Hi, Everybody!
Mondays! 
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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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[guitar music]
Dave: …good.
Matt: I’ve been working 10 hour days for like the past two or three weeks, and I’m getting really tired of getting up at 2:30 in the morning.
Dave: The money’s nice, though.
Matt: Oh, the money’s gonna be real nice soon.
Dave: [laughs] Okay, are we recording?
Matt: We are indeed recording.
Dave: Okay, Please Hold-ing time. “I do believe it's your turn to remember Jeff Seiler.” It is, “But my good buddy Steve Swenson found Jeff's personalized copy of the Strange Death of Alex Raymond California Test Market Edition on eBay, along with an unsigned copy of the SDoAR preliminaries.” That'd be from your SDoAR Kickstarter, I believe.
Matt: Correct.
Dave: “And Please Hold for Dave Sim’s MJ Sewall let me know, ‘Hey there, Manly Matt, instead of any asymmetrical or heated speculation, I wanted to let you know personally that I was the one that purchased Jeff's personal copy of Strange Death of Alex Raymond signed edition on eBay, in case anyone in the universe cares.” Well, if anybody in the universe cares, it's probably going to be here, on Please Hold for Dave Sim.
Matt: Ed Zackary.
Dave: And then, “As your inscription was, ‘To Jeff, a toadstool among the mushrooms.’ Maybe you want to re-explain the meaning of that.” [laughs] I think we covered this once before for Mike, or not. It does ring a bell. I can tell you that the last time that it came up, I went, oh I got that from Phil Seuling. That was in, one of the New York Comic-Con program booklets, and it was Phil Seuling, writing, I was pretty sure it was Phil, writing his own little autobiographical note, and mentioned that “Phil Seuling is a toadstool among the mushrooms” and I went to find it. I went, okay it's either in the 1978 program, which I've got because that was the year of The Studio guys, so it's got a really nice Kaluta/BWS, Barry Windsor-Smith/Jeff Jones cover on it. Or it's from the 1979 program booklet, because I'm in that one and Wendy Pini is in that one because Phil played us up really big as new indie Comics phenomenons in 1979. A disproportionate job for two people who probably two years before would have been thought of as fanzine people. So I don't know where I read it, but yes, it was Phil Seuling that wrote it. And okay we go… “Well looky at that, I can let Jeff explain it, from a message he left in the Yahoo Group about the Ye bookes of Cerebus art show in Olean, New York in 2005. Originally titled ‘Two queens smoking’. ‘I ordered my meal and then attempted to join the conversation but found that Al, Jeff, Dave, and M,” who is M in this? Did you figure that one out?
Matt: Margaret.
Dave: Oh, Margaret! Okay, okay, we're way over my head. And this is another Jeff, this is Tundis, instead of Jeff Seiler, when he's referring to Jeff.
Matt: Correct.
Dave: “And at some point during the meal, Jeff remarked that I was, ‘Really good at talking with strangers’, a thinly veiled reference to the ‘stray puppy’ I adopted at S.P.A.C.E,” and we're not going to go all the way through that story, but that’s a really good Jeff Seiler story.
Matt: I think we've already did that story.
Dave: Yes, we did, at considerable length, because I didn't know that one. “Dave then remarked that as someone had once said in a different context, Jeff is a toadstool among mushrooms” and it was actually among the mushrooms.”I responded I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or an insult, but it's interesting. Dave said you can take it however you want to. Upon lengthy reflection, I took it as a compliment of the kind, as I thought that it meant that I tend to stand out in a crowd. Jeff Tundis told me on Tuesday, however, that it was referential of my efforts to help people out. To be a servant to people, in the biblical sense. I don't know for sure, but knowing Dave, I suspect it was not meant to be an insult.” The more you think about it, the more it's very hard to tell, because it could be either a compliment or an insult depending on what the relationship is between toadstools and mushrooms, which we don't know, because for the average person it's like a toadstool is just a different kind of mushroom. Mushroom, toadstool. Toadstool, mushroom. No real big difference. On the other hand, if toadstools are superior to mushrooms in some completely objective sense, then it becomes whatever that Latin expression is, “First among equals” The pares inter pares, or whatever it is? Or it could be, at the outside extreme, Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, which is two of the titles that that Jesus is known by in Revelation. Or it can be the black sheep. In a world where everybody is either a mushroom or trying very hard to be a mushroom, this guy is just a relentless toadstool. And you know, I'm not sure that there aren't degrees of that, that are strictly perception, that somebody that you think of as first among equals, nobody else is going to think of as the black sheep . The exception, the contrarian. So it's interesting in that sense, because when I read it, I thought, that's a actually a very effective and astute description of Phil Seuling, because he probably falls into both categories. If I had to say if there was a first among equals, particularly in what we all owe to Phil Seuling for starting the Direct Market, he would be probably without peer in the sense of nobody actually had to do what he did, and it took a lot of chutzpah to do what Phil Seuling did, but he went ahead and did it and literally started the Direct Market just by saying, “What if I go to Sol Harrison at DC and say, what if I buy the books non-returnable? So every book that I order from you, I give you cash for it, and that's it, we're all done. As opposed to the newsstands, where you have to wait and see how many unsold copies there are, and they get to deducted from the sold copies.” As Mike Kaluta once told me, “You know, it's like inventing a wheel. It's pretty simple until you're trying to invent something that wasn’t there in the first place.” So in that sense, definitely Phil Seuling is in the first among equals category. But then Phil Seuling was also the schoolteacher in that situation who, as this was all just falling together once he tipped over the first domino and he was the New York City Comic-Con guy and the major retailer in Brooklyn, and then became the founder of the continent-wide Direct Market . Quit his job as a schoolteacher, and shacked up with one of his students, who was about the same age as his two daughters Heather and Gwenn. [laughs] And it's like, okay, well that's a different category. That's a toadstool among the mushrooms where, uhh, no we kind of prefer our mushroom qualities and that seems like toadstool behavior. That was Jonni Levas, who was also the vice president of Seagate Distributing. If you look at the really early back covers of “Cerebus”, if you're lucky enough to have those, and you see the Phil Seuling ad that Denis Kitchen drew, you see that Phil is the guy in the sort of like commodore’s uniform marching at one end of the parade. And at the front of the parade is this little girl with a little hiked up skirt which says I believe “Jonni” on it. And it's like, that was one of those, people have trouble understanding what that time period was like, and all we can keep saying is, uh, it was a different time period. When you met Phil or when you were staying at his house or whatever, then you just found out, “Oh he used to be a school teacher and now he's shacked up with one of his former student and is divorced and the student is the same age as as his daughters. Well, we don't want to be judgmental about these things. Everybody's got their different idea of how they want to live.” It’s like, oh no no no no. That's way way way over the edge! But not at the time, at the time it was, we were all trying to prove to each other and to ourselves that we can all be adults about this, which meant putting up with and tolerating and enabling really really dysfunctional social behavior. So there you go on, that's where my mind goes when somebody asked about toadstool among the mushrooms. It's, well, that's where it came from and that's why I thought it was a really apt description of Phil Seuling, who coincidentally enough turns up again in one of the later questions that I'm I'm holding in my hand here. It was, Jeff riffed on that when he did the plaque that I've still got here on my desk in the Rectangle Office. Let me go over and check it, hang on. “To Dave Sim, a sequoia among the evergreens” and that was on my plaque for my 50th birthday that you all surprised me with in Columbus at the S.P.A.C.E. show that year.
Matt: I forgot that! I remember we gave you a plaque but I forgot what it said.
Dave: Oh well, I don’t forget, because it’s always sitting right there, it’s always there to remind me. Go ahead.
Matt: So in my S.P.A.C.E. photos, I have photos from the party, and Paula had the camera, was taking the photos, and there's a photo where I'm smacking my head because I obviously forgot something, and every time I look at it, I’m like, you know, I remember doing it but I don't remember what I forgot.
Dave: [laughs] Well then smack yourself in the head again, man, you deserve another one for that!
Matt: It's actually, I mean, it's... you know, I always thought was going to be the answer’s gonng be, “Well it's from the end of ‘Rick's Story’, Matt. It's what Bear says to either Marty or Richard…”
Dave: Richard George.
Matt: Yeah, Richard George. And because, when I went in my email, I typed in “toadstool” just to see if I had the message that I said, and one of the other messages that popped up was, there was a Blog and Mail where you apparently had talked about selling off original art, and Jeff had commented that he had called you and left a message saying, or called you and talked to you, and said he really wanted to buy that page from “Rick's Story”, but with the way the original art market was back then, he didn't think he could afford it. And your response was, well make an offer and we'll let you know if we're willing to do it.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And I'm going, knowing Jeff, he never made the offer, cause it probably, he may have been able to squeak one in, but you know… if you sold 10 pages and made a bunch, maybe the 11th one would go for cheap.
Dave: Yeah, yeah. That’s always a balance act. Even back then, even now. The closest I will ever have to Apple stock or something like that where, whatever else I do, the artwork goes last, because the artwork is actually appreciating in value, and everything else I do, it's like “The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.” We'll get into that later on, as well.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: Uh, “Travis asked on the Friday after the last Please Hold, ‘In a Please Hold for Dave Sim from July 4th 2019, Matt mentioned to Eddie that there is a lost VHS tape of the making of ‘Cerebus’ #104. Has this been found?’” No. “If it were found, would it be released to the public?” [laughs] Well, probably not the public, because the public wouldn't be interested, but to Cerebus fans in the A Moment of Cerebus cult? Yeah, that definitely would be. “It sounds very interesting”, uh, it was, we got the video recorder either for that specific trip or at least recently around there, and it was, well okay, we're going down to see Bob, why don't we record the whole thing and then see if we can make a show out of it. And one of the first things we did was Pink Floyd music in it. Um, you know, trying to remember the lines from this song. I can't even remember which song it is, um “kicking around in your hometown looking for some little something to do”, and a shot of a close-up of my feet on one of the end tables with my one toe sort of tapping up and down, and then the phone rings and I answer the phone. So it's all staged stuff, but it was, yeah, what the heck, this is gonna be pretty interesting. We're going to see Bob, we're staying at his place, if we have a video camera, I don't think the whole thing will be entirely dull. And it certainly wasn't, but as soon as you start using Pink Floyd music, no, you won't be able to release this commercially or do anything with it in that sense. So once we got it all shot and edited it down to, whatever it was, I think about an hour and a half, then it was, okay, well the 92 tour was coming up and it was, well, all of these people are waiting in line for autographs. Why don't we get a monitor and VHS player from the hotel and play it and people can watch it while they're waiting in line? And that didn't work at all. It was in Minneapolis, strangely enough which is where Jeff lived, in a hotel that was facing the giant open pit where Mall of America was going to be, which was just a a weird hallucination at the time, and is now the Mall of America. And so, disappointed that it didn't have the effect that it was supposed to have, which was gonna be, everybody would be watching this while they were waiting in line, and everybody just waited in line and sort of tried to see what we were doing, or just stared around or whatever. So it's one of those, well okay, thought it was a good idea. Didn't work out. So we'll try something else next time. But that made me forget the fact that that's the only copy of the tape, and it's sitting in the machine, and we folded up the tents at the end of the day and went back to the hotel room, went out for dinner, went to the hotel, you know, went to the airport, and I think it was at the airport that I went, I don't have the tape. I should have ejected the tape and made sure that I had it, and it was the only edited copy and Gerhard said, “I'm pretty sure that I've got all the raw footage” and then he got home and looked for the raw footage and no, he didn't have raw footage. But it's lost, but it was definitely interesting. Anytime I talk to Bob Burden on the phone he always says, “What about that tape? You ever find that tape?” No, you’ve asked me that, I think, every six months since 1987, it's now the 21st century. No, the tape is gone.
Matt: I mean, have you called the hotel and asked them to check the lost and found one more time?
Dave: You always do that, but you always know better, it's like the hotel didn't have a VHS machine that they keep on hand for guests, they went out and rented it somewhere, and “You know, okay, yeah, we'll get you one of those, and pick it up the night before . Charge the guest for it. Okay this guest is gone, here's a checklist of things you got to go through. Here's the machine.” And just went, “Okay, return the machine to wherever we rented it from”, and the people that they rented it from probably didn't even notice until the next time they rented the machine that, “Oh, there's a tape in there.” It's like, ”Well okay, is there anything on it?” They hit play and went, “No, it's just some guys goofing around.” So there you go. I could tell you like clips from it that I remember, because I don't remember too many of those. I remember Bob reading his poetry, and I remember panning across the pages. The whole idea of doing this was, Bob was just getting pathologically slow, which was weird karma considering that Lamar Waldron, who was his roommate back in the day of the Atlanta Fantasy Fair when that was starting going, was having to do a comic strip for the “Visions: the Atlanta Fantasy Fair Booklet” and was anguishing about it. And Bob would go out and go on a hoodle because that's what hoodlums do, and then come back and Lamar is still anguishing about this. So Bob went, “You're just making this more difficult than it needs to be. They just want to a five page comic strip. Here, I'll show you how to do it.” And he sat down and did the first Flaming Carrot story, and I think it took him four hours? Five hours? To do a three page or four page Carrot story. And, “There, see! Don't overthink it. Just sit down and slap some stuff down on the page, just have some fun with it.” And by 1987, Bob was down to doing one issue a year of the Carrot. So I was hoping that Gerhard and I going to Atlanta, and buying two drawing boards, and setting them up at Bob's place, and buying the illustration boards, all of the art materials. Okay, you're going to draw the Carrot and you're going to write the Carrot, and I'm gonna draw Cerebus and write Cerebus. Gerhard’s gonna do the backgrounds and we're going to get this whole issue done in 10 days. That's why we called the tape, “The making of 104. 10 days that shook Atlanta.” And it didn't work, unfortunately. And it's one of those, why did those things happen? Why did somebody like Bob Burden who knows, “You're overthinking this. Just sit down and do it. It's a comic strip. Nobody cares. Just fill up the pages so that you can give it to the people and they can print it, people can read it.” Inside of… [sighs] well, when when did “Visions” come out? Would have been 79 ? I think 79. 78 or 79. And by 1987 Bob Burden has frozen solid when it comes to just sitting down and doing the Carrot. It's one of those [sighs] as long as it doesn't happen to me, please God! And now it's happening to me, as well. We'll get into that a little later on, as well.
Matt: Well, that’s… I have my list of Matt's stupid projects keeps getting bigger and bigger of, oh yeah I wanna do this stupid thing, I wanna do that stupid thing. It's like, you know, I have four or five different “Cerebus in Hell?” ideas that, “You know, you should really work on this” and it's like, yeah, I'm tired. I don't wanna do that right now.
Dave: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: The other day I was at work and like, a year or two, actually it was probably closer to three years ago, the Cerebus in Hell? Brain Trust was lamenting that there are no bootlegs of any issues of “Cerebus in Hell?” on the bootleg download sites. Nobody’s scanned in copies and has them.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I went, oh okay! And I did a quick parody sketch of the cover of “Batvark” #1 and went, there. There you guys go now. Now there's a bootleg. And Hobbs was enthusiastic of, “Keep going do more! Do more!” And so like I did one page of, it's a parody of “Batman: Year One” when Bruce Wayne is sitting in the study bleeding and the bat's about to come through the window, and it's Batvark writing his diary to his father, you know, “Dear Dad”, I forget exactly how I phrased it but at one point it's, “If I ring the bell, Alfred will come and he'll give me Band-Aids and kiss my boo-boos. Nobody's kissed my boo-boos since that night all those years ago.” It's just one page, three panels and I did it really quick and then I was lettering it in the back of Paula's car, we were driving somewhere, so the handwritten diary entry looks super like this guy's dying of blood loss…
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I scanned it and send it to him, “This is great! Keep going!” and then I’m like, yeah, guys, I actually have other things I need to do. This was a one-time joke.
Dave: [laughs] You’ve got two kids, for cryin’ out loud.
Matt: Well, when I was at work this week, and I’m like, you know I should really get back to that, cause I mean it's very Iguana vs Beer of, it doesn't matter what I plan. I'm just gonna do a page and that page will suggest the next page, which suggests the next page. You know, cause in my head I'm going, I have this “50 Years of Batman” book from the 80s that my Dad got me, and I'll flip through and find Batman stuff I want to make fun of, cause there is a lot of Batman stuff you can make fun of with Batvark.
Dave: Right.
Matt: But the whole point was it's a bootleg. It's supposed to be dumb and it's not supposed to be well done. It's a bootleg, and I'm going, why am I gonna waste time doing this when I have like “Vark Wars 3” I could be working on. I could be working on this idea! I could be cleaning the house! It's like, and in the back of my head, this little voice's going, yeah but it's funny! And as long as you're laughing at it, keep going! And it's like, yeah, but what are we gonna do? Scan it in, make a PDF and give it away to people, or sell it to people? I mean, at the very least, we send a copy to you, and you go, “This is great! Let's print it!” And it's like, in my head, I’m going, Dave's gonna look at this, be like, “No way this sees print. No way anyone gets to see this ever.”
Dave: [laughs] Well, it…
Matt: It’s gonna look terrible cause it’s a bootleg! [laughs]
Dave: Right. Right. And that's part of the idea is, you're just gonna bootleg through it, just as fast as your little hand can put it down on paper. We don't know what aspects of our personality are in the way, and what aspects of our personality are facilitating stuff. That's going to come up later on, as well.
And coincidentally enough, we've got MJ Sewall, again! And since we've got MJ Sewall again, I wanted to again plug his book “Wild Monsters Dance About: Stories from an Unruly Mind”, MJ Sewell, and I'm hoping that you can find a link to where folks can buy it, and failing that, if you can find a link to the two Weekly Updates where I read “Toasting Lester” and “It's the Now”, the first two stories in the book. Still only the two stories that I've read of Mike's work, but two really really stellar short stories. See if we can drum up some business. Anyway, MJ Sewall asked, “Hey there, Manly Matt, super early question for Dave,” this was like January 16th?
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: Nobody thinks about Please Hold for Dave Sim in the middle of the month except Mike Sewall, I guess. “At the height of ‘Cerebus’ how many copies were you giving out for free or trade? Were you getting as many freebies in return? Feel free to use this question as the spring board to tell fantastically interesting anecdotes about the free reeling 80s and 90s roller coaster of comics industry books. No pressure! Thanks.” And you wrote, “Good man, that Sewall, with a dozen more like him, these things would take 12 times as long.” Which is a good point. Which I am now going to reinforce by reading ,as quickly as I possibly can, the Aardvark-Vanaheim freebies list from 1996? I believe it's 1996, March… February 30th 1996. “Freebies: Library of Congress, National Library of Canada, Twilight Twins,” that was Zolastraya and Mr Echterling, “Zolastraya and The Bard”, my girlfriend way back when. They were deleted from the freebie list January 6 2000. “National Library of Canada again, Paul Pope.” When he was in Columbus Ohio. Deleted March 16, 99. This is [laughs] how Dave Sim found out that he had become a pariah in the comic book field, when people don't contact you to tell you that they changed their address and “please keep sending me ‘Cerebus’”, they're definitely telling you something. “Amazing Heroes, attention Kim Thompson; Sergio Aragones”, stayed on the list straight through to the end. “Terry Austin”, stayed on the list through to the end. “Terry Beatty”, “Ms. Tree” artist, stayed on the list. “Library of Congress.” I already mentioned. “Allred and Allred Ink Heads Incorporated”, that's Laura and Mike Allred. “Murphy Anderson, Chris Ashby,” moved with no forwarding address, January 8, 2001. Chris is the black guy on the back cover of “Church & State” volume one who looks like Lionel Richie. That was his nickname, Richie, and he was a Peter's Place friend of mine. “Mike W Barr”, comics professional. “Bob Boze Bell”, who was a wonderful cartoonist in Arizona, and took offense at me at some point and sent a snarky letter, which [sighs] unfortunately that happens, but I still got Bob Boze Bell's work, and that's what counts. “Linda Berzins”, got her nose out of joint, she was the typesetter and proofreader on “Cerebus” back in the 1990s. “Chester Brown”, all the way back to Avenue Road and then onto King Street West in Toronto. “Bob Burden”, oddly enough. Although, different post box number. “Sharon Cho”, in California, one of the Berkeley crowd, deleted February 28, 1998. Definitely became one of the “Dave Sim is an evil misogynist” people. “Max Collins,” writer on “Ms. Tree”, he stuck around to the end. “Bruce Costa,” a columnist for the Comic Buyer’s Guide. “Diana Schutz”, was on the freebie list, and got her nose out of joint over the Jeff Smith situation and never darkened my mailbox again. “Steve Bissette,” always, always there. “Richard Bruning,” when he was actually one of the top executives at DC Comics, deleted January 19th, 1999. “Eddie Campbell” Leady Eddie Campbell, was on the freebie list through to the end, as far as I know. Although, I think he and Ann were divorced by then, and I don't think it was a happy split, so if it was still going to the Olmstead, he probably didn't see the last bunch. “Catherine Collins,” the artist formerly known as Arn Saba.“Comics Buyer's Guide, attention Diana, advertising,” I have no idea who that is.
“Howard Cruse,” “Stuck Rubber Baby”. Howard and I mended fences in the literal and ambiguous sense of the term at the Norman Rockwell Museum exhibit, where we managed to get along, as Howard put it, “by avoiding the areas where we have the vehement disagreements.” He asked off of the freebie list long before the end of “Cerebus”. “Dan Day,” Gene Day's brother and essential artist in his own right. That was when he was in Lansdowne. “Dave Dixon,” who I picture vividly in my head, a person that I knew in England through Neil Gaima,n and I think he was on the list through to the end. “Martin Wagner, Double Diamond Press,” deleted March 28, 2000. That was when Martin went deep, deep underground, and I don't think anybody knew where he was. I don't think that was directed at me personally [laughs], I think he got into trouble with books and money that he owed people. “Will Eisner Studios,” in Tamarack, Florida. Will Eisner was there to the end, and bought me dinner in Toronto. Came to a convention in Toronto and said if I got “Cerebus” done, he would buy me dinner in Toronto. “Harlan Ellison,” Sherman Oaks, California, was on the freebie list up to the end. “Ernst & Young,” that was our accountants for Aardvark-Vanaheim, until they became way way too big an operation that I couldn't afford. And Doug Montgomery said, “There are much cheaper accountants than Ernst & Young now. Let me see if I can find you somebody.” That was three accountants ago. “Gail and Joe Erslavas,” that was Gail Jack, later Gail Day, Gene Day's widow. And Gail and Joe shacked up together and actually had a couple of kids. And then they broke up, so this has Gail and then a little box around “And Joe” and a little note that says “eliminate Joe only.” [laughs] This is how our world goes now. “Brad Foster”, brilliant cartoonist. Mini comics cartoonists in Irving, Texas. Jabberwocky Graphics was on the freebie list up to the end. “Colleen Doran”, note, this has got a big X in it, so there was a break with Colleen. Newport News. I loaned her money to pay a printing bill, she didn't pay it back for a while, and then she did pay it back. And that was one of the situations where we were trading freebies, so she was getting “Cerebus”, I was getting “A Distant Soil” and after she paid back the loan, that was it. I didn't get “A Distant Soil” after that anymore. “Kevin Eastman,” I think if I went through all of the paperwork that we have at Aardvark-Vanaheim, and just listed all of the addresses that Kevin has had. This is, post office box 417 in Haydenville, Massachusetts, and its crossed out, and Suite 7B something something Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, California. Lke I say, I've got at least 10 more, dating all the way back to when Kevin was just one of my fanboys. “Scott Idle”, a member of Gerhard's band, Dirty Shirt. “Scotty Rotten, Emerald Limousine, which was the limousine company Aardvark-Vanaheim was at one time was their second biggest client after IBM, I think? And “Bob Neufeld”, it says ”delete name”, so Bob Neufeld was there and then Bob Neufeld wasn't there.
“Jerry Moran,” was a bouncer at Peter's Place and a friend of mine deleted July 30th, 1998. He went into the military, so I would hear from him because he was a photographer in the military, and he sent me photographs, and then he changed his name from Jerry Moran to something else. And then, with the whole Freedom Convoy thing and the real bad boys out west who actually tried to shut down the border, one of them was named Jerry Morin, and [laughs] I'm going, uh, I don't think it's the same spelling, and I hope it's not the same Jerry, because I sure hate to see Jerry have to go through what the Canadian government is doing to the Freedom Convoy people. “Jules Pfeiffer, Vineyard Havens, Massachusetts.” Definitely a “Dave Sim the evil misogynist, never darken my mailbox again.” No letter or anything to that effect, but just he moved, didn't say, “You can send it here.” “Clay Geerdes's Comix World,” who did the newsletter for years and years and years in Berserkley, California. Deleted November 4th, 1997. and I don't know what that was about. “Steve Gerber,” deleted January 6th, 2000. I think that was when he died and somebody notified us to stop sending the copies. He was in Burbank, California. “Michael T Gilbert,” The Wraith. He was there to the end, and actually sent me a very nice drawing of Cerebus when issue 300 came out. “Wilf Jenkins,” my lawyer was on the freebie list. “Mike Kaluta, in New York, New York.” And I still got Mike Kaluta's phone number in my phone book, and I'm curious, is he still at this address in New York, New York? Because I know it was a rent-controlled department, and once you get one of those in N’York, N’York, you don't want to give it up, because you'll never get it again. “Jack Kirby. Thousand Oaks, California.” Deleted February 23rd, 1999. That was definitely after Jack was dead. I tended to keep people on the freebie list in case anybody else there was interested in “Cerebus”, so I guess nobody in Kirby's family was interested. “Denis Kitchen,” I think was still on the freebie list. Northampton, Massachusetts. “Rose Cragle,” [laughs] is Gerhard's significant other, and it’s like, uh, can't you just take this home to her, or do you really want her to be on the on the freebie list? Well, you put her on the freebie list, Rose gets a copy delivered to the house that she shared with Gerhard. “Dave Gibbons,” in England, and I believe he was on the freebie list right up to the end. Definitely enjoyed Dave Gibbons’ company the few times that I saw him. “Bill Griffith,” “Zippy the Pinhead”, who you figure has got to be complete 100% California guy, but no, by the time we were sending the last issues to him, he was in Lyme, Connecticut. Bill Griffith doesn't strike me as a Connecticut guy, but what do I know?
“Jolly Rogers Studio,” I have no idea what that is. “Adam Khan, the Chicago Maroon,” I think that was a independent newspaper, where, got along with him like a house on fire. Hey, let me put you on the freebie list. “Gene Kirby,” one of the Legion of Aardvark-Vanaheim Representatives at the Canadian Imperial Bank and Commerce in town. Collect them all. “David Anthony Kraft, Fictioneer Books,” who did “Comics interview”, was on the freebie list up to the end. “Steve Lafler,” cartoonist in Oakland, California. Brilliant guy, my favorite work of his was “BugHouse.” “George Lawrence,” I'm maybe incorrect, but I think George was the drummer in Gerhard's band. If he wasn't, I stand corrected. “Larry Marder,” “Beanworld”, was on the freebie list straight up to the end. [Alan Moore impression] “Alan Moore,” Alan Moore was on the freebie list and I know that he bought the house so I don't know if this address is still good. I often think to myself, self, I really should get Rolly to dig out all of the Alan Moore parodies that we've done, put them in a big box, and ship them to the address that I’ve got here. And just see if they get to someone. [normal voice] “Stephen Murphy,” “Puma Blues” in Northampton, Massachusetts on the freebie list straight up to the end. “Barb Roche,” who worked with Arn Saba on “Neil the Horse”, deleted April 15, 1999. I think that was one of those, “Never darken my mailbox again.” “Karen and Bob Rittinger,” Karen was Deni's sister, and Bob Rittinger, Boobah, Deni’s and my brother-in-law, and they were on the freebie list right up to the end. “P. Craig Russell,” in Kent, Ohio. And [laughs] I remember saying to Craig on the phone, this was at the absolute height of “Dave who? Never heard of him, don't even bother trying to talk to me about him.” And it's like, Craig, you want me to write the introduction to your book? You want Dave Sim, the “evil misogynist” to write the introduction to your book? Why would you want that? And he said, “Because it'll piss off all the right people.”
Matt: [laughs] So, interestingly, my brother does a role-playing convention every February. It's like the last weekend or second to last weekend in February, and it's called Fire and Ice. And I used to, back before I went, ehh, I'm just not into this anymore, I used to go. And the deal is, if you volunteer you get con bucks, and you can use them to play games and stuff. Well, I would go with Paula and she would play games all weekend, and I would work all weekend. And people were getting pissed off that, “Well, you know, she's not a volunteer! How come she doesn't have to pay?” So her husband works, so she can play. And I would run the auction and people would bring stuff in and we, it's okay, blind auction, whatever, and it's all role-playing stuff and role-playing accessories. Somebody brought in P Craig Russell's book, and they're like, “This isn't anything to do with role-playing. I mean it's fantasy, but it's beyond the edge of what we’ll allow.” And I'm like, well, wait wait a minute.
Dave: [laughs] Oh, really?
Matt: I'm like wait a minute, I mean you know [stammers] I open it up and I see your name and I'm like, well I know what I'm buying!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And I ended up getting it for 40 bucks. and it's cover priced 80, and it's got a signed tip-in plate from P. Craig Russell. And it was one of thes,e the guy that was running the convention with my brother was like, “Oh yeah, you know, whatever it's fine.” And I'm going, you guys don't understand. This is worth more than the cover and I'm getting it for half off. I mean if you let me find, I will run like my tail’s on fire, my ass is catching, but you you guys seriously don't wan to-- and, “No no, it's fine, it's fine.” So yeah, I have that book, and I love that book, and I love the introduction because it was one of those, I’m reading it, going, I can see Dave saying this!
Dave: [laughs] Well, what's… Okay. We're interrupting my freebie list, but picking up on that, that was the first book that I ever saw on computer. Like, he sent me a disc of what the pages were gonna be. And it’s like, this really really weird. I've never watched a book on television, and I’m watching a book on television. Okay well, just as Taylor Swift advises us, Shake It Off, and just write as if you were looking at an actual book. Oddly enough, the publisher was not really good about getting copies of the book to people, so I've never actually seen, let alone owned, a copy of P. Craig Russell's book.
Matt: Well I guess my copy is going in the box of stuff I have to send Dave!
Dave: [laughs] Well, unless you really treasure it as much as you do. Maybe we can wait and find out if somebody finds one of them going for five bucks or something like that. It’s one of those time periods where it's either something you'll have to pry out of somebody's cold dead fingers, or something that somebody goes, “Oh I got one of those someplace.” But it's just very odd, that yes, I might have to correct that and say, I think I autographed one of them someplace, and was absolutely hyponotized by it, because it's like, I've never actually seen one of these. This came out really good! This is what my introduction looks like in P. Craig Russell's book! And this is what P. Craig Russell's book looks like! Because, I gotta tell you, when you watch a book on television, it just doesn't stick with you like like a book does. So, all right, interesting couple of digressions there.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: “Bob MacMillan,” major Canadiana collector, who actually had a lot of Canadian comics Cerebus Archive stuff, that I gave to him because he was the guy who really had all of that kind of material, and it really should be in your collection. He donated it to the Brantford Campus of, I forget which university. So, someday that will turn up. I don't think anybody in Brantford has any idea who Dave Sim is, or would really care, but someday somebody will run across it. I don't think Bob MacMillan's with us anymore, and will go, “Do you know what this stuff is?” And it's like,” Um no?”
These are letters from Adrian Dingle who did the Canadian Whites back in the 1940s, and this is him writing to Dave Sim.” “Oh okay. Well we didn't know what that was, but it's all part of the collection.” “Todd McFarland,” was on the freebie list right up to the end. “Terry Moore,” was on the freebie list right up to the end, although every attempt to contact Terry Moore has failed. Hey Terry, you want copies of the “Strangers in Cerebus” parody? Or do you want to sign them? You know, sign your parody like Neal Adams did, and Kevin Eastman did? And complete zero on that. “James Owen,” deleted April 3rd, 97, but had second thoughts about it, and is still the only person in the comic field who apologized to me for, first of all how he treated me, and how the comic book field treated me, and of course, I forgave him. That's, I think, the first letter in “Collected Letters 2004.” So that's always what I think of with James. Stand up kinda guy. “Linda Lessmann-Reinhold,” the former girlfriend and Gorblimey Press business person. In a relationship with BWS, and married Bill Reinhold, and she was on the freebie list right up to the end. And I've even got her phone number written here, I think I phoned her a couple of times in this time period. “Trina Robbins,” definitely “never darken my mailbox again.” “ScanColour,” August 13th, 02. Did our colour separations right up to the end, but I guess didn't want their freebies anymore. “Ken and Mary Sim,” my Mom and Dad were on the freebie list. “Socorro Public Library, in Socorro, New Mexico.” I forget what that was about, but one of those, you really need to be on the freebie list. So they were on the freebie list right up to the end. “Jim Steranko,” on the freebie list right up to the end. Still very happy that I have Jim Steranko's phone number, but the last time I tried to phone him, he said, “I'm standing here with a brush full of wet plastic,” and I knew that that acrylic paint dries really really quickly, so that's always in the back of my mind. If I try phoning Jim Steranko, I'm going to catch him with another brush full of wet plastic, and that's the worst thing that you can do to a painter.
“John Totleben,” was on the freebie list as far as I know right up to the end. “Frank Miller,” New York, New York address. I tried contacting Frank a couple of times, including the last time I was in N’York, N’York, and no response. “Lynn Varley,” was crossed off, I don't know when that happened, but she obviously departed Charlottesville, Virginia when it happened. “Martin Wagner,” deleted, again, I think Martin Wagner ran for the hills. The “Robin Williams”, in in San Francisco. Brian Hibbs’ Comics Experience had told me that Robin Williams was a very good customer of his, and and I said to him, I'll tell you what. The next time he's in the store, ask him if he wants to be on the “Cerebus” freebie list. Brian had said, “Yeah he's read ‘Cerebus’, and he really liked ‘Cerebus’”, and he asked him, and Robin said sure! Gave Brian his address, forwarded it to me, and he was on the freebie list right up to the end. And when I went to Lenny Henry's birthday party in England, the showstopper video congratulations to Lenny Henry on his 40th birthday was from Robin Williams. So I actually wrote Robin Williams a letter when I got back, telling him how much of an effect this had on the crowd, and never heard back from him. “Jeff Smith,” [laughs] well, less said about that, the better. “Max Southall,” CerebusTV. This was back before that, when Max was in Miami, Florida. He's now, as far as I know, somewhere in Oregon. He was on the freebie list right up to the end. “Don and Maggie Thompson at Comic Buyer's Guide,” Don is circled deleted February 23rd, 97. I believe so. That was after Don died. “Frank Tapper,” deleted 6/3/98, I believe that was a guitarist in Dirty Shirt, Gerhard’s band? And I don't know why this is like crossed out and replacement postal code, and deleted two different dates for it being deleted. We'll just leave that alone. “Rick Veitch!” Rick Veitch, I still hear from Rick. He still sends me his work, I still send him my work. So there's one! There's one. “The Westfield Newsletter,” was a real big deal. “Westfield Distribution Company, attention Casey Carlson.” They were in your neck of the woods, in Middleton, Wisconsin. BWS! “Barry Windsor-Smith,” Woodstock, New York is crossed out, and there's a Kingston, New York address. So he was on the freebie list right up to the end.
“Joe Zabel,” Ohio cartoonist, used to do stuff for Harvey Pekar, and he was on the freebie list. “Michael Zulli,” was on the freebie list right up to the end. “Rob Walton,” moved and didn’t leave a forwarding address. But now Rob Walton and I trade publications. “Greg Hyland,” “Lethargic Lad.” He moved and didn't leave a forwarding address. Greg and I are on good terms. He actually came all the way down to Windsor to help us move all of the “Cerebus” inventory when we closed the warehouse down there. “Stan Peppas,” I have no idea who Stan Pappas is. It's in Kitchener, Ontario, so it's maybe one of Gerhard’s. “Joe White,” in Waterloo. Deleted uh December 26th, 1998. That was Beth's boyfriend. Beth was the nude model in “Women”, where she said to me, “If you're gonna put me in the comic book, do you have to make me a nude model?” And it’s like, mhmm. She was, and is, as far as I know, still working for the city of Kitchener. When I was doing the 10 flights of stairs at City Hall for exercise, occasionally I would Beth coming down the stair, or up the stairs, when I was coming down the stairs or going up the stairs. “Ralph Wall,” was the brother of Doris Wall, and Doris was Doris in “Melmoth”, the blonde waitress. And Ralph desperately wanted to be a cartoonist, so Doris did every everything that she could do to be nice to me so that I would be nice to Ralph, and as far as I know, Ralph's still designing websites. “Chris O'Connor of Janet and Chris, Northampton Brewery in Northampton, Massachusetts.” They owned and ran the Northampton Brewery which made very very fine craft beer. They were the couple that Susan Alston and I hung around with the most. Which is interesting. I'm gonna have to go pretty soon, the last prayer’s coming up but at 6:57. Because the neighbor who moved in, Jennifer and Alex on the second floor of the house, the triplex next to the to the Off-White House, I looked at her and I went, man, you look so much like Janet from Northampton. And I talk to her very very infrequently, but I see her from time to time. And she was born the year that I broke up with Susan Alston, so she's got a two-year-old now. So there's something that keeps it in perspective. At the time that seems like yesterday, when you're going out with Susan Alston and hanging out with Janet and Chris, this 24 year old woman next door was born. Giant bold text, “Send four copies to Wizard Press!” Isn't that funny? You go back far enough and it's like, remember when Wizard Magazine was like the be-all and end-all? That, of course you would send four copies of each issue to Wizard Press and get down on your knees and pray that they actually mentioned “Cerebus” someplace, because if Wizard Magazine doesn't mention, you don't exist.
Okay, I'm gonna go and do my last prayer time. We're almost at the end of the freebie list. Two more pages to go!
Matt: [laughs] Okay!
Dave: Talk to you in a little while.
Matt: Alright.
Dave: Buh-bye.
Matt: Bye.
[guitar music]
Matt: Hello again, Dave!
Dave: Hello again, Matt! Okay, picking up where we left off, “David Zepanta, Screaming Rice Press.” Did a comic book called “Hairbat”, and I did a preview of it in “Cerebus.” And that was one of those where you never know if it's gonna find an audience or if it's not gonna find an audience, or if the guy doing it is gonna be able to keep doing it even if he does find an audience. And that was a case where, I think, it was one or two issues and then done. And I thought that was always unfortunate for me. It was definitely, it would have been nice if I could pick and choose, “okay, this one I want to be successful. This one I’d be fine if it went away.” It never ever seemed to turn out that way. And telling an embarrassing story on myself, like I say, David's comic book was called “Hairbat “,and I was in Australia for Oz-Con in 95, I think. I was there twice, 95 and 96, or 96 and 97. The North American guest, and I was presenting the awards for indie comics, they’re almost all indie comics down there. And talking about what an enthusiast I was for a title called “Hairbutt” in Australia, but I kept calling “Hairbat”, and Australians being like Canadians, nobody even mentioned to me, “It's not called ‘Hairbat’, it's called ‘Hairbutt’. Hairbutt the Hippo.” And it's a wonderful strip, and just complete embarrassment because you're the guy who's there to get everybody pumped up, you know, the North American guest is gonna say very nice things about the domestic cartoon scene and the Australian cartoon scene, indie comic scene has always been really really good, and [laughs] this is the mess that you made of it, Dave. And there's nothing you could do, you just have to wear that for the rest of your life.
“Indy Magazine, Jeff Mason,” that didn't last very long, but that was nice to have a sort of indie version of Wizard Magazine. Jeff did a great job on that. “Marc Hempel, Art & Soul Comics,” I don't know if Marc ever forgave me for using his characters in “Guys”, or if, he sort of has this cantankerous, put-on personality, so I could never tell if he was really hacked off at me, or was just pretending to be hacked off and and actually liked the fact that I did a riff on his characters. “Ken Viola,” the Rolling Stones roadie in Andover, New Jersey. At this time, he was on the freebie list, up until the end. “Bill Mainprize,” in Kitchener. A friend of Rose and Ger’s, was on the freebie list. “Neil Gaiman,” was on the freebie list, and actually at one point said, [Neil Gaiman impression] “Please take me off your freebie list, because I really don't have enough comic books to be having to go to the store for these days and ‘Cerebus’ is one of them.” And that lasted a little while until I became “Dave Sim, the evil misogynist. Never darken my comic shop” and [laughs] Neil said, “Can you put me back on the freebie list? I'm afraid I can't get your comic book from my store anymore.” “Mike Cave,” a friend of mine who was DJ and bartender at Peter's Place. He's commemorated on one of the “Guys” covers, I used his last name. I should have checked this. I ended up working today instead of researching all of my questions for Please Hold for Dave Sim, so apologies for that. But it was, “Cavedaw” because the girl that he married, her last name was Daw and his name was Cave, so I put that on one of the bottles on the “Guys” covers. “Tom Kittner,” a really nice guy, interviewed me for his pop culture show on the Washington stop for the 92 tour and was definitely one of the people who was just completely, completely appalled by “Reads”, and that was it. He would stay friends with Gerhard, but he wanted absolutely nothing to do with Dave Sim ever again. “Chris Ashby,” Richie again, from the back cover of “Church & State” 1, “Chris and Lynn Ashby”, this was when he got married. I used to see Lynn from time to time downtown. She worked in a place on Ontario street, and I haven't seen or heard from Chris or Lynn in many many many moons. “FM International,” when they were a distributor, “Attention Wayne Markley,” Wayne has been all over the place in the comic book field. I hope he's still out there somewhere. FM International was in, again, your neck of the woods, Madison, Wisconsin.
Matt: Okay, I'm gonna pause there for a second. My friend Nick who lent me the first five Cerebus volumes and got me into Cerebus, knows Wayne!
Dave: Oh, he does?
Matt: And I've met Wayne, cause Nick lived in Madison so he knew Wayne because at the time Wayne was working for Westfield, and when I was gonna meet him, Nick’s like, “He's basically you, but older” and I'm like, yeah, right, whatever. And I met him, I'm like, oh my God, he's me but older! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] That's true! That's true. I know Wayne Markley, I have a very vivid memory of Wayne Markley, I never thought of it that way, but uh…
Matt: I met him in Chicago at Wizard World one year, because he had come down for the show and cause he works in comics and you know lives comics. I'm thinking, okay, he's gonna be looking for-- No, he was looking for old porn mags cause there was a guy there selling old porn mags, and I'm like, ‘kay. And I looked, I turned to my friend Nick, I'm like, how exactly? I mean, yeah he looks like me and we have a similar personality, but like I don't see myself doing that in 10 years. And Nick's like, “Ah you gotta understand, he lives comics, Matt.” Like, but still, it's weird!
Dave: Yeah, yeah. Well he probably when he was your age and he looked 10 years down the road, he didn't picture himself buying old porn mags either.
Matt: I'm hoping he was buying them for the articles.
Dave: [laughs] Well, we’re also in a completely, soon to be a disappearing, generation who even knows what a porn mag is, it's like, “You want porn? Well you got a cell phone. You know, that's what but you need your cell phone for. Just make sure that you clean it off afterwards.”
Matt: [laughs]
Matt: “Rick Siegel,” was a Hollywood producer that I met at Lenny Henry's 40th birthday party. That was a real coup, that Dawn French was able to get Rick Siegel to come to Lenny Henry's 40th birthday party, because they had had a falling out. Lenny Henry did a television show called “Chef!” in England and Rick Siegel bought the rights to do a North American version of “Chef!”, and they definitely got into a major dust up over how Rick was handling it. But it was very nice to see them getting along and bygones will be bygones. And I had a very good time talking to Rick Siegel. And Lenny Henry had made a very big deal about me at his 40th birthday party, being there as Dawn French’s gift to Lenny on his 40th birthday party, and cake of course was a Cerebus cake, so Rick Siegel wanted to know, “Who is this guy who's Lenny's hero?” That was how Lenny introduced Dave Sim to people, [British accent] “This is my hero, Dave Sim.” And I said, well, you know, I'll send you some “Cerebus” if you want to read it, and it's like, “Yeah I'd love to” so I got his address, and he was in Los Angeles, put him on the freebie list and never heard from him again. “Bill Gaither,” my second cousin. My “ew, how does that one work?” My mother's aunt’s… no, my mother's mother's sister’s son, I think was how that one worked. He was in Japan. He was he was a major monarchist and got in with the Japanese royal family and was actually the tutor of the Emperor's only child at the time, and quite a good gig that he had. And he had come to back to North America to visit, I guess this would be early 2000s? 2002, 2003. So, yeah, if you wanna know what your distant second cousin is up to, this is what he's up to. We'll have to put you on the freebie list. “George Petru,” was one of the guys that I knew at Peter's Place at the end, last year, two years. [laughs] And George was, you think Dave Sim is outspoken, George put me to shame on that. Very very very funny guy. He and his brother John were both musicians, and I don't think Cerebus was a big deal to him, but it was this was just weird enough to appeal to George, so I put him on the freebie list. “Marcel Guldimann,” no idea . “Joe Matt,” definitely got along with, got a couple of autographed “Peep Show” books from him, but definitely didn't hear from him after he moved to Los Angeles. I don't know if that has anything to do with “Dave Sim the evil misogynist or not”, but I think that's more Joe's just always busy being Joe. “Seth,” definitely “never darken my mailbox again.” He would tolerate me as long as I was hanging around with Chester, and Chester was okay with Dave Sim being here. But it was one of my guilty pleasures was going down and visiting Chester when Seth was there, and we'd all go out for lunch or whatever, usually with Joe Matt. And I knew Seth absolutely could not stand me, [laughs] and it's, there's a certain entertaining quality to that, particularly when you get to be “Dave Sim, the evil misogynist”, you have to take your entertainment where you can get it. So, I love Seth, he's a great guy, great cartoonist, but boy does he ever really really really not like me. And “Frank Cho,” cartoonist. He was on the freebie list. He's the last one on the list, so he was the last one added, and I think he was on the list right up to the end of “Cerebus”. So there you go, Mike, when we do a thorough job answering one of your questions, we do a thorough job answering one of your questions, because you're one of those guys that when you get interested in Please Hold for Dave Sim, and boy do you get interested, because we've got another Mike Sewall question!
[laughs] You even put in brackets, “Hey wait, there aren't actually 12 of them are there?” I don't know, this question came in on January 30th. Right?
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: Yeah. “The several published letters by you in comics, like Superman 212”. Mhmm, no, “Superman” 203. I'm not sure, I don't think I had another letter in “Superman”, but everybody can, if you've got a “Superman” 212 at home, you want to pull it out and check, there might be a Dave Sim letter in there. “Did you know at this point you wanted to be in comics?” 1967, “Superman” 203 was January 2, 1968. “Or were these simple fan letters?” They were definitely simple fan letters. “Being analytical was this a ‘foot in the door’ to later submit stories or art to DC or Marvel? How much street cred did this get you in super hip, swinging 60s Kitchener Ontario Canada?” Comics doesn't get you any street cred of any kind in Kitchener Ontario Canada. It's still a place where if I say I draw comics, they go, “Oh, you mean like in the newspaper.” No, comic books. “Oh oh, comic books.” Yes, you know, they're like little magazines. No, it was definitely just fan letter things. Just send a fan letter, and then check the issue up ahead to see if they ran it so that I could be one of the letters column regulars, like Guy H Lillian, or Irene Vartanoff, or Mike Friedrich, were the legendary ones at the time. Which, in terms of your question, you know the foot in the door thing, I knew the legend of Jim Shooter when he broke into the comic book field at the age of 13, I think it was.
Matt: Yeah.
Matt: And the way that he broke in was by doing basically mock-ups of comic books, sending them to Mort Weisinger. He would do a “Legion of Superheroes “story and you know draw it really really badly. You know, handwrite the word balloons. But Mort Weisinger, no fool he, wasn't gonna just say, “Oh well, this is an amateur kid’s comic book. What the hell is this doing on my desk ?” It was, “Well no, I'm gonna to read this, because I'm selling to kids, this came from a kid.” And they were really really good scripts. Mort Weisinger did not let it throw him off that this was a 13 year old kid, he wrote back to him and said, “You know, keep sending these, but it'd probably be better if you typewrite them.” And there's certainly a legendary batch of “Legion of Superheroes” stories, “The Super-Stalag of Outer Space” and “Moby Dick in Outer Space”, Jim Shooter had his finger on the pulse. It’s, do “Legion of Superheroes” but mix it up with “Moby Dick”. Do “Escape from Stalag 17”, but do it with “Legion of Superheroes”. And that was very astute of him, and knowing that, knowing that happened and knowing that that's where these stories came from, why didn't I do that? Like, don't try and break into DC with art, just, if you're gonna do a “Justice League” story, well how many pages is a “Justice League” story? Pull out the latest issue, okay, it's 21 pages, 19 pages, whatever it is. Do it on foolscap paper from school, send it to Julie Schwartz, send it to Mort Weisinger. The worst that they can say is no, or, “Uh okay, we'll buy the idea but you're not ready to do a script.” So one of those things where you credit yourself with being a very astute kid, picking up on this stuff, and no, that's a fastball went right by you there, rookie!
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: So there you go, Mike. There's… oh wait a minute, “And then MJ Sewall.. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. It's the MJ Sewall of Easton, Pennsylvania, Michael R!” But then you add, “If his middle name is John, I quit.” [laughs] So, yes, Michael R of Easton, Pennsylvania, “Hi Matt, if there's a Please Hold for Dave Sim this weekend,” he's still not really sure that we're doing these again. I really shouldn't have pulled his leg that badly on the last one. “Then here are my questions. Hi Dave, what was and is your preparation process on building up to a great cliffhanger? Have you changed anything from the beginnings of ‘Cerebus’ to now working on SDoAR?” There are Strange Death of Alex Raymond cliffhangers, and that's mostly a matter of moving stuff around and going, okay, what's the best way to tell this to get the the biggest bang for the buck on the surprise? So whatever the surprise is, where my reaction was when I got the the research from Eddie Khanna or Jennifer DiGiacomo, that I went, you're kidding me. Then it's, okay, you have to give this prime real estate. You've got to build up to this one and make sure that everybody's on the same page, literally, when they come to it. There's a, Jennifer found, like I'm working… [laughs] I really should have prepared this… I'm doing The Many Deaths of Margaret Mitchell right now, and Hugh Gravitt, who was the driver of the car that struck her, was driving a 1949 Ford at the time, and Jennifer found that Duke University has all of Ford's papers in terms of their advertising in-house promotions and whatnot. They donated all of them to Duke University, so she found literally, literally 800, 900 ads for the 1949 Ford. And [laughs] that became a winnowing process where, okay, you get it down to what you think are the best, and give it to me as raw materials for me to say, I want this one, I want this one, I want this one. So heroic second effort, giving 110% for Jennifer digging up all of this and then spending hours and hours and hours winnowing it down to 208. And it took Dave all of an hour and a half to go, okay, these are the 20 that I want. And out of the 20 that I got, there is one that is literally I went, I can't believe I'm actually looking at this. This actually exists, and this was actually in a high-profile magazine the year before and the seven years before the Alex Raymond… and it's the gift that keeps on giving. This one ad, this one image, resonates through the whole rest of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, all the way up into the 1960s. So it's like, okay do I show it to them now, and it's like, no I don't show it to them now. I can show this part to them. There's a part of the ad that I can show them that's in the upper left corner, and that applies to what Ward Greene was doing with the ”Pagan's Cheerful Summer”, Summer Stock Playhouse thing that he was riffing on his own experience as a playwright in 1937. I can go, I can show them that one, but it probably won't be another six years, seven years, until I can show them the whole ad, and then say, and here's the big payoff years and years and years later! So, that's really how it applies to Strange Death of Alex Raymond, is, I've got this this whole spectrum of material that I have to cover, and if I get something… this was what Eddie and I call AAA material. Where it's like, there's A material, AA material, and AAA material, and I keep them in separate compartments. And just go, I can't wait to get to this part. I can't wait until I can actually do this and then show it to people, have it accessible to the people who are getting as hooked on The Strange Death of Alex Raymond as I and Eddie and Jennifer are at this point. And the advantage of that is the stuff that applies to Alex Raymond's actual death, that's in a separate category. Here's all this stuff that was in comic strips and in comic books the months before and on the cover date of Alex Raymond's death. Here's Alex Raymond panel swipes in a “Tales of the Unexpected” story that was done, you know, 1964. So that goes in and around. It’s… I still have seven years of material to cover until I get to Alex Raymond's actual death, but then it's, okay, the AAA material goes right at the point of impact. This is the car headed towards the tree, that was the last thing that I did in “Glamourpuss”, that's going to be there, and it's just going to have its own constellation around it of AAA, “You're kidding. No way. That was not in a comic book in May of 1956.” If I'm lying, I'm dying. Eddie found it online, sent it to me, and it all safely in its own manilla envelope. When I get there, that's when I get there. One of the reasons that I enjoy doing “Cerebus in Hell?”, because I don't do cliffhangers in “Cerebus in Hell?” I spent my whole life doing cliffhangers, and trying to make sure that they're all in the right place. I want to do beginning, middle, and end, and that's it. We're done.
And segue on that, I did finally finish “Spore/Batvark”, which features Michael R of Easton, Pennsylvania, who is not in Hell?, but is just visiting. And we have photos that Michael has supplied for us, and that's the next issue that David Birdsong is going to be working on. And I've asked him to keep Michael R current with the production of the book, because it actually doesn't come out until November 2023, and if you know you're gonna be in a comic book, “Spore/Batvark” and it's going to be actually you under your name, you shouldn't have to wait until November to see it if it's going to be existing sometime in the next month or a month and a half.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: [laughs] I never know when I come to to the end of that, if you've just been sitting there going, “I got something to say about this. I got something to say about this. I got something to say about this.” Or you just go, “Okay.”
Matt: In one of my “Cerebus in Hell?”, I don't want to talk about it because I don't want somebody stealing the idea of projects, after “Spawn” hit 300 and Todd decided to do the Spawn Universe where he's doing spin-off books, so there's like their Spawn, there's King Spawn, there's Gunslinger Spawn. Who, I keep telling, every time it pops up on Twitter, like Todd’ll share, “This is the cover for Gunslinger Spawn.” I'll comment, if he doesn't sound like Yosemite Sam, what's the point?
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And I haven't gotten any reaction from anybody when I do it, because, I mean if you're doing a Gunslinger Spawn, if he doesn't sound like Yosemite Sam, what's the point?!
Dave: [laughs] There are other gunslingers! I mean, it could be Clint Eastwood Spawn, and just can’t call him Clint Eastwood Spawn. Or spaghetti western Spawn.
Matt: But, come on, Yosemite Sam is, as you know, the ultimate Batman pastiche of, “He's a demon from hell that fights crime”, but one of the books is called “The Scorched” and it's the Spawn team-up book where he's got all the various Spawns together. And I decided that, you know, we should do a parody of that book, because there's Spore, there's Cerebus as Spawn from the poster, there's CereSpawn from the “Hell Society” cover…
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And then there's Hello Spawnee!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: So I made a mock-up of the cover and it's called “The Sporched.”
Dave: [laughs] I love it! As Gerhard used to say, “Run that baby!” quoting “Bloom County”.
Matt: So, I have strips mocked up, and the first strip it's a parody of the “Spawn” 10 page one. It's “I am Spore, I am not Spore”. I am Spore goes through you know all the reasons why he's Spore, and then it's…
Dave: Right.
Matt: I am not Spore, because in the notes for “Latter Days”, Dave Sim gave Spore to Todd McFarland and I'm not getting sued! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And then Spore goes, “What are you talking about? We're not gonna get sued. All we gotta do is get one of them all-female Neil Gaiman juries and we're in like Flynn! And not-Spore goes…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And not-Spore goes, “You really think an all-female Neil Gaiman jury’s gonna side with Dave Sim?!”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And then it's three pages, the third page is a half of the Spore/Not-Spore, and it's, “I am not Spore, I am also not Spore.”
Dave: [laughs] Well, I usually say don't quit your day job, but this would be a different reason. It would be, don't quit your day job, but use all of your free time getting that down on paper, please.
Matt: Well that's… I want to keep it to 24 pages. I don't want to have to do a 48 page special, because A the price is higher. I think the sales might be lower on those. Like, it's one of them Golden Goose things where if the issue’s a double issue, I don't know if sales go down or not, and but I want to come back to it with Hello Spawnee of “I am Hello Spawnee”, and there's another one going, “I'm Hello Spawnee's twin sister Hello Sporee”, because in “Hello Kitty” Hello Kitty has a twin sister called Melody, and it's because I have little girls, I like I know way more about Hello Kitty than any 43 year old man should know.
Dave: [laughs] Without getting a restraining order, anyway! [laughs]
Matt: And it's one of those, I just I love the idea of parodying the “Spawn” 10’s opening because the “Spawn” 10 opening is, I mean, it's one of those, it's eminently parodyable if you have a good enough gag, and it's like you know, “I am Spore”, “I am not Spore”, and then it comes back like a boomerang of “I am Hello Spawnee” “I am not Hello Spawnee, I'm her twin sister” And I have a few other, the one gag I sent you of Spore/Batvark where it's Batvark in the alley with the “Hell Society” CereSpawn, of, it’s Batvark going, “Nice place you got here. Who are your greatest villains, dysentery and tetanus?”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Like I said, I got a number of strips, but it's just finding the time. And the other one is, I actually want to make physical mock-ups to fax up, because you know in my head this is gonna look great, and I'm like, I just know if I just type it and send it to the guys, they're gonna go, “Well, is this what you were thinking?” It's like, no no no, I basically need to get Dagon or Sean to send me a digital copy of the remastered “Spawn” 10 so I can just, okay, it's this with this instead of this, and this and this.
Dave: Works for me. I don't have to do anything on it. That's my criteria for a great issue of “Cerebus in Hell?”
Matt: I mean, I have one strip, or well, it's a sequence of maybe two or three strips that I'm, in my head I'm going, this is the one when Dave sees it, he's either gonna say, “No way in heck does this see print
or he's gonna go, “You know, that was a grand slam, home run, out of the park, bottom of the ninth, we've won the game gag,” and it's one of those, every time I think of it, I'm like, ehh, this is really a coin flip because you're either gonna love it or you're gonna hate it.
Dave: Uh, no, it's one of those, a home run in like towering shot to centerfield, is when we make ourselves laughs. It’s like, it’s, I've decided it's a hopeless task trying to make anybody else in this weird, politically-correct world where everybody's super sensitive about anything, laugh about anything. So it's, no if it if it makes you laugh, it's probably going to make me laugh. It made me laugh. Don't sweat that one.
Matt: Okay, yeah. Spoiler warning for people who are eventually get to read this when Matt gets off his ass and writes it, so Spore is Al Sim, because it's the parody of Al Simmons, and it's one of those, I thought it and went, oh God, that's just perfect. Al Sim, he was a mercenary killer, dies, goes to Hell, comes back to see his wife, and I have a, I'm not sure if it's a three or four page sequence, where he finally confronts his wife of, “I'm back from the dead for you” and discovers that she's remarried his best friend, they have a baby, the timeline doesn't work out for this to be a “she got pregnant after he died”.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And he's confronting her about the, “Wait, you cheated on me with my best friend” and says to her, “I'm kind of looking forward to when you die get sent down to Hell” and she responds, “Oh no, I'm going to heaven. I've accepted Jesus as my Lord and Master.” [laughs] And there's a blank panel with no dialogue, and then the last panel is Spore going, “Wait a minute, Jesús?! You fucked the gardener?!”
Dave: Okay, that’s a little over the edge.
Matt: The after gag is, “Well Al, you did ask him to take care of your wife's bush.”
Dave: Whoaaaa.
Matt: See? This is why I said, you're either gonna love it or hate it! [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] As long as your name is on it prominently, and don’t look at me. I let these guys build their own issues.
Matt: This is one of those, like I said, every time I come to it, it makes me laugh, but at the same time it's a sequence. Like I have to have, as Michael R asked, “how do you build a cliffhanger?” Well, this is the gag, but if you don't set it up right, it comes across as a broken leg.
Dave: Right. I think that would be my reaction. I've never gone “that’s just over the edge”, usually it's, okay, I see what you're driving at. There's a gag here, but you gotta find the funny, is what I always tell the guy. It's like, you gotta get right to the core of it, and I think this is probably better phraseology or a different way to tackle it.
Matt: Right.
Dave: The “War in Hell?” that David Birdsong did, it was funny, but it was just a little too over the edge in terms of, you know, Fox TV's approach to the war in Ukraine. And it's, no, you've got it here, but you’re just not framing it correctly. So at this point with all of you guys, I usually just have to say, let's rearrange this strip, let’s change this phraseology, and I think you've got the gag there. In terms of “What's the rest of the world going to think of it?” It's like, man oh man, we've got, you know, a thousand, 1200 hardcore fans that I think are going, “This is about the only thing that makes me laugh in the world today.” So I try to hang on for them.
Okay, moving on to the next question, Leo Loycannon[??]? I'm not sure how to pronounce your last name there, Leo, so I hope I'm not mangling that. Leo asks, “Hello, below is my question. Mr Sim, have you considered the possibility of writing an instructional book on pen and brush inking at some future date?” Umm. It's, as the politicians used to say, I'm glad you asked me that question, because this ties in with, I haven't been participating on A Moment of Cerebus as much as I've been, because I am working on Strange Death of Alex Raymond, so that's a far more arduous task in terms of not interrupting myself and really really concentrating on what I'm doing. And then that got changed, Jennifer is doing the GoFundMe concept that she came up with so, that's producing results, and thank you Jennifer for what you're doing on that. And there's basically $60,000 on the table, because there's 300 pages, and she set it as every $200 that comes in, you unlock a page. So it's one of those, is this just going to sputter along for a while, or is this going to take off slowly and then suddenly crest? And there's lots of open questions on that, but it's it's definitely a revenue producer, this being the first month that has been up there. So it's one of those, I'm trying to think of things that I can do to bring in money because Strange Death of Alex Raymond is just this complete money pit. There's not enough interest in it, and anybody who does go, “Hey, I want to support this”, as Ted Adams did when he was at IDW, it doesn't take very long before IDW and their participation got up to $60,000 and still didn't have anything that they could publish. And then, Eddie published the Strange Death of Alex Raymond California Edition. I got a serendipitous trade-off with IDW of , you waive all claim to Strange Death of Alex Raymond and you can reprint “Turtles” #8 as long as you've got the Turtle's license and not have to compensate me or notify me when you're doing anything, and they thought this was the greatest thing since sliced bread, so they went for it. The anonymous patroness, when she was here, was and is a tremendous Strange Death of Alex Raymond enthusiast, to the point where she got in up to her eyeballs to the tune of $39,000, [laughs] and finally went, “Look, uh, you know, I make a good buck, I've got a few dollars in the bank and I could possibly have more money in the future, but this is just like Ross Perot's giant sucking sound. This is just draining way too much money out of my bank account.” So she's still there, but it's, by the time you've lost 39,000, it's the same as when IDW lost 69,000. “That's all the fun I want to have, anybody else want to participate in this?”
So now Grandpa has come up with his own idea, because I'm working on, this is where it ties into your question Leo, where I'm sitting there and doing Strange Death of Alex Raymond and I'm really learning a lot more so that if I did such a book, I would call it “What I Learned at the Comic Art Photorealism Wars.” Because it really is internal warfare where I'm going, I'm not sure that anybody else is even remotely interested in this, but I am definitely learning very interesting things that if it wasn't absorbing all of my time and energy and attention, I would be writing about this for A Moment of Cerebus. Like, here I am way up on this mountain that I thought I was never going to be way up on again, and here's all the stuff that I'm learning, and here's it distilled down to its essence. And then going, one of the biggest things that I'm learning is you've gotta loosen up, Dave. It’s, you're trying so hard to be Al Williamson, which is really… Carson Grubaugh can't believe that I prefer Al Williamson's Secret Agent X-9 to Stan Drake’s Heart of Juliet Jones. Just difference in people, but there's a crispness and a clarity to to Williamson's work where, that's the guy that I want to be I want to be! I want to be Neal Adams for the Stan Drake perfecting quality that Neal did. But I'm looking at it, I'm going, okay, it took me nine days to do this page, going meticulous square inch by meticulous square inch, particularly on the backgrounds. I need to make this look like Peachtree Street between 12th and 13th in 1949, and here's the photograph that I’ve got that Jennifer found for me. It isn't from 1949, it's from 1946 or 1954, but it's like this is the stretch of road and this is, with John Marsh looking this way, this is what he would be seeing. So trying to make it as look as much like the photograph, also making it look as if it was drawn by Al Williamson and having to fake as much of it where the detail just isn't there, because it’s just an old photograph and it wasn't intended for this kind of detail. And it still looks like Dave Sim’s art. And it's like, big surprise, Dave, you're Dave Sim, it's going to look like Dave Sim’s art! You know, give it up for Lent! And that's one of the things that I'm learning is, no, my pen lines look like my pen lines. I can do them under the magnifying lamp and I can use a completely fresh Hunt 102. I can leave the solid black areas open so I can test the pen to make sure that it's absolutely the most microscopically thin line that I'm getting out of the thing, before I actually put it in the space that it's in. And then, just be able to do like five, six, seven lines, and then have to clean off the pen nib, exhibit[??] again and test it in the black area. But it doesn't look like Al Williamson because I'm not Al Williamson, I'm Dave Sim. And particularly when Dave Sim goes microscopic, it looks more like Dave Sim, not less like Dave Sim, but it looks like really really good Dave Sim. So this is one of the things that I'm learning, and I'm going, loosen up! Like, just… the same thing that I tried to tell Blair Kitchen for his book “The Possum”, just be who you are. You know what you're doing, you're Blair Kitchen, just go in there and and let ‘er dangle, and you'll get much better results, because spontaneous Blair Kitchen looks better than overworked Blair Kitchen. He was trying to be Sergio Aragones. So, I'm starting to learn that, but it's like, no, I have to do other things that I can loosen up on, where I really don't care what this looks like. I'm just have to get this done. That's the Turtles cards, the however-many-more-sleeps that I've been doing. Like, okay, I'm working on Strange Death of Alex Raymond, and it's absolutely melting my brain trying so hard to be so good at this, and I'm just not loosening up enough. So okay, do a Turtles card. And it's like, okay, that was a really dumb thing to do. They're dumb Turtles drawings and Cerebus drawings with the letters T8. The most important thing is that it's done, but you just went in and wailed on it. Now, while you're thinking that way, go back to Strange Death of Alex Raymond and do that. It was working, but it wasn't working, and it was like, okay, I have to have something that I'm working on that is in that category, but is bigger than a Turtles original art card and is an actual comic book.
And this was when Thomas K in Lincoln, Nebraska sent me a postcard just before Christmas, going, “Really enjoying ‘Cerebus in Hell?’, but when are you gonna do a manga parody? What about ‘Akira’? And by the way, is Cosplay Lass gonna make an appearance in ‘Cerebus in Hell?’” And I went, now there's something that I could do! Because manga is actually much simpler drawing, but it's still very very specific drawing, very very fine line drawing, and it's that exact mix of fine line and brush. So that was when I decided, okay, I'm actually going to draw the cover for “Akimbo”, which is my “Akira” parody. It just means ”hands on hips with elbows out”, so it's a manga Cerebus with his hands on his hips and his elbows out. It's “Cerebus in Hell?” comedy. Got the cover done, and then went, okay well, I can auction that and make some money on that, Heritage Auctions. And it is loosening me up, because it's actually closer to a page, so I can jump from this to Strange Death of Alex Raymond, and then jump back to this, and try and loosen myself up a little bit. Then I went, well splash pages go for a lot of money on HA.com, as well, so I'll do the splash page. And I actually made the title “splash page”, so that everybody gets the idea, “Here, bid lots of money. This is ‘splash page.’”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: And I went, well why don't I keep going, because I can just reduce and enlarge the two characters, and trace them off onto the Strathmore Bristol that I'm using for Strange Death of Alex Raymond, because that's what Raymond used, that's what Stan Drake used, that's what Neal Adams used. And you can lightbox it, you just put the drawing on the lightbox, put the Bristol over top of it, trace the image off, take it downstairs and ink it. And manga isn't actually that simple. That’s one of the things I’m making fun of, is how simple the artwork is. So, okay, make fun of it, but also do even simpler artwork. And then I thought, actually, Cosplay Lass is a great idea because I've got the steampunk pirate lady photos that Daria sent me when she sent me her photos when she was Cosplay Lass in the last issue of “glamourpuss”. And this was her friend Katie, and Dasha didn't have a steampunk outfit that she thought would work, but this is a really good one that Katie came up with. And it's like, yeah I'll do these! So it's really like doing Strange Death of Alex Raymond, but doing them much faster. Loosen up, and do it like you did “Cerebus”. Same thing I was trying to tell Bob Burden, do “The Flaming Carrot” the way you did it when you first did it, which was just wailing on it. Not tensing up so that you can only do one issue every three or four years. So I've been doing that, and I've been doing a page a day. I am now within two pages of being done “Akimbo”, which is Akimbo versus Steampunk Stars and Stripes Pirate Lady. And I'm hurrying to get it done so that it can be in the next Heritage catalog, which is coming out March 8th. [laughs] This is the only thing that's going to be in the Heritage catalog that hasn't even been drawn yet! Rolly was in today doing the scanning and he goes, “I haven't got pages 11, 12, and 13.” That's because I haven’t done pages 11, 12, and 13 yet! I'm working on it. But I got page 11 done before I came upstairs to do this. So when I have those done, then I can go back and explain, this is what I learned at the photorealism wars by doing “Cerebus in Hell?: Akimbo” #1, and because it's going to be in the Heritage catalog, you can post it to A Moment of Cerebus! Here's the February 2024 “Cerebus in Hell?” No big spoiler alert, it's also going to be auctioned on Heritage Auctions, and if all 24 pages goes for, oh, what do you think? Pick a number!
Matt: Oh see, this goes back to something that happened on the Facebook group, Chad Lambert asked, “So how does Heritage Auctions work?” And my response was, well, how it works for me is, they post something I want, I place a bid. Some yenta with more money than brains comes along, and blows my bid out of the water like the sinking of the Lusitania. I cry myself to sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Dave: [laughs] That's the Heritage Auctions experience for everybody on the planet except the one percent. So yeah, go ahead.
Matt: But I mean it's one of those, like there's a Rip Kirby original from 1951 that, I just got the… for some reason Rip Kirby gets pulled in on my “Dave Sim / Cerebus auction alert.” Every now and then it's Terry and the Pirates, but usually it's Alex Raymond. And I'm like, okay, yeah, and I clicked on it, and oh, the the opening bid's a dollar. I'm like, oh, I will once again, cause futility is my name, I'll throw a token bid that I know it's not gonna win, but if I did win, yay, this would be great. And go through the the hassle of logging in, confirming my bid, press the button, and it immediately goes, “You've been outbid!” And the new bid is a dollar more than my highest bid. It's like, well, no I don't think I'm gonna be Wile E. Coyote anymore, I think I'm just gonna let this one go off into the void.
Dave: [laughs] Diamond Matt Dow strikes again. There's just this ripple of excitement that goes through the casino anytime Diamond Matt Dow comes through the double doors.
Matt: Well, Carson said…
Dave: Okay, let me get back to the question. What do you think? 24 pages of “Akimbo” #1, half manga parody, and half “glamourpuss”.
Matt: [sighs] It all depends on what else is in the auction around that time. And I mean, are you doing it as one lot or 24?
Dave: One lot. All 24 pages and the cover.
Matt: I dunno, the last time you did all 20 pages and the cover it went for like 50 or 60 grand, but that was “Cerebus” #4.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: [sighs] I mean, I could see it going for like 10 or more? I mean, it literally boils down to, when the yentas with more money than brains show up, if they see a value in this. I mean, definitely put it in the auction that this is the first full comic you've drawn since “glamourpuss” 26.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: I mean, you have done the Strange Death of Alex Raymond, but that sort of kind of doesn't count since it's not finished, and it wasn't published as individual issues.
Dave: Right, right right. Oh, blah blah blah.
Matt: I mean, it's basically, you have get them to write the description so that it's “this is the greatest thing since sliced bread”. Like, you know. And very much reads as a “this is exciting and awesome and you want to throw money at it”, and not, you know, try to sell ice to Eskimos.
Dave: Right.Right. All I really need is one really really psycho manga “Akira” fan, and one really really psycho “glamourpuss” fan with deep pockets. You know, one of those AI guys, or, cryptocurrency isn't doing really good right now. Well, the ETFs are supposed to be doing really good. So somebody who's just up to his eyeballs in cryptocurrency ETFs, looking at that. That's what I'm hoping. It's like probably most of the people who read it, go, “That's disgusting!” But somebody with weird, weird “Cerebus in Hell?” sense of humour, and as you say, more money than brains. One of the things that I'm hoping for, because the three Turtles covers are in that same signature auction, my riffs on Kevin Eastman's work on “Turtles” #8. And it's like I said to Todd Hignite, I don't think I'm gonna get $78,000 for my “Turtles” 8 cover, but the question is, what percentage of $78,000 am I gonna get? So then I'm thinking, like I've got this picture that a lot of the stuff that people are getting on on Heritage Auctions, when it suddenly goes like that. When the “Dark Knight” cover goes for 2.5 million, and the Black Costume first page goes for a million or whatever. Those, I think, are the really really deep pocket people, who just go, “I'm not really interested in learning about this. I just understand that, the best of this stuff, if you buy it, it's never going to go down in price. Doesn't matter how much you spend on it, just watch and see. The ones that go ten thousand, fifteen thousand, twenty thousand, twenty five thousand… Okay, that's the comic art that I want. I have no idea what it is. I'm just buying it so that I can own it because my stocks aren't really doing really good right now.” So I'm kind of hoping that what happened with Kevin's “Turtles” 8 cover, [laughs] I'm hoping that happens with my “Turtles” 8 cover, and my other two “Turtles” covers, and then they go, “Wait a minute, this guy with the ‘Akimbo’ #1? This is the same guy? Okay, we're off to the races again.” Whether that happens or not, it's, all I'm doing is trying to buy Strange Death of Alex Raymond working time. And like I say, I know it's a money pit. IDW lost 69,000, the patroness lost 39,000 . However much money I get for this, it's going to go away way too fast, and I'll never get it back. But I can use it as seed money for at least getting another 25 meters or or so up my particular Mount Everest. And looking forward to documenting that on A Moment of Cerebus. I have nine more Turtles Sleeps cards to do, I've got two more pages to do on “Akimbo” #1, and then I'm definitely going back to Strange Death of Alex Raymond and I will have some time to document what I saw at the comic art photorealism wars that I am still in the trenches on. So there, Leo, it's, when I said I want to thank you for asking that question, I'm not just whistling Dixie. That's something I definitely wanted to talk about, and now I can talk about it.
Matt: So, when you get done with “Akimbo” and you're working on Strange Death, and you need to get loose, my advice as somebody that looks at auctions and what sells. I mean, it's purely crass, but go for it. Do a sequel to “Akimbo”, well not a sequel, but the next version of “Akimbo”, where you're gonna just do something quick to get loose. Do a book called “Getting’ Loose” and just have the entire thing be filled with young girls with dynamite yabos that you could do Shakespeare from.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: “Pretty Girls and Other Subjects”, because you know you’ll be able to sell pretty girls, everybody will be like, “Hey, that's a pretty girl.”
Dave: Uh, no, it's a drawing of a pretty girl. That's a problem with that one. It’s like, “Why would I want to buy this guy’s drawings when I can get the photos online?” But that is what I'm going to be doing. It's like, if this goes for, it's taken me just a little under a month to get within two pages of the end. If it goes for, let's say 20,000, or 18,000, I'm going a little higher than than your guess, but let's just arbitrarily say that. Okay, that justified in my mind putting in a month to bring in 18,000, but there's no guarantee that the next one's going to sell like this, which is why I will probably do, like you say, a manga “glamourpuss” kind of thing and see if Thomas K can… I was gonna go to Looking For Heroes in town and go, what manga do you have in stock that really really sells well right now? People are just absolutely berserk about it, and they'll probably go, “Actually it sold out. We haven't been able to reorder it.” But you know, find something like that. But if the 24 pages go for like $280, then you just go, well, okay, it looked good on paper. All I did was waste a month of my own life, and I got the experience of doing it. And it is very satisfying, I'm actually at the page a day pace on “Akimbo”, just going, okay, telling myself you know how to do this, if you're gonna get all of this done in a day, there's you can't sit back and assess it. You can't study it and and meditate on it, you just got to wail on it, and trust to the fact that you know what you're doing. Some of the pages will be better than others, but at least I can say that all of my long-suffering fans will be able to read a complete 24-page Dave Sim comic book drawn by him, in a photorealism and his first attempt at the manga-style, Dave Sim's bucket list again. Never know that I have a bucket list until I go, that’s right, I've never done manga. So let's jump in on this, and many thanks to Thomas K. I sent him a bunch of the sketches and photocopies of the model and stuff like that there that would ordinarily have gone to Margaret, but is going to him, because it was a very opportune suggestion.
And then we got uh, Jason Pilley? Is it Pilley or Pilkey?
Matt: Uh, not sure.
Dave: I think it's Jason Pilkey, but it says Pilly, so it might be a different guy. “Hey did you guys know there was a Sci-Fi novel,” well we know he's not a SF fan because they don't call it “sci-fi”, they take umbrage at “sci-fi”. “novel published in 1953 called ‘Pirates of Cerebus’”, I did not know that. “I'm just reading Ryan Hughes's collection of old SF”, oh maybe he goes across the divide, because he's calling it SF there, “Artwork ray guns and rocket ships and there it is on page 381. A note adds that it’s ‘perhaps the worst SF novel ever published’” You'd probably get into a shouting match with a bunch of SF fans about which one that is, but that's interesting. Maybe we should find out if there's a copy of the novel and I could do a cover for it. “Pirates of Cerebus”.
Matt: I looked it up after I got the email, and in fact I'll send Rolly the cover, just because, I can fax it but it'll be black and white and grayscale and all the yaddas. But apparently, I forget the name of the author, but the author name, it's a house author. It's one of those, there's this author has three different books written by three different people, and they've identified two of them, including this one.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: The third one they're still not sure who wrote it. But I found a bookstore that had a copy, but it was sold out, type thing, but they had the description and multiple sources have called this the worst science fiction novel ever written. I’m trying to remember remember the description was something like, “Delirious lack of at the time scientific understanding.”
Dave: [laughs] This person wasn't even caught up for 1953!
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: Okay, oh excellent.
Matt: And I'm going, because I'm like, well can I find a copy of this? And it's like, there's a copy that was selling in England for like 50 pounds, and I'm like, yeah that's an exchange rate thing where I'm gonna get the American price and be, my jaw’s gonna hid the floor. It's funny, but it's not that funny.
Dave: Right, right. I mean, that's “Plan Nine from Outer Space” to the nth degree.
Matt: Maybe that's the sequel to “Akimbo”, it's “Pirates of Cerebus”, where it's Cerebus as a pirate and a bunch of sci-fi girls.
Dave: [laughs] Well, we’ll come up with something.
Matt: But he’s totally, you know, the Jack Sparrow, 18th century pirate, cause that would be really funny. Like he thinks it's pirates and they're like, no no no, it's not “pirates”.
Dave: Well it was interesting because I was just coming to the end of “Akimbo” and that's when I got your Disney Cruises postcard with all of the Disney characters dressed up as pirates.
Matt: Well that's actually the second postcard. There's another one coming that I don't think you're gonna get till your birthday.
Dave: Oh, okay!
Matt: I mailed it at the beginning of December, but I mailed it from the Bahamas. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Okay.
Matt: I sent the one that you got, I also sent to Brian West, and then when I was in the Bahamas, I sent postcards from Wisconsin. You know, they're Wisconsin things from the Bahamas. On the back it says pretty much the opposite of what the one you have said.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And it was great, cause I was on the boat, I brought some postcards that I already had, then I bought a bunch of them, and I'm filling out the postcards, and they're really small but I'm being really funny, and then I go to buy stamps and the stamps are huge! And I'm like, well..
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: I can’t put the stamp where the stamp goes cause it's going to cover the writing of what I wrote.
Dave: [laugh] You could’t make that up. Bahamas postage stamps and there goes my Matt Dow original.
Matt: Well no no, your card is big enough, it's fine, and Brian's card's is big enough, it’s fine. But like the ones I bought for all the other AMoC contributors, cause I bought five of the same one, and it was, it's kind of a smaller postcard, and I'm going, well let's see how big a fan Margaret is. Does she peel the stamp off?
Dave: [laughs] Oh man. Did you ask them if they have smaller stamps? They just look at you.
Matt: [sighs] It was one of those, I bought the stamps and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go back to the room, actually I'll step to the side, slap them on real quick, and then mail my postcards. And the woman who sold me was like, “Do you need a glue stick?” And I'm like, what? “Yeah, these aren't self-adhesive stamps. You need to glue them on.” And I'm going ‘kay, yeah, I need a glue stick. “Oh you can bring it back…” No no, I'll just take five minutes and get it done now so that it's done.
Dave: Really? Really. It's, well we hope that that doesn't catch on in North America. [laughs] Canada does glue stick stamps, because we got to save money somewhere. Oh, that's great. Okay! “Oliver Simonsen found a post on Facebook from William Schanes about the Six Deadly Sins Cerebus. ‘My brother Steve and I were publishing a number of portfolios in the late 70s and early 80s under the publishing name of Schanes and Schanes, these featured both comic book and fantasy artists. We approached Dave Sim about working together on a Cerebus the Aardvark portfolio. Dave almost never allowed any licensing deal for his creation, so we were very pleased he agreed to work with us.” I would qualify that as, no I didn't do licensing but definitely Schanes and Schanes had very very good cache as a portfolio publisher, and the idea of doing a prestige portfolio that would be sold alongside of all of the great guys that they did that, was really the selling feature for me. And it was quite a bit of money for basically six pictures in an envelope. “Around this time I heard that Dave was in the middle of a dispute with Phil Seuling, who owned Seagate Distributors, one of the very first influential non-newsstand comic distributors, Bud Plant being the other. Dave did some of his most beautiful work on the six different illustrations that would be included in their Six Deadly Sins of Cerebus portfolio. The individual pieces of artwork were titled sloth, envy, avarice, gluttony, anger, and pride. There was some talk going around that time that Dave agreed to work with us as a form of protest against Phil, choosing the six deadly sins theme with the hidden meaning of Dave's overall frustration at Phil during that time. I never found out if this was true or not, but when we released the Six Deadly Sins of Cerebus portfolio, it was the only portfolio of over 30 plus we published that Phil declined to distribute. Phil never gave me the reason why.” The situation at the time was, one, I forget who the retailer was, but there was a big retailer that I either talked to at a convention, or who phoned me, and said, “Can I ask you why you have this exclusive deal with Phil Seuling?” and I said, well Phil's been a big supporter from the beginning. He always ordered more “Cerebsus” than anybody else. It was kind of an award to him in that sense. It's also, the more copies that you can sell to the one distributor, the easier it is logistically. And he said, “Do you realize that there's a lot of retailers who won't buy from Phil?” and I said, no, I didn't know that. Like they literally won't buy from Phil? “Yes”, like, and then he named two or three names, where he said, “So-and-so won't buy from him. So-and-so won't buy from him. So-and-so won't buy from him.” This is another one of those toadstool among the mushrooms things, where Phil tended to, he had a considerable amount of weight physically, and a considerable amount of weight as the biggest direct market distributor, and he tended to get into altercations with people and take the “my way or the highway approach”, or get into disputes about other business dealings that he had, and was a real “never darken my door” kind of guy. Would get blood mean about it. And I said, no, I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me, because I have to do a lot of thinking here. And he said, “I would really really strongly recommend that you stop the exclusive deal with Seagate and offer the book generally to the other distributors that are cropping up, because otherwise, I think you're you're probably going to go out of business.” And it was true that over the exclusive deal, which was from I think the teens, like “Cerebus” 15, 16, around there, until “Cerebus” 22, 23, the orders flat lined. Phil ordered the same quantity each time, and sales had been going up. And it's like, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well okay, I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet. It's not a contractual thing, I said, yeah, I will be happy to try an exclusive deal. Contacted Phil and said no, don't want to do the exclusive deal anymore. We tried it for six issues, and I think we want to go back to selling to the other distributors. He said, “If you sell to anybody besides me exclusively, I'm not carrying the book.” And it's like, [laughs] okay, now that's a different kind of decision. It was everybody and Phil buying “Cerebus”, let's see how that pans out. Now everybody but not Phil buying service. How is that going to pan out? And it turned out to be just about the same number of copies. Sales either went up by a few hundred, or down by a few hundred, but then they did start going up steadily on each issue, and finally Phil had to swallow his pride and come back and say, “I want to order ‘Cerebus’ again.” But then became very very difficult, in terms of paying on time, we would have to say, we can't send you books because you haven't paid for last month's book. It's 30-day terms, the 30 days are up. We don't have a cheque, so you're already going to get this issue because it's in the pipeline, but you're not getting the one after that. And that really screwed up a lot of people in the field. I remember talking to Buddy Saunders of MyComicShop and him saying that I was the reason that he ended up buying “Cerebus” from Seagate, because we were selling to Longhorn, and Longhorn was just lying to Buddy and saying, “Uh I think all those books were destroyed. Or Dave Sim’s off-schedule or I think he's sick or something like that.” And it's like, that's the problem with a monthly book, you got 30-day terms, and you don't pay, and Longhorn wasn't paying, it's, you're not getting the next book until you pay. We're not carrying anybody here. So that happened to a lot of distributors. Like I say, it happened to Seagate Distributors. We dealt with Jonni Levas, not Phil at the end, because he could swallow his pride, but he wasn't gonna deal with us personally. But it was like pulling teeth to get the money.
“In the comments, Craig Johnson said, “Given Phil Seuling ran Seagate, Dave chose anger over wrath, and avarice over greed, and ordered the six sins in that particular order, initial letters spelling out SEAGAP. If not deliberate on Dave's part, then surely this is an example of comics metaphysics at play. Copyrighted trademark Dave Sim.” Well, I sure didn't do it intentionally, Craig. And major brownie points for you for winnowing that out of the facts on the table. I'm gonna have to develop comic art metaphysics no-prizes or something. We’ll print envelopes that say “comic metaphysics no-prize” and send them to anybody who comes up with an example of Dave Sim’s comic art metaphysics that Dave Sim didn't know about. “And then John Glisman then posted The Note from the President from issue 107 and said, ‘Bill Schanes became an executive in Diamond Comic Distributors. Yes, his official title was Vice President of Purchasing and played a large role in the battle between Dave and Diamond over the distribution of the ‘High Society’ reprint collection.’ He then posted your reply from #107, and ‘Dave indicated that he was none too pleased with the treatment he received from Bill Schanes during his Six Deadly Sins experience. I don't know if they subsequently made peace.’” Yes, they did. I'm not one of the those guys to hold a grudge. That was more, on my part, a wounded pride thing, that this was my first time going to San Diego Comic-Con in 1981. And the Schanes brothers were supposed to ship the first plates for me to sign and number, and then I'd ship them back, and then they’d put portfolios together, and they went, “Well, we got kind of busy with other stuff. So we're not gonna have it done in time to ship it up there. Is it okay if we just pick you up at the airport and bring you to the hotel and you can find them here?” And it's like, well this is partly a comic book convention, partly Dave's vacation. Yeah, I'm not really happy about this, but yeah, we'll do that. And it was kind of, you know, I felt like a famous comic book creator at that point. One of the guys who's up in the pantheon so that he's being selected by Schanes and Schanes, and then, no. They brought me to the hotel room and that was the first time that I signed 1750 things in one session, and at that time in San Diego, all of the restaurants closed at whatever it was eight o'clock at night? Nine o'clock at night? And this was 10 o'clock, 10:30. And it's like, come on! It's San Diego! Some place has got to be open that we can eat. There was like a Denny's open, which was kind of appropriate. But it was like the most grizzly sort of Denny's food, but at that point I was willing to eat anything. But having to be polite after having flown across the continent and then being brought to my hotel room and having to sign and number 1750 plates before I get to eat dinner. And [laughs] it was a lot more “Oliver Twist”. it was Dave Sim the famous artist. And also, I can't fault them. It would have been nice if they were more enthusiastic about the Six Deadly Sins portfolio. Like “Wow! This is so impressive. Like, we've got all the plates here, and the cover came out great.” The cover was supposed to be black and white, and they made so much money on it that they decided to throw this really ugly blue and red on it, and it's like, wanted to say, whose idea was that? I designed it for black and white. But they were, “Look at this! We made so much money that we could do a colour cover on it!” And it's like, okay, bite your tongue, bite your tongue, bite your tongue. And what they were all stoked about, and obviously for good reason stokes about, they were also Pacific Comics and “Captain Victory” #1 by Jack Kirby had just come out. So they're sitting in my hotel room on my bed while I'm signing my plates and just going, “I can't believe this. We published Jack Kirby! It's ‘Captain Victory’ #1! Look! Aw, man. I just am so stoked. I can't wait to get to the convention!” And not a word about Six Deadly Sins.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: There you go! Finishing off, because we're coming up on 20 to nine and Grandpa's stoked for dinner at this point. Darrell Cook, “As I'm only just now trying my hand at reading ‘Spawn’, I didn't know our favorite aardvark made a cameo as a doll in issue 5. It's funny because Cerebus looks most unhappy about being a child's doll.” “I posted it. I fixed it”, you wrote, “Cerebus hates this PR crap”, and definitely goes with the facial expression.
Matt: It was one of those, I posted the original image from a month ago or two months ago and went, it's missing this, and then I'm like, there I fixed it. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] That's it. We'll see if Todd's going to do a reprinting of issue 5 up ahead somewhere, and see if he's okay with putting your thought balloon in there. Okay! Thank you as always, Matt, for the Please Hold for Dave Sim experience.
Matt: [laughs] It's one of those, I was at work today, getting kind of tired, and I'm like, oh man I just wanna go home and relax. But wait a minute, Dave's calling tonight! Ah that's gonna be fun!
Dave: [laughs] I actually chugged down a good chunk of a bottle of Diet Coke, because it's like, okay, I'm also working Cerebus hours, because I'm doing a page a day on “Akimbo”. Page a day doesn't really go with Please Hold for Dave Sim, I'm finding out. But, we're through another one! And next time it's your turn for a Jeff Seiler story.
Matt: I gotta find my note where I wrote down like three or four ideas of things about Jeff that I remembered.
Dave: Have a good night, Matt!
Matt: You too, Dave! See you next month.
Dave: Buh-bye.
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| Like the logo? I stole it... |
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And, coming in February, The 1982 Tour Book (click the link to be notified on launch).
Friend to the Blog, James Bing-Bong-Shama-Lama-Ding-Dong Smith has a new Papa Balloon and Cactus Comic on the Kickstarter.
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The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. OR(!) you could buy Bill's book with the Dave backcover. I have discovered links:
Wanderland (Paperback but slightly more expensive...I dunno why...)
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:
And if you wanna see how the book looks in Real Time...
Over on the Facebookees, Mike Jones shared that Dave has a five SEVEN page Strange Death of Alex Raymond story in YEET Presents #68. Mike Jones still has 30 copies of the second printing available, ya gotta back them on Patreon to get it.
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Our very own Jen DiGiacomo is part of a film production titled The Day Elvis Died. She'll never ask anybody here, but they're crowdfunding to finish the post production on the movie. (It's set in 1977, will a certain obscure Canadian cartoon aardvark make a cameo? (No. Elvis died in August. Cerebus wasn't published until December. Any appearance in the flick would be an anachronism that would ruin the movie for everybody. EVERYBODY!).) Here's the first trailer.
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Up to 35% off January 11-18 and January 28-February 1.*
*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.
Speaking of Merch, if you want a strange near-antique, shoot an email to momentofcerebus@gamil.com, and I'll tell ya where to send the $20USD I want for these. No shipping charge in the States or Canada. Everybody else add $10USD for shipping. I'll send 'em anywhere the postman is willing to go...
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| Back and front. |
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You can get all 16 volumes of Cerebus, many of them Remastered for $99CANADIAN at CerebusDownloads.com (More if you want the Remastered Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing...)
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Heritage has:
- A sketch for Michael. Kind of one of them "niche" items... (currently going for $5, so a STEAL if you're a Mike, or can pass as one...)
And ComicLink (remember ComicLink? Seiler brought us ComicLink. R.I.P Jeff.) has:
Thanks to Steve for sending the links. He also sent in:
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Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
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Next Time: New Year, New Jen post?
2 comments:
I'll be printing Dave's recollections of the Six Deadly Sins portfolio, nice background info to keep along with the prints.
......not that anyone else cares....
Steve
Prints of Dave Sim art?
Its cared about on here, Steve
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