Showing posts with label Cerebus (Origins). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cerebus (Origins). Show all posts

Monday, 17 November 2025

"What IS Cerebus the Aardvark?" AMOC Day 2025

Hi, Everybody!

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And as it is the seventeenth of  November, we must celebrate Tim W's founding of A Moment of Cerebus.

To celebrate (and to tee up Jen), I was gonna run Dave's The Strange Death of Alex Raymond pages that are in YEET Presents #68, but Mike Jones still has 30 copies of the second printing available, and I'm not stepping on his toes until they are gone. Ya gotta back them on Patreon to get it.

Speaking of, I just got the submission guidelines for YEET Presents, and since some of youse are of the artistic type, I thought they may be of interest:
YEET is always looking for talent. We have been giving artists and writers the opportunity to see their work in print for over 35 years.....and what a thrill it is to see your work in print for the first time. If you have a story or maybe just a pin-up, we'd like to see it. Not every submission makes it into the book for different reasons. Mainly, they get lost in my computer but sometimes they don't fit our "mold".

Here are a few guidelines that will assist you in getting in to our little comic book.

  1. We are mostly black & white but occasionally we will print in color. If you submit a story in color, don't be disappointed if it appears in grayscale.
  2. Page size is 6.7" x 10.25". Page numbering (at the bottom of each page) is very helpful. I like PNG files but PDF, TIFF and others will work. I use GIMP to edit most pages so I can always covert. Dropbox or google files are a headache. I prefer downloading files on wetransfer. Send it to: yeetpresents@gmail.com
  3. Keep it old school. We like hand drawn work. NO A.I. Computer lettering is fine, but personally I like to see the flaws of hand lettering. Keep your lettering font and size consistent.
  4. We try to spread the word of YEET and the comic book hobby in general. Getting young readers involved is a priority. Keep your material PG13ish rated. A great story doesn't need excessive violence, language or ....well you know. NO politics!
  5. Material is printed as needed. We don't have a schedule, or a deadline so take your time. Make sure your submission is just the way you want before sending it. Getting updated files piecemeal is a real pain. You may be asked to submit everything as a total package again. We like to keep our stories under 12 pages. If you have more, try to break it down into parts. Page count may be a deciding factor if it makes it into a specific issue. All genres are accepted, superhero, western, horror, etc.
  6. This is a one-man-show. If you send me something and you don't hear from me or it's not printed....shoot me a reminder.
  7. All characters should be original or Public Domain....no Batman.
  8. If you are not sure how to go about making a comic book story, we can help. Our FB Group has many pros and amateurs willing to lend a hand. Don't be afraid to ask. If you have a story and need an artist or if you’re a penciller or letterer or inker and want to contribute, just ask.
  9. Get involved. Join our FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/236613970397789 Check out our youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@yeetpresents7707 subscribe to the book: www.patreon.com/yeetmagazine
  10. Have fun and keep on YEETin’!

I hope this helps and feel free to reach out with your questions.

So with NEW Dave Art off the table, I figured why not "remaster" a classic?

Which means it's:


Cerebus #1 (December 1977)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Cerebus #0)
Easily the most common (and difficult) question I'm asked about Cerebus is to describe what the book is about. In an age when most movies, novels and television shows can be distilled to a sound byte (High Noon In Outer Space, West World Done With Dinosaurs), a description of Cerebus becomes an ever-more daunting task.

Put as simply as possible, Cerebus is my attempt to document a life for twenty-six years and three hundred issues. Cerebus began in December 1977 and concludes in March 2004 at issue 300, with the death of the title character. It is my attempt to by-pass one of the major faults of comic books (and strips, for that matter); the fact that the characters never age or change and that most attempts at change can be summed up as gimmicks and temporary modifications introduced for the purposes of boosting sales.

Sometimes the Cerebus story-line is funny.
 
Sometimes it is sad.
Sometimes it crawls along month to month with very little happening
and sometimes it flies by at breath-taking speed with everything happening at once.
I create the book consciously this way because this is the way I see life; my life and the lives of those people that I know. In some story-lines, Cerebus is a central figure and a driving force behind the events taking place.
At other times he is a secondary figure, observing rather than participating.
Again, this is very much like my own life and the lives I see around me.

...Cerebus is a six thousand page story-line, documenting the ups and downs of a single character's life (as well as those around him). Cerebus, like Howard the Duck,
is a funny animal in the world of humans. Everyone, whoever they are, feel themselves to be unique and, more often than not in the last half of the twentieth century, feel themselves to be out of place where ever they are. Documenting that, to the best of my abilities, seemed (and still seems) a worthwhile use of twenty-six years of my life. Cerebus is not a hero, a villain, an anti-hero, or an everyman. He is capable of being each of those and he is most often none of those.

He's Cerebus. An aardvark in the world of humans.

(Man, I should do this to ALL of Tim's stuff... Nah, that sounds like work...)

Happy AMOC Day Everybody!
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Like the logo? I stole it...









And, coming in February, The 1982 Tour Book (click the link to be notified on launch).
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The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. OR(!) you could buy Bill's book with the Dave backcover. I have discovered links:
Wanderland (Paperback but slightly more expensive...I dunno why...)
The site offers UK shipping, so PRESUMEABLY it's printed and shipped there(?).
And Journey Complete:
And if you wanna see how the book looks in Real Time...
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Dave also wanted me to post this:

Lots of little words, click for bigger.
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Our very own Jen DiGiacomo is part of a film production titled The Day Elvis Died. She'll never ask anybody here, but they're crowdfunding to finish the post production on the movie. (It's set in 1977, will a certain obscure Canadian cartoon aardvark make a cameo? (No. Elvis died in August. Cerebus wasn't published until December. Any appearance in the flick would be an anachronism that would ruin the movie for everybody. EVERYBODY!).) Here's the first trailer. 
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Up to 35% off November 17-23. And 40% off the 24th-December 2.*
*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.
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You can get all 16 volumes of Cerebus, many of them Remastered for $99CANADIAN at CerebusDownloads.com (More if you want the Remastered Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing...)
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Heritage has:
And ComicLink (remember ComicLink? Seiler brought us ComicLink. R.I.P Jeff.) has:
Thanks to Steve for sending the links.
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Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
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Next Time: It's been ALMOST three years since Jen started posting, so she's gonna try to ride AMOC Day's coattails...
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Saturday, 9 November 2024

Please Hold For Dave Sim 11/2024

Hi, Everybody!

Please Hold For Dave Sim 11/2024:

Quite possibly the last Audio:
segment, because I fucking hate Spotify, and think I've finally reached my limit for tolerance of their shitty "service"...

Videos:

Part 1: Dave remembers Jeff, And I pimp the new merch

Part 2: Tony wanted to know about the Remastered Guys

Part 3: Dave answers if there will be an Officially Licensed Cerebus Figure. And I show of Josh Even's Custom figure he's producing
I'm TRYING to get NECA's attention...

Part 4: Dave and I discuss Steve Peters and his second "go" at the Sparky: Cosmic Delinquent Kickstarter. My contribution to the book, and Dave's New contribution aside from the Variant Cover (available signed and unsigned) and the 8-page story he did with Steve. Then We anser Steve's question about Joe Matt's death. 

Part 5: Dodger wants to know if Dave will ever reprint his work from CANAR
Part 6: Travis had a question about something from Chester Brown's Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus

Part 7: Michael R. of Easton Pennsylvania and I answer Dave's question "What's it like living in a Swing State?"

Part 8: Dave answers just what the heck Larry got from Steve Hendricks
I personally did not see that coming...

Part 9: Dodger gets in another question. This time about Peter's Place
When in Scenic Lompoc, CA, eat at Mike's restaurant...

Part 10: We end with Michael R's question about Dave's favorite comedians
Next Time: After party!
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Monday, 31 May 2021

For the FIRST TIME EVER(!): Why an Aardvark? Part 5, "The Final Chapter"

Hi, Everybody!

And now,

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Well, Mags can't find the issue part five is in because it never was written or published. 

But Dave sent it to me and now I can give it to all of you...

Warning:


Having re-read all of Why an Aardvark?, I realized much, if not all of it, was reworked into The Many Origins of Cerebus. 

And (apparently, I don't have more than two issues of the series) in Cerebus Archive:
Dave & Deni: "Hi, Are You Harry?"
Dave & Deni: First Date
Dave & Deni: Parental Approval
The Cartoon Mascot Logo That Started It All!
(Thanks Tim!)

Anyway, there ya go Margaret...
________________________________

And Dave's most likely calling on Thursday, so get your questions in for Please Hold For Dave Sim 6/2021 to momentofcerebus@gmail.com.

Heritage has some interesting "Dave Sim" bits (Page from issue 5, and two (count 'em) TWO! Beavers strips!)

Up to 35% off site-wide:
Ends today, May 31
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!

Next Time: Why a Vanaheim?
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Saturday, 29 May 2021

WHY AN AARDVARK? Part four

Hi, Everybody!

Why an Aardvark? part 1



memoir
WHY AN AARDVARK?
part four

If it seems, to the gossip-starved reader, that I have scrupulously avoided “juicy human details” in the first three parts of this memoir, let me hasten to assert that that was very much my intention. It would be self-indulgent to an unconscionable degree for me to roast my ex-wife on a literary spit month after month with “my side of the story.” For those eager to devour a carefully crafted “she said, I said” autobiographical fiction (as I have asserted elsewhere, I believe all autobiography is fiction), I can dispense with the human side of the Dave-and-Deni Story —or my side of it, a least — in a paragraph or two:

While I had made great progress in formulating the structure and direction of my career by the time I was twenty, of women, of relationships, I knew nothing. I was a complete and utter babe in the woods. I hadn’t the slightest inkling that serious damage effected through acts of bad faith could not be undone. Damage to the foundation of a relationship is permanent, and one soldiers on with raw wounds which heal improperly and continue to fester beneath the pink of psychic or emotional scar tissue. By the time the nearly seven years of our relationship had run their course, the tissue of our marriage was composed almost exclusively of our accumulated scars. What sense of loss there was at the end (and there was a sense of loss) was overshadowed by the bright potential of starting clean on a new page. The dissolution of the marriage, like the end of the professional relationship (which limped on for a number of months after the personal separation), was without acrimony, regret, or bitterness.

(I will add, parenthetically, before moving onto the larger points I wish to make, that it came as another great surprise, in my education about women, relationships, and their respective natures, that there is no such thing as “starting clean on a new page.” I had eleven years of hard lessons on this very subject before I was able to begin a new page with a nature more or less cleansed of the psychic grime I had carried with me to that point.)

It is important to remember that Dave and Deni’s relationship began as a professional one. Through the immediate origin of Dave as Publishing Expert and Cerebus the Fanzine Consultant/Deni as Aspiring Publisher, through the period of Dave, Commercial Artist/Deni, Commercial Artist’s Agent occurring simultaneously with Dave, Cerebus Artist and Writer/Deni, Cerebus Publisher, and the beginning of the end with Dave, Cerebus Artist and Writer/Deni, Comics Publisher, the balance of power. in the professional relationship shifted with each new incarnation. In discussing boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, one inches cautiously onto the thin ice of using phrases like “balance of power” — one reason that this piece required a three-part preamble. 

Let’s return to the John-and-Yoko, Barry-and-Linda, Dave-and-Deni declension introduced in the last installment. At the point when Linda was correcting my misapprehension that her relationship with Barry at the time of Gorblimey Press was one of neatly separated responsibilities — Barry the creative half, Linda the business half — what was at issue was very much the balance of power involved. What other reason would there be for Linda to make so much of an issue of my erroneous impression? While there is much that is romantic, much that would be a source of pride in being She Who Takes Care of the Big Bad World While the Creative Titan Labours at His Easel — and to the unpracticed eye and the unthinking mind only a difference in shading between that and She Who Takes Care of the Details While the Creative Titan Both Labours at His Easel and Plots the Course and Shape and Content of the Business Implications of His Creativity — Linda recognized that the two occupied opposing ends of a spectrum: as different as white and black, red and blue. In carelessly amplifying her role in the Gorblimey Press experiment, I was diminishing Barry’s. The note struck resonated loudly, for to be honest— particularly at the time of the conversation — Aardvark-Vanaheim more or less mirrored the actuality of Gorblimey Press. I was troubled by the disparity between the reality of Aardvark-Vanaheim and my portrayal of it, and I remember fumbling for any sort of lucid reply. I might even have said something along the lines of: “Oh, sure. That’s the way we do it, too. Deni’s more of a helper than a partner.”

At the time, I rationalized to myself that, while it was true that I was the one setting the overall course for Aardvark-Vanaheim as the business vehicle for the Cerebus comic book, this was already changing. Having set in motion a “showcase” section in the back of the book called “Unique Stories,” an attempt was being made to restore the initial balance which existed in the professional relationship — Dave the Creator and Deni the Publisher. There was, after all, a world of difference between doing the business chores on your husband’s comic book and being a publisher. Now that my course was set—I had my own comic book to write and draw for twenty-six years — no larger fulfillment was imaginable in my case. Deni and I would, together, turn - back the calendar five years and work to achieve Deni’s seminal dream. Any lucid examination of the situation would have revealed the inherent flaw. Deni had originally intended to publish a forum for her own and others’ creativity in prose and pictures, with fantasy and science fiction as theme. We were “through the looking-glass” and into the uncharted waters of the comic-book direct market, where the balance of power still favoured me and not her. I was the one who sifted through the potential “other books” for Aardvark-Vanaheim to publish and set them in motion. In the case of Bill Loebs and Bob Burden, I was fulfilling my fannish desire (in Bill’s case fired by my enthusiasm for his story “Abortion” in Nucleus and in Bob’s by the Flaming Carrot’s Visions appearances) to provide a secure “nest” for their creativity. I made almost all of the decisions (I did make all the major decisions) and left Deni to implement them. We were very much in a no-man’s- land between Barry-and-Linda and John-and-Yoko. What potential lost! Had we shared a clear-eyed assessment of our situation, had Deni said, “Look, I want to do the digest magazine that started this whole thing. I want you to go back to the original arrangement — design, a few illustrations, and a bit of advice here and there. But I want to be the one in charge. I want to call it Cerebus because I came up with the name. We can afford to pay fanzine rates for the contributors, the printing bill, and not have to worry if it turns a profit right away or loses money for a year or two,” that would have been very Barry-and-Linda. Instead, like Charles Foster Kane building Susan her opera house, I was determined to be an Earth-Pygmalion and to mold and shape and sell to the world My Fair Deni as the Publisher of the World’s Greatest Cartoonists (with apologies to Fantagraphics). If this seems overly dramatic, it must be remembered that my perception of my life and career at the time — was grandiose to a very nearly pathological extent I never doubted for a moment that the comic-book field was the place to be in the late seventies and early eighties. My view of comic books as a medium of limitless potential and my determination to be a significant presence in the field as it began to fulfill that potential were central to my thinking.

Crack!

The ice gets very thin at this point in the description as it did then in our professional relationship. For here we swerve over into John-and-Yoko territory. I was very much a child of my time and had the unshakable faith that what was going on in the comic-book field in the late 1970s was at least as significant, at least as incendiary, as what was going on in rock ‘n’ roll in the mid-1950s. In retrospect, my choice to take what was significant, what was incendiary (self-publishing), and to transmogrify it into something pedestrian and commonplace (just -another comic-book company publishing creator-owned titles) can be attributed almost entirely to the John-and-Yoko Syndrome. As can be seen in my first Comics Journal interview (more pernicious still — Dave and Deni’s Comics Journal interview), I took great pains to disseminate the view that we were equal partners of equal importance. It wasn’t enough that you liked John Lennon’s comic book, you had to see Yoko through his eyes, share his admiration of her. The parallels are obvious. The resources upon which we drew were the Cerebus profits (read: Beatle money); the 1982 U.S. Tour wasn’t the Cerebus tour or the Dave Sim Tour — it was the Dave & Deni Tour. The very foundation of self-publishing that made it so revolutionary — that the comic-book creator was the dominant, significant, and irreplaceable element and that comic-book business people were secondary, insignificant, and interchangeable — was undone at every turn in the interests of being the comic-book John and Yoko. The balance of power in the professional relationship shifted dramatically in Deni’s direction. Where once the fulcrum had slid delicately (and sometimes not so delicately) between us along the straight line which connected Point Deni and Point Dave, it was now replaced by a wheel-like configuration. Deni the Publisher was the hub, and Dave and Cerebus became one of many spokes. That configuration — a natural perception in a capitalist society — was in turn at odds with the actual wheel: the Cerebus profits at the hub and all spokes issuing from it. The tug of war between perception-as-reality and the reality-not-readily perceived put us at odds. Like a complete novice I had stepped into a trap. Aardvark-Vanaheim was now indistinguishable from Eclipse Publishing, for all intents and purposes. A comic-book company was a comic book company was a comic book company.

Crack! Crack!

At this point the ice is too thin to venture across in the current political climate, so my route, of necessity, becomes circuitous. In our case, the resolution — dissolution — became inevitable. Deni rankled at her dependence on me and Cerebus. I rankled at the mushrooming size of the operation, which depended on an ever-expanding line of books to stay ahead of the cash-flow problem.

The real crunch time came when I heard — indirectly from an unimpeachable source — that Deni had begun to form her own publishing imprint and was making overtures to several cartoonists to be published by her. The publishing imprint was to be her ace in the hole if we were unable to agree on any additional title she was interested in publishing. Already we had been offered two projects within a few weeks of each other — one of which she wanted Aardvark-Vanaheim to publish (normalman) and the other that I thought we should publish (Megaton Man).

The writing was very much on the wall. Something had to give.

Next: Final Chapter 

Margaret adds on her site: (CFG notes: I'm searching for the issue this is in, as it isn't in Guys where the rest of these where. If you know what issue, please let me know so I can scan it in. Thanks!)

I know Margaret, and come Monday, you will too...
________________________________


And Dave's most likely calling on Thursday, so get your questions in for Please Hold For Dave Sim 6/2021 to momentofcerebus@gmail.com.

Heritage has some interesting "Dave Sim" bits (Page from issue 5, and two (count 'em) TWO! Beavers strips!)

Up to 35% off site-wide:
May 29 – 31
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!

Next Time: Oliver. Simonsen, not Klozoff...
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Tuesday, 25 May 2021

WHY AN AADVARK? part 3

Hi, Everybody!

Where I stole this from.

memoir
WHY AN AARDVARK?
part three

In examining my first draught of ”Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark Vanaheim” (the more avid reader will recall that I said that the original piece had “gone off in too many directions at once”), it sees clear that I was labouring under the same schism which existed in my life at the time — the war between my “comic-book life” and my “real life.” It is significant that the former has always been more real to me than the latter. Viewed accurately, my comic-book life predates my real life by many years. My encyclopedic knowledge of comic-book history (in its seminal aspect concerned with the first appearances of various characters, later with the careers, styles, and development of writers and artists I admired) occupied a disproportionately large percentage of my memory and thought processes. These elements which make up a “real life” (as in “get a life”) —job, girlfriend, friendships — existed in the outer fringes of the theoretical. At the age of twenty — getting my first apartment, meeting Deni, holding down a part-time job at Now & Then Books, moving into a new apartment with Deni, entertaining her brother and sister and friends on a regular basis — real life became an accompaniment to my comic- book existence (albeit a minor key in the larger musical work). Comic books still dominated. My first apartment was all drawing board and art supplies, promotional brochures for my studio which I had christened COMlCgraphics, tear sheets and news clippings filling the corkboard wall which separated the single living room/bedroom from the kitchenette, the limited drawer and cupboard space occupied by comic books and reference books; clothes I had owned since high school were an afterthought jammed into leftover corners and secondary spaces.

In a short space of time Deni was pressed into service as an agent for my commercial art skills, her brother collaborated with me on a handful of comic-book stories, our apartment was the studio and Aardvark-Vanaheim fanzine-publishing office. In retrospect it was the stuff of situation comedies — relatively normal French-Canadian family runs afoul of obsessive comic-book person, his-world divided into That Which Will Advance the Career and Everything Else. The square peg met the round hole and began chiseling right angles into the curvilinear symmetry in the name of the Higher Calling.

It is recognized that those human elements — the situation-comedy episodes which tended to degenerate into minor tragedies mid arguments, numbing in their relentless. . . relentlessness? — are doubtless of interest to the general readership: First Love Gone Awry, Portrait of the Artist as Young Suitor, etc., etc. It is one of the false directions referred to in the admission of the first failure. It was a story, but it was not the story which concerned me.

The reader had been left with the dawning of my insight that Gene Day’s career (my primary template at the time) had jumped the rails of real progress in my view) and left casting about for my own natural “next step.” Gene’s rationale for his career course — his obligations as husband and homeowner informing the largest part of his motivation — fueled the first insight that “real life” and “comic-book life” might exist in diametric opposition to each other. The Big House on First Street with its Big Mortgage took center stage in my mentor’s life. Divided into two dwellings -- one for his studio and residence, the other rented out — his goal was to unite the two. The many rooms would reflect his varied interests — a Second World War diorama, a studio to practice guitar, a library to house his enormous comic-book, magazine, and sci-fi collection, a House of Shadows publishing office, his studio. The steady paycheck from Marvel became the means to achieve the end — keep Marvel happy and the cash flow could be maintained; a maintained cash flow made the Castle Day a genuine possibility.

The discerning reader will recognize a large measure of Viktor Davis’ genesis in the above — in this case the marital residence itself serving as a creative void to devour his energies and idealism. Unfortunate, because Gene’s marriage (on the Viktor Davis scale) was good one. Gale was always understanding and indulgent of the time and energy required for his artistic priorities. . .and contributed equally to their shared life.

As the young Dave Sim of twenty-odd (some very odd) summers surveyed his own circumstance, the Big House on First Street became a thing to avoid. He had no intention of becoming a slave to the large expenditure, making career choices on the basis of “real-world” givens and requirements. As he eyed his lifemate (measuring her against Gale’s contribution to Gene’s career), he could congratulate himself that he, too, had chosen wisely. He intended to conquer the world, to become indescribably wealthy and equally famous, and made no secret of that ambition with his wife-to-be. For her part, had it not been an article of faith with Deni from a very early age that she would someday (as she considered her future) be the Woman Behind the Great Man? How suited they were to each other! Two halves of an equation, each biding their time until the opposite number could be located and Real Life (as opposed to “real life”) could begin in earnest. If her premonition had fallen more along musical lines, if the “other half’ she anticipated was perceived to be more on the order of a George Harrison or a Stephen Stills, her flexibility in giving her ardent young comic-book suitor the benefit of the doubt (she asserted that he had “George Harrison's eyes” — fortuitous happenstance to be sure!) spoke to his belief that rock ‘n’ roll had had its day, and the wisest and most alert of the late-Twentieth-Century Muses and Significant Others were placing their bets on those Young Lions of Sequential Art as the brightest of the bright, young men.

Does my pen drip irony here? Not at all, not at all, dear reader I enunciate my misapprehension of the time. There is no difficulty in perceiving the flaw in retrospect, touching as it does on the hidden realities which constitute love and marriage at odds with creative ambition. Not for small reason did a significant part of my ex-wife’s interview in The Comics Journal on the subject of the notorious issue 186 center on my assertions regarding John Lennon. She opined that I had switched philosophies in midstream — denouncing the ex-Beatle icon for wasting much of the last years of his creative life holed up in the Dakota, smoking pot, compulsively channel-surfing, baking bread, and minding the kid.

We were all, you see, John and Yoko back then.

One of Lennon’s spiritual offspring had been inspired — as a likewise halfhearted inmate of an archetypal English art school of the time —to abandon the safety and insular security of his circumstance and (in answering the clarion call of his creativity) to set his course for North America and the selfsame metropolis where the Beatles had debarked a handful of years before. Though the Marvel offices of the day were a far cry from the Ed Sullivan theater and penciling assignments on moribund titles like X-Men. (deader than a doornail at the time) a more flaccid pass at the brass ring even than singing background vocals on a Tony Sheridan single, still the metaphor sustains itself. Barry Smith (pre-Windsor) constituted the whole of the 1960s comic-book British Invasion. Beatles, Stones, Animals, Dave Clark Five et al. rolled into one (as Stan Lee, christened him) Bashful Brit.

Meeting Barry Smith for the fist time in 1973 when he was riding the wave of success that his work on Conan had conferred upon him— no, more accurately, cresting upon the tsunami of his “Red Nails” adaptation which hurled him, in one go, from the ranks of the relentlessly progressing talent into the Pantheon of the Indisputably Great — I met his “Yoko” as well: colourist and Gorblimey Press business manager, Linda Lessman. 

In my casting about for a more solid, more viable template for my efforts, this seemed ideal. For had Barry Smith not transcended the cul-de-sac of the career of the Marvel freelancer? Did he not represent the Next Best Step for the Gene Days of the comic-book world? If it was true that he was fully engaged in the making of pictures which became prints and so - outside of the comic-book field (except for the promised Robin Hood graphic novel inching, one supposed, towards completion), still the structure was sound. John and Yoko, Barry and Linda, Dave and Deni.

Life is nothing without its intrinsic ironies. On the only occasion when the paths of Barry-and-Linda and Dave-and-Deni crossed (a convention in Albany in 1980 or ’81), I remember being sought out by Linda, who had just finished a conversation with Deni in which the Aardvark-Vanaheim publisher and minority shareholder (49% to my 51%) had laid bare the entirety of her spouse’s cherished template – giving credit where it was due at the least, but more likely surrendering to excess and paying homage to Linda as the Spiritual Role Model of her professional existence.

The distortion was too great for someone of Linda’s intrinsic honesty to accommodate or dismiss offhandedly. So there I was, being read chapter and verse on the reality of the situation. She was not Barry’s business manager – “helper” struck closer to the mark. She did the bookkeeping, the banking, wrapped and mailed packages, kept track of invoices. I understood. It was impossible not to, since it was important to Linda that the truth be known. It would be clear in later years that I had been guilty of a fundamental distortion at a critical juncture. At the time, however, Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark-Vanaheim were embarked upon a course which compound the misapprehension – seeking out other talents whose work we would publish, or, more accurately – the amendment is critical to the point of my thesis – talents whose work Deni would publish. It is too oblique to assert that – as a spiritual grandson of John Lennon – I had decided that my Yoko would have less in common with Lennon’s first wife Cynthia than with Beatle manager and guru Brian Epstein?

Revelation awaited even as I – we – pursued a course doomed to failure. While we didn’t have the monetary resources necessary to attract the brighter lights of the comic-book field after the fashion of the failed Apple Corp. experiment (it would be left to Kevin Eastman and his Turtle Millions to reinforce the lesson with Tundra Publishing), still it had the excruciating lure of the logic of the next step.

The lessons I would learn would come hard and fast, fast and hard. Even as the Dakota Acolytes began leaking word of what had actually gone on — Lennon channel-surfing as Yoko, in Studio One, spent endless hours on the phone "making all her nowhere plans for nobody" — the irony was compounded and compounded again.

With the publication of Neil the Horse number one, the seeds of destruction had been sown, fertilized, and watered.

It is left to left to the next installment to describe how this particular garden grew.

Next: Business versus Creativity
______________________________

Sean Robinson is your Huckleberry:
Hello everyone,

Please allow Carson, Dave, and myself to thank you one more time for contributing to such a fantastic campaign. We're over the moon with the response to the book, and are quickly moving forward with the next steps.

In the meanwhile:

Digital Stretch Goal ... Almost?

We got so close to our digital stretch goal of $58,000, and even closer when we add up all the post-campaign emails asking for a few more items to add, so we're going to honor that goal. Which means everyone who pledged to the campaign will receive a digital download of the Preliminary Strange Death. In addition, everyone who pledged for a book tier will also receive a digital download of the finished book. We hope you enjoy!

Secondly, and most importantly from a time perspective: You should now have your rewards surveys in your email inbox! This is a quick questionnaire we put together to gather the data we need for campaign fulfillment. It's important you fill this out as soon as you can! Fortunately, about 2/3s of your have already taken care of it. If we can get 100 percent of responses by the end of the week, that would be tremendous. Among other things, this enables us to set our print runs for the supplementary books correctly, and not be short on any of the items you've ordered.

Thank you again!
So, GIT YER SURVEYS IN!!!! (Please.)

And ALL the Hardcover Swords of Cerebus in Hell? are gone. Yay Hobbs!

AND, Friend to the Blog: Steve Peters has a new Kickstarter. There's no real Cerebus/Dave Sim connection, But it's got Art by me. So back it. I insist.
Some select images from our "Viruses of Trek" and "Sin Kevitch" stories drawn by our mighty guest artists!
For "Sin Kevitch", Steve drew a number of versions and got friends to draw some as well. Guest participants in the challenge were James Windsor-Smith, Lee Thacker, David Branstetter, Michael Anthony Carroll, Anthony Casperite, Matt Dow, and Corey Bechelli. Steve did drawings in the styles of other artists like Michael Golden, Shannon Wheeler, Brian Payne, Dave Sim, Jim Woodring, and Moebius.
Well hump-a-duck, I guess there is a Dave Sim connection. Groovy. Buy two.

Next Time: Hobbs
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Saturday, 22 May 2021

WHY AN AARDVARK? part two

Hi, Everybody!



memoir
WHY AN AARDVARK?
part two

‘Hi, are you Harry?’

The date was Thursday, December 16, 1976. I had prevailed in my badgering of Harry Kremer and had the first (and only) REAL job I would ever have — sales clerk of the downstairs half of Now & Then Books. I didn’t recognize her as the brunette from the convention at my high school (that realization would come some weeks or months later). No, I was not Harry — could I help her in some way?

She and some friends were putting together a magazine like Dark Shadows, she said. Would Now & Then Books be interested in advertising in it or carrying copies for sale? Thinking she was referring to a cult horror/parody TV series of the time, I asked what sort of content she intended. ‘Like Dark Shadows,’ she insisted. Insight dawned.

‘Do you mean Dark Fantasy?’

‘Oh, right. Dark Fantasy.’ She never missed a beat — a trait I would come to know well over the next few years. I kept her talking for a while, trying to get some picture of her level of expertise. It was pretty clear that she was a novice in the publishing world. I offered my own services in assisting her. After all, I (ahem) had been published in Dark Fantasy. That got her interest (a genuine first for me — interest from a female). She left me her name, address and phone number. I wrote down my own. Kind of exciting really, since I had had my own one-room apartment for all of sixteen days. I had sold all of my comic books for approximately two thousand dollars and took the job running the downstairs at Now & Then Books for seventy-five dollars a month and rented the apartment for $120 a month — it was ‘freelance artist/writer sink-or-swim’ time. 

She recognized my name from Dark Fantasy.

She came by the store the next night around the same time to invite me over for dinner (she admitted later that she walked home thinking, ‘What am I? Mary Tyler Moore? I don’t cook dinner for people’). After dinner she pulled out a file with various stories and poems spilling from it. The ‘friends’ turned out to be her brother Michael and her sister Karen. A family friend, Eric Hope, was the only artist in the writing group. To my delight, I found out he had little or no artistic ability. With the methodical efficiency of a would-be suitor seeing his expertise (however limited) as a trump card in the game of romance, I began taking control of the magazine as a means of ingratiating myself to Denise Loubert de Neuilly (the ‘de Neuilly’ was an affectation of sorts; Michael had done some research on the origins of the family name and had determined that it had originated in Neuilly, France).

It was an unexpected switch for me to go from being a marginal presence at Dark Fantasy, a largely unpublished ‘wannabe’, and to find myself a kind of final authority on creative, production and business matters on Cerebus. That was the name of Denise Loubert’s proposed magazine: Cerebus.

Early in 1977, I designed a logo and did an illustration for the front cover. The logo appeared on the first fifty issues of this comic book you’re reading now. When I was done, there was something missing. I told Deni that she needed a name for the publishing imprint. Dark Fantasy was the name of Gene Day’s publication, but it also had the imprint name and logo of his publishing company: House of Shadows. She thought about it for a while and decided to solicit Michael and Karen’s input.

Michael’s suggestion was ‘Vanaheim Press’. I think he made the name up. It had the Nordic ring of Valhalla or Midheim or whatever else. I always took it to be synonymous with Valhalla — a mythological place where good and dutiful warriors go.

Karen’s suggestion was ‘Aardvark Press’. There was that damned quadruped again. It seemed that in her circle of friends a passing fancy had consisted of resting finger and thumb tips on surface and then raising the middle- finger from the surface: four legs and an elongated snout — aardvark.

Having aspiration to become part of the family in the not too-distant future (don’t laugh — it had taken me twenty years to find a girlfriend and I wasn’t about to risk having to wait another twenty years for the next one), I wasn’t going to play favourites and suggested combining the two names: Aardvark-Vanaheim Press.

I have no memory of drawing the first picture of the aardvark mascot. I was doing so much freelance work (both commissioned and on spec) that the work I did for my girlfriend’s magazine was more of a hobby, an afterthought to the day’s work. I only did the one version (‘A Boy and His Aardvark’ was still fresh in my mind, so I don’t think I even referred to the little picture in the dictionary): a cartoon barbarian aardvark (in keeping with the fantasy theme intended for the magazine). I probably knocked it out in about twenty minutes with an extra thirty seconds for the tone.

the original drawing of the aardvark mascot.

As the first issue started to come together, it was Deni who realized that the fanzine’s title, Cerebus, was misspelled. The three-headed dog who guarded Hides in Greek mythology was Cerberus. ‘Not to worry,’ I said, somewhat less than eager to reletter the logo and figure out how to squeeze in an extra letter and transpose two others, We’ll just say that Cerebus is the name of the cartoon aardvark mascot.’

The fanzine was never published. The originals and a cheque for (I believe) $175 were sent to an address in California of a Deep Discount quick printer. The magazine and the money vanished without a trace.

Of course, when something like that happens, it doesn’t happen right away. I recall the optimism and anticipation of the arrival of the first issue gradually giving way to anxiety, then anger and finally resignation. Subsequent issues were left half-finished. The awareness that a magazine like Dark Fantasy operated in the red, financed by Gene’s freelance paychecks, and that Cerebus would be lucky to break even in some distant future — that in fact it would be lucky to lose only a few thousand dollars over the first few years – such awareness, coupled with the loss of the cheque and the originals, dashed the original dream on the rocks of hard truth.

Original cover to Cerebus digest-zine #1

And it was not just Deni Loubert’s dream of making a living from a digest-zine ‘like Dark Shadows’ which had been dealt a blow. Gene Day had started getting more freelance work from Marvel Comics as an inker on Star Wars, Marvel Two-in-One and other titles. Dark Fantasy took a back seat to this job, which would pay his not-inconsiderable mortgage on his new house on First St. in Gananoque. Hellhound, his long-planned magazine-format comics anthology, was dead in the water. Pigeons from Hell, a Robert E. Howard short story for which he had purchased the rights from the Howard estate to do as a comics adaptation, languished as well. His logic was irrefutable. Every hour spent at the drawing board inking Marvel super-hero comics solidified his reputation as a reliable finisher — which garnered him still more work. Every hour spent on Dark Fantasy, or Hellhound, brought him closer to the day when he would have to pay a printing bill, pay the contributors and trust to the unlikely possibility that there would be a profit left over. His experience as a publisher told him that the profit would be insufficient to pay for the printing of the next issue. As a hobby, in Gene’s mind, the satisfaction had to be weighed in the balance against the money and time it consumed. As a livelihood, it was a treadmill to oblivion.

My perception of Gene began to change. I had imitated his ‘hell-bent for leather’ approach to freelancing — swimming like a shark in search of new markets, inundating editors and publishers of all shapes and sizes with work produced on spec, taking my acceptance by publishers A and B and using it as a crowbar to pry an assignment out of publisher C. I had pursued the ‘small press’ opportunity presented to me by Deni Loubert and her magazine Cerebus to mirror Gene’s efforts with Dark Fantasy. As a freelancer I was experiencing far greater success than I could have imagined. In talking to Gene, I recognized that Cerebus was not going to be a moneymaker — either for its publisher or her boyfriend-layout- paste-up-design-illustration guy. The question became one of ‘where to from here?’ If I was to continue following in Gene’s footsteps, I had to build my freelance career with smaller publishers and attempt to interest someone at Marvel or DC in using me as a writer (my greatest ‘strength’, as perceived by editors and publishers), layout artist (my second greatest strong suit), penciller (unlikely) or inker (impossible). In visiting Gene, the first rush of seeing actual Marvel Comics penciled pages in my friend and mentor’s studio gave way to the disheartening awareness of the crippling workload, Gene’s new status as a small cog in the Big Machine. Even more disheartening was seeing the full-size photocopies of the finished pages and comparing them to their published incarnation — most of Gene’s brushwork and attention to detail languishing beneath pools of magenta, crimson, navy and orange — each page a riot of chromatic inconsistencies.

For my part, my most lucrative jobs in 1977 were Revolt: 2000 — a quartet of super-hero stories I had written and drawn as a commissioned work from the long- departed and never-lamented lrjax Enterprises — and Phantaca’s first issue, drawn from a full script by Jim McPherson. As much as I thought that Gene had taken a wrong turn with his Marvel freelancing, I was left contemplating my own situation — doing second-rate imitations of the (even then) formulaic Marvel style at a fraction of the Big Two’s page rates and for publishers who could only muster a fraction of Marvel’s or DC’s circulation.

In the first weeks after creating the aardvark mascot, I had done a single comic-book panel — just to see what he would look like from a different angle. Some months later, after the loss of the originals and printing bill for Cerebus No. 1, the digest-zine, I drew a sample page, incorporating the original logo. It sat on a shelf in my studio in Deni’s and my first apartment — 48 Weber Street East — through the spring and summer of 1977, as I completed Phantaca No 1 (including a two-week period where I was confined to bed with a virus resembling mononucleosis).

The second Cerebus.

Next: Mr. and Mrs. Aardvark-Vanaheim.
_______________________________

Hobbs' Kickstarter has hit $15,000 and unlocked Jingles trading card. 
And TOTALLY he's gonna add two new Stretch Goals:
A Virgil trading card at $18,000,
And a new Cerebus figure added to the line-up of Cerebus in Hell? (starting in 2023) Who will it be? Old Cerebus? Fat Cerebus? The fuzzy black shirt Cerebus?

Strange Death of Alex Raymond: The Kickstarter, ends in a few hours. (Four, as of this writing.) And they send out updates like they're hacking their way through a jungle:
Good morning all you lovely backers!

The second episode of Living The Line is now up on YouTube. Sean and I put Yoshiharu Tsuge's The Swamp under the microscope. It is a great book and we had a killer discussion about it. Keep an eye out on Wednesday for a supplementary video to this one in which we try our hands at recreating a panel from this book, a practice which will be a regular feature of the channel! (GENIUS idea, Sean!)

BUT!

BUT!!! MORE IMPORTANTLY!!!

The Final Countdown of this campaign is on! We are so close to 600 pledges. Who is going to help us cross that line?! Pledge with the ferocity of two Labrador Retrievers scarfing down Starbucks Pup Cups.
We appreciate every single one of you for helping who have helped us bring this product to the market and cannot wait to get this book into your hands!
AND:
I have heard that the reason many people wait to pledge until the final day is that they are looking to back winners. Well, here is some winner news!

Sean and I have signed foreign translation deals with TWO different publishers.

Passenger Press, whose translation of Kris Kool by Phillipe Caza blew my mind with the quality of production will be producing an Italian language version of the Strange Death of Alex Raymond! Passenger Press is a small, one-man operation run by Christian Mara. Christian has an amazing passion for producing the highest quality book objects and I am so happy he will be handling SDOAR.

Christian will be running a pre-sale on his website sometime this summer.

Here is a look at his translation of Kris Kool.

For the Spanish language translation we have signed a deal with one of the largest distributors of comics in that market, Planeta de Libros, whose comics division has a large presence in both Spain and Latin/South America! They handle many amazing properties and do amazing work. The reach their distribution will provide is truly humbling. We are so grateful they are bringing Dave's work to the Spanish speaking world!

Bucha and Cammie are pretty excited about this, and are in the car hoping to do a signing tour in South America.
Sorry, girls. I might take you back to Starbucks, though.
And AND:
One more update as we enter the final four hours.

The Preliminary Strange Death will be printed in color, so if you waiting on confirmation of that before ordering, order away!

We have decided to increase the size of the signed and numbered Rip Cerebus print to 11.5 inches wide. I have not run the math on the height yet but the image will print at 10.5 inches, and the print will have .5 inch borders on the top and sides with a 1.5 in dropped bottom.

Also. All backers who ordered a physical copy of the book will now be getting a free digital download of Strange Death!!!

Thank you all again for making this campaign a WILD success!!!!
Buch sends kisses
Okay, NOW today's post is done...

Next Time: Oliver and pictures of HIS dog...
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