Hi, Everybody!
As we do:
Mondays!
As you all should know by now Dave's CONTINUING the Please PAY For Dave Sim format. If you want more '82 Tour Book discussion, go HERE, and pay for "Dave Sim 82 Tour Book". But if you'd rather hear more stereotypical Please Hold (*shudder*) "content", go HERE and pay for "Please Hold For Dave Sim". Either way, I have to amuse myself in the Editing Suite assembling these things...
The latest from Eddie for the July round for August is:
So, Audio (for the poor bastards who don't need/want to look at things while Dave talks...):
Video (to be added as I get it done, or I'll post those on Saturday...):
And if you're gonna be in San Diego for Comic Con, Dave has a request:
I bought and sent the shirt to Mr. Dunn, he should get it Wednesday...
Next Time: Jen's MIA, so more of me being "wacky"...
22 comments:
Might want to ask Ben to get a recording from some of his people for Dave.
That was a brilliant listen, thanks Matt! Reminded me of back in the day when the Cerebus Yahoo group would have thousands of posts a month, some of them even about Cerebus. 2028 isn't really that far away and it's great that Dave is willing to listen to all our thoughts and feedback.
What are the full lyrics to the tour book song Matt? The ones I caught were hilarious but the spotify transcript feature always makes mistakes
Aw, man. No more "Benny the Bouncer?"
Great listen! Two years isn't far away at all, tbh it's exciting that Dave is listening to all our comments and we're helping shape the final tourbook. I'd happily listen to a three hour show next time! Good idea to have variant tiers. If you google 1982 in comics it brings up a good list (man, i didn’t know GI Joe was selling 200,000 copies an issue back then, that's wild) . Remember as well you has all sorts of major events if Dave wants historical color - Falklands War, Compact Disc invented, Prince William being born. 1982 is the year Thriller came out too.
To answer Dave's question, X2 is generally regarded as the best ensemble X men movie. Logan might technically be the best reviewed movie featuring an X Man (it got nominated for an Oscar I think), but it doesn't really tie as closely in to Claremont's work per Dave's brief.
1982 was also the first appearance of William Stryker, although you have the issue Dave acknowledged of comic Stryker being a preacher and movie Stryker being a military man. You could just mention that "82 is when God Loves, Man Kills came out and talk about how it influenced the X-Men movies.
To answer the commentator's question, I don't recall Claremont being big on the mutant/gay analogy back in the day. However there were definitely parallells being drawn with racial discrimination. So if you're looking for linking text you could say something like "Claremont boldly used X-Men to explore issues such as xenophobia and discrimination, themes that would later feature strongly in movies such as X2: X Men United"
The John Byrne/Northstar gay stuff is on Wikipedia, but it's 1983, not 1979. The explanation is that Byrne was frustrated that the Alpha Flight characters had no back story so Byrne came up with Northstar being gay. Jim Shooter apparently had a policy against homosexual characters so Byrne just had to drop hints, with the in-universe explanation being that Northstar wasn't into women as he was focussed on winning a figure skating championship. Wikipedia links to Byrne's website where Byrne says he came up with Northstar being gay. Maybe he's just bandwagon jumping though.
Dave's explanation of the wedding photos idea makes more sense now - he just wants women to have photos they're happy with - but is there not a danger that they'll just not give consent to "Dave Sim the evil misogynist" whereas publicity photos for women in comics that have been floating about online for decades are unlikely go cause any legal problems?
Does no-one else think that Dave should use his photorealism chops to draw new pictures of women in comics, the same way in the SDOAR (Carson version) he used a *drawing* of Margaret Mitchell to get around her estate saying he can't use her actual photo? I'm not an attorney, but I highly doubt that Wendy Pini or whoever could sue Dave for having a *drawing* of her in a book, which wouldn't be true of actual wedding photos. Plus it means you could promote the tourbook as featuring new Dave Sim art.
Wild. If I was a closeted gay guy back in the day I don't think I'd use "focused on figure skating" as my excuse for not dating women, but maybe it's different in Canada with their love of ice hockey and the like.
I think Dave 's focus is still SDOAR. I could be wrong, but I don't think he's doing any *new* material for the tourbooks- it will take two years just to tweak and rewrite existing materials,
Hey is not worth explaining to Dave the whole Fox/Marvel studios distinction? Technically the only mainstream Marvel X Men appearance to date is in the Dr Strange mutiverse sequel where we had Professor X sitting on a panel alongside the dude from the Office and the chick playing Captain Britain. Maybe turn it into a positive and say something like "years before the Marvel cinematic universe debuted with Iron Man in 2008, X-Men were already familiar to fans of blockbuster movies". Sort of like how some histories of comic book movies count from Tim Burton's Batman and others go way back to Christopher Reeves' Superman.
I think the idea is more showing that Marvel movies were faithful to the comics (relatively speaking) and made a ton of money, which is also true of the X--Men movies. This contrasts with the era when Hollywood hot shots would make big changes from the comics (movie Batman kills because that's what action heroes do). Writer/director Kevin Smith is very funny about his brief for the aborted Superman Lives movie back in 1996 or so, where the producer told him that Superman shouldn't fly, shouldn't wear a "faggy" colourful costume, and should fight a giant spider.
Yeah, SDOAR is definitely the focus. Maybe fans of Dave Sim - essayist - can look forward to a new introduction or the like from Dave? I know the interviews might need footnotes but I'm guessing someone like Matt or Birdsong can help if it's just something like explaining a reference to a comic or creator mentioned in an interview. Personally I still think it would be cool if someone like Sir Lenny Henry or Neil Gaimain or the like wrote a blurb for the book.
Reduce the Spotify playback speed to 0.5 or the like and you should get them, there's some funny lines about the beige clothing popular in the era and the like.
Yeah I think it's mostly taken from Mark Millar's Old Man Logan comic, plus that movie had an R rating so they could push the boat out in terms of violence and the like
Yeah that sounds about right. Next best is.X Men: First Class. Everyone loved Michael Fassbender's portrayal of a young Magneto hunting down Nazis in Argentina. Claremont was the guy who came up with the idea of Magneto being a Holocaust survivor in issue #150 of Uncanny X-Men, definitely worth mentioning if you're talking about elements of the comics making it into the movies. Sir Ian McKellen, the acclaimed stage and screen actor who portrayed the older Magneto, said that he approached playing the character by thinking what it would be like to be a Holocaust survivor. When asked if he's met Chris Claremont Sir Ian once said something like "no, but I've never met Shakespeare either and I still admire him"
Claremont definitely deserves credit for coming up with Magneto being a Holocaust survivor. The only issue would be if Dave (as the guy who did Judenhass) thought it would be a bit tonally jarring to have "Holocaust survivor" on a list beside Dark Phoenix and the fastball special on a list of movie moments taken from the comics. Personally I know that Claremont is personally Jewish, and always spoke about wanting to do a realistic portrayal of a Holocaust survivor (well, within the confines of the Marvel house style) so I would say it definitely warrants mention. As with Alan Moore and Swamp Thing it's an example of a writer who didn't technically invent a chatacter developing aspects of their character that later writers and readers regard as indispensable.
Do we really need *any* feminism if there's only 4 female Cerebus fans? In 1982 Cerebus was surely increasing its female fanbase an upwards curve that probably continued to Melmoth. Just avoid the controversy. When people hear 1982 they think of a period of time before political correctness. There's no reason the Tourbook can't have female comics professionals but also hot babes, the open road, Reaganomics and all the other iconic elements of that period. 1982 is also the year ET came out - maybe talk about him looking like HERBIE from the Fantastic Four the same way ALF was influenced by Cerebus?
In terms of the Interviews I assume revisions will be for clarity and to avoid repetition. I'm sure a Gore Vidal fan like Dave will remember that time Vidal reviewed a book of Vladimir Nabokov's interviews and noted that, although Nabokov saying that his literature students "should have the passion of science and the precision of poetry" is a great line, you don't need to read it a half dozen times. I'm assuming the questions Dave got asked by journalists back in '82 were pretty repetitive. Having said that I'm assuming Dave will still revise them so it's the sort of answers he would have given in '82, even if there was a better summary of Cerebus in (say) the Issue Zero Introduction or Collected Letters. People criticise George Lucas for changing his story on the Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies over the years, but to me a creator can discuss the same work for decades and have different views and recollections in the seventies than he did in 2005 or 1999 or what have you. Norman Mailer might have regreted adding the "To Be Continued.." at the end of Harlot's Ghost, but I'm sure there were plenty of times in later interviews when he was entirely sincere when he said he'd get around to the sequel, it's just that life can be shorter than people imagine, and Lucian's Library is full of the books authors assumed they'd have plenty of time later to write.
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