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.
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And there was a Please Hold Pre-party?
Dave: Okay are we… are we set to go?
Matt: We are set to go, yes.
Dave: Alright. Okay. So, I think we’re gonna start with Rich L, this time, our resident Catholic in Peoria. Mr 153, who, as you were saying, Jeff Seiler is the only one who won’t run his question through, and now Rich is doing the same thing. Left a phone message. So…
Matt: He actually emailed me that he left a phone message.
Dave: Oh he emailed you the question at the same time?
Matt: Uh, he didn’t put the full question, but he did give me the gist of it.
Dave: Okay. Alright. Well, we can list to it right now. You haven’t heard it yet, but it’s on its way to you, Rolly’s got it, and he’s got Jeff’s question as well, so, here’s we go with Rich L’s question… which is basically a really, really short question. “How tall is Cerebus?”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So, um, okay. That sounds like a simpler question than it actually is, and that’s one of those things that I’ve never really talked about, or maybe I have! If I have talked about it I’m talking to the right guy about that, because you can say, “no, you did that in the Blog and Mail” however many years ago. “How is Cerebus?” Well, okay, the standard answer of course is three feet tall.But, one of the things I do know about Cerebus, and one of those things that I know about Cerebus and I don’t know how I know this about Cerebus, is if you snuck up behind him with a tape measure and put the one end and pulled it up all the way to the top of his head, exactly 36 inches. But, the moment that you let the tape measure snap back inside its housing and walk away, Cerebus would be taller than that.
Matt: Okay…
Dave: So it’s a fractal kind of thing. It’s a… if you’re measuring him, he’s 36 inches. If you’re not measuring him, he’s taller than that. And, I was going, “okay, how can I illustrate how I figured this out, or how I knew this?” The back cover of Cerebus #89 is “gone on tour” and it’s just three photos from the Aardvark Silver San Diego party that we had, which has Tony Basilicato, who created the Cerebus Muppet, the Cerebus Muppet, and Norma from Comics Nuff Said. It’s basically, Tony Basilicato hitting on Norma with the Muppet. The thing where people respond, women particularly, will take things from a Muppet that they would never take from a guy, but they just shift over mentally in terms of “she’s talking to the Muppet and the Muppet is talking to her” and she’s giggling and ya know, basically letting Tony say stuff to her that she wouldn’t ordinarily let Tony say to her. If you look at those photos, and you go, okay, let’s imagine that I’m looking at a Cerebus panel. Does Cerebus look to be the right size for Cerebus? Does he look three feet tall compared to the other people in the photo? And it’s like, mm, depends on which photo that you’re looking at. In one of the photos, he looks too small to be Cerebus, in one of the photos he looks too big to be Cerebus, and in one of the photos he looks just about the right size for Cerebus. Which is, I would maintain, one of those things that is what I’m talking about, which is that Cerebus is different sizes under different circumstances. To further illustrate that point, if you’re looking at the Cerebus Muppet, and I think there’s a few photos of the Cerebus Muppet out there, most people would look at and say, “well, it’s a little big for Cerebus. He’s only supposed to be three feet tall.” But I went and got my own tape measure, and the Cerebus Muppet is in the Cerebus Archive room here at the Off-White House and I took the tape measure, and I measured him, and Cerebus the Muppet is exactly 31 inches tall. So he’s actually five inches shorter than Cerebus is. And it’s like, that doesn’t make any sense, because Tony Basilicato was a huge Cerebus fan, knew that Cerebus was three feet tall, and had been making Muppets for Jim Henson and making Muppets with other people for however many years, he goes all the way back to the Sesame Street days. There was no way that he could not do a 36 inch tall Cerebus, but he ended up doing a 31 inch tall Cerebus. Never had a chance to talk to him about that, but it’s one of those, he either just fell under the spell of Cerebus and went, “oh I have to make him a little shorter than that because he’s never the size he is when you’re measuring him” or he got partway through the Muppet and went, “the Muppet just looks too damn tall at 36 inches, so I have to cut it down.”
Matt: Is he 36 inches from the floor to the top of his head, or 36 inches from the floor to the tip of his ears?
Dave: Uh, 36 inches from the floor to the top of his head.
Matt: So is the Muppet 36 to the top of his ears?
Dave: Mm, no. I don’t think the ears are five inches long. But that’s one of those, like you don’t measure ears if you’re measuring an animal, like is it this tall up to the top of its ears? No, the height is up to the top of its head.
Matt: I agree with ya, I know that Erik Larson has this problem with the Savage Dragon, and they’ll make him like six and a half, seven feet tall, and he keeps coming back with, “He’s less than six feet tall to the top of his head, the fin is another 12 inches.”
Dave: Right. [laughs] Right. Um, well that sort of ties in with “Spawn” 10 as well, where it’s like, Todd went, “well, if I’m gonna do Spawny and Cerebus together, Cerebus is gonna come up to just barely over Spawn’s knees, maybe up to mid-thigh. So I’ll just draw the bottom half of Spawn.” And it was a good sight gag, he was one of the first people to go, “well, no if I’m gonna draw Cerebus, I’m gonna draw him three feet tall relative to my character.” But at the same time, you picture a person who is six feet tall, who is just standing there. That’s a reasonably tall person. You don’t picture Cerebus being half of their height. Like half of their height, you would you picture them having Cerebus coming up to their waist. But it’s the… body proportions are different from that. Halfway up a human being isn’t there waist. Halfway up a human being is mid to upper thigh. So, that’s the most concise answer I can give to “how tall is Cerebus”. Like I say, one of the…
[beep]
Matt: Uh-oh!
Dave: Uhh, I think it’s one of those, “you’re not supposed to be talking about this” things. But you know me, and “you’re not supposed to be talking about this”. I, what the heck, at this point, I’m not real big on people telling me what I’m allowed to talk about and what I’m not allowed to talk about. Uh, so the point that I was about to make was that Jaka was the individual character that most clearly saw Cerebus as he was, and the reason for that was that Cerebus’ legs looked like Missy’s legs, and that was a DNA level, genetic thing for Jaka where she responded to that and not to what it was that her mind was showing her Cerebus appearing to be. Because that was one of those templates that anything that was Missy in her life was good, anything that wasn’t Missy was way down in the pecking order from there. So, consequently, when her genetic-level mind saw Cerebus, she saw Missy, at least from the waist down and that was what she responded to. So… all I can do is tell you what it is that I know about Cerebus and a few of the things are actually pretty weird, as you can tell.
Okay! Now, moving on to Jeff Seiler’s question, and we’ll have a listen to that one.
Jeff Seiler: …for uhh… well, you know what’s for. Um, I just woke up from a dream in which I was walking through a rough-hewn timbered house, much like Ger would draw. Had to climb a ladder to the second floor, ala Mesa Verde cliff dwelling, and when I got there I followed the hallway/walkway around two corners, and started to enter a room (my room?) when I encountered two long-robed goons. I only saw them from about the knees down. After I woke up, I realized that I was dreaming as Cerebus and those goons were Cirinists. Obviously that dream arose from my having read “Cerebus”, thus my question: of all of the Cerebus dreams and Mind Games issues, how many of those were based on your dreams? For instance, one could fairly easily interpret issue number 20 as arising from an LSD-based flashback. So, just curious, I think it makes for an interesting question. And my question number two will be in a few days, based on a, how do I put it, a suggestion from Steve Peters.
Dave: Okay! And as Jeff says, you could fairly easily interpret issue 20 as arising from an LSD flashback. You could, but you’d be wrong. The “Mind Games” issues, in particularly the first “Mind Game” issue isn’t in the same category as dreams. We’ll get to the dreams in a moment. Issue 20 was, and here I have to either coin a new term or try and explain it elaborately, that it involved contextual mind, where mind as opposed to thought, as opposed to brain, which is, to me, a separate context. And this was what I was documenting, fictionally, was, there were context, there was the Illusionist mind context and there was the Cirinist mind context, and Cerebus having been drugged had access to and inhabited both contextual realities. Which is one of the those, that gives you a good idea why you don’t want to drug Cerebus, because whatever result you think is going to happen, it’s going to be a lot more unpredictable than that. So, that was why I had the giant Cerebus pin-up, and the one context was inside Cerebus, which was cross-hatched grey areas, and the other context was the solid black surrounding it, because that’s another aspect of Cerebus’ nature where whatever they were trying to do by drugging Cerebus, all they did was divide him into the two contexts, and divided his mind context and divided his reality into the two contexts. Physically, he was just unconscious, he was exactly where he had been drugged, but… what he was inhabiting was unconscious mind would be the conventional way of explaining it, but super-conscious mind probably establishes more clearly what the concept was that I was trying for there. Again, that’s why you don’t want to drug Cerebus, because whatever effects that you thought that you’re going to have on him, all you did was divide his consciousness in a very inopportune way, and in a way that Cerebus was more comfortable with than either the Cirinists or the Illusionists, who were tapped into this. It was, Cerebus has figured out there’s two different contexts here, Cerebus can play off one against the other.
So, that’s what I’m trying to establish is, no, the “Mind Game” in issue 20 isn’t an acid flashback and is isn’t a dream, it’s completely different concept. In terms of Cerebus’ dreams, how many of them are dreams that I had, the answer to that one is none. When… Barry Windsor-Smith was the one who came up with “Cerebus Dreams” in “Swords” #5, which, as soon as I saw it, I thought,”that’s a great concept. I have to do something with that.” What was interesting out of that situation was when I did start doing Cerebus dreaming and doing Cerebus dreams, I was very much at sea, because it was… I have no idea what dreams are. I mean, I like to be well-studied in whatever it is that I was putting into the book at the time, and it seemed to me that, “well, okay, this is pretty basic stuff. All I have to do is figure out what Cerebus’ dreams are.” And as soon as I started going, “well, okay, what would Cerebus’ dreams be?” It was, “well, I don’t even know what my dreams are.” I know some of the qualities of dreams that are, I would say probably universal or if not completely universal pretty close to it, which is, what seems sensible while you’re dreaming, as soon as you wake up, you go, “well, no, that wasn’t sensible, that was crazy.” But in the dream, you don’t think it’s crazy, particularly there are situations where you’re home, and you’re walking upstairs in your home, and when you wake up, you go, “well, that wasn’t my home and that wasn’t my stairs. I have no idea what that was.” There’s lots of theories as to what dreams are, but really we’re no closer to know what dreams are or the form that they take, or what the principles are governing them, than we knew 800, 1000 years ago.
Rick Veitch is still pursuing the “Rare Bit Fiends” thing of keeping dream diaries and documenting the unconscious and super-conscious experiences that he’s having, and is getting pretty far advanced with it. I mean, there’s, at least the last “Rare Bit Fiends” that came in, had a lot of text in it, and he was using dream diary stuff and documenting dreams that he had had, that had far more Jungian aspects to them, where he’s gotten so completely immersed in, “okay, this is what this is. When you dream yourself in the opposite gender from your own, ya know, that’s anima and animus kind of stuff, and that has the this kind of significance. This is a spirit guide when this figure appears in your dreams”. I never really bought into that, because I think that that skews in the direction of, well if you read about it, you’re going to start dreaming, and if you start reading too much into it, I’ve always maintained with Rick that that gets way over into what I consider lotus-eating, where you’re drugging yourself instead of engaging with the world on its own terms. But that’s just differences in perspective. I mean, there’s no way that I’m gonna turn Rick Veitch, or Alan Moore, or Steve Bissette into devout monotheists, so they’re very very content way over there in whatever it is that they’re in the middle of that… well, everybody makes their own free will choice. I don’t think it’s a good free will choice, but it’s certainly becoming a more common free will choice. But in terms of doing Cerebus’ dreams, when I actually sat down and went, “okay, this is the section where I wanted to do a dream.” It seems false because when people fictionalize dreams they tend to have them dovetail whatever’s going on in their book or in their story. People dream about a fantastic form of whatever they went through that day. But if you sit down and look at your dreams, actually wake up and ya know, write a dream diary for even a few days, you’ll look at it and go, “no, that had nothing to do with what was going on in my life, has nothing to do with what is going on in my life, and if I keep reading it over the next three weeks, it’s not gonna turn out to be something that it was telling me was going to happen up ahead.” Those things do happen, when you immerse yourself in it. Rick Veitch has definitely had experiences of, “I dreamt this, and now I’m here enacting it. So that’s really cool”, and it’s like, well, I suppose so, I think there’s better uses for people’s time.
So, the short answer to your question Jeff, is no, none of the dreams were my dreams, and I never had the sense that I was doing what would actually have been Cerebus’ dream. I think in order to do accurate Cerebus dreams, I would have to understand Cerebus at a much deeper level than I do understand Cerebus, because that gets completely into unconsciousness and subconsciousness, and like I say, the problem with it was I don’t understand my own dreams in that I don’t understand what my unconscious or conscious mind is saying to me while I’m dreaming, so it’s very difficult to fictionalize that. And that was one of the situations where I definitely realized that I didn’t… it was impossible to know my character at a level where I would be able to do that and taught me that the same thing holds true for me. I only know my own mind and my own memories and my own instincts and my own connections and resonances to a certain level, to a certain point, and beyond that, to me, you’re getting into the omniscient territory. If you’re omniscient, then you know how all of these things interconnect. It’ll be interesting on Judgement Day to see how all of that plays out.
Any comments from you?
Matt: Well, a follow-up question is, has Cerebus ever appeared in your dreams that you remembered? Either as a character that you interact with, or do you have any memories of dreams about like writing and drawing the book where you woke up going, “no that’s not what’s gonna happen at all”?
Dave: Uh, yeah, I still have those dreams. Not dreams about interacting with Cerebus as a character, but dreams about still working on “Cerebus” and there’s still another six months to go [laughs] and Gerhard’s really really irritated because whatever it is that I’ve done he just doesn’t know what to do with it and I’m looking at it and I’m going, “I don’t know how to explain this and I don’t know what’s going on here.” Or it’s like I can’t go backwards, because I don’t do that on “Cerebus”. It’s all moving forward. How much room do I have left, and what am I going to do to fix whatever it is that I’m looking at that just isn’t working with six months or a year left to go on the book? I used to have those dreams when I was first on my own, and I think probably for the first 8 or 10 years after I dropped out of high school, where it was the worst of all possible worlds. It was the first day of school and my homework was late. And I had that dream constantly until at one point I had a dream where a teacher was telling me, “ya know, it’s the first day of school and where’s your homework?” and I went, “I got a comic book to draw, I don’t have time for this, I’m leaving” and I got up and left, and I’ve never been back in that situation again.
Matt: So, basically, you had the dreams where you have to finish this sketch of potato salad? [laughs]
Dave: No! No, it’s never a sketch, it’s always finished work…
Matt: I was referencing the dream Cerebus has in “High Society” after he talks to Jaka, where…
Dave: Oh yeah, yeah, I knew that that’s what you were saying.
Matt: Okay, just makin’ sure! [laughs]
Dave: Okay! Alright. No, that’s what’s interesting is it’s… I’m either… not done Cerebus and have no idea why it’s going off the rails and then having to sit down and start whiting stuff out and replacing it, and usually at that point, I wake up. Once I’m actually working on it, and I can’t even begin to figure out how to begin to fix what it is that I’m looking at, then I wake up, and I think that’s part of an inherent quality of dreams where it’s… the more micro you go in on something, the more apt you’re gonna go, “uhh, no, this isn’t real because I’m not following this.” The same as, I dream about Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette, and I’m in Vermont and they’re working on something, and they’re working on something with other guys in Vermont and they want to show it to me and they’re showing it to me, and I’m supposed to be doing something on it, and it’s like I have no idea what it is you’re talking about. I’m looking at it, and it’s really nice, [laughs] I wish you well with this, but I don’t think I can contribute to this. And it’s always a weird kind of convention setting, where that’s what we’re doing, we’re at a convention but we’re also producing some sort of joint project.
Matt: [stammers]
Dave: I send Rick my dreams anytime I have a particularly interesting comic book dream, so he’s got a backlog of those. If you contact Rick Veitch at Sun Comics and specific you’re looking for Dave Sim’s dreams, I think he’s probably got a few issues where he’s got some of those in there.
Matt: I frequently have the collector’s nightmare of I’m someplace, like a rummage sale or a comic convention, and there’s a dealer who has everything I could ever want and it’s ridiculously priced as far as it’s super cheap, and I gather up what I want and there’s always one more thing and I’m doing the math to figure out if I can afford it, and I look down and everything’s changed to something else, and I think, “is this a dream? No this can’t be a dream”, and then I’m gettin’ stuff, and for the second time I’m goin’, “is this a dream? No this can’t be a dream.” I’m like, “Wait a minute, what happened to that Captain Marvel figure I was just holding a second ago?” and that’s when I wake up, going, “why? Why do I have these nightmares?”
Dave: Really. Yeah, I still have that, where I’m looking at like old Superman comic books and going, “yeah, I don’t wanna start collecting again, but boy, I sure would like to have a copy of this, whatever it is.” Like “Superboy” #75 or something like that, and when I wake up, it’s like “Superboy” #75 doesn’t look remotely like that.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: And sometimes that happens to me in the dream, where I’m going, like, “No, I know what ‘Superboy’ #75 looks like. This isn’t it. Where did this person get these comic books that have all this wrong stuff in it? I mean, it’s a really nice Curt Swan cover, but it’s not ‘Superboy’ #75.” And usually I wake up, but before I figure out that I’m actually dreaming.
Uhh, you got here, “wishing Ben and Laura all the best and whatnot seeing as how they’re gonna be hitched when the videos go up on the YouTube on Saturday.” Yes, some honorable members, here here, here here. I… [laughs] Benjamin faxed me that he was shutting down operations at 4pm today. That was… he let me know this on Wednesday, so if I get the “Cerebus” #2 cover from Studio Comixpress and I have corrections, and I can get them to him before that he can do them. And it’s like I went, I vote that you shut everything down now, you’ve got three more sleeps until you’re married! You could at least devote 72 hours of your life to your wedding, and particularly recommended in this COVID-19 age where capacity for reception weddings is so diminished. Phone the people that would have had VIP seating and talk to them about weddings. What do they remember about other family weddings, and what do you remember about other family weddings? Get yourself into a wedding head space! You’re only gonna get married once. And this is, like I said, this is inside the three sleeps territory. So, yeah, Benjamin then faxed back, “well I’m glad that one of us has my priorities straight.” [laughs]
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: And that was it. He shut everything down after posting something to the “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” hardcover Kickstarter people, and good! Good. And I would recommend that to anybody. If you’re getting married and this COVID-19 nonsense is still going on, definitely phone and talk to your relatives, and don’t just phone and say, “hi, it’s Benjamin”, cause they’ll go, “oh hey, Benjamin! You’re getting married soon!” And then, you know, wander off and talk about Joe Biden or whatever else. Specifically talk about weddings! Specifically talk about family weddings, and weddings that you remember, and weddings that you don’t remember. And ask them if you can record it. “Can I record you talking about these weddings?” It’ll give it the significance that it should have instead of the significance that we’ve eroded into in the 21st century where, now when you’re walking down the aisle, you’re going, “wow! I’m participating in this family tradition stretching back over the decades that I already visited on the phone over the last couple of days, and which go back further than that; hundreds of years, thousands of years.” Get psyched! Get into a wedding head space. Also pretty cool that Laura’s first two “Cerebus in Hell?” issues, “The Unethical Cerebus” and “Strangers in Cerebus” have both just come out just as she and Ben are getting married.
Matt: That’s… Brian West. Ben and Laura were at the GemCon, or Gem City Con, a couple of weekends ago, and Brian West managed to go and so he got books signed by both of them. Got Cerebus head sketches on “Strangers in Cerebus” from both of them, and posted pictures, and they ended up on AMoC and I’m like… As I’m looking at the picture, I’m like, they’re not married yet, but they kinda have that “we’ve been together for way too long” look that most married couples get.
Dave: [laughs] Well, that’s the thing about living together before you actually get married. Definitely works better if you don’t do that, because then you’re really magnifying the event itself. I have no idea if they took my advice, but as soon as they told me that they were engaged and they set the date, August 7th, I said, “stop having sex with each other right now!” You will thank for me this come August because, ya know, you can’t actually have what the wedding night used to be, but you can get pretty close to it if you’re still young and lustful… and [laughs] it’s been a while since you’ve been there. We will try not to be anymore indelicate than that. Uhh, you got something more to add to that?
Matt: Uh, really quickly, one of my best friends was getting married and he wanted me to stand up at his wedding, and when I got to the ceremony, he’s like, “we don’t have an organist, but I have the music on my iPhone, I need you to sit here and press play on these tracks” and he gave me a little list, and I’m like, “I have to deejay the actual ceremony?” And he’s like, “yeah! Yeah yeah yeah.”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: So we did the ceremony, got to the reception, and I’m like, “so what are you doing afterward?” And he’s like, “I’m going back to the hotel room and having sex with my wife!” And I’m like, “oh yeah, I guess I drove eight hours to hang out with my wife and not see my friend. This wasn’t really well thought out on my part.” [laughs]
Dave: Right. Right, exactly. As David Lee Roth said… what is it? “The bad news is we’ve lost our way, the good news is we’re way ahead of schedule.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay! Let’s move on to John Wares(?), “Hi, do you know if “the last day and form and void” will be reprinted soon or if there are already some copies available, could you please tell me where I could find them ? Thanks in advance. A fan of your website from Italy.” And, wow! That’s very impressive, John. I’m very impressed that you’re joining us from Italy. The answer to your question is “The Last Day”, in terms of in the Aardvark-Vanaheim inventory, Diamond still has it listed, but I don’t know what the story is with Diamond on “The Last Day”. I think they ordered too few copies, when they do order them they order like 47 or 48 and we send them the 47 or 48 and before I know it, I got people going, “Can you tell me where I can get ‘The Last Day’?” and Eddie Khanna’s faxing me the Diamond inventory list, which he does, and thank you, Eddie, every Sunday, and “The Last Day” is still sold out. “The Last Day” is still sold out. “The Last Day” is still sold out. I don’t want to tell Diamond their business, but I think the people who are drifting back to “Cerebus” and are getting nostalgic about “Cerebus”, some of them never made to the end, are definitely interested in finding out how “Cerebus” came to end. So the short answer on “The Last Day” is, I’ve got copies here. If you want to buy a “Last Day”… [laughs] And you have to be from Italy. I mean, you can’t be from Toronto or Mississauga or something like that. So, the situation with getting a copy from Italy would be make a donation at CerebusDownloads.com. Let me know that you made a donation, and you’re gonna have to guess. You’re gonna have to say, “okay, what does it cost to get a copy of ‘The Last Day’ from Canada to Italy?” and look at what the cover price is on “The Last Day”. Add those two together, and that’s how much you pay, and I’ll be happy to send you a copy of “The Last Day” if Diamond still doesn’t have it in stock. [laughs] As soon as I get a purchase order from Diamond for “The Last Day”, and Rolly’s gone to the storage unit and pulled out that many copies, taken them to Packaging Too and they’ve packaged them up, and they’re on the way to Olive Branch, Mississippi, then I’m gonna say, “okay, now they’re available from Diamond, so I’m not selling them to you directly. You’ll have to find a store and just say, ‘can you order me ‘The Last Day’.” [laughs] You’ll probably have the store going, “No, we keep trying to order ‘The Last Day’ but they’re always sold out.’” If I tell you that they’re not sold out, they’re on their way, I’m not lying to you. So, on “The Last Day”, that’s a blanket thing. And the same in North America. You can always contact Escape Pod Comics and… Menachem is our Cerebus trade paperback supplier, definitely in the United States, and he will supply Canada as well. If there’s a Cerebus trade paperback you can’t get, Menachem will get it for you. So those are your two options on that one.
“Form & Void”… [laughs] We’re definitely… it’s been out of print for way, way too long, and unfortunately, it’s the Ernest Hemingway parody, so all the Ernest Hemingway fans who are finding out about Ernest Hemingway in the comics, and this is the most realistic portrayal of Ernest Hemingway in the comics, Ham Ernestway. Not only does Diamond not have any, not only do I not have any, but when they’re on… anytime they come up on eBay… I just got a letter from a guy today saying, ya know, he’s started reading “Cerebus”, he’s immersed in “Cerebus”, and wanted to make sure he had all of the trade paperbacks while he was reading, realized that “Form & Void” is just up ahead, went, “okay, I have to buy a ‘Form & Void’.” And then, found out that the cheapest “Form & Void” that he could find online was $100. And, as of course, as soon as he paid the $100 for the “Form & Void” and got it, another guy that he had bought another trade paperback from wrote him and said, “are you missing any other ‘Cerebus’ trade paperbacks, cause I’ve got a bunch of them here.” And he’s like, “yeah, well, I did need ‘Form & Void’”, and the guy had ‘Form & Void” for $30. So, that’s one of those, we’re working on it as fast as we can. It’s been remastered by Sean, I’ve already decided that I’m just gonna print the 1000 copies and Diamond will have access to them with the previous order code. Dagon will do a hardcover of “Form & Void”. That should be probably after the “Cerebus” #2 Kickstarter, but before the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” #8 Kickstarter, and that’s as much as I can narrow that one down. So, “The Last Day”, I can help you out. There’s a few hoops that ya…
[bee-boop]
Dave: You hearing this?
Matt: Let’s try this again! [laughs]
Dave: Let’s try this again. I think we had exhausted John W’s question there, so that’s the answer to him. I’ll be happy to sell you a “Last Day” or your local comic shop will be happy to get you a “Last Day” soon as Diamond has a “Last Day”. “Form & Void”, keep watching A Moment of Cerebus, and before you know it, six months from now, eight months from now, a year from now, a year and a half from now… there it will be, and available.
And Dan asks, and I have to apologize to Dan. I’m pretty sure he asked this last time and I missed--
Matt: He asked this in April of 2021, I have the answer with the transcript, and I’m just gonna put that from the transcript up so we can… Dan sent me an email, going, “oh, if it’s already been asked, then we can skip it.”
Dave: Okay. Alright, well, we can skip it, but he does say… well, just to let everybody know, “Did the continent of Africa always exist within the world of Cerebus, or was it retroactively added in later?” Uhh, answer to that is, that’s an existential question. Does Europe exist for Dave Sim until Dave Sim actually goes there? “My guess is that it's former for a couple reasons. The first being The Judge's mention of not being able to swing a dead cat in Jerusalem, and the second being Pud Wither's attempt to call Oscar a sodomite. If those places (Jerusalem and Sodom) didn't exist beforehand, how else could the characters reference them?” Uhh, yes, that’s a very interesting point. But at the same time, neither Jerusalem or Sodom is in Africa. Ba-dum-bump.
Matt: He did post a clarification, because, I forget who it was, somebody commented of, “wait a minute, I’m missing the joke. Those aren’t in Africa.” And he posted a follow-up going, “Well, I should so Africa and the Middle East.” And I just didn’t get the chance to correct it.
Dave: Okay. Alright! Okay, and again, apologies Dan, I had no idea that that question went back to April, but I pictured you asking it through clenched teeth, like, “What does it take to get an answer around here?”
Randal H asks, “ I read last year that your hands were crippled up to the point where you cannot draw. Was that true? How are they now?” It’s not really the hands, plural, and it’s not the right hand, it’s the right wrist. And it’s not really a ‘crippled’ problem, it’s… if I overdo drawing, and overdoing it is definitely way way way below the level I was drawing at when I was doing “Cerebus” and “Glamourpuss” and everything else, then I start getting something taking place inside the wrist that distracts me from being able to focus on the drawing. So, most of the situation is, trying to avoid whatever that syndrome is getting into the joint again. If I can keep it to the outside of the wrist, the outside part of where the wrist connects to the hand, and maintain it there, then I can’t draw to the ability to I used to, but giving it a lot of rest in between jobs, I’m still able to draw. Which, I wasn’t able to do back in 2016, 2017, 2015. At that point, when I was starting to do “Cerebus in Hell?” and mocking up the strips, it was all I could do to do a word balloon and have it actually look like a word balloon. So that was a very good test, took about a year and a half, two years, until I could do a word balloon the way that I used to. Just free hand, an oval with the pen. And then more capabilities started coming back. I can do finer lines, I can do tapered lines, I can do textured lines, brush strokes. At this point, I’m doing more work on “Strange Death of Alex Raymond” and “Cerebus in Hell?”, which are both paste-up, which is actually therapeutic. And doing, really, as little drawing as possible to see if, okay, I’ve been resting it. Instead of resting it, why not just not use it whatever for drawing as much as possible for as long as possible, because I’ve got all of this other work to do, and just visit it. So, as an example, the second “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” #8 cover I’ve had half-finished for a while and haven’t gone back to it. But I also did a “Cerebus” #1 cover for the “Cerebus” #2 Kickstarter for the people buying for the first time, will be able to get the #1 and the #2. And just trying to learn to do dead-hand inking. Don’t bear down on it, and go, “the brush line has to go exactly where I want it to go. The pen line has to go exactly where I want it to go.” I did a “Jack Grimm” cover for Gary Boyarski on that basis where, [laughs] it’s a freebie for Gary so it really doesn’t Matt:er what it looks like, let’s go completely dead on it. Which I did, dead-hand and just doodling. Like I’m just doodling a cover, I’m not drawing a cover. And it came out really good, so that’s when I went, okay, let’s do that, but let’s do it for a money cover, like “Cerebus” #1. And that went really good, and that was a couple of weeks ago, so now I went, okay, let’s leave it alone again. I’ve got “Strange Death of Alex Raymond” work to do, I’ve got left-handed typing to do, I’ve got “Cerebus in Hell?” to do. So, I appreciate you asking about it. As I say, it was never crippled up to the point where I couldn’t draw, it was… my hand/wrist eye coordination, I couldn’t get things to go where I wanted them to go and all I could do was focus on what was going on inside of the wrist. Hopefully that’s the in review mirror now, and God-willing I won’t have to revisit that.
“Friend to the Blog,” well said, “and runner of a new Kickstarter for his band, The Fright Watch, Steve Peters asks.” Have you looked at Kickstarter for “Fright Watch”?
Matt: Uhh, I’ve been sharing the link, I think the last update that he said was he’s halfway to his goal. I think he’s only trying to raise like $2000 or less?
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I think he said that yeah, he’s halfway there as of today?
Dave: Good! Good. While we’re talking about Steve Peters, since he’s gonna be part of this Please Hold for Dave Sim, can we illustrate it with the cover to his “Parallel Comicverses” trade paperback digest? Did you see that, have you read that one yet?
Matt: Yeah, I got that one. I backed that Kickstarter.
Dave: Yeah. That was one of those, man it took him forever to do that, but it was definitely worth the trip. I’ve got a couple of Weekly Updates coming up where I’m gonna talk about it, and it does have the “Descriptive Cerberus Conquers the Universe” that I wrote, that Steve Peters paid me to do for that book. And I’m still very very proud of that story, and I drew it for Steve Peters, I know he’ll be able to knock this out of the ballpark just the way I know how his stories go and how he draws them. So, this’ll have perfect tone for Steve Peters’ work, and it was definitely a trip getting the digest in and going, “Oh, here’s where it fits.” And the elaborate, elaborate work that he did on the other parts of that, that’s the reason that Steve only does a finished piece of work every few years, but it’s always worth waiting for.
Matt: I actually own the original page for the “Latter Day” page with Cerberus doing the “pretty flowers, pretty sunsets”, and then I also have the “Melmoth” page.
Dave: Good! What did you pay for that, out of those? I’m curious.
Matt: I can’t remember… I think it was around $100 or $150 on the Kickstarter? Cause, he was doing a Kickstarter and it was, I forget what Kickstarter it was, but if you did… No, no, I take it back, the first one it was, he was doing a Kickstarter and he was short like $200 from his goal with a day to go, and I’m like, I have the money, I just upped my goal, and he’s like, “Well, thanks so much, what’s your favorite ‘Cerebus’ page?” And I gave him like four options, and “darr, pretty flowers” was #1, and he went, “that’s perfect.” And I didn’t know about “Cerebus Conquers the Universe” yet, and apparently, you guys had already started the process when he did this page. And then for the next Kickstarter he was doing, I think it was for the “Parallel Comicverse”, where it was, he had different phonebooks listed and you could get a page with whatever page you wanted from that phonebook.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And it was another one where I went, I’ll do “Melmoth” cause I like “Melmoth”, and he’s like, what page would you like, and I went through the phonebook and pretty much said, “this page has Cerebus and other people, this page has Cerebus and other people” and gave him a list of like 15 or 20 options, and he responded, going, “well, thank you, this will be a lot easier to do now.”
Dave: Alright, right. Well, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah, I definitely appreciate with Steve did on that, and I hope more people buy a copy of it. Watch for me on the Weekly Update holding it up next to my face, which, it’s small enough, it’s just about the same size as my face. Uh, anyway, “I wanted to ask…”, go ahead?
Matt: The other neat thing about the original pages is, the original pages, the text is in English, and in the book he made up the alien language, so the pages in the book are the alien language. He also sent me copies of his handwritten alien language.
Dave: Yes. Oh right? [laughs] Okay. Yeah, he did the cover of issue 186, and actually redrew all of the wallpaper. Like he didn’t just Photoshop it from a copy of the book, and it’s like, well that’s impressive. Anyway, he says, “I wanted to ask about Superman as comic book messiah.” Um… I have some problems with what he’s saying here, so I’m gonna interrupt at the end of the each of his sentences and qualify it as much as possible. Like I say, he asks, “I wanted to ask about Superman as comic book messiah.” I would think that Superman was more the Mashiach, as Jews understand the Mashiach, which tends to be what you see in the Book of Judges, that the pattern appeared to be that every 20 years or 40 years, God or YHWH, or God and the YHWH, the Jewish people would get themselves into terrible troubles by being disobedient and backsliding and whatnot. And God or YHWH would send a savior/protector who would bail them out, and then judge Israel for 20 years, 40 years, something like that, it would specify. Superman seems particularly like Samson, who is included as one of the Judges in the Book of Judges, and is definitely the weirdest Judge that you can imagine, particularly the Samson and Delilah plot that even people who don’t know the Bible know Samson and Delilah. Particularly with the fact that Samson has super strength, and that he also has the Achilles’ Heel, which was, if you have the hair off of his head, because he was a Nazarite, then that would sap him of all his strength, then he would be a completely ordinary man. Which also ties in with the non-biblical, but culturally significant, Jewish Golem, which is probably more what Siegel and Shuster were thinking about, or Jerry Siegel was thinking about when he created Superman, the Golem. I qualify that because, when you ask about the Messiah, I think that we’ve got a consensus on the Christian side and the Muslim side, that Jesus was the Messiah. The description of Jesus in the Koran is definitely the Synoptic Jesus, not the Johannine Jesus. I don’t think it’s right as a society to automatically disqualify, particularly as North Americans tend to do, the idea that the Mashiach hasn’t gotten here yet. [laughs] It’s like, the Jewish people try to be very polite about that, but it’s like, “uhh, no we have a pretty good idea of what it is that we’re looking for. It’s gonna be somebody like the guy in Judges, it’s gonna be like Judas Macabee, but he’s not gonna sign a non-aggression pact with the Romans. We’ll let ya know, the moment that the Mashiach shows up, we’ll know, and we’ll let everyone else know.” No, Jesus isn’t the Mashiach. He’s interesting, he’s definitely a miracle worker, he’s definitely a teacher, blah blah blah blah blah, but he’s not the Mashiach, so.. The Jewish aspect of Dave Sim’s religious faith bristles when it gets to saying Messiah and the assumption being, “okay, when you say Messiah, you mean Jesus.” Well, not if you’re Jewish.
Yes, see, in the next sentence, Steve says “Though comparing Superman to Jesus is nothing new, someone brought it up recently and I started thinking about it in ways I hadn't before. It occurred to me that he died and rose from the dead IN OUR LIFETIMES.” And it’s like… hmm, okay. We gotta stop there again. [laughs] It’s like, he didn’t die in our lifetime. Newsflash, the year is 2021 and he died 2000 years ago, which I have to qualify that as well and say he died and was resurrected and don’t really know if he then died again, or if he just went away. Or if he was taken up to Heaven like Elijah in a chariot of fire. The Synoptic Jesus, there’s definitely, I forget which of Matt:hew, Mark, and Luke the ending has it of Jesus ascending into Heaven. The Johannine Jesus refers to, “and if you should see the son of the man rising up from where he was the former, what would you say at that point”, It’s like, he knew that the Synoptic Jesus was going to enact that, but the Johannine Jesus just has the interaction with the disciples on the beach in chapter 21, and then either leaves, or disappears? It’s very hard to tell, because the Johannine Jesus tends to do that. I mean he… ya know, they’re just about to stone him to death and then he just slips away, he just leaves the temple, or gets away from the crowd, and it’s very hard to picture that. Well, if you’re the focus of attention, and there’s this giant crowd around you, how do you get away from a crowd that’s about to stone you to death? And that’s never answered, but seems to be an attribute of the Johannine Jesus. But, as far as I’m concerned, no, that didn’t happen in our lifetime, that happened 2000 years ago.
Matt: I think Steve meant Superman.
Dave: What’s that?
Matt: I think Steve meant Superman in that sentence, that Superman died and was resurrected in our lifetime.
Dave: Uh, okay, well that happened multiple times [laughs] it’s like, there was one time when it was a really big deal with black plastic bags and everything like that. Okay, “He was ‘born’ long before we were, but we were witnesses to his ‘resurrection’. It had to have been a momentous thing to have been alive when Jesus died.” And it’s like, uh, yes, I can definitely agree with that. I think the most momentous thing was the resurrection of Lazarus, because that was something that a large crowd did observe. I mean, everybody was there consoling Martha and Mary about the loss of Lazarus. Lazarus had been dead for four days and entombed, and the Johannine Jesus resurrected him from the dead. “Lazarus come hither” and Lazarus came out from the tomb. You want to talk about momentous? I mean, there you are, you’re not from around here. You’re Jesus, you’re not from Bethany but you’ve been to Bethany several times and you know Lazarus and Martha and Mary and everybody is consoling them about the loss of their brother, and come to meet Jesus with Mary, like a whole crowd of them, and then they all go to the tomb, and here comes Lazarus out of the tomb. And then, Jesus, ya know, doesn’t stick around after that, but he does come back for the dinner where Lazarus is sitting at dinner. And what’s really interesting about that part of the story is that we don’t find out anything about Lazarus. It’s like, what did he say about being dead? What did he say about being resurrected? Or did he say anything? How long did he live after that? I’ll be getting to that in one of my Monday Reports way way up ahead, because that’s, as I say, Chapter.. what is that? Chapter 12. 11, 12.
Okay, getting back to Steve, “This got me thinking about a scene from the movie Waking Life. A character mentions that sci fi author Philip K. Dick wrote that we were living in the year 50 A.D. in the events of the Book of Acts. Jesus was crucified just recently, and his return is imminent.” Yeah, see, I would take issue with that, that he would have been crucified probably in the late 30s AD, is that recently, in 50 AD? I suppose so. We’re in 2021, is 2008 recently? For a lot of people it would be ‘recent’ in quotation marks. And his return is imminent? That’s another one of those aspects of, certainly at the time of his ministry, and the time of his crucifixion, and the time of his resurrection, that was the impression that was being made, was imminent as we understand it. Like, this is probably gonna happen tomorrow, or next week, or a month from now at the most. Even taking this at face value, that we’re all living in 50AD, it was still another 20 years before Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans. The imminent return as conveyed to people was definitely, ya know, it didn’t sound like it was gonna take 20 years, it sounded like it was gonna happen any minute now. And I always take that as God’s timetable. If you’re God, 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years, 2000 years, it’s all pretty much imminent compared to the life of a star or the life of a galaxy.
“The passage of time over the last 2000 years is an illusion created by the demiurge to fool us; in reality we are still living under Roman rule.” See, that’s one of those, it’s interesting that you would mention that, because Ward Greene does the same thing in “Rip Kirby”, the section where I’m documenting what I see Ward Greene is doing, and attempting to do, and achieving, comes at the end of the section that I’m working on now, and it’s the same kind of thing. Progressive, feminists, pagans, all are definitely obsessed with the events of Jesus’ life and the sequence, and they’re really desperate to get that view different which they can revisit it and we all have to revisit it and go through it again, and it’s like, no, no. You had your chance, everything happened and unfolded exactly the way it did. There’s certainly things that you could’ve done better for the pagan cause, but you’re up against God. It’s going to unfold the way God wants it to unfold and it’s going to unfold in such a way that you’re going to have to have an omniscient level of intellect to even keep up let alone be able to revisit the outcome.
“It also got me thinking that Superman's death is a reenactment of the Jesus story, a ripple through time that repeats itself, like Alan Moore's idea that the Ripper murders resonate forwards and backwards through time.” Yes. That definitely happened. Superman and Philip K Dick’s work, and my Cerebus, and all of those things, I mean we’re still living in Christendom. It’s definitely taken some body blows in the last 50, 60 years to say the least, but we’re still living in Christendom so it’s almost impossible for people still living in that context to actually create anything that isn’t Christian in nature and doesn’t have Christian elements in it. You can try to, but that was part of the point, as far as I can see, that the redeeming power of God’s Christ redeemed everyone in spite of themselves because it was that all-encompassing and was specifically designed by God to do that. It’s one of the core elements of God’s clockwork mechanism and I assume it enacts itself on every habitable planet, whatever it’s habitable by, when the time comes. That you have to earn over the course, in the case of our planet, 4000 years of doing religious faith wrong and not getting it as right as you could, and then you earn a Jesus, and then dealing with that for 500 years and not screwing that up totally, then you get a Mohammad. And then, after that, everything else is just everything else. That’s my take on it, and all of those things are going to, yes, resonate forward and backward through time. That’s one of the things that I’m documenting in “Strange Death of Alex Raymond.” Why did Alex Raymond die in this really weird, grisly way? And it’s like, well, because he deserved it. To explain that, I have to document pages and pages and pages of forward and backwards in time and how I see the clockwork mechanism working.
“I also realized that like Jesus, Superman had Jewish "parents"---Joe and Jerry instead of Joseph and Mary.” [laughs] I’ve never seen that one before, and that’s a good one. That’s a good one, yes. It definitely seems to me that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were in one of those God’s clockwork mechanism substantial pockets. It’s like, you have no idea what it is you’re creating here, you just want to create a comic strip that you will be able to do the way that Alex Raymond is doing “Flash Gordon”. That was as high as their perspective went, imagine being Alex Raymond, and imagine having your own “Flash Gordon”. And it’s like, mmh, you’re actually much closer to the source of all this and to the crux of all this than “Flash Gordon” or Alex Raymond ever hoped to be. But that hasn’t hatched out yet, and you won’t really be there when it does, it’ll just look like an inexplicable event. But you guys are right on the golden spot for all of this. The same as I definitely got a golden spot for Cerebus, but it wasn’t the golden spot that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got.
“Any thoughts about the Superman story being a reenactment of the New Testament?” Again, I don’t think that you can avoid that. There’s definitely theories out there that there are only a half dozen stories and every story is just a different permutation of that. I think even those half dozen stories are just permutations of the primary story of creation and redemption, the promise of redemption and free will as a redemption choice. Starting with the Big Bang and enacting itself from there, and in the same sense that I forget how many giant suns were created after the Big Bang, the first major consolidation. I think there’s five of them? A half dozen of them? Yeah, those are the prime primary stories that everything is a permutation of, but those five suns are all just permutations as well of the Big Bang. God is, and his works are, very very very very very very big. Unimaginably big. And permutate everything, even in our own culture. It was only with the advent of movies, and popular music, and radio, and television that… we got knocked askew from that. People knew the difference before that. Like, this is religion, this is Christianity, this is God, this is Jesus, this is the Blessed Virgin, this is Christian doctrine. Entertainment is just entertainment, and is at a much much much much lower level and we’re in one of those time periods where we decided to confuse ourselves and to believe that popular culture is somewhere on the same chessboard with this. And it’s like, mmh. To me, you’re already steering yourself in the wrong direction, if that’s your impression.
And then Matt says, “Superman is Moses. Quit trying to make him a Christian, Goyim! But seriously, Superman DOES have Moses’ backstory (to a point), so any modern-day addition of Christian symbolism is… I dunno. Steve didn’t ask ME…” [laughs] I thought that was funny. So… yeah, it’s, again, there are primary stories, and the problem with drawing analogies like that is, Moshe was drawn out of the river and given to Pharaoh's daughter and his sister said, “ya know, I can find a woman to nurse this child for you.” So, he was raised as an Egyptian, but was definitely nursed by his Jewish mother, that really doesn’t have an analogy with Superman. It’d be like comparing Ma Kent to Pharaoh’s daughter, and those two definitely don’t hook up in any way that I can see. So…
Matt: I actually have a book, I found it, I think, at Goodwill years ago and I bought it thinking it was something completely different, and it’s called “The Gospel According to Superman” and I’m going, okay, this is wacky, I need to buy this. And I read it, and it’s actually a… it was put out by a religious publisher and it was, at the time, the assertion was that Superman was created to supplant Christ and here, as a pastor, is how you can stop people from doing that. And I’m reading it, going, these people never a read a Superman comic! [laughs]
Dave: Right. Right. Yeah, that’s one of those… I remember that it was quite a stir when “The Gospel According to Peanuts” came out, which was in the mid-1960s, and it was one of those, yeah I understand what you’re trying to say, ya know, we have to make the church, and we have to make Christ, and we have to make God relevant to a new generation of people who have been reared on pop culture. And it’s like, mhm. You go too far over in that direction, and as I’ve been fond of saying, if you can see Satan from where you are, you’re too far away from God. So, [laughs] time to go back in the other direction.
Matt: Right.
Dave: Michael Grabowski asks, “Greetings! If it's going to be quite some time before the remaining/unpublished remastered traditional volumes of Cerebus will be available through Diamond, is it possible to use Kickstarter to fund limited printings of them just for backers as is done with the CANs? I understand that multiple projects are already in the crowdsource queue, but would you consider testing this out with Melmoth, perhaps, after the Waverly F + V hardcover?” Uh, I got a phone message from Rich L talking about a $200 hardcover, and I think you’ve been talking with him about that. A few people have been picking up on that, trying to figure out, A) is it possible to do something that’s just for the core insiders? And B) how do we get the price down to something sensible? What’s the progress on that?
Matt: Uhh… Yep. Not a lot.
Dave: Right.
Matt: I mean, it’s, everybody goes, “the Waverly Regency was too expensive, ya know, we need to get the price down” and it boils down to, Marvel can do a bigger book for cheaper, but that’s because they’re Marvel and they’re printing 10,000, 20,000, whatever.
Dave: Right.
Matt: The economy is a scale. Aardvark-Vanaheim is not gonna make 15,000 copies of a book to get the price down to what somebody wants to pay for it.
Dave: Right, yeah. I mean, it’s one of those… and also, if you get down to the ridiculous extreme of the smallest print run, and you go, okay, we’ve got 6 people here, each of them willing to kick in $500 to get one of these six books, and the printing bill is gonna be $3000 [laughs] I don’t really have much of a motive on my part. It’s like, well, okay, you haven’t factored in anything being paid to Aardvark-Vanaheim or Dave Sim, and you’re barely going to be able to afford this, and you’re going to take $3000 out of the Cerebus economy. So, I think the short answer to it is, everyone who’s interesting, stay in touch with each other, and do the research that you can do to figure out, is it possible to do something like this, and what is it that we want to do? I mean, that’s the other problem, is I think this came out of the Jesse Lee Herndon transcripts, wasn’t it? Doing like a book of Please Hold for Dave Sim transcripts, and it’s like, well if a Cerebus fan was gonna spend $500 on something, it wouldn’t be that. There would be something else that they would be interested in. A three volume complete Notebooks, or something like that.
Matt: Or the back of a book CD-Rom searchable text project that people were working on a while back, of all the Notes of the President, all the Aardvark Comments, all the essays in the back, all the previews. Ya know, there’s people who want that as a volume, and it’s like, it’s just not gonna happen.
Dave: Yes. It’s one of those, you could maybe do it digitally, and it would require an enormous amount of volunteer working, saying, we know the giant pit that we’re having to dig here, and we only have so many shovels, so everybody just has to be shoveling as fast as they can to get all of this in one place and then make it searchable, but it’s going to be a complete altruistic, “we’re doing this just because we want this to exist” and that’s where the expense comes in. Now, how many hours is everybody willing to put in to get that done? There’s only so many hours of the day, only so many hours in a week, a month, a year, the lifetime. We’re all finding that out. You can have the best will in the world, but when it comes to actually executing it, man, there’s just not enough hours in the day. So, short time, it… the Cerebus fans who are mad keen about hardcovers and everybody knows that I’m not a hardcover guy, it’s like, that’s gonna be blindsiding you frequently enough where there’ll be the Waverly “Form & Void” hardcover, there’ll be Benjamin Hobbs “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” hardcovers, and those will just come along. And it’ll be, okay, everybody that wants one of these, this is what it’s gonna cost, and be careful what you wish for.
Matt: The Please Hold transcript book, where I’m not at the point of looking to get it printed, I’m still, ya know, mentally assembling it and then it’s, I have to go through, read the transcripts, make sure there’s no errors, format them, and then Amazon does print on demand, and I was gonna see, okay, what does it take to get into that, and basically it would be, somebody orders the book off Amazon, and they print it, ship it. And you’re gonna get a one one printing of whatever book it is, whenever you want the book. And it’s one of those, I know that there’s things that I have to do to get it done, but it’s like, I’m not there yet, so I’m not gonna worry about distributing the book I haven’t written.
Dave: Right. Right. I mean, the closest analogy that I’m aware of, personally, is, Sandy Atwell doing his Malcolm X book, which was all of Malcolm X’s speeches transcribed. And he actually transcribed all of them, and is still finding new material all the time, but when he did finally get all or close to all of it done, it was this two giant books, two or three inches thick. And it’s definitely a worthwhile thing. I’m inclined to contact him and go, now that you’ve got it, like he got hardcovers printed up for himself and got hardcovers printed up for a couple of other people… that is something that I would like to have for the Cerebus Archive, but it’s not something that I would ever even sit down and read. If I was gonna reread Malcolm X I would barely have time to read his autobiography, as opposed to, okay, here’s all of the speeches that he gave for the Nation of Islam and here’s all of the speeches that he gave after he left the Nation of Islam. They would definitely be interesting. I wish I had that kind of time, but that was a labour of love on Sandeep’s part, was, this is what I want to do, this is what I’m going to do. No one could have ever paid him enough to do that with something that he wasn’t interested in, and it really came down to, he’s not got those two volumes on his bookshelf. “There, I did that.” Ya know, is a legend in the Malcolm X context of, you want to know what Malcolm X actually had to say and who he actually was, get this guy’s two books, he’s completely out of the way. He’s not getting in the way of Malcolm X, everything is just exactly what Malcolm X had to say. [laughs] I really don’t think we’re at that point with Dave Sim, although the people who are listening to the sound of my voice, have been listening to the sound of my voice for almost two hours now, well, okay, there’s a few of them! There’s a few of them.
Uhh, Jen DiGiacomo! Hello, JDG. Asks, “Dateline: February 18, 1983” [makes newsflash alert noises] “A letter from one Dave Sim was published in Comics Buyer's Guide #483 and reads as follows, ’I am interested in trading Cerebus original artwork for pre-1942 DC superhero comics starting with Action no. 1 (anyone interested in the artwork for two complete issues? three?)’” That was actually a reasonable offer to make in 1983, that would actually have gotten you, potentially an “Action” #1 if you were a Cerebus fan and an “Action” #1 owner. “’If this offer tempts anyone, please let me know, okay?’ Did anything ever come of this?” First question, uhh… yes, there were, not from the actual Buyer’s Guide, but it was one of those offers that I would make. I would do signings at stores and they would have Golden Age books and since I knew that the store owner’s having me in the store he’s already a Cerebus fan, “hey, you got a…” I did trade for a “Detective” #32, which was in really nice condition, which is like the 5th, 6th, Batman comic, didn’t have Batman on the cover. “Are you interested in trading for ‘Cerebus’ artwork?” And it’s like, “uhh, sure.” Well, okay, my artwork was going for $100 a page at the time, I think he had a $300 price on the book. So, “you let me know what three pages ‘Cerebus’ pages you want and I’m walking out of here with ‘Detective’ #32 in really really good condition”, which I never would have actually paid for. “What precipitated your offer?” Uh, comic book addiction. I was a major DC Comics fan and I only owned at any given time, when I was collecting the first time, pre-1942. My cutoff was Pearl Harbor, anything published before Pearl Harbor that had a DC superhero in it. It was finite but very very expensive. I only had a “Batman” #7, “Superman” #10. So it was, okay, I do have monetary instruments here that I didn’t have at that time, and let’s see how many of these that I can get. Like she says, what precipitated your offer? It was the addiction of going, I can actually own those books that I could never actually have before, except the one or two that I could afford that I bought very very early on. And then I had a bureau drawer that was full of pre-1942 DC superhero comics. And as has happens with anything that you collect, you can’t want something that you have because you have it. The break point for me was when I got a “Batman” #1 that I traded for. It’s like, this is a key Golden Age book. This is in the pantheon of DC superhero comics, this is right up there with “Superman” #1, “Action” #1, and “Detective” #27. I had a “Detective” #38, the first Robin, and it was really cool having them, but you get to the point where they’re all in plastic bags and you go to pull them out, and the plastic bags stick together because you haven’t looked at them in six months, a year, or whatever. And then it’s like, okay, these are really really pointless to have at this point. So, at that point, when I was getting out of it, and it’s like, okay, this is again just addiction stuff, you have to break these addictions. I took them all to Now and Then Books, and said, “Harry, price all of these books. You sell them, and I have unlimited credit at Now and Then Books, and every once in a while, I’ll ask you for a cheque. Ya know, can I have a cheque for 1500 or 2000.” And we didn’t get very far in that process and Harry died. Consequently, that was, this isn’t going to get rolled over into the next ownership of Now and Then Books, so there went my… whatever it was, my thousand, $6000 of credit at Now and Then Books. Have to just to forget that, we’re just trying to keep Now and Then Books going, and I have never again succumbed to that collecting addiction. Although, I am still really attracted to those books. I was at Lookin For Heroes here in town, I forget what I was going in and getting, and they had a “Detective” #44 on the wall. It’s like [laughs] “can I look at that?” And it’s like, you shouldn’t do that. It’s the same as “can I touch your pack of cigarettes?” If somebody’s got a pack of cigarettes, don’t touch their pack of cigarettes. Don’t ask them for a cigarette. Don’t hold a cigarette in your hand. You don’t smoke, and you’re not going to smoke. Stay, stay, stay away from them. And that’s the story on that one, the second time I was addicted to collecting comic books and how that came to an end.
And Jennifer also says, “Cerebus…” she sends along from, again, the Comics Buyers Guide. “Cerebus Plates Nearly Finished. A full-color portfolio of paintings by Dave Sim, ‘Cerebus’ creator/writer/artist, will be available in March, said Aardvark-Vanaheim publisher Deni Sim. The portfolio, she said, will consist of 45 photo-separated 9x12 plates in a folder designed by Dave. The folder is basically an envelope that folds in on four sides, fastens with a tab, and then is shrink-wrapped. There will be artwork by Dave printed on the outside of the folder. ‘What we’re trying to do is give fans a portfolio that will retail at $10,’ Deni said, ‘but, if we don’t get enough orders, we would have to raise the price.’ The portfolios available from dealers will not be signed or numbered, she said. Signed and numbered portfolios will be available ‘at a very steep price,’ only from Aardvark-Vanaheim. She estimated that there would be 75 to 100 autographed portfolios available at a cost of $75 to $100 each, for the diehard collector.” And Jennifer wants to know, which portfolio was this?
Matt: That actually me, that’s my question.
Dave: Oh that was your question! Okay, that was the animated portfolio. You got thrown off by the fact we changed the packaging to an envelope instead of the folder that folds in on the four sides because that ended being too expensive, and the fact that she describes it as as portfolio of paintings by Dave Sim. I’m not sure that she really understood the process that we went through on it. Yes, that was the Animated Cerebus portfolio, and people bought the portfolios and numbered Cerebus illustrations if they paid enough for their portfolio, and the whole thing was the biggest disaster in Aardvark-Vanaheim’s history. Cost about $17,000 to print the number of portfolios, thinking if you print enough of them it brings the cost don. If the cost is brought down then people can buy 45 plates for $10, it’ll sell like crazy. And it’s like, no, you’re still just selling to the same people, but instead of doing a portfolio that costs you $10 that you’re getting paid $75 for, you’re doing a portfolio that costs you $17,000 because you printed way too many of them, and you can still only sell a hundred of them because those were how many diehard collectors there were.
“Dan Eckhart asks: So, those two yahoos introduced on page 240 of High Society (Can you be-e-lieve it? Wo!!): are they based on actual people you met at a convention? Or just a couple of yahoos?” Loosely based on two fans at a signing, where I had become interested in what I call the fan voice. Some fans have it, and you particularly notice it when you’re sitting there listening at a table doing a sketch for somebody and they’re sort of coming up on the other side of the table. What it is, is they think they’re funny because they’re imitating a comedy voice. Like, they’re imitating Richard Pryor or George Carlin or Jerry Seinfeld or whoever it is in what they’re saying on the assumption that if they talk that way in that tone and that rhythm, it will make what they’re saying funny. [laughs] And it’s like, no, that doesn’t work. It just sounds like this weird affectation. It was actually at a signing in California. I was down to the last two or three people, it was a very good, well-populated signing, but I was down to the last two or three people, and these two guys were both doing that on the other side of the table, talking in arch ironic humorous tones, but not saying anything funny. And I finally say, “why are you doing that? Those aren’t your natural voices. You don’t actually talk like that, why are you putting on that voice instead of just talking the way you talk?” And one guy said, “because if I talk the way I usually talk, you’d just think I was a nerd.” [laughs] It’s like, I had to laugh a bit, and go, “no, you talking that way, as if you’re a comedian and you’re saying this punchline after punchline after devastating punchline, that makes you a nerd. If you just talk to me and say what you have to say and ask what you have to ask, you sound like a nice normal adolescent.” And it’s definitely one of those things that I don’t miss from the signings. It’s people who come up and are just badly socialized in that way. Way too much “Monty Python” or whatever it is, and they just think that, “okay if you just talk that way it makes everything that you say funny.” And it’s like, mhm. No it doesn’t. I can guarantee you that.
Okay, we’ve got a Jen again, we’ve already done a couple of Jen’s, she says she can resubmit it in September, so let’s do that, since we’re almost coming up on two and a half hour again. And thank you Jen, for understanding on that. And John G., “CEREBUS FEEDS THE WORLD (?) July 13th will be the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia which raised a lot of money for African famine relief. This upcoming date got me thinking about a Note from the President in Cerebus #74 (May 1985). In the Note, Dave wrote that he was donating a Cerebus story for a ‘comic book benefit for Ethiopian famine relief which should be out in the fall…’. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that ever happened.” No, it didn’t happen. [laughs] I have to say, as I was reading this, I’m going, this is not ringing any bells anywhere. “People of a certain age will remember that in the mid-‘80s African famine relief was a very popular cause for a time. It got worldwide attention when the musician Bob Geldof put together ‘Band Aid’ in late 1984. Shortly thereafter, there was the ‘We Are the World’ song in the U.S. and then the Live Aid concerts. The comic book world did its part as well, with Marvel putting out ‘Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men’ with a cover date of December 1985. D.C followed in 1986 with ‘Heroes Against Hunger.’ Even a company called Tiger Comics (which I don’t remember existing at all) put out a benefit comic in 1987 called ‘Phantasy Against Hunger.’ There are literally dozens of writers and artists credited in these books, but no Dave Sim. That ‘Phantasy Against Hunger’ comic seemed more independent, and even had one page of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although not drawn by Eastman and Laird), but no Dave and no Cerebus. Does anyone know what happened here?” I would say from my side it would’ve been I was contacted by someone who said, “are you willing to do a story for this?” and I said sure, let me know what the logistics are and I can not only do a story I can promote it in “Cerebus” and see if we can bump up the order through the distributors, and didn’t hear back, is the only thing that I can see as happening there. And if you don’t hear back, then it’s, well that’s one of things about being Dave Sim in the 1980s. “Hey, will you do this?” and it’s like, sure, I’ll be glad to, and on a percentage basis? Probably one out of every four where you say, “yeah, sure I’ll be happy to,” you never hear back from them again. It’s one of those, well, I’m not gonna go digging through my correspondence files going ,”where is that? Where is that? I have to find out what’s going on with that project”. No, I did my part. I said, “yep, I’ll be happy to do something for you. Let me know what everybody else is doing, and keep me up to date on this and I’ll help you promote it in ‘Cerebus’ and then didn’t hear back.” You don’t see this happening a lot anymore because what you discover when you’re doing that is you can’t just raise huge amounts of money and then give the huge amounts of money to Bangladesh or Ethiopia, because you have to give it to someone in the government, and nine times out of 10, the person in the government, or them and their friends, are just gonna divide it up. It’s call a kleptocracy, and the world is full of them, and particularly places where people are starving tend to be covered by people like that, which is why I donate to World Vision in particular, because they’re boots on the ground people. They will send their World Vision team in to dig a well in a village when you pay them, you donate $700, you say I would want a well for clean water for this community, that’s where the money will go, and a very small percentage to administration. But they don’t give the money to the government of the country that they’re in. They make sure that they go to the location and they make sure that they’re digging the well, and they make sure that the well is functional and is as cost effective as a well can be, because a water well is actually a very expensive proposition to put together. It’s one of those things where, particularly with all of the controversy in Canada about the residential schools and certainly the boil water advisory on First Nation reserves in Canada. There are certainly way too many of them. A part of me wants to say, well, the government of Canada doesn’t know what it’s doing. All governments are the most incompetent and the most expensive way to do anything. Why don’t you just get the World Vision to go to the Indian reserve and dig a well and make sure that everybody has fresh water. You’ll probably be able to dig a hundred wells for whatever the government of Canada would end up charging to dig wells. That’s why the only thing you really want government doing is military and things like that where what things cost is just too astronomical to be considered otherwise. As Jason Kenny used to say when he was in Steven Harper’s cabinet, “anything that’s in the Yellow Pages, we don't do, because the free market and capitalists will be able to do it for a much better price and more effectively and more sensibly than the government could possibly do. We’re just this giant cesspool of slush funds and borrowed money, massive billions of dollars sloshing around.” And it’s like, that has a certain charm to it but it’s just the worst possible way to accomplish something as necessary as clean water for First Nation’s people.
I interrupted John G there, and he goes on to say, “Apparently Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson were the driving forces behind the benefit books from the Big Two. I’m not sure if Dave had a friendly relationship with them or not.” [laughs] Well, until issue 186 came out, I thought I had a friendly relationship with everybody, which is one of those things that you find out when you get canceled. It’s, no, all of those people that you thought of as friends and as people that you could just call on the phone and say, “hey, let’s do this for a good cause.” No, I’m not singling out Jim Starlin or Bernie Wrightson here, when you get canceled, you get canceled. And that means you’re toxic. You’re the human equivalent of a third rail. “Don’t go anywhere near that guy or you could find yourself incinerated and destroyed the way that he has been.” “Dave has always been known to be generous with his time and aardvark to help friends and worthy causes (see the Anything Goes story, AARGH, C.B.L.D.F., etc.). Or did a Cerebus story benefiting famine relief come out in some form and I just missed it? Just wondering…” Again, it’s kind of a black humour that I talk about these things [laughs], but, that is one of the plus sides of being canceled and becoming a non-human being in the comic book field. You don’t mention Dave Sim, you don’t acknowledge that you ever knew Dave Sim, you certainly don’t ever acknowledge that you ever had a high opinion of Dave Sim. It definitely frees up a lot more working time, because people aren’t phoning in and saying, “can you be part of our big charity thing that we’re doing?” No, they know better than that. You don’t ask people who have been canceled to help you with anything. And it’s like, well, that’s sad. It’s certainly not helpful in a societal sense. Yes, I was generous, and I still am generous, but it’s just, when you’ve been made to not exist and when you’ve been made a non-human being, as has been the case for me in the comic book field in Canada, in Ontario, in Kitchener, there’s no coming back from that. It’s definitely one of the things that somewhere up ahead we have to deal with as a society. How do we make canceling not quite as absolute as it’s proving to be? Unfortunately, the people who control our society, it’s like there’s no frame of reference for that. It’s like, “uncancel somebody? No, if we cancel somebody it’s because they don’t deserve to be a human being. They don’t deserve to be treated as a human being, and it looks good on them. This is one of the good works that we’ve accomplished was as coming as close as possible to complete destroying Dave Sim as it was possible for us to do. Job well done.” So, that’s one of those, no, John G, this one isn’t ringing a bell, and “Anything Goes”, AARGH, CBLDF, those were all pre-issue 186. After 186, I would just be torpedoing any charity that I would be participating in as Dave Sim, Cerebus creator. Even with the [laughs] Food Bank of Waterloo region, here in town, it’s like, yes, I’m trying to send them 20% of every cheque instead of 10%, I’m going for the Muslim zakat as opposed to Christian tithing. It’s, you know, feed the poor, I take that as a very serious responsibility, but what would ever happen if they find out where this money is coming from? That’s it’s coming from somebody’s work who has been canceled and is considered unspeakable and a non-human being in all possible Canadian frames of reference. It’s why I don’t have any contact with them. It’s like, here’s the cheque in an envelope, no letter. No “I appreciate the invitation to come and tour your facilities and thanks for the form letter thanking me for my contribution. Please don’t just ever Google search the name and find out, ‘oh no, we’ve been taking money from this non-person’.”
Matt: Right.
Dave: So, I think that brings us to the end, Matt!
Matt: I think so, as well! Another pseudo-successful, I mean, other than the weird phone problems, but I think that might be on my end.
Dave: Was it? Yeah, I don’t know what that was. It’s definitely whenever it has that happens it has that [repeatedly beeps] and it’s like, do they just have like one universal code that says, ‘okay, somebody screwed up, or the machinery’s screwed up, or the software or the hardware is screwed up and we don’t have a recording for that’? [laughs]
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: It’s just [repeatedly beeps] it’s just, hang up, and reboot the system.
Matt: Pretty much!
Dave: Okay. Alright, well, say hello to Paula, and Janis Pearl, and Natasha for me.
Matt: Will do.
Dave: And we’ll do this again next month.
Matt: As long as everything goes good, yes.
Dave: That’s right, God-willing and the creek don’t run!
Matt: Yep!
Dave: Have a good night, Matt.
Matt: You too, Dave! Goodnight.
Dave: Buh-bye.
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| Like the logo? I stole it... |
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Tim Gagne sent in:
Crownfundr for Nick Crane
Already net its goal but pretty cheap for a collection that finishes the story all these years later -
https://crowdfundr.com/nickcraine?ref=cr_3EI341_ab_18OUE1
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:
And if you wanna see how the book looks in Real Time...
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Zipper calls in a favor:
Hi Matt!
I stopped in a JAF comics this afternoon after work and had nice conversation with John. John is the owner of JAF Comics and publisher of Dreamscape Comics. He asked me for a favor. So, I'm asking if you for a favor. Can you please kindly promote John's new book, Lady Savage, through the Rigamarole. It's live on Kickstarter now and need a little push to get the book fully funded. Most of the creative team has gone to the Joe Kubert School of Art.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dreamscapepub/lady-savage-footsteps-in-eden-by-gary-petras?ref=discovery&term=Lady%20Savage%3A%20Footsteps%20in%20Eden%20Comic%20Book%20%231%20by%20Gary%20Petras&total_hits=1&category_id=250
Thank you, Matt!
Michael R.
Wait a minute...I don't owe Zipper a favor...
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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.
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Up to 35% off today? Some other time this month*
*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:
- 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
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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Next Time: We all find out if Jen is back...
1 comment:
Thanks Jesse for the hard work transcribing the Please Holds! Especially this one!
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