Hi, Everybody!
All 300 (not really) Issues of Cerebus are for sale digitally at CerebusDownloads.com for Twenty-Five CANADIAN Dollars.
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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...):
The CAN13/Ninja High School Cerebus #2&3/Cerebus in Hell? numbers 87 (Cerebus in Jail?) and 88 (The Pun Issuer Groan Zone)/CAN29(sorta) Kickstarter.
Since we talkin' Kickstarters:
Friend to the Blog, Steve Peters has a new Comicverse issue on Kickstarter, with a variant cover from OTHER Friend to the Blog, James Banderas-Smith.
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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Matt: Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Children, adults, the young, and the young at heart, and any pets stuck in the room where their owners are listening to this. It's time, once again, for the greatest show on Earth, that we're involved with, here he is live via telephone from the Off-White House in Kitchener, Ontario. The man you've been holding for, David Victor Sim!
Dave: [hums “Hail to the Chief”]
Matt: Hi, Dave.
Dave: You know, if we had an audience, they'd be going nuts right now. [clears throat]
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Anyway “Hi Dave, here we go again.” And how are you doing, Matt?
Matt: Fine, tired like normal because I'm working like crazy.
Dave: Right, right. “All the running you can muster to stay in one place,” as Alice said.
Matt: Pretty much. The boss called me today and said, “We need to ship 1400 parts.” And I'm going, okay. And I looked in the computer, and we had 827 parts, I'm like, so we're not gonna ship 1400 parts today. Good to know!
Dave: [laughs] A man's reach should always exceed his grasp, or what is a working place for.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay. It's, as you note here, it's my turn to remember Jeffrey Allen Seiler, and [sneezes] excuse me. “Long time listeners will recall that Dave was remembering Jeff breaking quarantine with state approval, and the state in question is Minnesota, and the city in question was Minneapolis, to go to a karaoke bar and belt out throaty renditions of Debbie Gibson tunes (I assume. Jeff never told me what his go to karaoke songs were). Newer listeners should pause here and listen to the August Please Hold for Dave Sim where Dave last talked about this. And all the other previous episodes, until you're all caught up!” [laughs] No, don't do that. “Don't worry we'll wait. Anyway this is your cue, Dave.” And actually, as you'll discover that ties in with what were Jeff Seiler's go to karaoke songs. And I wrote notes on this one, because this had a distinct possibility of sprawling all over the place, and I think this is going to turn out to be part two of my answer, and part three of my recollection of Jeffrey Allen Seiler will round things off hopefully in December. But Jeff had acquired a new black cat that he named Yousuf, and left me a phone message saying that he had posed a riddle on A Moment of Cerebus, and do you remember this of, why did he name his cat Yousuf?
Matt: Uh, it's ringing bells in the back of my head, but the box is empty.
Dave: Well, there you go. That's really all I could hope for on that was, we're going back aways, and it was again that this is this odd meeting place of Jeff Seiler thinking in some way that only Jeff Seiler thought that this was somehow relevant to A Moment of Cerebus, the link to karaoke. You know, we all have different parts of our lives, why would you think that your karaoke experiences are of interest to A Moment of Cerebus people? And so explaining that, he explained that it had been in honour of Yousuf Mustafa, whose songs he had been singing at karaoke. And I'll make a metaphysical aside here that Cat Stevens stopped being Cat Stevens when he chose to become Yousuf Mustafa and devote himself to Islam. So it's a subtle but massive inversion of the truth to confuse Cat Stevens with Yousuf Mustafa. And alarm bells were sounding in my head at this point, like Jeff, why are you doing this? Or whoever you are, what have you done with Jeff Seiler, and why are you doing it? So, Jeff and I spoke the next day after he left this phone message that he was going to be posing this riddle on A Moment of Cerebus, “Why did I name my cat Yousuf?” and could I guess why he named his cat Yousuf. Which is now getting even stranger, because it's like, you left me a message explaining to me why you named your cat Yousuf. Do you not remember that from yesterday? So sort of like playing along, but definitely going, okay, this is now into very very strange borderline territory. Could I guess? I said, you've been singing Cat Stevens songs at karaoke, so I'm guessing you named him after Yousuf Mustafa, Cat Steven's Muslim name. And it was like definite dead silence on the other end of the phone, where it was like I had guessed Rumpelstiltskin's name, and Rumpelstiltskin was gobsmacked that I guessed that easily that that's why he named his cat Yousuf. So, it was like I'm going, okay, this is now weird in at least four or five different ways, and Rumpelstiltskin is gobsmacked that he is now busted. So, alright, I will follow along with what else I think is the riddle here. The multi-level riddle that is now weirdly multilevel, but what the heck, you know, you asked me, so I'll keep going here. Yousuf is the Arabic version of Joseph, and Joseph is a prominent figure in both the Jewish Torah and the Islamic Quran. Jacob's second youngest son and the eldest of the two sons that Jacob had by his beloved wife Rachel as opposed to Leah, who was his not beloved wife, and the two handmaidens of Rachel and Leah who he also had children with who became the 12 tribes of Israel. And Surah 12 is entitled and is about Joseph. And at that point, I went, okay, and that links to… I didn't have the actual verse at the time that I was mentioning this to to Jeff, but Genesis 37:19, Joseph's brothers said to one another, “Behold this dreamer cometh” is how it's translated in the King James version, and in the side footnote in the King James version the Hebrew says that instead of “this dreamer” it's in Hebrew it's “the master of dreams.” And it's like, well okay, that in my mind links to Neil Gaiman and “The Sandman.” Who, you know, Neil Gaiman being the Sandman riff guy. He didn't create Sandman, but he did a very very popular Sandman riff. And Neil didn't live in Minneapolis, but he lived near Minneapolis, and I knew that because his store that he shopped at was DreamHaven in Minneapolis. And that sort of links to the fact that I asked Neil at some point, do you want to be on the freebie list for “Cerebus?” He said no, he really didn't, because there was so few comic books that he was still reading that having a subscription to “Cerebus” gave him a reason to go to to DreamHaven and keep up with that. And then at some point DreamHaven became part of the ”Dave Sim the evil misogynist” group and was no longer carrying “Cerebus,” so Neil had to say, “Yes. could I please have a comp subscription to ‘Cerebus?’” Which I was happy to do so. So Neil was on comp list.
Which in turn links to the fact that Yousuf is a cat, and “Sandman” #18, 18 being 6-6-6, was “The Dream of a Thousand Cats,” which was Neil's feminism parable. That if a thousand of whatever, in this case cats, dream that cats can be restored to their dominance in the world, that's what happened. Because according to “Dream of a Thousand Cats,” that's what happened with human beings. A thousand human beings all dreamt of having dominance, and suddenly became the large sized species, and cats became small sized species. So, this cat is now preaching to all of these cats that if just a thousand cats could all dream in the same night that things have gone back the other way, then the cats will once more return to their dominant status and humans will be will turn back into pets. Which is one of those, you know, this was Neil's feminism parable, and well, okay, Neil, whatever else you managed to accomplish out of this, “Cerebus” was considered a very very popular and very very influential comic book, and now is completely unmentionable as is its creators. So it's one of those, as it says in “Dream of a Thousand Cats,” dreams shape the world. But I would say that it's more a case of, no wise choices are made in a state of unconsciousness, which is I think what Neil inadvertently brought into the world, and hopefully that can change back at some point, but we don't really have a thousand people who are all pulling in the same direction. We have a handful of people who think that, “No, Dave Sim isn't a misogynist and ‘Cerebus’ isn't a misogynistic work.” The part about Joseph in the Torah, I did pull out, it was one of those weird things because I started reading the Bible, seemed like a coincidence and now seems more like synchronicity, the Genesis 37, “And Joseph dreamed a dream and he told it his brethren and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, here I pray you this dream which I have dreamed for behold we were binding sheaves in the field and lo my sheaves arose and also stood upright, and behold your sheaves stood round about.” Where's the next page here? “And made obeisance to my sheep. And his brethren said to him, shalt thou indeed reign over ss or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream and told it his brethren and said, behold I have dreamed a dream more and behold the Sun and the Moon and the 11 stars made obeisance to me.” And it's like, as I say, I started reading the Bible in 1996, and this was after Neil was reaching the height of his popularity, and was the guest of honour, I think it was 1995 at the Chicago ComicCon, and as the guest of honour his Neilness came up with the brilliant idea , [Gaiman impression] “Let's get all of these famous cartoonists and get them all to do comic strips about me!” [laughs] And it's like, you could hear everybody who got pitched on this rolling their eyes and going, “Let's all do comic strips about Neil?!” And as I say, when I first read the Joseph narrative in the Torah when I started reading the Bible in 1996, I went, [Gaiman impression] I think I know this guy! [laughs]
And, how are we doing here? Okay, this is like 15 minutes already on my recollection of Jeff Seiler part two. And I think where Joseph came from, and I do consider Joseph an historical figure, he is one of the founders of the 12 tribes of Israel, this came from the fact this is the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons, and then the son in turn visiting their sins upon their fathers. Because Jacob the usurper, his father-in-law Laban, he makes an agreement with him that all of the speckled and spotted cattle that are given birth, those will be Jacob’s and Laban will have the non-speckled and spotted cattle. And you find out when you're reading Genesis 30 that he, that is “Jacob removed that day the he goats that were ring straked and spotted, and all the she goats that were speckled and spotted. Everyone that had white in it, and all the brown amongst the sheep, and gave into the hand of his son. And he set three days journey betwix himself and Jacob. And Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flock. And Jacob took him rods of green poplar and the hassel and chestnut tree and pilled white strikes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods had brought forth cattle ring straked, speckled, and spotted.” Essentially what he's done is he's made use of sorcery. Made use of whatever this is with the hassel and and green poplar, and this is how you create ring straked and and spotted cattle. And covering for himself in chapter 31, Jacob is saying to Rachel and Leah, “I see your father's countenance but it is not toward me as before.” [laughs] There's an understatement, because Laban now has got virtually no cattle, and Jacob has all of the cattle. “But the God of my father hath been with me and you know that with all my power I have served your father. And your father hath deceived me and changed my wages 10 times, but God suffered him not to hurt me. If he said thus, the speckled shall be thy wages, then all the cattle bear speckle. And if he said th the ring staked shall be thy higher, then bear all the cattle ring straked.” Well that's not true. [laughs] It's like you you engineered a situation where they would all be ring strakes and spotted. “Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father and given to me.” And then he follows up with, “And it came to pass at the time that the cattle conceived that I lifted up mine eyes and I saw in a dream and behold the rams which leaped upon the cattle ring straked, speckled, and grizzled and the angel of God spake unto me in a dream. Jacob, and I said, here am I, and he said, lift up now thine eyes and see all the rams which leap upon the cattle are ring straked, speckled, and grizzled. For I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee. And I am the God of bethl where thou anointest the pillar where thou vest the vow unto me. Now arise, get thee out from this land and return unto the land of thy kindred.” And it's like, that's really really bad. You're making up a dream about God and using it as a cover story. So that's why Jacob produces Joseph the singular master of dreams. It gets more intricate after that, but there you go. That was one of those, okay, when Jeff started doing this, it's like, okay Jeff, I don't know if you know why you're doing this, I suspect you don't know why you're doing this, but I think you're you're a conduit for something else that's being directed at me. And I'll leave it at that. That's our cliffhanger, and part three picks up from that when next I am remembering Jeffrey Allen Seiler. You want to talk about TMI? There you go, there's TMI.
Matt: [kaughs] Right.
Dave: [laughs] I always look forward to the times when I catch you flat-footed where all you can do is laugh and go, “Right.”
Matt: Well, Jeff had a tendency to, he would come up with an idea and you'd go, why? And that's actually my memory for next month, so I'll leave it there.
Dave: Okay, yeah. Yeah. He was a very very interesting character that way, because just, like you say, just all of a sudden he would say something, and it's not only, “That's a very strange thing to say” but it definitely leads to a “why are you saying it?”
Matt: Right. Right.
Dave: Okay! Now we are into the formal Please Hold for Dave Sim. Uhh, where are we here? Um, oh, I got my pages out of order, I think.
Matt: We're still on page one!
Dave: What's that?
Matt: We're still on page one of my fax.
Dave: Oh that's what happened. I turned it over so that I could read my notes. There we are. Thank you. Thank you, Manly Matt for that.
Matt: I only know because I have page one printed out so I could do the preamble.
Dave: Okay, right! Right. “Then we move on to the ‘Manly Matt Dow doesn't know nothing about this because Dave ain't told him yet but he's gonna tell us all right now’ section of the October 2023 Please Hold for Dave Sim.” And actually, I'm gonna turn that around and say, without giving us actual dollar amounts, this is the first Kickstarter where we've got “Cerebus in Hell?” creators doing their own self-published Kickstarters. This time David Birdsong with the “MarvelManVark.” I'm going to ask you, Matt, looking at it, it's just a little past the one week mark, so about 1/3rd of the way through, where we are where we're recording this, and when this is up on A Moment of Cerebus we'll be about halfway through. Do you think, given what you thought was going to happen with the “MarvelManVark” Kickstarter? Do you think that David Birdsong is ahead of where you thought he would be at this point, just about where you thought he would be, or has David Birdsong got some running to catch up, just like the number of units you're supposed to have to be producing at work that you didn't get to?
Matt: I know it's fully funded, but I also know that leading up to it there was discussion of what should the funding goal be. And I think, cause he had the preview version that people were looking at and and proof reading, and stuff, and I think the preliminary was like, I want to say like 6,000? And he's like, “Ah, I'm gonna lower that.” And I can't remember if he lowered it to 700 or 2,000, but whatever he lowered it too, it is funded. So the project is go at this point, it's just the kicking up support and trying to beat the drum and trying to get the highest total we can. I forgot to send it, the banner on A Moment of Cerebus has an image of Cerebus, it's like a head and shoulder shot where he's smiling and his one eye is a swirl. Cause, you know, it's one of those “he was knocked off his game” type images, but he's got both ears, and I can never remember where it's from. And I was going to send it to you to see if you went, “Oh yeah okay I know that page.” Cause the Swimsuit Bondage cover which has not been revealed yet as far as I know, it's the the image is covered with a Kickstarter K that says “censored for Grandma.” When Birdsong sent the actual cover, I responded with you got to use that head where Cerebus is obviously into it.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And it's the emails have been back and forth and nobody said definitively, “Oh yeah, we should do that.” It's more of a, “well we might need you to find it” and it's like, I can't find where this is from because every time I look for it I'm going, it's the iconic Cerebus in the vest with the medallions, both ears. My brain keeps going, no, this is has to be from “Guys” or “Rick's Story,” where he's shocked at something somebody says. I'm like, but he's got both ears, it's got to be before “Reads.” And it's one of those, it's this circular thing of there's like, what, 3,000 pages in the first half of the phonebooks, you know it's got to be one of them! Yeah, it's kind of a needle in a hay stack.
Dave: Right.
Matt: But Jesse Herndon asked about, cause Birdsong threw on the “Harper’s Bazar” “Cerebus the Emily” variant cover as a add-on because he's got a bunch of them, and Jesse asked, do you have any more of the “Batvark: A Poet in the Family” variant because he kind of liked that one. Birdsong came back with, “That's from the Hobbs end of the ‘Cerebus in Hell?’ pool. You got to ask him.”
Dave: [laughs] That's right! That's right. And we've got to be making these distinctions, because these guys are now self-publishing in their own little silo. Sorry I interrupted.
Matt: But that's, I have to double check the numbers. I haven't been looking because it's, you know, I've been putting the link up but I'm not riding it as much because I was riding Steve Peters’ which ends today, and he's fully funded .I just looked before the phone call, and he made it so “Tails of Sparky” for is go.
Dave: Yay!
Matt: So yay Steve. And James Windsor-Smith is doing “Papa Balloon & Cactus” #3 and that ends the same day as “MiracleManVark” and it's like, we really got to start sending emails to each other and going, “Okay, I'm gonna do my Kickstarter in end of September, beginning of October. Anybody else doing?” [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Yeah, you can't limit people that way. It's the same as we had no idea that Steve Peters was doing his Kickstarter at the same time that we started this one. And it's like, oh! Okay, well, it's gonna happen. I mean, part of the idea here is to have self-publishers breed like rabbits. And there’s gonna be overlap all all over the place. But, go ahead.
Matt: I know, I understand there's gonna be overlap, but I'm a big fan of the “let's try to avoid the massive overlap of the pot's only so big, let's not all stick our hands in at once.”
Dave: Right. Right. Good luck with that!
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Okay, and “Then by the fact that Dave sent it to Manly and therefore he can cut in line because we know about it, we move on to Lank Stephens and his question about working with a background artist (the answer, Lank, is that the background guy does his art after the foreground guy, or you use Photoshop to put the foreground stuff on top of the background. However you ‘swing.’ But here's Dave to read your question and say that in a longer and more detailed way with an actual real world experience answer).” I'm gonna ask here, I did ask if you could, this was posted to the Weekly Update because Dave Fisher dropped it off. Were you able to contact Lank so that he knows about this or?
Matt: I haven't yet, but now that I know where to look I will okay.
Dave: Alright. Yeah, just post it as a comment or something and we'll hope for the best. This one's gonna turn into a a series anyway of, since I think this raises a number of important questions, but we're just gonna start with the basics on this one. Lank asks, “Question, I've written 43 chapters of what will be a rather long self-published comic book, and I intend to draw the backgrounds, while hiring somebody better than me who can render the characters. Could you describe the process when Gerhard and you worked like that. On the Bristol board or whatever, did you erase part of Gerhard’s to layer the characters on top or…? Just trying to figure out how I would do such a two-man collaboration. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.” Okay, in order to answer this question thoroughly, we have to get back to the the the essence of the thing in terms of the reality of what Lank’s talking about doing. Lank, at this point you're the creator, writer, background artist. So my best initial advice would be get as much done on your side as you can. Now that that's the situation, that's all that exists with this intellectual property is you as creator/writer/background artist, and owner of the intellectual property. Do all 43 chapters if possible. I don't know how long the chapters are, but as many chapters as possible, to establish… the fact of you being the creator/writer/background artist. That wasn't a planned thing, with the Gerhard as collaborator on “Cerebus,” but it was the situation that I had done 64 issues of “Cerebus” solo and was now bringing on a collaborator. That's a very different thing from
”let's you and me sit down and do a comic book” as was the situation, say, with the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” So it's going to simplify matters and help you to get this intellectual property into a state of realism. It actually exists if you make it actually exist drawing it. It would certainly be odd to do the backgrounds first, but if that's the way your most comfortable working, it's your book. You're the only one who's working on it right now. The collaborator is theoretical at this point. Assuming you're doing the storytelling and lettering, and theoretically I'll add in the panel borders and word balloons, it would be a matter of just outlining the characters. The shape of the outline would tell the artist you're going to be hiring what to draw. You can then retouch the outlines, or the artists that you hired to do the characters could do that. That would also tell you what sort of artist you're looking for. Someone who just likes penciling and inking characters with zero interest in writing, lettering, composition, storytelling. As I said, get as many pages done as you can on this basis where you're the guy writing the story, putting the panel borders on, putting the word balloons on, lettering, and inking all of that. Photocopy 10 pages onto illustration board as a try out. 10 pages would tell he or she and you if you're viable collaborators. Arguably, like picturing this, it would make a good side hustle for someone if they can just bang out pages effortlessly, unlike work where they're doing everything themselves start to finish in the comic book form. You could be lucky enough to find somebody who's in that situation where they go, “If I'm just penciling and inking the characters, I don't have to think about the storytelling, I don't have to think about panel shapes, how many panels are on a page, how many panels I need to get this idea across. I'm not having to worry about any of that. That's all your job and as the creator, writer, and background artist is to establish all of that.” You could be very lucky and find somebody who goes, “Oh hey this is fun. I can do like four pages a day. I can do five pages a day if all I'm doing is penciling and inking the characters. You give me the model sheets of what the characters look like from all the different angles. I can see from the outline how much and what angle you're looking at the character, and kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom. Look at me, I'm Jack Kirby! I can do five pages a day!” If that is what's destined to happen with this, obviously the more you have done, the faster it's going to go. If you just get the 10 pages done and give him the try outs, he's apt to bang out the 10 pages and go, “Well come on come on come on! Where's the pages up ahead?” It's like, “Well I haven't got them done yet.” “Oh come on!” It took you a year to find your collaborator. You could have had 50 pages done on your side, and now you're just booting along, and very possibly you could have a monthly comic book out of this. So that's my direct answer to what you're asking me, specifically about your situation. Here's where you need to start, and in all capital letters, as emphatically as I can possibly make it, if you're going to do it this way, produce as many pages as you can. Whatever you can comfortably do, and I'm assuming that this isn't your job because you're talking about hiring an artist which means you have an income from somewhere else. However much of your disposable free time you have, start producing pages, and get as much of the 43 chapters down on paper as you can. Let's say that they are 20 pages each, that means it's an 800 page graphic novel. How quickly can you get the 800 pages done so that when you do find your collaborator as much of the book is done as possible and you don't have to be worrying about, “Okay what happens here? What happens in chapter 20/21?” You're way out ahead of them, and all he's doing is penciling and inking the characters. So that's as emphatic as I can possibly be above this is a very weird thing that you're asking me, It certainly would be the first of its kind, a comic book written and drawn and composed and all the backgrounds inked and the last thing that goes on is the characters. This is the approach that I would say that you need to take.
Matt: I'm trying to think, I swear there was a series where it was basically that. The writer had some artistic chops but not enough, and he was getting somebody else to do the figures. I don't know what the process there was, but I'm trying to remember what creator it was or what series it was, and it's, I know there was one I just can't think of what the title was.
Dave: Well, there you go. That's a quiz for the Please Hold for Dave Sim listenership. If you can think what Manly Matt Dow is thinking of, we will send you a prize. Fun prizes!
And then Dodger sent in… oh, now I'm looking for page three. Where's page three? Here's page three. Okay, “To the alliterationy Manly Matt and the eminently famous Dave Sim.” [laughs] No, the eminently notorious Dave Sim, possibly accounted for by “The Dream of a Thousand Cats.” “Great anchors in comics history, I'm reading ‘Woodwork’ a retrospective published in 2012 about Wally Wood. I know you've been influenced by Will Eisner, Al Williamson, and Neal Adams. Question, are there other great inker influences?” Practically without number. Inking as a skill, I have to, at this point, have to give definite credit and very serious credit to the existence of HeritageAuctions.com where we're all able to see brilliant spectrums of inking, all in black and white. All the way that the creator did it without garbage world press colour on top of it. And I'm sure, this is bringing about a Renaissance, we're just in the first two decades of of Heritage Auctions and online scans of original artwork, and this is going to clarify for more artists than we could have imagined back in the 1970s and 1980s of, “This guy! This guy's inking is exactly what I see in my head and I can look at this on a computer screen and enlarge it 400 times and go, what does that pen line look like? What does that that brush stroke look like?” Which brings us to the next part of Mike's question, “What makes a great inker in your mind? Use of blacks, delicate line work, overall composition, where and when to use blacks. Is there a big difference between comic strip inkers and comic book inkers?” Uh, I would narrow the frame of reference on this just because we're already 45 minutes in and all of these ever expanding questions definitely eat up time. I would say, let's limit it to photorealism, and let's limit it to two examples of photorealistic inkers. And let's limit it to to comic books. I would suggest, two of the best examples that I could cite, if you want to take a look at this and go “Okay, yeah, I know what Dave's saying here.” The best example would be, and I'm looking forward to talking about this in Strange Death of Alex Raymond when I get up as far as the 1970s and 1980s. In terms of a separate ink, the collaboration between Gene Colan and Tom Palmer on “Tomb of Dracula.” And playing along at home, if you're asking, “What should I be looking at?” I would suggest, if you can get the “Tomb of Dracula”… what does Marvel call their black and white books? Their phonebooks?
Matt: The Essential Collection.
Dave: Essential books, right. Thank you. Thank you. So if you can find a “Tomb of Dracula” Essential. “Tomb of Dracula” ran 70 issues, and it really is a remarkable series, and the best way to see it is in black and white. Some of the reproduction isn't Heritage Auctions level of quality, but it is at least in black and white. And it's an amazing thing to look at. If you're familiar with Gene Colan as a penciler, and Gene Colan was, you know, did have a whole career in penciling for Marvel Comics before the collaboration with Tom Palmer on “Tomb of Dracula.” I would love to be not only a fly on the wall but a fly inside of Tom Palmer's brain when he got Gene Colan's pencils on “Tomb of Dracula” and was looking at it going, “Man, there's a lot of interpretation that needs to go in here. I can see what Gene Colan is doing, but Gene Colan is a very unique penciler.” I describe him as the fisheye photorealist because, it's like Gene Colan looked at the world through a fisheye lens, and it's all very very accurate but it's all very very imaginative because he is making it up. “This is what this looks like from this angle. This is not only what this character looks like in a fisheye lens, this is what the background looks like in a fisheye lens. “ And Tom Palmer was a very very literalist, Johnstone & Cushing style illustrator, in addition to being a comic book inker. And what he was looking at, and going, “Okay it's all here in this part of Gene’s pencils. Over here it just sort of drifts off into, and then, you know, the pencils look something like this. But in terms of my own inking,” speaking as Tom Palmer, “I'm really really precise. Like I'm way at the literalist end of things. What does this look like?” So there's not only Tom Palmer being faithful to Gene Colan's pencils, but then saying, “Okay, I have to take all of my chops and say not only do I have to figure out what this chair and this room look like in behind the character, I have to figure out what they look like in a fisheye lens and then I have to ink them with either a Hunt 102 or a Gillott 290,” or whatever Tom Palmer was inking and say, “This is exactly what this would look like in Gene Colan's frames of reference.” In addition to being a very fun comic book and a very fun variation on Dracula, page after page after page of this, just bear in mind when you're looking at it, not all of this was here in pencil, and what Tom Palmer brought to the table and learned to interpret over the course of the 70 issues. I think it was a monthly title, so it was a good six years of Tom Palmer going, “Okay, here it is again, and I have to do this as literally as possible.” And, you know, coupled with Marv Wolfman's wonderful storylines. and wonderful characters. and intricacies interpreted from Gene Colan’s pencils, since they were they were working Marvel Style, you really can't do better than than “Tomb of Dracula.” I'll find out that the Essential volumes have been sold out for years. These are going for hundreds if not thousands of dollars on eBay because people have figured this out. But if they haven't figured it out, definitely, in terms of what you're asking, Mike, try and find “Tomb of Dracula” Essential volumes, and boy, read the story, but just look at Gene Colan over to Tom Palmer, Tom Palmer back to Gene Colan. Can't do better than that.
The other one that I would think of in that category is Frank Miller and Klaus Janson on “Dark Knight Returns.” And unfortunately there you'll have to go to Heritage Auctions and look at the scans because if I'm not mistaken I don't think there's a black and white version of “Dark Knight Returns”
Matt: Uh, there might be. They might have done an Absolute Edition that was black and white.
Dave: Oh is that what is called? An Absolute Edition?
Matt: Well, and the other thought is, for both these series there may be Artist Editions where it's the art at-size reproduced, you know, in the nice fancy $200 hardcovers.
Dave: [laughs] Which, I'm not going to direct anybody in that direction, but yeah, if you have a bottomless bank account and you can find Artist Editions. Excuse me, I'm drooling myself right here going, an Artist Edition of “Tomb of Dracula”?! [drools audibly] Or “Dark Knight Returns” Artist Edition? [drools audibly] See I'd be going the cheap route, I'd be going, okay Heritage Auctions, let's see how many auctions I can go through. Because a lot of ”The Dark Knight Returns” artwork is definitely coming onto the market, pages that people bought for 200, $300 back in the 1980s, from either Frank or Klaus Janso,n are now going for tens of thousands of dollars, which does tend to bring them out of the woodwork. But same basic principle, Frank Miller and Klaus Janson worked together on “Daredevil.” And I would be very curious, I don't know if there's any commentary that either of those guys have done on the work. Did Frank sit down with Klaus Janson and go, “Okay, you know, I see what you're doing on ‘Daredevil’ and two enthusiastic thumbs up on on that one. But now I'm gonna be doing this project for DC called ‘Dark Knight Returns,’ and I want you to be the inker on it, and I'm gonna be leaning into what it is that you're doing. Which is this marvelous, completely idiosyncratic, Klaus Janson inking where it's virtually all pen, some brush, but really really spontaneous.” And it was derived from Neal Adams. I mean it was, okay,, this is very very popular art style here in the 1980s. All of us going, “I want to do Neal Adams, but I can't do Neal Adams because I'm not Neal Adam, so here's what I'm gonna do, doing this extremly pen-heavy.” Klaus Janson took everything to a place that had never been before. And as I say, I'm very very curious as to whether there was any kind of dialogue on it, because I don't think there was any dialogue on the Gene Colan and Tom Palmer collaboration. It was just, whoever the editor was said, “Okay, here's Gene Colan's pencils. Tom Palmer’s got some time, let’s send this over and let's see what comes out.” And it's like, “Oh! Really really good. Let's see how long we can keep Tom Palmer on ‘Tomb of Dracula.’” And stayed on throughout the whole run. In this case Frank Miller was, “Okay, I'm doing ‘Daredevil’ but if I get a chance to go from doing ‘Daredevil’ to doing ‘Batman’, I'm gonna take it because Batman is gonna outsell ‘Daredevil’ by orders of magnitude. So I think I can get some major royalties on this.” He would be in a situation where he could say, “Klaus Janson's the inker. He's on my team. I don't want any questioning about that. I'm not gonna ink it myself. I inked ‘Ronin’ myself, and no, I want an inker on ‘Dark Knight Returns’ and I want Lynn to do the coloring. No ifs, ands, or buts.” And did Frank at that point go, “Okay, Klaus, we have to talk about this.” And have you read any commentary like that on the collaboration between Frank Miller and Klaus Janson? What they had to say about it and how it started?
Matt: I haven't. I don't know if there is any or if it's just something I haven't seen. I mean, there may have been like “Wizard” interviews back in the 90s. Maybe.
Dave: Right.
Matt: So you want the good news or the bad news, Dave?
Dave: [laughs] Let's start with the bad news.
Matt: Well, you know, you don't have limitless amounts of money, but there is an Artist Edition of “Tomb of Dracula” that has six full issues in original art, black and white, reprinted in the nice hard covers for like $125 bucks. But it's issues 25, 28, 36, 37, 46, and 48.
Dave: Prime stuff. Prime stuff. I'm sitting there picturing in my mind, okay, which ones would I want them to be? [laughs] And it's like, yeah, that's definitely in the range. That would be, oh! Oh, I am drooling. I didn't know I was going to need a drool cup for this edition of Please Hold for Dave Sim. Oh, I'm dying. I'm dying. Okay, yes, that is the bad news. What's the good news?
Matt: “Batman Noir: The Dark Knight Returns” black and white, the entire series, 28 bucks.
Dave: Yay! Now you're talking Dave Sim money! [laughs] Oh. Okay. Alright, I don't know if I'm telling tales of the school here, that I think Frank Miller and Klaus Janson came to loggerheads at some point and maybe aren't comfortable talking about how the collaboration went down? Or at least how it ended up? But that's just an impression that I have in my mind. But I would be interested. Like, there is some commentary by Barry Windsor-Smith in the the “Red Nails” Artist Edition, but most of it is not really too much commentary by him. Given the impact that “Dark Knight Returns” had on the comic book field, I would really hope that whatever commentary is there for the sake of future creators, people who are saying, “I’d like a balance between cartoon realism and photorealism.” Which is what we're talking about with ”Dark Knight Returns,” it is very very exaggerated, but it is photorealistic riffs. What was the decision making? Are there pencils? Did Klaus Janson photocopy Frank Miller's pencils before he inked them? And are there before and after? Because there's a lot of stuff you can learn from that.
But getting back to Dodger, he had, “How do you feel,” [laughs] I put a a box round “feel” obviously “about Wally Wood’s inking and art legacy?” I do have I think a salient observation about Wally Wood's inking. If you think of the assistants that Wally Wood had, just off the top of my head, the top guys in terms of where they went after being Wally Wood’s assistants, Larry Hama, Wayne Howard, Dan Adkins, Ralph Reese. I think one of the Wally Wood’s inking and art legacies that doesn't get talked about very much at all, and I think that's dropping the ball on who Wally Wood was, was the strength of Wally Wood's inking. As soon as Wally Wood inked the job, it might as well be a Wally Wood job, because it was just that powerful an inking style. You look at it and you go, “Okay, I know what that is.” And it was so dominant that, the job that the assistants had working for Wally Wood was pulling out swipes from the swipe file. It's like, “Find me a girl's head.” And okay, here's Stan Drake’s Heart of Juliet Jones. [laughs] I always love Larry Hama's comment that the only Heart of Juliet Jones collections that existed back in the day when he was Wally Wood’s assistant were in Spanish! There were no English language Heart of Juliet Jones, which is, you know, mindboggling. [laughs] Larry Hama’s reaction was, “This Spanish guy Stan Drake, he really knows how to draw.” [laughs]
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: But one of their jobs, the job would be, “I need a girl's head. Go look at the Heart of Juliet Jones collections, find a girl's head, and photocopy it, and stick it down on this page up ahead on this job that I'm working on.” And Wally Wood could trace on a light table, or Larry Hama would trace on a light table this Stan Drake head. And they're pretty distinctive. Like, Juliet Jones looks like Juliet Jones. Eve Jones looks like Juliet Jones. And it would be a major challenge trying to make it not look like Stan Drake did it, and boom, as soon as Wally Wood sat down with Larry Hama's pencil tracing of an Eve Jones head, it's a Wally Wood head! And it's like, how do you do that? How could you possibly…? It was just, the man was like an inking bulldog, where as he saw it, he's Wally Wood and this is gonna be a Wally Wood job when it's done, he was a steamroller. And he turned all of these very very distinctive artists, Larry Hama, Wayne Howard, Dan Adkins, Ralph Reese, into steamrollers where, “I see with Wally Wood's eyes because that's my job and this is a background figure and I know how to make this look as if Wally Wood drew it. We're not worthy! We're not worthy!” Wayne Howard in particular, Dan Adkins in particular, saw through Wally Wood's eyes, and there is no other artist that I can think of that was in that category. Neal Adams would have died and gone to heaven if he was capable of doing that to his assistants. They all tried to look like Neal Adams, all of the Crusty Bunkers working at Continuity Associates, but they all started developing their own riffs. It's like, you could tell looking at a Crusty Bunker job, “I think Neal probably did this. I don't think Neal did this.” But Dick Giordano was about the only one at Continuity with the Crusty Bunkers where you would go, “Is it Neal or is it Dick?” But everybody else was, well okay. [laughs] It got the job done, and Neal and Dick didn't have to ink all of it. So good revenue for Continuity Associates. But in terms of a steamroller, Wally Wood was the only steamroller in that category. And it's a prayer time. So I'm gonna have to interrupt and call you back in a little while, Matt.
Matt: Okay! That works.
Dave: Talk to you in a few minutes, Buh-bye.
Matt: Alright, bye!
[that damn chiming music again. What, am I trapped in a baby’s crib?]
Matt: Hello again, Dave!
Dave: Hello again, Matt! [coughs] Excuse me. Oh, got a frog in my throat for some reason. Okay, next one is Jason Trimmer. Hello, Jason. Jason curated the Ye Bookes of Cerebus Art Exhibit at St Bonaventure University back in 2005, I believe it was. So, hello again, Jason. “Hi Matt, for the past couple of years I haven't been able to shake the thought that President Biden looks like Dave's depiction of Mary Hemingway in ‘Form & Void.’ Is it just me? Do either of you see it?” Do you see it?
Matt: Kind of, maybe? Depending on the image and depending on, you know. I'm just making a note of, get a picture of Biden and then go through “Form & Void” and grab some images of Mary and we can do a side by side in the videos.
Dave: There's an idea. There's an idea. Yeah, I think Jason, what you referring to, and it is something that I've noticed. Again, I don't have television and haven't had television since 2001, so all of my experiences of President Biden are just photos in the newspaper, which aren't the best quality photos in any situation. But definitely the thing that I think you're referring to, and that I can definitely see in my mind's eye when I picture news photos of President Biden, is what I would call this this sort of white radiance thing. That Mary Hemingway had white hair, I think most of the period of time that she was married to Ernest Hemingway. Or it was blonde hair which was dyed so so bright that it might as well have been white, and consequently you get this sort of glow effect, depending on the texture of the hair. And I think this is true of President Biden, and Mary Hemingway, that the texture of the hair, and the whiteness of the skin, doesn't differentiate itself. It's very hard to tell looking at either of them, okay, where does the hair start and where does the skin end? Because it's just so bright, and because of the texture of the hair, there's a radiance to the hair that then makes it look as if the person themselves have a kind of radiance. And also there's a quality I would describe as brutalized defiance, [laughs] for want of of another term, where the eyes become narrowed and rather unfocused because there's just this relentless quality to the person. In Mary Hemingway's case, in the face of Ernest Hemingway's dominance, “Ernest is going to dominate, but I will always be defiant.” There will always be a sharp distinction between Mary Hemingway and Ernest Hemingway, and that's never going to be eliminated. And in President Biden's case, man, you talk about somebody who took the blows and kept going, relentlessly driving towards President, and driving towards becoming a Senator. And was never really well thought of by Democrats. If you had to say before 2020, who could possibly become President of the United States, or a long serving Senator, Joe Biden would be very very low on your list. My own theory is that Bill Clinton talked Barack Obama into making Joe Biden Vice President to make sure that there would be no competition for Hilary in 2016. [laughs] And it's like, the perfect candidate was Joe Biden. Nobody's going to look at at Vice President Biden and say, “Well, he was Vice President, so he's the natural President now.” So, yes, I can see physically and metaphysically what it is that you're talking about.
Then Jason writes, “That got me thinking, if Dave was working on ‘Cerebus’ today, is there a contemporary political or literary figure he thinks would be right to lampoon, either because their features would make for a funny caricature or because their speech patterns would lend themselves to his lettering style?” And then he adds, “Hard mode, no Donald Trump, who is basically Cerebus anyway? Many people tell me I'm the best prime minister.” That's an impossible question for me to answer, because I haven't had television since 2001. So you know, when I was starting to make use of the technology for exactly that thing, there's somebody that I want to do and I want to do them accurately. The Three Stooges, having VHS tapes of Three Stooges shorts, and being able to play them and watch watch them frame by frame. There's an idiosyncratic Moe Howard body posture and movement. What does that look like frame by frame, and which one of of those am I going to pick for this panel here to do the most iconic Moe Howard? I still have never heard Donald Trump's voice, which I'm sure there's number of people who envy me that. I still haven't seen how Donald Trump moves. Just as an iconic figure, I think I would probably have to do Donald Trump. I can't think of anybody who has so dominated his society, having attained to the Presidency, and because I've only seen still photos of him and read his tweets, [laughs] which I guess are called X's now. That I just don't get a mental picture, but it would be somebody that dominant and somebody that unpresidential in the conventional sense of Presidents. Presidents are supposed to smile like absolute fools, and it's very very rare that you see any image of Donald Trump smiling. I did see a photo in the newspaper a couple of weeks back where it was him holding up the the hand of one of his picked candidates and celebrating his victory. That's the only time that I've seen a picture of Donald Trump smiling. And yet he's also the most incredibly successful President in terms of, guy never ran for elected office anywhere. Started with President of the United States. [laughs] Something is up there, and it would be interesting since he was President of the United States to have an assistant, okay, go on YouTube and find me a full figure of Donald Trump moving. Like, walking into a meeting or whatever else. The only requirement I got to have is it's got to be from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. I gotta know how his body works, the same as I was doing with Moe Howard. And to be able to watch that frame by frame and go, okay, there's only one Donald Trump so odds are he moves physically like no other human being on the planet, just because he has this Effect on people. Giant giant giant negative effect, giant giant giant positive effect. And I've got to know how he works. It would be in terms of, like, apart from the the speech patterns, the physical Donald Trump. I think one of the things I found most interesting about him was also the unpresidential quality of, “You're fired!” [laughs] It was, anytime anybody in his cabinet wasn't, or his chief of staff or whoever it was, wasn't living up to Donald Trump's mental image of who they're supposed to be, his automatic reaction was, “You’re fired.” Which was the complete opposite of, again, the presidential approach where you don't cabinet secretaries resigning because it makes it look like you made bad choices, and we don't want a President who makes bad choices. So the few resignations you have in the course of your administration, the better your presidency is going to be. It's like [laughs] Donald Trump took the opposite tactic. It's like, “These people are lined up down the hall. They're lined up in every direction, just more than willing to jump into the place of whoever else it was. I got my pick of hundreds and hundreds of guys that if I don't like the Secretary of State, hey, you're fired. And you, you're now the Secretary of State. And you're gonna have about three weeks to prove to me that you're Donald Trump's Secretary of State. And if you're not, you're fired!” So that's as specific as I can be on that. I mean, it's like, win, lose, or draw, with Donald Trump, there's only one of them. And it would be very interesting if ‘Cerebus’ was still going to say, okay, I've got to get him physically. And this is, I've got YouTube to pick for on that and just say, Rolly, here's what I'm looking for. Find me footage of Donald Trump, a full figure, coming toward the camera, going sideways, doesn't matter, as long as I can see how his body moves and how the suit responds to how his body moves. He's very idiosyncratic, and that would be the physical side of it. And then, just “you’re fired” would be, what does it sound like when Donald Trump says “you're fired”? I never watched “The Apprentice,” so I have no idea. It would be interesting to break that down into Dave Sim lettering. What is Donald Trump's “you're fired” look like, as opposed to “you're fired” in a general sense.
Matt: I mean, the best way to describe the way Trump talks and moves is Groucho Marx without the humor.
Dave: [laughs] Really?
Matt: I mean, he's got this I don't like watching Trump just because he's Trump and you know he's grated on my… I figured out why I've always kind of had an aversion to him is because I was going through a box of old “Mad” magazines and “Cracked” magazines, and apparently the guys that “Cracked” made a joke about Trump in like every issue I own.
Dave: Really?
Matt: And so, you know, I picked up on, oh yeah, that Trump guy, like there's one where their Cracked reporter is interviewing a parody of Trump and bringing up real world “Hey this is what's going on with this guy” and pointing out that it's kind of ridiculous that he divorced his wife, married his mistress, but his wife still helps run the company.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And so, but whenever he's in an interview, it's, you know, someone will ask him a question and you know it's a presidential style question of, it's kind of a softball. “We're gently lobbing to you. This is, we're setting you up so you can talk about your policy initiative whatever” and he would just like, either he would be nailing Jell-o, where you're asking him a simple yes/no question and he won't give an answer, or he'd be like a dog with a chew toy where you ask him a simple question and he goes off on a weird tangent and is rabidly attacking whatever weird tangent he brought up, and it's like, okay, but the question was… you know.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And you watch enough interviews with him that after about the third one you're like, anybody can do this, it's just either, “I won't answer the question” or “I will divert the question to whatever I'm grinding against right now.”
Dave: Which is interesting. Yeah, I get that in the newspapers, as well, where it's not only did he not answer the question, not only did he go off on an oblique angle, there's no way to determine the connective tissue. Why did that steer him over in that direction? What is Donald Trump seeing in that question that says, “Oh this is how I'm going to answer that one.” Which is a kind of mystique, as well. It's, like you say, there's nobody who's going to make Donald Trump into Donald Trump, because what you think is a softball question, and “here Mr President I'm just trying to help you” it's like, “Uh now I have absolutely no idea what to say. I'm trying to help and you've answered that question in such a way that I don't even know how to get back to my question.”
Matt: I mean, if “Cerebus” was continuing and if you introduced Donald Trump, it would have to be one of these, he couldn't become a reoccurring character because then the book would be about that character. It would have to very much be a “Cerebus rides into the town, meets this guy, and at the end of the issue, he rides out of town and never goes back.” [laughs]
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: I mean, when you were reading Jason's question, I'm going, okay who as a fan would I have liked to have seen? And honestly, a post-car-accident Stephen King, I think would have been a really interesting character to introduce. Cause the way Stephen King moves since the accident, because he broke his hip, and broke ribs and stuff, you know, he moves different than he used to. And he was a big tall lanky guy to begin with, so now he's a big tall goofy-looking lanky guy when he walks. And there’s Maine accent so you'd have fun lettering that.
Dave: That would be good. Yes.
Matt: And he's been photographed a couple million times, so you could really lean into the the “Latter Days”/”Last Day” photorealism of the character. And I'm like, that could be cool. I mean, let's be honest Dave, as the guy who did 26 issues of “glamourpuss,” any cute pop singer probably could have made it into the book for pages and pages and pages and Dave wouldn't have complained.
Dave: [laughs] But we know that's a different thing entirely. Uh, no, if you're gonna be using these skills, again, you and Jason, and I think every Cerebus fan have mental images of, like ”I want to see Dave riff on this character, on this actual person, not just because of how she looks but because of, okay what does Dave Sim see when he looks at Jimmy Carter? What does Dave Sim see when he looks at Margaret Thatcher? And, yeah it definitely narrowed itself frequently by, okay, and I'm not just going to do this to go, look at how ridiculous this person is. It's like all prominent people definitely have an easy ridiculous side to parody, but they also have, how they see themselves, and how the people who admire them see them. And that was definitely one of the modern terms skill sets that I developed in in “Cerebus” in myself was, no, it's gotta be a balance here. You can't just be going, “Ha ha, you're ridiculous.” And you can't be going, “okay, I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy.” But you got to have both of those elements in there.
Moving on to Christon Hunwardsen. Hi Christon and thank you always for your patronage. One of one of the great 2023 Dave Sim art patrons. “I have multiple questions pertaining to Dave's creative processes. I really enjoyed the duoshade used on Cerebus throughout his entire run, it gave him a consistent gray textured tone.” And you point out, “I think he means zipatone AKA letraset,” actually letrone. Letraset was with letters. “How is this product applied? It appears to be perhaps a sticky sheet specially cut around every Cerebus figure, or was it ever just developer brushed onto a special type of paper board?” No, that is duoshade, but I can't think of a duoshade Cerebus that I did. Even when I did duoshade in issue #12, the Cerebuses were all still done with letratone. “I imagine it was a very tedious process but it looked great. Do you still have any duoshade.” I don't have the duoshade. I do have some letratone. Had a very bad experience with 30% letratone back in the early 2000s that has made me very gunshy, because the adhesive turned out not to be adhesive enough, even when you burnished it down, and hated to do that with any piece of artwork. Nobody is gonna want to get a piece of artwork with a toned Cerebus on it that then starts peeling up around the sides. And as Sean Robinson discovered remastering the artwork, the plastic shrinks. So, that's another thing that you don't want for posterity, better to have an albino Cerebus where that Cerebus is still is gonna look the way it looks now 100 years from now, then, well, it's still Cerebus, but his tone has shrunk. It comes on a backing sheet which is just sort of like wax paper on one side, and ordinary paper on the other. And it's a film. It's a very very thin transparent film that you can see through, and the dots are printed on the one side. So what you do is you take an x-acto knife, and putting the letratone sheet over the page, you can see the shape of Cerebus through the backing paper and through the very very thin self adhesive film, and you cut around it in a general shape so that it's going to include all the Cerebus. And then you stick the x-acto knife into the seam that you've just cut, and then carefully pull the letratone off of the backing sheet, move the backing sheet away, and then carefully place the tone on the Cerebus figure, and being very careful not to get any bubbles under there, because if you get bubbles under there and you try and smooth them down sometimes you get a ripple and now you've got a line through your letratone, and you have to start over again. But once you do that, once you've got it on there, okay, it's now covering the figure. I've carefully placed it, and now I want to smooth it down but not too heavily so that it's adhering and it's going to peel up the artwork when I have to peel it up, but firm enough so that it's sticking there. And I'm now cutting out along Cerebus' ear and the curve on the bottom of the ear, the side of the face, around the mouth, around the snout, and with a sharp enough x-acto knife so that it's cutting the tone, but it's not cutting into the artwork. Because it's an inked Cerebus, and it's very easy to cut into the inking. And now you've got a cut through your carefully inked Cerebus snout. So it's a real balancing act of, it's got to be this heavy to make sure that it's doing this, not too heavy so that it's sticking too hard, cutting so that it's a very specific cut, and when you peel up the adhesive film it's going to stay in place, but not so much that when you peel up the film itself, the part that you're cutting away, it doesn't peel up the artwork with it. [laughs] So you want to talk about very tedious process, yes, it's a very tedious process, and I think I'm pretty sure Gerhard and I both count ourselves very very lucky that we will never have to do that again for the rest of our lives.
“Artistically what do you believe is your greatest strength?” I would say probably the storytelling. The transition from panel to panel so that you're reading it, the story reads smoothly. As Kim Thompson said in the earliest review, “Like a skilled driver driving you through streets at a high rate of speed.” That's just Instinct. I don't think that's something that you can… you can learn! You can, but it mostly it's a matter of development. You either have that in your mind where you break things down into long shot, closeup, wide panel, closing in, cryptic, silent panel in the middle, breaking reality down into comic book panels. “Self-critical weakness?” Just can't get the artwork sharp enough. I'm just not a sharp artist and the more that I work on photorealism, looking at Alex Raymond magnified, Neal Adams magnified, Stan Drake magnified, Al Williamson magnified. The guys’ work, their work is so crisp. How do you get that? How do you… I'm getting better at it, but boy,it's got to be under the magnifying lamp, and it's got to be filling in solid blacks almost to the edge, and then filling in with Hunt 102 pen nib so that I can get it as sharp as Dave Sim can get it, which is just dull dull dull compared to the real photorealists. And for those guys, it's just it’s a brush stroke! You do it smooth. Don't do it rough, do it smooth. I'm just not a smooth guy. “This is perhaps a long shot, but do you foresee any more tours/conventions in your future?” No. Definitely not. In terms of best uses of Granpaw's time in his late 60s, there's just way too much stuff that needs doing, and conventions, signings, tours, even if it was something here in town, even if it was something just getting driven to Toronto, that's just too much dead time. That's, you know, an hour down to Toronto, and then 40 minutes checking into the hotel, and then over to the convention. It's,hours are precious. Minutes are precious. Seconds are precious. I don't have any anything that I would describe as a downtime. I'm never going, okay, now what am I going to do? Everything is, this has to be done to try and keep me healthy, this has to be done in order to accomplish as many of the things that I have left to do depending on how much time I have left to me. I’m sure I would enjoy a convention. I would enjoy a signing, but just bad, bad use of the time. [laughs] Matt says, “I'm-a say no. Dave?” And, uh yeah, that's the bottom line on that one for multiple reasons. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Christon Hunwardsen, and thank you, Christon!
And then Michael R. “Hi Matt, I picked Reed Waller's birthday as an answer only because I Google searched ‘comics history on August 3rd.’ I noticed that Dave drew an ‘Omaha the Cat’ cover for Reed,” yeah, that was “Images of Omaha” for Kitchen Sink as a benefit for Reed Waller when he was having health problems. “I picked August 3rd because I think that was the day you were calling Dave that day for Please Hold. So I thought it would have been a cool answer when one of you would have figured out that Reed's birthday was the same day as the phone call!” And it's like, yeah, you were very helpful in that sense because I'm going, it dragged into a month and I still don't know what I'm going to say about this. It's like, ask Matt! Matt is sitting at a computer. Matt can Google search Reed Waller and would have picked up August 3rd right away. So, and now that's in my mental toolbox of Please Hold for Dave Sim assets, if there's something that you can't think of, ask Matt. It'll take him a couple of minutes to Google search, but fill in some dead air and Bob's your uncle. We would have known that August 3rd was Reed Waller's birthday. “I thought that would have been funny.” It is funny! It would have been much funnier if I had known, okay, this is an over to Matt thing. When is Reed Waller's birthday? Which would have been morphed into its own rabbit hole Dave Sim Comic Art Metaphysics, which, yeah I'm still I'm still astonished at the fact that we're all in this Comic Art Metaphysics context, and you had no idea when you picked August 3rd because it was Reed Waller's birthday, and because it was August 3rd, you had no idea that it was August 3rd 1949 and that Dave Sim has been labouring tirelessly for six months on the many deaths of Margaret Mitchell, all of which took place August 11th 1949. That's amazing that two things are occurred simultaneously.
Matt: Well not simultaneously, but within two weeks.
Dave: Within eight days. I mean, come on! [laughs] You're being Comic Art Metaphysics resistant to a point that fail of human understanding as far as I'm concerned. But that's differences in people too, Benjamin Hobbs is like that. It’s “’The Valking Dead’ was the 37th issue of ‘Cerebus in Hell’ and it was around my 37th birthday, but it didn't come out on my 37th birthday.” It's like, come on guys, work with me here! Anyway, go ahead.
Matt: Well, it's not a bullseye, but it's still really close.
Dave: It's really close. Close enough for government work and close enough for atomic weapons. And then Michael R follows up with, “My answer for this month is ‘Dick Tracy by Chester Gould’.” And my question attached to that would be, what comic strip detective drawn in a primitivist cartoon style always had a level of popularity orders of magnitude greater than Secret Agent X-9, which William Randolph Heart paid Dashiell Hammett, The Dashiell Hammett, and Alex Raymond boat loads of money to directly compete with? The answer is Dick Tracy by Chester Gould, and major props for Chester Gould on that. It's like, it's not about a best-selling novelist and the most realistic cartoonist, it's about “this thing in my head, this element, this part of being Chester Gould, that when I sit down and do Dick Tracy, it's going to blow that out of the water, even though my drawing ability and my writing ability is probably not much further above Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. So, nyah, on you guys!” This is a mysterious thing, and I can't explain it, but it's right there in front of you. You can throw giant piles of money at unbelievably talented people and they're never going to be able to compete with Chester Gould decade after decade after decade.
Michael R then says, “When I received ‘The Last Day’ hardcover Kickstarter, I also received The Last Day widescreen auction catalog, second printing. First thing I noticed was that it was a bit thinner than the first printing. Ones auctioned off were missing. Will there be a third printing, and will there be new additions to the catalog?” And as you, say yes, there is a third printing. The Lst Day widescreen auction catalog and the idea of auctioning widescreen Remaque editions at A Moment of Cerebus, both of those were post Turtles 8 Kickstarter. Actually during the Turtles 8 Kickstarter, where, okay, this isn't bringing in “I am now fixed for life” amounts of money. It's bringing in large amounts of money, but keeping it in perspective, I got to figure out other ways to make money. That was one of those, this should work. A Moment of Cerebus is like Cerebus HQ, probably in competition with the Cerebus Facebook page. I don't know which would be the more popular in that. Here's a catalog with one-of-a-kind Dave Sim colour pieces. Widescreen Dave Sim colour pieces, and we're gonna auction them at A Moment of Cerebus. Presumably this is like a license to print money. [laughs] It's like, we have certainly just found out that it's the opposite of that, I think you would have to agree.
Matt: It's a license to ask for money!
Dave: [laughs] A license to get a bunch of blank stares, even if the amount of money being asked for turns out to be, “Okay, I have $10” and I get $11.
Matt: Well, and part of the problem was I didn't get the catalog right away so I didn't know when I was supposed to be putting stuff up, and then it was one of those, you know, like Michael got it, so Michael's asking. It's like, I don't know. I kept saying, I don't know. If I knew I would… and now it's, I got the catalog, I have the list from Rolly of what still is out in Camp David, and I can easily, okay, let's get the ball rolling, start doing this. The problem is, is there the heat there of people going, “Oh yeah, I'm interested in this” or is it “No no, that was 6 months ago. We don't care about that!” And it's like, okay, but now I have the information!
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: So I think the next, I did say after the $10 one that just sold of, the next one will not be fear of missing out, it's going to be a… I'm trying to figure out how I phrase this nicely… Um, Guido wants you to get in the car and go for a ride, you might want to throw money at him so that he doesn't do that.
Dave: [laughs] Right.
Matt: You know, we're not gonna break your kneecaps as long as you buy one of these for a set amount of money.
Dave: Yeah.
Matt: It's what's the basement level of sales that everyone feels comfortable making? Not $10, much higher than $10. Like 50? 60? I mean, we'd like them all to go for $497, but we also understand that's not going to happen every time.
Dave: Right. Right. Which is interesting in itself that, that is the case. I think this will be a thing that will cause great wonderment in the Cerebus fandom years and years from now, where people are going to be going, “I could have got that for 10 bucks?” [laughs]
Matt: Well, and that's…
Dave: Why didn't anybody else get it for 10 bucks? And I think part of the problem is, I'll be interested to get your take, but I'll just interrupt to say one of the problems was, that I sent one to each of the Brain Trust, and consequently each member of the Brain Trust has one of these. And that pulls the whole marketplace momentum if you take those 10 people and say “here's a free one” they're now over in the oil painting category. They're just staring at you going, “Ah, I already got mine.”
Matt: Well, I think part of it is, that each one is just unique enough that it's not like, well you know, we know there's X number of them. This one's nice, but is it as nice as the one that's coming in two weeks or supposed to be coming in two weeks? And at one point when Rolly sent me all the images, but it wasn't the catalog, it was just, “these are the covers we have.” And I numbered them one through I think 16, and I'm like okay, anyone can throw out a dollar amount and if it's high enough I'll say okay, yeah, we'll take that. And Michael was one of the guys going, well I'm like, if there's a page that you want or if there's a cover you want let me know and I can make this happen, “Well I kind of like this one but I kind of like that one” and I'm like okay, well, pick one and throw a crap load of money at it.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I'm kind of curious, when I list the next one, because I'm just going from the ones I know haven't sold in the catalog from the beginning of the catalog to what's left. And I'm just going from page one to the end, and it's, I'm kind of interested in as a, okay, so is one gonna pop and all of a sudden everybody's, “Oh yeah, that's the one I want!”
Dave: Right.
Matt: I hope so, but at the same time, you know, I mean, I guess at a certain point it becomes, what's Plan B? I think it's page one where it's the early one that it's been so long since you had drawn old Cerebus you forgot you only he had one ear, and I'm thinking, well, that's a rarity, that if you're into rarities, that's a rarity!
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And I put it up and everybody went, “Meh.”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Then nobody bid on it! Nothing. I'm like, okay, let's try this with the next one.
Dave: Right. Right. And from my point of view, it's like, they're already done. And it's like, it didn't work the way I hoped it would work. It did work pretty much the way I thought, you know, the likelihood is this is how it's going to go this way. It's this ongoing, you can get something for really really cheap that actually is probably going to go for major bucks five years from now, 10 years from now from, whatever else. This is a thank you for being a regular viewer of A Moment of Cerebus. I mean part of me is going, okay, why doesn't somebody go, “Okay, Matt will sell this to me. Really, you know, at this point if I can bid like 40 bucks or 30 bucks and say, ‘I want that one.’ It'll be like, okay, for Matt that's another one that he doesn't have to worry about. There you go.” And it's like, “Okay, now I got it, I got to put it up on eBay.” Presumably it would go for more than 30 bucks. Or is the kill radius on this just so massive in 2023 it won't even work on eBay? It won't work at at Heritage Auctions. If you tried to do one of them and started at a dollar, you couldn't get a dollar for it.
Matt: Well, I know that one of them was at Heritage but it was one of those I was like, oh yeah I got to keep an eye on that, and then, you know, original art pages were dropping. I just got a notification email that page three of “Narutobus” is going up, and page one or page seven preliminary from SDoAR, and I'm going, well see that's the problem is if something something big drops and it sucks all the life out of, “We're not gonna watch that auction, we're gonna be watching the big auctions.” And in my head I'm going, okay, just check Heritage every couple of days.
Dave: Right.
Matt: I mean, it used to be that I would throw in a token bid that would get blown out of the water, but you can only do that so many times before you're like, this is kind of starting to hurt my head.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Like, I know I'm not gonna get this. I have, this is a, cause I always in my head go, okay, what's the maximum I can safely bid where I won't get killed when it shows up in the mail?
Dave: Right.
Matt: And it's like, that's about, with the buyer's premium, $150, anything more than that and I'm gonna have some splaining to do.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: But it's like the anything Cerebus that goes on Heritage is not going for 150 bucks. It will at least blow that out of the water. It might be one of these where I could have had it if I bid five bucks more, but ehh, most of the time it's somebody's hunting on Heritage. And so if we put The Last Day Remarques, is there somebody that's going to be, “Oh yeah” or is it going to be more of a, “Well you know, that's the nickel and dime stuff, and we're going to the high rollers table.”
Dave: Yeah, and it also, anytime you do multiple anything, the first one sells for the most amount of money and then it starts dropping from there. That's sort of like a hard and fast rule for art of any kind in the comic book field, and particularly with Cerebus and Dave Sim. I think it was Benjamin Hobbs that commented on that with, variant covers and things like that. The first one that goes up on eBay goes for the big bucks, and then it's like, well okay, if you just waited till the third one went up you could get it for a quarter of that, or a fifth of that. Very very mysterious process anyway, but definitely entertaining, and we do have a future on these in terms of, if you're listening to this and going, “Yeah, where is my head at? I can get one of these for like 40 bucks!” Get one for 40 bucks and not be saying 20 years from now, “You know, I could have gotten one of those for 40 bucks.” And it's like, oh yeah! No, I can prove it to you. Here's the whole history of the widescreen auction cataloges. Even the cataloges themselves, it's like I've got probably the only 30 or 40 third printings that exist, and when I'm looking for something else out back at Camp David I’ll run across them and go, oh yeah, those will probably be incredibly rare someday for the people who got first printing and a second printing. I should do something with them! And it's like, until I'm looking for something else up back at Camp David, I'm not going to see them again, and the same thing goes through my head. As Puck said, “What fools these mortals be.”
Matt: I mean, I keep putting the link up for, you know, here's where to get “The Last Day” through Diamond. Here's where to get the Remarques through CerebusDownloads. I'm trying to remember what the third one is, then the last one is, and here's the link to get the catalog, and because I originally had said when the cataloges first started coming out of, if you want a copy of all of these, you can get the catalog and you'll have all the sketches.
Dave: Right!
Matt: If that's all you care about is the sketches, here you go, here's a book all of them in it. Now if you want a specific one, well okay, then that's slightly more money.
Dave: Right.
Matt: Hopefully!
Dave: Yes. Yes, that was my theory as well. [laughs] There are so many Dave Sim theories that look so good on paper when you come up with them, and then you go, ah, that one just didn't fly. That was the classic Led Zeppelin. Kaboom!
Okay, I'm coming up on the last prayer time, we have Chris Woerner. And Chris, I appreciate you checking in here. For people who aren't aware of Chris Woerner, he is the best represented author, second only to Dave Sim, in the Cerebus Archive, because the guy is just so darn productive. This would be a good chance to just do a lap dissolve of all of Chris Woerner's books, which are now stored in Camp David. I used to have them in the Off-White House library, and they just started taking over an entire bookshelf. And that hasn't happened a whole lot. Chris Woerner's books, always recommended. If you want to know the only time Dave Sim gets the experience of doom-scrolling, read Chris Woerner's books. Chris Woerner commenting on current history and recent history, you just can't get a better 2023 zeitgeist manifestation than Chris Woerner books. “Just a question, is the throwing a baby sceen anywhere on A Moment of Cerebus? And has Baby Yoda ever said, ‘get what you want or not get what you want, there is no happiness.’?” Matt says, “I think maybe the baby throwing pages are around AMoC.” You want to add to that one?
Matt: I've figured out today how to find out, I just gotta, on the page there's a a section of labels, and you know every post gets a label. Unless Birdsong sneaks in and posts something and then there's no title, no label, it's just whatever he's posting because he doesn't understand how it works.
Dave: [laughs] And that's when you go, “Birdsong!”
Matt: Yeah! Pretty much every time, I'm like, you could at least put a title on it. But one of the labels is “Church & State 1” and if I posted it, it would be tagged with “Church & State 1,” so I'm gonna look and if it's there, I will put the link in when I post this, and if it's not there, it'll be there Sunday or Monday.
Dave: Okay. Alright. Well, you can't do better than that for the money that you're paying, Chris, so bear that in mind. Okay, like I say, prayer time's coming up, so I'm gonna run along. All my best to Paula, and Janis Pearl, and Bullwinkle, as always, and God willing we'll do this again next month, Matt.
Matt: Well, the only wrinkle in that is, in two weeks I'm flying to Disney for a quick 3-day, “Hey we found cheap tickets with the wife and kids for her birthday.” And while I am getting on an airplane, it's not that I have a fear of getting on an airplane, it's just the, it's better to have a plan and not need it than need a plan and not have it, so I will be swearing in Brian as the new editor until I get back. Because he's basically my Vice President.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And so, God willing, and the planes land correctly, I will be here next month and we will talk. And if anything goes wrong, you'll be talking to Brian. And he'll be going, “How do I do this?” and cursing my name.
Dave: [laughs] That's right! Well, always something to look forward to in the world of Cerebus fans. Have a good night, Matt.
Matt: Have a good night, Dave. Bye.
Dave: Buh-bye.
Matt: And now for all of those who stayed till the very end, a special message for the members of The Little Orphan Aardvark Secret Society. Set your decoders to A = A, this is a Steve Ditko’s Mr A code. 9, I, diamond, diamond, X, 5, spade, 0, E, I, space, 1, 0, diamond, Taurus, space, M, spade, A, 8, I, space, 1, M, space, Taurus, 1, 7, space, I, 0, 6, I, 4, I, S, X, space, Taurus, 1, 7, space, A, diamond, diamond, Q, space, V, 7, 6, X, space, M, 4, I, I, V, spade, I, space, infinity, I, 6, 5, space, 6, yingyang, I, space, v, spade, infinity, space, 2, 4, spade, Gemini, I, space, 9, spade, 6, yingyang, space, Libra, Scorpio, C, space, 2, 6, 5, Q, space, E, 1, 0, infinity, 4, A, 6, 7, space, diamond, A, 6, spade, 1, 0, 5, space, 6, 1, space, yingyang, spade, skull and crossbones, X, space, A, 0, S, space, A, diamond, diamond, space, 6, yingyang, I, space, 4, I, 5, 6, space, 1, M, space, Taurus, 1, 7, space, I, 0, 6, 4, A, 0, 6, 5, Q. I may have forgotten some spaces, but you'll figure it out! Last one out, turn out the lights.
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