Hi, Everybody!
Mondays!
I'm still on vacation, so I can't format and insert the Monday Report. So, you'll get a double dose next week.
But here's the last Vacation strip:
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Jesse Lee Herndon has caught up to Dave and I on the Please Hold Transcripts, And since I'm out of Proto-Strange Death of Alex Raymond pages, I may as well start knocking out these transcripts.
Here's where I'm at (blue link means it's been posted):
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HA! So this week's (where I'm on vacation) transcript is from...when I was on vacation and Brian West had to fill in for me. You can't make this stuff up...
Dave: …This to Matt and Eddie Khanna, December 30th. And basically it’s coming in January 2023, the remastered “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” #8 Kickstarter. Coming in January 2022, like today, “Pieces of Turtles 8”, my first fanzine in nearly 50 years. I’d completely forgotten that “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” #8 is 45 freaking pages long! I let Kevin off his leash, fly and be free little Turtle, and fly he did. It’s so well written you don’t even notice how many pages you’re reading, just that it’s over too soon. But that posts a problem for Dagon’s Waverly Press, Sean’s Living the Line, and/or Aardvark Vanaheim, whoever ends up doing the Kickstarter in January 2023. How much extra material can you get into a book that’s already a minimum 45 pages long? So “Pieces of Turtles 8” is the planning stage for that. “Here’s what I would include.” With more “Pieces of Turtles 8” coming from A-V in 2022, first of all, if this first one is successful, and second of all, I’m encountering stuff here at the Off-White House where I go, “oh, I forgot I had that. That would make a good pieces in a ‘Pieces of Turtles 8’.” It starts with the ultra-rare Swordfish Canadian edition. 16 pages with gold foil cover for $25 Canadian postage included. And it’s gonna be available for one week after the January Please Hold for Dave Sim, this one that we’re doing right now, goes live on A Moment of Cerebus. It’ll be available only at CerebusDownloads.com. There’ll be two buttons there. One for $25, or buy 10 for $125, 50% off. First come, first served. The earliest orders get the earliest sequential numbers.
I’m gonna interrupt my own announcement here to say that, what I’m trying to do is, if you ask me who’s the core Cerebus readership at any given moment it’s the people who are listening to Please Hold for Dave Sim as soon after it gets posted as possible. And that lineup changes all the time, depending on level of interest. We’ll get into that when we get into the actual questions. But this is really the most significant thing that I can offer to that core group is, pretty much guaranteed rarity. If you take the number of people who listen to Please Hold for Dave Sim over the course of the month before the new one gets posted, it’s a lot more than the people who listen to it right at the beginning. Yes, that’s what makes the core audience. So it’s, okay, unfortunately the people listening to this three weeks from now who said, “uh oh, I haven’t listened to Please Hold for Dave Sim this month. I’ll queue that up and listen while I’m doing the dishes, or whatever, they’re gonna say, “I missed it.” Yes, you missed it. It’s nothing against you, it’s in favor of the people who are right there, complete eager beavers, and yes, I am looking at you Michael R in Easton, Pennsylvania. If this only sells 10 copies, then that’s great. You’ve got something even rarer than we could possibly ever imagined. If word gets out faster than we think it is, it’s still gonna be pretty rare.
Okay, so getting to the next question that everybody’s going to be asking. If you have a Cerebus Archive number, you will automatically get, A) the earliest sequential number available based on when you ordered. In other words, if you’re the first person who listens to this announcement, and goes to CerebusDownloads.com, and orders one of these, then you’ll be getting #1. But if you’ve got a Cerebus Archive number, then your Cerebus Archive number will be on the next line down. So you’ll get #1 of however many there are, and if it’s Rich L in Peoria, and he wants one of these, he gets 153 on the next line down, and autographed. Now,I got this far with it, and then started faxing Eddie Khanna and I went, here’s a brilliant idea. What about if the people who are ordering, when you type in your name on a CerebusDownloads.com order, and you want your Cerebus Archive number after it or on the comic book, type your Cerebus Archive number right after your name. Do you think that would work?
Brian: Uh, I dunno, I mean, I think so. I know, at my work there’s all this software that Missions uses to like tracks people the people who buy tickets and whatnot, and it’s down to like the molecule in terms of detail. I mean, if whoever’s doing the page for CerebusDownloads.com decides to maybe add a button with putting in your CAN number or your sequential number, that seems pretty easy to do, I would think. Or even just doing what you just suggested, just entering in your name and then a comma and then your CAN number or your sequential number. I think either way would work.
Dave: Yeah. It’s not like CerebusDownloads is like your workplace, it doesn’t have an expensive list of, “this is an approved person.” It’s like, anybody with a Visa card is fine with it.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: If you want to go ahead and tell me your name is RichLoves153, I dunno, maybe you’re one of Elon Musk’s illegitimate children or something like that. That’s why you’ve got a 153 in your name. We don’t really care! All we care is that your Visa clears.
Brian: Right, right. The check’s in the mail and it’s been paid.
Dave: Exactly! Fast and carried, and just next, I think. Eddie is still pushing for… one of other things that we got into was, do you want the “Pieces of Turtles 8” signed and hand numbered, or do you not want it signed and hand numbered. We got into this with…
Brian: “Spawn” #10, if I remembered, the Halloween Edition, maybe?
Dave: Yes! Yes, where it was, well ya know, if you go and get it graded by CGC it’s not a signature series because it wasn’t witnessed, so it’s just gonna be writing on the cover. So, at that point, it was a good half of the people that got the Halloween Edition said, “uh, no, don’t write anything on there. I’d appreciate it being personalized and autographed and everything, but I would it be a mint condition copy.” So, I think what we’re gonna do, Eddie’s email address is eddiesdoar@gmail.com, so, but we’ll have as the default setting that you get the lowest number that you qualify for, and your CAN number, and autographed. If you want anything besides that, then you email Eddie Khanna.
Brian: Yes…
Dave: I’m trying not to make this complicated and I think we’re failing already, right?
Brian: No, I think we’re okay. I mean…
Dave: Alright.
Brian: My job it’s.. kind of just organized chaos. There are all these details that my coworkers keep track of, like email addresses, phone numbers, names, amount paid… It just blows my mind. So this, I think we’re fine, in my opinion.
Dave: Okay, this is real ABC stuff.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah!
Dave: Okay. Alright. Let’s see, I didn’t get to the end of my master copy…
Brian: Okay!
Dave: There will be a Kickstarter for “Pieces of Turtles 8”, the $25 US edition in February or March of 2022. The only thing different with that edition, is that it will say, “$25 US” on the front instead of “$25 Canadian”.
Brian: Ahh! Savings!
Dave: Not to mention that the Canadian dollar has been going kind of up and down the last little while, but today, cashing a US cheque, which means the bank was buying Canadian dollars, it was 23 cents on the dollar. So, you’re talking about “Pieces of Turtles 8” the Swordfish edition with $25 Canadian on the front of it, it’d be about $18 US. And again, the price of the postage is included in that.
Brian: Mm. Mm. That’s good to know.
Dave: And then I finish off with, if you’re still listening to me and you want one of these, what’s the matter with you?! Hit pause, and go to CerebusDownloads.com before all the earliest books are gone! So, we’ll see how many people we hear from, we’ll see how many of those that we sell. It’s just one of those, it’s all getting to complicated in terms of the fulfillment and how long the Kickstarters are running, and stuff like that. How long it takes to get a Kickstarter prepped, so I thought, I wanna go back to the fanzine days, where, as I say on the inside front cover, if Gene Day could see the capability that we’ve got now. Just with a basic laptop and printer, it’s like, okay, here’s all of your font. You want to pick Akin Bold, you just click on Akin Bold and you start typing, and it comes out in Akin Bold. You want 35 point? Put the slider up to 35 point, and it’ll be 35 point. If you picture the way we used to do fanzines, which was doing like Letraset and rubbing down one letter at a time from a plastic transfer sheet, and costs $7 a sheet for that font that size, and it’s, like I said, Gene would have thought he died and went to heaven. He would be doing a daily fanzine because it would be just so easy to do. So I decided, okay, that’s what I’m gonna do this time, I’m just gonna type the stuff, paste it up with two-sided tape, and then later started using rubber cement like back in the old days, and then give that to Alfonso. Here’s your originals for this 16 page fanzine, costs plus covers. Print me out a proof. And he had a proof ready to go the following week. So now we’re at the point of Alfonso’s gonna be offering a printer’s proof. I don’t know if he’s all ready to do that yet, but I thought, well instead of me selling printer’s proofs, Alfonso’s like all the rest of us, he’s just trying to keep his head above water..
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: …here in the COVID-19 nightmare.
Brian: [laughs] Yep.
Dave: And then I’m going, like, well, okay, how much could you charge for a printer’s proof of “Pieces of Turtles 8”? And it’s like I’m mulling that over, going back and forth, and I go, well, if Alfonso’s doing it, Alfonso, you charge for it!
Brian: [laughs] It’s your problem now!
Dave: If it makes a lot of money, yeah, Aardvark-Vanaheim will take a cut, and thank you very much. But if you do like 10 of them and you charge $20 each, well, you keep the $200m it’ll pay the phonebill or whatever it is that you go to pay. If you charge $100 for each printer’s proof and sell 5000 of them, yeah, then definitely I want a cut. I don’t think we’re in any danger of that happening. But, it’s trying to get as far back to the original concept of DIY, do it yourself, where it is. It’s just me and Alfonso, and as soon as it’s ready to go, from Thursday to Thursday he can print them. Gets them to Rolly, Rolly brings them back to Camp David, he wraps them, packages them, and a week later, they’re in everybody’s mailbox.
Brian: That’s pretty quick fulfillment compared to other comics creators who might have Kickstarters and might start one year and you don’t get fulfillment until months later.
Dave: Have you participated in those? Have you had some really like long experiences?
Brian: Uhh… I eventually got it. I pledged in I think September of 2019, I think I got it in the Spring of 2021.
Dave: Wow.
Brian: But again, yeah, it was a long time. But I mean, to be fair, the work was like a jam session, it just wasn’t one or two or three creators, it was numerous creators so I think…
Dave: You’re only as fast as your slowest creator that way.
Brian: Yeah, so I… and what I got was in pristine condition, and I got what I wanted. I got some original art, too. So, it was still a good deal, in my opinion, even though I waited much longer than I anticipated. And to be fair, too, the creator also… the creator kept us in the loop. Those who pledged to that Kickstarter, so they made sure that we knew “I know that we’re running behind, but we’re gonna do our best to make sure we get this to you. We haven’t forgotten.”
Dave: Well that’s good.
Brian: Yeah! People are pretty forgiving. If you tell them the bad news up front, they’re more than likely going to be appreciative and cooperative with you. It’s when you don’t tell them the bad news up front that trouble starts, in my opinion.
Dave: Right. Right. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I’m sort of trying to do the other direction. What’s the absolute fastest that we can do this from conception to when the finished copy’s in your mailbox? Again, if Gene Day could see all of the levers at the command of creators in 2022, it would be, “why aren’t you doing this on a daily basis? Why aren’t doing a weekly comic book?” When the only way to get anything from anywhere to anywhere was by surface mail, it was, okay, it’s baked in. You just have to factor that into everything that you’re doing. But the way we’ve got it now, yeah, haven’t done anything since the “Spawn” #10 Halloween Edition, but that had a real good experiential texture to it, of, yeah, I think we wanna do more of these. We definitely want to bring the price down. That was $75, and I’m going, I’ve never done this before and I have no idea what could possibly go wrong. And not that many of them went wrong, but the ones that did go wrong, where they got damaged copies either because the packaging not being good, or Alfonso wasn’t checking the printing carefully enough, Rolly wasn’t checking the printing carefully enough. By the time they had mailed it back, and I’m reimbursing them for the cost of sending it back and then printing a replacement copy and then paying to mail that to them again, there were about 10 or 12 copies that didn’t end up costing about $60. So it’s like, okay, I didn’t lose money on them, but we know a lot more about what we’re doing now, and Rolly is training himself to be far more obsessive about condition, and Alfonso’s being far more obsessive about condition because, those are the people that you’re selling to. You can’t have a colour break or misformed staples, or anything like that, because you’re paying $25 Canadian, but it’s still $25 for a comic book, they need to get an absolute pristine mint copy exactly the way that they want it.
Brian: Yeah. I mean, that’s totally reasonable, I think, if you’re a customer, you’re paying that amount of money, you should get that kind of quality. You want to get what you paid for, you know?
Dave: Right, right. And you’re buying the rarity. It’s like, we don’t know if the most rare that Cerebus will ever get, we’re possibly still plumbing the depths of that. But, that’s definitely one of the hot buttons that I’m leaning on is, if I’m going to do ultra-rare things for the ultra-devoted Cerebus fan, now’s the time to do them. So, that’s, wasted almost 25 minutes, when I’m supposed to be answering questions.
Brian: I think we’re good, I have 22 minutes on my recorder, so I think we’re… yeah. Yeah.
Dave: Okay, so, we’re gonna start with Matt Dow saying, “Please Hold for Dave Sim time. New Year, new host. Everybody please welcome Brian West who’s filling in for me while I vacation where it’s warm and sunny. I’m currently in Disney World, probably watching the fireworks at Cinderella’s castle or hanging out in Tomorrowland. Anyway, Dave has a big announcement.” Well, we got that part done. The big announcement.
Brian: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dave: “And then it’s my turn to remember Jeff Seiler and I’m not there, and Brian doesn’t have any Jeff stories.” He puts “Probably…” Do you have any Jeff Seiler stories?
Brian: Uh, I just got one very small one. I remember, I was posting at the blog and it was a note from Jeff, he commented a few comments later in the thread, he said, “Brian, good writers always proofread first before they send.” So, I’m paraphrasing there, but he said a good writer always proofread first. So that was a good note. I still have not learned my lesson, but I’m trying to get better about it. So that’s my Jeff Seiler story. That is a quickie.
Dave: Okay, that’s Jeff all over. Jeff stopped reading newspapers because he couldn’t stand all the typos. Like I’m going, [laughs] I think that’s cutting off your nose to spite your face a little bit, but I can understand when you’re that obsessive about proofreading, and Jeff definitely was. That’s gonna be your reaction. So, “here’s a quickie that Brian can read in my stead.” Have you got your copy there?
Brian: I do, Dave.
Dave: Okay, you take it from there.
Brian: Okay! This is by Matt Dow, age 42. It’s written on paper… [laughs]
Dave: [laughs]
Brian: “And the title of this story by Matt is, ‘How Seiler became ‘Shecky McAssScrape’.’ Years ago (in 2006, I just checked), in the Cerebus Yahoo group there was confusion who ‘Jeff’ referred to, as we had two Jeffs: Toondis and Seiler.”
Dave: Tundis. I’m gonna interrupt.
Brian: Oh, please!
Dave: No problem.
Brian: Please, interrupt!
Dave: That’s all I had to say, that it’s Tundis, not Toondis.
Brian: Oh, Tundis! Tundis, like it’s a ton. Got it.
Dave: Right!
Brian: Thank you. Thank you, Dave.
Dave: A ton of dissing.
Brian: A ton of… thank you. “For a while, ‘Jeff’ was Tundis, and ‘Other Jeff’ was Seiler, but this wasn’t good enough for John”, I dunno this last name, Loffner?
Dave: Loffer, I think.
Brian: Loffer. Thank you. “Rest in peace. Who said, ‘did you ever think maybe Tundis would like to go by that appellation, huh? Didya?’ And there was some discussion about this, and I said, ‘I thought I settled this. Seiler is Jeff, Tundis is Jeffay. Matt.’ Larry Hart said, ‘It’s still confusion, because when someone just says ‘Jeff’ someone else isn’t going to remember that it applies solely to Seiler. Seiler needs another spelling as well. How aboout Jeffay? Larry Hart.’ And I said, ‘Fine. Jeff, you’re now Slambow AssGrape. Happy Larry?’ And Jeff fully embraced it. I got the name from a printed copy of a webcomic called ‘Superocity’, the one the character sees ‘Man on the Moon the film’ and creates a Tony Clifton-esque character called Slambow AssGrape.” And there’s an image here, which I imagine will be posted with this post. “And all was well with this, with Jeff’s new name. Seiler’s new name, I should say, until 2007, when I realized stealing somebody else’s character name was kind of a ‘dick move’ and rechristened him Shecky McAssGrape. Jeff signed off on an email ‘Slambow, who thought he was back on Monday, but got sidetracked on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and just got a call a while ago from his manager at the fine dining restaurant who loves how fast he has been catching being a waiter, never before having done that. But who said that her boss, the owner, whom she had to talk into allowing her to hire him, Slambow, put his foot down and made her fire him, Slambow, today. So he has to go find another summer job immediately, and may not be back again for a while. But could be back tomorrow and will continue posting for a while yet today. Did you get all that?’ And I said, ‘oh my God, you really are Shecky McAssGrape.” And that’s it from Matt. And he has this disclaimer here, “Shecky McAssGrape, copyright 2007, effing magnifyer productions.”
Dave: Yes, sir.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: I always wondered where that name came from. It’s like, I went , oddly enough, it definitely suits Jeff Seiler because he could really get on people’s wigs. Sometimes intentionally, and sometimes just by being Jeff Seiler. I was aware of the name, I thought, okay, there’s gotta be a story behind that, and now I need wonder no longer. All the way back to 2006. Okay, “anyway, questions.””Hey there, I know I’m a bit early, but question for Dave. In reading your 2006 to 2008 blog”, see how this all ties in together?
Brian: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]
Dave: Just when Matt Dow’s talking about the Blog & Mail 2006, here it comes again. “It states that the phonebooks could be bought through Windmill Press. They also published ‘Following Cerebus’ around the same time. Did you take a break from selling the books through Aardvark-Vanaheim at that time, or is there a more interesting story history there?” I’m not sure if it’s any more interesting or storied, that was bridging the time period between immediately post-”Cerebus” and Gerhard leaving, which was at the beginning of 2007. And I don’t know if that was a decision that Gerhard and I had come to together, or if that was a decision that I had made after Gerhard was gone, that Windmill Press had Paypal. They took Paypal for subscriptions for all of their publications, and instead of trying to figure out how to get Paypal for Aardvark-Vanaheim, which would require setting up a website, all that sort of stuff, I thought, okay, let’s solve the problem by saying you can get the books through Windmill. And Craig would just fax me the names and addresses of anybody who ordered a book, and what book they ordered, and I’d send them out through here, or we’d send them out through here, if this was while Gerhard was still here. Then whenever Craig was sending me the licensing money for “Following Cerebus” he would just include whatever the amount of money was for the trade paperback and the postage. I seem to recall that at that point the number of sales were already minuscule. I mean, I had already made… I don’t think I made the decision yet. That was a couple of years after Gerhard left, where I was looking at what Visa and MasterCard were charging me just to have Visa and MasterCard capability, and I was getting maybe one or two book orders a month, at most?
Brian: Oh wow.
Dave: I think that was getting eaten up easily with what it was that I was paying Visa and MasterCard, so I just contacted them and said, I don’t want Visa and MasterCard capability anymore. Boy, that was a lengthy process, just that phone call, because that really doesn’t register with Visa. It’s like, “you wanna get read of Visa? Nobody gets rid of Visa!”
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: It’s like, well, I’m getting rid of Visa! I’m afraid you’re just not helping my operation here, and the fees that you’re charging, I’m not making them back on what I’m bringing in. So let’s just call it a day, go our separate ways, and I hope we can all still be friends.
Brian: Yep, yeah.
Dave: After the big breakup. And it’s like, “you want to get rid of Visa?! I mean, do you realize what’s it going to cost you to get Visa back?” [laughs] and it’s like, I dunno, I feel like I’m talking to an ex-wife here. I don’t want you back. I just want to find out how much it’s gonna… what the process is, for us to go our separate ways, and we’ll never have to bother each other again. I think the same thing happened with Amazon, when I said, I don’t wanna sell to you people anymore. You’re just too strange for me. And it’s like, “you don’t want to sell to Amazon?!” I’m like, no, you’re not bringing in that much money, and you’re a lot more trouble than your worth, let’s just remember all of the happy memories that we had together. And always think kindly of each other, but let’s bring this to an end.
Brian: Those businesses, it’s like, when you try to get out of that relationship, that partnership, however you like call it, it’s like you just talked about. It’s like tooth and nail to have them let go of that. But it’s right, you’re just another customer, and it shouldn’t be that personal, but… I dunno. It is weird.
Dave: I think it’s one of those training things, too.
Brian: Yeah!
Dave: When you’re being trained as a phone operator at Visa, [laughs] if it’s like, “anybody wants to get away, you don’t let them get away. Here’s your shopping list of things that you’re going to say to them to convince them never never never drop Visa. And it’s like, you can’t take it out on the phone operator. “Hey I’m just making minimum wage at best, and this is what I’m being told to do and this phone’s being…”
Brian: Recorded. [laughs]
Dave: For quality assurance and training purposes! It’s like, [German accent] “ve come down on you like a ton of bricks, you let anybody get away from Visa! You want that docked from your paycheck, you can arrange that for yourself right now, smart boy.”
Brian: [German accent] “And the second time around, you can get terminated!”
Dave: “Ya! [laughs] You think it over and you remember that we are listening to every word that you are saying. We will know when it’s one of us on the other end of the phone, pretending to be a customer!”
Brian: Oh, no. A mystery shopper! The worst! [laughs]
Dave: So, okay, question was from MJ Sewell. Mike Sewell, and that brings us to another issue that we got here. This is the Mike Sewell that did the short story collection, “Wild Monsters Dance About”. I read one of his letter just recently, and one of his short stories, which I thought was a really really good short story about how technology just steamrolls just about everybody. I want to make an exception, usually we say, it’s only like one question per customer, and the exception is going to be MJ Mike Sewell, just reread all 300 individual issues of “Cerebus”, all of the backup material, all of the Notes from the President. All of “Glamourpuss”, all of the introductions. And sent me a very nice, 8 page letter about exactly what a mind-transforming experience this was, going back and doing all that. And as tends to happen in that case, at least until the effect wears off, those people are gonna have a lot of questions about “Cerebus” that they want to ask, and you can’t really limit them to just one. So I had already pulled out Mike’s letter and underlined the questions that he had in it. It would very satisfying for my ego to read all 8 pages of the letter, but I’m not going to do that.
I did want to read one of his paragraphs.”I’m a big fan of Thomas Payne”, he writes, “Talk about a parallel. He was famous for self-publishing ‘Common Sense’ and invited to all the early reindeer games. Parties, conventions, dinners, he met everyone. He also got screwed over by a few printer. Then he goes to France and pens the ‘Rights of Man’ and ‘the Age of Reason’, those two books. Then he got, not just canceled, but betrayed, imprisoned, impoverished; all of it. He said ‘organized religion ain’t so great, and by the way I’m a deist.’ Friends abandoned him. Several even tried to get him actively executed (is there any other way to execute but actively? Nyuk nyuk nyuk).”
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: And he writes,”’The Age of Reason’ was the book where I said this, this is how I think of God. I’m a deist. I’ve not heard anyone else use that word until coming across it in your commentaries. I believe in a personal connection with God. I’ve always found organized religion confusing. Was I missing something? My parents were, at some point, Baptist, Methodist, Mormon, Church of Latter-Day Saints, and then my Mom converted to Judaism. I’ve read the New Testament and the Paul sections. I love the adventure story as he headed to Rome. A shipwreck and everything. But as he ‘founded’ Christ’s church, I got more and more uneasy. Was this what Christ really wanted? I underlined that as the question. Somethings did not seem right to me as you said plenty of gobbledygook in Paul’s letters, too.” I think that’s one of those, we’re always going to have completely divergent viewpoints with fellow monotheists.
Brian: I would agree.
Dave: Yeah, I mean, just taking the question, per se. Was this what Christ really wanted? I would say, my impression of Christ is an obedient servant of God. He did that, proved his bona fides through his younger years that, yes, this is the only priority in his life, and then became an appropriate vehicle for scripture, for channeling these stories and being told, “okay, if you’re just asked this question, say this.” And probably didn’t know the full implications of what he was saying, but whoever it is that was telling him to say that was either God, or was delegated to the task by God. There’s no way to resolve that with virtually any Christian Church. Which, I respect, I’m not saying that’s the case, that’s exactly what reality is. It’s like, no, that’s my impression. That’s my overall impression, trying to give equal weight to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It wouldn’t surprise me if I’m completely wrong. I think the most important thing is for people to admit that everybody’s in that case. Which is one of the things that Mike mentions in his letter. “People who Know this”. No, you don’t “know” that, that’s your opinion. You can make a case for it, if you want to be persuasive and you’re part of the Baptist persuasion or the Catholic persuasion. I think we always want to welcome persuasive arguments, but telling somebody “no you’re wrong and I’m right” that’s, to me, trying to take God’s place. “I’m omniscient, you’re just a foolish mortal.” The only person who can say that as far as I’m concerned is God.
Brian: Yeah, it’s so hard to… [sighs] I’m a Christian so I’m a monotheist myself, it’s so hard for me to find my own reading of scripture and my own opinion of it without other people telling me [laughs] what it is. Say, either friends who are fellow Christians who tell me, “Oh no, that’s not what it meant!” Or, even at times at my church, I don’t really share my personal beliefs too much at church. I know that sounds kinda odd, but I don’t go into too much depth. But yeah, I think it’s better if monotheists just try to be open minded about different viewpoints and about scripture and about God. I mean, you might not agree with those viewpoints or opinions, you might think they’re just totally crazy, but I think at least people can just be open to reading that opinion and not get too disagreeable, definitely not violently so.
Dave: Right. Right. I mean, this is what we’re seeing everywhere in our society. It’s like, I don’t hold my opinions that I hold to irritate you.
Brian: Yeah!
Dave: [laughs] So there’s no real need for you to be irritated. But try to tell people that, it’s, you have offended. It’s like, I think that’s your problem, being offended.
Brian: [laughs] Yeah.
Dave: Try not to be that way. Like what are you, a two-year old?
Brian: Right.
Dave: You get this impression of people that they’re all Little Lord Fauntleroy and you just walked across their cape.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: Uh, I didn’t walk across your cape, I just said, “oh that’s interesting. This is what I believe in said.” And we can just leave it at that. I’m always happy to keep talking, if you want to keep talking about something. But if me disagreeing with you is going to really really irritate you and you don’t want to be irritated, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Brian: Yeah. And that’s perfectly fine. That’s a legitimate way to end a discussion. I have this movie critic that I really like and he’s on Twitter all the time, but people… his own critics believe that he doesn’t believe what he’s writing, but it’s so stupid when people make that type of argument, because he really believes what he’s writing. He’s making these sincere and very rational arguments about what he sees in a movie. I think it’s applicable to people talking about what they think about God and about religion. I think being more respectful and civil in discussions with people with different viewpoints, it would be more welcomed, I think.
Dave: Yeah, it’s a cornerstone of civilization that you really do have to accept the fact that people arrive at different conclusions from your own through sincere belief in what it is that they believe in. The idea of saying to somebody, “you can’t really believe that”, it’s like, what do you mean I can’t believe that?
Brian: [laughs] Yes!
Dave: It’s like, I can believe whatever I want. That’s one of the, to me, God’s greatest gifts to mankind is free will. You make your own decisions, and if you want to make bad ones, that’s up to you. It all comes down to Judgement Day. You’re not gonna find out what you were right about and what you were wrong about until then, but if you apply yourself, presumably you will get better at making better decisions. I think we also have to get the point of understanding that just because everybody agrees with something, doesn’t mean that that’s a good opinion.
Brian: Yeah, yes! Yes! Yeah.
Dave: The newspapers are full of, “62% of Americans agree” and it’s like, well what’s that got to do with it? At one point, 78% of people on planet Earth thought slavery was a great idea.
Brian: Yeah, yep. Yep.
Dave: That doesn’t mean that it was a right at the time, or that it’s a right idea now. Why do you think that we have suddenly arrived at the point where anything that 62% of people agree on, well, that’s it. The science is settled, as they say. And it’s like, well, if it’s only 62%, it’s not science. Newton’s Laws of Motion, 100% of people agree that until you get into outer space and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity applies, Newton’s Laws of Motion are factual. 100%. Anybody who disagrees with that doesn’t understand the science. But that’s science, something that people only agree 62% about, that’s still just your opinion.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, getting to the… then Mike starts talking about, “then something else kept nagging at me.” He’s documenting his whole experience with devouring everything. He called me the, “you’re a Canadian zealot in the midst of comic book history” and I turn up everywhere. “Then something else kept nagging at me. Wait, this guy was totally alone after a certain point. Gerhard working on his own, no secretarial help. Does that mean you did all the phone calls, all the errands, all the shipping and subscriptions and freebies, and running credit card sales for years? You did, didn’t you?” And it’s like, well, okay, that’s one of the things I sort of touched on earlier. There did a come a point where I would, okay the Visa and MasterCard phone thing, which was a big part of the operation for years and years, particularly when a new trade paperback would come out. Gerhard and I would alternate answering the order line and taking down the phone order. And that would take up a good chunk of the day. By the time Gerhard was working at home, and by the time “Cerebus” was over, phone calls and errands weren’t really an issue. Shipping of subscriptions and freebies, that came to an end in 2004, so that was no longer a concern. And that came to an end just at an opportune time, where it no longer became a viable thing to farm out to somebody. Patmail[??] here in town used to do the subscriptions and freebies, and when they went out of business, that was it. There was no replacement for them because there was just not enough money in charging whatever it is that they charged, I think 10 cents of 15 cents for each action, because they have to put it in a plastic bag with a backing board, and then they charge 10 cents for that, put it in an envelope, 10 cents for that, put a cardboard liner in it, 10 cents for that, put the address label on it, 10 cents for that. It would add up, but it was still affordable over the course of whatever it was, 200, 300 copies. And then at that point, it became, no, whatever we would have to charge you to do that, you wouldn’t be able to afford and we’d never build a customer base. Which is why there were no freebies and no subscriptions with “Glamourpuss”. So it became a process of… what happened was, when Carol West quit, instead of as had been the situation where Monique Kaptein trained Carol West, instead of getting Carol West to train her replacement secretary, we’ll get her to train us as to everything that she does. So she did that, and at that point it was, okay, now she’s all done, and we just divvied up the workload and that automatically saved us whatever it was, like $400 a week?
Brian: That’s good!
Dave: Yeah. Because, you know, she was only making like $250 or $270, which is not great money for a secretary, but we also had to pay the government $125 withholding tax, which is where that starts to add up. And it was, okay… she said when she was leaving, “give me a call if you have any questions about anything, and I hope you will call because it took me years to learn how to do all this stuff.” And we never had to give her a phone call. This is all really basic stuff. And when Gerhard was leaving, and hadn’t told me that he was leaving but was definitely planning to, he made up a red binder of all of the things that he was doing, so if anything ever happened to Gerhard I’d have this whole… it was a good like 50, 60 pages of “this is Gerhard’s job. This is all of the stuff that doesn’t involve drawing.” And then, when Gerhard did leave, it’s like, okay, you’ve got the red binder, here’s all of the stuff in there. Showing the invoicing, and sending stuff, here you’ve got to fax the mailing labels to Recker Distribution, and here’s how you calculate the weight of each book, and then add those weights together, if two of those books are going someplace. It’s like, I didn’t say anything, but I’m going, Julie Recker has finagled you into doing her job.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: So, at that point it was, when Gerhard was gone and I was taking over, I just phoned Julie and I said, Julie, I’m just gonna fax you. Here’s a list of the books that are going out, these are the single orders, these are the ones going out in quantity, and here’s the addresses, and you do all of these mailing labels and everything else. And she goes, “Well, that’s not how we’ve been doing it.” I went, [laughs] alright, I understand that, but that’s how we’re gonna do it now. And long pause and she goes, “Is Gerhard there?! [laughs]
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: No, Gerhard done gone! I’m the one in charge now, and this is how we’re doing it. So, essentially, although, Mike you’re making it sound like Dave Sim, valiant stalwart doing everything without any complaint or whatever, at each stage it was always, okay, what’s the easiest way to do this and how much of this can we offload to other people? And that’s really the situation that I’m still in., I’m always watching for that, the opportunity to save some money and streamline the operation. As Thoreau said, “Simplify, simplify.”
Brian: I understand. Dave, we’re almost near 60 minutes. I’m gonna save this to Anchor and then if you want, you can take a break. I can wait, or if you want to keep on going, we can keep on going after that. Does that sound okay?
Dave: That’s fine.
Brian: Okay. This won’t take nothing but a moment. I’m gonna stop recording for now, and then save this…
And I am recording.
Dave: Okay! Mike then started talking about “Glamourpuss”, and was very nice to say, “’Glamourpuss’ was a beautifully put together book down to the finest detail. Stunning art” and he asks, “How was this accomplished? Tracing, photocopy reference?” The process really involved going to Shopper’s Drug Mart and going to their fashion magazine section and flipping through the fashion magazines looking for Al Williamson Girls. Girls who look and their outfit look as if they were drawn by Al Williamson. Sometimes other people, sometimes Neal Adams, sometimes Stan Drake, but most of the time what I was looking for was Al Williamson-looking girls and looking outfits. And then I would buy the ones that I was interested in and bring them back here and photocopy them on a light enough setting so that I could get all of the detail in the outfit. And trying to get the density of the image, which was usually a colour photograph, down to Al Williamson’s densities, as well. And then I put that photocopy on the light table, and then put tracing paper over the back of the photocopy and traced it in reverse onto the tracing paper, and then put the tracing paper on the illustration board and trace over the pencil, which was on the other side, and that would transfer a very light image onto the illustration board, which I would then attempt to ink like Al Williamson. That was most of what I was trying to teach myself to do, which I never really got to that point where, okay, now that I can trace this and transfer it and tighten it in pencil and then ink it, and I’m getting closer to Alex Raymond by way of Al Williamson… Now, hopefully I will be able to do this without having to use an actual photograph, without having to trace it. But that’s a giant, giant leap that really, as far as I’m concerned, comes down to genius. That only Al Williamson was Al Williamson, only Alex Raymond was Alex Raymond, they had the capability of seeing that way and translating the extremely realistic image that they pictured in their head onto the artboard and then rendering from there. When people would say to Al Williamson that he was a genius, he would say, “Um, I’ll tell you what, if I ever invent a cure for cancer, we can call me a genius. Until then, why don’t we just say that I’m a really good comic book artist?”
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: So, there is a quality when I’m looking at really good reproductions of “Heart of Juliet Jones” or “Rip Kirby” or “Secret Agent X-9” or any of those guys’ stuff, and going, not only did they do this without using photo reference, although Williamson used a lot of photo reference on “Secret Agent X-9”, particularly Alex Raymond and Stan Drake had the capability of not only being this accurate with what they were doing, but being able to do it like six strips a week, just to stay current. And some of them six strips a week and a Sunday page, just to say current, not to fall behind. Which ties into the next part of Mike’s question, “Did you reproduce all those old strips from just looking at them?” No, again, I traced them, and that was, how much did you learn firsthand from that process, how did you find all the old strip material? And then reworked all that, again, into “Strange Death of Alex Raymond.” That was a matter of, there’s best resources. I had , at the beginning, really just Spanish translations of “Rip Kirby”. Really, really bad reproduction, and the only good reproduction that I could find was in Russ Cochran’s “Cartoonist Showcase” and publications like that, where he was reproducing the original artwork and running auctions. So it was a matter of extrapolating. I would say, okay, here’s a “Rip Kirby” strip from 1948 that I can actually see, because it’s in Russ Cochran’s catalogue, and here’s all the strips that are around it in the really fuzzy Spanish reproduction. And just learning to say, okay, I have to mentally take all of the noise out of this image and get it down just to what I’m pretty sure the artwork looks like under there. Really, it was a reproduction nightmare, for trying to do newspaper strips that were this good and to try and do them accurately. So I’m not really pointing fingers, but when you do see Alex Raymond’s original artwork and you see it full size, or close to full size… which was the next stage that I got to, where Heritage Auction was auctioning art but also reproducing it online, and I would get Sandeep to print it out full size at the local quick printer. And it’s, okay, now I’m seeing more “Rip Kirby” strips and I’m seeing exactly how they actually look, and surprise surprise, the ones that I was extrapolating, when I did finally see the originals, yeah, I was pretty close to that.
Brian: That’s good. That’s great! I mean…
Dave: Yeah! It’s one of those, now that it’s all over, I mean, I can, just in the last week mocking up “Strange Death of Alex Raymond” Volume 3, I’m trying to learn to do dead hand photorealism art. Which is, okay, I’m not really sure how this is going to work, because it’s not exactly perfect when I’m just doing Cerebus stuff, but I got to the point of John Marsh’s Christmas eve heart attack on Sea Island, which is an episode that, as I’m reading it I’m going, I really want to draw this. I mean, most of the stuff in “Strange Death of Alex Raymond” I can just use individual illustrations and narrative tricks to keep people moving through the story because it’s a draw dropping story. It’s not my story, so I can say that. But, this was, okay, I want to draw this, I hope I have the photorealism chops when I get there that I will be able to draw them. And that’s more of a reaction to Margaret Mitchell’s fatal car accident when she got hit by the car on Peach Tree Street in 1949. Going, okay, I really want to do that, trying to picture, okay, how am I going to do that? That’s been mulling around in my mind all along, and it was like, okay, in order to find out if I can do that, let’s do John Marsh’s heart attack. That’s a much shorter sequence, I think I can do that in about seven pages, and let’s just do it dead hand photorealism, which is kind of, it’s a mix of pasted up photocopies, but then just going in, very very spontaneously with the brush pen. Which, getting again closer to Alex Raymond, because he was a very spontaneous guy, spontaneous artist particularly in his rendering. Just sheer inking confidence, which you can’t fake. You either have the confidence that you know what you’re doing and you just go in and there it is, or you’re driving yourself crazy trying to focus too tightly on it and it’s just not gonna work properly because you’re clamping down on it. As I said in “The Guide to Self-Publishing”, it’s a slide. Go down the slide, let go of the sides, don’t try to edge your way down the slide. Be spontaneous about it. So, it’s, I think, a pretty successful experiment so far. It’s very difficult for me, as a control freak about my own work, to just let go that level of control and just say, okay, you’re doing raindrops hitting pavement at night. And basically you just need to do the concentric circles where the raindrops are hitting, but it’s going to take too much wrist to do a really accurate oval, so just do a spontaneous oval.
Brian: Mmm, yeah…
Dave: That’s what I was doing today, just before I called you, and it takes a lot of staring at the page, going, this is what I’m going to do. This is what I’m picturing that I’m going to do. And just spontaneously doing it, and then also going, okay, stop stop. Those four brushstrokes worked perfectly. I’m really happy with those, but now I’m typing up, so now I have to stop and try and get back to the zen state that I need to be in.
Brian: Yeah. There’s this Italian term with Renaissance artists, and mannerist artists too, there was this term called, “Sprezzatura” where you wanna show an ease of use in how you create a painting or a fresco. You don’t want the work to look too labored, because when it looks too labored it doesn’t flow quite as well. When you talked about Alex Raymond and the way he was so spontaneous, that term came to my mind.
Dave: Yes! It’s a very good example, and we’ve also ought to understand that that’s a lot like monotheism. There’s a whole spectrum of, you can’t really fault the people, the academy painters, who, “okay, now that we know how painting is done. Leonardo Da Vinci has shown the way, we want to go further and further into that. We want to get more and more and more and more accurate.” The more spontaneous you get, the less accurate it is, and consequently, the lesser a painting it is. The critic’s name slips my mind, but the one that said of, uh… I’m not even thinking of the painter that he was talking about… was “flinging a paint pot in the face of the public. Because, no, a painting is a painting is a painting. It’s either 100% accurate and consequently you’re rising in the academy, or it’s a rough sketch, a colour sketch of some kind, and it’s one or the other.” It’s like, well, no, it’s not. The impressionists have kind of proved that at the time. Even though the impressionists, almost all of them abandoned impressionism in their lifetimes because they couldn’t take the pressure of, “that’s just a colour sketch. That’s just sloppy. Why don’t you do a good finished picture and maybe you’ll get more commissions and maybe you’ll be able to be in the royal academy exhibition at whatever it is that everybody wanted to be in?” And it’s like,you gotta pick your own spot and you gotta say, “this is how spontaneous I’m going, and this is how literal I’m going to be.” Some people are born to spontaneity, some people achieve spontaneity, and some, like me, have spontaneity thrust upon them if their wrist just don’t work the way that it used to.
Brian: [laughs] Yeah, well, you know, if you become like John Sargent, Dave, while you’re creating the pages about John Marsh’s heart attack, let me know.
Dave: Okay. You’ll be the first, Brian.
Brian: Thank you.
Dave: Okay, and moving on… so that was Mike Sewell’s questions. Again, anybody who’s gonna read all 300 issues and all of the backup stuff and whatnot. If you get to that point and you do have questions that you want to ask, we will make room for you on Please Hold for Dave Sim. So, the next question… where am I here? I’m getting all messed up… now that I’ve got all my pages out of order. There was a question from…
Brian: I have my copy if you need…
Dave: There we are! Okay, no, no. Yeah, we’re actually coming pretty close to the end. Yeah, there was another Mike Sewell question. “After reading all of ‘Following Cerebus’, your 2006 to 2008 blog”, I forgot that, he read all the blogs too! Man.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: “In ‘Glamourpuss’ and the ‘Strange Death of Alex Raymond’, you list many photo-realistic artist influences. Bill Watterston ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ comes to mind, as he mixed comic characters with some realistic elements. Were there any more modern folks that you respect doing similarly influenced work?” Well, I have to say, a number of those are up ahead. I haven’t gotten to them yet. One of the guys that I hadn’t gotten to was Alex Kotzky, who did a comic strip called “Apartment 3-G”, starting in 1961, and it finally ended mid-2010s? Somewhere around 2014 or so?
Brian: Oh wow.
Dave: But yeah.
Brian: He stayed on there, same artist, same creator, everything?
Dave: No. No, the writer died and Alex Kotzky died and Kotzky’s son took it over.
Brian: Oh wow.
Dave: And it’s, okay, I have to look up all of the stuff that I have available from “Apartment 3-G” and find the 3G examples that I’ve got, which were very very few. It’s like two or three of them. So, it’s, okay, this is a job for Benjamin Hobbs! Benjamin, go online and find me “Apartment 3-G” examples, if you can, and fax them to me, because I’m coming up on the section where “Apartment 3-G” ties into a “Rip Kirby” story, where in the background behind a nurse there’s a 3G on the door, and a very significant part of “Rip Kirby”, I went, oh, 3G? It’s only when that strip got called to my attention by something else that, okay, I’m gonna study this one, let’s see what else might be in there. Oh, 3G, like in “Apartment 3-G”? And so Benjamin sort of opens up the taps and says, “here’s the ‘Apartment 3-G’ strips that I’ve found, Sunday strips. Do you want anymore? You tell me when to stop.” And I’m getting them, and I’m going, these are a lot better than I remember. Alex Kotzky did have his own renaissance. He’s not Stan Drake, but he’s definitely very very aware of Stan Drake, and I’m sure Stan Drake was very aware of him. And he was a little more cartoony than Stan Drake, but they were really good stories. Like, I’m going, okay, this is weird because this is proto-feminism, “Apartment 3-G” is three single women living together in the same apartment, three career women. And it’s like, this is significant for 1961 and the 1970s. Reading them, I started going, okay, what interested me here is, do any of these women talk about their jobs as career women, or is it all still just soap opera stuff and the career woman thing is just the gloss on it? So, at that point, Benjamin says, “I found this online site that ‘Apartment 3-G’, they’ve got like six years of it, daily strips. Do you want me to print them all out?” He said, they’re not spectacular quality or anything, but they are readable, and you can see the art. And it’s like, uh, yeah. I’m gonna splurge on this. Get Alfonso to print them out for me. Just do them up as 8 and a half by 11 booklets. This is what I wanted them for, just sort of, I want to get to this whole career woman angle and I want to talk about “Apartment 3-G” specifically. And it’s like, I had like 1971 to 1976, and that’s as far as they went. So it’s like now I’m jonesing for “Apartment 3-G”. It came to the end in the middle of a storyline, and I went, [laughs] Yeah, no kidding! It’s like, Dave, it’s a soap opera comic strip. You know that whatever the ending is it’s just sort of a contrived kind of ending. But it’s like, boy when Alex Kotzky really got going and was right up to speed, he was one of the guys that Johnstone and Cushing used to do their car ads. Like, he actually had the Ford contract…
Brian: Oh wow.
Dave: Yeah! General Motors. So when Alex Kotzky puts a car in his strip, you get a really nice car right there in the foreground.
Brian: Yeah. I can picture it now. I can picture the car now in my mind. Just the blacks and like chrome.
Dave: I’ve got a comic art heart, so I would much rather be able to draw a really good sports car into a comic strip than own a sports car, and not a lot of guys can say that. So, yeah, it’s… Alex Kotzky, there’s a good chunk about him, a distillation kind of thing that I did in Volume 3 and I’m now past that point. But I’m gonna be circling back on that. I’m looking forward to doing “Doctor Kildare” which one of the photorealism strips where the guy was working from TV “Dr Kildare”.
Brian: I was gonna ask you if it they were synonymous.
Dave: Yeah! I mean, that was another weird thing, that there’s only, less than a dozen genuine photo-realistic comic strips and two of them are about doctors! Neal Adams “Ben Casey” and the artist on “Doctor Kildare” is slipping my mind right now because I’m not focused on it. But it’s like, this is really really weird. Why would there be two comic strips, and both of them are adaptations of television doctors? Course, “Dr Kildare” goes all the way back to the 1940s when it was a series of movies. I think the mentor for, “Doctor Kildare” was… or it might have been “Ben Casey”’s mentor, was Doctor Gillespie, which is a very strange name. I mean, when was the last time you heard the name Gillespie? And Gillespie is Alex Raymond’s middle name.
Brian: Ohh…
Dave: Isn’t that weird?
Brian: It is weird!
Dave: That’s one of those comic art metaphysics, how in the hell did that happen?
Brian: Yeah. Yeah, just the layers, the levels… the only Gillespie I know is in sports, and that’s not really worth mentioning. But yeah, yeah it is strange. There was a Doctor Gillespie, and Alex Raymond’s middle name is Gillespie. It is pretty strange.
Dave: So, getting back to Mike’s question, but the thrust of his question is “more modern folks that you respect doing similarly influenced work”, I have to say between the writer, who was still alive, who’s actually a former psychiatrist, Nick Dallis, writing “Apartment 3-G” and Alex Kotzky when he was firing on all cylinders, I have to say, I am madly in love with Lu Ann Powers, who was the cute blonde in “Apartment 3-G”. [laughs] And it’s like, that doesn’t happen all the time. I’m trying to read this as a completely distant fellow creator and observer of the photo-realists, and ahh, no I’m more engaged than that. I am in love with Lu Ann Powers, and as soon as she isn’t in one of the strips, it’s like, oh, this storyline’s about Tommie Thompson, the nurse, or this one’s about Margo Magee, the secretary. When’s Lu Ann coming back in the strip?
Brian: [laughs] I don’t know if I’ve ever read strips or comics where I ever found a female character, or even a male character for that matter that, like, I need to see them again.
Dave: It hasn’t happened to me all the time, it certainly hasn’t happened since Eve Jones, which is in the same category. Photorealistic, pretty blondes. You’ve got Honey Dorian in “Rip Kirby”, Eve Jones in “Heart of Juliet Jones”, and Lu Ann Powers who I never even knew existed. And like I said, it drops off a cliff in 1976 right in the middle of the Lu Ann Powers story, where the story before that she’s gone to Europe for six months. And it’s like, oh don’t tell me that!
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: Why couldn’t Tommie Thompson go to Europe for six months and Lu Ann Powers stay here? And then this was, okay, Lu Ann Powers fell in love over in Europe and she’s coming home early, and she’s bringing home her fiance, and that was the storyline that just dropped off the cliff right in the middle. Because that, I ran out of those just before Christmas, so I’m still suffering from a serious Lu Ann Powers jones, to the point where I’m ready to say, Alex Kotzky originals aren’t going for that much. Could you folks see if you could find me original art with Lu Ann Powers in it? I mean, it’s like, I thought, Dave, grow up.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: For heaven’s sakes, as Bob Crumb said, “it’s just lines on paper.”
Brian: Well, they’re beautiful lines. That’s… [laughs] You know.
Dave: Yes. Okay, and then the last question, as far as I know… oh no!
Brian: I think there are two more, I think.
Dave: Mikhail is asking… Mikhail Bocharov, our man in Russia, from Russia with aardvarks. “Dave, how did you feel when the 300th issue went to the printers and then went to the comic shops? Have you felt the completeness of a gigantic undertaking in your life? Was it sad for you to say goodbye to the aardvark?” No, it was, by that time, I was so universally hated that it was, in terms of a real world experience, which is where you get into “how did that feel”, no, I’ve been made to not exist. “Cerebus” has been made to not exist. I don’t think that’s sustainable in the long term, but here I am, December 2003, I’ve finished my part of “Cerebus”. A month later, Gerhard has finished his part. Now it’s, gotta fill out the back of the issue, now it’s gotta go to Preney. Now, Pete Dixon is coming down from Paradise Comics to witness Gerhard and I signing all of the Dave Sim file copies so that they can be CGC graded. All of them signed on the day that “Cerebus” #300 came out, and it was, no, when you’re canceled and particularly when you’re canceled by feminists in our society, it just puts you in a nonexistent state. I don’t feel, because there’s really nothing to feel. I’ve been expelled from society, and I’m getting more and more expelled from society. I’m not vaccinated and I won’t wear a mask, so it’s like, “how much of a subhuman can we make Dave Sim into, so that he understands we do not approved of him, and he’s not allowed to join in any of our reindeer games?” It’s like, okay. I know what “Cerebus” is, I know how hard it was to do. I have a pretty good idea of, when I was getting all over the ball, as they say in baseball, so that you’re hitting ground rule doubles and every one in a while a towering shot straight away to center field, and that’s, you know, 20 years ago. So I’m pretty confident, yes, this is a substantial work and I just happen to live in this completely psychotic society that thinks it can make that not exist because it isn’t Marxist-Feminist propaganda, that it doesn’t agrees with feminists. So it was, ya know, that hasn’t really changed since 2004. It’s still, no one is allowed to mention Dave Sim. No one is allowed to say positive things about Dave Sim. And, well, okay. I don’t think that’s gonna work out for you. But it’s the reason that, although I have done this enormously complicated and intricate work and done it, I would say, pretty successfully, I can do a Swordfish “Pieces of Turtles 8” on Please Hold for Dave Sim and, we’ll be lucky if 10 copies get ordered. 20 copies get ordered. There’s a complete disconnect there, but what it really comes down to for me personally is, don’t applaud, throw money. [laughs]
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: Ya know, you can only go so far with that. It’s like, “no, Dave, you have a readership of this size which is mostly made up of extremely intelligent, erudite, well-read poor people who don’t have $25 to spend on comic books. They wish that they did. If they had $25 it would be yours.”
Brian: I don’t know about that, Dave. I mean, I look at some of Hobbs’ Kickstarters for “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” and you know, those hardcovers aren’t cheap, but those Kickstarters are fairly successful. I mean, they don’t make like tons of money, but there’s still money enough to go into the next Kickstarter, I should say. I dunno. I mean… that’s just…
Dave: I think even you and everybody else has to admit that there’s a kind of large gap between what “Cerebus” is and what rewards it brings in.
Brian: Mm. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave: When you’re 65 years old and it’s still, a third of my day is made up of, okay, what can I sell now? Because, if I don’t sell stuff, then it is, okay, I can’t preserve the Cerebus Archive, I’ve got to sell the Cerebus Archive in order just to keep the whole thing rolling along and to keep it from getting devoured by somebody, like Disney or Microsoft.
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: And it’s like, well, okay. It’s one of those… Kickstarters are great, but Kickstarters do take time that I could be working on “Strange Death of Alex Raymond”, but, no, what are people gonna give me the most amount of money for, because there’s just no money in “Strange Death of Alex Raymond”. I mean, maybe there will be. I’m just starting to get cheques from Sean Robinson so it’s like, ya know, again, the contrast of $5400 or whatever it was coming in on “Strange Death of Alex Raymond” Kickstarter, and so far, I’ve gotten a cheque for $3000 and a cheque for $1000 and cheques three and four are going to be put together and those are gonna be for $2000, and it’s like, yeah, definitely, that’s every week, but for how long?
Brian: Yeah. Yeah.
Dave: I can’t be sitting there going, okay, this is it. I’m going to be making at least $2000 a week for the rest of my life. It’s like, I really don’t think so! When you’re canceled, you’re canceled, and you’re gonna spend the rest of your life trying to figure out ways to make relatively small amounts of money because you’re just not considered in the category of “this person needs to be financially rewarded to the same extent of what it is that he gave us for 26 years.”
Brian: Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a fair trade. I mean, you got me there.
Dave: Okay. And the same thing with the hardcovers. It’s like, I’m very happy that Benjamin and Laura are doing the hardcovers, but mostly because they send me a cheque for $4000 for their side of the printing bill because the hardcovers are more expensive to print and they’re piggybacking on the trade paperback. So it’s like, okay, now I’m breaking even on “Swords of Cerebus in Hell?” the trade paperbacks instead of losing money. And because they’re doing hardcovers, I’m not interested in doing hardcovers. I’m not a hardcovers guy.
Brian: Yeah! [laughs]
Dave: So, consequently, I’m just getting a royalty from them for whatever the sales are on the hardcovers. Like, 4% which is the same that I pay Gerhard when I bring one of the trade paperbacks back into print. So, it’s one of those, yeah, there’s that much money coming in on the “Swords of Cerebus” hardcover Kickstarter, but in terms of the cheque, I already got $4000 for their half of the printing bill, and I’ll get another $500 or $600 which is my royalty as the guy who created the material. And it’s like, well, okay! Every little bit helps and I’m grateful that I’m making a living at age 65 in the middle of COVID-19, but we’re not talking kidney-shaped swimming pool time.
Brian: [laughs] Jacuzzi!
Dave: Yeah, my mansion in the Hamptons. Which one am I going to? Am I going to the one in the Laurentians, or in the Hamptons? That’s always a tough decision because the private airing is sitting on the tarmac, and I just have to tell the pilot which one I’m going to, and that’s the way it goes. It’s like, let’s have some perspective on, A) how “successful” this is in conventional successful terms, and B) why it’s in that category. And I’m putting that blame right at the doorstep of feminists. That, unless I had been canceled in 1994, and then canceled even more severely in 2002, presumably I would not be in this situation. I would probably not have Elon Musk’s level of money, but I would be, let’s say, closer to Neil Gaiman, Jeff Smith, Alan Moore, Frank Miller… not! “Okay, you just don’t exist as a human being anymore, be grateful you can afford your dollar store tuna.” That kind of thing.
Brian: I think those names, like, I think they owe a lot to you personally. Yeah, I think that’s a totally reasonable argument, a totally reasonable opinion. I think your name belongs up there, if you will, of independent creators, and comic creators period in my opinion, but that’s just me. Yeah.
Dave: Well, there you go. That’s one of those, I try not to really make an issue of it, because it’s like, giving equal weight to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam I do understand the difference between materialism and non-materialism. So it’s one of those things of, certainly for years, it was like, okay, I just missed out on getting Kevin Eastman’s money. The Turtles got that amount of money, and Cerebus should have gotten that. But it’s like, that money didn’t make Kevin, or Peter, particularly happy. It caused more problems in their lives than it solved and that doesn’t change once that takes hold. So it’s like, I’m looking for a Goldilocks spot, somewhere between the amount of money that completely destroys your life…
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: … And the amount of money where you have to stick with the dollar store tuna because I have no idea what I’m going to be making a living at in March. I’m just working on the stuff that I’m going to be selling this last 100, or 200 people in January, thank you very much. Okay! Leaving that aside, we have our last question from the ever-present Michael R of Easton, Pa. “Happy New Year! Do you have any New Year’s resolutions for 2022?” And… no.
Brian: [laughs]
Dave: “Did you ever make any resolutions in the past?” Uh, no. This is the easiest Michael R question I’ve ever had to deal with. New Year’s resolutions, I never got that. I understand how that works for some people, because it’s like, here’s the specific day that this thing is going to happen. I resolve to lose weight. I resolve to stop cheating on my wife. Or whatever it is that you resolve to starting January 1st you’re never ever going to do that again. I was always one of those people that went, oh if you’re gonna do it, do it today. [laughs] What is this idea of sitting there in October going, “Come January 1st, I’m never gonna do this again.” If it’s a good idea on January 1st, it’s a good idea in October.
Brian: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Dave: If it’s a good idea just before Christmas, it’s a good idea on Christmas. It’s a good idea between Christmas and New Year’s. It seems to me people setting themselves up for failure to do that, because then, how many New Year’s resolutions do people actually stick with? You build it up in your head as to how momentous a change this is going to be, and then when it actually starts to take place, and you go, “oh this is a much harder thing than I thought it was going to be.” Oh yeah, three or four days later, there goes your New Year’s resolution. So, anything that I did quit, smoking cigarettes, it was just, okay, this is the last cigarette that I’m smoking, and that is just off the table. That’s not being negotiated anymore. 1998, that’s it for relationships. I did the best I could, I think, but this is just completely dishonest. Poor Dave Sim, it’s like, if you’re not looking for a wife, don’t have a girlfriend, because you’re just going to aggravate yourself and you’re just going to cause problems for her. So that’s why I say, I should have said in 1983. That’s it, I’m not a husband, I know that definitively now, and I just have to stay away from that. It’s like, I like women, I enjoy talking to women. But in terms of having somebody there all the time that is my personal responsibility as half of a relationship, no, I knew in 1983 that that wasn’t the case. Okay, you know, be reasonable with yourself. Know who you are and make your decisions based on that, in terms of, “I’m gonna try fasting in Ramadan.” Which I did in 1999 and I went, uh, this is really good. I’m a much better Dave Sim 30 days later than I was 30 days ago, and that’s just unmistakable. And that’s another one of those that I never revisited, but I never said, starting in 1999 I’m going to fast at Ramadan every year. But now it’s in that category. And it was right from the beginning. Some things are easier than others.
Brian: Yep! [laughs]
Dave: You sound like you’re speaking from experience on that one.
Brian: Uh, yeah, I mean, since I’ve become a more observant Christian, there are some habits I’ve been able to give up, like drinking, for example. If I do it, I do it maybe once a week, and that’s just for my job, because the nature of what I do for my job sometimes has to have me consume bourbon. It’s a long story, but otherwise, I don’t touch the stuff. But there are other habits that are harder than others, but I’m working on it. I’m trying my best to like make clear boundaries for myself like, don’t do this, don’t do it because if you do it, you know what’s gonna happen. It’s happened a thousand times before, so stop. So, yeah, yep. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Dave: It’s like I always find it funny, the religious people who are always asking God’s forgiveness. And it’s like, “Don’t ask my forgiveness. Improve!” [laughs]
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah!
Dave: “How many times do you want me to forgive you for the same thing? Your heart isn’t even in it when you’re asking for forgiveness anymore.”
Brian: Yeah, there are old school observers of Judaeo-Christian tradition who are like, old school, like you have to improve, forgiveness is… once in a while, okay, but you have to like… you have to be worthy. That’s not the right wording, but just you have to do better. I mean, yeah.
Dave: Yeah, it’s one of those things where I’m always suspicious of the Christians who say, “it’s not by works, it’s by grace” which is, well that kind of gets you out of work, doesn’t it? [laughs]
Brian: Yeah! Yeah.
Dave: It’s like, “I don’t have to work at anything because everything is God’s grace.” It’s like, yeah, I understand the argument, but I don’t understand it in those terms. I take it as the original undeserved kindness. Anything that we get from God we don’t deserve because all fall short of the glory of God. But, you gotta work at it. It’s like, everybody can always be improving at any time, and I think there’s probably nothing better for God than the guy who finally gives up whatever it is and makes it stick, because, for God, the fourth dimension, time, is a single unit. So he knows, “okay, this guy apologizes here, apologizes here, apologizes here, apologizes here. But finally after apologizing for 15 years, he finally just goes, ‘look, this is gone. This is out of my life.’”
And speaking of out of my life, that’s the two hour mark for Please Hold for Dave Sim. So good substitute there, Brian West. How’d it do?
Brian: It felt good. I thought sometimes I was rambling too much, and I had a couple of my patented pointless digressions, but otherwise, it was okay! It wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be. So, yeah. Thank you for the compliment, by the way.
Dave: No problem. No problem. You are Matt Dow’s chosen successor.
Brian: Yeah, that I still am still trying to wrap my head around, but I’m very grateful that he has tapped me to do, God willing, something I will do down the road. Not immediately. Come back, Matt, come back! [laughs]
Dave: There you go! Okay, you have a good night, Brian.
Brian: You too! Happy New Year, Dave!
Dave: Happy New Year to you.
Brian: Thank you.
Dave: Have a good night!
Brian: You too.
Dave: Buh-bye.
Brian: Buh-bye.
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