CEREBUS THE DUCK (Dave's Weekly Update #375)

Hi, Everybody!

Previously-recorded-at-an-earlier-date from 

the Off-White House in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, It's:

Aardvark-Vanaheim Founder and President:

Dave Sim, with his Weekly Update:

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

Cerebus the Duck

Cerebus the Duck

Cerebus the Duck

Still available to order: Flaming Cerebus Comics.

And coming the first Wednesday in February: Cerebus in Hell? 2021 (the cover screw up delayed it a week...)

AND: Also for the orderings, Swords of Cerebus in Hell? 

Swords of Cerebus in Hell?

Swords of Cerebus in Hell? 

(I dunno why there's no video. Let's blame Jeff Seile...I mean Sean Robinson.)

Speaking of promo Billy Joel parody videos, I'd like to point out, this is a rip off of a parody I wrote:

And now we return to Dave's Blog & Mail, already in progress:

Dave started his Blog & Mail #123 (January 12th, 2007) with:

LATTER DAYS (AUGO31920)
No. I quite agree. There is no way to write a song parody about AUGO31920 unless there was a theme song to Beverly Hills 90210 with lyrics. Actually, I bet Matt Dow could do it.

Well, not one to let a challenge go unanswered, I wrote:

Latter Days (AUG031920)

To the theme song for "Green Acres"

LATTER DAYS (AUGO31920) is the phonebook for me.

Bible commentary is the life for me.

Three Stooges parody in the front of the book.

Keep your "Watchmen", just give me that "Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck".

HIGH SOCIETY (STAROOO71) is where I'd rather stay.

I get allergic reading commentary all day.

I just adore the Moon Knight parody.

Dah-ling I love you but give me the Regency.

...Spore's Spores.

...The "wuffa wuffa" guys chores.

..."Cerebus Bound".

...Elrod's around.

You are my wife.

Good bye, Iestan life.

LATTER DAYS (AUGO31920) we are there.

Which Dave ran in Blog&Mail #206 (April 5th, 2007). He continued:

Dave: That was great, Matt. Just swell.
Me: You can write ANYTHING into a parody of "Green Acres".
Dave: Seriously? I heard that the Warren Commission Report doesn't "scan" properly on the "goodbye city life" part.
(ignoring me)

Me: When I first saw the "challenge", Darth Vader's voice popped into my head and said, "All too easy."
Dave: So your lobotomy incision still hasn't healed properly.
(ignoring me)

Me: And it was. As I said, writing anything into a parody of "Green Acres" is easy. So here's a parody using (AUGO31920) sung to the tune of Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time":

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Hey have you read Cerebus "Latter Days"?

Thirty Five bucks is all you gotta pay

That's a steal to me

Guaranteed hilarity

That's what you get in "Latter Days"!!!

First Cerebus is a shepherd guy

Then he plays five bar gate until "Coffee" Dies

The Three Stooges appear

We bet you'll laugh off your rear

When you purchase a copy of "Latter Days"!!!

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Then Cerebus is bound until he could plotz

The next was untitled (hey Dave thanks a lot!)

Then there was "Uh Oh"

(Gee Dave sure is a pro)

You can see it all in "Latter Days"!!!

Then came Todd "Far lane" McSpahn

He tried ta make

Cerebus his pawn

But Cerebus came up with a plan

A gift for the land

And that gift's name was Spore's Spores

We don't want to give the whole thing away

Otherwise why would you pay?

So give it a shot

You will thank us a lot

When you buy a copy of "Latter Days"!!!

If you're worried about the "Chasing YHWH" stuff

(The Bible commentary)

It is not that rough

You might think that Dave's theories are $#!*

Just work your way through it

And you'll be at the end

And hey what about Gerhard's backgrounds

When we first saw them we said "Oh Wow!"

So buy a copy

Tell them you were sent by me

And you really want to own "Latter Days"!!!

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Augo three one nine two-oh "Latter Days"

Me: So there ya go.
Dave: Amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Me: Ya said I could probably do it and I did.
Dave: It was as if you were channeling Christie Brinkley or something.
Me: Took me three hours.
Dave: Three hours to write a song parody and according to Paula you still can't remember to pick up your socks and underwear off the floor.
Me: Sorry about the "You might think that Dave's theories are $#!*" line, I couldn't think of anything to rhyme with the next line.
Dave: Oh, no, that's fine. I've never known how to pronounce $#!* and now I do. I always read it as having the dipthong on the #. Good thing this is the Internet by the way.
Me: If you wanna tweak it, go for it.
Dave: Pardon me? Oh, the song. I was going to say, I haven't tweaked anything since 1998.
Me: I did all the hard work.
Dave: Three hours worth from what I understand.

So what I'm saying, is: I WANT A ROYALTY ROBINSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rigamarole:

_________________________________

Heritage has some interesting "Dave Sim" bits

_______________________________

The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe is on sale:

Your store will be on sale:

Jan 13 – 16

Jan 27 – 29

Tell your fans! Remind them that everything will be up to 35% off! That means $13 tees, $20 phone cases, $30 hoodies, and way more.

________________________________

High Society Regency Edition 4 left!

Next Time: Cleaning up around here...

Cerebus: And Yoda!

Hi, Everybody!

The Silver Cerebus (I think ya got until tomorrow to get your order in...)

The Varking Dead (Wanna hear the theme song?)

Friend to the Blog, Greg Hyland is running the next volume of The Monster Atlas on Kickstarter. (He ONLY needs another hundred and five bucks (CANADIAN! Not even real monies...) and it'll have Gerhard art. Well, heckfire, I just backed it, so it's fifty bucks (Again, CANADIAN, not even proper money...).)

_____________________________________________

So what have I got for you today?

Well, I just watched Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker again, and Eddie sent in this awhile back, so MOMENT:

Eddie found it here.

Where Brian has this preliminary sketch as well:

Funny story about this piece, from Dave's Blog&Mail:

Thursday July 5 –

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25 JUNE 0731 EST - Well, it had to happen eventually. The NATIONAL POST finally printed one of my letters to the editor. The subject was actually a pencilled commissioned drawing that I did for Mark S. (a copy of which Jeff Tundis has been patiently sitting on for a couple of weeks now waiting for me to mention it) of Cerebus and Yoda. Mark had sent an e-mail to Ger with the request and Ger had told him that he thought there was a very slim chance given my opinions of Yoda as a character (that I thought he had pretty much ruined STAR WARS in the second film by attempting to make me believe that Fozzy Bear – with a less intelligent command of the English language -- could also be a Jedi Master). That of course is my AUDIO opinion which is different from my VISUAL opinion. My VISUAL opinion of anything having to do with STAR WARS is that Al Williamson used his best stuff on the comic strip adaptation so even if I haven't seen what he did, I know that I'm competing with him when I draw anything related to STAR WARS. So, um, "bring it on". Particularly when you're paying $400 US for pencils only 9" X 12".
http://www.cerebusart.com/Commissions/Yoda.htm [This link is SO broke it's silly... -Matt]

ALTERNATE CAPTIONS:
[This picture is missing, so who knows what they were...-Matt (really wish I had an archive of all the IMAGES from the blog and mail...)]

Margaret here. . .guess who has the pictures? If ya want more, you're going to have to pay. . .teehee:

 

My biggest mistake was in thinking that I would use Canada Post instead of FedEx which is the hard and fast rule about commissioned drawings around here. "When It Absolutely Positively Has to Get There the Next Day" being less of a concern in a country dominated by Marxist State Monopolies than "When It Absolutely Positively Has To Get There Period". I had actually talked myself into using Canada Post, reasoning with myself that I was being way too hard on our Marxist State Postal Monopoly which is more of a last refuge for overstuffed labour unions (even though postal traffic is only a fraction of what it was before the advent of FedEx and the Internet, if the Canadian Association of Inside Postal Workers and the Canadian Association of Outside Postal Workers has laid anyone off in the last ten years despite eliminating Saturday delivery and expanding the length of time it takes to deliver a letter from one Metropolitan area to another I'll buy each of them a donut) than an actual public service. Hey, unreasoning grasping Marxists are people, too, right? They have families to feed, too, right?

So, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and make full use of the House Than Andre Ouellet Built (or, rather, found more interesting ways to overstuff). Canada Post USA Expedited here I come (to the opening martial strains of "O Canada"). Mark S. (famous last words on the phone the weekend of March 30): "I can't wait to see it."

23 May 07
Re: Ignorance is Canada Post's bliss, Andrew Coyne 23 May 2007 

The situation is worse than Mr. Coyne portrays it. 

On March 30 I mailed a standard business envelope to Camden, Maine that weighed 314 grams via Canada Post's "Expedited Parcel – USA" service, purporting to take seven to nine business days at a cost of $12.14. When it hadn't turned up by mid-month in April, I was informed that the Expedited rate "isn't guaranteed" and the package wasn't deemed to be officially missing until April 22nd. All hope was given up on that date. 

My Maine correspondent notified Canada Post—by e-mail, fortunately—that the package had finally arrived this week, seven weeks after departing Kitchener, Ontario, with no sign of tampering, being detained at Customs or any indication where the package had been all that time. 

Canada Post, in turn, notified me—by phone, fortunately. I was gratified to find that they didn't request the $32 back that I had been paid for my "missing item" claim two weeks ago. 

Dave Sim
Kitchener, ON

25 JUNE 0751 EST – Okay. Time to hit the showers and then it's (coincidentally) off to Canada Post for my once-a-week visit. When I get back, I'll type the letter as the NATIONAL POST printed it for your compare-and-contrast dining and dancing pleasure here on the Blog & Mail.

Okay, I'm back with a short sidetrack to address my David Peterson MOUSE GUARD fiasco (see July 2 entry for details)

25 JUNE 1112 EST – Here's how the letter appeared on the NATIONAL POST editorial page (right under one from Robert E. Waite, senior vice-president, stakeholder relations and brand) (seriously, that's his title) (Canada Post):

The situation with our postal service is worse than Mr. Coyne portrays it. 

On March 30, I mailed a standard business envelope to Camden, Maine, which weighed 314 grams, via Canada Post's expedited Parcel-U.S.A. Service. When it hadn't turned up by mid-month in April, I was informed that the expedited rate "isn't guaranteed" and that the package wasn't deemed to be officially missing until April 22, three weeks after it was mailed. All hope was given up on that date. 

My Maine correspondent notified Canada Post that the package finally arrived this week, seven weeks after departing Kitchener, Ont. There was no indication where it had been during that time. 

Dave Sim, Kitchener, Ont.

I thought it was probably a mark of how wealthy the average POST reader is that the reference to $12.14 was dropped. I'm probably just old but the idea that 12 bucks doesn't get you guaranteed delivery to anywhere in anything less than three weeks is really the thing that boggles my mind.

After a month of the piece being MIA I called Mark and told him I was doing him another one, traced from the photocopy I had made of it. He said he'd pay me something more for the second one if the first one turned up and I told him, basically, don't be ridiculous. It was my choice to use Canada Post and if I was going to learn my lesson it was better to do so on a $400 pencil sketch than on a $3500 painting. I told him to frame them together if the second one came in and will them back to the Cerebus Archive where – as I hope they would for Mark – they would make a nice conversation piece. When the letter was printed, I also sent Mark a tearsheet suggesting that he frame the whole page (there was a nice nearly full page shot of Miss Canada in a skin-tight Toronto Maple Leafs outfit right next to my letter) (hubba hubba and Go Leafs Go!) and include it in what is now becoming, I'm sure, the Cerebus and Yoda Room in his house.

Okay, back to the overnight cable traffic at

Tomorrow: YIKES! 25 JUNE 1134 HOURS EST

Okay, that's a more in-depth Moment than I expected... you're welcome...

Next Time: Oliver and "another Fine Mess"...

"We're Sorry, The Person You're Holding For Is Unavalible Or Out Of Service" Please Hold For Dave Sim December 2019

Hi, Everybody!

As we do: The Silver Cerebus
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So it's the first Saturday of the Month, which means that Dave called on Thursday right?

Well, in a word: no.

Dave seems to be experiencing a very difficult time right now. He has identified whatever it is that is occurring as being the same as what happened to him between December 2006 and February 2007, where he was incapacitated for several months and had virtually no uninterrupted sleep.

He talked about it back then in the Blog & Mail:

It's certainly interesting doing these commissioned pieces. I mean, on the one hand it makes me feel like a much older artist than the fifty year-old that I am. Commissions are sort of an Legendary Veteran kind of thing, but then being the Pariah King of Comics puts you in various contexts that you might otherwise not be in. Producer of Commissioned Work being one of them (although I've yet to tie it in with my discussions with Chester about prostitution). The interesting part is that I end up drawing things that I would never in a million years choose to draw on my own. It's no big secret that I am definitely not in the Star Wars fan category. I had gone to see the first film when it came out and loved it (more vicariously through Gene Day who L*O*V*E*D IT) and then went to see the second film when it came out and, well, that was it for me. I went to see the last instalment when that came out a couple of summers ago, part of me wondering, "How did I get so easily put off by these things? Wasn't there enough Gene Day Juice in the first one to keep me coming out to see every one of the films the day it was released?" The answer came at some point in that final instalment when Yoda showed up on the screen. Oh, right. Fozzy Bear. Frank Oz doing his Fozzy Bear voice with that strange syntax. That was what had done it all right. My willing suspension of disbelief went from willing to unwilling the moment I was being asked to accept a Muppet with Fozzy Bear's voice as a Jedi Master. Mm. Sorry. No can do.

No offence to all the Star Wars fans who are legion in the ranks of the Cerebus Yahoos, but that was it.

So it was interesting going to get reference at the library for the piece. There was a picture book that was just tailor-made for my purposes, Star Wars The Visual Dictionary (D.K. Publishing Inc.). Big display publicity shot of Harrison Ford from the first movie looking as if George Lucas is somewhere off-camera explaining to him exactly how to pose as Flash Gordon as drawn by Al Williamson. This was one of those "luck of the draw" things for John H. that he was asking for a Star Wars commission and that Al Williamson had drawn the original Star Wars newspaper strip. I would get a chance to do my best Al Williamson impression on the page and John was pretty much guaranteed to get a much nicer drawing as a result as I tried to impress my inner Al Williamson.

I had already warned John over the phone that Cerebus as Han Solo was going to pose some difficulties since Han Solo is a distinctly vertical figure. The more vertical a character is, visually, the more difficult it is to compress him to Cerebus size. The leg holster was a good example. It was either going to be too large if I drew the blaster accurately, taking up most if not all of Cerebus' leg, or it would look like a toy if I drew it to Cerebus scale. The Flash Gordon jackboots are a big part of the look and there was no way to do them on the shape of Cerebus' leg. The best I could manage was shiny leggings. John expressed confidence in whatever solutions I came up with. "At least he has the same vest," he said hopefully. Han Solo had a Cerebus vest? Sure enough when I got the book out—cut differently but definitely a black vest.

Anyway, this serendipitous publicity shot of Harrison Ford looking exactly like an Al Williamson Flash Gordon pushed me in an entirely different direction. I just HAD to use the whole thing and traced it off in short order manufacturing my rationalization as I went. What if Cerebus is using the legs as stilts? That way I could draw the legs and boots as much like Al Williamson as I wanted and it would look kind of funny to have Cerebus' own legs bulging up Harrison Ford's svelte waistline. I even decided to include Harrison Ford's hair as if someone had taken extraordinary pains to make this aardvark character look as much like the actor as possible. I tightened up the figure in pencil on tracing paper and got out a sheet of 11 x 17 S-172 artboard to figure out how much space he was going to take up.

That was when I noticed that the book had a nice Star Wars logo in gold against a white backdrop, which meant that I could trace it off without even shooting a photocopy. It only took a few minutes to change Star Wars to Vark Wars. Then it was time for Jaka as Princess Leia. I tried the traditional all-white robe and the hairstyle that looked like two cheese Danish stuck on either side of her head from the first movie. It just didn't work for me somehow. It was hard to tell why. The basic answer is that the outfit is pretty much featureless—a nun's habit is more distinctive!—and it was pretty much tailored to Carrie Fisher's body type which is very different from Jaka's body type. I could trace off the publicity photo in the book, but pretty much everything would have to be redrawn anyway including the posture of the figure. What a strange outfit. Did they cast Carrie Fisher before they designed the costume? These are the sorts of questions you find yourself asking yourself when you're hip-deep in a strange commission and mentally analyzing the physical components. Under what other circumstances would Dave Sim find himself asking himself if Carrie Fisher or her costume came first in the first Star Wars movie?

On the facing page was a smaller shot of Carrie Fisher dressed as Jabba the Hutt's slave girl. It certainly seemed more suited to Jaka with her dancer costumes (and I suspect if your average Star Wars fan was to choose a favourite Princess Leia outfit the slave girl outfit would be the one) (I wonder how many slave girl publicity stills Carrie Fisher sells versus the other publicity stills at show signings these days?). This raised even more layers of speculation that I had no idea I had inside of me. How did George Lucas talk Carrie Fisher into the slave girl thing? I mean, that was pretty far along in the series and presumably Carrie Fisher was still thinking and hoping that this Star Wars gig might be a stepping stone to other roles in "major motion pictures". "Barely there" costumes are not exactly something with which actresses with hard-won screen cred are known to willingly associate. Did he just blindside her with the script? Throw it onto her front steps in the middle of the night? PRINCESS LEIA DRESSED AS SLAVE GIRL ENTERS FROM RIGHT OF SCENE. When did she first get a good look at the costume? Did she call George Lucas up screaming? Can you even do that to George Lucas or did everyone have a "Whatever George wants George gets" clause in their contract? That might explain my favourite Harrison Ford quote where he said that George Lucas should be tied to a chair and forced to read his own dialogue out loud.

Where was I dredging all this stuff up from?

Were there negotiations about how much skin would be showing? Or was the outfit just presented as a fait accompli? I mean, it's a very good costume, based solidly in the Alex Raymond/Dale Arden mode (I assume it was one of the things on George Lucas' mental checklist) but with all of the high-end Hollywood costume artistry brought to bear. "Here's Alex Raymond/Dale Arden and here's Carrie Fisher's body type. Now, how do we do work them both in?" Pretty flawlessly, I would say. In the publicity shot she certainly doesn't look very happy (which I suppose could be just "in character" for a slave girl). Looks like she had to work out pretty hard to get that toned. How old was she at that time? Early thirties? No love handles, no pot belly. She did a great job.

As I say, it's bizarre what goes through your mind when you actually work on something like this. In the same vein, it was an unexpectedly happy nostalgia jolt to have John Williams' Star Wars soundtrack running through my head for days on end. Took me right back to 1978-79 when that was what you listened to most mornings at Gene Day's studio in Gananoque. "What'll it be? John Williams' Star Wars soundtrack or John Williams' Superman soundtrack?" It certainly made writing and drawing comic books seem incredibly heroic at the time.

I really have to give George Lucas credit as a thorough-going storyteller, assuming that all of the detailed information included in this book came from him personally. I mean, I'm probably just outside the loop, but I had no idea that that broken red racing stripe on the side of Han Solo's pants is a "Corellian blood stripe" or that his belt is equipped with a Droid caller and blaster power cell. Or that the blaster consists of a scope, enhanced blast delivery circuits, power pack release lever, low power pulse warning, power pack, cooling unit, final stage collimator (with "puree" setting?) and flash suppressor. Or that it's officially a DL-44 pistol. I think I managed to get them all on there, although I'll frankly admit that the proportions are probably off by quite a bit.

Anyway, I did a quick Jaka as Jabba the Hutt slave girl drawing on tracing paper and then reduced it a bit on the photocopier so she didn't look TOO much larger than Han Solo (although I did want her to look larger—this is, after all, Cerebus and Jaka), turned over the photocopy on the light table to trace off onto another piece of tracing paper…

…and the next day promptly fell ill for nearly a month.

Shall a bore you with my illness? Not the Full Horror Story. I'm saving that one. But just the sheer surprise that I had never been through anything like this before. All of my recent experience of the last twenty years or so has been that when you feel sick the best thing to do is to just go straight to bed for twenty-four hours. My experience has been that if you catch it early in the gestation, you sleep and let your body—by itself—get rid of the virus or whatever it is. Usually involves staying as warm as possible in bed and letting that body warmth crest until the fever breaks (that is, you wake up bathed in sweat from head to foot, towel off, change night clothes and go back to sleep for another six to eight hours). Worked like a charm for years. The difference this time was that I went to bed but I didn't sleep. I didn't really even notice that I didn't sleep (which was very weird in itself). I also couldn't get my body temperature to go up no matter how many night clothes I put on (up to and including my winter coat). So I just had this feverish weight on my brain that made even basic thought processes really difficult and then virtually impossible but which just stayed up there on my scalp and refused to come down into the rest of my body. Since I run on my thought processes this posed no small problem. The biggest concern, as always, was my prayer times and for a couple of days I struggled out of bed and attempted the ritual ablutions and changing into my prayer clothes and kneeling down until that just became impossible and I would, instead, just lie in bed with my hands crossed over my chest and recite my prayer. With my impossibly slowed-down thought processes it took me about a week to realize exactly how strange this ailment was. It did finally dawn on me that this was something that I had speculated about. What happens when you get too old and you can no longer kneel down to pray? My assumption was that you just lie in bed and pray that way (but how interesting to be that close to The End: "I'll never actually kneel down to pray again"). So, the strange ailment suddenly became a dress rehearsal for my own Last Days. And then I started wondering—with my incredibly slowed down thought processes (a stroke? A brain tumour?) if it was a dress rehearsal or if this was the real thing. I found that either way I was fine with it. Obviously swimming upstream every day of your life as the Pariah King of Comics can get to be a drag and the idea that I might just be headed down the exit ramp was fine by me. "If I keep going downhill like this, I could actually be Out of Here by the end of January."

Cool beans!

There really wasn't much that I could do, so I'd recite my prayer and when I was done, I'd recite it again. I'd drift off for strange brief periods like ten minutes or twelve minutes and then snap wide awake. It was only two weeks in where I had actually managed one morning to sleep for a two-hour stretch—what a sense of accomplishment!—that it sunk in exactly how strange this ailment was. "I've basically been wide awake for two weeks." My mind and brain were really, really slow but at that point I started wondering (really, really slowly) about sleep deprivation. I mean it isn't natural to not sleep for two weeks but it's even more unnatural to not really feel any ill effects from it. No delusions, no hallucinations, no light-strobing in the corner of your eyes, no paranoia. Just really, really slow thought processes. I never doubted my faith in God or came anywhere close to recrimination against God ("God, after all my faith and prayers how can you DO this to me?"). It seems to me one of those things about faith in God that the more you have the more you pretty much anticipate that life is going to be something of an ordeal when the time comes for that. The Job Rule seems to me to always be in effect. The more you have absolute faith in God, the more you become a potential contending ground against God's adversary. "Sure he's got faith in You now, but take away his ability to think, take away his health, his mobility and see how much faith he has then." Well, quite simply it didn't work. "Unto death" was my simple response. If that's what this was: I was dying of a stroke or a brain tumour then that's what it was. It would be hard not to see it as a failing grade on my report card being that abrupt: I had guessed wrong too many times, had written way too many controversial Blog & Mails in way too short a space of time and now I was being taken out of the game because I was over-throwing all my pitches. Trying too hard and missing. Well, so be it. I had no cause for complaint. Especially in the last ten years of my life, I had made each of my own calls every step along the way. People had tried to get in the way and tried to coerce me into different paths but I couldn't say with a straight face that any of them had had any success. No, all of my decisions were my decisions. "Dave Sim Fails at Fifty." Well, okay, Dave Sim fails at fifty.

What was interesting was that this was also my first month running Aardvark-Vanaheim completely on my own with Ger's decision to leave the company at the end of 2006. I suspect that might have been part of God's point: even with my diminished capacity where I had to plan one or two half hour stints per day a day ahead of time just getting the basics done—bills still had to get paid, invoices had to be sent out, the mail still needed to be picked up—I was able to run Aardvark-Vanaheim even though I was flat on my back for the better part of a month. I shepherded the first printing of a Cerebus trade paperback anywhere outside of Preney Print & Litho. A FedEx package came in containing three copies of the fourth printing of Form & Void from Lebonfon in Montreal—and they did an excellent job! The mail piled up. I'd take a cab to the post office and back once a week (I'm putting on my coat and the scarf Linda Parker knitted me. I'm standing in the doorway waiting for the cab. I WILL remain vertical and I WILL walk out to the cab and get in when it gets here) and just pull out the cheques and the bills that needed to be dealt with. Mid-month was about the worst: it actually took me the better part of an hour to write four cheques, put them in envelopes and put postage on them. Mid-month I'd get the newspaper in the morning and force myself to read the headlines on the front page until I understood what they said. Then I'd flip through the front section in about ten seconds and go back to bed where I would lie awake repeating my prayer over and over and having these weird eight to ten minute naps every two hours or so.

Finally, whatever the mystery ailment was was…well, not gone, but no longer had a stranglehold on me…and about two o'clock one morning in the third week, I went upstairs and started tracing the Jaka figure for the commissioned piece. What an adventure that turned out to be. I had to do everything at least eight times before it was even remotely close to what I intended. "It's a picture of Jaka, Dave. You can draw Jaka in your sleep." Maybe so, but this morning? Not so much.

It was interesting because by that point I had such a clear mental image of what the piece was supposed to look like that it became hard to tell if I was doing everything eight times because I was still sick and incompetent or if I was doing everything eight times because I wasn't going to rest until this picture looked exactly the way it did in my mind's eye. I had done the "Vark Wars" lettering in a double outline, as an example, and intended to colour between the two lines. As I looked at it, though, I could see that the space for the outline was off about a sixteenth of an inch. It needed to be a little bit wider. Not too wide. I didn't want the lettering to be the first thing you saw. I wanted the first impression to be of a nice Al Williamson splash panel. Only once that had registered did I want the viewer to see the "Vark Wars" lettering. I don't know how long it actually took me to expand that outline by a sixteenth of an inch, but it definitely took a while. Then I filled in all of the areas where the space backdrop would show through with brushed in solid black—as close to the pencil lines as I could get—and then filled in the remaining spaces with a Hunt 102 instead of a rapidograph. Using a Hunt 102 to fill in solid blacks. Only a very sick and/or very obsessive person could come up with something like that and stick with it, but I wanted every straight edge as straight as an arrow. My inner Al Williamson was watching closely. I wanted every corner as sharp as I could get it, coming to a precise point with no extraneous line intruding or extending beyond where it was supposed to be. I was also determined not to have to white anything out. I was aiming for an Al Williamson level of accuracy and precision and I can't think of a higher level of accuracy and precision than that. I forget how long that took. I also made the choice to not outline the Vark Wars lettering in black which added a whole other level of precision to the inking stage. I forget how long that took. I remember it took the better part of a day to colour Jaka's fleshtones, adding layer upon layer of light orange, pink, pink and yellow blended, building it up and building it up. Bright! Brighter! Brightest! Al Williamson Bright! After a month you forget how good it feels to be actually drawing and to have the picture coming out right how it would colour your entire day so you didn't even think about strokes and brain tumours. I'd just sit and look at it while I was getting my shoes on (which meant I had plenty of time: putting on my shoes took a while) or waiting for a cab or getting ready to actually walk downtown on one of my "half-hour of health" sojourns. Looking at all the sharp lines, looking at that bright colour of Jaka's fleshtone and the pretty close match on the slave girl skirt colour.

"Don't screw it up, now" I'd think, looking at everything else that needed to be done.

John had asked when I wanted to get paid and I told him to send a cheque. The cheque came in Monday and at that point there was a sense of obligation. Nothing worse than getting paid for a piece and to have it sitting there three quarters done. What if I have a relapse? So I spent most of Monday working on it. I mean, literally most of Monday. I woke up almost exactly at midnight with the Sabbath over and I went out and sat down and worked on it, inch by painstaking inch from midnight to roughly three-thirty when the newspaper arrived which I was finally able to read from front to back while resting in bed. Apart from picking up the mail, I had nothing planned for my "half hours of health" on Monday, so I alternated resting in bed (and actually sleeping for a change!) with each inch by painstaking inch of the picture. And then, unbelievably, twenty-two hours later it was done. And apart from a few minor glitches, it was about as precise and accurate a piece of work as I've ever done.

In fact, I'm so pleased with it, that I decided to make it this year's Thanks for Showing Up Print at SPACE in Columbus, Ohio (i.e. it will only be available at the show). I'm getting 50 high quality cardstock colour photocopies done of it and I'm going to sign and number them and sell them exclusively at SPACE for $20 each. Except the #1 out of 50 which I'm going to auction on eBay. If I have any of them left over, I'll sell the remainder at Torontocon.

Just called and told John Higashi that his commission is done and chatted with him a bit about his art collection. Has he gotten a lot of these Star Wars commissions done? Turns out he's been collecting them since 2000 and at this point he has (get this) SIX HUNDRED individual Star Wars pieces that he's commissioned. You think I'm kidding? Click on www.comicartfans.com and then type in "higashi" and he tells me that you can see just about all of them. Since I know most of the Cerebus Yahoos are raving Star Wars fans as well, I figured I better mention it.

It's a funny thing about drawing. It exists in a world all its own. Out of the six thousand pages of Cerebus, I can tell you what was happening in my life on the day I drew the page with maybe a half dozen of them. If that.

I wonder if that will be true of the Sickbed Star Wars Commission? Probably not, now that I've told the whole story here. But I've forgotten other pages that I thought I would always associate with specific events.

And, at one point in the depths of my feverishness I thought, "Lord Julius as a WOOKIE!" Now I'm never going to my final rest in peace until I get THAT one out of my system.

Okay, so here I am approximately a month late on my commissioned drawings. James S. of New Jersey has been patiently waiting to see if he's going to get his own version of "Cerebus standing on top of a pile of dead super-heroes" ("Bonfire of the Super-Heroes Revisited" I guess we'll call this one) with Cerebus thinking to himself "That was a lot easier than Cerebus thought" which, ordinarily, I would have had done by now, so we're going to give James a lock on the End of February. That means the next available slot is the End of March and according to what I've got here, so far Katrina has the highest offer with $850 for a recreation of the Flight trade paperback cover. If you want to offer more than that for your own commissioned piece, give me a call at 519.576.0610. If I'm not here, leave a message and a phone number where I can reach you to let you know where you stand on the bidding up to the March 15 deadline.

Ah yes, back when the hand worked.

So I faxed all that up to Dave, and he responded:

 Sick Dave got it wrong. Cerebus was revealed to be 26 in issue #5, not #12 (that was where Cerebus turned 27.)

Issue five

Issue twelve

I got all the questions everybody sent in, and they'll be answered (God willing) next month.

Next Time: In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Original Sim

Hi, Everybody!

Friend to the Blog, and Superman's Frenemy, David Birdsong, sent in the following (which has run piecemeal in the past, but none of you would have realized that...) Click on Dave's stuff to make it nice and big...

This isn't by Dave, it's by Pat Broderick. But I thought you should see the cover in case you're gonna go back issue bin-diving looking for it.

So, the story I was looking for yesterday was the story of how this came about.

Can't find it.

So excuse the "Alan Moore From Hell commentary" here (ya know, Alan's "it's from this book, but I can't remember where, and I'm to lazy to go look it up.") .

I thought it was from the Blog & Mail, but I couldn't find it, so it might be from one of the Yahoo group Q&As.

Anyway, as I recall, these came about because Deni left Dave, and Dave needed money to buy out her half of Aardvark-Vanaheim. So he called Jim Shooter, who got him the Fanfare gig. 

Next Time: Hobbs. And Jingles. Sitting in a tree?

From the depths of the AMOC Cave I bring forth...Spider-Ham!

Hi, Everybody!


So looking for something else in the AMOC cave, I ran across something Dave wrote in the Blog & Mail:

Dave Sim's blogandmail #220 (April 19th, 2007) 

As You May Remember from Yesterday's Thrill-Packed Episode, Dave has been playing telephone tag with his contact at Marvel…
Evidently he does have a rate offer that he's gotten approval on from "upstairs" so I just have to wait and see what the number actually is. Haven't heard back all week and again I'm in the situation of having to decide whether to give him the benefit of the doubt or if this is the mainstream comics pressure tactic again of trying to figure out how desperate you are by how long they can keep you hanging. Hm. How desperate am I? I got in absolutely no money in the entire month of February so I was in a different frame of mind back in March when we first started talking and now I've just had two very big weeks of trade paperback orders, last week in March, first week in April (THANK YOU, RETAILERS!) and Monday I got in the first two big cheques from Diamond of the Dave Sim Solo Administration (THANK YOU, DIAMOND!). It's a very awkward way to make a living. Revenue dries up, so I start thinking about ways to make money and sending out metaphorical messages in a bottle and just as those reach their intended recipients, I get a nice big dump of money and orders and I think, "I don't want to do any commissions or any outside work. Sales are fine. Revenues are fine. Let's stop doing the Blog & Mail or any outside work and just work on the secret project. The books sell themselves." Of course then revenues dry up again. And there's no discernible pattern. Ger would print out all the crunched numbers for each of the trades, month-by-month. How many sold and what month they sold in. Bar graphs showing overall sales month-to-month. If you set the computer on "random play" I don't think you could get a less predictable sales profile.

The problem with the Marvel situation…well, there are a couple of problems already. First of all, I said, I think what went wrong at DC was I treated their work-made-for-hire contract as an initial overture. When Shelly Bond's assistant told me I could direct any questions to so-and-so in the Legal Department, I figured, okay, this is the guy I talk to about what I have problems with: here's what I'd like changed. Nothing was "do-able". End of negotiation. Bye-bye, DC. So I suggest to him, Why don't you fax through the Marvel contract and put a check-mark next to any non-negotiable point. I'll read what you have checked off and if I can't live with them, we'll call it a day. So he faxes through the Marvel contract. Nineteen, count `em, nineteen honking pages. Nothing checked off. So the next time I talk to him he says that he didn't know which clauses would apply in my case and which wouldn't so he decided to just fax everything over from their boilerplate work-made-for-hire contract on up. "Oh, well," I said. "Whatever else happens I'll have a lot of material to talk about on the Blog & Mail." I would describe the ensuing silence on the other end of the line as "pointed".

One of the problems is that what I pictured doing was Spider-Ham. I have a definite approach in mind but Marvel has a Submissions Waiver form (supplemental to the 19 pages, it came in the next day masquerading as an afterthought) which you have to sign which says that this indemnifies them if you pitch them an idea that they're already working on. There's a lot of trust involved in signing something like that. I mean, what's to keep them from CLAIMING that they were working on that idea already after they read the proposal? BWS pitched them on his Hulk graphic novel about Bruce Banner having been molested as a child. They rejected it, but a year or two later it turns up as a Jim Shooter script. Yes, that was a long time ago and, yes, that was a different Marvel administration. It's certainly possible that Jim had already been working on that but, even if you allow for that possibility, obviously the BWS story is going to be that much better just because it's BWS. And BWS gets bupkis.

So, I faxed my contact "I really can't sign this, so how about instead I'll tell you half of my idea, the half where there's no jurisdictional risk to Marvel at stake. What I want to do is Spider-Ham but it's a completely different approach to what Marvel has done with the character. So what I'm proposing is that Marvel gives me a stake—nothing huge—but a stake in my version of Spider-Ham and if it turns into a series or Hollywood wants to make a movie out of it, I make a small percentage. If you do YOUR version of Spider-Ham I don't get anything." Given that it's going to cut into my own writing and drawing time and I'll probably be making substantially less money, I have to come up with a scenario, however remote, that would potentially make this a cagey move. Even the outside chance of getting 1% of a 75-million or 200-million dollar movie would justify a certain encroachment on how I do things (is the uneasy underpinning of my rationalization).

Well, he went and ran that past whoever he had to run that past and phoned back a couple of days later and said, "No, Joe Straczyinski just did Spider-Ham in Civil War, so Spider-Ham is out." This is one of the things I have trouble understanding about mainstream comics. I'm not talking about Joe's Spider-Ham, I'm talking about Dave's Spider-Ham. It has something to do, I would guess, with creating the illusion that they're actually documenting real-life characters and if Dave's Spider-Ham shows up too soon after Joe's Spider-Ham that will make Spider-Ham less believable in an overall Marvel continuity sense.

The real world part of me thinks "We're discussing a cartoon pig in a Spider-man costume. `Believable' is a relative concept with very, very big quotation marks around it." You know. "Let's get a grip, here." But Dave Sim, fanboy, understands perfectly. Mark "Marvel Universe" Gruenwald (God rest his soul) has been dead and gone for some years, but the urge to make everything conform to One Giant Marvel Comics Flow Chart of Internally Consistent Reality has survived him in spirit if not in fact (a die-hard Marvel fan would know better than I would). Dave Sim, comic-book writer, who has a foot in both the real world and the fanboy world thinks, "I made twenty-six years of a cartoon aardvark plausible to an audience made up largely of grown-ups. Send me what Joe did and I'll figure a way to turn his Spider-Ham into my Spider-Ham in two panels that will have Mark Gruenwald weeping in the great by-and-by at the sheer symmetrical and internally consistent inventiveness of it all." But "real world" Dave understands that that's VERY unlikely to happen. 

"Real world" Dave is "new around here". When in Rome do as the Romans tell you to do.

"What other Marvel character would you want to do?"

 Everybody remember Spider-Ham?

This is what he first looked like...

 The character that Dave has said was "Cerebus in a Spider-Man costume."

[For those not aware of the history, way back when the earth was still cooling and I had done my three consecutive Wolverroach covers on Cerebus 54, 55 and 56 -- thereby sincerely pushing the boundary between misappropriation of a trademarked character and legitimate parody -- I suspect that Marvel decided to fire a warning shot across my bow by coming up with a funny animal version of Spider-man that was basically Cerebus in a Spider-man costume. I don't know whose idea it was (Jim Shooter his own self?) but I have to say that I always admired the thinking behind it. It was a very measured response along the lines of "See? How do YOU like it?" while also a creative one and, ultimately, a profitable one! According to my Overstreet Guide, Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham ran for seventeen issues from May 1985 to September 1987 as part of Marvel's Star Comics children's line. Not a bad run for the mid-80s]

 And which has been disputed.

This is how he usually appeared...

I mean when Dave draws him the "Cerebus-ness" is DEFINITELY there...

Well, there's a new Spider-Man movie coming out:

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

And Spider-Ham is in it. But he looks more like Porky Pig in a Spider-Man suit now.

Okay, I "momented."

Next Time: The thing I was looking for today (I hope...)

"Let me see your blog, blog, let me see your blog" Bloggymail #3

Hi, Everybody!

First:

The Saga continues...

Anyway, THIS:

Your ol' Interim Editor Matt Dow here. Today, I thought we'd take a look back at Dave Sim's Blog & Mail. Specifically, the third one. With my then-commentary.


Preamble: Dave Sim's Blog & Mail ran on the Cerebus Yahoo group from September 13th, 2006 to December 26th, 2007. And...no, that's pretty much all you needed to know. I used to call it the "bloggymail" because in Spanish, "and" is "y", and I thought "Blog y Mail" sounded funny, or something. Dude, it was a decade ago. Wait do you want? Anyway,

On 9/15/06, Dave Sim < dsim@nonexistente-mail.net > wrote:

Friday September 15 –

Today's Blog & Mail is brought to you by the Theory of Relativity.

The Theory of Relativity. It Wants Back into Today's Headlines

And it's willing to use modern marketing methods to do it!

But, I have to ask: What has the Theory of Relativity done for me lately?  Schrodinger's Cat Paradox helped bring in the groceries last night.  AND did the dishes without having to be asked.

We'll be back after this short commercial message

Alright.

Hey, Cerebus Retailers!

Answer your phone in the month of September with the phrase that pays:

"Cerebus Doesn't Actually Suck—it's just those idiots on the Comics Journal message boards that make it sound like it does!"

and you could win $5,000 in Cerebus Merchandise!

Who from? We don't know, but there must be somebody

Who'll give you $5,000 in Cerebus merchandise to answer your phone that way!

Um...I think I'll pass on mentioning this one to Jed.  (Yes, my local retailer is named Jed.  I believe it's short for Jedediah.)

Plans for the "YE BOOKES OF CEREBUS" exhibit and performance are continuing for Salt Lake City at the end of October (a few days after the end of Ramadan).

If we get the car loan, Paula and I will be there.  Of course, we'll have to pull a "Seiler" and drive for a day.  But SHE wants to go.  I'm not the one dragging her along.

Performance? Mimi Cruz is putting together a power point presentation of the first 40 pages of The Last Day which I'll be reading while it's projected behind me (or possibly "onto me" if we can't get the big auditorium).

Ha!  "Dave sure gets into Cerebus!"

Should run about three hours with a nice intermission in the middle.

Will there be punch? 'Cause I'm a sucker for good punch.

Our pitch to the book festival patrons? "GIVE US 15 MINUTES AND WE BET YOU STAY FOR THE WHOLE THING."

You're gonna disobey the fire marshall and lock the doors aren't you?

This will be followed by a Q&A and autographing session and that's what will be on all the advertising and promotion of the event in Salt Lake City. What we're hoping to do right here and now, however, is to let all you Yahoos know that GER AND I WILL BE AVAILABLE FROM NOON ON even though the actual program won't begin until, as advertised, later in the afternoon.

Yippee!  If turn-out is low, I can be annoying.  (Not that I wanna be annoying, I just feel that I turn annoying.)  ((I may need help.))

That is, just between Ger, me and the Yahoos, Ger will be in the actual exhibit room from noon on and I'll be inside the auditorium from noon on if you want anything autographed or just want to drop by and chat.

And in my case, be annoying.

We hate like heck to see Yahoos having to wait in line behind Non-Yahoos

Damn Right!  And can we bump Lenny Cooper too?  (Just kidding L nny.)

(Or "Soohays" I guess you would call them)

As good a name as any.  I case.

AND HUSBAND-AND-WIFE NIGHT FLIGHT COMICS IMPRESSARIOS ALAN CARROLL AND MIMI CRUZ DID A HECK OF A JOB PUTTING TOGETHER THE SINGLE BEST-ATTENDED CEREBUS STORE SIGNING FOR ME BACK IN 1994

Cool.

so there may be a number of Soohays in attendance twelve years later on.

Crap.

Of course there may not (THE 1994 SIGNING WAS THE LAST SIGNING BEFORE ISSUE 186 CAME OUT)

Coo...Cra... Hey guys, how are we handling this one?

but the invitation includes Yahoos in full standing as well as lurkers (feel free to just stare at all of us from begind a nearby pillar)

Man I hope they don't.  That's just freaky.  All these people in Fedoras, sunglasses, and trench coats standing behind pillars.  And there aren't any pillared structures around.  They bring their own freestanding pillars.  Creepy.

and anyone else who isn't still sulking about issue 186 TWELVE YEARS LATER!

Well Dave, to be fair.  You did call them "whiny crybabies who never let anything go."

BULLETIN! BULLETIN! BULLETIN! UBER-YAHOO MATT "YEAH I'M MARRIED NOW: WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT?" DOW NO LONGER LIVES AT 2115 MONROE STREET IN TWO RIVERS, WISCONSIN.

Haven't for two years now.

WE REPEAT: MATT DOW NO LONGER LIVES AT 2115 MONROE STREET IN TWO RIVERS WISCONSIN.

And you've sent me at least two letters and two packages at the new address.

THIS INFORMATION CAME TO LIGHT WHEN A LETTER ADDRESSED TO HIM WAS RETURNED WITH A CHECK MARK NEXT TO "NOT DELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED".

Yup.  The six month forwarding period ran out.

IT IS ALSO ADORNED WITH A YELLOW STICKER READING: DOW-115 542412005 1N 09 07/01/06 (ONLY ONE INTEGER OFF FROM E. HOWARD HUNT'S CIA FILE NUMBER. COINCIDENCE? HAHA! AS IF!)

Why my good friends G. Gordan Liddy and Henry Kissinger, I mean "TWO STRANGERS WHOM I'VE NEVER MET, MUCH LESS GIVEN MONEY TO." always say that that was a clerical error.

AND "UNABLE TO FORWARD", "NO FORWARD ORDER ON FILE" AND "RETURN TO POSTMASTER OF ADDRESSEE FOR REVIEW" AS WELL AS HALF A BAR CODE.

The other half doesn't work for MI-6 Dave.  No matter what the photos show.

IN A LATE-BREAKING DEVELOPMENT A STRANGE CANCELLATION MESSAGE APPEARS ON THE ENVELOPE READING: "FROM ANYWHERE TO ANYONE" AND (EN FRANCAIS) "DE PARTOUT JUSQU-A VOUS" (ROUGHLY TRANSLATED "BLOW IT OUT YOUR EAR, ANGLO SWINE"). THE LETTER HAS BEEN SITTING IN GERHARD'S IN-BOX FOR ABOUT SIX WEEKS NOW (HIS SUBTLE WAY OF INQUIRING "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?" THE FIRST WEEK AND "CAN YOU PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM MY IN-BOX?" IN EACH OF THE SUBSEQUENT FIVE WEEKS)

It's all a plot to drive him mad.

AND IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY CONTAINS A DRAWING OF FAMOUS MATT DOW CARTOON CREATION "BONER THE RUNT DOG"

Ha!  "Famous".  Well maybe now because:

BY YOURS TRULY

You're making my Boner famous. (That sentence makes me feel dirty.)

(SEE www.yourstruly.com.) (THAT WAS A JOKE, BY THE WAY,YOU WWW.COMPUTEROBSESSESSEDPAVLOVIANDOGS.COM).

"Say, what was the name of the band that first recorded 'WWW.COMPUTEROBSESSESSEDPAVLOVIANDOGS.COM '?"

If either Matt or his lovely bride can email Ger a new address maybe we can move this project forward sometime before Christmas and Boner can find a new home (NO CRACKS, PLEASE).

Done.  But just in case Ger didn't get my address to you, or you didn't get my latest Oh-no-what-did-the-furry-weirdo-send-now package, it is:

Matt Dow

1615 1/2 Washington St.

Two Rivers, WI 54241 USA

Or as Canadian customs likes it:

MATTHEW M. DOW

1615 1/2 WASHINGTON ST.

TWO RIVERS, WI 54241 USA

_________________________________________________________________________________________

For the record, I don't live there anymore either.

But feel free to send the secret Asian man who bought the place whatever you want.

Next time: "Wait, he's gonna keep doing this?"