all went through it one last time, he’s like, “okay,
it’s going in tonight because they wanted it that day” and that was like two
days ago, I think?
Dave: Right.
Matt: Okay, now that we
can’t change the book, I can tell you, why this is probably my favoritest issue
of “Cerebus in Hell?” ever. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Okay,
there’s a teaser! We should actually do, “okay, and we’ll tell you next month
on ‘Please’”… but no, I wanna know. I wanna know. I wanna know!
Matt: Okay, so, it’s in
the preview, so this isn’t a spoiler yet, but there’s the secret history of the
Bronze-Age Hermann, Mr. H.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: And we teased
this, so anybody listening right now will be like, okay. Where the spoiler
comes in, so if you want to stop now if you don’t want it spoiled, and you
wanna wait till next month, now’s the time to stop. Ya know, goodnight
everybody. But for everybody that wants to brave through, Dave mashed all of
our names together for the secret history, because it’s kind of a twisted
history, I’m not gonna explain why. But the point is, is that Mr H was created
by Manly Matt Birdsong and Bashful Benjamin Dow. And that is my favoritest line
ever, because I have a sibling. I have an older brother. His name is Benjamin!
Dave: No way.
Matt: And from now on,
his name is “Bashful” Benjamin! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] I
actually showed him the first proof which still had a few things that to get
added to it, like the apostrophe on “Bashful Benjamin Dow” and it’s Bashful
Benjamin Dow with an S because an apostrophe was missing. And we fixed that.
But I showed it to him, and I’m like, from now on, you’re Bashful. And then he
just glared at me, and then he laughed. And then I explained to him, for
Christmas, I’m getting matching long-sleeve black t-shirts, and across the
chest of mine is going to say “Manly” in white, and across his it’s gonna say
“Bashful” and we’re gonna be the best Batman 1966 goons ever! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Well, I
will make a grandpa mental note to sign a copy of “Hermann” to Bashful Benjamin
Dow.
Matt: When Eddie asked
how many copies do you want, I’m like, I’m getting five extra cause if I work
on the book, I will sign five and send them up to Dave so that’s three for the
archive and two that Dave can get rid of if he needs to. And then I’m like, I need
another extra five but I can’t tell you guys why yet, because I’m gonna have my
brother sign five of them. [laughs]
Dave: Oh, great! Oh
that’s terrific. [laughs]
Matt: I mean, it’s one
of those, I read it the first time and I’m like, oh my God, this is great, but
I gotta sit on it, I can’t let anyone on the team know cause it’s the whole
Tony Twist thing of, “oh, what happens if he gets upset?” It’s like, I don’t
care, he’s my brother. He’s either gonna live with it, or he’s gonna live with
it.
Dave: That’s right.
That’s right. It’ll be interesting to find out if Benjamin Hobbs has an older
brother named Matt.
Matt: [laughs] Or if
Birdsong has an older brother named Matt, so that it’ll be Manly Matt Birdsong.
Dave: Yes. Anyway, they
were the classic Silver Age team on Mr H. Or the classic bronze-age team on Mr
H.
Matt: Right.
Dave: So, yes, looking
forward to that coming out. It was disappointing sales, we got sales of 1800 on
that one.
Matt: I don’t understand
why… that was the first time we went, we’re gonna parody something that we
don’t know what it is, because we’re hitting it when the iron’s hot!
Dave: Yes, yes. And it
was one of those things that we all labored on very very hard and when I read
the proof, I actually laughed out loud several times, and I went, “when this
isn’t actually hard work, it’s actually pretty darn funny.” So,
congratulations. Go ahead.
Matt: I will admit that
the page that I wrote is a ripoff of a web comic that I wrote almost 20 years
ago. My buddy and I had a bunch of action figures and started taking pictures
of them and putting them in backgrounds and we… originally, we didn’t have a camera,
we were scanning the toys and then Photoshopping them into backgrounds.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And after about
the eight or ninth day where we went, “oh well this is funny, let’s keep doing
this”, we went to Walmart and spent $100 on a camera. He spent it, and then he
told his parents, cause he was in college, “I need this for work.” [laughs]
Dave: Right. In
quotation marks.
Matt: The original strip
it’s, Captain Kirk on the desert planet doing the, “a fortune of precious
stones and I’d give it all up for a simple spear” or something when he was
fighting Gorn, and in the last panel, it’s pulled back, and it’s the
background, a sign saying, “you can reenact Kirk” And somebody saying, “Hey TJ
Hooker, move aside.” When I got to, we’re gonna do “Hermann”, I’m like, okay,
we have to make fun of the whole Hermann’s journal and the actual Rorschach’s
journal about, ya know, the city’s full of filth type thing and I’m like, this
joke, I’m stealing from myself so it’s okay, I can’t sue myself, right?
Dave: Uhh, I don’t know.
If anybody could, I think you could.
Matt: It’s kinda like
the time John Fogerty got sued by his brothers because one of his songs sounded
like a Creedence song that he wrote and he had to go to court with a guitar and
play both songs to show the jury the difference, and he won the class, but the
fact was he was accused of plagiarizing himself, and I’m going, only in this
world.
Dave: [laughs] This is
what we need the courts for, is ridiculous things like that. You wouldn't have
that happen outside of a court of law.
Matt: Well, and that’s…
now it’s time for everybody to go home. [laughs]
Dave: Okay, I’m gonna
go. Say hi to Paula and Janis and Natasha for me.
Matt: Will do. And we
will do this again next month, picking up with the Christmas box.
Dave: Sounds good. We’ll
see ya then, Matt.
Matt: Yep. Talk to ya
then, Dave!
Dave: Buh-bye.
Matt: Bye.
My Kickstarter was unsuccessful. Thank you for adding it to the blog in the last several days.
I appreciate it.
I decided to just put the comic for sale on Lulu.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/fanny-kelly-and-hal-kolbeck/my-captivity/paperback/product-459wr8z.html?page=1&pageSize=4
If you can link this on AMOC Matt Allsion could use the help. https://crowdfundr.com/a2Yvxb?ref=ab_3UXdKBiCFCH3UXdKBiCFCH Bargain @ $10.
1 comment:
Thank you, Matt. For anyone who finds my initial verbatim style of transcribing grating (like the late Jeff Seiler did, which shows how long it's been since I started on it), I do get better, I promise!
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