Original Original Sim (Old Dave Art that's new to you!)

Hi, Everybody!

You've seen it in color and resized all small and, frankly, not worth looking at, but here it is in glorious Original Art:

Original Sim (Click for bigger):

Dave has explained the Origins of Original Sim before (most recently in Please Hold For Dave Sim 04/2025):

Chris W's comment on Please Hold for Dave Sim, January 2025, video 2. “I noticed the ‘marriage’ part of the contract too.” This is the contract that I was pitched for doing “Cerebus” through DC in 1985. “Am I misremembering? Or was Dave and Deni's divorce the reason he even started looking into working with Marvel or DC on this, just to bring in some extra money? Or am I thinking of the Epic stories or something else?” Uh, no. The only thing that Deni and I separating in 1983 that touched on Marvel and DC was, because Deni and I had a joint bank account and Deni was spending money from the joint bank account on family matters, helping out her older sister Adele who lives out in, I think it was Idaho? Yeah, I think it's Idaho. And I was going, I don't know how much this is going to happen, and I'm uncomfortable with these amounts of money flying out of here. So, I actually phoned Jim Shooter and said, can you give me a quick “here, I just have to do this” sort of thing for Marvel Comics and you can pay me your top page rate and pay me, actually, doing business as Aardvark-Vanaheim, as quickly as you can. And he said, "Uh, yeah, that's fine." He said, "Why don't you do a series of pin-ups for ‘Marvel Fanfare’?" So, that's where the original Sim portfolio that was in “Marvel Fanfare” came from. They paid a very generous page rate and “Marvel Fanfare” was one of their prestige titles where they could afford to pay more than they usually did. But, Adele got the cheque from Deni and said, “I really don't need this much” and just said, “I'll hang on to this much and you can keep the rest.” So that got reestablished in the Aardvark-Vanaheim joint account, and then that was the last time that Deni did that. So, it was one of those overreaction things, caution myself, don't you overreact to this! Just find a way to replace the money or some of the money and then let's see how do bad this problem gets before we start taking any other action. Like, don't do a stupid thing like, okay, I'm going to get a lawyer and sue you to prevent you from accessing the joint bank account. Then she would get a lawyer and just counter sue me for suing her, you know, inappropriately. And then you're in the situation where all of your money is disappearing and it's just going to lawyers, it's not doing any good for anybody else. So I think that's the part that you're thinking of, Chris. But I did mention that at the time, I think, after the fact that this is what the Original Sim portfolio was about, and I can certainly understand you going, “Okay, he was doing a multiple number of things at the time” but no, at the time it definitely wasn't “the divorce is making it necessary for me to get into bed with DC.” It was, is DC a possible viable alternative or side hustle that I can sign on to that'll do great things for me, great things for “Cerebus”, great things for the bank account, and hopefully great things for DC.

I've always wondered about Dave character choices on this. 

Some, I understand, like:

Shang Chi: As Dave's mentor, Gene Day, was the penciller and inker on Master of Kung-Fu. Dave honoring Gene's memory makes sense.

Howard the Duck: Also makes sense, back in 1979, right before Dave decided to take Cerebus from bi-monthly to monthly, he was approached by Marvel to take over the writing chores on Howard the Duck after Steve Gerber left. He turned it down, but his choice of Howard makes sense in light of that.

Moon Knight: This one makes total sense: UNORTHODOX ECONOMIC REVENGE!!!

Cyclops: This one I question. Why Cyclops? Theory 1: This was close enough to the proposed Cerebus/X-Men crossover that maybe it was intended as a quasi-promo piece for the project (or as a nod to it)? Theory 2: Dave just really dug the X-Men?

Iron Man: This is another one that doesn't make obvious sense to me. I mean it's a weird foreshadowing of Guys, and the skull definitely has shades of Church & State vibes. But why Iron Man? Dave a fan? Dave impressed by Tony being a drunk?

Maybe I'll ask for October's Please Hold...

MOMENT!

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Like the logo? I stole it...

The Waverly Comics site is gone.
Big books (Form & Void and The Last Day) are at Waverly's regular site: [https://www.thewaverlypress.com](https://www.thewaverlypress.com/)
Smaller books (comics and the goodies) are on their eBay page: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?item=257022613619&rt=nc...
Just so everybody is aware...

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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.

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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/

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TwoMorrows has a new book on Marshall Rogers. Does it include the Name of the Game is Diamondback? Do they talk to Deni? I dunno. You might if you buy a copy...

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Acquaintance to the blog Travis sent in:

My Kickstarter was unsuccessful. Thank you for adding it to the blog in the last several days.
I appreciate it.
I decided to just put the comic for sale on Lulu.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/fanny-kelly-and-hal-kolbeck/my-captivity/paperback/product-459wr8z.html?page=1&pageSize=4

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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:

Wanderland (Paperback)

Wanderland (Hardcover for the guys who get "hard" for hardcovers...)

Wanderland (Paperback but slightly more expensive...I dunno why...)
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:

Hardcover

Paperback

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Larry Shell could use a hand to keep his house.

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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...

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The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe

Up to 35% off August 10, 21-24, & 29-31.*

*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.

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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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Heritage has (coming soon):

• 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:

• CEREBUS #18 PAGE 4 DAVE SIM COMIC ART SALE
• CEREBUS #181 PAGE 6 DAVE SIM COMIC ART SALE
• CEREBUS #67 PAGE 5 DAVE SIM COMIC ART SALE
• BATMAN AND CEREBUS ILLUSTRATION DAVE SIM COMIC ART SALE

Thanks to Steve for sending the links.

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

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Got a message from Studio Comix Press:

If you wanna support "local" Canadian publishers...

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Next Time: Mondays!