Dave: Make sure this is recording. [fiddles with device] Yes. Everything looks good. Okay, how you doing today, Kim?
Kim Preney: Pretty good, Dave. Nice to hear from you.
Dave: Nice to hear your voice again too. It’s like, our voices are a little bit older but they’re still the same voices.
Kim Preney: [laughs]
Dave: So, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I did want to sort of announce these printer’s proofs that we’re gonna be offering to the Cerebus fans. Preney Print & Litho printer’s proofs, and the fact that back at the beginning when you first sent me the list, it sort of knocked for a loop that there was 90 copies of issue 300 and the next competitor was like issue 124, that I think you had like 36 of that one, or something? And a lot of them are, there’s two or three, or there’s one or zero, we’ll get into the other ones, let’s just talk today about the issue 300s. How did you guys end up with 90 copies of issue 300?
Kim Preney: Well my brother, Richard, was the one who kind of watched over the production on the press. And he knew that we were going to be missing doing the regular issues of “Cerebus” because we’d been doing them for so long, but for us, it was very important to have issues of “Cerebus”, but at the same time it was always a quality thing where we always were making sure that we made the order, which was whatever order Dave gave us, which was the quantity of books that we were producing. We always made that order as a first priority, and always made the best books with that way. When Richard was having the book printed and watching the quantities of each part of the book, which we printed the covers on one press and we printed the interiors on the other press, and then there were sections of the book. Those sections each had to be all of the same number so that we would have the right quantity to supply Dave with what he needed for the order. So, he made sure that we printed more than we normally would, of acceptable quantity. And at the same time, he would also watch to make sure that they didn’t produce too many so that we didn’t have more people involved in the production than we should by the end of this. So there’s a whole bunch of things going on at the same time, so anyway, he actually grabbed a complete box of the book and at the end of the day after 18 years, ya know, of being moved from one hour to another and be stored in different places, I put together what I actually had in that pile, and we ended up with 90 books of that particular issue, 300, which is considered to be important because it was the final copy of the book that we were producing.
Dave: I wish I’d have ordered 90 copies for Aardvark-Vanaheim. In retrospect, I should have, because that’s one of those…
Kim Preney: Oh my goodness. You had to store them, Dave, you’d have to store them. [laughs]
Dave: Yeah, I’m storing a lot of stuff that makes a lot less sense than the 90 copies of issue 300! The same as if I’d overprinted 100 and 200, that would have made a nice package. You can order issue 100, 200, and 300 at the same time. But we’ve got these. So the quality control, Dick wasn’t the actual pressman at the time. He was sort of supervising like administrative pressman, so he was shepherding these, or shepherding the shepherd of these as they were being printed.
Kim Preney: That’s right. He would make sure that we did the right quantities of each production in each, the different areas of the shop. So that also he would be checking the quality, to make sure that we were accomplishing. You know, we’ve had kind of a standard process that worked out where we were constantly working to a certain level, of the blackness and the sharpness of the images would be fair constant throughout production of the book and at the acceptable level of the book pages, and the non-acceptable ones were separated and discarded properly, and stuff like that. So it was always an ongoing process that we did develop for the book.
Dave: Right. Right. And the winnowing process of, like you say, it’s, if something’s not working on the press… Dick had been doing this for a lot of years at this point, so there was no question about it that he knew exactly what he was looking for, and it had to do with the sharpness of the image, right?
Kim Preney: That’s right, like the actual-- if you look at the original piece of art, it has when you laid ink on the page, it has a very distinct clean edge. When we go through the various steps, that clean edge can be lost if we’re not constantly working at it, because the amount of ink and the amount of water that we use for the printing process can effect the sharpness. So we have to constantly be keeping those two balanced, so that we can have an image that works as close to the original art as we can, while we’re producing it.
Dave: And that’s... that’s just an adjustment on the actual press. Like, you would just turn a knob or something like that to turn the water down or the ink up?
Kim Preney: Absolutely. That’s right, it’s not quite just a knob, actually for the ink there’s like I think probably 35 little keys that you can adjust.
Dave: 35?!
Kim Preney: Yeah, it goes right across the press.
Dave: [laughs] Okay.
Kim Preney: It’s a big chute, and the ink has being in a, you know, like, you can control the amount of ink that spot. So it goes ya know, like it was a pretty automatic process for the pressman, because he would actually look at the image on the plates when we made the plate for the printing. He’d look at that image and set the keys according to the image he saw, and then you would run, that would cut down on the number of wastage it was. And then you’d run or cut up amount of shape, and then that he would pick and choose and fine tune those keys. There’s a lot of them, right across the press, and each one is separate. They’re actually on the press for the colour printing, those are controlled by computers, so you can actually… you’d touch a key, and it’d automatically adjust the key. When you push it up, or you push it down, there was an increase or decrease that amount of ink in that plot on the press.
Dave: Right. Right. And it’s like you say, this is back in the day when there was a lot of wastage of paper just because you have to actually the press and see “okay, now it’s settled into this look to it. Is this the look that we want, or do we want to add more water to it?” I can remember you printed a lot of indie comics and they all wanted to have “Cerebus” quality to them, and it’s like, “well, no, you’re only ordering 1000 copies, if I have to run 5000 sheets of paper to get your 1000 copies, that really cuts into the profit margin.”
Kim Preney: Yeah, it doesn’t work. And then that’s where, all of a sudden, to make it work, you end up having to charge them so much for their book that it doesn’t become feasible to do it.
Dave: Right, right. Okay, and so this is what we’re looking at is, with these 90 copies, I think I told you I’ve got Dwayne and Richard here in town at Looking for Heroes who have a lot more expertise than I have in grading according to comic book grading condition who are gonna be prescreening the 90 copies and putting them in what they consider the order of the best copies, to the not so best copies, so that’s what the Cerebus fans are going to be ordering on this one. At some point, I want to talk to you about the rest of these, and what the standard operating procedure was in terms of, “put these aside for Kim”, because these were in your custody, weren’t they? The ones that weren’t? Dick had the number 300s but you had all the rest of them?
Kim Preney: Well, actually, Dick had an office of his own, and he kept the books in the office.
Dave: Okay! Alright.
Kim Preney: He had them on like a bookshelf, and they, ya know, like he had, not just your book, he all the books that we printed in that office. And then we had usually just a small handful of books, but it always depended on how many he kept, had to do with how many acceptable copies. We filled the order, and if there was a pile left after it, he would take some of those and put them in the office.
Dave: But they’d have to be acceptable copies.
Kim Preney: That’s right.
Dave: Because one of the things you’d be using them for is to show other customers.
Kim Preney: Exactly.
Dave: Or potential customers.
Kim Preney: Also to, like the last issue, what was the last issue looking like? And we wanted to make sure there was a continuity between them. The way that they felt and the way they looked. That was always an issue, too.
Dave: Okay, I want to thank you for your time here, Kim.
Kim Preney: Okay, sounds good.
Dave: We’re gonna make you famous on A Moment of Cerebus.
Kim Preney: [laughs]
Dave: As soon as we can get this uploaded.
Kim Preney: Okay, sounds good.
Dave: And I’ll be calling you back. And we’ll talk some more about this.
Kim Preney: Alright then. Bye for now.
Dave: Have a good day, Kim.
Kim Preney: Okay, bye-bye now.
Dave: Buh-bye.
Matt: We are recording as of right now.
Dave: Alright. You start off your fax, “I hope you had a ‘good’ Ramadan. Or whatever adjective applies.” Yeah, that’s kind of funny that… you wouldn’t say to someone “have a happy Ramadan.” Or “hope you had a happy Ramadan”, which is kind of a contrast between Islamic monotheism and Western monotheism, which, since I’m part of both of them, you definitely appreciate the difference that to the Western monotheistic mind, everything’s about happiness. [laughs] Ya know, merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy birthday. And that just sounds kind of lunatic to the Islamic mind. It’s like, it’s not about happy, it’s about duty. You do what you’re supposed to do. As far as I know the expression would be, have a blessed Ramadan, or I hope you had a blessed Ramadan. Which is, bringing God directly into the equation. Your Ramadan is going to be as good as God thinks you deserve to have a Ramadan. “Catching up on old business, #1, I think it’s my turn to remember Jeff Seiler.” Yes, it is, “which is going to turn into a remembrance of Neal Adams.” Okay, well, this I gotta here.
Matt: [laughs] So, when you guys were doing “Green Dante / Green Virgil” the comic store that I go to had Neal Adams in for a signing. Leading up to, so, instead of starting with Jeff, I’m gonna start with Neal…
Dave: What’s the name of the store? We might as well plug ‘em.
Matt: Powers Comics, I forget the exact address on Ridge Rd in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Dave: Okay.
Matt: When I make the video, I will put their Facebook info on the screen so everyone will be like, “hey, if ever I’m where Matt is I can go buy comics.”
Dave: Green Bay, Wisconsin! It’s the place you want to be if you’re coming to Green Bay.
Matt: So, they were gonna have a signing and they announced that Neal would do sketches that you could pick up at the signing, and I’m like, I got a little bit of extra money at a time. This was about 7 years ago, and so I emailed, and the contact person, which I believe the email address was his son Josh, and I said, “hello, I was wondering about a sketch for the February 4th signing at Powers Comics. How much would a head sketch of Cerebus creator Dave Sim run?”
Dave: Of me?
Matt: Of you! [laughs]
Dave: Oh-kay!
Matt: And I got a response. “Dear Matt, now that I’ve stopped laughing with good humor and fun, I had to ask, why on Earth do you want a drawing of Dave Sim. Not that I can’t do it, not that I wouldn’t be delighted to do it. You just want a sketch of Dave Sim, not to use for reproduction, but just cause you want it, which again, is very cool, so let me ask, do you want just a quick sketch or do you want something a little more complete that you can frame and put up on the wall? Best wishes, Neal Adams.” And I emailed back, responding, “Dear Mr Adams, glad you got a laugh. I’m actually planning on mailing the piece to Dave as a belated Christmas/early Birthday present. I know he drew you in an issue of ‘Glamourpuss’, I can’t remember which. And knowing the regard and respect he as for you, I think he’d find a Neal Adams Dave Sim awesome. Plus, I’m willing to bet he doesn’t already have one. I was looking to spend about $80, so whatever finish that would get me. Matt Dow.” And he came back with, “Ehh, it’d be about $200”. But I thought you’d get a kick out of I asked for a head sketch of you and the response was, “now that I’ve stopped laughing”. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Yeah, well, I gotta tell you, you were probably on Neal’s list of “well there’s one that I haven’t heard before.”
Matt: And so we went to the signing, and I didn’t get the sketch because it was more than I could afford with like a month to go, type thing. And then the following year, cause this was when you were gonna turn 59, so I thought, oh, next year’s Dave’s 60th, this will be perfect! And conveniently completely forgot about it around your 60th. But I went to the signing, and it was great! Neal showed up a little late, had the crowd in the palm of his hand the entire signing. And I guess at the end of the signing and turned to the owner of the store and said, “this was fun. When can I do it again?” So part of him signing was that he brought a bunch of prints, and signed them all, and left them there, and it was store selling signed Neal Adams prints, and then every couple of months they’d send him a check of however much they sold. So when “Green Dante / Green Virgil” happened and the original art was going up for auction, and Jeff won, I went up to the store and got a reproduction of the original “Green Lanter / Green Arrow” cover with Speedy as a junkie. I think that’s issue 85, I wanna say?
Dave: 85 or 86. Yes. 85!
Matt: And I had it, cause then Neal came back for a second appearance. I’ll buy one for Dave, I’ll buy one for Jeff. Jeff wins the auction, this way he’s got Dave’s version signed by Dave, Neal’s version signed by Neal, they’re both signed to Jeff, this’ll be perfect! And I sent you yours eventually, when I finally had a box of stuff I had to send up, and so my first big regret in life is that I didn’t get the Dave Sim head sketch from Neal for you, and the second regret that I kept forgetting to mail Jeff his, and now he’s dead, so it’s sitting down on my desk as a constant reminder of “hey Matt, you’re a bad friend that failed miserably in life.”
Dave: Always worth reminding yourself of.
Matt: It’s one of those, I kept tripping over it, going, oh I gotta mail that to Jeff, and then it’s like, well, I had a couple other things I had to mail to him and they won’t all fit in the little tube, I should really get a box. And was hemming and hawing, and going, but I got time! But I got time. And Jeff and Neal have so dearly reminded everybody, you think you have time, but you probably don’t have that time. So do it now!
Dave: Yeah. Or you’re better off not betting that you have the kinda time that you hope that you have.
Matt: Yeah. So…
Dave: As you say, it’s still there, so if you wouldn’t mind putting that in your will, and leaving that to the Cerebus Archive.
Matt: Oh no no, I’ll just put that in a box with the signed “Cerebus in Hell?” issues that I’ve signed that I have to send up, and the next time that I get that box going, which will probably be in the next couple of weeks. Cause I got like, I wanna say 25 or 30 issues I gotta send up.
Dave: You gotta get a bigger place for all of the stuff that you haven’t mailed out.
Matt: I gotta stop putting it on my desk!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Every couple of weeks, Paula will look at my desk and say, “you know this gives me anxiety, don’t you?” I’m like, but if I move it anywhere else I can’t find it.
Dave: Right, right. Yeah, it looked completely uncoordinated, but I got different piles around the Off-White House where it’s like, don’t move that because I know this thing and that thing and the other thing are in that pile, and if I start semi-sorting stuff, all I’m really gonna do is lose everything at that point.
Matt: That’s why you’ve got to put a post-it note on top of “this pile contains” and the top five things in the pile. By importance, not the top physical five things, just, “hey, these five things are in this pile” and you put a post-it note and that way, if something happens and somebody goes, “what the hell is this?”
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: My remembrance of Jeff was that, I got him something really cool, and completely forgot to get to him in time.
Dave: Well, he died in September. How long before September would you have gotten this?
Matt: Uh, a couple of years?
Dave: [laughs] Okay. I was trying to help you there, but I think I…
Matt: Nah, no, no. This is one of those, on my list of things in my life that I regret not getting done, getting that print to Jeff. I also had a t-shirt that I bought him one time, there was, I just stumbled across this shirt at a sale and went, Jeff would like that! And I bought it, and it’s sitting down in a box in my room in the basement, and every now and then I trip over it, going, oh yeah, I should have mailed that to Jeff, too.
Dave: Why did the t-shirt say Jeff to you?
Matt: Uh, well, okay. So, Saturday Night Live, Andy Samberg had created a band called Lonely Island and they do digital shorts on Saturday Night Live. And one of them, it’s him and Justin Timberlake singing a song called “Dick in a Box”. And the song is about how they’re going to give their girlfriends a box, that has their penis in it. And the t-shirt it’s “step one, get a box. Step two, cut a hole in the box. Step three, put your dick in the box. Step four, give her the box.” And Jeff thought that short was just one of the funniest things he’d ever seen, and I saw it, and yeah, it’s kind of funny, but I didn’t quite understand why would we be putting this on a t-shirt? Cause I don’t see anybody wearing that shirt out and having a good night.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: But I saw it and it was like $2 or $3 on sale, and I’m like, ah, you know, I’ll spend this for Jeff. And it was right after he moved to Minnesota, and I’m like, OH okay, when I get his address I’ll mail it to him, and then I didn’t hear from him for a couple of years.
Dave: Well, I just had to ask!
Matt: [laughs] I mean, I can send the shirt for the archive and you’ll look at it and go, “yeah, let’s donate this to the charity shop!” [laughs]
Dave: Really? Really.
Matt: I mean, it’s one of those…
Dave: Okay, moving on to number two, we’ve got CerebusOnline’s 1500 subscriber is Audell Laroque, or LaRock, depending on how he pronounces that. “I don’t know how to contact him on YouTube, you should just do a Weekly Update and let him contact you.” I don’t understand these things. How do you know that the 1500th subscriber, what his name is? How did you get that information?
Matt: I contacted Dave Fisher and asked.
Dave: Oh! Okay, so Fisher knows from his..
Matt: Yeah, he was able to look up and go, okay, this is the guy that is number 1500.
Dave: Okay. Alright. And he would have the address?
Matt: Uh, he might be, I don’t know if he’d be able to email directly to that guy or not. It was one of those, I clicked the link of, oh this is the guy’s YouTube page, but I’d have to subscribe to his videos and I’m like, this is one step further than I wanna go.
Dave: Right, right. I’m just trying to figure out if… why the name, in that case? The name isn’t gonna really tell you anything. I can understand like an email address, somebody subscribes and the part of the deal is that you get their email address. So it would be just a name?
Matt: It’s basically, this name is tied to a YouTube. Cause the way YouTube works now is, you don’t just go to the YouTube and watch videos, you go to YouTube and they’ll give you a page so you can upload videos. And this guy, if you go, what Fisher sent me was a link, I clicked the link and it takes me to this guy’s YouTube page, and to contact him, I would think I would have to subscribe to his channel. Which I could do, contact him and then delete it if I wanted to, but it’s like, I said, it’s one of those, at the time I’m going, this is like a step further than I think I wanna go for this.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Honestly, it’d be better to make a Weekly Update video announcing he’s the winner, showing the fabulous amazing prize package that you’re gonna get, and say, “now you have to send a letter, it’s one of those white things in an envelope with a stamp on it”
Dave: Uh yeah, well he try not to be colonialist around here, it could be beige, could be light brown. Okay, I think in that case, who I wanna contact is Fisher, and go… cause I think it would be kind of embarrassing to do this whole surprise package for the 1500th subscriber and then find out the 1500th subscriber doesn’t even watch CerebusOnline, just happened to subscribe in a weak moment, or something.
Matt: Well, or is one of those fake robots on the internet that they’ll click… it’s one of those, it happens on Twitter a lot where, somebody is following 1500 people but they only have 43 people following them. Well, that’s usually because they’re not real, it’s a robot.
Dave: Right.
Matt: So it’s conceivable that your 1500th subscriber is a fake robot, it’s just a name tied to a YouTube channel that’s got 12 videos loaded that don’t say anything.
Dave: Right, right. And Elon Musk paid $44 Billion for this.
Matt: [laughs] Hey, when you’re the richest man in the world, you can do whatever you want. The rest of us are gonna shake our heads and say, “did you think that was a good idea?”
Dave: Yeah, yeah. It’s, I’m not sure how that’s gonna shake out, but it looks to me like it’s got the AOL Time Warner merge written all over it, where it was definitely Time Warner that got the pie in the face for what it is that they were getting for what they actually paid for.
Matt: One of the many, many, many tweets about it that I saw was somebody saying, hey, remember when Yahoo bought some other site for like $30 Billion and ended up having to sell-- or now, they bought it for $11 Million and they ended up selling it for 3 six months later because everybody went, we’re not gonna use this site, and it turned into a bogus investment where you’re not gonna get your money back.
Dave: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: And people are going, you’re doing the same thing to Twitter now! And I’m like, until the deal goes through and he actually gets it, cause right now it’s still pending approval from governments and half the money’s coming from a loan against his Telsa stock and if Tesla stock goes down before the deal’s done, then he won’t have the money to buy it, yadda yadda. I mean…
Dave: Yeah, yeah.
Matt: What I kept coming back to is, Batman’s rich, and he fights crime. This guy’s rich, and he buys Twitter.
Dave: And builds rockets! Build rockets. He’s gonna colonize Europa, and grow stuff out there.
Matt: That’s one of those, I’ll believe it when I can power my home without using fossil fuels. [laughs] We’re going to space but we still have war and death and bad stuff here, like I don’t think space needs us.
Dave: No, no. It is an interesting theory, but so’s Tesla for the most part. It’s like, the Canadian government has this video of all of the vehicles being electric vehicles by 2030 or 2035 and that’s like 8 years from now. Tesla manufactures 600,00 cars a year, or something like that? And then ends up recalling 400,000 of them because they don’t work properly. And nobody can afford to buy them unless they’re getting subsidized by government and Tesla’s already getting subsidized by government. It’s like, back in my day, we used to have to prove that this thing can make money on its own without massive interventions from government to try and bring the cost down from $55,000 a car to $45,000. It would have to come down a lot further than that, but Elon Musk seems like a nice guy.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: He’s at least a first amendment purist. It’ll be interesting to see how pure his purism is, if he gets a hold of Twitter and the first day headline is, “Okay, Donald Trump’s back on Twitter.” You can’t just get rid of an ex-president with 84 million followers because you don’t like the cut of his jib. That’s far from a first amendment absolutist as you can get, as far as I’m concerned.
Anyway, we’re getting way way from Cerebus here, so we’re going to move onto Steve Swenson! Hello, Steve. “Offered me an unsigned Cerebus Berserker print, and I say he should send it to you, but he’s pretty sure he already did. So, did he?” And it’s like, I thought, that doesn’t sound right to me, so, I went to the Cerebus Archive cabinet where I’ve got a certain amount, it’s mostly stuff from the early pre-”Cerebus” and “Swords of Cerebus” material, a sort of an assorted spot, and I went, okay, I’m pretty sure the Berserker original is in there. That’s because that’s where it was, that’s where I would put the prints. I knew that I had three prints of Cerebus Berserker from Cerebus fans, I didn’t have any of my own. And I went, that doesn’t sound right to me. So, opened up the cabinet, and sure enough, they’re right there on the top. Three of them, I’ve got, or the Cerebus Archive has, #86 out of 500, and two unsigned copies. So I’m pretty sure that, at least one of those came from Steve in that case. That was another one of those surprises where, I had theorized in my head that there were unsigned Berserker prints in the sense that I didn’t get around to signing all of them, but I would’ve bet dollars to donuts that I threw out the unsigned copies at some point because I was just tired of having these copies that were getting battered around pretty good, just always underfoot. So now the question is, how many of them did I sign, and how many unsigned ones are there? So, let me thank Steve for sending the, either the two prints, I can’t remember if he sent both of those, or if he sent me one of them and somebody else sent me an unsigned Cerebus Berserk print. But it was definitely, anytime I ran across the original, it’s like, that’s pretty bad when you’ve got the original but you don’t even have any of your own copies of this. So now I’ve got the Cerebus Archive quota of 3 copies of it in the Cerebus Archive. And you got two more signature pics! Steve Swenson’s #272 and Brian Davis’ #69, and you put “(nice)”.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Yeah, I don’t know why I decided, okay, let’s not sign the rest of these this way, let’s just sign them and hand write the number in ballpoint pen. Cause the early ones really do look the best. I’ve got, like I said, #86 and I was still doing the hand-lettered Dave Sim signature when I was doing those, and very neat lettering, definitely solid black. I think that was just a fit of pique on my part because I’d never signed 500 of anything before and found out, okay, this is really taking up far more time than I was going to. Signing and numbering stuff particularly, because you sign it and you number it, and then the moment you put it aside you forget what the number was. So then you have to go back and look at the number, and then sign the next one, and make sure you’re putting the next number on there, and try not to stupidly look over at what the number is, and then copy that number. [laughs] I’ve done that before! It’s like, where am I? Oh, #86, okay. Write down #86. No no no, that’s number #86, now you’re supposed to write 87. It’s definitely one of those things that turns your brain to cream cheese while you’re doing it because it’s just, it’s the mental equivalent of a repetitive motion injury.
Lee Thacker asks, in reference to a fax to Mikhail Bocharov, “will Dave be boycotting any future Russian reprints?” And you wrote, “I suspect not, but it’s in the ‘for Dave’ pile.” Yeah, that’s one of those, I won’t be boycotting, because boycotting is usually a customer thing, and I’m not really a customer of Mikhail’s and I’m not really a customer of the Russian publisher that he found to do “Cerebus”. The best way that I could sum it up is, this is a creator… Language fan relationship where I don’t see myself as doing Russian reprints. I got paid by the publishing house. People really think that this is a complete contradiction of morality hat I took $1500 in the rubles equivalent from this Russian publisher and authorized them to do the book. I don’t really see it that way, but I would have no problem about refunding them their $1500, finding out what the value of the ruble is. But this is a very idiosyncratic Dave Sim approach to these things, where Mikhail just contacted me and said, “hey, I’m a Russian Cerebus fan, and I translated the first issue of Cerebus into Russian” and at that point the idea of keeping going came up, and I have absolutely no problem with that. Russia is a country, but Russian is also a language, so to me the dealing is with the language. Someone who’s fluent in a foreign language and fluent in English, and a Cerebus fan, and they want to do that, I can’t really picture any situation where I wouldn’t allow them to do that. The publication came very late in the process, because this was really just an online thing. Every week Mikhail got, and I assume, or I hope, is still getting, another issue of “Cerebus” translated into Russian, and posting it online and getting online reactions from people. That just seems like an inherent good thing. My primary concern was, this is a totalitarian country that really doesn’t have a sense of humour about political parody. But that to me was Mikhail’s lookout. You’re the one who lives in Russia, you know how bad the situation can get. You’ve read “Cerebus”, if you think that a Russian translation of “Cerebus” isn’t going to get you in insurmountable trouble in your country, that’s your call to make. I would be very very weary of doing that.
But then, Canada’s going a little wonky, so it’s like, well, ya know, I’m doing the same thing. I’m doing “Cerebus in Hell?” parodies that are distinctly, distinctly illegal relative to the Justin Trudeau mindset of “yes, we support freedom of speech. You can do any kind of subject matter as long as it’s Marxist/Feminist propaganda and if you get off of that reservation and we find out about it, then you’ve only got yourself to blame if you end up with a two year prison term.” So it’s like, well, okay, I’m having to make those decisions on an ongoing basis, and this is my hill to die on. Freedom of expression, it’s not “freedom of expression that you approve of”. No, freedom of expression is an absolute. The number of things that I would allow to be limited if I became dictator, “here’s what you’re allowed to say, here’s what you’re not allowed to say”, I would have a very very high bar that you would have to get over to persuade me that, no, you can’t do this on Twitter. You can’t do this on Facebook. You can’t publish comic books with this stuff in them. That’s just anathema to me. I mean, the N-word still sticks in my craw. It’s like, uhh, okay, I wouldn’t have voted for that if we took a vote on that, but we seem to have had this giant societal consensus shape up around “you can’t actually say the N-word under any circumstances, unless you’re a black person”. So that’s, to me, the canary in the mineshaft. Then it’s, okay, as soon as you allow that, then the whole thing just becomes one giant wool sweater unraveling of, “okay, now you can’t say this. Okay, now you can’t say that. Okay now you can’t say this other thing over here.” And it’s whoever is… whichever political philosophy is dominate at the time, those are the people that suddenly decide that they’ve got this giant shopping list of what you can say and what you can’t say. Back in the 1950s, 1940s, 1930s, Christians were, it was still Christendom, and Christians were in the dominate position and that’s what they did. So, having sort of grown up just in the aftermath of that, it always seemed like, okay, all we have to do is explain freedom of expression to the Christians in a way that they understand. You can’t arbitrate what other people are allowed to say. You can say, “I don’t agree with that, I don’t wanna read that.” But you can’t say “nobody is allowed to read that.” And we worked and worked and worked and worked at that, and sure enough, we reached the breakthrough point where I think, most conservatives, most Republicans, most Christians understand, you can’t limit somebody else’s freedom of expression just because you don’t like it. And then as soon as you do that, then the progressives are off on a tear of “you can’t say this, you can’t say that, you can’t say the other thing” and it’s like, what are we just gonna keep ping ponging between the two groups over decades and centuries until people finally go, “ohh, freedom of expression! Oh, why didn’t you say something?” [laughs] It’s like, I did! We’ve saying the same thing for 70 years, 100 years now. Please, can we all just understand what this situation is.
So there’s a very long, long form answer to your question, Lee, as to, no, I won’t be boycotting future Russian reprints. I’m not really a boycotting kind of guy. I think the market sorts everything out philosophically, financially, ethically, and morally, if you just let it do that. You’ll reach dry patches and glitches and road bumps and stuff, but no, boycott, divest, sequester, sanction, all of that sort of stuff, unless you’re talking about apartheid, you can’t just keep swinging these sledgehammers around to destroy other people and other philosophies that you disagree with. It’s like I’m even uncomfortable with the antisemitism argument. Having done “Judenhass” I think I’ve established which team that I’m on, but ya know, I read the protocols of the elders of Zion and went, okay, I think I know what this is. I think it’s transparently what it is, and obviously a lot of people don’t see it that way, but I don’t think you do yourself any favors by saying “no one is allowed to read this. This can’t be allowed to circulate on the internet, nobody’s allowed to print this. You can’t teach it as an object lesson of how these things happen in school, because somebody’s gonna take it at face value and run with it.” It’s like, again, you’re intruding on freedom of expression, which, if it’s not absolute, it’s gotta be as close as absolute as possible, and unfortunately, the biggest victims when you do that, the more of an absolutist you are, the more detrimental it is to black people and Jewish people, because those are the two groups that just are magnets for hate for some reason, and we could debate that till the cows come home, but… it’s one of those, I don’t think you do yourself any favors by saying, “you’re not allowed to express these sentiments” it’s like, express the sentiments and just disagree about it. I disagree with everybody about everything, and I’m quite comfortable being in that situation. So I’m far more aware of my own vulnerability of, there’s way too many people that just want Dave Sim to be made to stop saying what he’s saying, for me to be comfortable with that. At the same time I do understand, most people try to figure out what the right way is to think so that they don’t get themselves in trouble, and they’re completely comfortable with that, and where does Dave Sim get off with not being in that societal nutcracker that the rest of us are. Time to crack Dave Sim’s nuts, so I have to live like the rest of them. So that’s an even longer answer to your question, Mr Lee Thacker, “Cerebus in Hell?” Collaborator.
“When I posted the pictures of you and Alfonso signing the printer’s proofs of ‘Pieces of Turtles 8’…” Did you have pictures of Alfonso signing them?
Matt: Yeah!
Dave: You did?
Matt: Rolly sent me both of them.
Dave: How about that! How about that. See, I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool. [laughs] Steve, I’m not sure which one. Almost as many Steves as there are Daves. Yeah, I think it was Cat Yronwode who used to talk about the legion of Steves in comic book fandom. Anyway, you say, “Matt asks: "How the @#%& you print a proof AFTER the books have been printed AND shipped, I have no idea..." Which is essentially my point in an AMOC comment down there towards the bottom of the page on 12 April.
It's NOT a printer's proof. It's simply another gimmicky low-print cover produced under a dishonest name.” Ahh, okay, well let’s ans-- I’ll finish the comments here. “For 8.2, howsabout an honest name, something along the lines of "Alfonso's Signed Edition". Unless honesty isn't particularly observed with Dave's 'idio-syncretistic" belief system.” No, I’m very big on honesty. I think that’s a cheap shot and an undeserved shot, but that’s freedom of expression, too.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So, I wrote down a few notes here on this one. The first time that this came up, as far as I recall, was with Waverly Press’s printer’s proof for the remastered “Cerebus” #2? I think that was the one. And they had solicited for printer’s proofs on Kickstarter. You could pay this premium price and get a printer’s proof of the “Cerebus” #2. Which, when Alfonso printed the proof for me to proofreader, he printed however many proofs had been sold at the same time. And I forget how many it was, let’s say there was 20 of them. And what happened was it was an uncorrected proof because it was done at the same time as the one that I was correcting, and there was a fair number of corrections of the “Cerebus” #2 remastered, to the extent that when I looked at the proof, I just went, oh, it doesn’t really matter. Just let it go. This is Dagon’s take on this, I sent him the raw materials. It doesn’t look the way that I was picturing it. But then Dagon did come back and say “can you give me notes on the proof? So that uhh…” It’s like, well okay, you did ask! And basically had to redo a fair chunk of it. So that qualifies as a printer’s proof in my mind because a classic printer’s proof, which is the idea that the printer prints it so that the person who’s paying for the printing can look at it and say, “this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong” and then fix it. So if somebody bought the “Cerebus” #2 remastered and bought the regular “Cerebus” #2 remastered, they could see the difference between the two. You could go through page by page and go, “oh, okay, this is all of the stuff that Dagon got wrong that Dave Sim corrected on his proof copy” which was odd because when you call something a printer’s proof, the picture that you get in your mind is this is as much better printed copy than the run of the mill copy. This is something that has been babied along and handcrafted and is better than the regular edition. At least, that’s what I picture when I think of it, but it wasn’t my book, it was a Waverly Press book, so, okay, this is just a new category that we haven’t had before.
Now contrast that with the “Cerebus” #300 printer’s proofs that I’m going to be selling that are signed by Dick and John and Kim Preney and by me. Dick had 30 years printing experience at the time when they were printing issue 300, and he was the lead pressman, he wasn’t the guy actually running the press, but he was the lead pressman, where everything goes on his desk as the number 300 is being printed, and he’s fixing and micromanaging problems that the hand’s on pressman isn’t equipped to make those kinds of decisions. So there’s different stages of, at the time that “Cerebus” 300 was being printed, printing was still a matter of, you have to print a large number of copies, a lot more than the customer was paying for, in order to fix all of the problems as things are being printed, and go, “okay, now it’s perfect. This is exactly what we want this to look like. Keep running the copies, and we’ll keep refining it as they’re coming along, but these are now the good copies” and those copies at that point where that decision’s made, are the ones that are going to be going to the distributor. The further along you go, then it’s “okay, we’ve printed enough for all of the distributors, now we’re gonna print another whatever. 1000, 1500 copies, in order to get the Aardvark-Vanaheim copies” which however many I was taking at the time. 30, 40? Something like that. So those are about the best copies, and then because you’re printing at this enormous ratio at the time of probably five times as many copies as you actually need, then you get into the overage. So the distributors’ copies, they’re all set aside, there’s enough of them for all of the distributors. The AV copies are set aside, those are for AV. And then you get into the overage, and you’re continuing to refine the process and that was the batch that Dick said, “this is the last issue we’re running, I’d really like to have a box of these. So I am going to cherry pick a box of the best of the best of the best of the best. So, that’s a different kind of printer’s proof. Those were pulled before they went into general circulation, and were hand-picked by the lead pressman, and preserved for the 18 years since they were actually printed. So compare that to the Waverly Press, they’re both printer’s proof, but they’re just defining it a different way.
Now we come to, “For 8.2, howsabout an honest name, something along the lines of "Alfonso's Signed Edition". Well, okay. That opens a can of worms because Alfonso’s opinion, and I forget how we got onto the subject, but we started talking about it on the phone at one point. Alfonso’s opinion is that it’s a jurisdiction and authority thing. Now those are my terms, but this is really what he’s talking about. He has jurisdiction and authority if he printed it, and it goes from his press to a bag and a board, at Studio Comixpress. Straight from the press, to a bag and a board, hasn’t left the premises. To him, that’s a 10.0. And it’s like, well, okay you’re gonna hit a wall on that one by definition, because CGC is going to say, “no, it’s a 10.0 if we say it’s a 10.0. You can’t grade your own book.” But it’s an interesting discussion and it really only centers on Alfonso, because he’s at the point of, well, it’s not his book. Take “Pieces of Turtles 8.2”, please! It’s not his book, it’s my book. I’m paying to have it printed. He’s not a customer for the book. He’s not buying them from me, and he’s also not selling them. All he’s saying is, if he printed it, and he looked at it and went, “Yep, that’s exactly the way that it’s supposed to look” and it gets bagged and boarded, and nobody touches it in between there, and it didn’t leave the premises. Like, that gets into a different area of, if I’m signing it. If I’m signing the 8.2 and it’s leaving the premises, that means that the jurisdiction has been violated, as soon as it’s outside of Studio Comixpress, because I can unmint it just by signing it. But Alfonso, because he’s a comics publisher, and a comics printer, and a comic store owner, and a comic fan, I would suspect that he’s the only printer that would even countenance the discussion. I don’t think anybody at Marquis printing, who print “Cerebus” and “Cerebus in Hell?” #1s would… they would have no frame of reference for the discussion. “Like if you guys ever thought of doing printer’s proofs, and what would you think of saying, okay, here’s these 50 copies, and they’re gonna go straight from our press, and somebody’s going to bag and board them, and we’re gonna call those printer’s proofs.” Their reaction would be, “no, you’re talking about something that we don’t do, we have no frame of reference for it, we have no interest in it. We work in terms of large volume is possible, all we are is printers. We’re just printing it. We’re not getting into all of this Comic Shop Guy on ‘The Simpsons’ kind of stuff, cause that’s not our business model”. So, you could disagree, and I think a lot of people would disagree with Alfonso saying, “no, you can’t unilaterally declare a 10.0 .” Why not? If that’s what Alfonso is saying, and he’s putting his name to it, he’s saying, “I’m grading this 10.0 because I’m the guy who printed it.” You could argue with it, but as long as it’s in the bag and the board, and it’s got a 10.0 designation and the designation is signed by Alfonso, then it’s up to the market. Throw one of those on eBay, what does a 10.0 go for? As opposed to, if Dave Sim decides to auction one of his 8.2’s, which he wouldn’t do, I don’t own them, scrupulously because I don’t want to get into what I would consider a conflict of interest with that. Then, I can’t call it a 10.0 because I didn’t print it. I can’t call it a 10.0 because I didn’t guarantee that it went straight from my printing press to a bag and a board and went nowhere in between, and as the printer, I’m able to sign it and say, okay, I didn’t do anything to that copy which would knock it down from 10.0.
Then there’s the other’s printer’s proof. I got Rolly to take some pictures of them today and he’s gonna be emailing them to you and you can put those up while we’re talking now. Those are actual, “this is a proof that Benjamin Hobbs put together, the final version of that ‘Cerebus in Hell?’ #1”. Emailed it to Alfonso, Alfonso printed it out, and Rolly picks it up and brings it back to the house, and then I proofread what is an actual printed copy of that “Cerebus in Hell?” #1. Alfonso usually does two of them. I went, okay, getting ahead of this problem, I had Alfonso come up with a Studio Comixpress sticker, that’s maybe like an inch square, that anytime that he prints one of these proofs, something comes in from Hobbs, “can you print this for Dave and give it to Rolly to give to Dave?” If that’s what you’re printing, put one of these stickers that you can’t remove without completely damaging the comic book, and make sure that it says Studio Comixpress on it, and has space for the date, and write the date in the space, and then when I’m done proofreading it, I write on it, “hand corrected proof, Dave Sim”, and the date that I corrected it. So, technically that’s the first copy of that that ever existed and is verified those two ways, that I wrote on it, “hand corrected proof” and I do, like while I’m reading it, I hit a typo, and I go, oh no, that’s a B and that’s supposed to be a D, and then I circle it, and then just fax the copy to Benjamin Hobbs to say, these are the ones that need to be corrected. As far as I know, these are the only corrections. But at that point, now, that’s definitely not a mint proof copy, because I have to flatten it in order so that I can put it on the scanner so that it can scan it and then send the fax to Hobbs. But that’s kinda offset by the fact that, well, there’s only one of them, and this was the first one that ever existed of this comic book. There was no printed version of it that was done before that. So there’s a long-winded, I hope, defence of the honesty that I’m trying to bring to this. It’s like, I’m perfectly aware of all of these aspects and I don’t want anything to be suspect about what we’re doing, either now or 50 years from now when people are saying, “well, okay, what is this?” Well, okay, I can tell you exactly what that is, but just giving the four different versions of what constitutes a printer’s proof, and each one of them is in the Cerebus Archive, or is circulating in one form or another, well, this is what that is. You can say, “okay, this is a really cool printer’s proof, and yes, this should be going for lots of money”, and you can go, “oh I think this is a fake printer’s proof, this is not a 10.0 just because Alfonso says it is.” Well, ya know, different people are gonna disagree about different things on that.
Matt: My thing with the 10.0s is , if it comes off the printer and gets bound and this is the finished comic and they put it in a bag and board and send it from the printer to CGC and CGC says “oh this is a 9.2”, what’s a 10.0 then?! [laughs]
Dave: Yeah! Yeah.
Matt: Yeah, there’s gonna be some physical damage when they’re folding the book and putting the staple in, but at the same time that means 10.0 doesn’t exist. It’s a theoretical of there could be a better copy of the book than this. It doesn’t get better than fresh off the printer, folded, stapled, and put in a bag and board. I mean, if that’s not 10.0, 10.0 doesn’t… I mean, at that point, we need to change the grading scale so it’s Spinal Tap and it’s “well, this one’s an 11.”
Dave: [laughs] Well, this is why, this is the first time that I’ve wrote down all of this stuff, because I’m going, okay, well, this is a can of worms but let’s deal with it. That’s why I said it comes down to jurisdiction and authority. CGC definitely has the cache of having authority, whether they have jurisdiction is another question. Because we’re not talking about Alfonso printing his own copies of “Fantastic Four” #543 or whatever. It’s like, there's X number of books that Alfonso prints, and Alfonso is, as far as I know, the only guy in that category right now, where he’s right on that borderline between comic fan, publisher, printer, comic store owner, cartoonist, and writer, and has a network of people surrounding him. Aardvark-Vanaheim’s not the only place that says “Alfonso does all of this stuff for my company” there are other people in that category. Then it’s a matter of saying, well, okay, this is a Studiocomix Press 10.0, and the reason that we’re saying that it is, is because Alfonso has both jurisdiction and authority that arguably supersedes that of CGC, which doesn’t have everything all in one place. CGC is third party grading, they’re grading the comic books, but they didn’t draw the comic books, they didn’t publish the comic book, and they’re not selling the comic books. So their authority definitely comes from consensus. The comic book field consensus is that, if somebody at CGC says that this is a 9.2, the fact that they’re employed by CGC validates that, because CGC only hires people that have the chops to be able to do that. That gets into an ancillary area which I’m working on, which is, working on mentally and getting ready to try and implement it… getting people to either grade or rate comic books who are willing to attach their name to their grading, because that’s one of the things that I go, “Mhm”, looking at it objectively, I’d say that if there’s a flaw to CGC, it’s that you don’t know who graded this comic book. If everybody had to put their name on their grading, and if two or three guys had to look at this comic book to arrive at a consensus as to what the grade is, can we have their names on there? So that then the people that are getting their books graded, if they get them back and they go, “9.2? That’s a 9.8. What are you talking about, 9.2?!” They can look at, okay, who graded it? And go, “okay, I don’t want that guy grading my books anymore. I want this guy to grade my books because I think he’s a more accurate grader.” Which is why I’m getting Dwayne and Richard here in town at Lookin For Heroes with the issue #300 signed printer’s proof copies, to… they don’t do third party grading themselves. They farm that out to another store up north when they do that, if they’re sending something to CGC. But they are willing to put them in order of condition. “As guys that have daily hands-on experience with the condition of comic books, we would say that these are the highest graded copies out of the 90 that you sent us, going down to the least high graded copies.” And then when I’m ready to sell them, and I figure out what I’m going to sell them for, then I can say, okay, we start selling them at noon on Saturday, and first come first serve. If you’re the earliest one ordering, you will get the best condition copy, and then I will put whatever number you want me to put on there. If you want me to put #1 out of 90, I’ll put 1 out of 90 on it. If you want your CAN number, ya know #213 out of 90, I’ll put #213 out of 90 and there you go. That’s what you’re going to be bearing in mind when the starting gun goes. But I seem to be alone in that. I can’t remember anybody else saying, “I have no problem with third party grading, but what I have a problem with is anonymous third party grading.”
Matt: Well, the problem I have with grading in general is that as soon as CGC slabs you’re book, it’s sealed permanently in plastic at whatever grade they give it, and it’s guaranteed to never go down in grade because no one can touch the book, which defeats the purpose of owning a comic book, in my mind.
Dave: Right.
Matt: I’m the guy that has the first appearance of the Hobgoblin, a book that sells for hundreds of dollars, and my copy’s probably worth cover price because I read the crap out of it because I was 5.
Dave: [laugh] Yeah.
Matt: My best friend and I reconnected after not talking for like 10 years, just cause he was living far away and we were busy being dads. And when he’s living back in town, and he’s like, “Hey, can I borrow them old Spider-Men that we used to read when we were kids” and I’m thinking, well in my head it’s a 90 dollar book but at the same time if nobody reads it, it’s worthless. So yeah, sure, here’s a stack of old, slightly valuable but not as valuable as they could be Spider-Men. And he read them, he gave them back, and they’re back down in the box. And it’s like, I understand the concept of “Action Comics“ #1, if you had a very good grade “Action Comics” #1 slabbing it makes sense because as an artifact it has more value than as a comic. But like, last month’s “Cerebus in Hell?” #1? I don’t see people going, “Oh I need to have that slabbed in 10.0.” I mean, yeah conceivably you could, but at the same time, is it gonna increase in value other than adding the value of slabbing it to the cost of the book?
Dave: Uh, yeah. But I think there’s a sliding scale on that, where, before you know it, this, as you say the first Hobgoblin #1, is… that just seems like yesterday to me, but it’s this many years ago, and now it is in that category. At that point, it becomes like the Dave Sim file copies of “Cerebus” where they’ve been maintained in this condition, which is either perfect or close to perfect for 40 years. Now would be a very bad time for them to get all buckled and wrinkled up just because they got into the hands of someone who goes, “uh, no, comic books are for reading.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: I can definitely see both sides.
Matt: There was the guy that was remodeling his house and in the wall when they pulled the drywall off, they found a copy of “Action” #1, and he pulled it out, and went, “Oh wow, this is the first Superman!” And his mother-in-law grabbed it out of his hand to see it, and ripped the cover, and they took it to get it graded, and the grader went, “Yeah, that’s like a $5000 rip.” And I’m thinking, and that guy probably doesn’t have a mother-in-law anymore! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: I mean, we’re cleaning up the house, I find an impossibly valuable comic book and you ripped it? Yeah, we’re gonna have a discussion about why you’re giving me five grand every time I think of this.
Dave: Yeah. Yeah. That’s one of those… everybody who is a comics fan can’t help but think that everybody that isn’t a comics fan in that sense is really the barbarian at the gates, sort of thing. Like you say with your friend, it’s like, “Yeah, I’ll be happy to lend you those comic books that you missed out on, but don’t treat them like this week’s Time Magazine and fold the covers back and stuff like that.” And then, you get into, okay, he’s looking at you, going, “Aren’t you the obsessive compulsive disorder casualty?” And you’re looking at them going, “Aren’t you the completely unaware philistine when it come to condition!” I think you have to have both angles on it. You need to have reading copies, and you need to have slabbed copies if for no other reason than to say, “this comic book made it from 1938 to 2022, and these are the only flaws that it has. We need to preserve it so that those stay the only flaws that it has.” Taking it as a given as well, though, that if Elon Musk took it into his head to buy an 8.0 “Action” #1, and cracked open the case because he wanted to read “Action” #1 and folded back the cover, he can do that with far less hardship to his bank account than any of the rest of us can do.
Matt: There’s a line in “The Lost Boys”, cause in “The Lost Boys” part of the deal is, Corey Haim plays, he’s like 13 or 14, and he goes to a comic book store and the owners of the store are hippies and their kids are running the store, and they’re about the same age. They’re giving him a comic book trivia test to prove whether he’s a real comic book fan or not, and he’s sorting their Supermen for them on the rack they have them on, going, “We can’t have this issue here cause Red Kryptonite hasn’t been invented yet, and you can’t have this issue here because…” So he proves that he’s a comic book fan, and they’re like, well, ya know, and they’re talking comics, and he goes, “Well, I’m looking for a copy of ‘Batman’ 14.” And they’re like, “That’s a serious book. There’s only five known copies in existence.” And he goes, “Four, and I’m always looking for the other three.”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: So he proves that he’s a comics fan. And it’s not a true stat, there are more than five known copies of that particular book, but my friend Kevin that worked in a store, they had a copy come in. And the owner bought it as part of a collection and I did the line from the movie, “Well, that’s a serious book, there’s only five known copies.” So when they put it on display, they put a little note saying, “Only 4 known copies (not really).”
Dave: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: If I had Elon Musk’s money, one of my stupid fantasies would be to buy all the copies I could of “Youngblood” #2 and destroy them, except for one that’s in a mid-grade, and get it slabbed as, “This is the only copy left.” So it’s automatically worth millions of dollars, cause there’s only one of them. And I wanna do it with a book like “Youngblood” where I know they printed 2 million of them, because that way, it’s the hunt of you can get them all for a quarter a piece now!
Dave: Well, I think that’s why God would never give you Elon Musk’s money. Because that’s just perverse!
Matt: Oh there’s a million reasons why he wouldn’t!
Dave: [laughs] Okay, well, II hope that covers for you, Steve. Thank you for your question. I hope it maybe raises the honesty of my “idio-syncretistic belief system“, maybe a couple of notches in your mind, if not up to Gem Mint, at least maybe 8.5 or 9.0.
Speaking of “Pieces of Turtles 8”, the commentary for the flash sale idea is, and Margaret says, “More like four minutes for roughing. Restricting the time frame will make it harder for anyone. The time frame might be when someone who listens to all of ‘Please Hold’ is asleep, at work, at a Bruins game,” [laughs], “or just doing anything that means they aren’t in front of their computer at that arbitrary time frame. Just give us a different password, and make it a day, and use the password to get the discount.” I probably should have announced this off the top, I did the final approval today of “Pieces of Turtles 8.2” and it is ready to go on Saturday when Please Hold goes up, as planned, on the Saturday, and this time there’s going to be three buttons. There’s going to be one copy of the Canadian edition for $25 Canadian, then there’s going to be a second button that we didn’t have last time where you can get five copies of “Pieces of Turtles 8.2”, a $125 value for $75, and then the same as last time, if you want to buy 10 of them, you get them for half price, $12.50 each for a total of $125. First come, first serve. I still love Eddie Khanna’s line when he first read the 10 copies for $125, “We will not be undersold.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So, like I say, that’s a go, and we’ll persevere right now to Easton, PA’s answer to “Why an Aardvark”, Michael R said, “That is a very short time frame.” This is when I was talking about why we couldn’t we make it two hours. “It takes me a while to listen to all of Please Hold, sometimes as long as a week.” That’s a good point, that’s a good point. Like I said, I should have done this off at the top, and here we are an hour and 15 minutes into Please Hold and now they’re just finding out about the “Pieces of Turtles 8.2”. “So, as long as the announcement is a week moving forward of when it’s going to happen, then I think I can make it happen. Which his another good point, it depends on when you announce it, and how quickly that circulates so that everybody’s that’s interested finds out. If the announcement is within hours of Please Hold and there is a good chance that I will probably miss out. Just give me the advance time. I like Margaret’s idea of a different password, that will keep everyone on their toes.” Yeah, the password is sort of just a conceit, it’s not really necessary if you find out about a new Swordfish edition on Please Hold for Dave Sim and you go to CerebusDownloads, the odds of you needing a password are very very slim, although it is very funny to see the “swordfish”, “swordfish”, “swordfish” [laughs] “swordfish” when the paperwork comes in.
Bill Ritter asks, “I would ask, what is the purpose of a short duration flash sale? Collectibility? Why would Dave want to do that at the cost of market? He gets no gain from Bill buying 10 for $100 and selling 8 for $25 each. I get the profit. At short duration in this audience, then Dave loses cash. One week worked okay, asking again, why make a change?” Uh, that’s a good point as well. One of the aspects of that that I’m still dealing with mentally is, is this a Please Hold thing? Which is sort of how it started, I’ll just announce it here. Is it undermining the collectibility if Eddie Khanna sends out an email blast to everybody who ever participated to one of the Cerebus Archive Portfolio Kickstarters, and Sean does an email blast to everybody who bought a “Strange Death of Alex Raymond”, and I do a special video that goes up on Youtube for my now 1500 subscribers. Theoretically that would bring in in more money, but then you go, well, okay, but then you’re definitely pushing a boundary for how much you can charge for a comic book already, and if you start getting into, okay, now having sold 300 of this, let’s see if I can sell 800 of this next time. Then you are sort of wounding the collectibility. But yeah, I can definitely see what Bill is saying, and I would tend to agree that a short duration flash sale of a couple of hours is too far over in the other direction.
And Margaret commented after Bill, with… Margaret must not have been at a Bruins game! She commented again! “Two hours is too short. I will probably be unable to access it to either being at work, driving to a Bruins game, at a Bruins game, etc.” You can tell that it’s playoff time.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: “I need to be at home and awake during this time frame. Plus, if it is a time for the people in the Western Hemisphere, that just puts fans at other areas of the world at a disadvantage. Please don’t do a shortened time frame sale.” Maybe we could find some way to get it up on the JumboTron at whatever the arena is called where the Bruins are playing and see if we can drum up some business that way.
Matt: She’s currently in Washington, DC for work. [laughs]
Dave: Who? Margaret’s in Washington, DC for work, is she?
Matt: Yeah. I’m friends with her on Facebook, and she’s been posting photos from the work trip, and I commented going, “This is all a cover for your plan to heist old comics from the Library of Congress, isn’t it?” and she’s like “Shh! Don’t say anything!”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: So she posted a picture this morning of the conference she’s at at some hotel, and I’m like, “Ooh! Heist time!” And she’s like, “Shh!” [laughs]
Dave: Really. Really.
Matt: Yeah, so I…
Dave: I don’t think the Bruins are playing Washington, are they? So it’s like she must be going into withdrawal.
Matt: Uhh she was just at a game, I think, on Tuesday.
Dave: Okay.
Matt: I think she’s a season ticket holder.
Dave: Oh yes! Oh yes, there’s no question about that. You would have to pry her Bruins season tickets out of her cold dead hands when it came to that.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Anonymous said, “Regarding the two hour window, I see it like this: first, don't announce when the two-hour window will be, and make everyone who wants it refresh every hour until they find it up. Wow! You got lucky and could buy some. Annoy the crap out of your few customers! Second, announce start time in advance. Everyone who really wants it will be there, except for the handful who will not be able to be there, and so are you annoying the crap out of the few who can't get it at that time, but also annoying the crap out of many more who know it's a totally unnecessary buying restriction. If you want to make it shorter, do days, not hours. That would make sense. Hours is just a dumb way to restrict the several dozen buyers to a few less and in a way that is likely annoying to most of the several dozen.”
And then Dion Turner, “G’day, mate!”, from Australia, said, “I'm okay with the short time frame window, so long as there would be a good notice period. A few days, a week. That way if it's a clash with work I can line up a proxy. I half suspect it’ll be in the middle of the night my time. I still remember the “High Society Regency Edition” 2 a.m. login. No complaints, I got the book I wanted.” Whereupon Glenn chimes in, “The two-hour window will be 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. on a Tuesday. Have your Visa ready!” [chuckles] Michael Hunt, “No, just no. I want to buy a thing and support an artist in their work. I'm already paying too much for a short zine in order to do just that. I would prefer that the artist not spend his valuable time thinking up ways to keep me from doing just that. Signed, Michael Hunt.” And that's the comments from A Moment of Cerebus.
Then, “Easton, Pennsylvania's sexiest man alive, Michael R”, and we have an asterisk there, “they really need to survey somebody other than Grace for this one.” Uh, no, I think we can take Grace R’s word for just about anything. She strikes me as a very very honest person. So Michael R is now officially now Easton, Pennsylvania's sexiest man alive. “Hi, Matt! My thoughts to Dave on the Canadian version of “Pieces of Turtles 8”. I know everyone will get mad at me. Well, that's the 2022 way to be for everybody, but I'm fine with having a two-hour window providing you let everyone know ahead of time it will be on this date, at this time, to go wherever, CerebusDownloads, or however many copies you want, if you want to make this special for the people who listen to Please Hold. If not, then you can just put “Pieces of Turtles 8” on Kickstarter and make more people happier with a longer window to pledge. Bottom line for me is just finding out about it. It really doesn't matter how long you want to make it. I'm fine with the majority. Michael R. P.S. Why not have the Canadian and the US version sold together on Kickstarter?“ Uh yeah, that's a possibility as well, as a two copy package that you could order on Kickstarter. I think if I was gonna do them on Kickstarter, then I would just scratch the Swordfish Edition completely. The appeal for me on that one is that it' attached to CerebusDownloads. So the money comes in, the end of the month arrives, Eddie Khanna transfers all OF the money to the AV bank account, and it's all done and it's just a matter of doing the fulfillment. So yes, that brings us to the end of the comments on that. So trying to be as judicious as possible about this, and wanting to keep a certain amount of mystery attached to it as well. As I say, all things being equal, George Peter Gatsis having gotten the three buttons done for CerebusDownloads, the “Pieces of Turtles 8.2” Swordfish Edition will be available for sale on Saturday and it will be available for… I don't know how long.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: How ‘bout that one?
Matt: You're lucky she's further away in Washington than Boston! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] I'm just saying, it's not gonna be two hours, and it's not gonna be 30 days. It’s gonna be somewhere in between those.
Matt: [laughs] A week and a half?
Dave: Well, that's very possible, as well. Do you think I should tell people at some point how long it's going to be? Like, do I have to tell them right now, or can I go, “Well, okay, let's say it'll at least be available on Saturday”?
Matt: Uhh, just let me know when it's gonna go away so I can stop telling people about it!
Dave: [laughs] That's true! That's true. Come on, Matt, you've got to be our best possible publicist! What are you doing telling people to buy something that's not available anymore?
Matt: Well, I do have a track record of making a rigmarole that I put on every post and forgetting to update it so all of a sudden I'm telling people to buy a copy of “Cerebus in Hell?” that the final order cut off was last week. That's happened a number of times, where they’re like, “Hey, why are you still promoting the thing that we're printing?” I'm like, “Oh, uh, extra sales?”
Dave: That’s a good story. I'd stick with that one.
Matt: I mean, there was… when you were putting stuff on Comic Link, I had a link to the Comic Link auctions, and I wasn't paying attention when they ended. So it was still going for, ehh, like another two, three days after everything sold.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: I mean, I'm guaranteed, if you're a Cerebus fan, I will tell you. I may tell you and you find out a month too late, but I will definitely let you know. [laughs]
Dave: That's right. That's right. It's your job. It's a core part of your job description. It's why you make the big bucks.
Matt: I would say, send me a fax with the 24-hour notice of, okay, there's 24 hours as of when Matt got this fax, or as of when Dave sent this fax. And then, that's it. End of the show, you know. If you didn't get one now, wait until the US Kickstarter and get a gold Sharpie and you can cross out US and write Swordfish and no one will know.
Dave: How about an audience participation one? I hate to back Eddie Khanna, the successor, into a corner on this one, but he has access to CerebusDownloads. If, in as close to real time, which in any case would be when he gets home from work, being on the West Coast that'd be probably about nine o'clock eastern time, if every day starting Saturday he says, “this is how many sold today.” You with me so far?
Matt: Yeah…
Dave: And then it's kind of a ”everybody vote as we go along.” Should we probably just pull the plug and put this out of its misery? We only sold two of them today.
Matt: Um. I guess the question is, how fast did the first sell? I mean, it was available for a week. How many sales… you know, what was the bell curve on this, of, at a certain point you know it's the last day and people are either scrambling to get it, or was it the first day everybody bought it and then it was, you know, onesies and twosies for a week?
Dave: That I don’t know.
Matt: That would be something Eddie would… I can send Eddie an email that I go, “Hey Eddie, how fast did this sell out?”
Dave: Um, do you think he would still have that information or have access to that information?
Matt: I'm sure he's still got access to it. If it goes through the Aardvark-Vanaheim PayPal account he should have access to that for eternity, because it's the internet! Nothing goes away!
Dave: Right! Right right.
Matt: Or, to really mess with everybody, it's on sale until we hit 2000 copies, and then it's gone forever!
Dave: [laughs] That could take an entire generation to get up to 2000 copies.
Matt: Or, everybody could panic and they could sell out by Sunday. You know, it's kind of a coin toss.
Dave: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: Ooh! I got it! I got it. Because it's 2022 and we didn't do the February 22nd 2022 Batvark number two idea I had because I… the idea got real complicated and I'm like, “I think we're gonna forget about this one.” Every day at two in the afternoon, you flip a coin, and if it comes up heads, we keep selling them.
Dave: That's a theory. That's a theory. Or we could have a vote. You could be completely democratic about it and everybody votes every day on whether to euthanize the 8.2 Swordfish Edition, or keep going. And you have to keep voting if you want it to keep going, and if you don't vote and the anti-8.2 continuity faction chimes in, then uh I'm sorry. And you know how the votes go on A Moment of Cerebus. It's, you know, four to two, or six to one, or whatever it is, because just like in the real world, people tend not to vote. The people who mean to vote and never get around to it, well okay, now you just lost your chance for an 8.2 Swordfish because you let the the anti-Swordfish faction take over the political process.
Matt: I suspect there will be more copies of 8.2 than 8.1 only because now I know the email addresses of the big time Turtle fans and I can say, “hey, 8.2 is going live” and they'll tell all the Turtle fans. And so, 8.1 will become even more valuable for the people that want… the crazy collectors that need to have both copies Canadian and US will be… well, there were only, what, 125 Canadian?
Dave: Yes. Yes, I see where you're going with that. What's your comfort level on the legitimacy of contacting the major Turtles fans, and what's your level of confidence that they're going to go, “yeah let's make sure that more people get copies of this instead of just me and my friends?”
Matt: Well, as a Turtle profiteer…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: When I bought the 10 with the intention of I'm going to get emails going, “I missed this, how do I get one?” and the first eight guys that showed up with cash on hand got them, it was very much a… I mean, I had a number of people who were… I remember there was one guy I think his name was Rich, who runs a Turtles website, and he was, “Oh if I had known about this, I would have told everybody!” Well okay, now I'll tell you, so now you know, so now you gotta tell everybody. So I have a feeling that this might be at least double, maybe triple, I mean it all depends on if it's a slow Turtles news day.
Dave: Right, right. And who knows that ahead of time?
Matt: Well, Kevin Eastman, probably.
Dave: Because, as I'm far as I’m concerned there's no such thing as a slow Turtles news day.
Matt: Well, I think Kevin Eastman would know. He would be like, “Hey I'm not doing anything today, it's a slow Turtles day.” And then other days, it's a “Hey I'm going to write a new Turtles series” and then it's a hot Turtles news day.
Dave: Right. Right. Okay, well, we'll go with that, and I will say I will at least commit to the same length of sales time as last time. It'll be at least a week.
Matt: Okay, Saturday the 7th to Saturday the 14th.
Dave: There you go. All right. And every everybody's on their own. If you want to email Rich the Turtles website guy, uh, you go girl.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, then MJ Sewall sent in, “Hey Manly Matt, several Ebay auctions ended today of Dave's original art. They were being sold by presumably George Santian Ahumada” I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. “All pieces for sale were signed to him. The seven pieces went for between 1175 and 2075 dollars respectively. The cover to number 152 sold for 7601!!!” and let me second the motion on those exclamation marks! [laughs] Gerhard and I got nowhere near seven thousand six hundred dollars when we sold that one. “You probably already talked to Dave for Please Hold, but I thought you and he'd like to know.” Yes, definitely. Thank you, Mike. “I won two of the auctions. I am thrilled! I've already sent word to the Art Hunt email, note copied below for details, if interested. Cheers, MJ Mike Sewall.” To the Art Hunt email earlier today, “Hello there. I just won two Ebay auctions. I'm still in an excited dither and they are not in hand yet. The art pieces are issue 102 pages 14 and 15, issue 112/113 page 8 from 1988.” The issue 102, we auctioned that at the Mid-Ohio Con for charity, the complete issue that was all double-page spreads. So the provenance goes back at least to them, like 1987. “I don't know if these pieces have already been scanned or not. A firm believer in the project and supporter of Dave's work I'm happy to help. What is the process for getting these scanned?” Uh, Mike, the easiest thing that you could do with that is if you don't have a scanner yourself, you don't know somebody who does have a scanner, would be to take them to a local print shop, Kinkos, FedEx, or one of those places, and tell them that you need a digital scan of them. RGB-- uhh, my mind's going blank what's the dots per inch that we usually do on that?”
Matt: I believe the official request is 600 dpi but Sean wouldn't say no to a 1200 dpi.
Dave: Right, right. So… and I think 700 is sort of the Goldilocks spot, if you're looking for a Goldilocks spot. So, if you tell any place that has a top grade scanner, all you need is an RGB 1000 or 700 dots per inch digital scan of these pages, and then from there just email them to the Art Hunt address and if there's any kind of problem with them I'm sure Sean will check them right away and say, “Um this one should probably be redone, and this is why it needs to be redone .” Then we heard from Mike again, and thank you Mike for volunteering to scan them. It sounds like we're a go for Kevin H in Denton, Texas, just North of Dallas, to get him a scanner that he will be our man on the scene for Heritage Auctions…
Matt: No, no no no, the official announcement was “high-end auction house”. We're not supposed to name names, I guess? I don't know! That was the email I got from Eddie, said “high-end auction house.”
Dave: Okay. [laughs] Somewhere in Texas? Uh, okay we'll leave that alone.
Matt: We're proud of our Texas heritage! [laughs]
Dave: That's right! That's right. We're deep in the heart of Texas. We’re all yellow roses at Cerebus.com. So, yeah, we'll just leave that alone.
Matt: Well---
Dave: Amputate everything that I just said on that.
Matt: No-no-no-no-no, well I mean it's one of those… it's very Swordfishy of, “we all know what the password is.” [laughs]
Dave: Right.
Matt: I mean, yeah, it is Heritage and it's because of something we're going to get to in a little bit I'm sure.
Dave: The fact that it's it's all of “Cerebus” #4
Matt: Yeah. That was… uh not Wendell, what is it Wenden? I believe his name is Wenden Adams, who works for Heritage, is a member of the Cerebus Facebook group, and when an original page of art comes across his desk, he takes a picture and posts it, going, “What was at my desk today!” And Sean goes, “Can I get a scan of that?” and it's, “Well actually, you gotta talk to so and so” and Sean goes, “Please let us have a good scan!” because they're taking a picture but it's not the quality that a six or 1200 dpi scan is. And I guess this issue was finally the point where Sean got a hold of somebody at Heritage, went, “What do we have to do to get it” and they're saying, “Well we don't do that” and it's “Well, what do we have to do to do that?” and apparently it's “Buy a scanner and have somebody come and we'll let them scan it.”
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: And my particular Don Quixote concept of, you know the Mickey Rooney, “Hey everybody! Let's buy an issue of ‘Cerebus’!” idea you know “let's all pool our money, win the auction, send it back home and turn it into well hey since we're buying this scanner anybody want to help pay for it” and I think the last I heard was that we're up to like $900 that has been donated to pay for it?
Dave: That's terrific! That's terrific, because I said that Aardvark-Vanaheim would pay the balance of whatever money wasn't raised. And I think that Sean found the scanner that I use, and Gerhard uses, and Sean uses, used on Ebay somewhere for $850 or something like that.
Matt: I think it was, with shipping and everything, I think it's a thousand or a thousand fifty or something like that and Eddie told me when he… he sent me a message going, “Hey you can tell everybody on AMoC and Facebook this” and I’m like, “Okay” and I've been beating the drum of, “Hey everybody, if you want to help out, this is, you know… send Sean the money to this Paypal and… in fact Larry Wooten sent me email that he already gave 100 bucks and now he's sending another hundred because Larry loves helping out!
Dave: Yes!, Yes there's no question about that. You're talking about Weldon Adams?
Matt: Weldon Adams! Yeah. It is Weldon.
Dave: Yeah he used to work at one of the Texas comic stores, like… trying to remember which one it was, either it was either Camelot or… yeah i think i think it was Camelot. He was sort of like the sidekick guy. So Weldon goes way back in the Cerebus contacts context and good guy to have on-site. So yeah, very very very exciting that we will have that capability and we'll just hope that there's more comic pages come available. How is the fundraising going for the complete “Cerebus” #4? You said it was up to six thousand?
Matt: Yeah that's pretty much where it's plateaued, because, it became this logistical nightmare of i said hey if we all pool our money together we can probably get the $50,000 I estimated it's going to go for. Because it's 22 pages, if they're $2000 a page it'll be at least 48,000, so about 50. And people, you know, it was “I'm interested but if I do it I want a page” and it's like, okay well the idea was we're sending everything back…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: But okay, as I repeatedly say when it comes up I’m like, “All right, money talks, bullshit walks. If you give the most money and you want a page, we will let you have a page.” And then it became, okay… because Larry Wooten kicked in 2078. 11.
Dave: Wow.
Matt: 2000 for the page, 78 for the year that the issue came out, 11 cents for his CAN number.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And he was top dog and he wants the pages to go back to you. And I'm like, okay so… and I'm being, there's no holding anything, you know, playing my cards close to my chest. I'm being as open and honest, because it's Aardvark-Vanaheim, open and honesty is pretty much what we do. And so it’s..
Dave: Because we're so bad at lying and dissembling.
Matt: Well that's part of it. I mean, I'm sure you were great at lying back when you drew “Cerebus” #4 in 1978, but I think you've seen the error of lying and have had that come to Jesus moment of, like, let's just tell the truth. I mean when you're broke, you're broke. When you're not broke, hey I can eat good cat food!
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: I mean, we've been saying this for a couple years now, so it was, I've been open of, okay I gotta donate… you know I haven't necessarily been saying names, because it's I want to let it be anonymous, but you know somebody donated 2078.11, they want the art to go back to Dave and somebody on Facebook went, “Well I'm willing to kick in two grand but I want to keep a page” and I'm like, well okay well. So the the deal became for, you know, highest money in gets first pick, if we win because that's the big… everything is dependent on if we can win this is what I'll do. So the plan initially was send it back to Dave after scanning it and everybody gets a Cerebus Archive portfolio 1.4 of all 22 pages and the recreated cover. And everyone's going, you know, behind the scenes to see the “Cerebus in Hell?” guys and Eddie are going, “so who's paying for this?” and I'm like, we gotta win the auction first. I'm gonna burn that bridge when I get to it. That's future Matt's problem and i hate that guy.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: So, the initial deal was it's all going back to you, then it was, “Okay, money talks, bullshit walks. The more money you give determines what happens. If you give more money than the highest pledger, you become the new high pledger, and if you want a page and you want everybody to physically keep the art, fine. We will just determine a way of splitting the 22 pages among everybody. And then, you know, because all I'm trying to do is goose people to say, “Yes I will throw money in.“ So then at one point it was, if we can get more than 22 people it'll become a lottery based on how much you give and if you give less than 2000 you can still get a chance to earn a page by giving more than everybody else. And that didn't spark anybody's interest. You know, I honestly think everybody's going, you know, checking the couch cushions for “how much money do I have personally so I can outbid Matt and his band of merry idiots?” And it's one of those, I'm like, I know this auction is probably going to get real high because it's 22 pages or technically 23 pages of art and somebody with, as you so eloquently put it at the end of the Konigsberg section of “Latter Days”, “some yenta with more money than brains” is going to buy this.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And probably… you know , because the first thing I said when I heard about it was, why are they doing it is one lot instead of 23 individual lots? And Weldon came back with that he's not handling this particular auction, but from what he understands this is what the seller wants. They just want to do one lot that's, you know, get it all done. Which leads me to believe this is probably an estate deal where somebody owned this, they died, they don't know what to do with it, and somebody else said, “well, put it up for auction.”
Dave: Right. I do take issue with the complete issue package which Heritage Auctions has done with other stuff. I always think to myself, however much money that you're going to get by selling this large package as one unit, you're going to make more with the first Elrod page, kind of thing. Exponentially more, and then the rest of the pages really become gravy at that point. But Heritage Auctions is the the experts on this, so it is… they do tend to do that. And I know that Denis Kitchen did the same thing when he was selling Will Eisner's Spirit Section. that he would only sell stories intact, eight pages at a time, rather than selling the pages individually. Those are now starting to… individual pages, they're starting to get sold, but it's kind of a long process. Harry Kremer bought both of those. Harry Kremer bought #4 and #6, which are the only two intact issues of the early issues, and I got a grand total of $220 for for each complete issue because that's about what they were worth at the time. Harry will give me $10 a page if he can have all of the pages.
Matt: [laughs] And if I remember correctly from an old Blog and Mail, and then you went and spent that 220 on marijuana and smoked. [laughs]
Dave: Yes, the most expensive marijuana baggies ever purchased by a comic book artist.
Matt: [laughs] Specifically I remember an old Blog and Mail where you were, I think it was the beginning of the art hunt and you were saying, “Yeah, issue 8 doesn't exist in the Archive because somebody wanted to get high.” [laughs]
Dave: Yep, yeah. So okay, we've got…
Matt: If 4 went to Harry, now I kind of wonder who's selling it. Because i think when 6 sold it sold… I think there was another auction of the entire issue’s worth of art and now that I think about it, I think it was issue 6. I’m gonna have to look back
Dave: Yeah, that's a Kitchener scandal, of “What happened to Harry's artwork after Harry died?” and there's no real answer to that one. Just kind of, well okay we're never going to find out, nobody's going to fess up to anything, so you just have to unfortunately become philosophical about it.
Mike had another question, “How much did ‘Cerebus’ cost to produce per page or per issue? Pens, ink, artboards, ISBN number not free, printing cost per book, all of it.” That would have changed over time. The box of pen nibs, 50 cents each. Gerhard and I, between us, wouldn't go through a box of pen nibs on an issue, I don't think, depending on how the nibs were working. So that was a couple of bucks. Ink amortized probably across several issues. Letting the ink evaporate so that it became darker, replenishing it out of the master bottle of ink. We both had master bottles of ink, those are about 20 bucks for a large sized bottle of ink? Which would probably last us two years? Three years? The artboards that we were using most of the time, they came on large sheets where I think we got four or five pages out of out of each sheet, and each sheet of illustration board probably cost about 10, $15, so you're talking about $4 per page. The ISSN number, which is what it would be on the comic book, I don't think that was… It’s not free now, but it was free at that time. That was something that the government subsidized. All you had to do was tell the National Library that this is what you're publishing and send two copies to the National Library, and you could just apply for an ISSN number. The ISBN number, that was on the trade paperbacks, that would be a different category. Printing cost per book, all of it, there's a certain amount of that in the Cerebus archive. I've been meaning to take any sales book for 1977 and get that scanned and sent to you at A Moment of Cerebus because it definitely shows sales figures for issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, who was paying on time, what discount that they were getting. All of those kinds of things, and stuff that I’d forgotten! An invoice for commercial artwork that I did for Victoria Bowlarama here in town, which doesn't exist anymore, that was a going concern when Deni was also my commercial art agent, and I have no idea what that is. What artwork I did for them and what they used it for, no copies in the Cerebus archive. This is the first I heard of it when I just happen to flip through the book, which is in the Cerebus Archive “eight and half by eleven and smaller” category. That's something that I want to get to. Printing cost per book, I do have a record of that, Deni's ledger from that time period, and I can try and rustle that up to let you know exactly what each of the early issues cost to print. Got a canceled check for the printing of “Cerebus” #1 and I think it's $500, $570, to print all 2000 copies.
And then Mike Sewall again! Hello again, Mike. “Hey Manly Matt! Sorry to bother you. I plan to buy a Collected Letters of Dave Sim when I can find one, Volume One and Volume Two. Do you know if AV/Dave has any still for sale? I'd rather have any money go directly to Dave.” And yes, we do have copies of both. We have more copies of Volume One than Volume Two. Volume One was $35, Volume Two, I think, was $20 cover price. And Rolly was in today and I asked him. “What would it cost just off the top of your head to ship Volume One and Volume Two together?” and he said “Ballpark, between 20 and $30 Canadian. Probably closer to $30 than to $20.”
And okay, that brings us to the end. I will say Mike, you don't have to send money for Collected Letters Volume One and Volume Two. You sent me a wonderful gift which Rolly picked up at the post office on Wednesday. I'm not going to spoil what the gift is and your cover letter that came with it, but it's definitely a really really cool “Dave hasn't got one of these” and is reet chuffed that he's now got one of these. So that will be a Weekly Update coming up ahead, thanking you for that, and the other way I'm going to thank you is by sending you a personalized autographed copy of Collected Letters Volume One and Volume Two. But anybody else that wants Collected Letters Volume One or Volume Two, like I say, the shipping cost for the two of them together would be about $30 Canadian. So knock $5 off of that for the exchange rate, and just whatever you would want to pay for Collected Letters Volume One and Volume Two. It's not as if they're terrifically rare around here, and I can personalize them or just sign them and send those out to you. The shipping costs are the primary concern, so it would be $30 shipping, and then if, like Mike, you want AV/Dave to have the money, just send as much money for the book as you're sending for the postage, and I will consider myself and AV well compensated.
Matt: And that's.. there's still four of One and ten of Two, or is that counting the ones you're sending to Mike?
Dave: Uh, I'm sorry, I didn't follow that.
Matt: So how many copies of Volume One does AV have for this offer?
Dave: Uh, way too many. It's the book that we have the most of. It's the book that Diamond ordered in a specific quantity, and it took them so long to sell them, it took… “how long did it take them to sell it?” It took them so long to sell them that they refused to list them as being available from Diamond and would not allow me to solicit for copies of Collected Letters 2004, is the actual title, Volume One. But it's one of those weird things where it's now 16 years later and I'm thinking I am going to make up a solicitation for Collected Letters, an autographed copy, and do it at the original cover price of $35, and send the solicitation to Diamond, and see, A) if they will list it, and B) how many people go, “Wow! I've been looking for this for a long time, and here it is! It's actually available.” And who knows, it could it turn into a big seller. I mean, the same thing happened with the Animated Cerebus portfolio. It's like, I don't know, you want to buy 500 of them and make a coffee table out of them? And then it's like, well, no, it's that many years later on and this is now this thing that you never thought you would ever be able to get rid of is now a rare collector's item.
Matt: If you have Rolly send me a list of what AV physically has that you maybe want to get rid of, let me know, and I will let people know. And, okay, you know like, I’m just trying to think… like the Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing, the original edition. If you have any of those left, or any of this any other stuff…
Dave: Yeah. I will specify that for Rolly. It's like, “You know what we've got way too many of. Definitely let Matt know about those.” The Guide to Self-Publishing I've only got the archived copies of the original comic book size printing, and I've got maybe like 13 of the uhh…
Matt: The Revised Expanded?
Dave: Yeah the Expanded trade paperback edition. I forget what the mix is on the “Cerebus ticking clock” cover and the “Cerebus berserker coming through the wall” version of the cover. But that was another one of those that sold like, emm, okay, but this is top of my list to bring this back into print. But yeah I will definitely make a note here to ask Rolly, “Anything that we've got in significant quantities that might be rare for everybody else, let Matt Dow know what they are, and he can start beating the bushes for sale.”
Matt: I still remember the time I called Aardvark-Vanaheim and a guy answered the phone, and I asked for you, and it was, “Oh hold on a minute”, and they came on the phone and I ordered the Guide to Self-Publishing and I sent the check, and then Gerhard, because that was when I did the coffee mugs, and Gerhard wanted a mug for Margaret, and I never charged him because if the guy that created it wants me to do something I'm not gonna say, “Oh give me 30 bucks or whatever.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: I just sent it to her, gratis as a “Hey thanks for letting me make mugs” and Gerhard being Gerhard was, “Well, we got to pay Matt.” So you had signed and sent me the the Guide and then Gerhard had went, “Ahh! I know how I'll pay Matt back. We'll send him his check back and give him a a signed and sketched copy of the Guide” and on the envelope you wrote, “I didn't have the heart to tell Gerhard I already sent you one, so this will be our little secret.” [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Yeah! There you go. There you go.
Matt: I still have that copy with the envelope and it's one of those, it's like, you know, part of me goes, “Oh I should put this in the box with all my Cerebus stuff” and part of me's like, “Yeah but the envelope doesn't fit in the box so no it's going to go in the stack of envelopes.”
Dave: There you go. Okay, that's a wrap then, Matt!
Matt: Yes! I will start beating the drums on “Pieces of Turtles 8.2” and as of Saturday the money will just pour in like a hole in the roof when it's raining.
Dave: Terrific!
Matt: And while I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony!
Dave: Okay, well uh you'll have to talk to Ronald Reagan about that.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Have a good night, Matt.
Matt: You too, Dave! Have a good night.
Dave: Buh-bye.
[receiver clicks]
Matt: So to reiterate, at the very end of Please Hold for Dave Sim, since Little Orphan Aardvark didn't get a message to me this month, although she was really thinking about it. “Pieces of Turtles 8.2”, the second Pieces of Turtles 8 fanzine, which is completed, signed off, and going to be available on CerebusDownloads.com as of Saturday for me right now, for, well actually tomorrow for you, since I'm probably gonna get these videos up on Friday. But the blog post will go up on Saturday, so… third base! Anyway, “Pieces of Turtles” 8.2 on CerebusDownloads.com and what's the price? One copy for $25 Canadian, five copies for $75 Canadian, and 10 copies for $125 Canadian. And the sale starts Saturday and will end whenever we decide it ends. I think Dave's vote idea is probably the best idea, so once you get yours you can vote and say, “Okay! We're done! Stop!” And everybody else will cry and whine and then you can sell your nine extra copies for hundreds of dollars and be Turtle profiteers like I was. I don't know how many I'm gonna buy this time, that's gonna be something I'll have to figure out, but uh yeah! So that is deal number one, “Pieces of Turtles 8.2”, CerebusDownloads.com Saturday May 7th until at least Saturday May 14th, possibly longer. Second deal for all of you lovely listeners listening to my stupid voice, is Collected Letters Volume One and Two from Aardvark-Vanaheim signed and personalized by Dave, if you want it signed and personalized. $30 shipping and whatever free will offering you want to pay for it. I would suggest at least $30 dollars a copy, depending on if you want the first one or the second one since the first one's the big thick phone book and the second one is the little not-big thick phone book. I'm in the first one, I know! I'm between Dostoevsky and Dragon Ball Z right where I belong. And then the third offer that isn't an offer yet because I don't know what's for sale, is anything else Aardvark-Vanaheim has clogging up the hallways that they just don't want anymore, for however much Dave wants for it, when i get the list. I'm sure it'll be a fun list of, there's this and there's this and there's this and everybody's gonna go, “I've been looking for that for hundreds of years!” So as soon as I know and I get a post up, I'll let you know. Thanks for listening to Please Hold for Dave Sim. Margaret, I'm sorry I gave the details of the heist away, but hopefully you got away with it. Remember, I need that copy of “Batman 14” because there's only four in existence and I'm looking for another the other three. Last one out turn out the lights, if you want to pledge money for the buying “Cerebus” #4, the original art you can send an email to mouse… ahh, MomentofCerebus at gmail.com or thevarkwars at gmail.com, or one of my four other email addresses because I'm a freak that has way too many email addresses. You got anything to say, cat? No? Cat doesn't got nothing to say. Again, thanks for listening. This is the part where you're supposed to say, “Like, share, subscribe” but I don't do that because I don't believe in it. If you're the guy, 1500TH Cerebus Online subscriber, and you're listening to this for some reason, you should call Dave at his phone number that I'll put up on the screen when I make the video for this and for the audio fans that number is the number that Dave just called me from that everybody should know by heart. Okay I'll look it up! Just give me a second, people. Number number number number… what is it? Uh, 1-519-576-0610, so call and Dave's answering machine will answer and you can leave a message and Dave will call get back to you, if you are the 1500th Youtube Cerebus Online subscriber. Anton, I think your name is Anton. I can't remember off the top of my head, and I'm not looking because I don't print out notes, we wing this! Anyway, again thank you thank you thank you for listening and I’m just at this point padding it out because I get paid every time somebody listens to the entire thing. All right, last one out turn off the lights, don't take any wooden nickels, and don't piss upwind. Bye!
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