Hi, Everybody!
Dave has things on Heritage. These are FROM the Cerebus Archive, and Dave (eventually) gets ALL the money (minus the fees and whatnot. Plus he won't believe it until the money crosses his hand... *NOT* my first "Dave waiting to be paid" rodeo...):
Minds Original Art on eBay ends Wednesday at 9PM.
Also Kickstartering:
Living the Line's next Kickstarter has ended. There is an option for late backers, so if you were waiting for the last minute, you messed up, better click over there and hope you can get in...
And I was asked: "Scott Palochik & Dreamscape Publishing has the 4th issue of MARCVS live on Kickstarter now. If you could kindly put it up on the Rigamole, it would be greatly appreciated."
And I'm making the attempt to get the Pud's Tavern Logo on the kid's Dance team's merch. Details alllllll the way at the bottom.
Anyway, 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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[So, due to a technical error, the first few minutes of the September 2023 Please Hold for Dave Sim were accidentally erased. We apologize for the inconvenience. We now rejoin Please Hold for Dave Sim with Matt remembering Jeff Seiler.]
Matt: But, my particular Seiler memory, for anybody that knew Jeff, was he was a Parrot Head AKA a Jimmy Buffett fan. And when he was living in Wisconsin, he hooked up with the Green Bay chapter of the Parrot Heads, which [laughs], Paula had a coworker and friend at the hospital who was also a nurse who was a huge Jimmy Buffett fan and a Parrot Head.
Dave: Oh really? Oh really!
Matt: She invited Jimmy Buffett to her wedding.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And three months afterward got a reply in the mail, on on the invitation there was a handwritten reply of “Mr Jimmy Buffett will not be attending.” And then he signed it. So that, you know, she's a big enough fan that's framed in the living room for everybody to see.
Dave: And a big enough fan that she would have gotten a reply.
Matt: Well, it was one of those, when Paula came home and said, “You'll never believe it.” I'm like, what? Like, “Heather got a response from Jimmy Buffett” and I'm like, oh? And yep, handwritten on the RSVP card of, big check mark no, but then signed. So, they were going to a show I guess and the Parrot Heads had rented a coach bus, and anyone that really knew Jeff knows that he had irritable bowel syndrome, and when he had to go he had to go. And like when we took a road trip to S.P.A.C.E. one year, he had to drive so that when he needed to stop we would stop without whining about it type thing.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Well, they all got on the bus, the bus got on the road, and Jeff had to go, and so he used the toilet on the bus. Which, you know, some people believe that it's okay, and other people don't. Well, Jeff had to go and when he got out of the little toilet, like the back of the bus stunk, to the point that like people had all moved to the front of the bus. And I found out about this because Heather knew that we knew Jeff and was talking to Paula about it, “Hey, you know that Jeff guy, right?” “Yeah.” Well, you won't believe what he did.” “Oh?” And she tells the story, and Paula kind of laughed. “Yeah, that's Jeff!” And she then she told me and I went, “Well, yeah, that's Jeff!”
Dave: Uh-huh! That's really weird that you would tell that story. There was just an item in the paper about somebody who had that happen on an airplane going from, oh I didn't memorize it because I didn't know I was going to be referring to this, but there's just another Comic Art Metaphysics. It was a plane flight from somewhere in the US to Spain, and they actually turned around and came back because of that happening.
Matt: [laughs] The bus wasn't that bad, but Jeff kind of got a reputation as a, “Yeah, don't sit by him on the bus.”
Dave: Right. Right. Uhh, arguably you would say, never be in an organization with Jeff Seiler where you're going to be on a rent-a-bus, because the odds are this is probably going to happen partly just because of irritable bowel syndrome, and partly just because Jeff was Jeff.
Matt: [laughs] Very very true.
Dave: There you go! That's definitely a Jeff Seiler story. “And thanks to the Big Pete Comics and Collectibles unopened envelope with ‘The Last Day’ Remarque catalog. Now that I have one I can start to auction off the Remarques. I just need to know which ones we already sold, basically I need to know which page numbers of the catalog are still available from AV and the cartoon doggy will take care of the rest. Thank you, Boner the Runt Dog.” And a nice rendition of Boner that you faxed to me there, I will mention parenthetically. And I mentioned this to Rolly and he's going through the Remarque Editions and through the catalog, probably as we spea, and will be emailing you a list of the ones that are still available. Some of them did sell, some of them I gave away as gifts, but they're still at least a part of a box full of them. So we'll be able to get on to that.
Matt: So going back to the Boner real quick. Well, that's a phrase I didn't expect to say today.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: That this particular Boner the Runt Dog is the AMoC Nuts version. When I got the scan of Manly Matt as Linus, I went and did… my first thought was, okay, you know, it's me, there's you, there's Carson, and there's Sean, and Eddie Campbell was on the introduction page of Carson's version of the Strange Death of Alex Raymond. I'm like, it's a real small cast, and I’m going, I know that they've done a skeleton version of Snoopy. I know I've seen this somewhere. So I Googled it and found, yep, there's a Snoopy where he's wearing a unitard that's black with a skeleton on it. And I’m like, well, this won't take me long! So I printed it off, and then I inked it! Like with an actual brush, and ink, cause this is back when I'm like, I can ink. And so this is technically Boner by Charles Schultz and me.
Dave: There you go. One of the rarest of Charles M Schultz/Matt Dow collaborations out in the wild.
Matt: And I sent the original to Brian West cause I also did Brian as Franklin.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Which was one of those, I said hey, I want to do a thing, can you send me some selfies? And he went, “Sure!” and he sent me a bunch of them, and he kind of had a vague notion of what I was going to do with them. So he was, you know. side face, front face. [laughs] And at one point I was like, okay you have an afro. Franklin doesn't. How much hair do you want? And so I did it and I positioned the character on the page so that he was way too high so the top of the head was cut off. I'm like, I can fix this digitally, but Brian was like, “Oh no. You know, big! Really big!” And I'm like, okay, and get it all done, get it scanned, did a strip with Brian in it, and then Brian posted pictures that he had gotten a haircut. I'm like, come on, Brian!
Dave: [laughs] Work with me on this! Work with me on it.
Matt: Well, AMoC Nut Brian has a fro, and it's never ever going away cause I just, nope, I did it once.
Dave: There you go. There you go. Okay! And moving on from there, “And then if there's isn't anything in the ‘Matt doesn't know about this but Dave's got a thing we need to mention’ pile, we enter the inquisition.” And actually I do have couple of things that I wanted to mention. One of them incoming for you is, I haven't gotten very far on the collaboration with Oliver Simonsen on the riffing on Don Martin.The Don Martin Cerebus strips. I just wanted to say to Oliver, he's very self-deprecating about his abilities, and the first panel with the lettering, the “Many fine ales at the tavern”, when I sat down to do it, it's, okay the only thing really “wrong” about this is that lettering needs to be a little bit higher so that the lines are closer together. But apart from that, I just did Oliver Simonsen's lettering and it looks exactly like vintage “Mad Magazine.” So first step was a good one. Following that, doing Oliver’s Don Martin Cerebus, I actually put tracing paper over his first panel and did the Cerebus head, and just as I expected was going to happen, when I took the tracing paper and just looked at the ink head without the tracing paper, it's a nice cartoony Cerebus, but it doesn't look like Don Martin. Whereas Oliver's Don Martin Cerebus looks like it was done by Don Martin. So I have, now I'm sitting down and trying to go, okay, why is that? Why is it that even when I'm tracing Oliver Simonsen I can't get it to look like Don Martin did it? But Oliver Simonsen can make a Don Martin Cerebus look like it was done by Don Martin. So not really knowing why that is the case, that's gonna take a little bit of analysis, and I'm trying to avoid actually inking directly on Oliver's pencils, because it's the only Oliver Simonsen Don Martin Cerebus that I've got that is actually on the artwork. I do want to produce an individual piece of artwork, ultimately. So, I think what I'm going to do is try and find a way to photocopy Oliver's Don Martin head and enlarge it. I think maybe that's what I'm having trouble with is, it needs to be about 140% larger than Oliver’s got it. But the rest of the Cerebus is fine. It's just a matter of inking it like Don Martin. So I think the next stage is going to be inking Oliver's background, inking the Oliver Simonsen Don Martin Cerebus body, and then enlarging the head ,and seeing what that looks like at the different enlargements. I'm guessing 140%, could be anywhere between 125 and 150%. But, Oliver, stop beating yourself up! You are the the solitary genius at doing a Don Martin Cerebus. So far! I don't know, maybe you'll have whole studio someday that's producing Don Martin Cerebuses.
Matt: I would suggest scan the pencils. Use the original art scanner, just scan the pencils, and you should be able to print them off and have them be pencil-like.
Dave: Right. That requires an intermediate, or an intermediary in this case would be Alonso, and that could take weeks. [laughs] Rolly only goes up there on Thursday, so it's like, okay, here's the one that Alonso printed out, now I have to worry about the density of the pencil, and I have to worry about the size. Because it's like, this might be the right density, but it'd be the wrong size. So it could be Christmas before we had the right size, right density. I already thought that. I already thought, that's a way that we could do it. I am thinking, I could get the scan done, get Rolly to do the scan, and then put it on a thumb drive, and then I'll put it on my laptop, and open it up in Pixelator, and just click on image and try different darkness, contrast, automatic developing, desaturate, and then just try doing the slides back and forth, darker, darker, lighter, lighter, and then print it out on the office photocopier and see what that does. But I will get there! I am convinced that there is a destination up ahead and I will very pleased when I get there while keeping the Oliver Simonsen pencils intact and just as they arrived before I actually do the final inking. But a lot of pressure there. Lot of pressure.
The only other thing that I wanted to mention is the next Kickstarter that will be coming up. David Birdsong has the go ahead for his “MiracleManVark” Kickstarter, [coughs] which is the December issue of “Cerebus in Hell?” This will be the first time that we're going to be doing a Kickstarter version before we do our traditional shipping to Diamond of the regular edition and the signed edition. The only thing that I've added in to the “MiracleManVark” Kickstarter is the Aardvark-Vanaheim multi-purpose greeting card, which is also going to double, I believe, as a “MiracleManVark” variant cover. After that, Birdsong's on his own. It's like, David Birdsong, what do you have to do to get a successful Kickstarter going for an individual issue of ”Cerebus in Hell?” and let let me know which things work the best, which things didn't work quite so good. Because the next one is going to be me doing the same thing with “Akimbo” and having to decide things like, how many variant covers is too many variant covers? And what's a really good variant cover that people go, “Wow, that's really clever! I really like that.” Sideways from there, thanks to Margaret Liss, I just got your letter in today where part of what she was doing was enthusing about the T8 variant covers, and which ones she was particularly jazzed about. and the “Cerebus” #1 variant covers. So it's one of those, it's individual taste, but people that like that sort of thing, that's just the sort of thing that they like.
Matt: Dagon sent me four of the glossy blank covers, and I'm like, I only need one of these. So I went on Facebook and said, I got three of these, 50 bucks. Who knows what I'm gonna put on them, who knows if it's gonna work?
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: I believe the way I phrased it was, I'll take requests. I may not fulfill them, but I'll definitely take them. And Margaret was like, “Yeah sure, I want one” and I'm like, okay, any requests? And she's like, she wanted the AMoC Nut Margaret, Cerebus, all four Turtles, Iguana, and Beer. And I'm like, all right.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And within, oh I say…
Dave: You did ask! You did ask.
Matt: Well, and within about 40, 45 seconds I went, well, there's only one image with the AMoC Nut Margaret I can think of that would have all those other characters and would actually work as a cover, so I just ripped off the cover of “Cerebus” #1 and put her in the place of Cerebus, the Turtles in the place of the barbarians, and then the back cover is where Iguana and Beer and Cerebus show up. And I put a couple gags on the back that I'm not going to spoil for Margaret here, suffice to say that Beer is a stickler for the rules of hockey.
Dave: Okay. All right.
Matt: Well actually, screw it! Margaret's gonna see this, because I'm almost done with it, I just gotta… the problem with those covers is, cause they're glossy, they don't hold anything very well. And I'm like, okay, I'm just using an archival pen to sketch. Actually, I penciled first, and then I went in and I'm going, well yeah, at this point the pencil is just a groove on the cover, and whatever I ink is going to go in the groove. And then I actually went out and bought a giant black Sharpie to put the black in, cause my regular Sharpie it's like, line line smudgy line, line line smudgy line. I'm like, what? I'm waiting, cause I'm going to ask Dagon, can I get some of the matte covers when they come in? Because the glossy ones are really nice for not doing anything with.
Dave: I'll tell you. I’ll tell you. You've discovered that too. I've tried just about everything on those, and it also takes the ink forever to dry. It's just sitting on there in little inky pools. And it's like, this will look really good, but man, is it aggravating doing one of these. Which is, it's like going back to school, which is part of what compelled me to offer them to the school teachers as an incentive of “most improved student,” I don't know if you posted that yet.
Matt: I did. I did.
Dave: Okay. So I've just done another one of those for another school teacher that I heard from, and it's, man oh man, just doing a basic Cerebus head with the horn helmet on and putting the leafy bushes on in the background, it's man, I have to find one of my ink bottles where almost all of the water is evaporated out of the ink, beyond Gene Day level. Where I used to say Gene Day used to spot in his blacks by just dipping his index finger and thumb into the bottle of ink and then rolling it around in his fingers and smearing it on the page. This guy was dedicated to solid, solid black. And even at that rate, if Dagon had sat down with Marquis and said, “I want you to put a a sketch cover on here that is completely impervious to all forms of ink, doesn't take ball point, doesn't take archival pen, and doesn't really like Hunt 102, and doesn't really like brush particularly well.” It's like, it's me trying to make up my bad karma from high school with all of the teachers that I aggravated. This is me aggravating myself.
Matt: Well, so really quick, so the gag on the front, it's the AMoC Margaret in the Cerebus position holding a hockey stick, going, and you know, dropping down onto the four Turtles, and on the back it's Beer going, “Hey! That's high-sticking!” and Iguana looking at him going, “Why don't you go tell her that?”
Dave: Nyuk nyuk nyuk! “High-sticking!” [laughs] We should have a warning. Margaret block your ears. We'll have you interject that. You want to see this live, you don't want to hear this on Please Hold for Dave Sim.
Matt: Well, I'm gonna send her a scan before I post this, so she'll see it. She’ll know.
Dave: Okay. Alright. Sounds good. Okay! “Then, we do enter the Inquisition. Dave Fisher had questions about ‘Hot Wacks.’ We did ‘Hot Wacks’ in the January 2019 Please Hold.” And I thought that when when Fisher sent me the fax. I was thinking, uhh, I think I remember talking about “Hot Wacks”, but I couldn't remember if it was way back in the Blog and Mail days, it seemed more recent than that. So we covered it pretty exhaustively.
Matt: That's, I sent him the link. He’s like, “Well this looks pretty long, but I'll read it later” type thing. But apparently, he used to buy “Hot Wacks” off the newsstand or wherever back in the day, and that's where he first encountered Dave Sim, and didn't know that's where he first encountered Dave Sim!
Dave: Right. Right. It was just, this was the magazine. The overview that I would attach to it [coughs] in 40 years retrospect, which is what I'm doing now. Big picture, most people are interested in comic art the way I, Dave Sim, and interested in music. Not at all. And completely incurious. So that I would supplement that, that “Hot Wacks” was like a backwards and forwards in time. Obviously, the music business, particularly rock and roll, was as close as we had gotten as a society to the Infernal, although it started pretty innocuously. Most infernal things do. And it seems like a, “Okay, let's plug Dave Sim backwards and forward in time, into this, and see what we come up with.” And you came up with, was basically just a magazine full of hot chick photos, some verging on softcore pornography, because that was Dave Sim’s interest in that end. And really not much about the music apart from the funny borderline between the legal and the illegal, which of course is always of interest to the Infernal side of reality. And I think the reason that “Hot Wacks” manifested and Kurt Glemser, who was Blue Flake Productions, was because that did fall in a sort of leyline from my sensibility where even before it came down to, okay this is what we're talking about here. This is what Dave Sim is going to be tested on through “Hot Wacks” and through my indirect connection to bootleg records and Now and Then Books, because bootleg records occupied one whole bin at the downstairs at Now and Then Books, which is where I was working. That was already a borderline cross where bootleg records would ordinarily be sold under the counter. You would have to know the owner of the store, and you'd have to know him pretty well before he would say, “Okay, I will give you a list of the bootleg records that I've got.” Uh, no, Harry was very open and above board about possessing illegal material and just putting it out as, “here's where you find the bootleg records.” Which, when the RCMP did their big raids on all of the bootleg record outlets here in the Golden Triangle, Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, they scooped all of Harry's records. And it's like, “You know, you might get these back, you might not get these back. These are illegal things. You don't sell illegal things open and above board.”
My ethical take on it was, and I could only relate it to the comic art field. And this wasn't going to occur, and still hasn't really occurred in the comic art field, but I had already settled this in my own mind, the analogy would be that bootleg records, which are really just illegal recordings of concerts, the bands and the record companies in collusion decided jointly that, “No, we have zero tolerance for this. Anybody who tries doing bootleg concert recordings, we're gonna land on them with hobnail boots.” And it's like, the analogy for me from the band point of view, which is the bands didn't want this because live recordings are notoriously sloppy, because it's a live recording . Usually the band, you know, everybody in the band has already at least smoked a joint before going on stage, and it's, “Okay, this is roughly our hit, but when you compare them to the live recording which has been meticulously produced, this is this is garbage, and we don't want people listening to our garbage.” And the analogy for me and the comic book field would be, somebody who was so devout a Cerebus fan that they have collected good quality scans of all of my convention sketches, and they're going to do a 500 page book of every convention sketch Dave Sim ever did. It's like, okay, from the perspective of a cartoonist, the same as a band, it's like, I don't have the proper materials at a convention, and sometimes I'm drawing it at a drawing board tilt, sometimes I'm drawing it flat, so everything's skewing off to the left. But it's a compliment. If your fans are devout enough to record your concerts and they want to make it available, they’re fans and they're making it available to devout fans, I can't see anything wrong with that. It's like, you're the band. Don't listen to it! [laughs] I would not be a good target market for a 500 page book of all of my convention sketches. I'd be going through it going, oh god. Oh that's horrible! Oh that's really bad. You know the occasional one where I go, okay, that one doesn't suck too badly, but it would have looked a lot better if I'd done it in the studio. It's, I'm not the target market for it. And of course, one of my foundations in doing “Cerebus” was going, John Lennon said when they said Elvis died and he went, “Elvis died when he went in the army.” Which is a killer line. I go, well okay, the capper to that is, John Lennon died when he met Yoko Ono, and back before that, John Lennon died when he signed his recording contract, because artists in collusion with companies come up with bad ideas. The Rolling Stones and the Beatles could have said, back in 1964 when they were calling the shots, before they signed their contract, “We want to have all of our concerts recorded and offered for sale, because everybody's an obsessive Beatles or Rolling Stones fan. So instead of doing one record every six months or every year or whatever it is, every time we do a concert, we record it and we make it available to the fans, by whatever means necessary. So let it be written, so let it be done.” You would have found, and you would still find, that there's a real market for that. That it's, okay you're not gonna like it, but you're not doing it for you. You're doing it for the fans. Taylor Swift seems to be almost getting there, where she's now authorized them to do a movie of concert footage while she's still doing her concert tour. What is it called? Is it the Eras Tour?
Matt: Yes. And my daughters and my wife are going next month to see it.
Dave: Well, there you go. It’s, to me, the poor man's Mecca, but God bless them.
Matt: Well, I got the message from Paula of, “I bought three tickets to this.” I'm going okay, so which one of us is taking a bullet for the team and going? And she's like, “What, you want to go?” I'm like, no. I’m very much a, one of us has to suffer through this. I'm willing to be a good husband and I'll step up and take the bullet if you don't want to go. And she's like, “No, I'll have fun, I'll go.” And meanwhile Janis' bedazzling a pair of sunglasses so that she can wear them to the theater. I’m like, it's not really a concert. You’re going a step too far, but okay.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Janis has also informed me that when the original to the “glamourpuss” page shows up, that,that's hers now, and I'm going, yeah, you'll get it when you pry it for my cold dead hands, but go ahead, kid. Tell yourself it's yours.
Dave: Well, I couldn't fix that. I want to get back to my story, but I couldn't fix that. But I did, before all of the Beer and Iguana, and Avril and Taylor prints disappeared, I did put two of them aside, one of which I personalized to Janis Pearl, and one of which I personalized to Bullwinkle. So those should be on their way to you as we speak, because Rolly was packaging those packages up today.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: So getting back to my, there's still time to fix the music business now that it's pretty much rotting on the vine, Taylor Swift at this point could say, “Okay, every time that I set up for a concert, everything goes through the sound board and we need a seat of the pants on the fly mixer who can mix all of the sound as professionally as possible. We're not asking miracles here, we're just saying do the best that you can. And handheld cameras, I mean you've got practically a stadium full of people with high resolution photography filming capabilities. While I'm doing the concert, that concert is being put together as a film, and by the end of the week this is on its way to the cineplexes, so that you can not only go and see the film of the Eras Tour while it's still going on, you can see every stop on the Eras Tour.” And it's like, these cineplexes are empty! You could fill them with Swifties. Five years from now you won't be able to fill them with Swifties, but you can fill them with Swifties right now. The same as it would have happened back in 1964 if you said, “Every stop on the Beatles 1964 tour is being turned into a film as we speak and being rushed to the cinemas.” It would be bonanza! It's like, Taylor Swift is moving the gross domestic product for the entire United States by virtue of the fact that when she does things like that, it generates money. But nobody listens to me. But, you could do it the same way just with the sound. It's like, as soon as the Phoenix stop is over, it's being mixed on the fly and then put on the internet, and don't any expertise people be whining about, “Well, the sound quality is really bad.” It's not about the sound quality, it's about the fact that it's Taylor Swift's Phoenix concert and “I was there and I want a copy of it” and “I couldn't afford to be there and I want a copy of it.” It's just, it's a license to print money. Don't be stupid.
Matt: Paula bought the tickets, and I think they're showing it on six screens at the multiplex, and they sold out every single screening. And she's going, “Taylor Swift has to be the richest woman in the world.” And I'm like, well, Oprah, but okay yeah sure go ahead and think that. And to prove me wrong, Paula looked up who the richest women in the world were, and Oprah's not even in the top ten! And I'm like, there you go. This is what I'm saying. Taylor Swift, today she's probably on her way into the top ten, but she's not quite there yet.
Dave: Well, this also ties in with good old Jimmy Buffett, as well. The obit that I read in the National Post and I wish I photocopied it, it's gone now, was saying ”I was the only one interested in the business side.” So he was as interested in the business side of his music as he was in the music, and consequently Margaritaville Incorporated did very very well by Jimmy Buffett. We don't know what kind of a businesswoman Taylor Swift is. The Beatles had a license to print money, the Rolling Stones had a license to print money, and they fumbled the ball completely all the way down. For the Beatles, “We'll let Brian Epstein take care of it. That's Brian's end of things.” It's like, no, that's not Brian's end of things. It's your business, and this is your chance to get it right, but it's only right now. As you say, I mean it's, look at Madonna. She has to keep rescheduling her tour because people don't want to see Madonna the way they wanted to see Madonna at one time. The same with Britney Spears. It's like, where is Britney Spears supposed to be getting her money from now? Not her then-money, when she was the Britney Spears on cover of every magazine, etc etc. It's like, mhmm, no, you have to decide that at the time, and you have to pay very strict attention, and you're going to have to end up deciding whether you want to be Taylor Swift artist or Taylor Swift CEO. That ties in with the whole Turtles thing , why I asked Kevin, when did you hit the wall on that? Where you had to decide, “Am I the Kevin Eastman who writes and draws the Turtles, or am I the CEO of Mirage Studios?” And it's like, like he said, that was overnight once the animated cartoon happened. I hope that isn’t happening with Taylor Swift, but it's you tend to opt for the Hollywood glitz and glamour, and backstage parties, and the actual performance. The experience of performing in front of the people. Meanwhile, X number of vultures are backstage and surrounding you, and all of the actual money is getting siphoned away, or a good percentage of it is. I hope that isn't the case, but you know, if you're doing the Eras Tour and it's a very intense tour, and if you're concentrating on getting every night as good as you can get it, somebody else is playing Simon Legree. “You must pay the rent.” “I can't pay the rent!” “You must pay the rent.”
Okay! That's enough of that. And then, “What, who, when, how, but most importantly, why! The questions I've been sent by our good listeners for the September 2023 Please Hold for Dave Sim. And Dodger’s right at the top of the list, right after Fisher. ‘Hey Manly Matt and the super famous Canadian Dave Sim,’” no, I'm definitely more notorious than famous, and I'm definitely not super famous. Well, here I am! When people are listening to this, this is as super famous as I get. “Changing artwork. Neal Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, Rick Veitch, Dave Sim. All artists change over time. Some like Bill Senkiewicz actively experiment with new media and techniques, others seem to change gradually. Question, do you think these changes in style are conscious or happen naturally? Asking for a talentless friend.” Both of those happen depending on the artist that you're talking about, and depending on what point in the artist's career you're talking about. Relating it to the fast forward end of comic art where, when you get a comic strip and when you got a comic strip to do, you hit the ground running and then you can do a certain amount of it consciously, and a certain amount of it is just, “I have to do six strips a week. If I'm doing a Sunday as well, I gotta do seven strips a week. Where am I putting my time in? Just grind it out.” So if you look at Peanuts, you look at Li’l Abner, you look at Garfield, any of those strips, you start off on-model. “This is what my characters look like.” And then fast forward a year, five years, ten years, and those characters have changed considerably, and continue to change considerably if you look at them in a time lapse sense. You will see that, as they go along, they're changing just because of the nature of the beast. That your unconscious mind and your creative unconscious mind, whatever part of your cartooning comes from your soul and from the core of your personality, as your personality is changing, and as you're making ethical decisions, moment by moment by moment in your life, that's reflected in your art. So in that sense, when you're asking “does that happen naturally?” Yes, it's naturally occurring, but it only happens naturally in somebody who's doing it 365 days a year, or years, and in some cases decades on end. Now relating it to the comic book field, trying to distill the process as much as possible. Let's take BWS. Barry Windsor-Smith when he was Barry Smith. Obviously starting out he wanted to be Jack Kirby in the worst way, [laughs] and that's really what he accomplished! He was the worst Jack Kirby clone, but definitely enthusiastic. Obviously dedicated to having his work look as close as possible to Jack Kirby's work as he possibly could, and if possible, improve on Kirby by exaggerating Kirby, who was already an exaggerated artist. Moving from there, I think what happened with Barry was he was being more precise in his pencils to immunize his pencils against bad inking, which is not an uncommon thing. I think Jim Starlin did the same thing. The experience of labouring for an entire month on a comic book in pencil, and Marvel doesn't want you to ink. “Just pencil it, send it to us, we'll get it lettered, and then we'll get the inker to ink it. The next time you're going to see it is when it's on the newsstand.” And it's like, “Oh my God. You know, look what this incompatible inker did to my brilliant pencils. Not to mention, look at how much of my pencils have been covered up with lettering Roy Thomas' story.” So you try to minimize that effect by doing more precise pencils. “If I really put down pencils that virtually look like inked drawings, they're that precise, maybe I will be getting better results from the inking stage.” Which did happen, but not to the extent that you wanted it to happen. But what happened with Barry was, in being that super precise in his penciling, when he did have the opportunity, Marvel goes, “Yeah okay, we'll let you ink this one. You pencil it, you send it into us, we'll get it lettered, Roy Thomas will write it, and then we'll send it back to you and you ink it, in probably bundles of 10 pages.” “Red Nails” being the classic example.
At that point, it was, I think he intimidated himself, because it was it's one thing to do super tight pencils to immunize yourself against bad inking, and have stuff in there where you're going, “Wow, this is really really tight and precise.” As Gerhard used to say when he would do his really tight and precise backgrounds, “Who wants to ink this? Anybody want to ink this?” [laughs] And I would sit very quietly at my drawing board, it’s like, I probably should have said a couple of times. Yeah okay, give me one of your pencil pages, and I'll do some of the inking, and then you can either do what I'm doing, or do what you're doing, and if this just becomes too confusing for you, then don't do that anymore. Don't say “who wants to ink this?” And at that point it was, “Red Nails” became peak Barry Smith, unbeknownst to him. Because it was “Okay, penciling is one thing, inking is another thing, and now that I'm doing both of them, I'm slowing down way way too much. I had no idea how slow an inker I was.” Which is why the first half of “Red Nails,” the end of the story did get gang inked at Marvel, which Barry definitely didn't want to have happen. But the super precision made for a combination that everybody went, “Oh man, this guy, he's got to do Conan from now on and he's got to do it always like this!” And it's like, well, you don't know what you're looking at. You don't know what kind of a torture chamber Barry not Windsor-Smith yet, just Barry Smith, put himself into on this one. Better enjoy this because there's there's only one “Red Nails.” And consequently, when it comes to the market for Barry Smith artwork, and Barry Windsor-Smith artwork, it all centers on that peak time period. Going into it, here's a page where obviously around “Conan” monthly comic, or bi-monthly comic, issue 12, Issue 13, around there, this is where he's getting into that. Here's up through “Song of Red Sonya” and then Barry is pretty much done with this process. This was a major torture chamber. But it's, okay, if you're buying Barry Smith or Barry Windsor-Smith artwork, that's what you want, is the stuff in that perceived peak period.
Which then follows into, I wrote it down as “this is what I pencil and ink like.” Which was “Storyteller,” the work that he did on Valiant. all the way up through his latest, ”Monsters,” where it's, “I'm not gonna torture myself the way I tortured myself on ‘Red Nails.’ I have to figure out something where I can ease back on the throttle a little bit.” And it's not considered his peak work, because that's just not how people perceive Barry Windsor-Smith. It’s, no, this is stuff that goes for a good buck and it's certainly desirable, but if you asked anybody, “I've got a ‘Storyteller’ page, or I've got some of this stuff that he did for Valiant, or I've got pages from ‘Monsters.’ Would I trade that for a comparable number of pages from ‘Red Nails?’ In a New York minute, I would do that.” Just the way it exists. Relating it to me, I set out to do “Cerebus” as ideally I want this to look like it was drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith in his “Red Nails” style, and in it is the Cerebus cartoon character, the funny animal in the world of humans, I want to look like Chuck Jones or Robert McKimson animation cells. Which was an example of way too ambitious, I couldn't even see what those guys were doing, and I was trying to do it. But not Barry Windsor-Smith, and not Chuck Jones, enthusiastic amateur turned out to be peak Dave Sim. It was, the mixture of the enthusiasm of what he was trying to do and really doing it really really badly and really really incompetently, communicated to the audience, who, eEhh, you know. They look at Barry Windsor-Smith's art, and Chuck Jones or Robert McKimson's art and go, “That's really good. I really really like that.” But they don't really know what they're looking at, so consequently even somebody doing it completely incompetently, it's like, “Oh hey that's cool, because that that looks like BWS! That looks like Chuck Jones. He's doing animation riffs on ‘Cerebus’ instead of the basic Donald Duck, which is what ‘Howard the Duck’ was.” It's like, there's more facial expressions available if you go over in the direction of Warner Brothers rather than Disney. So consequently, it's like, that's where my career came to an end, about “Cerebus” #20, 21, if you're talking about, “I own some Dave Sim artwork from 1995. Would I trade that for a page from ‘Cerebus’ #10? In a New York minute, because that's peak Dave Sim. The first 20 issues of ‘Cerebus.’” But as a cartoonist, I was saying as I went along, these are my strengths. This is what I know how to do, [laughs] or at least suspect how to do, so this is what I'm leaning in the direction of. The storytelling, the page composition, where to use the silhouette, transition from panel to panel. It's not as commercially viable, it's not my peak work from the point of view of the art market. But it is getting better as I'm going, this is what I know how to do, this is what I don't know how to do, so this is what I'm going to lean on. This is what my work is going to consist of.
Combined with, “This is the best use of Gerhard’s literalist background.” It grounded me, because Gerhard draws like Gerhard. It's, you tell him, I want you to draw a wall full of bottles in a tavern, and he will do that. He was a complete literalist in that sense, so consequently that kept me from straying off the reservation too far in the direction of stylization, which I'm very very fond of. And consequently, from my perspective “Cerebus” did get better and better as it went along. Maybe a falling off in the last part or parts of “The Last Day,” that last year was a nightmare, but definitely up through “Going Home,” “Form & Void,” “Latter Days,” “The Last Day.” It was, yeah, this is the absolute best that I can get this. This is the result of working day in and day out for years and decades on end. Which brings me to Dodger’s bonus question, “Have you looked at the remastered Cerebus art and reassessed your own talent?” Uh, no. It was done. The ambition was not to have what happened to Hal Foster, where he said the last batch of pages he did of Prince Valiant were lousy. So okay, I'm gonna be doing this in my 40s, because I don't want them to turn out to be lousy. But apart from looking at pages from “Rick's Story,” which on an occasion, I was struck looking at them going, this is really really good material. Very very well rendered. Gerhard and I were in our unspoken competition about fine pen lines, how fine it is too fine? And well, we don't know. We keep going further and further up on on tippy toe, and in terms of, this is a caricature of relationships, but it’s very very funny. But it's not Marxist-Feminist propaganda, and consequently it has been dismissed completely out of hand. You don't even mention “Cerebus.” That's the nightmare that Cerebus ended up existing in, the Marxist-Feminist dictatorship. And I think there will come a day of reckoning, but it might take another 50 or 100 years, where there will be a whole list of, “Okay, here's really excellent things that existed between 1970 and whenever the Marxist-Feminist dictatorship collapsed, and everybody, check these out and see if you can support the preservation of this material because the Marxist-Feminists don't F around.” If it's not Marxist-Feminism, it needs to be crushed and destroyed. And a lot of the stuff they're going to find 100 years from now, “Okay, this got crushed and destroyed, this got crushed and destroyed. And this is what they they tried to sell us in a replacement of it.” So, I wish I could look at it through another lens, it's just, uh okay, “Cerebus” did not and will not get in my lifetime a fair hearing just because of the political context that we're in. I wish it had, and regret that it didn't, and I will never see the day when “Cerebus” gets the acknowledgment that I think it should get. But that's just the way it works. There are worse things, nobody asked me to go on the Battan Death March, nobody locked me up in Auschwitz, so there's “suffering” in quotation marks, which is all I've ever experienced, and then there's genuine suffering.
Matt: Well, I'm just thinking, I do remember when the first phonebook got remastered, there was a time where you had said, “Hey wow, this doesn't look like garbage like I thought it did.” You know, that there was actual quality to it, it just was poorly reprinted.
Dave: Yeah, I had that experience as well doing the Wolveroach tryptic, where, okay, I don't draw like this and I wouldn't want to draw like this anymore, but once I had the first two covers done and side by side, it's like, ahh, give the kid his brownie points. It's like, his marriage was falling apart and he did these two covers, and they are really really really grabby. They'll probably go for a very good price, because even though they're incompetent, as Neal Adams said when I talked to him about that, he said, “Sometimes the more you learn, the more you lose the rock and roll quality.” And yeah, I can definitely see a Ramones quality to it, [laughs] but a lot of it is really really bad. I'm trying to meet the popular consensus halfway, and it's not coming over this way, and I can't really go all the way over that way, but yes, good point. Good point.
Matt: Well, and the other one that, talking about, you know, where did the quality drop off? It's like, well in “Latter Days” there was the scene of Cerebus and Konigsberg in the sanctuary with the Torah spread out, and it's the sanctuary, the background is, it's dark you can't see anything, but then at the Ye Bookes of Cerebus show we saw the tracing paper of, okay this is Gerhard's background, the tracing paper. We’re like, everybody's jaw hit the floor, like, “This is amazing! Why would you put all this detail in here and just cover it up in black ink?” And Gerhard's like, “Well, you know, at the time I thought that we were going to see more of this, so I put every little noodle in there, and then when it became time to ink it, it was like, yep, nope, this is dark.” You know, some of it's in the book, but like the tracing paper had detail on top of detail on top of detail. And it's like, and at the time, I was like, a book of just the tracing papers would probably sell like gangbusters. When people open it up, they'd be like, “Oh yeah, this is amazing!”
Dave: Yeah, but gangbusters and gangbusters are two different things when you've been canceled. It's like, I have to figure out things that the 125 remaining Cerebus sponsors are willing to pay a good buck for that you can only need to print 100 of them. Yes, in a perfect world, Barnes and Nobles would be on the edge of their seat going, “We can't wait for the Gerhard tracing paper book for ‘Latter Days’ to come out.” It's like, “Uh no, it's not Marxist-Feminist propaganda, consequently it's crap, consequently nobody is interested.” And it's like, [laughs] well okay. Nobody's been interested in my work since 1994 for that for that single reason, but enough people are interested in the work that I'm not going to try and swim up hill against the Marxist-Feminist dictatorship. You'd be crazy to try and do that. “Let's solicit Diamond for the Gerhard ‘Latter Days’ hardcover, full size.” You would have to explain to 99% of the comic book stores what “Latter Days” even is, and it would be, “Oh that's Dave Sim’s religious crap.” I got put into a number of different boxes, and so did Gerhard, and none of them are very good boxes.
Matt: [laughs] Well, I mean it'll sell like gangbusters, the problem is it's not Al Capone's gang, it's Our Gang and you can bust them kids in like two minutes.
Dave: [laughs] Which is fine, you adjust yourself to it. I mean we're sort of getting ahead of our story here because we start talking about that later on. So we'll get away from that and then continue talking about the, no, this is what you do. If life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. If, you know, the fan mail consists of one letter a week, which is up from its previous average back around 2010/2011, where it was one letter a month. It's like, well okay, do the person a drawing. Send them free comic books, whatever. It's like these people are actually interested in your work, and have ignored what the Marxist-Feminist dictatorship is telling them, that, “No, if you want to read the ‘Cerebus’ and ‘High Society,’ and maybe part of ‘Church & State,’ do that. But everything after that is crap.” And it's like, well okay, some people don't listen to that. Some people make up their own mind about things and are rewarded and go, “I had no idea that this was my kind of thing, but Dave Sim and his work is my kind of thing.”
Next up on the Hit Parade is Zipper, who asks, “Hi Matt, hope you are doing well. Here's my questions and answer for Dave this month. Hi Dave, how did the idea of ‘Cerebus in Hell?: Spore/Batvark” come about? And how did I get mixed up in guest starring in the comic? My answer this month is Ken Bruzenak.” And my question is, who represents the smoothest integration of illustrative lettering into cinematic comic page storytelling? And the bonus answer is, Howard Chaykin’s “American Flagg.” So I'm subverting you here, Matthew, because you went, “Nah-uh, Zip, your answer from last month was Reed Waller's birthday.” So I'm going to interrupt right here and go, if you're at a computer right now, can you Google search Reed Waller and tell me what Reed Waller's birthday is?
Matt: [laughs] Give me half a second. Not that. That doesn't tell me what I want.
Dave: It's funny, everybody who lives on computers says that. It's like, uh, no, that's fine. I'm fine. But everybody who gets asked to do something on computer, even with the high-speed internet that we've got, which is like, well you talk about faster than a speeding bullet, everybody says, “Just give me a minute right here.” It's like, what happens when you're talking to computer people and they're going, “Come on! Come on! It's been four seconds and you haven't answered my question! You’re driving me--”
Matt: Well, I had to go on the Googles and type in “Reed Waller's birthday.” Give me a second to get the Google ready. So, August 3rd 1949.
Dave: August 3rd 1949? Wow! Wow! Did Michael R know that, do you think? Because August 3rd 1939 is when Margaret Mitchell died. Not right on, she was hit by the car on the 11th and died on the 16th, but wow, did Michael R just sort of pick Reed Waller's birthday out of out of thin air, and it turns out to be that close to the Margaret Mitchell narrative that I've been layering on since December?
Matt: Uh, maybe?
Dave: I'll have to formulate a question around that. We'll push that off until next month where I go, okay, 8/3/49. 8349. Deni and I broke up in 1983. And theoretically that's how Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh broke up, was John Marsh pushed her in front of the car. That's Gravitt's story, but that's getting way ahead of the equation. So, okay, now we gotta go back to, “Okay how did the idea of ‘Spore/Batvark’ come about?” Oh, I'm leaving out your comedy here. Don't do that. “Was forwarded to this month because Dave needed time to formulate the question. 50 points from Gryffindor and your CAN number just went up by one! Good luck getting new copies of everything with a 27 on it. Wait, can the Manly one really do that? Will Dave let him? Spoiler warning, no. I guess it depends on if Dave has copies of everything that he can put a little 27 on and sell to Michael R at a premium. Uh no? Dave doesn't? Oh crap. You win this round, Mike! But know this, someday when you least expect it I shall enact my vengeance. It will be so subtle that you won't know if it's the cruel hand of fate, or the machinations of Manly! Matt! Dow!!!” and five or six parentheses. “Anyway, ‘Spore/Batvark’ was Matt's idea after the new ‘Spawn/Batman’ was announced and Matt thought that it'd be a good set of coattails to ride in the same vein as ‘Batvark: Penis’ and ‘Hermann.’” That's an interesting observation, because we've been watching for that ever since, but “Batvark: Penis” is in a league all its own. “Hermann” didn't work, that sounded like a good idea. “Spore/Batvark,” even when you suggested it, I thought, mhmm, the “Spawn/Batman” thing looks more like Todd McFarland trying to engineer his way onto the red carpet in San Diego. Which works from that perspective, but did anybody get all worked up about “Spawn/Batman”?
Matt: I don't know. I do know that the cover we're parodyyng is the variant K, which, when you're getting close to the first initial of my name in your variants, I think you’ve gone a bridge too far.
Dave: [laughs] Yeah, a bridge too bridge too bridge too bridge too far, we're all worried about that.
Matt: The fact that Birdsong was the one putting it together, and he was looking at every cover as it was announced, and went, “None of these have that iconic, you know, ‘hey, we know exactly what we're gonna do with this right.’”
Dave: Right. Right. Which “Batvark: Penis” has in spades, of not only was it a funny riff on Bruce Wayne's penis being featured in the actual book, it was an iconic cover. You looked at it and went, yes, this is going to be known as a Batman touchstone from not only this year, but this age. It's not an easy thing to do.
Matt: I came up with the parody of the original “Spawn/Batman” cover that I thought, yeah, this could work. And everybody went, “Yeah, it could. But it's, again, what are they actually putting out?” And it's like the product they're putting out, it's… I know Todd thinks that Greg Capullo is the best Spawn artist ever. I think he's in a minority when it comes to that, because like, I'm an old enough Spawn fan to be like, no, Todd, you're the best “Spawn” artist ever. It kind of goes with the fact that you created Spawn.
Dave: Right.
Matt: It'd be like Joe Shuster saying, “You know, that Curt Swan really took my character to where I wanted him to go.”
Dave: Yeah. Yeah. I would agree on that, and that's sort of baked in, that's, you have to accept that your perception is almost never if ever the popular consensus on whatever it is. And if you don't confront that head on and deal with the consequences as being consequences of your own perception, then you're really asking for trouble.
And then you mentioned, “But Dave said that he wasn't gonna bump a book and wreck the calendar book, so it got pushed until the end of 2023 and is available for order, Diamond code SEP231324, and a signed version, the fifteen dollar sign version, SEP231325.” [Elrod voice] “Them's Diamond Distributor Star Code, son! Go to, I say, go to your local comicable bookshop. Kick the door in, grab the punk behind the counter, pull them halfway across it, look em dead in the eye and in a low growl tell them you want, ‘Cerebus in Hell? Presents: Spore/Batvark #1’. And give em the Diamond Star code, and he'll order you a copy. Or six, if he knows what's good for em.” [Lord Julius voice] “And be sure to have somebody film you doing it, because Dave and Manly could use a good laugh.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Nice writing there, Matt. I just had to read it. “How you got pulled in, Michael R, is an answer only known by God and Dave Sim, since it was his idea.” Uh, yeah, that's part of the ever-collapsing audience. It's like I did, Jeff Seiler's guest appearance in “She-Aversions” just in the text, that, you know, Seiler is in Hell?, and I would tend to agree with you it's probably Seiler and the Legion of Parrot Heads all accompanying Jimmy Buffett in the nether regions, but we'll find out on Judgment Day. It’s very funny, and it's like, well, if you're down to the point where you're only selling a thousand copies, or 1400 copies through Diamond, you might as well have shout outs to, you know, dance with the one that brung you. Why, if I contemplate how much money Michael R makes, how much he grosses a week, and how much he spent on Dave Simm and Cerebus over the years, I should be probably putting Michael R in every issue of “Cerebus in Hell?” And Margaret Liss, and Jennifer DiGiacomo, and everybody else who are the 100% loyalists, and if everybody else reading the comic book goes, “Uh, I don't get this.” It's like, um, no you don't, but it's not really intended for you. It's intended for the people who are putting a roof over my head and food on my table.
Okay, next Greg Shantz asked, “Hi Matt, I have a question for Dave. What became of Harry Kremer's collections after his passing?” Ah boy, there is a question that there's an answer for it, there's probably multiple answers for it, none of which are available to me, and I'm pretty sure not available to any but a small handful of people. I would narrow it down, in terms of this is the closest I can come to answering your question, Greg, too many people had access to 6 DeKay Street, if you want to Google on Google Earth to see what Harry's place looked like. That was where Harry lived, as far as I know, all of his life in Kitchener from 1946 on, with his father and mother. He was the only child still at home, I think he had brothers but they all got married and had kids, and then his father died and it was just Harry and his mother living at 60 DeKay Street, and then his mother died, and it was just Harry living there. And Harry was a very soft touch, as a relatively successful person. In terms of, most of the people that he knew were either from high school or the years and years that he spent working at the Smiles and Chuckles Chocolate Factory, a candy factory in town. And he never lost touch with the people that he knew way back when, and as I say, he was a soft touch it's like people came and went at 60 DeKay Street who needed a couch to crash on while they got themselves back together. Harry was pricing a collection in his living room when he died. So, you know, there's ancillary questions like, what happened to that collection? How did somebody be able to prove, “I gave Harry my collection and he was gonna give me a price and as far as I know, he was still working on it. Do you still have the books?” And it's like, well, who are you asking? It's like, everybody was just people who worked at Now and Then Books, and it was a legion of them, and the people who were in and out at 60 DeKay Street, and a, I'll go out on a limb here, a completely disinterested family. Harry was just the weird member of his family who was obsessively interested in comic books, and obsessively interested in comic art, and obsessively interested in records, particularly soundtracks. And his family just wanted to wrap everything up. “Harry’s dead. Obviously the only thing of value is the house itself. We’ll sell the house and divide up whatever that amount is. But in terms of all this comic book stuff, we have zero interest in this. We have zero interest in what's going to happen to it.” And obviously again, as with the vultures surrounding the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and Taylor Swift, there are vultures everywhere. So I don't think it ceased to exist. The artwork didn't cease to exist, but it went into the hands of people who divided it quickly into, “Okay, deep six this, or I will sell it to you myself at a discount, but then it's on your head that if you get caught with this.” And Dave Sim artwork from all the way back to 1971 when I was first going to Now and Then Books was obviously at or close to the top of the list. But also other artwork that, because the people that were looking at it were going, “Okay, I know a Frazetta. I know a Jeff Jones. I know a Barry Windsor-Smith. I know a Bernie Wrightson, or at least I can sort of intuit that these are our major pieces.” There's a lot of other stuff in there like, I don't even know who this is, and it was maybe a 2000, $3000 piece of artwork in 2002 when Harry died, and is now probably a 10 or 20,000 piece of artwork. It won't get destroyed, but it will go through a number of strange hands before it finally ends up somewhere. I'll contrast that with the other effect, it's usually the family. The family either participates or just turns a blind eye to it because it's like, “I got my own problems. It's like, yes, Harry was my nephew, or Harry was my grandson, or Harry was my cousin or whatever, but this isn't something that I want to invest in my life in.”
Contrast that with Craig Miller's father. When Craig Miller died, the guy who did “Following Cerebus”, and his father did dive in. it's, “Okay here's this house chock full of all of these collectibles. I had no interest in this, Craig and I didn't didn't talk about it, and I still have no interest in it. But I do have interest in my granddaughter Jennifer, who has been taken back to Ohio by the estranged wife, and I have no use for the mother, I have no use for Craig for the most part,” he's just Craig was Craig, in the same way that Harry was Harry, “but Jennifer, I will move Heaven and Earth because the granddaughter, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, she's the perfect being, I have to do everything that I can possibly do to benefit Jennifer.” And ended up having spent, I think, five years pretty much 12 hours a day, six days a week, cataloging, trying to find out what the stuff that Craig had left was worth, and turned it into whatever amount of money he turned it into. I think, quarter of a million dollars? Something like that. And made sure that it is in escrow, that it will become Jennifer's when the time comes, when she is of age. But it's not going to the mother, it's going to Jennifer. Which is probably not the nicest thing in the world that you could do to a kid, but people don't know that. It's a grandfather looking at his granddaughter and it's like, “Make sure that she's buried in money” where all Craig wanted was, ”I want Jennifer's education paid for and it's like, you know, higher education. I want her to go to university and not have to worry about money.” Well, you can go to a lot of universities for the rest of your life on a quarter of a million dollars. The odds are you're going to spend that quarter of a million on things that are not good for you and just end up tempting yourself in very very bad directions. But try explaining that to a grandfather. I helped where I could.
So basically all of this stuff just turns up now, Greg. A bit at a time. Stuff that I don't even remember that I did. Harry had bound volumes of his Marvel Comics which he decided to do, like “Fantastic Four” #1 to 100, and all in bound volumes. Anytime I see bound volumes in Heritage Auctions catalogs, I look at it and it's like, it's all pretty. Everybody did pretty standardized bound volumes back in the day, but I go, were those Harry's? Were those Harry's “Fantastic Four” #1, and when did they leave 6 DeKay Street and who did they leave with? And how many trips around the circuit did they make before they ended up at Heritage Auction? Or it's probably the same case with anything that I'm looking at in Heritage Auction. Unless it came from the actual collector, who said, “Okay, I'm all done with these. I really more need the money than I need to complete set of FF and “Tales of Suspense” and “Spider-Man”, and whatever else that Harry had, complete collections of all the Marvel Comics. A lot of those bound collections went the same way. Here's the completely disinterested family. “Where's the comic book store he used to go to? Can you give me any money for these?” Open them up, and it's complete set of “Fantastic Four.” And it's like, well, they're thinking, “I can't give you what they're worth, and I can't give you probably a tenth of what they're worth, but I can give you enough money that'll make you happy and then I can turn around and eventually they'll end up at Heritage Auctions.”
Matt: Yeah, that's the collector's curse of, you know, my mountain of Hopalong Cassidy memorabilia is worth a fortune to me, and when I'm gone it's, “Oh what do you do with all this Hopalong Cassidy merchandise?”
Dave: Which you-- yeah, go ahead.
Matt: Well, you know, in theory. I don't actually own Hopalong Cassidy, but that's, I'm just thinking the guy that owned the comic book store I used to go to when I first got into “Cerebus” when he had his heart attack and died. Cause that's a stereotypical thing for comic book guys is they don't take care of themselves, they get overweight, they have a heart attack. And it was, well they got to clean out his apartment, and then there's, he was in the role-playing games. The store was mostly a role-playing store, but he also liked comics, so he was doing comics too. And like I had lent him some stuff, and never got it back, and I'm like, alright, you know, whatever I don't need it back this minute type thing. Well he died, when they were cleaning the apartment, I'm like, hey did this stuff show up? And they're like, “No, not that we saw.” I’m like, huh, I wonder where Jim left it.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Because you know, the box of stuff has to be somewhere. And it was the same thing with the store of, “Okay we want to keep the store open in his memory.” Well, that's all well and good on paper, but three, four years later when, “Hey the store's not making money and the Inheritance is is getting down to the last couple of nickels, yeah well hey, what do we do now?”
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: They fired the manager who had been there for years and years and years and it got to the point where, because comic book store owners aren't necessarily the best businessmen, so like the guy hadn't been paying the store’s taxes and he also hadn't been paying his personal taxes.
Dave: Yii!
Matt: And the IRS said, “You're gonna give us this money or you know we're putting you into collection type thing” and his brother who was managing the estate went to the store account and emptied it to pay the back taxes. Which, had the legal right to do it, but he didn't tell the manager, so the manager all of a sudden was bouncing checks to Diamond because he wrote a check that had no money behind it.
Dave: Right. Right. There's a Russian novel to be written behind every one of those instances, and they are legion.
Matt: It goes back to a common theme of Please Hold for Dave Sim of, hey, if you're a collector, write down your wishes. Make a plan. Have a long box of the high-end books that you know this stuff will bring money when you're gone, and and leave a copy of that list with people you trust!
Dave: Right. Right. But then, that's that gets into a funny area too. Like, a lot of people trust people that they shouldn't trust, and all of a sudden there you are, I picture in the next world going, “Oh my God, this is the person that I trusted, and this is what ended up happening.” I don't think that's an unusual circumstance, again, particularly in the family sense, because comic fandom isn't a transmissible blood relation thing, very very rarely anyway. You better trust somebody who's another comic book person, like Eddie Khanna, rather than going, “Well, okay, what relative do I trust?”
Okay! And following that, Christon asks, “Hey Manly, I have two topics that may or may not be worthy of Please Hold for Dave Sim conversation. Dave, last month you spoke about attending independent comic shows. I would assume with your strong indie book influence, you have had significant interactions with many other independent comic book creators. Of these creators, who has shown you the most support over your career?” Just off the top of my head, I would have to say Steve Bissette, particularly in terms of following along with everything that I was saying about creators’ rights, and acknowledging in his situation of having worked at DC on “Swamp Thing,” and when I would be talking to him either on the phone or in person, and I would say, this is probably what's going to happen, and then it happened, Steve Bissette was one of those rare people who doesn't default into hallucinatory settings. If Dave Sim told him something was going to happen, and it happened, then Steve Bissette goes, “Okay, I was wrong, Dave Sim was right. If that keeps happening this way…” and it kept happening that way, then Steve Bissette gradually changed his own perceptions to dovetail with reality, and consequently, in terms of being simpatico with other indie comic book creators, with Steve Bissette, when I was talking to him, the lights were on and somebody was home. Most of the other creators, it's, I'll keep saying these things. I'll do what I can do to try and help you, and try and keep you from going in what I consider wrong directions for these reasons, the lights weren't on and nobody was home. Their priorities were somewhere else, or a number of somewhere elses. Consequently, I've always appreciated Bissette in that sense, because he did admit that he was wrong when he was wrong, he did assert that he was right when he was right, but he also never, it wasn't baby out with the bathwater when Dave Sim got accused of being a misogynist. Steve Bissette was one of the few people who didn't say, “Gee, I thought Dave Sim was a really helpful guy and really doing good things and always talking from an ethical standpoint and always talking about the problems that ethics can present if you get attached to something that you think is ethical that isn't actually ethical.” That didn't change after that point, and Steve Bissette still talks about me, and still talks about my work, talking about Strange Death of Alex Raymond and saying, [Steve Bissette impression] “I don't want to hear from any of you about other things having to do with Dave Sim’s opinions or what Dave Sim thinks, here's what I got to say about Strange Death of Alex Raymond.” And that's rare as hen’s teeth in the comic book field, where virtually everyone else, you mentioned Kevin Eastman. Kevin Eastman was in that category, as well. Never changed his opinion about Dave Sim, no matter what people decided we all have to think about Dave Sim. So I would put Kevin Eastman and Steve Bissette at the top of that list in terms of consistency, because I think that's a key point of integrity. If you change your mind about somebody because of what other people have suddenly said about them, then that's not integrity. That brings us to Rudyard Kipling's “If-”. “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing their’s.” Very very rare that that happens. Most people go, Bob Burden’s “This calls for an emergency!” “Everybody's thinking about Dave Sim, Dave Sim has turned out to be completely evil. I thought Dave Sim was great, but I'm never going to admit that again. Dave Sim is evil. Dave Sim is evil. Please don't throw me out of the club!” That kind of thing. It's very very, very very common in that Marxist-Feminist dictatorship.
“I am hoping that other creators have also currently remained supportive.” Very very possibly. I don't hear from anybody, but cartoonists don't really hear from other cartoonists. I haven't really talked to Steve Bissette since I started “Cerebus in Hell?” and got his help promoting it. When Kevin Eastman and I had our back and forth during the T8 Kickstarter, I hadn't talked to Kevin on the phone for 15 years, 20 years. I would leave him messages occasionally, and he's Kevin Eastman! It's like he's up to his eyeballs with people who just want to touch base. You'll find out once you're in your 50s, and I'm now in my 60s, that, no, you’re on your own. Everybody lives their own life and makes their own choices and their own decisions. And that's true for me, and that's true for Steve Bissette, and that's true for Kevin Eastman. We all have the good faith to be in touch with people that we would like to stay in touch with, but you get older, you're slowing down, you still got to put a roof over your head, you still have to put food on the table, and that becomes more of a priority. Far more of a priority than when you were in your 20s. And then Christon asked, “Also, who is your favorite independent character, story and creator?” Probably in the broadest sense in terms of, these are always at the top of my list and have been since I first encountered their work? Vaughn Bode’s “The Man” one shot underground, which I read probably back in first time 1970s? I think he created it in 1967, and it's still a very very solid piece of work. So Vaughn Bode as the creator, The Man as a character, and “The Man” has the story. Jeff Jones’ “Idyl” is in that same category. I was a huge “Idyl” fan when I first encountered it in “National Lampoon Funny Pages” in the 1970s. And still to this day, some of my favourite work. Although, apart from Idyl herself, most of the characters don't have names. And each one of them is a story. Each single page, which is a remarkable achievement in and of itself, that this story is only five panels long, six panels long. And it's one of my favourite comic book stories. I would put it up against any number of graphic novels. “Aristotle” It's like, beautifully lettered first panel that just says “Aristotle” and then the girl’s walking into the panel, and goes, “Barrels” and there's two barrels, and she looks at the barrels, and she opens up the top of the one, and goes, “Nothing in this one.” And then walks away. [laughs] And I go, that's a perfect distillation of, but insulting point of view, on Aristotle. But you couldn't replace that in terms of, if you had to refute somebody, in this case probably Steve Ditko and Ayn Rand by way of Aristotle, barrels! Nothing in this one. And then walk away from it. Brilliant, dry, dry material. And speaking of Steve Ditko, he would be in that category. Favourite independent character? Mr A or pretty much any character that Ditko did after working at Marvel and DC and Charlton. Story? I would take all the Mr A stories and the cumulative narrative. And creator, nobody else could do Mr A than Steve Ditko and you would be a fool to try. And okay, that's Christon’s first question, and thank you, Christon. It's that time of year where now the prayer time is at quarter to eight, so I'm gonna go down and do a prayer time, and then we will move on to Christon's #2.
Matt: Okay.
Dave: Talk to you in a little while, Matt.
Matt: Talk to you in a little while, Dave.
Dave: Buh-bye.
Matt: Hello again, Dave!
Dave: Hello again, Matt. Okay! I forgot one of the things that I wanted to mention in Dodger’s question. I didn't get to the conscious part of the decision making. And I just had a situation where I did make a conscious creative decision on the “Narutobus” page that Rolly will have just emailed to you. Page eight, the girl in the bottom right, where I got the figure in and I had decided, okay, I want to go a little more detail on the actual character, so I'm gonna go larger than I've been going with her. And got everything penciled, everything traced, and then inked the hair and the face and the sunglasses, and the pearls, and then started working on the stocking and went, mhmm, that's a lot of stocking to be doing cross hatching on. And it's a completely vertical composition. Vertical but tilted. How many times have I thought to myself, self, why don't we try inking with a ruler? Like, nobody does that, but I have seen it done by illustrators of my favourite time period, late 1950s, early 1960s. Inking with a ruler where basically you're taking a Hunt 102 pen nib and putting the vertical lines as close together as possible, and making them as thin as possible, to get this complete vertical streak movement through the entire illustration extending into the background and the partial silhouette on her right hand. And just went, I thought about it so many times I couldn't count them. Let's just go ahead and do it. It's like, it's “Narutobus”, if people are going to buy it, they're going to buy it for the baby-throwing panel. So, let's just lay it in there across the two stockings, and it worked really good. It’s like, I got it done and went, I should have got it done a long time ago. So that's a conscious decision that will probably now become part of my ongoing photorealism style, because now I know that it does go with my particular inking approach, my unconscious inking approach, where I'm just not a clean enough inker to do Al Williamson or to do Alex Raymond, although I love trying to do Al Williamson and Alex Raymond. And this blends quite nicely with the inherent roughness that I can't get out of my work. So, yes, there are conscious decisions that are made, but not usually as clear-cut as this particular one is.
Okay, so now we're moving on to part two of Christon’s… oh! Please Hold for Manly Matt! “Manly, allow me to begin with expressing my appreciation for all you do with A Moment of Cerebus.” Can we have a standing ovation sound effect dubbed in there? Thank you! Thank you. Go ahead, say thank you, Matt.
Matt: [laughs] You're welcome, Christon.
Dave: [laughs] ”I'm new to this party, as I barely discovered AMOC about 2 years ago. But, I'm definitely a fan now. I absolutely love checking in every night before I go to bed. I really enjoy this sight!! So, my question for you is, do you have an estimated idea of how many followers this website has? An approximate, round-a-bout of AMOC family members? Just kinda curious.” Do you want to read your answer, or do you want me to read your answer?
Matt: Uhh, I’ll let you read it. I know you enjoy that.
Dave: Oh-kay. “Thank you for your time, Christon Hunwardsen. Manly answers, two, six. Twelve if it's one of Margaret's Notebook posts. Three if it’s Hobbs.” [laughs] Cruel but fair. “The numbers on Jen DiGiacomo aren't in, but I bet she doesn't beat Margaret at anything but backgammon. Seriously, I don't look. Partly because I don't care, and partly because I don't care to know.” I'm gonna interrupt here with Churchill talking about his dim view of public opinion polls, where he said, [Churchill impression] “It's like taking your temperature every 15 minutes.” Which is pure hypochondria. “If I took the time to look once, I'd start looking all the time and wondering why this post does gangbusters, but that post is crickets. I love all my little posts equally, although there are six slots in the ‘popular post’ column at the top of AMoC, and when they are all ’mine’ I get a little warm glow in the cockles of my heart, much as the warm glow I get there when I think about the vengeance I have planned for Zipper! I'll get you, my pretty, and your little aardvark too!” Do you trust that six slots thing? Is that automated?
Matt: It's automated. One of Tim's posts was, “The Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: And that's in the top six, I want to say, like 90% of the time. Like, it'll go away, but it always comes back. And I don't know if it's an algorithm thing where the algorithm resets itself and it pops back up or what. But there the first time it was, hey wait, these are all things I did. I'm like oh well that's neat, and then like a week later half of them were old Tim posts. And it's like I said,it's not that I don't care, it's that I don't care to know.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: Like, one of the analytics that I had, I think it's for the podcast, was a map of, it was the end of year here's where your end of year review of how many minutes were streamed and this and that. And at one point, it's, here's a map of the world where your top five countries that people listen are from. And you can click the little button and get a full expanded list. So I clicked the little button and there was a sixth country, and I'm like okay, that was totally anti-climatic. Here I'm thinking there's gonna be like 20, 30… nope, six.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: It's like, I felt really, I'm trying to remember what the sixth country was too, because at the time I was like, well I feel bad for those guys. I mean, they're listeners too.
Dave: Right.
Matt: I know as a content creator in the internet era I'm supposed to care about engagement, I'm supposed to care about the numbers. You don't build a brand by by not paying attention to that stuff. And I'm thinking, but it's not my brand. And everything, it's not my brand because I didn't create the character. It's not my brand because I'm not the one doing the new work. It's not my brand even because I didn't make the blog, Tim did. I just took over when he wanted to get out. At a certain point, it's like, I very blatantly said it when I first took over, I'm the interim editor. I know that the ship's not going down with me, somebody will take the baton when I decide to pass it, but at the same time during my reign of terror, yes, you know, this is my reign of terror but at some point it will end. And like every now and then, there is the analytic button. And I think, oh I should see which posts are doing good. And it's like, that way lies madness because…
Dave: Right.
Matt: One of the top six posts that keeps coming up is the AMoC review of “Avengers: Infinity War,” which basically was me going, “I went and saw the movie. No aardvarks in it.” And they were even in Africa in part of the movie!
Dave: [laughs] Right.
Matt: It's a stupid post, but it keeps popping up as being popular. Is it just the computer messing with me? Is it that for some reason people are searching for “Infinity War” and the blog pops up and so they click the link on, “What could this possibly have to do with…?” You know, one of these things is not like the other, so let's see what's going on.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And every single time I'm just like, no, it's probably somebody has it on their phone and every time they open the internet on their phone it automatically goes to that page and they just keep forgetting to remove it.
Dave: [laughs] That’s possible. I mean there's so many variables that are completely unknown. Even if it was hard information, like, here you go, this is 100% truthful, it's still going to be, now that we know that, what do we know?
Matt: Exactly.
Dave: Okay moving on, Michael R of Easton… hey wait a minute! [laughs] Michael R sneaks in again! “Hi Matt! This question is from Benjamin Hobbs for this PHFDS. Enclosed is the "rough " "stand in art" in question. Subject: Re: My appearance in Spore Batvark -part 1 Thanks! Now I want to know what happened to that "stand in art".” The art in question and there you are. This is me saying I want a photo dubbed in here, but this is roughly what I want the photo to look like. And that qualifies as “Cerebus in Hell?” artwork which is one of the categories in the Cerebus Archive which is more over in the direction of documents than actual artwork per se. So it's not at the off-site House, it's at the Off-White House here, but it hasn't been formerly inventoried. I think I told everybody that back during Ramadan I completely pulled everything out of the upstairs closet that was all in manila envelopes and transferred them into Stayflats so that they would stay vertical and orderly. I got about three quarters of the way through that process, and I'm down to, ballpark it at 20, 15 manilla envelopes left that have to be, the manilla envelopes need to be deep sixed and the contents put into a large size Stayflats. We've got the Stayflats in stock here at Camp David, so I'll be able to do the process pretty quickly when I actually do get to it. And I think those have already been done. “Cerebus in Hell?” artwork, there isn't a lot of it because for the first few years of “Cerebus in Hell?” I couldn't draw, and now we're at the point where theoretically I will be drawing whole manga issues of “Cerebus in Hell?” But most of the stuff is, okay, occasionally I would do a drawing, here's one. In the category there's the drawing of Spider-Vark, where, okay, it's been used in three or four different comic books, but there's still only one piece of artwork. So that's one of the ones that when I got there, okay, I know what category that is, that’s “Cerebus in Hell?” artwork. I'll put it in there when I do, God willing, finally get around to finishing that part of the project where everything that was in manila envelopes is now in Stayflats, and I start doubling back to... I wrote on the the inside flap of the Stayflat, “this is what this category is.” So that'll be the next stage of typing out, Stayflat #43 is this category Cerebus lettering. # 44, Cerebus lettering again. #45 Cerebus lettering again. When I get to the one that says “Cerebus in Hell?” artwork for this year, for this time period, I will pull it out and if I find the stand-in art, then I will give it to you, Michael R. I promise! I will remember what I see it, that there's only one person on the planet that could possibly be interested in buying this art, and I think posterity can do without the Michael R stand-in art in perpetuity and we’ll live with just the photocopy of it. And I will personalize it to you, and send it to you, also with the #26 written on it, which as we all know is Michael R's CAN number. And coin-ka-dinkily, just before I was going upstairs to do Please Hold for Dave Sim, Rolly had been over to Studiocomix Press and picked up the two proof copies of “Spore/Batbark.” They’re official printer’s proof copies because they've got unremovable stickers on the back, signed by Alfonso, that say printer’s proof Studiocomix Press and date. Although Alfonso just scrawls in it, I don't think he writes the date anymore. And I will send one or both of these to you as a commitment that you will get the stand-in art, Michael, and I am going to write the #26 somewhere on this “Spore/Batvark” proof copy and send it to you. No no no, your patronage is more than thanks enough for me, and that's a serious understatement.
Matt: Yay Michael.
Dave: Yay!
Matt: I will still will have my vengeance!
Dave: What's that?
Matt: I'll still get my vengeance!
Dave: That’s right. [laughs] I forgot. I forgot. What am I doing being nice to the guy that you want to get vengeance on?
Matt: But I want the vengeance. You're not in my vendetta! You're like, there's a restaurant in town that Paula was friends with the owner. And I mean, it's, the restaurant's been here since like 1976, but it's changed owners a couple times. And the the owner was Paula's friend, her daughter was in Girl Scouts, I mean really close friendship. Well she had bought the business from the previous owners and ran into some money problems, like I guess her accountant wasn't paying her taxes, and so the state came and said, “You're giving us $25,000 or you're closed” and she didn't have the money so she closed for a little bit. Well the previous owners, I guess in the contract ,could renege on the contract and get the business back. So they did and Paula is like, “We're never eating there again.” And I'm like, whoa whoa whoa! You want me to join your blood feud, you got to pay, I'm a mercenary.
Dave: [laughs] To which she replied?
Matt: “We're never gonna eat there again.”
Dave: [laughs] So, how does that stand now? How long has that been been going on?
Matt: About a year. I mean, I'm okay with it because everything I've been told, the new owners have, it's a sub shop, and part of the problem was the owner we were friends with switched bakeries because the bakery she was buying from was selling her day old bread and saying it was fresh. And everybody complained that the bread didn't taste right, and I'm thinking, well, yeah it tastes good. That's what the problem is, you're used to it tasting not good.
Dave: [laughs] Being the provocateur that you are.
Matt: So the new owner has promised to make the restaurant great again, and we're going, okay. The owner of the bakery that they stopped using died. A new owner bought the bakery. You presume they're gonna be able to make the bread the way the bread used to get made. You know, it's one of those, Dave Sim can't draw “Cerebus” #1 the way he drew “Cerebus” #1. It won't--
Dave: Good analogy!
Matt: It won’t look exactly the same. It'll look good, it'll probably even look better, but it's not gonna be that nostalgia you'll want.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And around the same time this happened, I was doing something where I asked my brother, hey this is a role-playing game thing. You're into role-playing games more than I am. I want to buy this, where do I go? And he's like, “Oh well, you gotta talk to Bob!” and I'm like okay, how do I get a hold of Bob? Well, and Bob sells stuff out of his basement, and he's semi-retired, and you gotta wait for when Bob wants to be available. I'm going. I want the stuff now. why can't I go to the store and tell him. “Well, I have a blood feud with the store” and I'm going, okay, this is like the third blood feud I've heard about in two weeks. From now on, I'm a mercenary. You want me to join you, I'll join any crusade you want, but cash on the barrelhead.
Dave: [laughs] There you go! “I charge by the hour. So think it over!” [laughs]
“Next is friend to the blog and STAR, well deserved, of Steve Peters Week 2023. Coming in two weeks to an AMoC near you. Not you, Zipper.”
Matt: I said I'd get my vengeance!
Dave: [laughs] And there it is! “Steve Peters, who is Kickstartering ‘Tails of Sparky’ #4 RIGHT NOW!” Yeah it started September 5th, didn't it?
Matt: Yes.
Dave: “Until Paula's birthday!” [sings] Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, to you. Happy, happy happy happy, birthday, dear Paul-LA. Happy happy happy happy happy, birthday to you. Just in case there isn't another Please Hold for Dave Sim before October 5th, for those of you playing at home. “Featuring in some capacity that the Manly one isn't entirely clear on, Dave Sim’s take on Steve Peter's Sparky, as Dave Sim’s Cerebus Sparkybus, insert image here.” Yeah I got the picture done, Steve, as you know, asked, “if I pay you $200,” you talk about your mercenary blood feud, “if I pay you $200 will you do a sketch that I can put in the back of ‘Tails of Sparky’ #4?” And yes, no problem. It was, I sat down right away to do that, and almost got way too carried away on it, going, you know it's a sketch now, but it could be a variant cover if you just shrank the image down a little bit. And I thought, you could put the ”Sim City” logo on. The logo that we used a couple of times on “Cerebus in Hell?” “Sin City” parody. You never go too far wrong on Kickstarter doing a Frank Miller parody cover. So I'm gonna offer that as a suggestion, Steve could either Photoshop himself or engage the services of David Birdsong, or Benjamin Hobbs to put a “Sim City” logo. “Sim City featuring Sparkybus.” And there you go, Steve Peters, Bob's your uncle, you would have a variant cover. Hope it sells a million copies. If not, the fallback position is “Sparkybus Penis!” Steve axed…
Matt: Let me interrupt for a second, because I, again, not knowing what Steve was gonna do with this, sent him an email saying, say, what's your plan for the Dave Sparkybus? Because I'd be willing to pay the printing costs to print 75 eight and a half by eleven double prints, so two prints per sheet, making 150 prints total, up in Kitchener, and the shipping from Dave to you after he signs and numbers them. A), unless he has a better plan, and B), unless Dave says, “Not with this hand.”
Dave: [laughs] No, I'm fine! I'm fine.
Matt: And his response was, “Wow, that sounds great, but what's in it for you?”
Dave: [laughs] What part of this blood feud are you making your mercenary bucks on? And you answered?
Matt: I actually haven't answered, because it came in yesterday, I'm like, I'll discuss this with Dave, because if you're not willing to do it, the plan, it crashed on the tarmac. And, what's in it for me is helping out Steve, celebrating Steve Peter's week, giving him something that he can throw on the Kickstarter for the week three lull where all the numbers are up up up, down down down, flat flat flat.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Kind of like what James Windsor-Smith did with his Kickstarter with the variant cover, and the prints. So I will let Steve know your offer. I will clarify why my offer, and then I'll see what he says, and then have to send emails to people and do work. And this is one of them 8 AM Matt was gung-ho for this idea, and 8 PM Matt is going, I'm tired!
Dave: [laughs] “Who suggested this? Who suggested this?!” Yeah. He could do wallpaper. Take the Sparkybus image and duplicate it like six times, and do a Andy Warhol variant cover, and only print one of them. It's one out of one, and auction it on AMoC, and see Who ends up with the Andy Warhol Sparkybus.
Matt: I will give him that idea too. I mean, I can't, he's been posting updates, and the updates were ,you know, day one, he was blown away. Day two there's a bit of a lull. And he's got a little stuffed Sparky that's like three inches tall, and it's a picture of the Sparky. The first one he's floored by the computer and the second one he's on a pool float in the pool, and Steve's comment is, “I told him to just relax. You're new to Kickstarter. You don't know how this works.”
Dave: Right. Right. Don’t get too excited, and don’t get too depressed, it's somewhere in between there and we all go through it.
Matt: Right.
Dave: “Here's something for Please Hold. If I didn't make it in time for September, you can save it for the next one. Hi Dave, I wanted you to know how much I appreciated you talking about mungu mkono in response to my question earlier this year.” Mungu Mkono, of course is Swahili for “God, in the hand of God.” “At the time, I was heavily into recording that song, and your thoughts on the subject helped me fill in the gaps I had in the lyrics. I finished a rough version of the lyrics before I stopped cold because there was too much other Important Stuff going on. In fact, that's what the song is all about. I had a life-changing decision to make, a mungu mkono moment. At a certain point, you have to trust in God to inspire you to make the right call, and know that He'll guide you through it. The ‘Ah, ah’ parts don't translate, I suppose; you really need to actually hear the piece, but I thought I shouldn't take them out. Hope to finish the song soon (I always have many irons on the fire), but your help with the lyrics certainly came at the right time, so thanks again.” And this brings us back, full circle to the point that I was making about Dave Sim’s relationship to music. Which, if you will recall from a while ago, was that my relationship to music is about the same as most people's relationship to comic art, comics. Where, whatever level of interest that they have, it goes this far, and stops dead. And I would cite instances of that in the the age of the DVD and the CD, when suddenly the music business abandoned the single. You couldn't go and buy a 45 that just had two sides to it and two songs. You had to buy the whole album. And being in the gravy time period that I was in, I did that a lot. But I was buying the single, but because you couldn't buy the single, I would buy the whole CD but I would never listen to it. Except for the song that I bought. Because that was pretty much the extent of my interest in music, was, that's a pretty song. It's a pop song, usually more over in the direction of bubble gum, and I'm completely incurious apart from the fact that… I’ll cite as two examples. I bought the CD, Laura Branigan, I forget the the name of the album, and I bought it for the song “Te Amo” which I understand that she won the the Eurovision thing for one year with that one. And I just really liked the song. I really liked the song, as a girl singing about the specific breakup type of thing. And I had another breakup song, “Joey” by Concrete Blonde. And same deal, it's like, couldn't wait to buy the CD. I got it. I can listen to it on my world class CD player through the speakers or through the headphones, and what is does the rest of the album sound like? It's like, I didn't buy it for the rest of the album. I didn't buy it because it's a Concrete Blonde album. I bought it for “Joey” and that's it. That's the extent of my interest. And consequently, where are you here? Wait a minute, I got a dig through… “Coming to the end of our show, Steve didn't clarify but I think it's 3/4 beat and a key of F . Take it away, Dave!” [laughs] “I kid, I kid. We're not really doing Steve’s song to the tune of the theme to ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’ Actual title, ‘The Fishing Hole.’” And they say these things aren't educational. “Are we? Oh then, we are? Okay, but I get to do the whistling.” Is it actually called “The Fishing Hole?” Where did you find out that?
Matt: Ironically, 12-ish years ago when we had the baby, it was, “The baby's sleeping. You can't have the TV loud.” So I put the subtitles on. And like regular broadcast TV, put it on closed captioning. And then if we watched a movie, you know, put on the subtitles. So like the volume on my TV goes up to like I think 80 or 90s where it maxes out and we never got it above 10.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: For, I’m gonna go with, I dunno, at five years straight? Like, there were a few times we would turn it up because okay, we really want to hear this. Most of the time it was the TV's quiet enough, I mean if you're sitting quietly you can hear it, but if the kid's babbling away, nope you're gonna be reading the TV.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And have not turned the subtitles off. Now people come over and ask us to turn them off, and we're like, okay, why? “Well it's distracting.” What you don't want to read? Incidentally, ironically, coincidentally, however you want to look at it, both my kids read at a grade… my first grader was reading at a 3.9 grade level when she got assessed. My seventh grader, the last time she got assessed was off the charts. Like both of my kids in grade school, the way they do it now is books are graded of A level, then B level, and you go up the alphabet. And when the rest of the class was at F, both my kids were around M. Like, they're just beyond readers. And the teachers go, “Yeah we don't understand.” I'm like, well, see when the baby was born, we couldn't have the TV loud, because you can't wake up the baby, so I put the subtitles on, and so the kids have been reading unconsciously since they were old enough to realize “Hey, there's a box in the corner that's got a picture on it.” So…
Dave: And in a perfect world, that should go completely viral through our whole academic world of, “Look everybody can do this. Do this! You're not going to stop watching television, so the kid grows up in a television world, but reading, and this is a win-win-win all the way around.” But our schools don't work that way. [laughs] “We’re not interested in actually teaching kids. We're interested in getting more money for teachers unions and teachers’ pension funds, that could be going to education.” But I interrupted.
Matt: Well no, but that's, so I told both kids teachers at the first grade level when they're like, “Yeah your kid’s really advanced in reading. Like, we're worried because the level your daughter reads at, we don't have books that have age-appropriate content for them.” And I'm going, well, and I explain the story, I kind, I don't blatantly say it, but like, you should suggest this to all your struggling readers of, tell their parents, turn on the subtitles. They'll start, it's an unconscious thing of, hey! Because the other one that I've noticed with broadcast TV is the closed captioning services sometimes it's for a hearing impaired thing where there's specific hearing impaired deaf viewer shortcuts. It's like a shorthand that they'll put in the subtitle, and you'll be like, “That's not what they said.” And then it's well, no, but you know this symbol means whatever word. I'm going, that's kind of weird. But anyway, so I don't even remember what show it was, but there's a channel called MeTV that shows classic shows from the 60s and 70s, and there were some show that I liked that I would watch, and then it would end and “The Andy Griffith Show” came on, and in the subtitles, when it would have a musical symbol, and it would say, “The Fishing Hole.” And I'm going, what? What is this? It's just whistling! And it turns out that, yeah, the name of this is “The Fishing Hole” and there's actually lyrics for the song that I found on the internet when I was double checking that I had the title right. And Andy Griffith sang the song. It's this tune we all know with the actual words sung by the guy whose show it is. I'm going, why didn't they use the lyrics in the title? And because it's much more classic to have him and Opie walking up to the fishing hole with their poles and walking back to town with no words.
Dave: Right. Right. Which brings us to the actual, that's the beginning of their show, this is the end of our show. Can you whistle the Andy Griffith “The Fishing Hole”?
Matt: Kinda? [laughs] I mean, I know the tune, I can kind of whistle.
Dave:[laughs] I'm not a whistler, I'll try and help on my end, but…
Matt: [laughs] I mean, it's…
Dave: [whistles extremely weakly] See that’s as good I…
Matt: Actually I can't do it because I'm laughing!
Dave: [whistles weakly and off-tune version of “The Fishing Hole”]
Matt: And now YouTube's gonna put a copyright disclaimer on this video.
Dave: [laugh] Have a good night, Matt! Say hi to Paula, and happy birthday again. Tell her to listen to her her birthday wish for me, and to Janis Pearl, and to Natasha.
Matt: Have a good night, Dave. And God willing and the creek don't rise, we'll do this again next month.
Dave: Sounds good. Take care, Matt!
Matt: Take care, Dave.
Dave: Buh-bye.
Matt: Bye.
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Next Time: Jen's gone "full Shatner"... FULL! (She sent me her cover of Rocket Man...)
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