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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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Dave: Hello Matt, how’re
you doing?
Matt: I’m alright! How
are you doing?
Dave: Oh, I’m okay. Just
got my head shaved. We’re in the lockdown again and it’s like, if trying to
picture what I would look like after a month and a half with Ramadan coming up.
So it’s like, no, let’s shave it right down to nothing.
Matt: I’ve been meaning
to ask, how come you don’t grow a beard?
Dave: [laughs] Uh, I’m
not really a beard kind of guy. I used to be. I used to be, but, uh… nah, it’s,
when you’re in your 60s, it’s like, “how much can I simplify my appearance so
that it doesn’t take any time out of my life?”
Matt: [laughs] Well, if
you grew a nice full beard and if it came in white, you could make everybody
think you’re Santa Claus!
Matt: If you like
birthday cake.
Dave: Um, okay, let’s
start with Jeff Seiler’s first question..
Jeff Seiler: Hey, Dave. It’s Jeff. So, um, mit program, my
cat climbed up on the TV table and somehow, I have no effing idea how he did
it, turned off the program. So I’m going to take this moment of silence to call
you and leave you my question for next month. And it goes as this, “as you are
an ‘industry insider’” [laughs] And I use “industry insider” in quotes, “why do
you think, or know, that Marvel and maybe DC etc, cut off the corners and
sometimes the tops of their original art paper. The recent artist editions, or
as in the case of Walt Simonson “The Mighty Thor” Artisan Edition, show these
trims. I don’t recall you ever doing that. So why do they do that?” Just
curious! So, there you go. Alright, hope you’re doing well and I will talk to
you soon. By--
[robot lady: end of message.]
Dave: --Which was the
one about the original artwork, and as a, how did he put it? “Comics Insider”,
and I think I could hear the quotation marks in his voice from here, yeah, I’m
a comics insider but I’m not a Marvel and DC insider, and I noticed the same thing
that there are original pages where they’ve lopped off the corner of the page.
And my best theory, and it’s just a theory, you’d have to ask somebody from the
time period, is that Marvel and DC, that is how they would designate that this
page was supposed to be returned to the artist. Since, I don’t know how many
people know this, that Marvel and DC, err, at least DC Comics used to shred
their artwork. Because that was their best legal advice at the time from their
legal department, was, “if you don’t shred this artwork, it’s in danger of
getting out there and being reproduced illegally. So we will keep that from
happening by shredding everybody’s artwork.” I think one of the first jobs that
Marv Wolfman or Len Wein, or both of them had, at DC, was taking the paper
cutter to original artwork, which was, of course, excruciating for them as
comics fans and they got into the habit of chopping up the artwork at least in
between the panels and then talking DC into making the amputated panels into
bonus items that they would give to people on the tours of DC. Which was where
Marv and Len, as far as I know, first came to the attention of DC, was they had
a tour every week and Marv and Len being the comic book fans that they were and
DC fans that they were, used to come every week, and it was like, “these guys
are gonna show up any week anyway, we might as well put ‘em to work”. And the
only other thing that I would add to that original art story is that it’s just
come to life since Murphy Anderson died a few years back, I think 2016 or 17?
That a lot of his artwork was showing up in the Heritage Auctions catalogue as
part of the Murphy Anderson collection, and that was when I inferred the fact
that Murphy Anderson had a special deal with DC where he got all of his artwork
back at a time when DC wasn’t doing that. Like I say, I think the cutting the
corners off of the artwork was a way of indicating, “this page is not supposed
to get shredded, or this cover isn’t supposed to get shredded. This is supposed
to go back to the artist” where I think DC got to the point where they went,
“uh, if you really want a page for a specific reason, or if you want a cover
for a specific reason, as long as you don’t come around too often asking for
that, we’ll try and be good natured about it and give it back to you.” So,
Murphy Anderson coming out of newspaper strips, he was a either the last or the
second-last artist on “Buck Rogers”, when he moved from newspaper strips to
comic books permanently I think that was part of his contract with DC, “I get
all of my artwork back.” And that has turned out to be a very, very cagey
decision on Murphy’s part, that his family is now doing very well on all of the
artwork, having been consigned to Heritage Auctions. I think the first thing that
they auctioned was the first Zatanna story from “Hawkman” #… uhh, I’m not sure
I know the exact number. #4? It’s one of the early ones, anyway. But that went
for a very, very nice piece of change. But, if Jeff, you’re inclined to do it,
try to find some of the guys that were working back in the 1960s, 1970s, who
are still alive and ask them about it. That’s my best theory on it. Could be
something else entirely.
Dave: Wow. Wow.
Matt: And it’s an
unpublished story. It was, superheroes died and this was sitting in the can,
and they went, “oh well, let’s just get rid of it” and they stripped it up. And
so, there was like four or five missing stories, and two of them they have.
Dave: Right. Yeah, and
before that, or around the same time, Julie Schwartz actually started giving
artwork away. I know that Don and Maggie Thompson got some absolutely amazing
pieces of artwork that, if you happened to have a letter printed in that issue,
I think it was a way of Julie Schwartz trying to get more letters coming in.
But at the same time, ya know, this late in the day, it’s going like, “why
don’t you give away your own artwork, Julie? Like what are you doing giving
away Murphy Anderson pages and Carmine Infantino pages?” But, that was also the
guys at the time period, I think it was considered unsophisticated to actually
want your art back. You were supposed to be at least sophisticated enough to
know how completely unimportant comic book art was. Some comic strip art was
considered important and valuable, but somebody, thinking their artwork was
valuable, was just considered a swelled-headed individual, and everybody tried
to keep that part suppressed. Which is really unfortunate, but it’s one of
those things that time and distance tells you, “well, no, these covers that
these guys were supposed to be sort of semi-ashamed of because they weren’t top
flight illustrators, they were just working in superhero comics” I mean,
they’re going for, ya know, $100,000, $200,000, so…
Matt: I posted on
Tuesday that if somebody really loved me they’d buy me page two of issue eight
of “Amazing Spider-Man” because the original art’s up for auction and I think
the opening bid is up to $38,000! [laughs]
Dave: Yes. Yes. I do
look forward to those platinum catalogs coming in from Heritage Auctions. What
have they got this time that actually made the platinum listing? I lend them to
Alfonso at Studiocomix Press when I’m done looking at them, and he knows he’s not
going to get much work done that day, because, same thing I did, all tools
down, the Heritage Auction catalogs came in. Um, yeah, actually, that’s, the
auction’s tomorrow.
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: Uh, the other
question, Jeff Seiler being Jeff Seiler, he gets two questions a month,
everybody else just gets one question a month. And he was asking about, well… I
got Rolly to email it to you, so you can actually play Jeff’s phone message
right now, and then I will answer his question.
Jeff Seiler: Hey Dave!
It’s Jeff. Because I’m too lazy to actually type it in at AMoC or Matt’s email
address, or whatever, here’s my another question for April. Here’s what I
wrote. Well, I suppose that it was about to come eventually. Ken Burns has a
new documentary premiering on April 5th for three nights, probably
about six hours, on Ernest Hemingway. At first, when I watched the early
trailers I thought they were just going to lionize him, and there does seem to
be an element of that. But a longer trailer shows Burns discussing the aspects
of Ham’s life that you got into, although he does so obliquely. He even says
that once they got into the research, they had to, “throw out everything we
thought we knew and start over.” So Dave, my question for you, 20 years on from
your take, any thoughts about Papa that you might want to revisit or add to?
So, there you go. Next month, theosis. I’ve got a lot to say about that. So
we’ll talk later on. Thanks.
Dave: Two, three, four…
okay, so 20 years later on, what do I have to say about Ernest Hemingway in
light of the fact that The Ken Burns, and he is definitely in the documentary
world THE Ken Burns, is doing his Ernest Hemingway documentary. And I would
have to say that I’m not surprised that Hemingway’s sexuality hasn’t become
more of an issue than it has, because I think people were very very protective
of Papa’s extreme masculine facade. I dug out my copy of “The Garden of Eden”,
which the backflap for the hardcover, “Hemingway began ‘The Garden of Eden’ in
1946, and worked on it off and on for the next 15 years, right until his death.
During the same period, he was writing ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, ‘Moveable
Feast’, ‘Dangerous Summer’, and ‘Islands in the Stream’. He described the
book’s theme as ‘the happiness of the garden that a man must lose.’ Here,
Hemingway’s interpretation of love and art is darkly profound. His imagination
is keenly alive, his writing masterly. ‘The Garden of Eden’ published 25 years
after the author’s death is a provocative and astonishingly modern work.” Which
is all tiptoeing carefully around the fact that, how would I put this? If we
ever do get to the point, or if the Hemingway scholars ever do get to the point
of going, “No, seriously? What was Ernest Hemingway’s sexuality?” I think we
would have to add at least three more letters to LGBTQ. Two plus. And I’m not
being sarcastic there, I don’t think I’m being provocative, I think the
Hemingway scholars have been remiss in not addressing the fact that there is
definitely serious psychological business at work here. I think one of the
reasons that he worked on “Garden of Eden” for 15 years was that, as he was
trying to convey an autobiographical perception of his own sexuality, he would
get to what he was trying to say, and then would go, “oh, I can’t say that.
That makes it sound like I’m a homosexual.” Which, well, it’s a reason it makes
you sound like you’re a homosexual, because if you weren’t a homosexual, you
were in a strange borderline category. Which is why, if this was Dave Sim’s
ideal world of “Dave Sim, you’re the one who is going to decide how the Ernest
Hemingway scholarship is going to go from here.” My best recommendation would
be to take a lesbian, a gay, a bi-sexual, a queer, and a transexual, and give
them all of the drafts (which, from my understanding, is a far amount of paper,
at the JFK Library in Massachusetts), and let them read all of it, and then sit
down and discuss, “okay, was he one of us, or was he one of you?” I think that
would be not only an interesting discussion, but it would probably make a great
five, or six, or seven, or eight volume series of Ernest Hemingway’s “Garden of
Eden” and the ongoing debate about what was his sexuality. And I’ll just leave
it at that.
Matt: [laughs] Okay.
Dave: [laughs] It is
going back 20 years. I’m not a right up to speed Hemingway scholar these days,
but that is definitely my impression. That what needs to be discussed about
Ernest Hemingway needs to be discussed by people who are in all of those
categories to decided, “what is it he was saying here, and what is it that was
the nature of his sexuality?” It’ll be interesting to read the reviews of Ken
Burns’ documentary and see how careful is he being about it, and if he’s not
being careful enough, are the Hemingway scholars going to tear him a new one,
as they say?
Uh, okay, getting to the other questions. RSS, I believe, Ralph Smith.
Yes, I think that is how Ralph Smith designates himself. “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 feminism's negative impact on society?
Certainly your own work/ability/success was impeded, at the very least.” Uhh,
Ralph, or RSS if it isn’t Ralph, I think that you’re asking two different
questions there. I’ll address the side of anti-work and anti-ability, which I’m
assuming is one of those extreme progressive viewpoints that we’re all having
to get used to. Just when you think they can’t go any further, they go that
much further. And I think what needs to be understand is the explanation, or what
I see is the explanation of the anti-work and anti-ability sensibilities.
Which, I jotted down a note here, I consider it institutionalized
grasshopperness in the sense of “The Ant and the Grasshopper”. These are people
who are, not only by nature grasshoppers, but extreme versions of grasshoppers
who have come to the belief that it is oppressive to make people work who don’t
want to work. That it’s basically the equivalent of slavery. And that it’s
oppressive to make people work who have no ability or talents to make more than
minimum wage. And I don’t think this is going away, I think this is something
that as a society we’re going to have to say, “we’ve progressed this far with
the Judaeo-Christian work ethic with the welfare state grafted onto it, and we
have to understand that there is the opposing viewpoint that wants to separate
completely from our traditional perception of what a society is. And I made the
note of, what I would describe as getting up at the crack of noon video game
addicts, where, if you said to anyone of those people, “okay, instead of you
having to go and work somewhere and earn 800, $1200 a month, we’re going to
give you $2000 a month for the rest of the life. Ya know, however old you are
right now, at like 20, 21, until you’re 80 or 90 years old, all you will have
to do is sleep and eat and play video games.” To me, that’s a living nightmare
to even contemplate, but to an enormous chunk of the population, particularity
I would suggest boys who have been reared by feminists and who have been reared
by feminist rules, that sounds perfect to them. If they never had to deal with
anybody, and all they had to do was sleep and get up at the crack of noon and
play video games. The only questions that I see as not being answered there, is
how many of them are there, and what percentage are they of any given
population? The reason that I say that, is because, if this is something that
we can’t get rid of a society, and I suspect that we can’t get rid of as a
society, then we’re going to have to determine, how much is it going to cost to
remove those people from the equation? To basically say, “okay, we’ll take you
at face value. This is how you want to live, this is how you’re going to live,
how much is it going to cost us to pay you to basically just read video games…
err, play video games for the rest of your life.” So that’s category number
one. Crack of noon video game players. Category number two, what percentage
want to be doing something else besides their job? Something they love, but
aren’t and never will be good at. So that’s a, “here, we’ll pay you $2000 a
month to be the world’s worst ballerina.” The problem with that one is, if you
don’t make them prima ballerina of a major ballet company, they’ll just double
down and say, “the reason that you won’t make me the prima ballerina is a major
ballet company is racism, or misogyny, or homophobia, or Islamophobia (if
they’re Muslims). Victimology is the gift that keeps on giving. That, I would
suggest, if the trade off. If, as tax payers, we agree to pay you a
survival-based guaranteed income, and I think we could all agree that virtually
any North American could get by on $2000 a month. They’re not going to be rich,
they’re not going to be poor. Ya know, it’ll buy you a certain number of minor
luxueries. This is the trade off that we would be looking at. If we do that,
then your side of the deal is you officially, and legally abandon your victim
leverage. You can no longer be a victim of anything. We don’t want to hear from
you, you’re not allowed to go to protests, this is what we’re going to consider
the investment is however we’re going to try and run this society, so that
we’re improving and we’re getting back in the direction of excellence. We’re
never going to get back in the direction of excellence until we find a way to
move the people out of our society that want to be moved out of of our society.
They don’t agree with the society, they don’t agree with anything having to do
with the enlightenment. They’re not interested in anything besides video games
or whatever it is that they’re interested in. It seems to me that it would be a
small price to pay, relatively speaking, when we’re already talking about
quantities of money that will never exist, never have existed, and couldn’t possibly
be printed even if you printed $10,000 bills. It would still take two
Presidential administrations to even try and begin to print the amount of money
that Biden Administration is talking about making exist. Let’s lean into it. So
that, how many number ones, the Crack of Noon Video Game people, and how many
people who are just incompetent at whatever they love so you’ll be paying them
to do something that they will never do professionally are there, and how many
can we afford as a country? And each country, I think, would have to ask
themselves that particular question. Canada can only afford X number of them,
because we’re Canada. The United States could probably afford more of them more
than just about anybody, and that’s my best answer so far, in terms of, I have
to look with one eye at, okay here’s where we are as a society. I know where we
used to be, and that’s very very different from where we are. Presumably, if
you tried to plot a line from where we were to where we are to where we’re
going to be, and I think that’s where the line goes, in that direction.
The second half of RSS’ question is “Certainly your own
work/ability/success was impeded, at the very least.” I think that’s because I
probably know, or have much better theories that fit known facts when it comes
to feminism than virtually anyone else. And the feminists of at least since
issue 186, been trapped in the unenviable position of “what do we do about this
guy? We can’t really afford to make him into a martyr because if you make him
into a martyr, then whatever hope that they have, Cerebus and all of Dave Sim’s
works and all of his letters and everything else will be completely eradicated
and we’ll never have to worry about them again.” I don’t think that’s going to
happen. The further along feminism goes, we’re into year #50 now… 51, actually.
The more all of those very simple questions that I ask in “Tangent” almost 20
years ago now, those questions still exist. It’s not a matter of “okay, well,
we’ve answered all of those questions. We’ve solved all that.” No, you
destroyed the person who was asking the question, that’s the compete opposite
of answering the questions. So, I think that’s not… what happened to me wasn’t
an “anti-work, anti-ability” thing. Although, there’s probably a certain amount
of jealousy there that the “anti-work, anti-ability” people could direct at me,
but I think it’s far more a “I was one of the few people to pose questions
about feminism and to frame them in terms of the 16 Impossible Things to
Believe Before Breakfast” and as someone who comes from a debate-minded background,
I would really not want to be in the situation of having to defend feminism in
a debate where you were allowed to say what you have to say, and you were
allowed to pose the questions that you want to pose.
So, how did we do on that one? That was about 10 minutes.
Okay! “It must be Please Hold, because here’s Michael R.” the Pride of
Easton, Pennsylvania. And “Easton, Pennsylvania’s answer to George Bailey”.
“Questions for Dave. Hi Dave! In Church and State volume 1, page 507,
Weisshaupt reveals to Cerebus that Suenteus Po was his uncle. 1-Is this why
Weisshaupt believed that he "was fated to be the redeemer"?” Um, was
Suenteus Po… I’ll actually read all of this question, “2-Was Suenteus Po a
"true" uncle to Weisshaupt? Or was he an illusion? Or something
else?” The easiest part of the tripartite Michael E question, “who were
Weisshaupt’s parents? Mr and Mrs Weisshaupt. That’s as far as I’m going on that
one and I don’t… I’m not a real big family guy to begin with, so the last thing
I would do as a writer is concern myself with, “okay, what was Weisshaupt’s Mom
and Dad like?” But getting back to the first two questions, you always have to
bear in mind whenever we’re talking about Suenteus Po and Illusionism, there
isn’t a “the” Suenteus Po. There is in the sense that there was a Suenteus Po
who was deemed to have been the Redeemer, but the closest analogy, and I think
I must have said this somewhere else but I probably don’t say it as often as I
should, when talking about Suenteus Po: Suenteus Po is in the “Cerebus” world
context the equivalent of the Spanish Catholic Haysu,or Jesús. “Yo soy Jesús”.
“I am Jesus”on planet Earth has one connotation among Spanish speakers and
another connotation among everybody else on the planet. And that’s really the
way Suenteus Po is with Illusionism. It has one meaning for Illusionists, and
for everyone else it has a completely different context. So I would venture to
say that Weisshaupt had an uncle named Suenteus Po, or an uncle who called
himself Suenteus Po, and it wasn’t just, “well, that’s just a name Illusionists
tend to use the same way that Spanish Catholics use the name Jesús”. That would
mean that it was over in the direction of a theological messianic context for
Weisshaupt, that his uncle, whose name was Suenteus Po or who called himself
Suenteus Po, was interested in all of the things that would move him from the
category of just, “Suenteus Po just happens to be his name” to “the pretension
that he is the Suenteus Po, or he is one of the candidates for the Suenteus
Po.” So, that’s as clear as I can be on that one. All the best…
Matt: My favorite is, I read an article where it was just insane uses of government money, and it was a grad student who was on student loans, getting a grant to write their grad paper, and the paper was, “Was William Shakespeare secretly two aborigine women?”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: My favorite is, I read an article where it was just insane uses of government money, and it was a grad student who was on student loans, getting a grant to write their grad paper, and the paper was, “Was William Shakespeare secretly two aborigine women?”
Dave: Right. Because
they didn’t exist yet.
Matt: They existed, just
not there! [laughs]
Okay, moving onto John G, asks, “Hello. I hope this e-mail finds you
well.” Uh, as far as I know, but that’s one of those COVID-19 things. You could
be mere minutes from death and actually think that you’re feeling okay, you
poor deluded colonialist. “Question: Has Dave ever met Jim Steranko? I recently
picked up Nick Fury #3 to have as a companion to my Cerebus #2. Love them both
and looking forward to the Remastred Cerebus #2. Just looking at Jim Steranko’s
bio, he seems to be quite a character. I’m thinking if Dave met Steranko
sometime in the ‘70s or ‘80s, then two A-type personalities like Jim and Dave
would either have gotten along really well or ended up in a swordfight. Just
wondering. Thanks for the time, - J.G.” Jim Steranko was actually the first
comics professional that I ever met at the first comic convention that I ever
went to, CosmiCon in Toronto in March of 1972.
He was one of the guests, Joe Kubert was one of the guests, that was
actually just the weekend after the first Joe Kubert “Tarzan” had come out, so
obviously a good reason for Joe Kubert to be going to a convention to promote
his version of Tarzan. And I definitely stopped at Jim Steranko because he was
just walking around the dealer’s room at this convention at Winter’s College at
York University, and just sort of, “hey, you’re Jim Sterkano! It’s like, can I
ask you a question?” “Sure, what is it?” And I just asked him a question off
the top of my head, and I think it was probably a particularly stupid question
because I had really just stopped him because, wow, it’s Jim Steranko! I need
to talk to him so that he doesn’t just walk past me. And I think he said, in
answer to my question, I can’t even remember what my question was, something
very very pithy and succinct, but cutting, and I did take umbrage as only a 15
year old who believes he knows everything there is to know about the world and
how it works. So, yes, we didn’t get off on the right foot, but definitely Jim
Steranko, over the years has been a big supporter of mine. I don’t know how
many of the people listening remember CerebusTV where one of the season
premiere episodes was Jim Steranko and me talking about Jack Kirby, where
basically I recorded the whole thing. Mostly Jim talking about Jack Kirby
because Jim certainly had a lot more experience and personal contact with Jack
Kirby and basically I just recorded the whole conversation and then found as
many examples of what Jim was talking about, and made a very long CerebusTV
episode out of it. We can maybe try and coerce Dave Fisher into going through
his files of CerebusTV episodes. I don’t know where we would post it, because
it’s, I think, an hour and half long? I think it was a two parter. But that was
definitely one of the highlights of my life, was sitting on the phone, talking
to Jim Steranko about Jack Kirby. And yes, Jim does have a remarkable bio.
Julie Ng, our resident female magician, professional magician from that whole
environment, at one point I mentioned Jim Steranko and knowing Jim Steranko and
she was terribly impressed. And I don’t think Jim Steranko has been a
practicing magician since the early 1960s, I think probably before his stint at
Marvel? So, that tells you right there, he’s not just a legend in the comic
book field, he’s a legend in the magic field. Not just, “oh okay, this comic
artist used to perform magic. Used to do Houdini style escapes.” No, he was at
the level where, if you were at a magic convention and you said Steranko,
[laughs] there isn’t a magician on the planet who wouldn’t know exactly who you
were talking about. That’s terrifically, terrifically impressive, that Jim
Steranko doesn’t harp on it or anything like that. It’s just one of those
things that you discover. That we were lucky enough to have him in the comic
book field and they were lucky enough to have him in the magic field. Cause,
you wanna talk about excellence? That’s Excellence with a capital E. I’ve got
Steranko’s phone number and I’m always tempted to phone Jim just to shoot the
breeze for a while, but he’s Jim Steranko! [laughs] He’s got more important
things to do. I remember, it was either the last… I think it was the last time
that I phoned him, and he said, “Dave, I’m standing here with a brush full of
wet plastic.” [laughs] And it’s like, right, okay, he’s doing an acrylic
painting, and that wet plastic doesn’t stay wet for long and he’s probably
mixed it up specifically to do a specific colour and effect and here’s Dave Sim
on the phone just, “Hey, Jim, what’s happenin’?” [laughs] Jim Steranko’s not a
“hey what’s happenin’” kind of guy that you would phone. But it definitely
warms the cockles of whatever passes for Dave Sim’s heart that he knows that
he’s got Jim Steranko’s phone number and could phone him whenever he manages to
work up the Dave Sim chutzpah to do that.
“So here's a question Dave might
consider answering, if it's not already in a commentary yet to be posted Dave:” [laughs] Yeah, it seems
like it would be pretty exhaustive. “What's Tom Orzechowski's role in the look
of these pages? Dave makes it seem as if Claremont placed the exposition boxes
and dialogue/thought balloons. Would that normally be the letterer's job, the
penciller/layout/artist's, or, as Dave... infers(? implies?) the author's?
Orzechowski's letters had by this point long been as much an identifying visual
element of Professor Claremont's X-comics as any Byrne/Austin or Cockrum-styled
art. So much so that I assume (infer?) that he could be trusted as much to make
those placement decisions as Wein to make hers. Anyway, my question at the top is
fishing for Dave to comment on Orzechowski's lettering in these specific comics
or in comics in general. I'm sort of reading along with Dave in a Comixology
edition of these New Mutants issues and just to underscore my point above, I'm
about to read the annual and it actually doesn't have Orzechowski lettering. It
makes the visual back to McLeod's art for that story even more jarring. It's
like looking at X-comics from Earth-Two or something.” To which I would add,
yeah, particularly coming in on the heels of the end of the Demon Bear saga,
where Bill doing such vivid and gripping operating room images [laughs] I think
Chris got carried away and went totally Dark Knight on what had happened to
Dani where she has a broken back, and she has this, and she has that, and she
has something else. And then she sort of just walking around in the Annual. And
even in the next couple of issues of the “New Mutants” after the Demon Bear
saga, the slumber party, she’s there in a wheelchair! And not really looking
that much worse for wear. It’s like, wait a minute, didn’t this person just
have a broken back? But yeah, getting to the Tom Orzechowski question, yeah,
the fact of it, Tom and Chris were working together symbiotically at that
point, where Chris, I think he would be in a situation by that point where
Chris and Tom working with John Byrne, or Chris and Tom working with Dave
Cochrum, or Chris and Tom working with Bill Sienkiewicz, it’s “Chris and Tom”.
It’s two sides of the same thing. Chris, knowing how Tom letters, would
probably be changing the way he letters on the pages to get closer to how Tom
sees things, and I think Tom, knowing how Chris writes, would be moving in the
same direction as well. This is, by that point, if Tom was lettering… [coughs]
excuse me…. an X-title, an X-comic, and Chris was scripting it, they would just
fall into the pattern they did working together. The same as a lead guitar
player and a bass guitar player who play in the same band and have played in
the same band for 15 years. They can go and play with whoever they want,
they’re going to drop into the pattern that they have with each other, which is
going to be very different with the pattern that they have working solo. And,
yes, I think that was a big part of the success of the whole X-Men franchise,
was, let’s keep these two guys together, and then anybody else coming in doing
their own stuff, at least it’s grounding it in the X-Men universe, in the
franchise. It looks like a franchise book. And I think that would be completely
unconscious. They may have had occasional conversations about it, but Chris,
when he was writing an X-title, I’m sure, was picturing Orzechowski’s lettering
even as he was writing it, and particularly when he was writing it on the page.
Where does Tom put his captions? What sort of caption boxes does he use to
convey different ideas? And not being a professional letterer, Chris would get
to play Tom Orzechowski while he was doing that. “Tom will make this 100%
Tom-like when he gets it, but I get to be Chis Claremont, Tom Orzechowski
fanboy, and riff on it.”
Dave: Okay!
Dave: Yeah, yeah. Well,
that’s one of those things. I think Tom Orzechowski lettering that issue at
that time would probably have been doing… oh wait, a minute! No, Steve Oliff
was the colourist.
Matt: Yeah.
Okay, Steve Peters asked, “Hey Dave: There's been something I've been
wanting to say re: "Women read minds" for a long time now. I don't
know if you share the Kingsley character's ideas on the subject, but I wouldn't
be surprised. I feel like I've probably experienced that phenomenon many, many
times, but there's one instance that has always resonated more than any other.
Like most red-blooded males, I have a tendency to check attractive women out
when they're not looking. There was one occasion, many years ago, in which I
was staring intently at a really hot woman who was walking ahead of me. Out of
nowhere, she suddenly whipped her head around, looked straight at me, and just
GLARED at me, really angrily, too.” NO! You don’t really do… I’m sorry, I’m just
being facetious here. “There was one occasion, many years ago, in which I was
staring intently at a really hot woman who was walking ahead of me. Out of
nowhere, she suddenly whipped her head around, looked straight at me, and just
GLARED at me, really angrily, too.” And I wrote next to that, “What were you
thinking?” And it’s like, I don’t mean, what were you thinking looking at her,
I think the pertinent element is, what were you thinking in your head about her
being a really hot woman? You don’t remember what you were thinking, because
whatever you were thinking got dislodged by the fact that she whipped her head
around, looked straight at you, and glared at you really angrily. I would be
willing to be that you were thinking something that was just WAY over the line, and thinking,
“well, I’m just thinking it. We’re not passing laws against thinking.” Well,
not yet, but we’re not a completely feminist society yet. Those links do take
place telepathically. Steve goes on, “I eventually learned to look away when
looking at a woman if one started to turn her head. As if I'd just been looking
around when she turned to look at me. And on some occasions I've seen them turn
and look at me out of the corner of my eye. It reminds of interviews I've seen
of women who were attacked by a stalker, and they talk about, say, walking down
a dark street or an alley and suddenly having the feeling of being watched.
What is that? How can they sense it? Beats me. I mean, I'm no stalker, just a
bit of a creep, perhaps, but I never had any intentions beyond looking. Yet it
still seems like some sort of self-preservation mechanism.” And, before we get
to Steve, I think you added, “This reminded me of Tracey Walter’s line from
Repo Man”?
Matt: Uhh, yeah. I sent something right before…
“#2 when will Cerebus Volume Eight be remastered? No need for specific
dates, but on the list of volumes cued up to be remastered you recited a few
Please Holds back, there was no mention of ‘Women’. Thanks for taking the time
to answer.” Yeah, I went and checked the list, and “Women” is not on the list.
I didn’t have time today to find out, “okay, what’s the ‘Women’ situation at
Diamond in terms of how many copies of ‘Women’ do they have available?” and I
think we have a few at the storage unit for Aardvark-Vanaheim, but not many of
them? That is a question that I will look into, and I will ask Sean Robinson.
“Am I just not remembering that ‘Women’ was already remastered, or is it
actually missing from the list and couple that with, how desperate is this situation
going to get?” I hope we never get as desperate a situation as we’ve got with
“Form & Void” where it’s been out of print way way too long and absolutely
zero copies available and a good five or six months at least until that one’s
coming back into print. Don’t want to be surprised with another book like that,
so I will… [laughs] I will go on a “Women” hunt over the next 30 days and find
out all the information that I possibly can and I will report next time what
the situation is with the “Women” trade paperback, and where it would be in the
batting order if it hasn’t been remastered, and which one it would be. It’s
still going to be “Form & Void” and “The Last Day”, will be the next two
trade paperbacks. Could “Women” be number three? Not really sure. We will find
out.
Matt: Uhh, yeah. I sent something right before…
________________________________
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/
_____________
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...
_____________
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 but slightly more expensive...I dunno why...)
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:
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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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Up to 35% off August 6-10, 21-24, & 29-31.*
*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...)
_______________
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
- 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
- JAKA 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:
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If you wanna support "local" Canadian publishers...
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Next Time: Jen's show is opening, so Me filling in.
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