Dave Sim recommends: Santos Sisters (New Dave Art!)

Hi, Everybody!

Dave sent a bunch of stuff:

Matt Dow
amomentofcerebus.com
INCOMING
1) scan of Greg & Fake's Cerebus drawing

Click for bigger

2) My SANTOS SISTERS Pin-Up on its way to Greg and Fake in Chicago

It's original Dave Art, of course you have to click for bigger...

3) Rolly should have sent you SANTOS SISTERS cover scans last week.

THE SANTOS SISTERS "Finally, A Comic For Generation X".

"One day while combing the beach, the Santos Sisters discovered a pair of beautiful medallions. What happened next changed their lives forever."

It's like an ORIGIN COMICS 101 textbook. Keep It Simple, Stupid. The Simpler, the better.

There's riffing on ARCHIE COMICS, and "riffing" on ARCHIE COMICS. This is RIFFING on ARCHIE COMICS. On opening the box I had to look a couple of times to confirm that these weren't ARCHIE COMICS from the 1970s.

That's attributable to the print design which is as exact a match as you could get with the World Color Printing of that era. Slightly -- but ONLY slightly -- better quality newsprint, the cover stock is definitely an exact match. It's digital color but you would have to be a complete comics printing geek (like me) to recognize that it's definitely digital color. It's that faithful to the time period.

Right from the first story in No.1 (2020) "The Hotter the Lobster the Sweeter the Juice" (the actual first story created, "Hairy Teen", is reprinted in black and white in the back of issue No.1) Greg and Fake's difficult balancing act is tackled head on. On one level it's a completely cliched cute teen-aged super-heroines kick ass facade. Using ray guns they're shooting a mass invasion of Rob Liefeld-looking Reggie Mantle (and Reggie Mantle-looking Rob Liefeld) clones. But it's also Betty and Veronica. But it's also riffing on Generation X dating habits and popular psychology. What if Betty and Veronica were having "The Talk" in 2024?

Alana: Does Dirk even know about Jake?
Ambar: Dirk is not my boyfriend.
Alana: I just think it's weird that you spend all this time with Dirk and…
Ambar: …and what , Alana? Jake invited me to Hot Lobster. Have you ever had their bread bites?
Alana: You're a horrible person, Ambar. You may think you are justified , but you are being very cruel and hurtful. At least have the decency to acknowledge that.
Ambar: Why don't YOU acknowledge that you are sad and alone?
Alana: (as she's shooting the last Reggie/Liefeld clone) I realize that this behaviour gives you a sense of heightened empowerment and identity, but you're hurting both Dirk and Jake when you do things like this.
Ambar: Yes. The mental anguish I put my boyfriends through must be unbearable for them.

Madame Sosotris fills the sparkly magenta sky above them. "GREAT WORK, SANTOS SISTERS". We know it's Madame Sosotris because Ambar says "Madame Sosostris!! Who were those guys?" To which Madame Sosotris replies "Atalyke soldiers. Ankhovic was able to open an access portal to send them down to the surface level. Luckily Thoraxos was able to close it." It's a perfect Image Comics "teenage girls who kick ass" closer. We have no idea who Atalyke soldiers are, who Ankhovic is, what an access portal is, who Thoraxos is or how he closed it. It's the first-person-shooter video game ending to which super-hero comics have been reduced for decades. The bad guys are all dead by the end of page two and the Santos Sisters killed them. Not really important.

What's important is the dating discussion between Alana and Ambar. Which actually advances the decades-old Betty vs. Veronica discussion with Alana as Betty and Ambar as Veronica: "I realize that this behaviour gives you a sense of heightened empowerment and identity, but you're hurting both Dirk (Archie) and Jake (Reggie) when you do things like this."

Arguably (as in, I would argue) advancing the discussion because of the notation on the cover INRI (from the Latin Iesus Nazaraenus Rex Iudaeorum: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews) and John 3:16. Betty and Veronica were created early in the 1940s and Veronica was playing Archie off against Reggie pretty much from the beginning. Which isn't a moral approach to courtship and can only be perceived as "right dating" if the alternative is cast (as Ambar does here in reference to Alana) as being "sad and alone".

Page three introduces their civilian context. 

caption: Later that night.
Alana: Hey, Ambar. It looks like your new guy friend, Jake, is here.
Alana: Oh, it's Dirk.
Dirk: Hey, Alana, I am here to pick up Ambar.
Ambar (to Alana): Don't say a word.
Alana: Looks like our little chat we had earlier did some good.
Ambar: Or maybe someone else had to cancel.
Dirk: What got cancelled?
Ambar: Nothing, Dirk. Take me to Hot Lobster.

It's very well realized. Jake has cancelled which has wounded Ambar's vanity. So she isn't choosing Dirk because the more moral choice is to stick with the guy she's spending the most time with, she's doing so because she wants someone to take her to Hot Lobster. Which she turns into an instruction: "Take me to Hot Lobster". Not "Can we go to Hot Lobster?" concealing from Dirk what his situation is and degrading him to servant level in the process.

And Greg and Fake bring it all in for a landing in 3 PAGES!! It's really the most amazing thing about this most amazing book -- Greg and Fake's ability to keep virtually all of their stories to classic ARCHIE 3-, 4- and 5-page lengths.

No.3 "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" A great running gag in the strip is the fact that wherever the sisters go, Todd works there! A great riff on 21st century under-employment.

This one's interesting because it's the first Black character introduced in the book and she turns out to be a crazy villainess. Even saying the "c-word" in 2024 is problematic but…your first Black character? That certainly takes not only a certain amount of guts but a willingness to parody the Inclusiveness Pathology head-on. "We're riffing on Archie Comics, so no, we won't be doing identity politics Quotas. Here's our token black person. And as long as she's a token we might as well double down by making her crazy and having people call her crazy. Which if you're bombing a chain restaurant in a fit of pique over a two-dates-and-over "fling" certainly seems an apt descriptor.

Ambar: Todd, you work at the Oliver Garden?
Alana: She's your girlfriend?
Todd: We only went out twice. She is a crazy person.
8ball: I'm crazy? How can you say that I'm crazy? You're the one who said you loved me.
Todd: I specifically said I loved your outfit. I barely know you.
Alana: You told her you love her?

It really is a great motif. Whatever is going on in the Super-Hero Genre Cosmetics end of things, the book is, centrally, as much about dating and relationships as is ARCHIE'S PALS & GALS. Only "over the top" in the way only 21st century "swipe left/swipe right" dating could be ("That is the last time I will find a date online.") with the multi-levelled riff content distilled to the level of a haiku. I'm trying to limit my excerpting for that reason. While hopefully conveying the flavour.

In the back-up story "Kreg the Handsome Barbarian" the riff is on animal rights with Kreg attempting to liberate the Las Brisas Zoo.

Ambar: I don't even like animals. They're gross.

A female character who doesn't like animals? "They're gross"? Again, there's a 21st century authenticity to this. Only women can say politically incorrect things with 100% impunity.

Really can't recommend this one enough
Dave

 

You can get copies from the website.

Rigamarole:

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The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe: up to 35% off:

Your store will be up to 35% off

May 24-27.*

*Sale dates are not final and therefore subject to change.

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NEW Spawn 10 Lenticular covers from the The Waverly Press. You can click the link and get your own for $100 each.

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The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill. 

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The Last Day Without nothing.

   "      "     "        "  Dave's signature.

   "      "     "        "  an Old Cerebus Remarque

   "      "     "     Auction catalog for the Panoramic Remarques. 

___________________________

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: I STILL gotta play catch-up...

Weekly Update #180: Cerebus In Hell? #3 & More Colin Upton

This week featuring:

• Benjamin Hobbs' funny / obnoxious girlfriend!
• Colin Upton's mini-comics, which can be found at Colin Upton's Tumblr and on Facebook!

Weekly Update #179: Steve Peters & Colin Upton

This week featuring:

• Steve Peters of Awakening Comics and his Comicverse #5 Kickstarter!
• Colin Upton's minicomics, which can be found at Colin Upton's Tumblr and on Facebook!

Weekly Update #176: The Incredibly Productive Colin Upton

...featuring the comics of Colin Upton.
In other news, Dave's computer died. :(

Weekly Update #170: The Cerebus / Starchy The Dark Spud Crossover!

...featuring Terrible Lizard Comics, Rick Veitch's Spotted Stone & Rob Walton's Ragmop!

Donate to Rick Norwood's Comics Revue!

 

DAVE SIM:
(from a comment posted on AMOC, 8 February 2017)

...Al [Williamson] was pretty far gone (Alzheimer's) by the time I sent him the first issue of glamourpuss, but his wife, Cori relayed word through Yoram M. (major Williamson art buyer) that he had said that what he liked about my work was that it didn't look like him or like Alex Raymond, it was its own "Dave Sim thing".

Obviously, I'm really glad that he actually got to see it and liked it. But, really, I think there's only one Al Williamson and nothing compares to his run on SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN and STAR WARS.

Coincidentally, I just got a COMICS REVUE from Rick Norwood where he's offering a copy of CR vol.1 #4 with Williamson STAR WARS cover and STAR WARS strips for a minimum donation of $10 to help him keep COMICS REVUE going. I'm definitely sending him a donation...

...As far as I know George Lucas still has ALL of Williamson's STAR WARS originals -- that was the deal: he got the original artwork.

I wish I could say that.

Weekly Update #166: Tales From The Wedding Present Redux

This week, Dave checks out a bunch of comics, including Tales From The Wedding Present!

Harvey Kurtzman's Little Annie Fanny

Little Annie Fanny

by Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder & Others

(Collected Vols 1 & 2 avaliable from Dark Horse Comics)

DAVE SIM:
(from a comment on AMOC, 10 December 2016)

...I think much hinges upon your innermost intention with the material which I think, in the case of Kurtzman and Elder on LITTLE ANNIE FANNY was a) to be entertaining b) to be funny and c) to have steady work. PLAYBOY was a lot more exploitive of women than I perceived it to be at the time (or, at least, I perceive it that way now) and I did get rid of my PLAYBOYs because they seemed unhealthy in that sense.

SOME of the cartoons are an exception to that. I can't pretend that I don't find Gahan Wilson really, really funny because of the context his cartoons appeared in. Likewise Jules Feiffer. Likewise Sokol (although that's more because of his brilliant painting).

That was the same reason that I bought Dark Horse's LITTLE ANNIE FANNY volume one. It's "mannered" humour but it's brilliantly executed. The Annie Fanny bodies that Frazetta painted are among the best pieces of art I can think of.

And, in the case of our present subject, Will Elder's comedic painting of Kurtzman's visual humour. PAINTING humour is on a whole other plateau from DRAWING humour and Elder made it look easy.

I would always hang onto my LAF collection and PLAYBOY CARTOON collections for that reason. The subject matter, to me, is a very minor part of what it IS.

I'll find out on Judgement Day if God thinks that way as well.

Weekly Update #158: Colin Upton's Kicking At The Darkness

Dave takes a look at Colin Upton's new comic Kicking At The Darkness, and gets a phone message from  Kapow! Comics store owner Matthew Dykes about the "I Don't Believe Dave Sim Is A Misogynist" iPetition.

COLIN UPTON:
(from Colin's Facebook page, 16 October 2016)
Well, today was the release of my new comic book, "Kicking at the Darkness" [PDF preview here]. My brother Leslie attended along with my high school history teacher. Mr.Kreiger, who's daughter Nina runs the VHEC! There were also a couple retired history professors from UBC who were colleagues of my father. It's a bit unusual as the comic was paid for and printed by the Vancouver Holocuast Education Centre. It's not intended for distribution but as a tie-in with an exhibit on the Canadian Army in World War Two to be given to student groups. If you really need a copy you can contact me as I have a limited number of copies or you can contact the VHEC about getting a copy but it is not their intention to sell lots of them to the public. They're asking for a donation of $5 for the comic.

Askari Hodari: Day Prize Winner 10 Years Later

Askari Hodari: Guerrillas, Gunsmoke & Mirrors

by Glenn Brewer

GLENN BREWER:

My trade paperback, Askari Hodari: Guerrillas, Gunsmoke & Mirrors is finally finished. 148 pages of gritty goodness! It's a collection of the six part comic series called Askari Hodari that I wrote, illustrated and published between 2001 and 2003. It was nominated twice and eventually won the Howard E. Day Prize in 2006. I was also nominated for a Glyph Award in the Best Self-Publisher category.

The story centers around three vigilantes fighting crime, poverty and inequity. The Askari Hodari are just as dedicated to busting heads as they are keeping folks from becoming criminals in the first place. Imagine Omar Little from "The Wire" a social conscience and high tech armor and weapons. Make sure to grab over at Amazon and check out the Askari Hodari site.

DAVE SIM:

Askari Hodari will always be the 'nearest and dearest' of the Day Prize winners to my creative heart. Photorealistic comics are ALWAYS rare in the field and brilliant one like Glenn Brewer's Askari Hodari rarer still. I'd like to thank him for updating us all here as well as updating The Cerebus Archive. Glenn? The cheque is in the mail.

About the Howard E. Day Prize:
In 2002, Dave Sim and Gerhard, in memory of Sim's late mentor and self-publishing pioneer Gene Day (née Howard Eugene Day) established the Howard E. Day Prize for outstanding achievement in self-publishing. The prize consisted of a $500 cash award and a commemorative plaque awarded annually at SPACE (Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo) in Columbus, OH. The recipient was chosen by Sim and Gerhard from a pool of works submitted at SPACE the previous year. Each year the duo alternated duties, with one reading all entries received and drafting the Short List of final nominees and the other judging those books to determine the ultimate winner. The Day Prize ceased being awarded as of 2008, and was replaced but the annual Gene Day Award For Self-Publishing. 

Steve Bissette: Teen Angels & New Mutants

Teen Angels & New Mutants:

Rick Veitch's Brat Pack & The Art, Karma & Commerce Of Killing Sidekicks 

by Steve Bissette
(Black Coat Press, 2011)
Cover art by Rick Veitch

Writer/artist Rick Veitch's career bridges the underground comix of the 1970s, mainstream DC and Vertigo Comics, and the self-publishing revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. In that extraordinary body of work, Brat Pack® remains a landmark, and Teen Angels & New Mutants is the first book-length, in-depth study of a creator and graphic novel worthy of the autopsy. En route, Teen Angels offers a crash-course on teen pop culture and superhero sidekick history, fresh analysis of Dr. Fredric Wertham's seminal books, ponders real-world "new mutants" like Michael Jackson, The Olsen Twins, and Justin Bieber, and charts the 1980s comicbook explosion and 1990s implosion -- and more. 

STEVE BISSETTE:
(from 'Chapter 11: Packaging The Pack' in Teen Angels & New Mutants, 2011)

Kevin Eastman and Tundra Publishing Ltd became Brat Pack's first publisher.

In 1990, building on the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mirage Studios, TMNT co-creator Keven Eastman founded Tundra, personally bankrolling the venture. Before the company's curious conclusion in 1993, it was estimated that Eastman had sunk $14 million into the enterprise. Brat Pack was one of Tundra's few successes, as was Veitch's sequel The Maximortal, and Veitch's role in Tundra merits attention.

How could a publishing experiment like Tundra rise and fall so quickly? I long ago went on public record with my perceptions of what happened [The Comics Journal #185, March 1996]; for the present, I will rely primarily on Veitch's and Eastman's published accounts of events, while primarily focusing on Veitch and the Brat Pack.

The comics industry was at a number of crossroads at the close of the 1980s and the early 1990s. In hindsight, that roadmap can be charted, dissected and discussed, but at the time, factions of the comics industry and creator communities were struggling in wild disarray to divine and define the nature of the medium and the industry.

Veitch and I personally experienced these jarring shifts. There were new economic models and creative mentors that emerged from the fray. During our own tenure as the art team on Swamp Thing, John Totleben and I met Cerebus creator Dave Sim at the Mid-Ohio Conventions in 1984-1985, and Dave had turned our heads to how the comics industry functioned, the role of freelancers and creators played, and the benefits of self-publishing versus continuing to work for the corporate comics publishers: in short, the core ethics and opportunities of the industry. The industry-wide conversation heated up thanks to two New England cartoonists -- Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird -- who self-published their own modest black-and-white parody comic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...

...Even as Eastman and Laird began to explore the comic book community in 1984 as "instant celebrities", Cerebus creator Dave Sim seized the day. Based upon his own experience self-publishing Cerebus since 1977 and experimenting with publishing the work of others (via his imprint Aardvark-Vanaheim, and the newly formed Aardvark One International), Sim used the text pages of Cerebus and his many convention and trade show appearances to expound his own philosophies of the autonomous creative life possible in the direct sales market, without the traditional support systems or yokes of the mainstream (or, for the most part, the alternative) publishers. The one-two punch of Sim's informed, experience-based arguments and the skyrocketing success of Eastman and Laird's TMNT prompted a new awakening for many, including Veitch, myself, and many in our circle. More than anyone, though, Veitch had the experience, background, self-motivation, work ethic, and "chops" to succeed at self-publishing where many failed -- it was, after all, a direct extension of his Sun Comics one-man comics "company" from when he was a mere lad.

Still recovering from his Swamp Thing years, Veitch was considered unfairly by some a sort of an "odd man out" amid these tumultuous times.

"This was the point in which I'm beginning to get into Sim's orbit, and he had been meeting up with Eastman and Laird at conventions, and they were all talking about how to get people into self-publishing, and try to define why self-publishing works, and what part's don't work. Dave came to a comic book symposium that was going on at Greenfield [Community] College, in Massachusetts, where I first met him. We did a panel, and he instantly raked me over the coals as a DC stooge... I guess it was because of the dynamics of out situation at that point, he would paint me as an apologist for DC Comics, which really wasn't where my head was at..." [Rick Veitch, The Comics Journal #175, #March 1995]...

Stephen R. Bissette is best known for his collaboration with Alan Moore on Saga of the Swamp Thing from 1983-87, and for his self-published Tyrant comic, the portrait of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the late Cretaceous period. He also edited the ground-breaking horror comics anthology Taboo, which launched From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. He co-authored the books Comic Book Rebels and The Monster Book: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and his novella Aliens: Tribes, illustrated by Dave Dorman, won a Bram Stoker Award in 1993. More recently his articles on horror films have been collected in the Blur series published by Black Coat Press and Steve currently serves on the faculty of The Center For Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. 

Christopher Woerner's NEW FUN

DAVE SIM:
Thanks to Christopher for my comp copy of NEW FUN's limited run of 150 copies.  I always resolve to only skim his latest blog collection and I always end up reading all or most of it while it's sitting in my "mail to be answered pile".

One of my favourite lines from a 2015 post:  Would the woman who left her nine kids at Wrigley Field please come and get them.  They're beating the Cubs 13-0 in the top of the seventh inning.  Good line for any team going through hard times.

Thanks to Karen Smith (Mrs. Michael Zulli) for the phone message.  I don't really have time to talk on the phone with people.  I wish I did.  But thanks.

Also thanks for the favourable comments on glamourpuss from a couple of people.  It was really the only time in memory where I could say I was happy doing a comic book.  From very early on, CEREBUS was really just "getting it done."  What form would a 6,000-page graphic novel, properly executed, take?  From about mid-HIGH SOCIETY on that was always at odds with the audience. "When is he going back to being a barbarian?"  i.e. This SUCKS!  As far as the audience is concerned my work has sucked ever since.  So, roughly, my work was "cool" for five or six years and has sucked for the last 30.

For me, it was a matter of artistic responsibility to the 6,000-page graphic novel.  "The book will just have to suck, in that case" because I always had a pretty good "magnetic north" idea of where I was going and what I needed to do, sequentially.  And I did it.  But the schism between what I saw as needing to be done and what the audience wanted me to do got wider and wider and wider and is now, I think, unbridgeable.  You can call that "doom and gloom" if you want, but it's an accurate observation of how the 6,000-page graphic novel and the life and work of the guy who did it unfolded and continues to unfold.  "Wow, here I am at the summit!  Universally hated!"

It really is more funny than depressing.  

The people who have read SDOAR [Strange Death Of Alex Raymond] like it a lot.  Karl Stevens will be doing the "bridging pieces" -- comic pages that "bridge" the individual comic books that were never published -- in volumes one and two and was enthusing to me about it on the phone.  He's sure it will be very popular.

Yes, if the book got a fair hearing, I think it would be VERY popular.  But I think all that's going to happen is the automatic "This SUCKS!" response, dead silence from the people who liked it...and that's really all that's needed to destroy ANYTHING in the Internet age.  That SOUNDS depressing, but only if you haven't lived with it for 30 years.  If you've lived with it for 30 years, it's really just LOL funny.

Ask Sandeep.  What's the news like at the Off-White House on a daily basis? (I show him pretty much every communication that comes in).  I think he would say "Unimaginably bad."  Then ask him, what's Dave's reaction?  I think he would say "Outright hilarity."  We both spend most of the day laughing about "whatever-whoever" said in their latest fax or letter.  "You could NOT make that up".

It's nice to have someone to show the stuff to.  "You remember what so-and-so wrote to me?"  Yeah. "Well, here's his follow-up."

The fact that Sandeep spends most of HIS day going, "WHAAAAAT?! That's bull****!!" reassures me that Crazy Dave Sim isn't ACTUALLY crazy.  Just universally hated.

Honk honk.      

Drawn & Quarterly

Drawn & Quarterly:

Twenty-five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels

Cover art by Tom Gauld

DAVE SIM:
(from a comment posted on AMOC, 17 February 2016)

Glen from a couple of days ago: I don't read anything apart from Scripture and STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND research materials (most recently Willie Seabrook's autobiography and the book his second wife wrote about him, THE STRANGE WORLD OF WILLIE SEABROOK). I DO read comics material that people send to me (a very rare occurrence).

I think Drawn & Quarterly has made it abundantly apparent that they are firmly in the Feminist Theocracy camp: Dave Sim doesn't exist and CEREBUS doesn't exist. I would read a Drawn & Quarterly book if the cartoonist who created it sent it to me. However, for the hate-filled people of that political stripe, the unlikelihood of that happening verges on the astronomical. So, for all practical purposes, for me, Drawn & Quarterly doesn't exist and its cartoonists don't exist.

I used to meet people halfway, but you can't meet closed-minded people halfway BECAUSE they're closed-minded people.

Live and learn.

Weekly Update #121: Lee Thacker & Karl Stevens

Dave Sim recommends the comics work of Lee Thacker (Tales From The Wedding Present, One For Sorrow) and Karl Stevens (Failure, Guilty, Whatever).

One For Sorrow

One For Sorrow

Book One: Secrets (2006)

by Lee Thacker

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to One For Sorrow Book One, December 2005)

I couldn't quite believe it when Lee Thacker referred (quite casually and in various spots) to his 800-page graphic novel in another publication of his which he sent me (My Year, a daily diary he was keeping in comics form): his completed 800-page graphic novel One For Sorrow. In commenting on the initial work, I -- in an equally casual fashion -- mentioned that I was interested in reading it and wondered if he was willing to trade for a copy. He has to produce them on a photocopier individually so it seemed a little presumptuous to just ask him to assemble one for me gratis. They arrived -- eight hand-bound volumes of 100 pages each -- a couple of days into Ramadan. I read the first handful of pages and realized it was distinctly not Ramadan reading material and put it aside. And then I never got around to picking up the first one again until Ramadan had been over for a number of weeks. On the one hand unforgivable but on the other hand, hey, it is an 800-page graphic novel.

I motored through it in about a week of reading in between getting my regular work done. It wasn't oppressive in the sense of being completely amateurish. Reading 800 pages of amateur material would really be pushing the limits of endurance. Lee's artwork exists on an interesting borderline between amateur and professional. Mostly he reminds me of early Jaime Hernandez and Adrian Tomine both in terms of his subject matter and in terms of his drawing style which is a very difficult style to master. You do the face in a mere handful of lines and how it comes out depends on any number of variables. Overall there's improvement but it is fitful. A handful of pages that compete with the best that Jaime and Adrian bring to their work and then flattening out (intentionally?) into something more iconic that owes more to Charles Burns. It makes full use of icons, One For Sorrow does.

The story is its greatest strength. To whatever extent it isn't locked into a pure "eye candy" motif the story is going to have to be strong enough to carry the reader through and One For Sorrow certainly is. With most early attempts at a graphic novel, you're going to get a lot of traditional story and storytelling devices with a few good moments here and there. The situation with my own reading of One For Sorrow was the reverse. The whole thing is incredibly inventive and engaging with a mere handful of sequences that I would characterize as traditional. That's no mean trick the first time out of the gate. The story is told out of sequence (the Prologue comes almost at the end -- you can't get much further out of order -- or more inventive -- than that) and there any number of moments where I would think "Nope, he's lost the thread" and have to remind myself that this is an unpublished creator, I have to lower my expectations, etc. And virtually every time -- not all the time -- but virtually every time it would turn out that he was being intentionally confusing -- losing the reader in a general sense rather than me specifically -- and then the events would start falling into place again. I get it, I get it. And the Need To Know What Happens Next was pretty much relentless from the first twenty pages onward. It was only when I was done reading the book that I read his annotations and found out that in his youth, he had gone from reading the Fantastic Four to reading Cerebus to reading Love & Rockets to reading Howard Chaykin's Big Black Kiss in a very short space of time. That explains a great deal when you are discussing a germinating graphic novelist and what that would lead him to attempt.

What would be a good litmus test of whether or not you would want to buy your own copy of One For Sorrow? I'd say buy the first one and if you can stand not knowing what happens next when you come to the end of the first 100 pages, then I've missed my guess and you'll only be out the 8 quid (roughly 16 dollars American). There were a number of times in the course of my reading when I had to reassure myself "It's all here -- beginning, middle and end." Had he sent me only, say, the first five volumes as a work in progress I would've been sweating bullets partway through the fifth one. I say this by way of warning because if your reaction is the same as mine or roughly the same as mine and you order, say, the first two and come to the end you're probably going to try and phone Lee and get him to act the rest out over the phone or get him to FedEx the other six volumes to you and imagine how much that's going to cost?

When he writes in his notes for Book Three "The Big Issue": `Matt Silvie at Fantagraphics corresponded with me for some time and eventually wrote a very flattering review in The Comics Journal [issue 205] This caught the attention of a handful of people, including British Small Press legend Paul Gravett. He phoned me out of the blue one day asking if I'd be interested in contributing to `CRISP' a now defunct annual `comics happening' in London. I sent him some pages for the exhibition and Kirstie and I got soaked running through London one weekend trying to find the gallery. It was small, nobody was there, and my stuff was displayed downstairs with no explanation of who I was or what the story was about. The pages had been spray mounted onto thick card and hung on the wall. They weren't even in glass frames! I was gutted. But it was a thrill all the same. That was my only moment of fame during the entire time it took to complete this project. No wonder I became reticent to carry on in later years'.

There is really something in that. If it's extremely unlikely that someone would finish an 800-page graphic novel in the first place it seems (at least!) doubly unlikely once the lack of reaction is factored in. Kirstie, his long-time girlfriend, was virtually his only reader throughout.

So, anyway, fair warning. If you want the whole thing it will cost you roughly $128 US and I'm pretty sure that if you read the first one you'll pay it, uncomplainingly. I could have been a real "smarty- boots" and just suggested that you all buy the first one KNOWING that the $16 initiation would lead directly to the $128 investment but I'm being as up-front as I can. And look at it this way -- each copy will be put together by hand and autographed by Lee himself. And what do you suppose those will be going for in twenty years time when One For Sorrow finally gets the wider distribution it deserves?

Yes, exactly.

Weekly Update #111: Meanwhile...

With a new intro and outro sequence by George Peter Gatsis, in this week's update by Dave Sim...

• TWENTY-FOUR THOUSAND POUNDS of comics head for The Comic Book Warehouse in Kitchener!
• A look at Meanwhile... featuring the stunning art of Gary Spencer Millidge and Darryl Cunningham!
• Also, Jimmy Gownley (Amelia Rules) offers his effusive praise for the restored edition of Church & State: "This is absolutely stunning. You guys have done an absolutely astounding job. It's like if someone showed you that your beloved copy of Sgt. Pepper was somehow missing half of the instruments and vocals. I'm blown away."

Jeffrey Jones: Idyl / I'm Age

Idyl - I'm Age
by Jeffrey Jones
Donald M. Grant, Publisher Inc
HC $39.99 / SC $24.99
On Sale: Now!

The first book publication collecting two legendary graphic strips by the late Jeffrey Jones. Idyl ran in the pages of the National Lampoon while the later I'm Age appeared in Heavy Metal magazine. A 96 page oversized 9"x12" art book celebrating the unique vision of celebrated artist Jeffrey Jones, collecting all the pages of these graphic strips, with an introduction and an insightful afterword by award winning artist George Pratt. More details...

DAVE SIM:
(from Eight Days Of Dave: Day 7, 8 September 2013) 
One of my all-time favourite things is my over-sized Jeff Jones Idyl collection.

NEIL GAIMAN:

Idyl was my favourite thing that was a comic when I was a teenager. I didn't understand the ones I read, but I loved them anyway... Now they're collected and are as magical and elegant as they ever were.

A Few Thoughts On Krazy Kat

A FEW THOUGHTS ON KRAZY KAT

by Bill Watterson
(This article first appeared in "The Komplete Kolor Krazy Kat", Kitchen Sink Press, 1990)

As a cartoonist, I read Krazy Kat with awe and wonder. Krazy Kat is such a pure and completely realized personal vision that the strip's inner mechanism is ultimately as unknowable as George Herriman. Nevertheless, I marvel at how this fanciful world could be so forcefully imagined and brought to paper with such immediacy. THIS is how good a comic strip can be.

Interestingly, Krazy Kat gains its momentum less from the personalities of its characters than from their obsessions. Ignatz Mouse demonstrates his contempt for Krazy by throwing bricks at her; Krazy reinterprets the bricks as signs of love; and Offissa Pupp is obliged by duty (and regard for Krazy) to thwart and punish Ignatz's "sin," thereby interfering with a process that's satisfying to everyone for all the wrong reasons. Some 30 years of strips were wrung out of that amalgam of cross-purposes. The action can be read as a metaphor for love or politics, or just enjoyed for its lunatic inner logic and physical comedy.

Despite the predictability of the characters' proclivities, the strip never sinks into formula or routine. Often the actual brick tossing is only anticipated. The simple plot is endlessly renewed through constant innovation, pace manipulations, unexpected results, and most of all, the quiet charm of each story's presentation. The magic of the strip is not so much in what it says, but in how it says it. It's a more subtle kind of cartooning than we have today.

To the bewilderment of many readers, there are few endings in Krazy Kat that qualify as "punchlines." Instead, it's the temperament of the writing and drawing throughout the strip that is the joke. If you don't think it's funny that a strip should have an intermission drawing, or that a character would refer to his tail as a "caudal appendage," you're reading the wrong strip, and it's your loss.

Quirky, individual, and uncompromised, Krazy Kat is one of the very few comic strips that takes full advantage of its medium. There are some things a comic strip can do that no other medium, not even animation, can touch, and Krazy Kat is a virtual essay on comic strip essence.

In their headlong rush for the "gag", most cartoonists run right past the countless treasures Herriman uncovered simply by taking his time to explore the freedom of his medium. The self-consciously baroque narrations and monologues ("From the kwaint konfines of the kalabozo del kondado de Kokonino -- Officer 'Pup' gives answer") show that words can be funny in themselves, just as drawings can. The sky turns from black to white to zigzags and plaids simply because, in a comic strip, it CAN. No other cartoonist ever approached his blank sheet of paper with so much affection for all its possibilities.

The scratchy drawings delight me no end. They have the honesty and directness of sketches. So many of today's strips are slick and polished, the inevitable result of assistants trying to develop a mechanical style that can be continued indefinitely. The drawings in Krazy Kat are whimsical, idiosyncratic, and filled with personality. The bold design of the Sunday strips neatly compliments the flat expanses of color or black, and the wonderful hatching brings character to the otherwise posterish approach.

Nothing in Krazy Kat had a supporting role, least of all the Arizona desert setting. Mountains are striped. Mesas are spotted. Trees grow in pots. The horizon is a low wall that characters climb over. Panels are framed by theater curtains and stage spotlights. Monument Valley monoliths are drawn to look more like their names. The moon is a melon wedge, suspended upside down. And virtually every panel features a different landscape, even if the characters don't move. The land is more than a backdrop. It is a character in the story, and the strip is "about" that landscape as much as it is about the animals who populate it.

As the artwork is poetic, so is the writing. With the possible exception of Pogo, no other strip derives so much of its charm from its verbiage. Krazy Kat's unique "texture" comes in large part through the conglomeration of peculiar spellings and punctuations, dialects, interminglings of Spanish, phonetic renderings, and alliterations. Krazy Kat's Coconino County not only had a look; it had a sound as well. Slightly foreign, but uncontrived, it was an extraordinary and full world.

Darn few comic strips challenge their readers anymore. The comics have become big business, and they play it safe. They shamelessly pander to the results of reader surveys, and are produced by virtual factories, ready-made for the inevitable t-shirts, dolls, greeting cards, and television specials. Licensing is where the money is, and we seem to have forgotten that a comic strip can be something more than a launchpad for a glut of derivative products. When the comic strip is not exploited, the medium can be a vehicle for beautiful artwork and serious, intelligent expression.

Krazy Kat was drawn well over half a century ago, and yet it's a much more sophisticated use of the comic strip medium than anything we cartoonists are doing today. Of course, a 1930s Sunday Krazy filled the entire newspaper page, whereas editors today usually cram at least four strips in the same amount of space. This reduction of size greatly limits what can be drawn and written and still remain legible, and it goes a long way toward explaining the comics' devolution.

Even so, the whiteness of paper is still vast, uncharted territory, ripe for exploration. There are plenty of exotic lands for a cartoonist to map, if he or she will leave the well-worn paths and strike off for the wilds of the imagination. Krazy Kat is like no other comic strip before or after it. We are richer for Herriman's integrity and vision.

Krazy Kat was not very successful as a commercial venture, but it was something better. It was art.

Bill Watterson is a cartoonist and created Calvin & Hobbes. In 2014 he was awarded the Grand Prix at the Angouleme Comics Festival in France. Fantagraphics Books have reprinted George Herriman's complete Krazy Kat Sunday pages (1916-1944), which belong in any serious comics reader's collection. The top illustration above of a Coconino County landscape is taken from Cerebus #218 (May 1997) created by Dave Sim & Gerhard.

Leonard Starr (1925-2015) RIP

Glamourpuss #24 (March 2012)

Art by Dave Sim

EDDIE KHANNA:
(from the Patreon Update, 6 July 2015)

Last week saw the passing of one of the greats in the field and the last of the photorealists from the Raymond / Drake / Prentice / Williamson era. In the area of realistic comic art, Leonard Starr was one of the giants, with his high watermark achievement on Mary Perkins, On Stage influencing comic book professionals for years afterwards. There's a quality to Starr's work where the energy in the art almost causes it to jump off the page (captured even in Dave's recreation of the Mary Perkins image above from glamourpuss #24). The Classic Comics Press reprints of On Stage have introductions from the likes of Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin and Eddie Campbell and Kurt Busiek, all revealing their love and admiration for his work. And while I'm not sure how much of a fan Brian Bolland is, his style does seem very reminiscent and influenced by Starr (whether consciously or unconsciously). Which is something I wouldn't have seen before Dave began talking about the photorealists and their work and influence on the medium. As well, Leonard Starr does figure into the narrative of SDOAR... [Read the full update at Patreon]

Jules Feiffer: The Man In The Ceiling

The Man In The Ceiling

by Jules Feiffer

Harper Collins, 1993

DAVE SIM:
(from a review first published in Cerebus #200, November 1995)

Two years have passed since Jules Feiffer's The Man In The Ceiling was published. Not being a fan of the New York literary 'scene', I'm not sure if it was reviewed extensively or at all. If it was, the certainty exists that the point of the book was lost on the reviewers if those reviewers were just... well... reviewers (and not creators). Art Spiegelman's back-cover blurb left a bad taste in my mouth. While it would make sense from the standpoint of a New York publisher to have the creator of Maus endorse a new work by Feiffer (successful New York Jewish cartoonist gives thumbs up to successful New York Jewish cartoonist), there is an apples-and-oranges quality at work, from my vantage point. It makes about as much sense as having Charles Burns do the back-cover blurb for Eisner's Dropsie Avenue. Spiegelman can't help but be aware (at some level) of the inappropriateness -- working 'Batman's punch' into his endorsement is an eyebrow sufficiently arched to induce a universal wince among Feiffer's devotees.

As a card-carrying Feiffer devotee, permit me to redress the balance in my own small way (mindful of the fact that a Harvey award for Best Cartoonist offers meagre literary firepower in a shoot-out with a Pulitzer -- even a 'special' Pulitzer):

The Man In The Ceiling is a deceptive work. It's a book intended for children -- at the least that's what it purports to be -- more accurately that's what it's dust jacket purports it to be. I prefer not to take the dust jacket's word for it, myself.

On the one hand, the dust jacket has a case. The language, sentence structure, composition are all of the straightforward variety favoured by authors addressing adult buyers of children's books as demographic quarry. One can picture Aunt Tilly in a Fifth Avenue bookstore in search of a 'nice book' for her nephew. She reads the dust jacket, skims through a few paragraphs and decides it's just the thing for little Timmy who spends all of his time in the basement drawing his funny books. We must trust to the tender mercy of Fate that Aunt Tilly's cursory examination misses any of the pithy, characteristically Feifferesque depreciations about the value of school (nil, of course) and any other assertions guaranteed to raise Aunt Tillian ire.

The Man In The Ceiling is a Trojan horse, you see.

The thought occurs in anticipation of the imminent thesis that perhaps Spiegelman is 'in on the game'. Perhaps 'Batman's punch' is his own contribution to the equine subterfuge. If such is the case, the Harvey apologizes, abjectly, to the 'special' Pulitzer.

Distilled to its essence, The Man In The Ceiling concerns Jimmy Jibbel, a young boy who writes and draws his own comic books in the basement of his parents house. He has two sisters. Lisi, the elder, makes his life a living hell but is also the most avidly interested in his creativity. Susu, the younger, is simply devoted to him in all regards, particularly the stories he TELLS her. (Feiffer makes a key point of this. Despite the boy's drawing ability, his younger sister on;y wants him to TELL her stories. She has no interest in seeing the characters drawn.)  The boy's mother is a fashion illustrator. His father is a white-collar drone. At a critical juncture in the story we are presented with Uncle Lester, a creator of Broadway musicals who has never had a show produced despite twelve years of trying. (The musical with which Uncle Lester finally 'gets it right' is called Robotica, which, from its description, bears am uncanny resemblance to an early '60s Feiffer peice, The Lonely Machine, which appeared in an issue of Playboy. Whether the allusion is just that -- or whether some treatment of The Lonely Machine as a musical comedy actually exists in some form -- my interest was piqued by the reference.) There is also Charlie Beemer, the most popular and accomplished 'all-boy' student in Jimmy's school. Interspersed with Feiffer's ink and wash drawings of the events in the story are crude pencil comic book pages from Jimmy's laborious pre-teen efforts as a comic-book creator.

Back in Aunt Tilly Land, one pictures little Timmy being horrified by his present. Two sentences in he knows he is being condescended to (despite Art Spiegelman's assurances to the contrary on the back-cover -- if only Spiegelman had pencilled an issue of Youngblood. Alas...). It's a calculated risk on Feiffer's part. He is too much aware of his own childhood to be unmindful of the delicate balance that must be struck. He has something to tell the little Timmy's of this world. But, in order to get little Timmy, he has to go through a) a New York book publisher, b) mainstream bookstores, c) Aunt Tilly, d) Mum and Dad. From the point of view of all four hurdles he has psychic molestation as his agenda. The only hope is to come across as kindly old Uncle Jules with a perfectly harmless little children's book (the first ten pages wouldn't furrow the brow of Mother Teresa). To extend our speculative scenario, Little Timmy thanks Aunt Tilly in the desultory way common to all boys who have just gotten a sucker punch to their age group for Christmas. He puts it aside. But a week later, maybe a month, maybe six months (Uncle Jules is very patient, Little Timmy), he's reread the latest Spawn for the fourth time and decides...ah, what the fuck.

And then he and kindly old Uncle Jules are...

Alone!

BWAH-hahahahah!

Now, understand that the menace implied there is purely from the standpoint of Aunt Tilly and Mum and Dad. What is compelling about The Man In The Ceiling (and what makes it a seminal work of its kind) is that it constitutes a creator's direct communication with the would-be creator. This is an avenue near and dear to whatever I'm using for a heart these days. The realisation is abroad the land that there is a secondary birth in the life of the creative individual. Blood relation jockeys for position and prominence with Creative relation(influence and peer) -- a meaty theme hidden from popular sentiment by its 'outlaw' nature. In The Man In The Ceiling this is sharply focused to a laser-like intensity beneath its cosmetic exterior of being and innocent, nice book about 'a boy just like me'. It documents the birth of the creative mind, creative awareness, creative sensibility. The effect (assuming it 'worked' -- we won't know until Little Timmy's another ten or fifteen years older) is not dissimilar to the effect Feiffer's 1971 interview in Playboy had on the fifteen-year-old version of the chap typing these words.

He KNOWS!

Jules Feiffer KNOWS that I don't fit in anywhere. He knows that the best I can manage is a grudging acceptance of the fact of my existence. He KNOWS that comic books are more important to than my family. He KNOWS that the comic books I draw in the basement are more real to me than school or a job (please God, no!) or my friends or what I read in the newspaper or whatever grown-ups happen to be flipping out about this week.

He's OLD! But he KNOWS!

(Now -- being almost forty -- I don't use the term 'old' quite so casually.)

There is an eerie, Stephen King quality about it. No, more accurately, an 'occult' (hidden) quality about it. Impenetrable mystery, that so few 'connect' with comic books at a visceral level or at the core of the psyche. The veil, the fog, is at its thickest, its murkiest as a child picks up a pencil and a piece of paper and KNOWS (just KNOWS) that 'the thing' has been found. The Man In The Ceiling documents the particular effects attendant upon that discovery, the fact that the birth of a creative sensibility induces a kind of creeping insanity in the uncreative individuals in proximity to it. At any moment a benign friend or family member can flare into an inescapable malignancy. Beneath the mask of concern, benevolence, camaraderie is the fear and hatred of the 'different one', which (one is left to suppose) is as ancient as society itself.

In the story (as in life) this exists everywhere just as the creative sensibility encounters it: the inexplicable imposition of a needless impediment that recalls the belief in demonic possession. Whether the impediment is thrust in the way by a parent, sibling, friend -- the overwhelming urge is to ask: Who are you? I know you have the face of (my father, my teacher, my best friend), but WHO'S IN THERE?

It is  only Uncle Lester, the creator of Broadway musicals, who implies no threat. (Suspect at various junctures in the story, but he always comes through.) He encourages, he is a good audience, he pays attention. He expresses preferences (knows INSTINCTIVELY when his nephew is drawing his comics for some other purpose than serving his own creative sensibility).  He is Feiffer's stand-in in the proceedings. Like Feiffer, he has that success snatched from him by the New York reviewers.

The message is implicit. It never stops, Little Timmy. You can get past your parents and your teachers and all the rest just by getting older and getting out on your own. But those demons pursue you. They inhabit people at inopportune moments, interpose themselves between you and your audience.

The first and only time I met Jules Feiffer, I remember telling him how much I liked his strip about Irwin Corpulent. I quoted it badly (a Feiffer strip has an internal melody that is lost in encapsulation): I'm a pillar of the community, got a big promotion, a fancy new office. But inside I'm thinking, you're a fraud. Someday they're going to find you out and come and take it all away. I get awards, testimonial dinners. But inside I'm thinking, you're a sham. Someday they're going to find you out and come and take it all away.

Etcetera, etcetera in that vein. How wonderful the guy's life is and the inner voice always saying: Someday they're going to find you out and come and take it all away.

The punch line is that, one day, he's sitting in his office and a delegation of people come in. He figures they're there to give him a good citizenship award or something. One of them says, "Irwin Corpulent, we've found you out and come to take it all away."

"So I cleaned out my desk and I left. When they find you out, they find you out... why argue?"

I told him how much I identified with that strip. He asked me if I knew why I identified with that strip so much. I really didn't. He said, "Because you've never had a large failure in your life. I used to identify with the strip myself until Little Murders closed on Broadway after a handful of performances. Now I don't identify with that strip. You find out that life goes on. They can't take anything away from you that really matters."

The reassurance that I got from that simple observation could only have come from another creator. I try to pass that on where I can. The conclusion of The Man In The Ceiling  resonates with that observation and the experience -- the hard experience -- from which it issued and which was transformed by Feiffer's indefatigable (hell, let's use the word) Spirit into a shining piece of creative armour.

The Man In The Ceiling should be in every comic-book store in the world. If you know a kid around the age of ten or eleven who is starting to draw his own comic books, you can do him (or her) no greater favour than to give him (yeah, probably him) a copy.

Just don't let his Aunt Tilly or his Mum or Dad read past the first ten pages.

UPDATE - FEIFFER FANS ALERT!

All Feiffer fans will be eager to learn of Jules Feiffer and director Dan Mirvish's ongoing Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for their upcoming film Bernard & Huey The Movie. Don't delay -- the fund-raiser ends on Saturday, 4 July!

Kickstarter: Bernard & Huey The Movie