Hi, Everybody!
Mondays!
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Jesse Lee Herndon has caught up to Dave and I on the Please Hold Transcripts, And since I'm out of Proto-Strange Death of Alex Raymond pages, I may as well start knocking out these transcripts.
Here's where I'm at (blue link means it's been posted):
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Matt: Alright, that
one’s recording… And… that one’s recording. Alright, we’re good to go!
Dave: Alright. I’m gonna
start off by saying that I did hear from Dagon James that “Spawn” 10 is
shipping starting tomorrow, March 5th. So I’m gonna request that
everyone post to A Moment of Cerebus as you receive your packages of “Spawn” 10
because that’s gonna be the starting gun for the “Cerebus” #2 Kickstarter, as
far as I know.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: And this is also
March 4th today, and happy birthday to Dagon James, he turned 50
years old today.
Matt: Well, everybody
sing “Happy Birthday” in the comments. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Yes, and
try to stay in key, this time.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, ahh, let’s
see, what else did I have here? Um… We’re finally at the point with something
that I’m calling “Aardvark-Vanaheim signature verification certificates” and
we’re starting that with the William Messner-Loebs comic books that Bill signed
and that I signed that are now on their way to CGC in Sarasota, Florida for
slabbing. And they can’t be signature series because neither Bill nor I had a
CGC agent there to verify us doing our signatures. What I decided to do was a
sort of poor-man’s signature series, which is a 5 by 7 certificate that looks
very much like a slabbed comic book. It’s got the Cerebus graphic that I use on
most things, Cerebus with his arms crossed in a circle with the clouds in
behind. That printed in blue, and on top of the blue, the one that I’m looking
at right now is “Power Comics #1. Power Comics company 1977. First printing,
signed by William Messner-Loebs. January 17th 21, and signed by Dave Sim
February 4th 21” and then just as you would have it on a CGC label,
“’A Boy and his Aardvark’ by Dave Sim, ‘Nightwitch Rising’ by Bill Loebs, first
Dave Sim aardvark (not Cerebus).” And they get those straight out of
Overstreet. Whatever Overstreet says about a comic book, that’s what goes on
the CGC header. So it’s a certificate but it’s printed as a sticker, a 5 by 7
label, and the idea is that you can just leave it with the backing on it and it
will be a verification certificate, or you can peel the backing off of it and
put it on the back of the backing board of the comic book in question. And it’s
got a colour photograph of the comic book so that you can see from the
photograph that this is Dave Sim’s signature because it looks exactly the same
as it does on the comic book in this plastic bag here, and this is Bill Loebs’ signature
and that looks exactly the way it is. And as I say, you can put it on the
backing board, or if you want to get the book slabbed by CGC, when they send it
back to you, you can take the signature verification certificate and stick it
on the back of your CGC capsule as a further point of identification. It would
say “signature series” on the front of the case, but on the back of it, it will
have the Aardvark-Vanaheim history of it. So just wanted to let people know
that that was happening, and now we’ve got a phone question! Jeff Seiler is our
Jetsons guy because he does actual phone message questions. So let’s listen to
Jeff’s message right now, and then I will read my answer to Jeff.
[robot lady (possibly Rosie the Maid): … in your mailbox. First saved
message.]
Jeff Seiler: Hi, Dave,
it’s Jeff. Just nosing around on the internet and I found out there is a new
brand of rum, both dark and apparently they call it black even though it’s
clear rum, so two kinds, and they are both labeled “Papa’s Pilar Rum”, and then
the ad goes… hang on… and the ad says something like (I can’t look it up
because your sweet woman comes on and tells me that I’m done, so) but the ad
says something like, “Inspired by the nature of adventure in the writings of
Ernest Hemingway and his boat, the Pilar”. So there you go, and since I’ve got
ya I’m gonna give you my question for March. And this has actually been kicking
around in the back of my mind for a while now, and by a while I mean months,
not years. You once wrote, to me, I think, you don’t read the Torah commentary
book (which I think is called the Talmud, but I’m not Jewish, so), but then you
do your own commentaries on the Bible. So, I’m wondering about that sort of
dichotomy, some people would use a different word, but it seems strange that
you won’t read commentaries by other people but you do your own commentaries.
So if you would care to expound on that, and again, I’m leaving this on your
phone because I could certainly why you would care not to expound on that, but
I would be interested. And if you want to just call me and leave me a personal
message or talk with me over the phone and not over the internet, that would be
fine, too. Hope you’re doing well, and I will speak with you soon. Take care.
[robot lady: End of message. To delete this message, press 7.]
Dave: Two, three, four…
okay. Well, first of all, Jeff, you’re making it sound as if I dodge questions
I don’t want to answer, which I don’t think I do. I usually know what the
answer is, the factual angle to my answer and the “my opinion” angle to my
answer, before someone is done asking it. The seemingly innocent question can
end up taking a long time to answer, as we’ve seen with my month’s long answer
to your “what do you think Chris and Bill were doing in the ‘New Mutants’?” But
that just goes with the territory. No one knows what kind of question they’re
asking until I answer. Like Gary Boyarski with his question about reprinting
the “Epic Magazine” Young Cerebus stories last month. I know the answer, but
getting all the dots in my head in a row and then connecting them for people
who don’t know anything about what I’m talking about. It can be a labour
intensive process. Would I rather not answer the question? Uh, that’s not
really an option. If I say, “Gary, that’s way too complicated a question so I’m
just gonna skip that one.” Then everyone will just start making up the worst
possible reasons that they can think of as to why I wouldn’t answer. You know,
welcome to the internet age. In this case, I think the answer is pretty
straightforward. To me, the difference between scripture and commentaries on
scripture, is the difference between eating a carrot and reading a 500 page
book about carrots. Eating the carrot seems to me the obviously preferable,
nutritional choice. I think the ratio I have chosen, 10 to 1, reading scripture
aloud over commenting on scripture, seems to me a comparably preferable choice.
Scripture didn’t work for me until I found what I believe to be a viable
working model for the Torah, the Gospels, and the Koran; God vs YHWH. Since I’m
the only who sees it that way, it seems worth the half hour out of my week to
write one page of commentary on John’s Gospel, as opposed to the five hours a
week I spend reading John’s Gospel aloud. I certainly rule out that this would
be a universal experience. If you, Jeff, as an example, spent five hours a week
reading John’s Gospel aloud, and a half hour a week writing about what you
think it’s telling you, very possibly you will find that it’s telling you very
different things. I don’t think there’s any danger of you doing that. You or
anyone else listening to me, here. So it’s an experiment without a control
group, as far as we know. Maybe someday that will happen, but A), Not likely,
and B) Not soon. The theory is that that’s a genuine snowflake situation.
John’s Gospel will say something different to every human being reading it
aloud and we just don’t know that that’s the case. Or, the opposite of that
would be, if everyone spend five hours a week reading John’s Gospel aloud, we
would get to some sort of kernel of John’s Gospel that everybody was on the
same page with. God vs YHWH being the seminal schism, which, for me, reiterates
through the Torah, the Gospels, and the Koran. It would be very difficult for
me to read other monotheistic commentaries. “God says this”. Well, no, the YHWH
says that! “Jesus said A, B, and C”. Well, no, the Synoptic Jesus said A and B,
the Johannine Jesus said C. I look up things in Strong’s Concordance and my New
Bible Dictionary, but there it’s pretty easy to separate fact from opinion, so
I really only look up factual material and skip over the opinions. There’s
obviously a lot of that in there, I mean, 2000 years later, they’re still
trying to explain why, in the Synoptic Gospels Jesus has the perfumed ointment
broken over his head, and in John’s Gospel, it’s his feet that are anointed.
God willing, if I can keep going with my Monday reports, I will explain why I
think that is, but that’s well down the line. That’s in chapter… what chapter’s
that?… Umm, 12. So, at the rate that I’m going, that could be a few years down
the line. Let me try to explain it this way to you, Jeff. Me reading
monotheistic commentaries would be like you trying to read books of the history
of the Kansas City Royals, and every page or so, they start talking about the
New York Yankees instead, going back and forth from one to the other. Or
reading a 500 book about carrots and every other page they start talking about
bananas. The sensible reaction would be to go and eat an actual carrot and an actual
banana, I think. In the case of the Kansas City Royals, go, “well, I’m just
gonna read these books here where I know they’re talking about the Kansas City
Royals throughout, cause this ‘Kansas City Royals / New York Yankees writing’,
I just can’t do that, it’s just too weird.” And I do think that reading John’s
Gospel aloud is a better use of two and a half hours of your life than watching
the Kansas City Royals play baseball, or any other professional sporting event.
But, obviously, we’re polar opposites on that question. So, there ya go, that’s
the best I can do on that one, Jeff.
Matt: The only thing I
would add to that is, the reason you don’t read commentary is because you’re
reading the commentary from somebody who’s got the opinion that Jesus didn’t
have siblings because that’s their belief, when the Bible says, no, Jesus has
siblings. [laughs]
Dave: Right. Right. I
mean, it’s one of those, I think the most efficacious thing… Rich L. in Peoria,
our resident Orthodox Catholic, sort of came to that point as well, that the
thing that interests him the most about me isn’t my religious beliefs, it’s the
fact that I was reading John’s Gospel outside City Hall Council Chambers. I’m
glad that he said that, because I think that’s where God has been wanting us to
get to. It’s very interesting what you all think about scripture and the
different ways that you interpret it, but if you wanted to actually use
scripture for what it was intended for, reading scripture aloud outside of
pagan environments, anti-God environments, which I think we’re coming to the
point of going, “look, we have to call them what they are”. This is the best
use of your time, and then just basically, very quietly reading John’s Gospel
aloud and then thinking in your head, or saying aloud, may God judge between me
and thee. And it’s like, I’m not judging you, I’m reading scripture aloud, I’m
invoking scripture, and then I call upon God and say, whoever is most in the
right, I hope you would favor them with your divine disposition.
Um, okay. Then we’ve got, the questions that you just faxed through to me.
The first one is Dan, from last month, “Hi Dave. Thanks for your answer last
month about the Mary Heimingway/Ernestway dilemma in Latter Days. It makes
sense, as Cerebus says the encounter with the former really happened, and the
encounter with the latter was a dream.” Uh, next to that, I wrote a note, is
the dream of someone who actually existed more real or less real than an
encounter depicted in a comic book? Because they’re both nonexistent, but in
what sense? Obviously, Mary Hemingway’s dream about the warthog was very vivid
to her at the time, vivid enough that she got up and wrote it down in her
diary. “My question this time is one you might not get often: Why are the last
few pages of issue #186 almost entirely italicized? I have two theories. One is
that the last few pages are a direct continuation of the (also italicized)
first paragraph of #186, with everything in-between being what Viktor Davis had
written on paper. The other is that the last few pages are narrated by the
Female Void character. Her dialogue also seemed to be italicized before (see
page 206 of the remastered Reads for an example), so maybe it's her that's
talking. Have fun letting me know how off the mark I am.” Ah, no, you’re not
far off the mark, at all. I did underline the, “what Viktor Davis has written
on paper”. It was more that as I got to the end of issue 186, there was a
distinction between Viktor Davis recounting his autobiographic experiences, what
had been happening to him, and the points that he was making with them, that he
saw them as reinforcing, versus Viktor Davis addressing the actual reader,
having finished with the recounting and not really know how to do that without
changing something visually about the text, it seemed like italicizing was the
best bet. Viktor Davis is recounting throughout issue 186, saying “this
happened, and this happened, and this happened, and this is why I’m telling it
to you as the reader.” But then, when you hit that italicized portion, it’s a
kind upon awakening out of recounting the story into addressing the person
specifically to whom you have been recounting the story. It’s a changed state
of being. So that’s why that one was in italics.
Ah, then you wrote, “It wouldn’t be Please Hold For Dave Sim without a
question from down Easton, Pennsylvania way.” Truer words were never spoke. “Hi
Dave! I noticed when you had written or talked about Alex Raymond's photo
realistic inking that you never (hardly ever?) mention Alex Raymond's pencils
skills on anything he had drawn before he inked the pages? It seems that you
favor his inking over his pencils. Are there even his penciled pages that exist
of his to compare before and after he had inked them?” Not a great deal. The
best that we have in that situation, is there are photographs of Alex Raymond
working at his drawing board and inking a strip. Or penciling characters. Or
something like that. And if it’s a good enough photograph, and most of them
were taking by newspapers or magazines or somebody like that, you can see
pretty much what’s on the page before he inked them. But there really isn’t a
lot of that. It’s one of those things, yes, you kind of need a photograph
because Alex Raymond wasn’t the sort of person and it wouldn’t have been
standard operating procedure for a cartoonist at the time, to photocopy his
pencils. You wouldn’t be able to afford a photocopier of your own and it would
be too expensive to do copying just for the sake of saying, “this is what my
strips look like before they’re inked.” The other situation is that Alex
Raymond was inking himself. So, consequently, there’s usually less to see at
the pencil stage, than if a cartoonist is penciling for someone else to ink
them. That basically being penciling as self guideline. “I know what this
means. This is the stuff that I have to pencil a little tighter because I’m not
really sure how I want this to look in the finish, so the tighter penciled it
is, the more accurate I can be with my inking. Well, I know how those folds go
in that suit jacket, so I can just sort of drop them in roughly where they go
and when I’m at the inking stage”, doing folds in a suit jacket are not
something that Alex Raymond is going to find intimidating after he’s done “Rip
Kirby” for x number of years. It’s “no, I know how to do that so it’s just most
basic kind of indication that I need in order to do it properly.” And it also
allows you to do a more spontaneous inking line, because it’s not where it’s going
to be specifically, so you build up a head of steam, and Alex Raymond inked his
strips, I think, over a course of a day or a day and half? So it took two or
three days for him to pencil them, but when he went in inking, it was
definitely a spontaneous skating sort of effect. Which is why the work is so
good. When you get to that point, where you have that level of confidence, the
less penciling you have, the more inking you have, the more spontaneous the
inking is going to be, as opposed to, I think the tightest pencils I ever saw
were probably Barry Windsor-Smith on “Conan” and Jim Starlin’s on… I’m not
really sure what it was, one of Jim Starlin’s Marvel projects. And that’s
[laughs] the victory of experience over hope, not “I hope the inking turns out
on this.” By the time you’ve seen your work inked, and Barry had seen his work
gang inked, where the job came in late, so they’re gonna get two or three
inkers together in the Bullpen and they’re all gonna ink Barry’s story, and you
go, “wow, I don’t want that ever happening again, and if it does happen, I want
to make sure I’m being very very clear where the pencil lines go.” It comes out
looking more like your work that way, but you also get less spontaneous inking
because the guidelines are more specific for what the people are going to do be
doing when they ink your stuff. So that’s really the biggest difference there.
If you’re inking yourself, and habitually inking yourself, Alex Raymond was
never inked by anybody else and he never inked anybody else, you just get
comfortable with your own wrist. “This is the stuff that I want to be really
specific about, this is the stuff where, mmm, no, I’d rather draw this at the
inking stage.” The Alex Raymonds and the Milt Caniffs, and the guys like that
who inked themselves considered the term “inking-in” a pejorative. There’s
inking, where you’re inking yourself, and there’s inking-in, where you’re
really just tracing over the line, and they saw that as being less artistic,
which it can be and it can’t be. It just depends on who’s doing it. Gene Colan
inked by Tom Palmer was like a match made in heaven. Gene Colan never looked as
good, and Tom Palmer never looked as good, because Palmer knew exactly how to
read Gene Colan’s spontaneous pencils and bring them to life without going,
“well I know roughly what that looks like, but Gene, couldn’t you be a little
more detailed?” It’s like, no, he didn’t have to be, because Tom Palmer brought
so much of himself to it and knew how to do, if I’d gotten further along in
“Strange Death of Alex Raymond”, I was gonna call Gene Colan the “Fish-eye
Photorealist” because he could literally pencil stuff that looked like you were
looking at it through a fish-eye lens, and Tom Palmer is one of the few guys in
the field, who knew how to look at that, and how to say, “okay, I know exactly
how that needs to be inked, this much pen, this much brush, to bring out the
full effect on it.” To the point where Gene, by the time they were done with
“Tomb of Dracula”, was feeling very overwhelmed by Tom Palmer, the Gene
Colan/Tom Palmer combination rated far more highly with the people in the comic
book field than Gene Colan with anybody else. So Gene sort of rebelled against
that by switching to pretty much exclusively pencils. “I don’t want my pencils
inked. I just want to reproduce them from the pencils because I’m getting tired
of being Tom Palmer’s set-up man. I come in and do all of this work on the
pencils and it’s Tom Palmer that everybody is raving about.” It’s like, mm,
very tough situation, but I would much rather look at Gene Colan & Tom
Palmer, than any of the other inkers that Gene Colan had. Okay, thank you
Michael R, again, just wouldn’t be a Please Hold without Easton, Pennsylvania
making an appearance.
Uh, “So for Dave: On eBay, seller "cerebusoverload" recently
listed multiple versions of the proofs for Cerebus #1. “ that’s the “Cerebus”
#1 Remastered Edition that we did a little while ago on Kickstarter. Just
getting ready to do, as I say, the “Cerebus” #2 Kickstarter. “The first version
had, according to the item description, only 8 copies printed ~~ so there's now
a new holder for the Most Rare Cerebus #1 In Existence title. Cerebusoverload
had two copies of the 8 of this first proof for sale; I asked the seller where
the other six copies were. The seller replied that you had one copy,”, talking
about me, “a fan / collector of long standing (I won't give the name here to
protect their privacy) had one copy - but the seller did not know where the
other four copies were. Do you know where they've gotten to?” is the first
question. Uh, no, I don’t. That’s a Waverly Press thing, and I think you’re on
the right track, Steve, of anytime you see something like that, definitely
inquire. Cerebus Overload is a subset of Waverly Press. There’s a lot of stuff
that Dagon does just because, “hey this would be cool. I’d like one of these,
or I think I’d like one of these and I think Dave would like one of these.” It
would be really nice just to have these in the Archive. Others, it’s just,
“might as well keep the press running, you can never have too many of these.” I
think I’ve got probably a five year supply of the Regency Elf postcard that I
did the painting that’s part of the “High Society Regency Edition”. It’s really
nice to have all of the postcards, but it’s one of those, “uhh, Dagon, it’s
okay. You’re doing more postcards all the time. I don’t send out that many
postcards!” But it is nice to have them. I mean, if you want to brighten up a
Cerebus’ fan’s day, just through 9 Regency Elf postcards into their package of
whatever it is that I’m sending them.
Matt: I have a “Cerebus”
#1 proof, but I don’t know if it’s one of the eight, I think it might be, I
thought it was the next round, I think it was numbered “1 of 20”. I think.
Dave: Okay.
Matt: I’d literally have
to go and find it and dig it out and look and double check what it says, so I
may have one, but I don’t think so.
Dave: If you could do me
a favor and all of us a favor, I think, when you can get to that and actually
do that, it would be worth scanning or taking a photo of it, and putting it on
A Moment of Cerebus and directing the question to Dagon, “Is this one of those?”
Matt: Okay.
Dave: Because, we’re
really getting into an esoteric era of the rarest Cerebus item, which, is a
very logical stage to get to. The size of the audience is getting progressively
smaller and smaller and smaller, but at the same time, I think we’re all pretty
confident that Cerebus isn’t going away, it’s just being marginalized and
deplatformed and shunned and all the rest of the stuff that high school girl
cliques do. But it does mean, for a period of time, however long it is, we have
no idea how long it is, we’re going to be going in the other direction where if
you’re one of the people that is just still sticking around, we’re gonna have
some really really really rare Cerebus stuff for you to buy. It’s going to be
expensive, relative to what I’ve done with Cerebus up to now, which is I want
the best trade paperbacks that I can do, but I want them to be the least
expensive trade paperbacks that I can do, and I don’t really want to flood the
market with more stuff for people to buy. Well, we’re not really flooding the
market with things like the “Spawn” 10 Halloween Edition, the numbered edition
of that. There’s only 54 of them [laughs] and there’s only ever going to be 54
of those, so that does become, not necessarily a problem, but something that
you have to focus on, and I would definitely say, the people who are in the
category of wanting to have as many of these ultra rare Cerebus things as they
can afford, Waverly Press being the place that they’re going to get most of
those. I would definitely want to have as much documentation as possible. Like,
how many of these proof copies are there, and what is the criteria? Are you
going to do more proof copies? I had a chat with Alfonso, because he’s printing
prototypes at Studiocomix Press for me to proofread. It’s a lot easier to
proofread a comic book when it looks like the comic book is going to look. Good
example, right now I’m just proofreading “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” volume 1,
and one of the things we’re trying to figure out is the exact size of “Swords
of Cerebus” volumes that will be coming out monthly, starting very shortly, and
it’s like, got two difference sizes of it printed, and one of them is a little
bit larger than the other. Both of them fit in a golden age comic bag. One of
them, not quite snugly enough, one of them a little too snugly. So, we’re
having to find a Goldilocks spot on that one and, as I say, those are proof
copies, so I’ve gotten Alfonso to do a Studiocomix Press sticker, an
unremovable sticker that says “printer’s proof”, and any proof copy that he
sends over here for me to proof, stick one of those on the back of it, sign it
“Alfonso Espinos” and write the date in the blank at the bottom. It’s got a
space for the date on it. And the idea is, okay, when I say a proof copy of
“Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” I think there’s three of them now. There was the
first one that was comic book sized, and the book was disappearing into the
spine, it was very difficult to read, so it was, “okay, what are going to do
about this?” Well, we’re going to print on larger paper. How much larger paper?
Well, large enough that it has to fit comfortably in a comic bag. Always driven
me crazy that “Swords of Cerebus” you can’t find a comic book bag to put that
in. It’s swimming in a magazine bag, it’s swimming in a golden age bag, it’s
too large for a silver age bag. [laughs] I really wish the bags had been a
bigger issue when I started doing it so that I would’ve adjusted the size on
the original “Swords of Cerebus”. But as I say, I know specifically how many printer’s
proofs there are of “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” There’s three of them right
now, and there’s one prototype each for Volume 2 and Volume 3. And I had coffee
with Alfonso and said, how many of these do you print for yourself? Well it’s
like, “I don’t print any for myself.” I said, well, okay, that’s good. If you
do end up, you know, you have to reprint the volume or whatever because
something went wrong with the printing process, please put a sticker on the
back of it, so we know, okay, this is a printer’s proof, this isn’t a pirated
copy or a counterfeited copy. So, not really coming from the comic book field
[laughs] I think Dagon can be a little philosophical about this, like, “ah
well, what the heck? Ya know, we can always sell them on eBay.” Well, we can
always sell them on eBay, but if you say there is only 20 of them, there’d
better only be 20 of them, there’d better not have 10 more of this kind show
up, and 8 more of that kind show up. So, that’s as far as I’m going on that
one. I don’t wanna get myself into trouble here.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: Uh, yeah,
actually, Steve then, “Hey again Matt - So, a correction on my question: the
Publisher also has one copy of the Proof #1, which leaves three 'out in the
wild" ~~ and does Dave know who has them?” Uhh, no. No, again, that’s
Waverly Press and definitely the Cerebus Overload has become a definite, I
wouldn’t say a cash cow for Aardvark-Vanaheim but it was a pretty solid revenue
stream of… it brings in probably about as much as the CerebusDownloads does,
which is with the digital copies. Which leads into, “I'm also curious, with the
eBay / cerebusoverload sales, how much of those sales make it back to Dave?”
And, after expenses Waverly Press and Aardvark-Vanaheim split it 50/50. How
much gets back to Dave [laughs] is another question. Dave gets paid when
there’s money in the bank [laughs] that can be used to pay Dave basically just
to keep current with his personal Visa card, make sure that he’s buying
groceries. Up at Aardvark-Vanaheim, yes. I think sales for this month were
somewhere around $1800 US or something like that? Or Aardvark-Vanaheim’s share
was, so yeah, if you’re looking for a way to help support this whole thing,
buying stuff at CerebusOverload is definitely between the time that you spend
your hard earned dollars buying something over and when Aardvark-Vanaheim gets
it cut, is usually just a matter of a couple of weeks, three weeks, which is
very very good in this day and age. Very very good for Aardvark-Vanaheim. But,
yeah, if you’re buying something because it’s rare, and particularly if you’re
buying because you’re hoping it will appreciate in value, definitely ask those
hard questions.
Matt: Well, Dagon sent
me photos. The “High Society Notebook” that’s part of the “Regency Edition”.
Dave: Right.
Matt: He got them back
from the printer and there’s two different covers. A white cover and a black
cover, and he got 250 of each printed, but some got damaged in printing and the
damaged ones just sent in the recycling bin, because they were that damaged apparently,
so now it’s, there’s 65 black, and 200 white. [laughs\
Dave: Okay. [laughs]
Okay.
Matt: Somebody asked
about it, because Margaret shared photos, cause she got copies of the photos
too, she shared them on Facebook, and somebody asked how many there were, and I
responded, cause I knew, and they were like, “oh great, another variant.” It’s
like, some people are not gonna be happy, other people are going to be going,
“gimme that, I want it.”
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And at a certain
point, you know, it’s not your decision making, it’s not my decision making, we
throw our hands up of we don’t know what to do. Nobody’s going to be happy
100%, we’re trying to make the 35% of people that can be happy happy, and
everybody else will have to be sort of happy.
Dave: Yes. Or sort of
unhappy. Or really unhappy. But, as I pointed out to Steven, the obsessive
Spawn collector, if you really want to get into unhappy and unfair, and “I have
to be able to get everything that Spawn is on” there is nothing preventing me
from doing my own “Spawn” cover of some kind and doing one of those.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: And auctioning
that on eBay. So, let’s all get a grip here, that I’m confident that I’m not
manipulating the market or trying to create absolute rarities. I am trying to
strike a happy balance, and Dagon’s trying to strike a happy balance. I mean,
he gets a lot of stuff in where, okay, he’s approved the proof, and now he
wants a bunch of copies, and he gets a bunch of copies in, and they’re wrong.
Well, okay, now he’s in the hot seat of these, do you recycle those? Do you
throw them away? I mean, it’s very tough for me, getting in, we have, as far as
we know, 8 of the “Spawn” 10 Halloween Edition were damaged in transit, and I
did tell them, send them back and we’ll replace them. But having created
another #33 and sending it to the guy who got the damaged 33, I now have to
take a pair of scissors and cut a really really rare “Spawn” 10 Halloween
Edition in half with scissors and throw it in the recycle bin. And it’s like,
ehhhh! [laughs] I really don’t want to do this! There are so many people that I
could just light up their world by sending it to them and saying, “don’t tell
anybody that you got this”, but you can’t really do that. You gotta play fair
with everybody.
Matt: Right.
Dave: And now you’re one
of the insiders, too. Like you say, you’re getting stuff that, okay, this is
sort of rare but the one that I’ve got is super rare. And for the people that
that means something to, that really means something to.
Matt: It’s like the
“Hermann”s that I sent you that I signed and then I had my brother sign,
because his name’s in them. If I start selling my copies of “Hermann” are
people gonna want him to sign and do I want to find the time to get him to come
to my house to sign them? And does he want to sign them?
Dave: Right.
Matt: And how many times
can I put a gun to his head saying, “sign the damn comic” before he just stops
coming to my house?
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: Ironically, this
past weekend, Paula bought, it’s called a Cricket, it’s a maker thing where you
can make t-shirt designs, and they have transfers you can iron on onto shirts.
So she made me a black shirt with white writing that says “Manly” and made one
for my brother that says “Bashful”, so now I gotta get him to come over so I
can give him the shirt and get a picture of the two of us, so I fax it or email
it up to you so that you can see it… cause now we’re 1966 Batman villains.
Dave: Right. [laughs]
Yeah, yeah. And then you get into the thing of, okay, how many “Hermann”s do
you got, and how many did you sign, and if you get your brother to sign all of
them, except one, the one that your brother didn’t sign is the rarest one.
Matt: Right.
Dave: And it’s like,
okay, now we’re getting a little crazy. But, I think that pretty much every
month when I’m signing all of the Cerebus Archive copies of whatever the latest
“Cerebus in Hell?” is that just came in and it’s “this could be the only #5
that’s not signed by Dave Sim. All of the other #5s are signed by Dave Sim” and
future generations going, “well, why is that?” and just, well [laughs] because
Dave Sim decided not to sign the #5. But, you don’t wanna go too far over into
that, cause then you are getting into crazy territory. “The Great Hero of
Cerebus fandom (well I like him…) Sean Robinson asks: Hello Dave! Having spent
the past five years with voracious young readers in my house,” that would be
the two little Robinson boys, “I've spent a lot of time reading (and rereading)
(and re-reading) various classic children's books, and simultaneously examining
their art in minute detail. Which has occasionally led me to seeing visual
storytelling parallels with your comic work! So I guess my question could be
one of two questions. Either the broad version-- ‘What children's books did you
read that you recall today, and did any have any influence on you, as far as
you know?’" So, we’ll deal with that one first, and just writing down off
the top of my head, children’s books that I remember reading. I remember
reading “Curious George”. I remember reading the Bobbsey Twins, “Bobbsey Twins
at the Beach” and I think there was a whole series of Bobbsey Twins books. The
only part of that that I remember was, whoever the boy was of the Bobbsey
Twins, they had this part in the book where he was playing with his boot, and
then playing with his boot again. And I was going, “what’s so interesting about
a boot? I’m not really getting this.” And that was the first time that I knew
what a boat was. It’s B-O-A-T, not B-O-O-T, and that’s all I remember of the
Bobbsey Twins. The Hardy Boys, I read the Hardy Boys. I remember burning with
the temptation of the damned for the “Hard Boys Detective Handbook” and never
getting it, which was like, here’s how to become a detective yourself. Dr Seuss
being in the news [laughs] not in a very happy way lately, I do remember
“Yertle the Turtle” because I had two pet turtles and I named them Yertle and
Mertle. “Horton Hears a Who” was one of those, I do remember that as a book,
but I think I remember it as an animated cartoon. I don’t know who did the
animated cartoon years and years and years ago. My impression was that it was a
Warner Brothers cartoon, cause I remember my Mother quoting it, “I said what I
meant, and I meant what I…” err, how did that go? “I said what I meant and I
meant what I said”? No, no, no, “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant,
an elephant’s faithful 100%.” And doing it in the cartoon voice. So I don’t know
if that’s a planted memory in my head. “Horton Hears a Who” is one of those
ones like if the Dr Seuss corporation is looking for more books to throw under
the bus to try and appease the social justice warrior fascists, “a person’s a
person no matter how small”. Well, that’s obviously a reference to fetuses, and
we don’t want a person to be a person no matter how small. They have to be at
least 9 months babies before we consider them a person. So, “Horton Hears a
Who” has to be eradicated. “Mary Poppins” I read when I was a kid. I remember
being at friends of my parents, out of town somewhere, staying overnight, and I
had the book “Mary Poppins” having seen the movie, so it would’ve been when I
was 9 years old? And pretty much shutting myself up in my parents’ car because
I wasn’t really interested in visiting with the family, but I was very very
interested in “Mary Poppins” and obsessively reading the whole book from cover
to cover. Sean goes on, “"Did you ever read and do you recall -- the Babar
books” I don’t know how pronouncing that. Babar? Baybar?
Matt: Babar.
Dave: Specifically..
what’s that?
Matt: Babar.
Dave: Babar?
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: I’ll take your
word for it, “specifically the first one”. No, I remember seeing those in the
bookmobile that my mother would take me to in Forest Hill Village a couple of
streets over, and they had the kid’s section. And I never read those because
they were handwritten. It wasn’t type, and it wasn’t hand lettering, capitals
and lower case. It was writing, and writing was just beyond me. [laughs]
Whatever is this doing in the children’s section? This is for grown ups. This
is for university students. Children can’t read handwriting.” But I always
looked at them and thought, boy if it was only in a language I understood, I
could read these. “Go Dog Go” doesn’t sound familiar, “written and drawn by the
great PD Eastman. Eloise (drawn by Hilary Knight).” No. I remember the first
time that I was exposed to Eloise was either in “Vanity Fair” or “The New
Yorker” or possibly both, when I was subscribing those pre-9/11 when [laughs]
both of those magazines sort of went way over into Never Neverland as far as I
was concerned. But I do remember reading about Eloise and looking at the
graphics on Eloise and going, “a little person and a little person’s
perspective on a luxury hotel? This sounds very familiar. It’s not the Regency
but it’s definitely the plaza.” “Madeline”? No, Madeline doesn’t ring a bell.
“Calico the Wonder Horse” doesn’t ring a bell. “(If anyone is curious,” Sean
writes, “I'll compile the visual resonances sometime)”. Well, I’m curious, so if you get a chance to
do that… [laughs]
Matt: I’m curious! If
Sean can get the resonance… get all the visuals together and do a blog post,
then I don’t have to do one for a day, that’d be great for Matt!
Dave: There ya go.
Alright, we got two votes already just from the initial quorum here, and the
same thing with all of the books that I just listed. If anybody wants to reread
“Curious George”, “The Bobbsey Twins”, “Hardy Boys”, “Yertle the Turtle”,
“Horton Hears a Who”, and “Mary Poppins” to see, okay, what was it that
destroyed Dave Sim mentally and psychologically in these books and what did he
mangle that into in “Cerebus”? I think we’d all be up for that.
Matt: I looked it up on
the internet while you were talking. “Horton Hears a Who” the animated movie
came out in 1970, it was produced and directed by Chuck Jones, who also did
“How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.
Dave: No, that wouldn’t
have been it, because I would’ve been 14 by then. There’s no other “Horton
Hears a Who”?
Matt: Well, I guess…
lemme double check. Ehh… yeah, well, lets see what Wikipedia says. Ahh… huh.
Yeah, this particular version says 1970, but the problem is the classic Boris
Karloff “Grinch” cartoon, I don’t know if it’s the original or not, but there’s
also a version where Walter Matthau was the Grinch.
Dave: Oh really?
Matt: So it’s possible
there may have been multiple versions of Horton as well, where somebody got the
rights, did it, it flopped, and then Chuck Jones came in, and it’s Chuck Jones.
Chuck Jones, you know, he never fails.
Dave: Right, right.
Yeah, there is that kind of deep sixing quality that corporations do of, “okay,
this was never done, this doesn’t exist, we don’t talk about this one anymore.”
And it’s like, uhh, you really can’t do that if you’re profiting off of children
and profiting off of children’s memories. Suddenly going all Beijing on it
[laughs] because it’s a problem for you as a corporation or you don’t want your
corporate waters muddied, that’s one of those, if Eddie Khanna is listening…
Eddie, when you inherit Cerebus, don’t ever do stuff like that. [laughs] Please
don’t ever even consider, “well, if we throw ‘Reads’ under the bus, maybe
they’ll still let us sell the other 15.” You can’t appease those people and you
know you can’t appease those people, and you’re just asking for trouble trying.
Which, I don’t know, there’s a few corporations doing that right now. I had a
little discussion with Sean by fax about that, of Mattel making a fluid
gendered Potato Head. No longer with a “Mr” in front of it, and they’re doing
the same thing with, I forget how many colours of skin Barbie has now [laughs],
but this unimaginable like 95 different skin colours and…
Matt: Well, the thing
with Barbie is, a few years back they did Tall Barbie, Short Barbie, Curvy
Barbie…
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I understand
the concept of why they would want to do it, but at the same time, ya know… we
bought a Curvy Barbie. Because I saw one in the store and went, “I’ll buy this
for Janis because, ya know, Curvy Barbie will give her a realistic idea of what
women really look like.” Great! Get her home, no Barbie clothes fit Barbie
because Barbie’s clothes are designed for Barbie…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And even Barbie’s
clothes that fit Barbie don’t fit Barbie every couple of years cause they
redesign Barbie slightly so she’s a little bit thinner or a little bit wider or
a little bit taller. And Paula has all of her Barbie stuff, and it’s like, “oh
you can play with this. Here’s the doll.” None of the clothes fit.
Dave: There you go.
[laughs]
Matt: And it wasn’t even
the Curvy Barbie, it was a regular Barbie, but they redesigned her between 1990
and 2011, and then there’s clothes that Paula’s grandma knitted for her and
those don’t fit any Barbies!
Dave: Right, right.
Which is kind of authentic if you think about it, because women go through that
as a standard part of being a woman. Only this many parts of your wardrobe are gonna fit the way you want them to fit, and
it would be really nice if you could fit into the skinny jeans just because
they’re your skinny jeans but, it’s nice to know that Barbie’s in that same
situation. You don’t have to be all the way up to Curvy Barbie before you
already have the Oprah Winfrey problem.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: I’m gonna have to
take a break here for a prayer time.
Matt: Okay
Dave: And then I’ll come
back and we’ll finish up with Sean’s third question, “Do you recall where the
device of having graphics inside of word or thought balloons came from? I.e.
the device you use on "Night on the Town" most prominently, as well as
some other places. Any memories of this device and possible origins of it?” I
got it from Sergio Aragones, I’m pretty sure, because I think he either had
things like “Groo the Wanderer” where Mark Evanier was the guy writing the
dialogue from Sergio’s direction, or he had the marginal thinking in “Mad
Magazine” which was all silent and then he would have stuff in between where,
okay, this isn’t going to have to have text, but it’s somebody explaining
something so they’ll just explain it with the picture in the word balloon. So,
I think it would be a question for Sergio, as to “where did you get or did you
come up with it yourself?”
Matt: I would assume the
answer, I mean if we could ask Sergio the answer would probably have something
do with the language barrier of going from non-English to English, it’s just
easier to draw a quick picture explaining what’s happening. That way you don’t
have to worry about relettering it when you go from Spain to “Mad Magazine”.
Dave: Right, right.
Okay, I’m gonna take a prayer break, and I will call you back probably in about
20 minutes.
Matt: Okay! That works
for me!
Dave: Talk to you then.
Buh-bye.
Matt: Yep. Bye.
[time passes, presumably]
Matt: Okay, we are
recording again.
Dave: It’s “Please Hold
time! I'll be hitting the transcription of it this weekend after you post the
podcast version, of course.” This has gotta be Jesse Lee Herndon.
Matt: Yes.
Dave: “I recently began
collecting the Spirit Archives published by DC, at your suggestion of starting
Eisner reading with the Spirit. I've gotten a good deal on them, despite being
hardcovers at least a decade out of print, and I look forward to reading them
when I get enough in to do so. So thanks!” Oh, you’re quite welcome. “Have you
ever heard of Fletcher Hanks? He was a Golden Age artist who created characters
such as Stardust and Fantomah. He did some work for Eisner & Iger. His
works have resurfaced as memes for really bad, or at the least especially
absurd, comics. Fantagraphics did a collection or two in the past decade, which
included an excellent epilogue about Fletcher's son which has a very comic art
metaphysics ending to it. I'd love to send it to you, as some of the most
interesting conversations on here, to me, are through the lense of "Dave
Sim, comic fan" as much as "Dave Sim, comic creator". It might
spark a good Weekly Update video or even a New Mutants level response.”
[laughs] I don’t think we’re gonna be having too many more “New Mutants” level
responses, folks. So, didn’t know that that was going to happen, and not
happily looking for the next one of those.
Matt: I jokingly was
going to suggest when you were done, “Hey, what did you think they were doing
in those issues of ‘Marvel Two-in-One’ I sent, other than, ya know, a team-up
of the Thing?” [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Really,
really?
Matt: But it was going
to be a joke, I wasn’t expecting a real answer! [laughs]
Dave: Well, that would
be the problem is, if you say something like that to me and I start reading
them, I never know what I’m going to find. It’s not like I go looking for
stuff, it’s the stuff jumps out at me and it’s like, “whoa, wait a minute.”
Jeff asking the question was already, that’s a very weird question to ask Dave
Sim, and there was a definite sense on my part of, yes, I definitely have to do
this. I mean, [laughs] I’m not gonna go out and buy the “New Mutants” movie and
I’m not going out and buying the trade paperback, but if you send them to me,
I’ll make an exception in this case, and it’s never just what they think.
Matt: I forget where it
was, but somebody said that apparently on the movie, there’s a commentary track
with Bill Sienkavitch talking about the story.
Dave: Bill Sienkiewicz.
Matt: Err, Sienkiewicz,
sorry.
Dave: Sin-Kevitch.
That’s why I named the character Kevitch.
Matt: Sorry, I apologize
to Bill.
Dave: No problem.
[laughs]
Matt: But yeah, I heard
that and I’m going, well now there’s a part of me that wants to look to see if
it’s real and if it is, then, well maybe I would buy a copy of the movie.
[laughs]
Dave: Definitely the
Blu-ray that Jeff sent me theoretically has Bill Sienkiewicz on there talking
about the “New Mutants” with the director, it’s Josh… Josh Boone I think that’s
his name. The director and screenwriter talking to Bill Sienkiewicz about the
New Mutants, so I assume it would be pretty interesting. I mean, that’s one of
the things that I’m just getting to right now is, anybody notice that Chris
Claremont doesn’t do these things? It’s like, I don’t think the separation from
Marvel was a happy one for Chris and I assume most of that was Jim Shooter
related.
Matt: I don’t know if
Chris is separated from Marvel.
Dave: Really?
Matt: Last I knew, he
was still getting a monthly salary from them basically, it was the knock-off
version of the Stan Lee deal of “you’ve created so many characters for us, we
have to keep you on salary otherwise you’re gonna start trying to get the
rights back to everything you created.”
Dave: Right, right. I
understand that, but that’s a very different thing from actually participating
in these kinds of things. Like, we’re all guessing, because these are all
secret contracts that all of these guys have, ya know, complete confidentiality
and that’s one of the things you’re signing, “you will not talk about A, B, C,
and D or you’re in danger of losing whatever it is.” But it does seem odd that
Chris Claremont doesn’t say anything about the “New Mutants” in the “Demon Bear
Saga” collection, and isn’t interviewed on the Blu-Ray and in both cases, it’s
what Bill Sienkiewicz has to say. [laughs] And Bill basically says, “the people
loved what I was doing really loved and the people who hated what I was doing
really really hated it” and it doesn’t seem like there’s too much more to add
to that. I’m preempting my own writing on that, so I’ll leave that alone.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Yeah, I’d be
interested in looking at the Fletcher Hanks thing. I wouldn’t want to get into
the habit of encouraging people to send me stuff to read that I would comment
on because I really do need to save most of my time on that for A) things that
actually make money, like I’m hoping the Cerebus “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”
#8 remastering will do by virtue of recreating the cover and doing multiple
covers. That’s the category that I’m in. I’m not really in the landed gentry
sort of, really just sitting around in the chateau anyway, [snooty voice]
anybody wants to send me a book collection of something and I’ll read it and
tell you what I have to say about it. [regular voice] It’s like, uhh, no, I’m
still trying to keep my head above water and pay for groceries and hopefully
keep the house from falling the pieces. But, had you heard of Fletcher Hanks?
Do you know who he’s talking about?
Matt: I haven’t heard of
Fletcher Hanks as Fletcher Hanks, I have heard of Stardust and Fantomah because
they’re both in a book I have called “The Legion of Obscure Heroes” and it’s…
Dave: Okay, alright.
Matt: It’s a collection
of really weird, really obscure superheroes from the Golden, Silver, and Modern
Age, and it’s like… Skateman’s in there, by Neal Adams.
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: And NFL SuperPro
from Marvel, and guys like that, and in the Golden Age stuff they cover, “this
is Stardust, this is what his deal is”, and it kinda has a lot of tongue in
cheek to it of, “this is why the idea failed miserably” and in Stardust’s case
it was that he was just too powerful. Like, at a certain point he can fly
through space unaided, and “Superman II” type stuff of turning the Earth
backwards.
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: And Fantomah was a
woman superhero, one of the first female superheroes, who in her super
identity, her face would melt off and she was like a green skull.
Dave: Ah, that’s got to
be tough to get dates.
Matt: It’s one of those,
they’re describing the stories and they’re like, and they’re just weird
stories.
Dave: Yeah. Oh yeah,
once you start digging deep in that end of the comic book field, there’s a lot
of that, “what were these people thinking? What were they even hoping for?”
Okay, back to Jesse, “Speaking of comic fans, I did in fact finish my video
reviews of all 300 issues of Cerebus”. [applauds]
Matt: [applauds]
Dave: Sitting ovation
for Jesse Lee Herndon. “plus all miscellaneous stories and major guest
appearances, as I said I would do.” Because an elephant’s faithful 100%.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: “I've asked my
viewers for their suggestions on what series to cover next and have gotten a
lot of great ones such as Gaiman's Sandman, Strangers in Paradise, lots of Alan
Moore stuff... but I'd love to know, do you have any suggestions on what I
could cover? Any particular characters or creator runs that you think might be
worth my time to review?”
Matt: Matt’s gonna
interject, “Judenhass”, “Glamourpuss”, “Following Cerebus”, “Cerebus Archive”
the comic series, and “Cerebus in Hell?” [laughs]
Dave: Uhh, yeah, that
would take him a while to do, that’s for sure.
Matt: Well, he’s gotta
finds them first!
Dave: That’s true!
That’s true. That’s gotta be really tough on the social justice warriors, that
all of my stuff that they could get really really upset about [laughs] you
can’t really find. There’s like the one “Cerebus vs LGTBQ etc” going for like
$150 or something? You gotta be a seriously steamed social justice warrior to
be willing to pay that kind of money. But just be patient, it’ll be coming up
in “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” and you can’t get really irritated about it for
only $19.95 US.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: I jotted down,
just from my personal standpoint, if I had time to sit down and do what Jesse
is doing, like, okay, what do I want to do. What do I want to talk about? I
would really like to reread the Deadman from “Strange Adventures” that started
in 205. Neal Adams started drawing in 206, 205’s drawn by Carmine Infantino. I
think Arnold Drake wrote it throughout, although I think Neal had a lot of
input on Deadman. That was 205 to, I think, 216 or 217, was the last issue of
the “Strange Adventures” run. And then “Brave and Bold” #86, Deadman and Batman
team-up theoretically, was the actual ending on the story, that 217 wasn’t the
actual ending on the story. I remember it being really good, I was only 13, 14
years old when it came to an end, but anytime there’s a Deadman page, which
there’s been a few lately through Heritage Auctions, seeing them in black &
white, and remembering that part of the story. Okay, ya know, let’s touch a
page from issue 209 or whatever it is, I know that part of the story. Is that
as good as I remembered it? Cause I remembered it being really good, and
particularly… at this end of my life, and having become a monotheist, Deadman
comes back from the dead and is able to take possession of people’s bodies,
which was always, always interesting in terms of actual possession. Possessing
someone else with your spirit is, wow that’s cutting pretty close to the
monotheistic bone in terms of theme. I remember it being pretty interesting.
There was a surface story to it that was just the David Jansen “run for your
life” chased by the one-armed man. There’s a one-armed man in Deadman. But,
yeah, if I was going to invest the time to read on my own a 300 to 400 page
collected story, Deadman would be at the top of my list. “Flaming Carrot” I
think would interesting, because, again, there’s a lot of them relative to most
comic book intellectual properties, and Bob tells me that Dark Horse did a
“Flaming Carrot Omnibus”, all of the Flaming Carrot in a giant hardcover or a
giant softcover. And the number people of who have tried to do a working class
superhero living in a working class city and having working class interests,
they’ve tried to do but I think Bob got the closest of anybody. If nothing
else, his females are very authentically female.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Obviously, I was
trying to do that. A lot of us were trying to do that. Bob I think did that
effortlessly, so it’s one of those, Flaming Carrot living in Palookaville,
where Flaming Carrot before Seth called “Palookaville” Palookaville, and it was
a genuine Palookaville, I would be interested in rereading that just in terms
of, Bob went a lot of different places with the stuff. It was, I think, the
closest to dada that we had in the comic book field. Again, there was a lot of
people saying, “let’s do a dadaist comic book” and it’s like, well you can try
to do it, but unless it’s second nature for you, and it was second nature for
Bob, you’re not going to come anywhere close to it. So that would be one that I
would like to reread with a notebook in my lap, writing down, “here’s where Bob
does that better than anybody else possibly can”. Obviously he’s in the same
boat that everybody’s in now, where it’s like, well, we’re all playing fast and
loose. It’s like, you want to be interesting, you want to be innovative, and
you want to capture people’s attention. But, that’s a good way to be destroyed
by the social justice warriors in our day and age. It’s like, I get the
impression that these people don’t read anything or watch anything for
entertainment, they just read and watch things looking for stuff to destroy and
people to destroy.
Matt: One of the things
about the “Flaming Carrot” that I’ve always liked, because I have issues here
and there. It’s weird, cause I’d find an issue and I’d pick it up, and I’d be
like, ah okay, and then I’d come home to put it in my collection, it’s like, I suddenly
have a run from like 28 to 37.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And one of the
things I liked was he did a “Flaming Carrot” series through an imprint of Image
and it was like issue #1, and in the small print, it’s like, “it’s actually
issue #36.” [laughs]
Dave: Right. [laughs]
Right.
Matt: Which, I think he
was doing that before Marvel got on board with, “we’re gonna relaunch
everything with a new #1 every six months.”
Dave: Yep, yeah.
Matt: Image wants a
number one, Bob doesn’t want to do that, so the compromise is, “ehh, it’s
actually issue 36.”
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: And rereading
those issues, I mean, yeah, the last one I think I have is the Fumetti issue
where they were at a comic book convention and somebody dressed as the Carrot
and they took photos and digitally altered them and made a comic book. I’m
like, that’s a brilliant idea!
Dave: Well, and
brilliantly executed. I ran across that one when I was doing “Flaming Carrot”,
which is coming out next month. And, okay, dig out all of my Bob Burden
“Flaming Carrot”s, I’m not gonna do Flaming Carrot, but I at least want to have
the character in mind while I’m doing “Flaming Cerebus”, and I had completely
forgotten that one. Found out, and read it, and had the same reaction you did.
It’s like, this is a brilliant idea and it’s brilliantly executed. It’s like it
would be very very easy to do that wrong, to do that in such a way that, okay,
you’re really just doing this to do a “Flaming Carrot” issue on the cheap, on
the fly. And it’s like, well, you know, to whatever extent that was true, and I
don’t think Bob ever did that, it took him forever to get an issue out of
anything, it was, why aren’t people doing stuff like this these days? Why
aren’t people taking these kinds of chances and doing these weird absurdist
things? And it’s like, weird, and absurdist, and funny are… if they’re not illegal,
they’re very very close to illegal at this point. And it’s like, uhh, you
really don’t want to do that as a society, but go ahead, see how far you can
get with that. When you get to the point where the Dr Seuss corporation is throwing “To Think I Saw
It On Mulberry Street” under the bus, it’s like, mm, you’re going to get to the
point where you’re forcing people to do preemptive stuff that’s beyond anything
Beijing could imagine. Like, the Coca-Cola corporation [laughs], with their
training of persuading their employees to be less white. And it’s like, less
white? Are you kidding? You know, if we were back in the 1970s or the 1980s, if
I was a Coca-Cola employee, I’d put my baseball cap on backwards and my jeans
hanging halfway down my ass and come in with a boombox. What do you mean, less
white? Who in the hell are you to tell people that they have to be less
anything, let alone a skin colour? Okay, I’m raving here.
Matt: To kind of
continue that for a second, they just put “The Muppet Show” on Disney+, and
it’s all five seasons of the original “Muppet Show”, and I’m super excited
cause there’s an episode where Mark Hamill is the guest star, but he shows up
as Mark Hamill and Luke Skywalker, and I’ve wanted to rewatch that thing for 25
years.
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: So I’m like, super
excited, so as soon as it showed up on Disney+, I’m like, we’re watching “The
Muppet Show” and everybody was going, “well, okay, fine. Like, why are you
going to season 4?” I’m like, because that’s where Mark Hamill is, and we’re
watching Mark Hamill first.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: So we went back to
the first season, and…
Dave: Wait a minute, I
have to interrupt, you knew what season it was?
Matt: Well, no, I
started scrolling through, looking for guest star Mark Hamill.
Dave: Okay, alright.
It’s in here somewhere, it’s in here somewhere.
Matt: Yeah. Back when
Netflix was physical media, where they would send you a disc, they had lists. I
searched for “The Muppet Show”, and I found the listing for what years stuff
happened, and I knew it was 1978 or 79, I think. Because it was after the first
movie but before the second, and Netflix had said, “oh there’s going to be a
special collection of ‘The Muppet Show’ Mark Hamill, would you like to reserve
it” and I’m like, yes! And four years later, when they got rid of physical
media, I’m like, “so what happened to this disc you guys were going to maybe
send me?”
Dave: No answer, no
answer.
Matt: Cause they
announced it, but it never happened.
Dave: Right.
Matt: So, we watched
that episode, and I’m like, okay, we’ll go back to the beginning and start
watching it, and watched the first episode, I forget who the guest star was,
but okay, ya know, it’s “The Muppet Show”, and the next episode is Peter
Sellers is the guest star, and before the show starts there’s a disclaimer from
Disney saying, “there’s views and opinions expressed in this program” I can’t
remember exact…
Dave: Ohh, no.
Matt: I don’t remember
the whole wording, but it was basically, “they were wrong then, they’re wrong
now, but we’re presenting them unedited for people to see” type thing. And
okay, so I’m watching the Peter Sellers episode and he shows up at the
beginning and he’s Inspector Clouseau, and I’m like, there’s nothing wrong with
that. And then they cut to him doing a song and dance, and he’s a gypsy violin
player, and I’m like, bingo! That’s what they’re flagging.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: And the next
episode is Jim Nebors, and it’s got the disclaimer, and I’m like, Jim Nebors?
He was Gomer Pyle! What could possibly be offensive about Gomer Pyle? And one
of the parts of the episode, there’s a Muppet couple and she’s doing the call
of the Indian something and Muppet Indian shows up, and I’m like, found it!
Dave: There it is.
Matt: It’s this new game
of, what cringeworthy, horrible late 1970s joke does the Walt Disney
corporation think that we don’t need to see anymore. And the worst part of it
is I’m going, you’re Disney, you own “Song of the South”, which everyone agrees
is the worst most racist thing in the universe, and yet you’re complaining
about an Indian Muppet.
Dave: Right, right. And
it’s the Jim Nabors episode, it’s like, doesn’t Jim Nabors get brownie points
for being gay?
Matt: I’m watching the
episode, going, what could possibly be wrong here? He sings a song called “Gone
with the Wind”.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And he’s singing
the song, he’s on a farm, and he was trained opera singer, apparently. I didn’t
know that.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: And as he’s
singing, they turn on a wind machine and blow the set away. [laughs]
Dave: Good sight gag.
Matt: I’m going, what’s
offensive about this? That’s funny. And then the episode continues, the Indian
Muppet shows up, and I’m like, oh yeah, there it is.
Dave: There it is.
Matt: Sandy Duncan and
Julie Andrews had episodes without disclaimers, I’m like, well, what’s going on
here, they don’t like the guys?
Dave: Uhh, we don’t
wanna go there.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: It’s just getting
crazy. It’s like, we have to deplore things, and it’s like the social justice
warriors aren’t interested in deploring it, they want it eradicated. Anything
that they don’t approve of, they want it gone, which is why I say, if you think
you can appease these people, then you know absolutely nothing about what kind
of people that they are.
Matt: There was a…
Dave: Getting back to
Jesse Lee Herndon.
Matt: Right.
Dave: I’m kind of
running out of time here, the other one that I wrote down was “Haunted Tank”
which was a book written by Bob Kanigher and drawn by Joe Kubert and Russ
Heath, and various other guys. Which was [laughs] it would definitely run
afoul, I hadn’t even thought of that until just now as I’m taking about it,
that it’s a spirit of a rebel general, a Confederate general, and it’s like,
that’s not gonna fly. You can’t have a Confederate general as a hero in a comic
book.
Matt: The Haunted Tank
has showed up a couple of times.
Dave: I do have the DC
collection of “Haunted Tank” vol 1, and that’s one of those, as soon as I wrote
down Haunted Tank, then I wrote down “Metal Men”, which was also written by Bob
Kanigher, and almost exclusively drawn by Ross and Andru, and it’s like, Robert
Kanigher is one of the unsung heroes of knowing what kids want to read and what
will engage their intentions, and not concerned whatsoever with propagandizing
them. Just, here’s how interactions work. Here’s the lovesick female, Platinum,
with the Professor, the doctor who had created the Metal Men. I’d like to
reread those at some point. I don’t know if there’s a collection out of those.
Matt: Uh, yeah.
Dave: There is?
Matt: I believe there
is. Ripping off the Cerebus phonebooks, Marvel did their Essential line of
black and white reprints, and DC’s version was called Showcase Presents. And I
believe there’s a Metal Men.
Dave: Yes, yes, right.
Matt: So, conceivably
you could probably get it all for like $50.
Dave: Yeah, yeah. I
mean, the original run of “Metal Men” there was like three issues of
“Showcase”, and “Metal Men” #1 through I think it made it to 37 or something
like that? And they’re good, entertaining, goofy comic books. The different
characters are different metals. Gold is gold, Iron is iron, Platinum is
platinum, Mercury is the little stuttering guy, probably couldn’t do stuttering
characters anymore.
Matt: No, no, no, wait,
I thought Tin was the stuttering guy, Mercury was the jerk.
Dave: Oh, Tin, yes,
that’s right. Tin was the stuttering guy and Mercury was the really tall,
hot-blooded one who freaked out all the time. That’s right, that’s right. Thank
you for correcting me on that one. Bob Kanigher did a really really strange run
of “Wonder Woman”, I don’t even remember how many issues of “Wonder Woman” that
he did, but, and I think those were drawn by… oh I said Ross and Andru… Andru
and Esposito. Ross Andru and Mike Esposito are the creators on that. It, even
when I was reading it at the age of 10 or 11, I was going, “this is A), a
really really strange comic book, and B) a really really strange Wonder Woman.”
And Wonder Woman was pretty strange to begin with, so that’s really saying
something. That’s really as far as I got on my list in terms of, I know they’re
out there, I assume that they could be found, if I was going to do a run, then
it would probably be those books that I would lean towards.
“Jeff Seiler ONCE AGAIN tries the ‘double dip’”, uhh I think this is
actually a triple dip at this point, cause I’m still answering his “New
Mutants” question from January. “I only get a coupla paragraphs on this month's
question?!?” Well, it’s a little longer than a couple of paragraphs, but yes.
It was much easier. “Well, then, here's question #2. (I was going to save this
to next month, but...): Okay, Dave, so ... last night, I said to my cat, out
loud, because, you know when you live with a cat, that's what you do:
"CAT! You get free food and fresh water every day, a relatively fresh
litter box every week, free rent, a warm place to live, a soft place to sleep,
high perches, more toys than you can count, and free rein (reign) of the
apartment.” And he’s got “free rein” r-e-I-n, and then, I think knowing where
I’m going with this, r-e-I-g-n in parenthesis. “Yet: "Why do you feel
compelled to bite and scratch me several times, daily." So, Dave, does
that question to my cat remind you of anything in particular? As an analogy, I
mean? And, yes, it's a softball question. You're welcome. But, really, a year
and change in to this social contract with my cat (I adopted him; I'm
responsible), I can't *wait* for him to grow up. Again, a familiar analogy?”
Uhh, yeah, I mean, if we really really want to get into this, I think when you
have a feral creature as a companion, the only thing that you can be viewed as
is a useful idiot.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Basically, if you
do everything for them, which you do, I mean you just listed chapter and verse
all of the things that you do for your pet. The pet is not that far away from
the natural world, it’s a feral creature that has been made somewhat less feral.
So all they can do is really look at it as, ”I’m the one in charge here. I
mean, he feeds me, I don’t feed him. He buys me toys, I don’t buy him toys.”
It’s the same thing with dogs and cats, they eventually have little twinges of
feral guilt, I think, and that’s when they go out and hunt a mouse, or
something, or as Rich L talks about killing a possum for the third time, where
it’s, “ahh, I really feel like I should do something to pull my weight around
here.” and then it’s like, you don’t even eat the mouse that they bring you. So
it’s like, “okay, fine. You’re beyond a useful idiot. You’re completely my
helpless slave. And consequently, if I feel like biting you, or I feel like
scratching you, I’m gonna test that out to see okay, does he stop feeding me?
If he doesn’t stop feeding me, then it’s like, this is beyond a useful idiot.
You’re my bitch.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] You
asked, so I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for you, but that’s what I see when I look
at that, is, well, if that’s what you do, that’s really all that you can
expect. It’s like, it’d probably be a much better idea if every once and a
while you just smack the cat in the face. Like, not enough to break tooth or
anything, but just enough to assert, just want to make sure you understand
who’s in the charge here. And the cat would, I think, probably up on that.
Either that, or cut your throat in the middle of the night when you’re asleep,
because it’s like, “he might hit me again, so I’d better kill him. I’m sure
somebody else will come along and feed me.”
Matt: There’s a mem of a
statue of the goddess Bast, it’s a cat statue with an actual cat next to it,
and the statue’s saying, “do they still worship us as Gods?” and the cat goes,
“well, I crap in a box and they clean it.” And the statue goes, “good, good.”
Dave: [laughs]
Everything is going exactly according to plan, yes. Yes. So, it’s the same
thing as with kids, it’s like, you must know that Janis and Natasha think of
you as a useful idiot and you have to really really work at making sure that
they understand that you’re in charge, even though they know that they can wrap
you around their little finger.
Matt: My Uncle was
staying with his sister, my Aunt, and she had a little boy. My cousin was just
being a jerk, and one day they were out on the back deck, and he did something
to my Uncle, and my Uncle picked him up and dangled him over the deck, and it’s
only a one story drop, but he dangled by his shirt and held his face close to
my cousin’s face and said, “I’m your Uncle, not your parent, I don’t have to
like you.” And picked him up, put him back on the deck, and my cousin
understood that, Uncle Marty isn’t Mom and Dad.
Dave: [laughs] Right,
right. There’s useful idiots, and then there’s the people that go, mm, wrong
category. Don’t try and do that. And we’re losing that, because now it’s like,
all of the husbands and fathers are not only their wife’s useful idiot, but
their kids’ useful idiot, and the mother runs interference. And if you try
doing something like that, they’ll call the child welfare authorities and those
people have no sense of humour about this, cause they know any one of these
things can hit the headlines, and it’s like, well, okay. I’m very philosophical
about it because, A) I don’t have a pet, B) I don’t have kids. But I don’t
think you’re going to be very happy where that takes you and by the time that
gets you there, it’ll be too late to change course. That’s the problem with all
of this stuff, is like, if you undermine authority where you don’t want to
undermine authority, you don’t get at the crux, at the crucial point where the
rubber hits the road, to go, “mm, maybe I should’ve done this differently like
15 years ago.” It’s like, yeah, unquestionably. But you were the one who that
went, “no, the patriarchy is wrong about everything. Men are wrong about
everything. Fathers are wrong about everything. Grandfathers are wrong about
everything. Brothers are wrong about everything. We have to have all of the
rules established and reinforced by women.” And it’s like, uhh, this whole
thing is completely out of control. Well, okay, like I say, that’s 15 years
later, that’s too late to do it.
So that Jeff’s question, moving onto “The Great Hero of Cerebus Twitter”
[applauds] “(freely admit, I made that up…)”, you say, “Brian West asks: Q for
Dave: As an artist who believes in and strives towards absolute creative
freedom what are the challenges you see today for artists who attempt to create
and thrive in an increasingly conformist and corporate culture, both in the
comics field and society as a whole?” Um, I’m so far removed from that. I mean,
a guy in his 60s who’s never owned a cellphone. It’s [laughs] very very
difficult for me to address the question in its own frame of reference. But
just from what I understand of what’s going on, I think probably the most
important thing relative to creative freedom and the challenges that artists
and writers are facing, I would say, finding a balance point of staying away
from social media, while using the internet to make money. I think, social
media has got to be so poisonous at this point that that’s really the intention
of social media, is to make everyone so, so self-conscious about you don’t want
to offend anyone because there’s a daily scapegoat who’s being ripped to shreds
before your very eyes. So if you’re looking at that on a 24/7 basis, and it
becomes one of the key elements of your… I like the COVID-19 term
“doomscrolling”. If you’re scrolling through your Twitter feed, which is
feeding you back “here’s all of the things that you’re interested in, and
consequently here they all are in 140 characters at a time, or 280 characters
at a time”, it’s going to really inhibit the creative side of you. The part
that goes, “here’s what I have to say. Here’s what I have to contribute that
nobody else has to contribute.” Social media is flypaper. In life, it’s always
a good idea to understand which things in the context of your life are flypaper
that you don’t want to get stuck to, and which things aren’t flypaper. Go for
stuff that isn’t flypaper and stay away from stuff that is flypaper, and try to
understand it in those terms. Don’t wait until you’re buzzing helplessly glued
to the flypaper to go, “maybe this flypaper was a bad idea. Maybe I shouldn’t
have joined Twitter. Maybe I shouldn’t be participating on Twitter.” Avoid
becoming a propagandist. There are writers and artists who create works that
are resonant works that inspire people, works that people look at and go, “I’ve
always known that, but I’ve never had that expressed that clearly before” and
that’s really valuable. Works that you go back and revisit because of that.
Because, here’s something I read when I was 20 and I just reread it when I was
40, and it’s not only telling me stuff that guided me getting here, but it’s
telling me new stuff that I wouldn’t have gotten when I was in my 20s and 30s.
If you try to make people happy and not offend anyone, and make sure you’re
making the approved people immaculate perfect people. All of your black
characters have to be immaculate and perfect. All of your gay characters have
to be immaculate and perfect. All of your female characters have to be immaculate
and perfect. Nobody’s going to be reading your work in 20 or 30 years because
it’ll be like reading Russian propaganda, or Nazi propaganda, or reading
Chinese Communist propaganda in this day and age. If this book, if this poet,
if this filmmaker is approved and lionized by the Chinese Communist party, it’s
almost a guarantee that he’s no good at what he’s doing. He’s just a
propagandist. He’s capable of fitting into that niche in 2021 and keeping
everybody onside who is pushing the buttons and is deciding what people are
allowed to see and what they aren’t allowed to see. I think it was Joseph
Stalin who was more fearful of writers than he was of armies or opposing
politicians, because he went, ya know, writer’s shape souls. It’s like, he knew
[laughs] he wasn’t shaping anybody’s soul and nobody who was working for him
was shaping anybody’s soul. They were just tyrannizing their minds and their
spirits and their physical person and people’s soul were completely
inaccessible to him. So it’s like, always try to be doing work that is intended
for other people’s souls and just accept the fact that the fascists, and the
tyrannists, the dictators, the commissars, the apparatchiks, are always, always
going to be the people who are in opposition to you, because you are more of a
threat to them than anybody else. So it’s, know that. Aspiring to be popular,
and to have popularity as the centerpiece of what you’re doing, you’re not
going to get very far if you’re not going to be very content with what you’re
doing. Just be as honest as you can and just try to say the things that
everybody else is afraid to say.
Okay, got bogged down on that one, we’re now down to the last one, RSS,
which, I believe, as you say, is Ralph, asks, “Question for Dave: Do you
consider anti-work and anti-ability (again, I've seen lots of both) to be
implicit in your consideration of the negative impact on society? Certainly
your own work/ability/success was impeded, at the very least.” Uh, I guess I
would answer the question in terms of ants and grasshoppers. The ants who
labour and provide for themselves, and the grasshoppers who basically fritter
everything away, and fritter away their own opportunities, and their own
security, and then run into a bad situation when winter arrives, or whatever.
The whole ant and the grasshopper thing. Through COVID-19 we’re arriving at a
new place as a society. The ants and the grasshoppers were both forced to stay
home and just watch TV, [laughs] and from what it sounds like just worse and
worse TV. Netflix going out and finding Scandinavian detective series and
things like that, so that we always have something new here because we don’t
have anything new here. Nothing new is getting made, so if you wanna watch
Netflix, well okay, what’s the least disinterested I am in the stuff that I
haven’t already watched? Is there anything that I want to watch again? That’s a
very new thing. We have arrived at the point that we started at in the 1950s
for the people who all wanted to live inside the television. Well, it’s like,
now you can. And not only can you live inside your TV, you can’t do anything
else. All you can do is stay at home. If you don’t get rid of your TV, you’re
going to spend a lot of time watching
TV. You’re going to spend, now, a whole year. I think we have to
cross-reference that and triage that with the fact that the fed can’t lower or
raise interest rates, because the interest rates are as a low as they can get
without going into the negative interest rates, and the specs on that from
places like Japan are not good. So if you can’t raise or lower interest rates,
you can’t raise them because you’re gonna eradicate whole chunks of your
economy of the people who are overextended, and if they suddenly have to pay
real interest rates like we used to, they’re out of the game. You also can’t
stop creating money. Like, all of the G7 countries are creating money out of
thin air. It’s borrowed money. We’re talking about debt that’s delusional, when
the US creates 4 trillion dollars, and then creates another 1.9 trillion on top
of that, just because [laugh] of the squeamishness of “we can’t really create
another 2 trillion, we’ll make it sound less. So we’ll make it 1.9 trillion.”
It’s like, a trillion dollars is, relative to a billion dollars, if you tried
to pay off a billion dollar debt, it’s going to take you years, if not decades.
Once you’re up to a trillion, and it’s compounding, you’re talking about
centuries, and not even plausibly centuries. So all of the debt, all of the
money, is delusional. We also know now that you can have a good 25 to 40% of
your economy wiped out. Literally, wiped out. Businesses that, they were
marginal to begin with or they didn’t have enough cash on hand, and they’re
gone! They’re not coming back. New York City is like a ghost town for
storefronts and stuff like that. That happens, and the stock market stays solid
It’s like, well, okay, this is one of the things that you’ve been paranoid
about since 1929, when does that happen again? When does it get wiped out? And
it’s like, it doesn’t! You’ve plugged all the leaks, but you’ve just stuffed
[laughs] bandages into some holes and rags into others and others you’ve got
chewing gum and spit, but the whole thing’s held together and you are able to
create money with impunity.
So, cycling around this, back to the question, it’s, I think we just have
to get used to the fact that, okay, we’re not talking about debt, and we’re not
talking about “we have to get the economy back under control, and we’ve got to
get spending under control. We need smaller government.” It’s like, the
government is the size of the government. Now it’s a matter of, well, why not
create 10 trillion dollars? Why not create 15 trillion dollars? But instead of
pumping it all in at the top, to make sure that the stock market keeps going,
and to make sure that you can have 0 interest rates, and to make sure that
you’re not putting taxes up, that’s the other one. You can’t raise taxes
because it’s like, you just came through a pandemic where half of your economy
is wiped out and the other one is just sort of staggering around, wondering
what happens next. You can’t tax those people more than they’ve already been
taxed. So, start creating money at both ends. It’s like, the same thing that
they’re doing with COVID-19, protect the most vulnerable. Okay, do the same
thing with money. It’s like, here’s the 100,000, 200,000, 2 million, 8 million,
15 million poorest people in the United States. Send them all the United States
government credit card, and tell them, okay, your credit card is prepaid up to
$25,000, $50,000, $75,000. Doesn’t matter! You just, you’re making numbers up.
That money is never going to exist. You could never print that much money. You
could never print a trillion dollars if Joe Biden ends up being president for
eight years, in eight years, you could probably print a quarter of a trillion
dollars? If you had every printing press in the United States running 24/7. But
it’s like, we don’t do that anymore. We don’t have to print money, we just have
to print credit cards, and put a coat on it, and there you go. This is how much
money you have to spend. Now, you don’t get anything else. We don’t have
government programs for you, and we don’t have things financed for you. Here’s
enough money for you to keep yourself alive, you can’t keep yourself alive now,
we can’t help you. That’s my theory, is that we have to just look at where we
are, we can’t get out of here anymore, we’re all socialists now. We are all
money printers. We’re all Venezuela. It’s just different degrees of being
Venezuela. The Canadian dollar is going up in value, which is really killing my
whole business model, because it’s based on the Canadian dollar being worth
substantially less than the US dollar. That’s just Justin Trudeau not printing
as much money as Donald Trump and Joe Biden have. It’s a really basic formula. They try to make it sound
complicated, but it’s just, Canada can print 10% of the money that the United
States prints because we’re 1/10ths the size. We’re 38 million people instead
of 380 million people. And it’s like, Justin Trudeau only spent 700 billion
dollars, only talking about a debt of a trillion dollars. If Joe Biden keeps
printing money, and he pretty well has to keep printing money, then it just
means that Justin Trudeau has that much more room on his credit card. He
doesn’t have to worry until he gets up to probably, what, 2 trillion? We’re up
to a trillion now, so you could probably double that in the length of time that
the United States will be getting up whatever numbers they get up to. It’s
like, they’re just numbers. They’re just numbers. It’s just a one now, and pick
the number of zeros that you have after it. It’s 12 zeros. Okay, well 12 zeros,
let’s go for 13. I’m at the point of, uh forget trillions, let’s g right to
quadrillions, what do you say? Ya know, everybody can have as much money as
they’ve ever wanted, and the ants can continue to be ants.
This is where I get back to my original point. The ants can continue to be
ants, because we’re ants. We work. We save. We try to keep our spending under
control. We try to have everything make sense. The grasshoppers don’t. However
much money you give a grasshopper, the grasshopper is just going to spend it,
and just wants to make enough money so all they have to do is stay home and
watch TV, and in Canada, smoke pot and drink beer, and whatever else. It’s
like, instead of trying to figure out how to turn a grasshopper into an ant, or
train them to be ants, or give them their own social worker to try and get them
to understand ant thinking, just forget it. They’re grasshoppers. Invent enough
money so that they can do what they’re already doing, and they will live very
very placidly, just plugged into their television and their cellphone and their
Twitter feed and you can stop worrying about them. It’s like, well, we just
gave them another $20,000, most of them, that should hold them. Most of the
homeless people are proving, when they do just give them a chunk of money, a
percentage of them don’t fritter it away. They’re instinct ants, they just
ended up homeless. Some of them had a divorce where they lost everything, or
whatever grisly story that they have. But, most of these people are just
looking for the most minimal kind of livelihoods. They have this circle of
friends, and they spend their money on what they spend it on. I think we’re
already there. I’m just saying, everybody’s acting as if somehow the G7 countries
are going to pay back the debt that they’re talking about. They couldn’t pay
back debt that they had a year ago before all of this hit. Where they think
that they’re going to g… where would Canada get a trillion dollars? A trillion
dollars for what? That’s a lot of maple syrup. That’s a lot of beaver pelt. It’s not going to
happen, it’s not going to happen.
Matt: Right.
Dave: So that was my
last question. So, ya’ll would probably be better asking me about comic book
stuff, because once I get started on these things, it’s like, I’ve been
watching all of this a long time. I’m up to the point now where I’m reading
four or five newspapers a week, cause the newspapers are getting thinner and
thinner and they’re all getting crazier and crazier, trying to figure out how
to be responsible citizens when they want to say, “none of this make sense.
This is all completely insane and we’re becoming co-responsible for it. Because
we have to keep writing these articles about COVID-19 as if any of this makes
any kind of sense.” And it’s like, yeah, I don’t think it is. I think we’ve
gone as far down the road as we can. The whole Republican/conservative side,
which is my side, I mean, this is complete vested interest, the small
government, low taxes, all those kinds of thing. It’s just not gonna happen
anymore. You dig this deep a hole, and there’s no way that you’re gonna dig
yourself out of the hole, cause you’re just digging faster and faster. So start
living with the problems on their own terms. And now I am coming up on my last
prayer time.
Matt: Really quick,
during our last break, I found my “Cerebus” #1. I have, it’s a final proof, 50
copies, it’s stamped “office copy.” So I don’t know if that’s one of the eight,
or not.
Dave: Stamped office
copy? Like with a…
Matt: Like a rubber ink stamp.
Dave: Okay.
Matt: It’s 50 copies,
and there’s a white circle for putting the number of which of the 50 it is, and
it’s stamped “office copy”.
Dave: Okay. So it’s not
a number on it?
Matt: No. It just says
final proof, June 2020, 50 copies, and there’s a white circle and in that is a
blue “office copy”.
Dave: Mmkay.
Matt: Showing the folks
at home.
Dave: That’s when I
would start wondering, okay, how many office copies are there?
Matt: Well, this is also
the… it’s the 24 page reproduction that has the $1 price tag on the cover, as
opposed to the expanded version that has the $20 price tag.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And the copy of
that I have is… if this will open quick… it’s a publisher proof from April
2020.
Dave: Mmkay.
Matt: And it isn’t
numbered. So I will ask Dagon. I probably have an email that I just forgot
about that explains what’s what.
Dave: Yeah, I think it’s
definitely worth looking into in terms of, this is as small as the problem is
going to get, because Dagon’s going to be publishing more stuff for people to
buy and more versions of different stuff. A Moment of Cerebus will be a good place
to say, “if you wanna know, here’s all of the Waverly Press stuff, and this
will tell you what you have in terms of the description.” And you could just
look up office copies, how many office copies are there of this edition.
Matt: Right.
Dave: Okay, thanks Matt!
Matt: Thanks, Dave!
Dave: Say hello to
Paula, and Natasha, and Janis for me.
Matt: Will do.
Dave: Talk to you next
month.
Matt: Talk to you next
month.
Dave: Bye-bye.
________________________________
Friend to the Blog, James
Windsor-Banderas-Smith has a new
Kickstarter for Papa Balloon & Cactus #5. He's got a few copies of one of Dave's variant covers for the previous issues as rewards. ACTUALLY, he found a bunch of copies of issues he thought were out of print, so I think you can get the whole series. He's got T-Shirts too.
________________
Our pals at Living The Line are getting it from "Diamond" (Or Whoever Owns Them Now):
Legal trouble. Lost inventory. But great books keep coming.
Hello everyone—
It’s been a wild few weeks at Living the Line HQ here in Saint Paul.
If you follow comics industry news, you may already know that our former distributor, Diamond Comics, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in January. Then, on May 16th, they were sold! End of problem, right?
Not only have we not been paid for any book sales since that sale closed… We've been refused access to our consignment inventory—books that legally belong to us and were merely stored in Diamond's warehouse.
Worse yet, they’ve now petitioned the bankruptcy court to sell that consignment inventory—including our books—without our consent.
This means we haven't been paid for books already sold, and we’re at risk of losing the rest of our inventory in their possession. For a small publisher, that’s an existential blow.
But we’re not taking this lying down.
Living the Line, alongside several other trusted publishers, has retained legal counsel and formally objected to this maneuver. We’re fighting for our rights in bankruptcy court. But legal battles, even righteous ones, are expensive, and we could use your help.
How You Can Help Right Now
1. Preorder My Gorilla Family (Iijima Ichiro)
Our September release is live! My Gorilla Family, sure to be one of the wildest books of 2025, will see wide release the first week of September.
Order direct from us (ships from St. Paul): https://livingtheline.company.site/products
Order through your local comic shop via Lunar Distribution: https://www.lunardistribution.com/home/search?term=My+Gorilla+Family
(We’re temporarily listed under our friends at Uncivilized Books — be sure to request it!)
2. Watch for Our New Book-Trade Distributor (Announcement Soon)
We’re onboarding with a new distributor for the wider book market. First out of the gate: reprints of UFO Mushroom Invasion (2024 American Manga Award Nominee, Best New Edition of Classic Manga) and MANSECT (2025 Nominee for the same category!). Sign up for announcements here: https://www.livingthelinebooks.com/mailing-list
3. Grab a Backlist Title Direct
Most of our inventory is frozen in the Diamond warehouse, but we have limited quantities of many titles on hand in Saint Paul ready to ship in 1–2 business days while supplies last. Browse what’s physically in stock here, including our much-beloved science fiction titles by Brandon Graham, Xurxo G. Penalta, Matt Battaglia, and Miel Vandepitte, and the stunning psychological fiction of Erik Kriek: https://livingtheline.company.site/products
4. Spread the Word
Know someone who digs beautiful, strange, unclassifiable graphic novels & manga? Please forward this email, share a link, or talk to your local shop. Every order and every share helps.
A Few of the Books We’re Fighting For
MANSECT — Koga Shinichi
Order MANSECT direct: https://livingtheline.company.site/products
FACE MEAT — Bonten Tarō
Order FACE MEAT direct: https://livingtheline.company.site/products
Thank you for reading, for caring about independent publishing, and for helping us fight the good (and occasionally slimy, mushroom-ridden) fight. We literally couldn’t do this without you.
With appreciation,
Sean Michael Robinson
Publisher, Living the Line
St. Paul, Minnesota
https://www.livingthelinebooks.com/
_____________
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs
Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney
Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. OR(!) you could buy Bill's book with the Dave backcover. I have discovered links:
____________
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Our very own Jen DiGiacomo is part of a film production titled The Day Elvis Died. She'll never ask anybody here, but they're
crowdfunding to finish the post production on the movie. (It's set in 1977, will a certain obscure Canadian cartoon aardvark make a cameo? (No. Elvis died in August. Cerebus wasn't published until December. Any appearance in the flick would be an anachronism that would ruin the movie for everybody. EVERYBODY!).) Here's
the first trailer. And if you're going to Edinburgh Fringe, Jen's doing her One Woman show
Woman in the Arena, pretty much all month. If you go, "swordfish". And send pics...
______________
*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.
______________
You can get all 16 volumes of Cerebus, many of them Remastered for $99CANADIAN at
CerebusDownloads.com (More if you want the Remastered Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing...)
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- Page 16 of issue #44
- Page 5 of Cerebus #20
- Inside Back Cover art from Cerebus #3
- The covers to Issue #74 and #76
- other stuff
And ComicLink (remember ComicLink? Seiler brought us ComicLink. R.I.P Jeff.) has:
Thanks to Steve for sending the links.
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If you wanna support "local" Canadian publishers...
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Next Time: Jen's in Scotland. So I probably have to work...
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