Hi, Everybody!
As we do:
Mondays!
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As you all should know by now (if you check A Moment of Cerebus more than once a month "to see if it's gotten good again..." (SPOLIER WARNING: it hasn't.).), 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... (wanna find out how many of these I already own? Then you're gonna wanna pay for more '82...)
Speaking of Please Hold...
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.
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[guitar music]
Matt: Hello, Dave!
Dave: Hello, Matt! How's it going?
Matt: Alright. I was just wondering, huh, I wonder if Dave's gonna call or if I should grab that book, and as I turned to look for the book the phone rang, I'm like, well okay, Dave's gonna call.
Dave: [laughs] He doesn't sleep all the time!
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Just last time. Okay, I hope I've got everything here. Man, this has been right up to the last minute getting everything together. So, we might get a little stuttery here. Are we recording?
Matt: We are recording.
Dave: Okay. “Hi Dave. Ah, February! Ferby-arary. Febonocci. The second month of the year and the first month of 2024 where the first Thursday is the first. August is the other one.” See, I didn't know that.
Matt: I actually looked at the calendar when I was writing it out. I'm like, I wonder how many times it's gonna be the first, and no, it's only twice. Okay that's good.
Dave: [laughs] I'll take that! “And we come together again for the Please Hold for Dave Sim and it's your turn to remember Jeff Seiler, but last month I pulled in a ringer! And he's back this month if you want to use him.” And I'm gonna give you a big thumbs up on that, okay. “And then later on,” see now I'm getting disorganized already. Where, uh okay, what I'm gonna do is I'm actually going to combine the remembering Jeff Seiler spot and the Lank Stephens spot into one answer, one little block of time. Why, you might ask? Because, Matt Dow, we need to talk.
Matt: [laughs] Okay.
Dave: [laughs] Get ready for Dave Sim’s question for Matt Dow in part two.
Matt: Alright.
Dave: Okay. So yeah, this is Steve Peters. And good news from Steve Peters, I called him a couple of hours ago and he told me he was within $68 of his goal, whereas on Tuesday, he was about halfway to his goal, which put the fear of God into both of us. It's like, man, we don't have much time to do something about this. Where all of you are listening right now, this all ended two days ago, but where we are, there's three hours left in Steve Peters’ Kickstarter campaign.
Matt: I just looked at Facebook before I was getting ready, he's fully funded. He got the 68 bucks. Thanks to Philip Frey and Larry Wooten.
Dave: See, that's good news. Particularly for me because I told him we can work, if he hits his goal and goes past his goal, then by however much he goes past that'll figure into how much I'm getting for my variant cover. Okay! So Steve writes, “Re: last month's discussion about whether or not Seiler sat for my ‘alien’ portrait of him. I've had a sign on my convention tables for years now saying ‘Steve can draw you as an alien.’ When people buy something from me or on Free Comic Book Day when I do free sketches, I offer folks the sketch of a Comicverse character or the customer as an alien, and point to the sign. The current one has a bunch of examples from previous customers. I couldn't find a good photo, but I did find an earlier sign which just has a single sketch card as a sample.” And you'll have that up as part of our visuals right now. “The customer will usually sound interested and I'll go on to explain that I'll draw the person as a Lekru.” I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, “Which is the most common alien species living on the Comicverse’s Space Station. That gives me a chance to talk about the comic, which will hopefully help in getting a sale. Part of the hook is that I'll tell the person that their alien counterpart could appear as a background character in a future issue.” That's pretty cool. I didn't know about that one. “Which has happened on many occasions as I always need background denizens in the Comicverse’s comic shop. I almost always take a photo of the person so that they don't have to stand there posing the whole time I’m drawing.” Yeah, see, Grampaw's way behind the times. All of these people have cell phones, that makes a lot of sense. “If Bianca is not with me to chat with the customer, I'll tell them that they can keep looking around the convention and come back for the sketch, because it's tough for me to chitchat and draw at the same time. I've had to hunt down the customer on a few occasions to give them their sketch card, and once or twice the person never came back.” That's one of those, okay, this is part of the Lank Stephens aspect of this, humiliation. That's humiliating that you would have to A, hunt down the customer and B, have a customer not even come back for their sketch card. But that's a big part of being an independent cartoonist is, you have to get used to the fact that a lot of it is humiliating and the only rule of thumb is don't let it humiliate you. It's got nothing to do with you personally. Another person, they're running their own program. They got their own agenda when they're at the convention. If they forgot you, it's nothing personal. It's nothing about your work, nothing about your intellectual property. So that's a good mindset if you're going to a convention and you're going to be sitting in artist’S alley, or you're going to be sitting at your dealer's table, it doesn't matter what you do. I can understand it, intellectually, as a humiliating thing, but I'm just not going to be humiliated by it.
Steve goes on, “Which is the long way of explaining that I took Seiler's photo for his sketch card. I remember being pleased that he turned to a three quarter view, because everyone who poses poses as if they were taking a passport photo, so there tends to be a sameness to the sketches.” I wrote a little note here for myself that, Steve, you should definitely pose them. Just explain to them, as an artist, different people's faces work better from different angles. “Can you just just turn your head slowly from one side to the other, and look up and look down, and I'm going to tell you, that one right there! Don't move.” And then take the picture of that. “I create folders on my hard drive for every event that include any photos of the con I've taken, and scans of the sketches if I'm able to have a scanner with me, and I also put all the reference reference photos in there. So I was able to find the reference pic of Seiler that I took. So you can check it out for comparison.” And while I've been saying reading all of that, you've been looking at the photo of Seiler, hopefully, side by side with his sketch card, and that's pretty impressive. When I saw the photo of Jeff, I thought, uh okay, that's a real aptitude. Steve says, “Bianca's commented many times that I'm good at getting people's likenesses, even with the alien ‘prosthetics.’ The aliens kind of look like Star Trek characters, which is quite intentional. Maybe I should have been a caricature artist!” I would interject there and go, it's better to be a translation cartoonist, which is what you're doing. ”It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, I can translate you into to my style and into one of my characters.” And even the average civilian is going to be impressed by that, going, “You know, that actually looks like Doris!” or “that actually looks like Mark” or whatever it is that they're at the convention with. “As you saw last time, I did two sketch cards for Seiler that year. Less annoying than the year that he kept coming back to my table and buying one sketch at a time, so he could get a bunch of free sketches. Ha!” And I wrote, that sounds like Seiler. Whatever your ground rules, he would find your loophole and drive his SUV through it.
Matt: That was, when you sent the “glamourpuss” 25s to me, you sent them through Jeff, so I had to pick them up at his apartment. And there were the five “Zootanapuss” that you signed and numbered as the Mouse Skull Edition, and he's, “Oh I really would like one of these!” I'm like, okay, well let me figure out what I want to do with them first because I've literally had these for 48 seconds, Jeff!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: You hand him to me, I'm looking at them, I'm going, okay, I got to figure out what I want to do with this. Do I want to sell them, do I want to keep them, you know, and you're going, “Can I get one?” and it's like, give me a a hour or two to think about what I want to do and then I'll get back to you. It was one of those, I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do, and then he moved before I could sell him one. So I still technically have, quote unquote “Jeff's” downstairs/ I believe he may have actually gotten it, now that I think about it. I may have said, okay, you can have #5 because I'm keeping #1. Cause he wanted 1 and I'm like no, Jeff, let's be reasonable.
Dave: [laughs] “Let's start negotiating 48 seconds into your possession and let's start with I get the best one.”
Matt: That's Jeff!
Dave: That's Jeff. That was Jeff all over. So yeah, the “Ghosts of Rabbit Hell” Kickstarter is ending as we record this. I was even going to suggest, is there some way to put the Kickstarter up on your computer while we're doing this so we can update as we're getting closer to, uh… I guess it's, yeah! Steve Peters is on the East Coast, so he's in the same timezone here, would be ending at nine o'clock Eastern time, which would be…
Matt: Eight o' clock my time.
Dave: Eight o'clock your time. Right, right. And, go ahead.
Matt: Yeah, I can periodically take a look.
Dave: Alright. And just sort of, if it suddenly goes up by $28,000 or something like that, Elon Musk finally came to his senses and went, “I gotta get in on some of this Steve Peters action” then definitely just say, “Dave, hold that thought. We have to interrupt for the Elon Musk announcement.” “With ‘The Last Day’ Dave Sim ‘Akimbo’ variant cover.” Yeah, I'm gonna have more to say say on that, as soon as we know who's getting the “Akimbo” cover. Which I think, we won't have to wait wait for the surveys on that. It'll be like, okay, this was person who gave the largest cash donation and so consequently they will be getting the cover. And then at that point, I'm going to have some stuff to discuss with Steve first as we're building how these things are going to work, as the cartoonist of record. It's Steve's Kickstarter, it's Steve's book, I'm a contributor. So it's my varant cover, so here's what I'm thinking of related to the varant cover. Is Steve okay with that? Because I do want to defer to the cartoonist of record, and and Steve goes, “I have no idea” and would throw it back to me “you do whatever you want.” Then I would probably bring in the person who got the cover and say, here's what I was picturing doing with it, it's your cover. Do you want on that on your cover? Because what I've got in mind can get pretty complicated and pretty interesting. And you're going to have a lot of decisions to make on your own as the winner of the cover. And I'm saying this and I'm going, right, they still got three hours to decide who's the top cash donor to Steve Peters Kickstarter. And you can go, “That's all a little too complicated for me. Dave, you do whatever you want to do.” That would be fine or if they go, “Really? I get to decide that? I get to decide whether this thing is this and that thing is that?” And it's like, yeah, because it's it's your cover. You donated the most amount of money, so as far as Dave Sim, variant cover contributor, is concerned, you're driving the bus.
And you say here, “Speaking of ‘Akimbo,’ it's being Kickstarted by Ben Hobbs and ends on February 9th, along with the 10th Cerebus Archive portfolio” and then you say, “We need to mention that. A lot!” Very good point. Very good point. I am very very slack to promote my own stuff, which I really shouldn't do. Like I'm sitting here talking about Dave Sim and and Cerebus stuff for however many hours. “Get in some plugs for yourself there, Dave!” So at this point, they should be looking at photos of Rolly… Well, Rolly won't be in the photos, we've already established that. Spent most of the day putting the CAN 10 portfolios together. So I asked him to take a number of photos for Please Hold for Dave Sim that would show the CAN 10 portfolios getting assembled, which I'm just tickled to death about. It's February 1st, campaign doesn't end until February 9th, we're gonna have these puppies ready to go. But getting back to Steve Peters and Lank Stephens, here's stuff that I recommend, it's a great convention hook that Steve came up with there. And that’s what every independent cartoonist, if you're gonna be printing your comics, taking them to conventions, and sitting at a table and selling them, it's really dropping the ball on the one yard line to not have a convention hook in mind. Just “You know, I go to the convention. Here's my table. Here's all of my books. Now I'm just gonna sit and stare, waiting for somebody to buy them.” Convention hook. What are the the aliens called on “Star Trek”? Do you know off the top of your head that the ones that do have that prosthetics-look that Steve does for the aliens?
Matt: It's sort of like a Klingon, it's sort of like a Ferengi. And mostly it was “Star Trek: The Next Generation” where they just would, you came on the show and they glued crap on your face.
Dave: Right. [laughs] Right. And it's like, “And what, give up show business?” See what I was thinking is that, it would probably be good, as you can see from the photo, Steve's not an in-your-face kind of cartoonist. So he's probably not going to do this, but this would be my recommendation in the convention hook end of things. Hold up an enlargement of one of the alien sketch card and a photo beside it so that it's not the same size as the sketch card, and just say to people as they're walking by, “Want a sketch card of you as a Klingon?” Because it's like, a Klingon they know. What was the other one? See I didn't know that name.
Matt: Ferengi.
Dave: Ferengi. See, you would have to be at least a seven out of 10 “Star Trek” fan, and, it was “The Next Generation”?
Matt: Yeah.
Dave: Yeah, you'd have to be a “Next Generation Star Trek” fan to get that one. But Klingon, everybody knows Klingons.
Matt: I'm just thinking, back in the early 2000s my friend Kelly used to go to the Chicago ComicCon right after Wizard had bought it. And she would get a table and the deal was, she'd get the table and she would get a couple extra passes, cause you get X number of passes when you buy a table. And she would invite me to go with her and basically my job was to babysit and watch the table when she had to go to the bathroom, get her food, make sure she was not dying. And for doing that, I get to go to the convention for free and run around and do whatever I want, just periodically check on her. And one year I got bored of walking around and so I sat down next to her, and people were giving her sketchbooks, and getting sketches, and she was doing sketches on her own sketch paper. But she's a talented artist, that, kind of like Steve, kind of like you. I can do a sketch but it's gonna be, you know, okay give me the Sketchbook and come back in an hour.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And and the whole time she's sketching, she's not really selling and making money, because she's focusing on sketching. And so I had a bunch of Post-it notes, so I started sketching Post-it notes!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And I am not a good artist. I very much am, I'm closer to the Elrod “he can do one every five damn seconds” end. And so I was doing little stick figure sketches, and putting them in a notebook and when people would come by and look, the hook was, would you like a free sketch? And they were like looking at her art going, “Yes! Yes I would” and I would open up the notebook and there's all these Post-It notes of stick figures. And a bunch of times it was the disappointment of, “Oh, um okay.” But after about a minute they look at him, and there were little one panel gag sketches. I mean the one that I did, aw, I swear I must have done at least a dozen or two of, it was, “Why I'm not an artist part one” and it was a stick figure Batman, and then I wrote “my name's not Jim Lee” and Jim Lee was the guest of honor that year, and he was doing Batman.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And like everybody saw that laughed cause the joke sells itself real easily, and “oh yeah can I have this one?” Yeah sure, and as soon as it went away I'd do another one, and throw it back in the notebook. I mean, at first I thought Kelly would be kind of annoyed about the fact that I was quote unquote “stealing her thunder” and after a little while I asked, I'm like, you okay with this? And she's like, “Oh no, that's great. Like people actually stop. Not everybody's buying something, but they're more likely to give some money because we made them laugh and gave them a cute little sketch,” and she's like, “That's the best hook I've had ever.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I'm going, okay! In fact, “Race Car Comics” #1 is the sketches I didn't get rid of that I went, okay, and photocopied and made that horrible little mini comic.
Dave: Aha! More method to your madness! But I gotta tell you, you are the definitive Boner the Runt Dog cartoonist of record. Nobody else can do Boner the Runt Dog like you do, Matt.
Matt: Well yeah, this is the part where I show your version of Boner, everybody goes, “Not, his is better.” [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Oh, what do they know? But, okay finishing off on the Steve Peters/Lank Stephens thing, having just read the “Comicverse: Behind the [counter]” book, the solo book that Bianca did, which I was very very impressed by. It was one of those things where, okay, the first part of Please Hold today is gonna be Steve Peters and his Kickstarter, but I can stretch a point here where I got all of the Kickstarter stuff in from the “Comicverse” one, and it's like, okay, well this is studying for Please Hold, which is what I do all day on the on the first Thursday of the month. But it's also reading comic books. And reading comic books and reading text. And I gotta tell you, what they what they're looking at right now is Barnard’s story, Steve Ditko story, that he did that Bianca wrote the balloons for, which was Steve's idea. That… why can't I remember his name? All I remember is the Barnard part. Anyway, he's doing this amazing riff on Steve Ditko from a Charlton outer space comic, but doing it is in his own style, and then just leaving the words out of the word balloons. And Bianca is, as a writer, so far at the other end of the human sectrum from 1950s Steve Ditko science fiction, written I assume by Joe Gill, that I phoned Steve and specifically talked to him about it, saying, how did this go? And it was, well, he came up with the idea. And he did say, you know, as she's looking at the artwork, she's going, “Can you tell me what's going on here?” And it's like, “Well, it's a Joe Gill/Steve Ditko Charlton science fiction story from 1950s. I can only explain it so far in your frames of reference.” And then the stuff that she did in the word balloons is just amazing. It's like, Steve Ditko 1950s is pure hydrogen, and Bianca is pure helium, and here's what they look like when they get together. And I have to say the same thing, there's a text piece in “Comicverse: Behind the Counter” called “Sue’s Place”, and when I read it, I had an instantaneous reaction of, this is probably one of the best helium stories I've ever read. This is a helium sensibility, writing completely from a helium angle, and just knocking it out of the ballpark, paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. And just a drop dead ending on it, where it's if you're hydrogen and you want to know about helium, here. You read this story and that'll take you to graduate school. So, applause applause applause on that one.
“Over on the Cerebus Facebook Group, I asked for questions, and Steve Bolhafner asked, I've mentioned this before and maybe it's been answered. In which case, would someone please point me to where, but when Dave originally announced his long-term plan for ‘Cerebus’ it was still bi-monthly and it was going to be exactly 26 years, ending with issue 156. Shortly after that, he went monthly and realized that if he stretched it out just a few months beyond 26 years, he'd come out with the nice round number 300, which as we all know is what he did. My question is, why 26 years? Was there something significant about that number? My first thought was to honor fellow Canadian Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, but no, Foster did that quite a bit more than 26 years.” Yeah, it was actually 34, I think. “Before the process of choosing a successor began. So I'm puzzled, why 26 years?” “Well, it took two years of my life that I'll never get back, but we did answer this in October of 2020.” Did you really spend two hours of your life looking for that?
Matt: It may have been less, but I looked at the clock and I'm like, it's like 7:00 at night, I started looking for this at like I swear it was around 5. Yeah, it was, I went back, on A Moment of Cerbeus there's labels.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And you know, Please Hold has its own label, and I clicked on Please Hold, and I'm like, alright, and I'm going, it always starts with the newest one. So I'm going back, and I'm going, I know we answered this. I know we answered this. I know we answered this. Then I got, the kid wanted something or whatever, and I went back and like, okay I know we answered this. I know we… and I'm scrolling and then the jerk who makes these stupid posts, every now and then will get lazy, and it's just the videos with no description of what it is, and then I'm like, what the what is? And then it's, the next post is above. It was okay, Saturday, here's all the videos. Sunday, okay here's a description of it. I'm like, what kind of jerk does this? And I'm like, oh yeah, right, me.
Dave: [laughs] Yeah, the trouble with a one person operation. [laughs] Okay. And then it's like, it was Steve B who asked in October of 2020! So I think we're pretty confident it was Steve Bolhafner, and he forgot that he had already asked.
Matt: And I printed out the transcript from Jesse Lee Herndon of the section that, from 2020 of, okay this was the question. Here's the answer, and if Steve gives me his address, I'll mail it to him. But my printer ran out of ink and it printed from the third page to the first page, so the first page is unlegible and the other two pages are good, and I'm like, all right I'll reprint it out, but yes, Steve, send me your address, and I will send you a simulfax signed copy of, here's your answer.
Dave: That's so… nice of you. That's so broadminded, somebody having eaten up two hours of your life on something you already answered for him. Well, that's that's one of those things that makes me have to go the extra mile as well. And what I'm gonna do is give you an even deeper consideration of why the 26 years, where the answer would be, it wasn't my idea. I thought it was my idea, but it was given to me, and in in my current frames of reference, the question would be, was it given to me by YHWH, or was it given to me by God? Or was it negotiated between the two of them? Because, remember that I was doing “Cerebus”, and it's like, I wonder if I can keep going. It's like, let's try and get three issues done. Got the three issues done, not getting rich but still in the game. Just stick to the bi-monthly schedule, hit them short and straight, and it should all come out in the wash okay. And doing it at that point, and then by the time I was getting to issue eight, issue nine, it was how long am I going to do this? And that's another discussion that we've definitely had of me saying, well I don't want to, as Hal Foster was saying in 1970/71, “The last few Prince Valiants I did were lousy” and that's no way to end off. So where do I end off so that it doesn't end up lousy? Which became, well, at least younger than Hal Foster was. But at that point, in terms of the grand scale of the universe, and obviously when you're talking about God and the YHWH, there's in my frames of reference God and the macro YHWH, the first light that was created, and then there's all the residual YHWH is like the one who makes up core and substance of our planet Earth. And it's a ongoing chess game. I mean, it's the Earth is designed to keep orbiting the Sun exactly the way it is without any decay or any kind of fault for roughly 15 billion years, which means okay, that's how God has it set up. That this is how long it's going to take to get all of this sorted out with proxy human beings, all the rest of it. And YHWH going, “I'm God. I have no idea who this voice is, but I'm God, and I have no interest in these. Man is, you know, evil from his youth.” “The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth”, as it says in Genesis. So what I think happens is, different chess games present themselves, and I was presenting myself as a chess game, because what I was picturing in my mind was, I'm not gonna do this as long as Hal Foster did Prince Valiant, but that's what I'm thinking of, is okay, what short of that is, in my own mind, yeah, I can picture myself still having the chops to be able to do this at that age so that's the age that I'm going to do it. But in terms of the scale, then you are talking about somewhere between 20 and 30 years, and at that point, then you get into the whole faith and endurance thing, where it's like being the world's tallest poppy. This 20-year-old kid is saying, this is what I'm going to do and it's like, okay, both God and the YHWH know exactly how insanely interested in comic books this kid is, how important they are to him, and you know, put me in coach, I'm ready to play. And from the YHWH's standpoint, it's like, “Uh okay, this guy's gonna prove my point. I bet you he doesn't get there and I bet you he's… like if you think think ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was ugly at the end of the story, you can't even imagine what this guy's going to be like.” Because, God and YHWH both know what his soul looks like at age 20, and it's like, it's a major major traffic accident and scanning the most distant horizon there is absolutely no sign that he would be anything otherwise. So, as I am fond of saying, the Job rule is always in effect. “What do you want to bet on Dave Sim and ‘Cerebus’?” And it's like, “I don't know, what do you want to bet?” And the reason, it's a sideshow. It's like, it's just a cartoonist, but it's like, okay, anything that's longer than three months or six months or whatever, if you're talking about somebody doing something for a quarter century, okay well, “You're gonna have to eat your words or I'm gonna have to eat my words but we're not gonna find out for 25 years.” It really comes down to Faith and Endurance, capital F, capital E, and this is not something that this kid has in abundance. So in terms of the 26 years, what becomes most obvious is that there's 52 weeks in in a year, and 26 weeks in half a year, so that means it's a halfway point that they're talking about. But it's a macro halfway point, because he's not talking about doing this for 26 weeks, he's talking about doing this for 26 years. So it's like, “Well okay, you're he/she/it, you're the the ‘triune being’, why don't we say 26 years and three months?” and it's like, I think that definitely appealed to the YHWH. “Yes, I will get to do my three month victory lap over this guy” and it's like, at that point, it's Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck, because it's God, and God's going, “I know exactly how this guy turns out. I know exactly how the 26 years and three months turns out. As a matter of fact, I know how the how the 20 years after that goes. And it's like, oh boy, are you asking to walk right into a ‘Duck Amuck’ cartoon, but that's okay, I'll just let you box yourself in on this.”
And the way that I would support that, from my extensive monotheistic reading of scripture, going to the, what I think everybody, whether you're Jew or Christian or Muslim, would have to agree that the gold standard of eschatological religious works, religious scripture, is John's Revelation. And it was, as far as I'm concerned, it's intended that way. And it's the macro version of that. I was just going through it before I phoned you, and what's really really noticeable about Revelation is the definition of the time spans being described. Because, right off the top, Revelation 1:4, “for the appointed time near”, well okay, you can go through all of Revelation and it's like in human terms it definitely wasn't the appointed time near. John's Revelation was in 98 AD, in Patos. But it was the appointed time was near in God’s and YHWH's frames of reference. 1:18 , “living I am into the ages of the ages”, it's talking about, okay, this is going to be a from now on thing, the ages of the ages. This watershed moment that we're talking about, or span of time, and this is what's unknown to human beings. I suspect even unknown to the YHWH. “You may be having tribulation of days 10” that's the angel in the Smyrna of Ecclesia, the angel of the Church of Smyrna. And to the angel of the in Philadelphia of Ecclesia, “You observe the word of the endurance of thee, and I you I shall observe out of the hour of the temptation, the being about to be coming upon the being inhabited whole, to in to tempt the inhabiting upon the Earth.” And it's like, the hour of the temptation being about to be coming upon. Again, it's like anything that any human beings could apply to this is at least hundreds of years and possibly thousands of years and possibly hasn't even occurred, but the specificity is astounding. Revelation 8:1, “And whenever he opened up the seal the 7th occurred silence in the heaven as half hour.” It's like, okay, I know what a half hour is for me, it's 30 minutes. What is it for God and YHWH? And again, I think that's something that God knows, “Well I can tell you exactly what the half hour is in my frames of reference, and this is what it is in the YHWH's frames of reference. This is what it is in human frame of reference.” 9:5, “in order that they will be tormented months five.” Okay, what is the five months, again, at those macro deistic levels, and as the the cut off point of into the ages of the ages. Is it 5,000 years? Is it 500 years? Is it 50 years? And we don't know that. 9: 10, “and they are having tails like to scorpions and stings and in the tails of them the authority of them to treat unrighteously the men month five.” And it's like, m’kay, that's the months five again. Five versus later on. Is this all talking about the same events in that specificity, and this is what we're watching watching for? We don't know. God knows we don't know, YHWH doesn't know. “The city the holy they will trample on months 40 and 2.” That's skipping ahead to Revelation 11, and this is illustrating what I see as, the small potatoes version of the 26 years being 26 weeks. The foundation of “Cerebus”, and why I don't think it was my idea. It was, no, specifically we can put it in the in the capital F capital E Faith and Endurance category. “And the courtyard the outside of the divine habitation throw you out outside and not it you should measure because it was given to the nations” and it's like the word nations actually means “goyim”, the non-jews. “And the city the holy they will trample on months 40 and 2.” Okay 40 and 2, that's three and a half years. aAnd the biblical seven years is, of course, very very significant and the fact that there are seven days in the week is very very significant, so again this is a halfway, if you crunch it down. “And I shall give to the two witnesses of me and they will prophesy days 1,260, having been thrown about sackcloth.” I've been reading this for 27 years and I tried to do the math on 1,260. Like I say, the 40 and 2, I got, oh okay, it's a reference to half a week and half of a seven year time period, it's on the 50 yard line. Days 1,260, I don't have that “Having been thown about sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands the in sight of the lord of the Earth having stood.” That is to me the Synoptic Jesus and the Johannine Jesus. The sons of oil, the two olive trees and the two lampstands, the in sight of the lord of the Earth being the YHWH having stood. And then, again supporting that in my own mind anyway. “And whenever they should finish the witness of them the wild beast the stepping up out of the abyss will make with them war and will conquer them and it will kill them and the fallen of them upon the broad way of the city the great which is being called spiritually Sodom and Egypt where also the Lord of them was put on cross.” We assume that that's Jerusalem. “And they are looking at out of the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations, the fallen of them days three and a half.” There's the three and a half again, again it's on the 50 yard line and it's the two sons of oil. This is the end times to me Synoptic Jesus and Johannine Jesus. It will be enacted again, but on a much much higher scale. “And the fallen of them not they are letting go off to be put into to memorial,” that is they're not being buried, “and the dwelling on the Earth are rejoicing upon them and are making themselves well-minded and gifts they will send to one another because these the two prophets tormented the dwelling upon the Earth.” So, it's one of those, again, the three and a half tells you, okay it's half of the seven, so this is on the 50 yard line. And with me, the 50 yard line reference for “Cerebus” in doing it for 26 years is that it's half a year. It's 26 weeks, but scaled up to years.
Matt: And you were only doing the book bi-monthly, so you would have been only doing it half a year.
Dave: Right. And then doing it all year.
Okay! We are now at the point where we can start talking about the question for Matt Dow. And tell you a little story first. Okay, I'm out at the dollar store and I'm buying gift cards, Dollarama. And because of the way it's set up, the girl has to do the scanner over the barcode, and then also run the each card through the Visa credit card thing, so that it's it's registered in the system both ways. And she says, “I'm sorry, I got to do these individually.” I said, I've done it before and you'd think they’d come up with something else, some other way to do this. She said, “Yeah, you figure that they would.” So then, I'm just standing there, this is pretty good for me. She's a very very pretty young lady, so I get to watch her scanning the stuff. And she's pretty intented upon that. And then all of a sudden she starts singing, and she's singing along to, whether it's the radio or the in-house tunes at Dollarama. [laughs] It's like you know, I'm an old man. It's like, she's not even thinking about me being there. So it's like me as an inanimate object suddenly says, “Uh, what's the song?” And she like looks up, like she's, oh, I sort of surprised her. And she says to the clerk next to her, “What's the song?” And the clerk's going, “I don't know. I don't get it paid enough to answer what a song is.” And she could see, yeah, he's not gonna play along with this. So she looks back at me and she goes, “It's Taylor Swift.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] And I went, when I asked what's the song it was like, I had sort of taken it as a given that it was Taylor Swift, because as I said to her then, Taylor Swift is everywhere. And she said, “Yeah. She's pretty much everywhere.” And sort of proving the point, I was going from Dollarama to my barber, Black and White Barber, which is actually where Peter's Place used to be. And they have television at each of the stations where you're getting your haircut, and they have videos on all the time, which is really cool for me. I don't have television and so this is my chance to watch 15 minutes of television in the time it takes them to shave my head. And sometimes it's cat videos, and sometimes it's bloopers, sometimes it's music videos. And this time it was music videos. Of course, I walk in, and it's Taylor Swift. And it's like, I know who Taylor Swift is, but it isn't a Taylor Swift song, it's a song with somebody else, where they're on a barge. [silence] Do you know that one?
Matt: I don't, but I know someone who does!
Dave: Now we're getting to the point! Now we're getting to the point. It was, okay, there you go. And I'm going that's, in terms of how little time I spend out in the real world, combined with the fact that going and picking up my newspaper on Monday, I was getting in the habit of going, I wonder if Taylor Swift's still in the playoffs? [laughs] Because you know, if the Kansas City Chiefs win, then it's gonna be on the front page, and it's gonna be [laugh-stammers] Taylor Swift with it and it's like, I'm going this is entering a whole other realm, as somebody who remembers the Beatles on “Ed Sullivan.” You know, remembers my parents and my grandparents when I was seven years old, my sister was 10, “Come on, Ed Sullivan’s on! You got to come watch The Beatles” and it's like, I don't even know what the Beatles are. My sister doesn't know what the Beatles are, but the parents are, you know, really jazzed about this. So it's like, okay, we'll come and watch The Beatles. And it's like, what happened after that is, like I will never forget that, and this is orders of magnitude above that. So I'm going, okay, this is just a little too weird for Grampaw. Grampaw's going back to the Off-White House, and is gonna do his Strange Death of Alex Raymond page, which is coming along very nicely. And I was walking past one of the downtown daycares, there's several daycares downtown. And just, okay this couldn't possibly get any weirder, I'm across the street, and there's a little girl inside the fence, and she's going, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” and [laughs] so I start turning around and I'm waving and waving, and then it's like whoever her keeper was, you know, there's two or three keepers in there. She's turned around and looking at that, and sort of smiling like, “Yeah this is pretty strange. Like, she's not behaving as she normally does.” So then, now I'm waving and going, “Hi! Hi!” I keep walking and I keep going, okay, am I gonna go back and do it? And it's like, Grampaw, no, you're not going to go back and do it. I know exactly what you're thinking of, and it could be funny, it could be cute, [laughs] but it's 2024, we don't know about these things. One foot in front of the other, you just get yourself back to the Off-White House. And what I was gonna do, what I knew in my mind right away, I was going to come back to the fence and kneel down, and go, in my best Maurice Chevalier, [sings with French accent] “Thank heaven, for little girls! For little girls get bigger every day. Thank heaven for little girls, they grow up in the most delightful way. Those little eyes, so helpless and appealing, one day they'll flash and send you crashing through the ceiling. Tthank heaven for little girls. Thank heaven for them all, no matter where, no matter who, without them what would little boys do. Thank heaven, thank heaven for little girls.” So when I come back after my prayer time, [laughs] I want to know, on a scale of one to 10, what kind of Swifties have you got? You got two of them there, and tell me some Taylor Swift stories.
Matt: [laughs] I got… I don't have a lot, but I got a couple.
Dave: I'll bet you! I'll be back shortly.
Matt: Okay. Talk to you then.
Matt: Hello again, Dave!
Dave: Hello again, Matt! Okay, we're gonna plug the Kickstarter before we get back to Taylor Swift and the little Dow girls. And this was the other thing I was working on right up to the last minute before calling you, I had faxed Benjamin Hobbs, going, what have you got done on “Akimbo” and what have you got left to do? And then said, Rolly's putting together the CAN 10 portfolios. No pressure! Like, there's no pressure there. “I'm hoping to have the proof for ‘Akimbo’ done within the next week, which means it would be at Studiocomix Press by next week's pickup or the one after. Rolly picks up on Wednesday or Thursday.” It's like, I circled Thursday. “He can make a special trip if there's a delay. I can proof it in about half an hour once I got it. Covers, I have my two covers, flatted, and about halfway fully colored.” Oh, flatted is the the digital thing. “About 75% done. David has the baby-throw cover, it looks mostly done, but I don't have the file yet. Interiors, I'm toning the interiors.” I know you're toning the interiors, Benjamin, believe me. “I might be adding TOO MUCH tone to the interiors. This is about 66% done.” A little late in the day I go, please don't put any tone on the photorealism panels, just the manga panels, and we'll see if that works. “Pages that can be put in the layout have been.” Yay, thumbs up. “We just sorted the inside front cover this week, as you know,” yep, got back to him on that one. “Should only take a few hours to put together once the pages are toned.” He writes, “I'm actually getting sleep and have time to work every day now, a first in two months. It should all go quicker from here on out.” And I underlined “actually getting sleep” and said congratulations, I hope Laura too. How were you on the sleep? Do you remember when Janis Pearl was born?
Matt: We had, cause the way that the apartment was set up is, our room was right next to the room we had her in, but we still had a baby monitor, and it was very much a, the baby woke up, and whichever one of us was more cognizant of the fact that the baby's making noise was usually the one that got up. And I want to say it was 50/50, that's probably rose-colored glasses.
Dave: Uh-huh.
Matt: I know there was a lot more, cause Paula was trying to breastfeed, so yeah at that point it's a, I can't take care of that! Sorry.
Dave: Yes!.
Matt: But, once she got a little bit older, it was for, I want to say a good year or two, it was, okay, it's bedtime, and me and her would go into her room. She got to pick out three books, I would read her three books. Then, okay, lights out, it's time to go to sleep. Usually, I'd rock her in the rocking chair and get her to go down. Once she's got old enough to start talking, there was a lot of, okay, you can pick three books, and she would grab the thickest book on the shelf. And I'm going…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: No, I'm not reading you all 12 Dr Seuss books that are in this collection. I will read…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: … a book. The book that we had, I don't know where it came from, but she had a book called “Coco Was A Kitten”, and it's it's a board book. It's, you know, it's probably got 30 words total in it…
Dave: Right.
Matt: And it's about it's a little kitten, and then it becomes a cat, and the little girl that owns the cat. And for some reason after about the eighth or ninth time I read it, I started reading it in a bad French accent.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: So, it's not Coco wasa kitten, [French accent] Cocon was a kit-ton.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And about the third or fourth time I did that, it was, can we not read this book? Oh, no no no. This is a perennia. You get to pick two other books and “Coco” is the third one, cause I can get it done in about, eh, three and a half minutes.
Dave: Right.
Matt: To this day, Janis now hates that book.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: But yeah, I mean, with all newborns there's a period where you sleep when they sleep, and you're awake when they're awake. And I remember there was one time where I just was dead tired cause I kept having to get up in the middle of the night and it was like a Saturday, so I didn't have to work. I'm home with the baby, Paula's back at work. And she had a little bouncer that you could you her in, and I put her in the bouncer, strapped her in, and she was sleeping. And I fell asleep, and it was one of these, she started making noise, and I woke up, looked her, went, no, we're sleeping now. [laughs] Go back to sleep!
Dave: [laughs] Do like Daddy. Do like [French accent] Inspector Clouseau!
Matt: And the other books that Janis had that she hated, and I freely admit it's 100% my fault, was she had two Dora the Explorer books. And Dora is a little little Mexican girl who goes on adventures. These two books, it's her going on an adventure. And after about the fourth time I had to read this little book, I mean, they're short little books, so of course Dad's picking… “let's pick Dora, let's pick Dora.” I started reading it in a Mel Blanc Mexican voice. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And it got to the point where Janis, you know, was old enough to talk, and was like, “You can read anything you want, just don't do funny voices.” I'm like, why not?! Funny voices are fun! And, “No. No more funny voices.”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: But with Natasha, she'd go to sleep real easy. And like we'd be sitting in the rocking chair, I'm holding her, she's in a blanket. She's nice and warm. She falls asleep, I wait 5 minutes, I slowly stand up, I slowly walk two feet to the crib, I slowly lower her into the crib. As soon as her head touched the mattress, she would pop up like “The Exorcist” and scream!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And I would pick her back up, and calm her down, and get her coddled, and get her back to sleep. And wait five minutes, and slowly stand up, and slowly put her down into the crib, and as soon as her head touched the mattress, like a demonic Jack In The Box…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And she would do it over and over. Finally, it was one night where it was like an hour and a half of, okay the kid’s asleep. And Paula came up to bed and was like, cause she got Janis to sleep, and she came up and she's like, “Okay, you can put her in the crib.” I'm like, no, I can't. “Yeah yeah, she's sleeping!” No, she's not.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And I'm angrily, loudly whispering, no, she'll wake up. And it was, “No no, it'll be fine.” I'm like, okay, and put her in the crib, and immediately she started screaming. I was like, your turn.
Dave: There you go.
Matt: And Paula just kind of looked at she's like, “Well, you set her down too hard.” No, I didn't!
Dave: No I didn't! [laughs]
Matt: So, we had a little rocker thing that, they're banned now because they can flip over and kill the baby.
Dave: Right, right.
Matt: But we had this thing, and she slept… when she was a newborn, we were putting her in it, cause she's got to get up every couple hours and eat. And it got to the point where we were putting her in it, and like she's starting to out grow it, and I'm like, I don't care, she'll sleep in that, she will not sleep in the crib, I don't know what's going on. And then there was the one night, I mean she probably was 6 or 9 months old, where she would not go down into the crib, but she would sleep in my arms. I'm like, screw this, and I brought her into the bedroom…
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Laid her on the bed next to me, and went, we're sleeping now. And she just kind of stared at me, and then closed her eyes, and went to sleep. And Paula came up and went, “What's the baby doing here? She can't sleep in the bed.” I'm like, she's sleeping here cause she'll sleep. I don't give a crap.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: “Well, what if we roll over and crush her?” Like, then she's not going to be a problem anymore.
Dave: [laughs] You did not say that!
Matt: Yes, I did, because at that point it was the Demonic Jack in the Box had gone off like 14 times and I'm like, enough! It's bedtime, you need to sleep. And we let her sleep in the bed with us for a couple of months, and then she got big enough that, okay, now you'll sleep in the crib. But all I can think of is that the crib mattress was just cold enough that it was a temperature change that would wake her up, and she'd immediately scream. It's great now, because now it's, you know, bedtime, and both of my kids look at me like I'm an idiot. Like, “It's not 9:00.” I'm like, you have school in the morning, it's 8:00, go to bed. “Bedtime’s not…!” I'm pretty sure I set when bedtime is!
Dave: That’s right!
Matt: Last time I checked, I pay the mortgage!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: But I have an almost 8-year-old and an almost 13-year-old and at a certain point you choose your battles.
Dave: Almost 13?! Janis?!
Matt: She’ll be 13 at the end of March.
Dave: Oh man, that was going to be part of my question to you was, like they're both under 10, right? Ohhh man. Okay. Alrighty.
Matt: Hey, don't feel bad, Dave. I have two cousins that are 28 years younger than me and in my head they're still 3. They're 16, they can drive now!
Dave: [laughs] Okay, finishing Benjamin Hobbs’ fax, “P.S. at some point on Moment of Cerebus you mentioned doing a painted ‘Kingdom Come’ parody with ‘Cerebus’ characters. Was that for ‘Faust’? Is that the ‘Cerebus in Hell?’ cast or ‘Cerebus?’ I asked because I have notes for a ‘Kingdom Come’ parody and was just trying to avoid overlap.” Uh, no, Benjamin, it was a joke. I was making a joke that I would do a “Kingdom Come” cover. So, you're fine. Just keep going, and “Kingdom Come” is yours. “P.P.S just emailed David about the baby throwing cover. Gmail strangely doesn't autofill ‘baby throwing’, it suggests ‘baby shower’. ODD.” And I wrote, you're telling me! (with a smiley face)
Okay! Let's get to the Taylor Swift part of our program. Well, first of all, just the bottom line, and then you can flesh it out, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being… how do you pronounce his name? Travis Kelchy or Kelce?
Matt: Kelce.
Dave: Kelce. Travis Kelce being a 10. Where, is it Janis that's the Taylor Swift big big fan?
Matt: I thought that it was more Janis than Natasha, but I'm going to go with she's a 10, Natasha's probably either an 8 and a half or a 9.
Dave: Wow! [laughs] Okay. And you're not guilding the lily there? Like, it really is…?
Matt: Well… I don't know how else to say this. For Christmas, my father calls me and says, “What do the kids want?” And he's thinking, you know, they're going to want some kind of toy that he can throw the money at me, I go buy it, it goes under the tree.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I'm like well, for the big ones and, ya know. Natasha had wrote Santa a letter so I'm like, here you go. Here's things that the kid has asked for from Santa. And I went to Janis and said, Granddad wants to know what you want for Christmas, you're big enough that you can tell me. And she's like, “Taylor Swift albums.” And I'm like, …’kay. You listen to everything digitally, you want a gift card so you can buy off Amazon? “No no no, I want a Taylor Swift album.” Okay, a CD? “No, I want a vinyl album.”
Dave: Whoa! [laughs] Okay.
Matt: Don't own a record player. Why do you want vinyl? Because Taylor re-recorded all her albums and released them on special edition vinyl and the kid, that's what she wants, and I'm like, all right. Well, I have a record player, and my brother moved and I got my Mom's old record player cause she got my Grandma's old record player. And it was one, I'm like, okay, I have a spare record player. Yes. And I said to my Dad she wants vinyl and he went, “Does she have a record player?”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: I'm like, she has access to a record player! And he’s like, “Really?” I’m like, yes, she wants vinyl. So it was, “Yeah okay, I'll get her a $50 gift card, she can go to Walmart and buy a album.” And I took her and you know it's okay…. [stammers] and she spent five minutes comparing the packaging to three identical albums to see which one was the one she wanted.
Dave: Whoa.
Matt: To be fair, it's genetic, cause I do that with comics and toys. I mean, it's in the genes.
Dave: Right.
Matt: But at the same time, it was, I'm, you know, an obsessive collector going, grab one. It literally doesn't matter. You're going to open it up. And she's going, “Oh yeah.” I'm like, alright. So she picked the one she wanted, and we brought it home, and I hooked up the old record player, and it didn't work right. Like, it's a 1970s era JCPenny record player. It probably needs a lot more tender loving care than I want to put into it, but the speed control was either way too slow or way too fast. And I'm going, yeah, there's probably a belt that's getting loose. And so okay, we tried it in my record player. Well, the volume wasn't loud enough. Well it turns out my mother-in-law has a stereo combo thing of a record player, tape player, CD player, radio, and we've been storing it in the house since she moved. And Paula went, “Oh, she can have my Mom's record player.” And, okay! So now it's in Janis' room, and Janis, we bought her the one album, and then we went out and she found another album she really wanted. And vinyl is not cheap anymore, it's like 20, 30 bucks an album, but she had babysitting money, so okay, she'll quote unquote “pay me back”.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And so she's had two albums, and now she just got a third album. And then for her friend's birthday we had to order her Taylor Swift's first album on vinyl cause that's the gift that Janis is going to give and she's like, “Now I have four records!” And I'm like, is that one yours? “No.” Then you have three.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: “Well, you know, it's mine until I give it to her. Nyah!” You're not opening it, you're not playing it, it's sealed in plastic.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And of course , the first day, the first album, she pulls the sleeve out, and the sleeve is 90° from the opening of the outer sleeve because you don't want the record falling out. And she pulls the record out, puts it on the record player, and she's going to put the sleeve back the way it came out. No, turn it 90°, and she's like, “Why?” I'm like, because that way you can get the album out easier. She's like, “Why would you do that?” I'm thinking, well, I only own like 30 more records than you do. I've had vinyl all my life, I'm just telling you this is how you do it.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And,”No no no! That's…” I'm thinking, oh my God. Yeah, no, she's… the Taylor Swift movie, Paula took the kids to see it. They were all sold out of the special edition popcorn tubs but they have the soda cups, so Paula bought each kid the giant 40 ounce soda cup that's got, you know, it's says “Taylor Swift Eras Tour” has all the pictures of her. And I'm going, okay, you know, cool. They have a neat collectible, it's reusable, type thing. Well, then we went to the movie theater, and they had gotten more of the popcorn tins, so Paula bought…
Dave: Oh, good!
Matt: Paula bought her the metal tin that looks exactly the same as the cup. Oh, she was so happy and amazed, oh it was, “Oh you're the best parents ever!” I'm like, I was going to go to the good nursing home that day!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And then we went to the movies, and they had the plastic popcorn bucket, and it was, “Oh I need that.” We're going… literally the Bugs Bunny eye twitch started of, you need it why? “Well, I have the metal tin and I have the cup. This is the third thing. I need to have the third thing.” Okay, you have the metal tin, it's a popcorn tin, why do you need the popcorn tub? And it was at that point that my, “you picks your battles.” Okay, fine, cause the other one was it was marked down because they're trying to get rid of them, and I'm going, okay, we're quote unquote “saving money” by getting this.
Dave: Right.Right.
Matt: And then we came home, and she had all this in her room on her bookshelf, and I'm like, screw it, and I put the cup down, and I put the metal tin on top of it cause it's got a wider base, and then I put the plastic tub on top of that cause it's got a wider base, just to mess with her. And she's like, “Oh no, that kind of looks good” and I'm like, oh my god. Oh why why?!
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Like, my Dad will call and say, “Are the kids watching the football game?” Why? It's not the Packers, we live in Wisconsin, you know, it's the Packers! Why? “Well, Kansas City's playing.” And? “Well you might see Taylor Swift.” I can see Taylor Swift whenever I want, the kid’s got pictures.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: I mean, the reason I can say Janis is a 10 is she forced her Grandmother to go online and buy a full 3 foot by 5 foot flag that says “Taylor Swift for President 2024.”
Dave: Uh-huh. [laughs]
Matt: And it came and she was wearing it like a cape, and I'm going, alright, and then she's like, “I want to hang this in my room.” I'm like, well where do you want to hang it? And she's, “I want to hang it here.” Well that's not going to work, the two eyelets to hang it are on the left side of the flag, you want to hang it so that it's not perpendicular to the floor. So we're going to have to put a hole in the flag. “Well okay, we'll make it work.” So she hung it up by her bed and it's huge and I'm going, why do you need this? “Well, cause I think she'd make a great president.” Like, you do realize she's not eligible to run for President in 2024? She's 34 years old, she needs to be 35. “Well that's stupid!”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: That's the law, it's been the law since 1789, don't think they're gonna change it just for you!
Dave: [laughs] But they should change it for Taylor Swift. Come on! [laughs]
Matt: Hey, if she were eligible to run this year and she threw her hat in the ring, I would not say she wouldn't win. I wouldn't say she would win, but she definitely wouldn't lose. It would be real neck and neck cause everyone would be, “Oh you got to vote for Taylor.” Be like, well what's her platform? “Doesn't matter! You got to vote for Taylor. You know, what are you, some kind of horrible misogynist?” Like, I just want to know where she stands on literally any issue!
Dave: [laughs] Right.
Matt: But, like I said, I thought Natasha wasn't that, I thought it was “big sister enforced love” type deal.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And one day Janis was gone at dance class and Natasha was just watching videos on YouTube. And normally she watches crap that makes me question the sanity of letting my children have access to anything in the world at all, like videos where it's a woman reacting to other videos, and I'm going, why are you watching this? This is garbage. And it's, “Well she's funny!” No, she's not, this is garbage.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: Or the same woman opening up blind bag toys and, “Well what do you think we're going to get?” Like, this is not entertainment, and why are you watching this? It's crap. But this particular evening…
Dave: “Dad!” [laughs]
Matt: Hey, I freely admit, I make videos that go on the internet that I'm sure somebody goes, “Why are you watching that? It's crap.”
Dave: Right.
Matt: Like this one! But she had on a playlist and it was mostly Taylor Swift songs, and and she's singing and dancing along without her sister making her. I'm like, oh okay, no, it's not what I thought it was. She actually does enjoy this all on her own.
Dave: Right.
Matt: And I'm watching some of the videos cause I haven't seen all of these, and Taylor Swift knows how to make a good video. I mean, they're all interesting! And I'm just… I get that she's a cultural force. There's a part of me that goes, you know, she's like Madonna was in the early 80s. And there's part of me going, no, she's bigger than Madonna ever was.
Dave: No, no, she’s much, much bigger than that.
Matt: Well, the world has gotten bigger since the 80s, but it's still the same cultural force. There is the artist, there are the fans, and there are the super fans. And you can say, well, Madonna was never that big. Madonna was just as huge as Taylor Swift is, the problem was back in the 80s you just couldn't go on the internet and see all the fans at the same time.
Dave: No, I think the difference with this one is, at least at this point, the Travis Kelce thing, because it is… you know, I'm picturing these poor opposing players trying to play a division final game against the Kansas City Chiefs and in the back of their head, all of the female relatives that they love between the ages of eight and 25 are going, “Uncle Jeff, if you beat Taylor Swift, I'm never speaking to you again!”
Matt: On Facebook, Steve Bolhafner actually shared a thing of, it's a memm of, understand that if you're you know mad about the NFL showing Taylor Swift during the games that all your female relatives are seeing what you're saying which is “be small, go away” type thing. And there's a bunch of comments on this post, and I haven't said anything about it because Steve and I are friends, but when the Chiefs got into the Super Bowl, Paula told me, “Oh yeah, it's going to be the Chiefs” and I'm like, oh okay. It's like, “Yeah, and there's a big brouhaha online among the Swifties because Taylor has a show in Japan the same day. How is she going to get back from Japan in time to watch the game?” And I'm thinking, right. The problem I have with that particular statement is, it's very much putting Travis first, which, I'm not saying Taylor wouldn't do that, but wouldn't the more accurate question be, how is Travis going to get from Las Vegas to Japan to watch Taylor’s show?
Dave: Mhm, I don't think so. I think this is…
Matt: I know it doesn't go that way, but it's one of those, if you flip the script a little bit, you realize that it's a ridiculous concept. They're both busy Superstars.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: She probably booked the show in Japan a year ago not realizing that, hey, the Super Bowl's the same day and that might become a big thing.
Dave: Well, it's like, when you got that kind of money, like she's going to be traveling across the International date line. I know all of this stuff and I just read the newspapers! It's like, it's amazing. I know that one of her cats is named Benjamin Button. I know that one of her cats is named after another female character on a soap or something, and I know that both of her cats have more money than Travis Kelce does.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Like, by orders of magnitude. I mean, that's a whole, whole different reality entirely . I mean, depending on what kind of people they are, we don't know. But it is, obviously they, or I think we can all assume that they've had sex, and that's fornication, and fornication has its own punishments attached to it. And two famous people, not a lot of happy famous people stories, but it's orders of magnitude of endorphins mixed with… adrenaline. It’s like, the worldwide thing. Do the girls watch the Kansas City Chiefs so that they can see Taylor Swift?
Matt: There was one game, I think they were playing the Packers, we watched that game, and they showed Taylor Swift. That was the other one! Because, yeah, they were playing in Green Bay, and Janis is like, “Oh my!” And she was talking on her phone to one of her friends, video chatting, and she's like, “Can you believe it? Taylor Swift’s within 45 minutes of us.” And I'm like… ‘kay.
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: I immediately flashed on the episode of “The Simpsons” where Spinal Tap appears and Spinal Tap says that, “When we're on our way here out on Route 7” and Bart turns to Milhouse and goes, “That's only eight miles from my house!”
Dave: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: There comes a point where, yes, Taylor Swift is in the same zip code as you. But! There's also 80,000 people between you and her. When she showed up, it was very much, she landed at the airport, got into a SUV, had a police motorcade from the airport to the stadium. My sister-in-law works at the stadium as a bartender and she's on the opposite end of the field from where the box that Taylor was going to be. But they shut down an elevator in the stadium, so that when Taylor showed up they could whisk her to the elevator, get her up to the floor where the box is, and get her into the box within… I mean, it's presidential level precision of, we know where she is in this building at every second.
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: And I'm just going, it's neat. That's the only way I can describe it. Yeah, it's neat that she's this famous and everything, but at the same time, she is just a woman!
Dave: Yeah, mhm, well…
Matt: She puts her pants on one leg at a time, same as everybody else.
Dave: Yeah. Yeah. But it's like I say, just speaking from Grampaw's point of view, where all I do is is read newspapers, and it's amazing the amount of information that people know about. It's like, [laughs] I'm sitting there going from my “I wonder if Taylor Swift still in the playoffs?” question, to… she's starting up her tour again sometime around the Super Bowl, isn't she? And it's like I'm going, I know that! And then going, is she going to be able to get back from wherever she is to the Super Bowl in time? Yes, because she's going across the International date line, and if she left immediately after the show, and presumably she would have somebody's private plane. She's got have a shopping list of people who are more than willing to give her their private plane just to say, “Yeah, Taylor Swift's on on my plane coming back from Japan to the Super Bowl.” No, I don't think all of this ends happily, but the only thing that I can really say it's directly analogous to, is Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Which was, as long as you're working on “Cleopatra,” this giant, giant circus which is really what the Super Bowl is, and which is really what the Eras Tour is, the level of insanity and the level of focus just becomes, “Well, it's Taylor Swift's world, we all just get to live in it.”
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: But then once “Cleopatra” wraps and it's, okay, where do we go from now? That was just a complete nightmare whether you were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fans or absolutely hated Elizabeth Tayor or Richard Burton, or couldn't care one way or the other about them. It was, mhmm, this is going to destroy both of your lives. And it's like, there's nothing you can do about it, because from my point of view now, it’s like, well you've completely disconnected yourself from God and you plugged yourself into this supernova, and it's like, “Okay, I guess we'll find out what living in the supernova is like when ‘Cleopatra’ wraps.” And it's like, mhmm, orders of magnitude of difference. Anyway! Okay, thank you for [laughs] letting me talk a little about Taylor Swift and get an idea of what life with a couple of Swifties is like.
Matt: It's not horrible, but there are some days where I'm just like, enough! You can stop now. [laughs]
Dave: That’s right. Michael R of Easton, Pennsylvania is asking about… I'm missing the page where he actually asked about it. But he got the digital versions of Dave Sim Collected Letters, which I had forgotten where we had left off, so thank you, Michael, for reminding me that it was 1990 was the latest Collected Letters that were offered in in digital form. The situation with that the Collected Letters, which are in physical form and are at the Aardvark-Vanaheim storage unit. They used to be at Camp David, now they're at the storage unit. Rolly was scanning them, Dave Fisher was digitally removing the addresses, because when I answer the letters I would type or get Monique to type the addresses at the top of the letter, and ehh, you don't want to do that. You don't want to be retaining addresses where you don't know if the person's still there. So in terms of, are we still scanning? No, we're not still scanning. Certain number of them were scanned and the addresses were cleaned up, and I can ask Fisher about that and say, where are we past the point where we actually offered them as a digital reward? In terms of, I think what you're asking is, “Is there ways that I can get more Collected Letters?” And when I started answering the letters after I finished “Cerebus”, which is like 20 years ago, it was if I answer the letter and type the address at the top for the letter, and then delete the address and then type the person's name in bold in 24 point and center it at the top of the letter, it's the format of Collected Letters. So let's do that. And consequently, it's like, it'll need some tweaking. It's not ready to be printed, but this was at the time that Collected Letters Volume 2 came out. This will be a lot less work than Fisher is having to do on the scanned hard copy letters, and taking the addresses out. So, the question is probably more, no, those won't be offered, because they weren't a real popular item, but I know that you really like them and there's about a dozen other people that I know that said, “Yeah, you know as many Collected Letters as I get. Thumbs up from me.” Because I still do that, when I'm answering the letters I have a digital file, CORR, for correspondence, JAN being January, and then 24 which is 2024, and that goes back, I think if I got Rolly to check the harddrives that we've got, got Sandeep to check the the harddrives that he has, Fisher to check the harddrives that he has, it would be, conservative estimate? Probably 2007, 2008 through to right this minute. But not formatted. If I finish a letter and I want it to print out on a separate piece of stationary, then I have to move it down and onto another page, and I usually don't fix that. I don't go, okay, now I need to delete all of those spaces and put it back up under the other letter. So, I'm getting better at not answering letters [laughs] so that I can work on Strange Death of Alex Raymond. Very proud of myself today looking at the January letters in the filing cabinet where I have the hard copies, and I maybe wrote 12 letters this month, and most of them were Matt Dow incoming. “Matt, this is coming in on Thursday” and fax that to Matt. So, I think what I could do, like meeting you halfway, if you wanted to say, “Why, if I could have all Dave Sim’s letters for 2023” and I go, okay, that's a limited objective. I think I probably even got that on my harddrive. Although, I haven't checked it that way, I could go, okay, all of my correspondence from 2023. What would you be willing to pay for a digital copy of a whole year? And, be generous now! [laughs] You're helping to finance Strange Death of Alex Raymond and that's my frame of reference on all of these things. Let's just say a year, what you would be comfortable paying for all of 2023? And if anybody else wants to get in on that, who's listening and going, “Yeah, I like Collected Letters. I haven't seen a Collected Letters collection hard copy or digital since…” I think 2016 was the last time that they were offered? So a good eight years. It's like, “Yeah, I'm in, and I would pay this much for a year of of Dave Sim’s correspondence from 2023.
Matt: I mean… I probably have a good chunk of 2023, cause they were sent to me!
Dave: [laughs] That's right! That's right, you've almost cornered the market yourself. Okay, so this is between you and me, Michael, at this point, the same as the situation was with with Rob Snell with the Notebook. It's like, if this is really important to you, I will do what I can on my end, and at least you will end up getting Dave Sim Collected Letters 2023. Not sure how long it would take to do it, but I will put it on my list to talk to Rolly about it, and I'll look and see if I've got them on my laptop, and it could be sometime in the next week. Could be sometime in the next 10 days. You've got my phone number, just leave a phone message saying, “This is the absolute maximum that I could picture paying for a year of Dave Sim’s Collected Letters.”
Matt: Okay. I'm sure that there's more than just Michael listening going… like, Margaret I could see wanting to throw money at it, maybe Dodger. Although Dodger was real quiet this month, so I don't know!
Dave: I think Dodger was maybe quiet because he got the original art in the mail of Cerebus tarred and feathered and didn't know where it came from, where was Cerebus tarred and feathered? So I was going to suggest, could you serialize on A Moment of Cerebus for Dodger’s benefit “The Amazing Batvark” because that's what that one was from. And I thought that was really funny. I was very, very proud of how “The Amazing Batvark: Batvark No More” came out, and that was one of the first actual drawings that I did. It's a pile of feathers that's the shape of Cerebus. The wrist isn't in 100% good shape but I think I can handle this. I hope I can handle this. And sure enough, I could handle it.
Matt: Did we ever send you the original pitch for that cover?
Dave: Mhmm, I don't think so.
Matt: Okay, I suggested the “Amazing Spider-Man” 50 parody, and it was a little Cerebus in the front and the big Batvark in the back, and in my suggestion there was two word balloons, and the one was Cerebus going, “Cerebus knows you're staring at the back of Cerebus’ head. Cerebus can feel it.” And Batvark going, “You know you have a liver spot that looks exactly like Spiro Agnew?”
Dave: [laughs]
Matt: And I sent it to the team and they came back with, “It's funny, but is there a better modern political pundit besides Spiro Agnew?” I'm like, no. No, it's got to be Spiro Agnew. That's what makes it funny.
Dave: That’s right.
Matt: It's the name, Spiro Agnew, is just inherently funny. And there was some back and forth, I think with Hobbs, going, “Yeah, but it could be this person or that.” I'm like, no, you don't get it. It's very much a 1960s Mad Magazine joke, you kind of got to go with it. And when I saw the actual cover I'm like, there's no word balloons. What's going on, guys? Like, “Yeah, we didn't think they were funny.” Like, come on! It was perfect!
Dave: [laughs] Oh, Untold Stories of “Cerebus in Hell?” This is one of the reasons that I do everything by fax, so that I have a paper trail on everything. I've got, I think, probably three long boxes now just of “Cerebus in Hell?” and all the back and forth, and the funny stories, and the gags that didn't make it, and the gags that got changed, and all of that kind of stuff, we are saving it for posterity. I mean, if you could even take out just a handful of the strips from that issue that have, uh…
Matt: I believe I have, I know I have a PDF of the printer file, cause Hobbs sends it out and I always save them, the last minute proofread files. Cause I save them because that way I have them, and I know I have that one. I think I may even have copies of the preliminary strips from when Birdsong faxed them to you.
Dave: Right. Okay.
Matt: I'll have to look. But I know I have everything. That's also the issue that I quote unquote “contributed to” because I wrote the inside front cover.
Dave: Right! Right.
Matt: Because that was a, “Hey who wrote the IFC?” and everybody went, “Uhh…” and like there was at least three or four emails back and forth of, “You did, didn't you?” and everybody going, “No, no no” and I'm like okay, what's the issue about? They kind of gave me a ballpark of, alright, or what's the premise? And they gave me the premise, and I went, okay, here you go. I sent it out and it was, you know, nobody responded. Alright, whatever. And then finally the fax came back from you with a few minor corrections, and I'm like, oh! Okay, apparently it's in.
Dave: Yeah. Yeah, we're easy to to accommodate around here.
Matt: Well yeah, we're big fans of “as long as I don't have to do it.”
Dave: [laughs] And then Michael R of Easton, Pennsylvania. “Hey wait a minute!” Says, “Hi Matt! After reading the Sunday AMoC post where Dave might think there might be an issue with Jeff Catherine Jones Idyl reward for this Kickstarter campaign. While reading Dave's faxed post to AMoC and every time I read ‘Jeff Catherine Jones’ I thought of Catherine Zeta-Jones.” And is that… how do you pronounce it? Or is it Zeeta?
Matt: It's Zeta.
Dave: It’s Zeta. Okay, I thought it was. Catherine Zeta-Jones. “And the more I thought of Catherine Zeta-Jones, then I started thinking of Gita. Catherine Gita-Jones. LOL. Catherine Gita-Jones mocked up like-a-look to Jeff Catherine Jones’ Idyl. If Henrot could duplicate Red Sophia, I'm sure Dave Sim could duplicate Catherine Zeta-Jones as Catherine Gita-Jones, as Jeff Catherine Jones’ Idyl. Not really a question for Dave, just an observation. Anyway, I thought it was funny.” I'd probably think it was funny if I knew who Catherine Zeta-Jones is.
Matt: Um, yeah! You probably stopped going to the movies when she started getting big.
Dave: Oh, she's a movie star? Is she, like, in “Star Wars” things or…?
Matt: Uhh… She's been on a number of… she was married to Michael Douglas. I think she still is married to Michael Douglas.
Dave: Oh, this sounds familiar!
Matt: She was the romantic lead in the Antonio Banderas “Zorro” movies.
Dave: Okay, alright. And this is a photo of her with the Disney+? Or is this just she's on a red carpet and there's a Disney+ logo in the background?
Matt: It's a red carpet for a Disney+ premiere, cause I don't know what she's done for Disney+. Oh! If she's still married to Michael Douglas, she was probably on the red carpet with him for some Marvel movie that he was involved in, because he's in the “Ant-Man” movies. He's Hank Pym.
Dave: Oh! Right. Right. That's right. Huh. It's a small world, but I still wouldn't want to paint it.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: Then we go, “And on her post this week, Jen shared the gear sketches Flip is getting, and Flip said, ‘Wow, I'm floored. Anyone who can help move this project forward, please do. We need to support great comics like this one.’” And thank you, Flip. Flip was in for $289, he not only unlocked the last $89 on one page, he went the whole 200 on page 333. So, that was a real coincidence where it was I was going, okay the next person who ponies up the three figure amount, I got some machinery here for them. Even my sketches are getting laborious, particularly the “caught in the machinery” which is a quote from “The Monkey’s Paw.” And the mental image that I had in my mind from, I probably read “The Monkey's Paw” at the same age that Ward Greene read “Monkey’s Paw”, about about 10 or 11 years old. And that really sticks with you and in a genetic child sense, first time reading a real grown-up story and going, “Wow, I'm not even comfortable picturing that, but boy, it's a completely vivid picture in my head.” Very very happy with how ”The Monkey’s Paw” sequence has come out. All I got done this week was pages 592 and 593, two-page spread. And it was, Wednesday is a caffeine day for me [laughs] but I was really pushing the limits of caffeine. I had been up since 3 in the morning reading John's Gospel and was still working on page 593 at about 12:30. So almost 20 hours of wide awake and working on a Strange Death of Alex Raymond page. But it came out about as close as a page is going to come to exactly what it looked like in my head, I hope it can be this good. And giving me a motif that I didn't anticipate that I will be able to do on 594. Don't know if 594, 595 are going to be a two-page spread. Trying not to have “The Monkey’s Paw” take over Strange Death of Alex Raymond, but just, life doesn't get any better than that. It's just simply, having Strange Death of Alex Raymond pages come out the way I want them to come out, and going, I don't know how many of these I got left in me. I don't know if I get Strange Death of Alex Raymond done, but man oh man, if I die tomorrow, I will be very very pleased that everybody's gonna go, “This is the last page? Agh! You're killing me! These pages are are getting better and better and better.” Which was exactly the the experience that all of us “Rip Kirby” fans had with Alex Raymond. He was just getting better and better and better as he went along, and then you go, well, that's it. That's the last one. John Prentice is great, just being a talented Alex Raymond clone, but there was only one Alex Raymond, and just picturing if he hadn't lived the way he had chosen to live, how much better that strip would have gotten, picturing it in my mind. So, yes, thank you, Flip, and you are more than welcome to the machinery drawings. And don't forget, we're still here! The stuff up ahead in the 330s, 340 pages, I've been skipping ahead. When Jennifer tells me 333 was unlocked, it's like, okay, what was that one? Oh boy, that should knock their socks off in in a number of ways. And then skipping ahead and going, yeah, these are like salted nuts, as close as I can get to a salted nut graphic novel. “I just need another page.”
Thank you for sending me the Rob Snell report on the Albatross One. Have you printed that?
Matt: He posted that on Facebook, because he put some pictures too, I'm going to grab the pictures and use them for this right now, and I'm probably gonna copy and paste it for a post, ehh, maybe Sunday, maybe Monday. Or I’m gonna put it up as part of Please Hold for Saturday.
Dave: Alright. Well, he was very very flattering about it, and I know that he was a retailer and then he went into printing, which I didn't know that he had his own print shop. So, for him to be that impressed with Albatross One, we're very very pleased about that. One of the questions that he raised was, does it have to be in colour? And it's like, mhm, if you're talking about a facsimile notebook, yes, because some of it is in blue ink. There's little sort of painting of Captain Cockroach, a bunch of other stuff. Some of it's in black & white, some of it's in colour. He was saying that for his purposes, it didn't have to be in colour, if it would be cheaper if it was in black & white. That one I don't know, that one I didn't ask about. Rolly asked Alfonso, “Okay, what's the charge going to be for one of these in colour?” And it was $57 Canadian just to print one of them, and Rolly said the shipping was about 25. So you're talking a base cost of $82 Canadian, which is probably $60 US. It's one of those, okay, it's not going to be cheap, but I think I can say if everybody is happy with a colour version, at this point if people are interested in a fascimile Albatross #1 Notebook, send me a cheque for 100 US. Now, yeah, 100 US would work out to what? Like, 130 Canadian, so it's like there is a pretty good profit margin and there isn't really anything I have to do, because I just handed it to Rolly and say, take this over to Alfonso and find out what it costs to do as exact a copy of this as as he can. And it is really impressive! It does look exactly like the notebook except that the spiral binding is wider and it's black, but apart from that, if I was looking at it across the room, if I was looking at the Albatross One next to the copy, I couldn't tell the difference from across the room. So it’s like, that could be it, and that could be it.
Matt: When you sent the picture of you holding them both up, took me a minute of, I think the one on the left, Dave's right, is the facsimile and the one in Dave's left hand, our right, is the original because it looks like the spiral is pulling off the notebook a little bit near the top. But I did have to look at the photo, and when I posted the pictures I said, I'm fairly certain the facsimile is on our left. And when Rob posted his picture I'm like okay, I did figure it out. It did take a minute, but I did figure, okay, yep, black spiral and the original it's coming a little loose.
Dave: That's pretty darn good. That's pretty darn goo, if that's how you can tell the difference. Whether we would forge ahead and do the further notebooks, it's like, mhmm, let me see how many 100 US cheques I get in with a little cover note that says “Swordfish.” This is only being offered on Please Hold for Dave Sim. If you want to leak it to somebody else, you can leak it to somebody else, and make the cheque payable to Aardvark-Vanaheim, or money order! If you're doing a money order, make sure you specify where you're getting the money order that it's going to Canada, because I have gotten money orders that say “only in US and territories” and it's just not something that they ask about. Coming in to ask for a $100 money order, they'll give you a $100 money order. They figure you're just going to give it to somebody or mail it somewhere in the US. It has to be a specific money order that says it's good internationally, as well. If I get a whole bunch of them, it's like, well, okay, how often are we going to do this with the next notebook? I think the next notebook is another 200 pages, but then there's other thinner ones up ahead, and I'll have to deal with a “Teddy Kennedy will drive off that bridge when we come to it” situation.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: But I'm certainly not adverse to doing it, it's one of those things, probably can't solicit for them through Diamond. If we solicit for them through Diamond, then it's 60% off whatever the cover price is. So if I offered it in Previews, and it was going to be in your local comic book store, it would probably be at least 200 US, maybe 250 US. And it's like if we don't sell any or if we only sell eight of them, that's fine. We're printing them individually, it's not like I'm expecting to be producing a Marquis Press size number on these books. That was the other thing was Alfonso priced them down to, if we got 249 done, like 250 of them, which would be, well, okay, that would take forever to to sell them, whatever the the cover price would be. The price only dropped to like 52 Canadian from 57 Canadian, so no, it's not the easiest thing in the world for them to print, it takes tender loving care to do it. So for the hours it's going to take to do 250, you're not getting a much better price than you would just on the one. So, probably this is just going to be a Please Hold for Dave Sim “Swordfish” special, and we'll leave It wide open. We're not going to cap it, anybody who's listening to Please Hold for Dave Sim from February 2024 in March 2030 and they're going, “Wonder if that's still good?” Yep, it's still good if I'm still around.
Matt: [laughs] Well, I'm just thinking, I'll email Eddie and go, hey Eddie, you got another little task on your list of things to do when you take over.
Dave: Right! Right. We're trying to keep that to a minimum, because that's the unenviable task that Eddie is going to be in is, however suddenly popular temporarily Dave Sim is going to be, and I think will be capital T Temporarily if the feminists have anything to say about it, and they have something to say about everything. Eddie's going to have to deal with that. It's going to be, “Oh wait a minute. Now I definitely want one of the Notebooks and I want it right this minute a week after Dave Sim died” and 75 people suddenly saying, “Yeah, I want that.” So it'll be, Rolly having to take care of as much as he can on site and Eddie calling the shots in between his full-time job, which is a more-than-fulltime job. So, that's why they call them the Grateful Dead.
Matt: [laughs] Well, the other thing I've made a note to talk to Margaret of, because she's got all the scans of, hey, just a ballpark list of how big is each Notebook, and how much actual content should be in each Notebook? Cause unless you're reproducing all the blank pages…
Dave: Right. Right.
Matt: Well, that way you would have an idea of okay, number one sold like, I don't want to say hotcakes, but it's sold well enough to think about doing #2, it's, okay #2 only has 136 pages or whatever. Because I know she said one of the Notebooks is really small and doesn't have that many pages, so I mean, that one might be super cheap to reproduced, but then again that might be the one that everybody goes, “Eh, we'll wait till the next one.”
Dave: [laughs] Right! Or, “That'll do it for me. I got the first two.” Or, “I've got all the ‘High Society’ ones, and I was only really interested in ‘High Society,’ and the last one came in and it hasn't got as much artwork in it, it's got more writing. I'm not interested in the writing.” Or, “I'm interested in the writing and it's got more artwork in it. Ehh! I think I got enough of these.” Yeah, that's all baked in. Okay, real quick on the “after Dave Sim dies” thing with Comic Art Metaphysics being what it is, I've been meaning to talk to Eddie about this, so I might as well talk to Eddie about this on Please Hold for Dave Sim. We've talked about it a little bit, but I'm starting thinking somebody who works for 14 years on something called Strange Death of Alex Raymond is pretty much asking for the Strange Death of Dave Sim. Can you agree with that?
Matt: [sighs] At a certain point, I don't think “strange” is going to be the right adjective. It's going to be weird. There's going to be enough metaphysics tied around it that when somebody goes, “I'm going to do the Strange Death of Dave Sim graphic novel” any of us that are first generation sources are going to be like, “You really want to think twice pal.” [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] It be eating your life!
Matt: Here's the dump truck #1 of Dave's notes. Go ahead, go nuts! [laughs]
Dave: The greater concern that I have is the material being available. If it's the Strange Death of Dave Sim and there's a criminal investigation attached to it, or it's under suspicious circumstances in the eyes of the police, which Alex Raymond's death actually wasn't. I think the cops when, and I'll be documenting this somewhere up ahead, they went, “Okay, Stan Drake wasn't insured for this guy driving his car. So his new his brand new Corvette is totaled and he's not getting a penny back out of it. There's not much else that we can do to the guy. This peer of his that he had all of this admiration for, he's dead.” It's, uh no, if somebody wanted to make an issue of this, “We want to know how this happened,” it would have to be a family member, and the family members weren't remotely interested. Stan Drake wasn't remotely interested. The coroner wasn't remotely interested. It's like, mhmm, guy his age with all that he has to live for driving way too fast and slamming into a tree and killing himself with all that he had to live for? Mhm, it's, “No, this is truly tragic for everybody involved but this is nothing that will attract the attention of a coroner or the courts.” So if that's the case, then most of the materials should be available. What I'm specifying on Please Hold for Dave Sim, so that you can check, no, this is not a deep fake. This is Dave Sim's actual voice saying this, I wave any proprietary interest in all of the evidence. If it's a police investigation and there's a criminal element involved in it, then no. Until that's resolved then the police have all the cards, and no, even if you want to wave it, you can't wave it because there's a criminal investigation attached to it. Anything short of a criminal investigation, if it's just, “Wait a minute, how did he die? Can we see the autopsy photos?” Yes, anybody who wants to see my autopsy photos 24 hours after I'm dead is more than welcome to see the autopsy photos. As far as I'm concerned, my family has has no interest in it. I have a sister living further up in Ontario. This wouldn't be of of any interest whatsoever to her, but this would be, as soon as people find out, “Oh Dave Sim is dead.” “Oh how did Dave Sim die?” “Well, it says here, ‘blah b-blah b-blah blah blah’.” And it's like, “Come again?” [laughs] “Well, as I said, it says here ‘blah b-blah b-blah b-blah’.” And I do read in the Waterloo Region Record, which is the the local newspaper, stories about people who die, and it's like, “Waterloo Region Police shut up like a clam. It's like unless you have some reason that you have to know what happened there, no, you can't know.” And it's like, mhmm, well, I think you're leaving a lot of questions about this front page news story that, yes it is of concern to the citizenry in Kitchener, because I've read this article four times now and I still don't understand what it is that happen. I'm concerned with the truth. I'm concerned that people be able to get the truth if they're interested in the truth, and the way that you would get the truth in this situation, is if as a many American, and British, and Australian Cerebus fans can email the Waterloo Region Record and go, “Uh no, I can tell you for a fact Dave Sim wanted all of the information about his death, autopsy photos, coroner’s report, all of that stuff, he wanted it 100% public and he wanted it 100% public immediately.” It still may not work, but it will make them go, “Uhh, these people are from a real place, like the United States! [laughs] And they're interested in this, and they're really interested in this. This is a week later and this is the 15th email we've gotten from this guy in Easton, Pennsylvania.”
Matt: Okay, Eddie, remember!
Dave: There you go. Alright, we're coming up on the last one now, where Manly, you wrote, “Dave, I forgot Birdsong's question, ‘did Dave ever meet Jeff Jones?’” Uh, yes I did. I met Jeff Jones at the second Cosmicon in Toronto, when I would have been 16 years old, and John Balge with Harry Kremer had already done Now and Then Times #1, now we were working on Now and Then Times Volume one #2, and we had T Casey Brennan had come up from Michigan and we had interviewed him at Now and Then Books. And so I did a part article, part interview format on T Casey Brennan. I read it today, it was like, wow, that's actually really good. That's a very very interesting interview for a 16-year-old to to accomplish. The interview begins, and this was kind of innovative as well, “In December of 1972, T Casey Brennan made a weekend sojourn to Kitchener, Ontario. The following questions and answers are taken from a lengthy interview session which took place at Now and Then Books during Mr Brennan's visit.” And the first question is, “Do you think that the early comic books before the Code, like the early war and horror books, had any effect on the kids who read them?” And Casey answers, “Yes, I think it was a good effect because it showed the violence while showing the effects of that same violence. What you get, especially today in cartoons and funny comic books and strips is a situation where you'll have a character, say, pushed off a cliff and he's none worse for wear. It's just an annoyance and no real injury is involved. In fact, one psychologist pointed out that it's rather frightening when you think that kids can be watching a television show, a character be pushed off a cliff, and not even flinch because they know that there's nothing going to happen. After the Comics Code, even in the serious comics, you had war comics where men went off to war and nobody got maimed. There were no legs and arms being blown off, no blood dripping down the chin as you would see in the comics before the Code. It just seemed to portray violence as a sort of a game, like the violence of the ‘Batman’ TV show. Violence was a big game. Compare the ‘Batman’ TV show with the Batman punches where no one really gets hurt. to say a fight scene or a beating scene out of an EC where you've got teeth being knocked out, blood, and all the effects of the violence shown. Compare a Road Runner cartoon where the Coyote gets pushed off a cliff and is just rather annoyed with it, with an EC comic where a guy gets pushed off a cliff, and then he'd be at the bottom with a bone puncturing his skin, and is just broken in a mass of blood and guts. That's all. You should show the results of that violence. That's the way it should be done. If you're going to show violence at all, you should show the results of that violence. I think it's very harmful if you don't show the results of that violence. I did a story like that in Warren in ‘Creepy’ #37, the issue after ‘On the Wings of a Bird.’ It was a story called ‘The Cut-Throat Cat Blues’ about the kind of attitudes that violent funny cartoons were putting across. That's when I think our magazines,“ he's talking about the Warren magazines, “are doing just great. I'm glad that we finally got comics on the stands now that are showing violence as it really is.”
I took that answer, that paragraph, and typed it out, and took it with me to Cosmicon and showed it to… what's the lineup here? Marv Wolfman, Will Eisner, Steve Englehart, Len Wein, Steve Skeates, and Jeff Jones. Jeff Jones was one of the last ones that I showed it to. This was at York University, he was in one of the classrooms where they displayed the artwork, and it was some of his painted comic stories that he did for the skin magazines. One page like “Prince Valiant” parody, but Jeff Jones, and just absolutely absolutely jaw-dropping stuf. But not your main convention goer item of interest. So he was really just sitting in this classroom by himself waiting to see if anybody wanted to talk to him about his artwork. And it's like, I came in and sat down across from him, and I explained what I was doing, that I had interviewed T Casey Brennan and this was a quote from an interview that he had done. And I was showing this to the other professionals at the convention and asking them whether they agree or disagree with what Casey was saying. So I handed it over to him, and he took it, and he's sitting there, and he reads the paragraph, and then he just started rolling the piece of paper in his hands. [laughs] It was a very, very vivid memory of mine that it was like part of his cogitative process of, “What is it that I'm going to say about this? And I know what it is that I'm going to say, how am I going to say it?” And he just rolled the piece of paper, and rerolled it and rerolled it, and said, “I agree with him 100%. I think he hit it right on the nose. That's exactly the way I feel about violence and the way you should approach anything with kids. Be honest with them and don't shelter them with a lot of fairy tales that they're going to grow up and find out that that's not really so and end up not trusting their parents who were usually the ones who gave them all the wrong answers to begin with, whether it's about Santa Claus or whatever. I don't know that you should expose kids to a lot of violence, but when you do, present it to them honestly. The ECs, admittedly, when they presented violence, presented it, well, violently. But it was not really a good cross-section. The ECs were dwelling on a particular thing. If there were kids who read ECs and only ECs and never got exposed to anything else, then that might not be particularly healthy. But whatever is presented to the kids should be presented honestly.”
Okay! That's a wrap, just coming up on the three-hour mark. I'm going to put this on the fax machine, the one page of comments from people about Casey's “if you're going to show violence, you should show the results of that violence.” Will Eisner was particularly noteworthy. It was very funny because he was walking toward towards me, and it's like I've got a piece of paper in my hand, and he pulled his hand up into his sleeve, like “I'm not doing sketches, I don't have a right hand.” And it's like, uh, no, I'm not asking for a sketch. I'm handing this to you because it's a quote from T Casey Brennan, a comics writer, about violence, and I wanted to know if I could get your opinion about what he's saying. And he read it, I turned the tape recorder on and recorded him answering the question. The funny thing was, the whole time he had his he still had his arm up his sleeve.
Matt: [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] Okay! Okay, that will do it for Please Hold for February 2024. You go and listen to some Taylor Swift songs on my behalf. The only two that I know are I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In and Shake It Off, so either one of those, listen to that, and think of me.
Matt: [laughs] Her new big hit that the girls were really into is called Anti-Hero, and in the song she sings, “Hello, I'm the problem, it's me” and every time I'm thinking, I bet you Dave would probably like that song. [laughs]
Dave: [laughs] I'm sure I would love all of Taylor Swift songs. Whatever the one that the girl at the Dollarama was singing long to, it's like, I think I had been thinking this is kind of catchy, whatever it is. And I'm pretty sure God gave her a nudge and went, “Sing along with this, so that so that he knows that this is Taylor Swift.” You have a good night, Matt, and we'll do this again next month.
Matt: Uh, really quick, the ”Ghost of Rabbit Hell” Kickstarter is at $2,241.
Dave: How about that?! With half an hour to go.
Matt: Correct. All right, have a good night, Dave!
Dave: You go, Steve Peters! Take care, buh-bye.
Matt: Bye.
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Next Time: Is Jen back yet?
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