The ol' AMOC Mailbag. (Plus NEW Gerhard Art! I probably should have led with that...)

Hi, Everybody!

Greg Hyland is Kickstartering the second volume of the Monster Atlas, and if he gets another ninteen hundred and twenty-seven bucks, it'll have Gerhard art like the first volume. It'll look a little something like this:

There's TWO more images, but we don't get to see 'em until they get the 4K...

There's more auctions up at ComicsLink. And yesterday's update has a special AMOC auction. (Go ahead and outbid me, I DARE ya!)

If you're waiting for a Indiegogo live for the Postcard Kickstarter, like the one for the birthday card Kickstarter, I don't know if there will be one.

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.

And The Jaka's Story remaster won't get a Starcode number until the April previews is out, so hopefully next month.
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So, what's in the ol' AMOC Mailbag?
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"Bill..."
"Bill..."
"Past Due..."
"Final notice..."
"Second Final Notice..."
"Death Threat..."
"Death Threat..."
"Letter Bomb..."

Hey, you guys remember T. Casey Brennan? well he sent in:

http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/2014/12/t-casey-brennans-hypothetical-cerebus.html?m=1

Here's what happened: an artist in Dubai put my photo from this on a t-shirt

 And then there's:

Tim W. (our revered Editor Emeritus) send in:

Hi Matt,

Photo of Deni below. Might be useful at some point.

Tim

And a bit from Chester Brown's Patreon (ya gotta be 18 to see it.)

I don't know where he encountered it, but Dave Lapp sent me this old photo of Seth from the late 80s:

To judge by the hair, it was taken after I’d first met him but before we’d become friends. That’s Deni Loubert on the left — she would still have been married to Dave Sim at the time. 

You guys remember Seth right:

See? "Seth."

Thanks Tim! Thanks T. Casey!

Next Time: Dave and his Unique Views...

The Avant Garde List

Penguin Graphic Classic Covers

Cover art by Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Chester Brown, Seth & Charles Burns

(See all the Penguin comic covers at Paul Buckley Design)

DAVE SIM:
(from 'Mind Games Of The Avant Garde' in Following Cerebus #8, May 2006)

...when [Chester Brown] and I were en route to The Beguiling after having had lunch with Rob Walton and James Turner, we were discussing a recent plum assignment that Chet had landed with Penguin Books: doing a comic-strip / cartoon illustration cover for a literary classic -- in his case D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. I had asked -- more than a little disingenuously -- who else had been asked to do one of those covers? "Let me see," he said, "Art Spiegelman did one, Dan Clowes, Charles Burns, Seth, Chris Ware..."

"The usual suspects," I said.

Chet smiled and allowed -- I suspect more than a little disingenuously -- that it did seem to be the same group of cartoonists that kept turning up in these high-prestige real-world environments. Indulging in a little good-natured teasing from the sidelines, I asked, What had happened to the Brothers Hernandez? How did they get dropped from The List? Chet didn't know. Hard to tell if he was being serious or answering in the same facetious manner -- as is always the case until one of us cracks up. They hadn't been in that special issue of McSweeny's had they? Mmm. Chet was pretty sure they had been. As I say, good-natured teasing. Of course then we got to the Beguiling and Chet pulled out a copy of McSweeny's, and there they were: Jaime and Gilbert. Okay, I thought, time for some more good-natured teasing. What about Adrian Tomine? Why wasn't he on The List? Adrian -- or Mr Tomine if he prefers -- was on my mind because I had just picked up the latest issue of Optic Nerve.

"Oh, Adrian is definitely on The List," said Chet.

Yeah? How so? I asked -- preparing to be needlessly quarrelsome -- which is always a big part of discussions when I visit Chet: whether the subject is comic books, Scripture, prostitution, or gloves vs. mittens.

"Adrian passed on doing Lady Chatterley's Lover -- that's why it was offered to me."

I cracked up. Okay, Chet won that round hands down.

...what bothers me about The List is the sense of More Validity Than Thou that seems to accompany membership on it for several of its members. It seems to me that the latest round got launched with the New York Times Magazine - can you cite the date? - cover that you had done and the picture of you with Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Seth, Dan Clowes and... am I missing anyone?... and the accompanying article last summer. Nice Big Feathers in everyone's cap all the way around, to be sure, for whatever actual value the "real world" coverage has. But I really thought we had all gotten past that back in the 1980s when the Major Piece on Frank Miller in Rolling Stone really didn't do anything much for Frank that Frank... and DC... hadn't done for himself and when Alan Moore became Top of the Pops pop culture phenom in England that left him, at the end of the day, you know, Alan Moore. Not that there's anything wrong with that stature. I should be so lucky...

New York Times Magazine (July 2004)
Clockwise from Top Left: Seth, Chester Brown, Adrian Tomine, Art Spiegelman, Joe Sacco

'Not Funnies' by Charles McGrath

The Three Wise Fellows

Cerebus #270 (September 2001)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Notes On Latter Days, Cerebus Vol 15, 2003)

I made the decision a long, long time ago (relatively speaking) that The Three Stooges were going to be the link between Rick and Cerebus and the "coming to fruition" of the religious text first developed in Rick's Story, basing them loosely on the "Wise Men" of Matthew's Gospel (2:1-1:12)... Anyway, I remember coming in from a night of drinking late Friday (which is to say, early Saturday) and Channel 29, the Fox outlet out of Buffalo was running the latest Three Stooges syndicated package (their packaging has always been horrible and the new one hit a new low), so I just hit record and went to bed. When I got up the next morning and went through them, I thought, Whoa, boy. This is not going to be easy. I put the tape away on the top shelf of my linen closet and thought, I really don't envy me two years or so from now.

Well, I was right...

...It was tough. It was the toughest drawing and writing job that I had ever attempted, so it became a kind of multi-layered house-of-mirrors joke. It's hard to describe what I mean by that, but let me give it a try: what I had chosen to do was a grinding, arduous task knowing that virtually everyone would look down on the result. Sweating bullets for days and weeks on end to get it right and I knew that virtually everyone's reaction would be, "Oh, the Three Stooges, they're stupid." But, then, my work had been completely ignored since the notorious issue 186, so it became very funny to do two "highbrow" graphic novels, Going Home and Form & Void, about "highbrow" subjects, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, knowing that they would both just be ignored and then to have the Three Stooges as the apex of the pyramid.

And they were. They were several magnitudes of difficulty above Fitzgerald and Hemingway. At that point from an artistic credibility standpoint, it didn't make any difference. Artistic credibility? What artistic credibility? All I hear are crickets chirping. Seth relayed word through Chester [Brown] that I had done an amazing job capturing their body language (Chester had only vaguest idea who the Three Stooges were) and Bruce Costa, a columnist for Comics Retailer thanked me for doing right by his beloved Stooges (I sent him several Stooges tracing paper drawings as a sincere thank you).

Pussy-Whipped

Cerebus #213 (December 1996)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from a reply to a letter from cartoonist Seth, Aardvark Comment, Cerebus #193, April 1995)

Okay. Pussy-whipped. Now there's a can of worms for you. It's a subject very much on the minds of the women I talk with (I know it comes as an enormous shock to you, Seth, that women do, indeed, talk with me). Being pussy-whipped is a lot more the fault of men than it is of women. What a number of women have woken up to is that their boyfriends and husbands never disagree with them. Since they know that I will give my honest opinion if they ask me for it, the topic has become a recurring theme in recent years although the implicit tone accompanying it has shifted. For a vast majority of women the issue is a basic one: 'if he lets me push him around, it's his fault.' Most of them test the boundaries of what they can get away with (particularly the young ones, who are new at the game) much as they did with their fathers when they were growing up. Of course this falls into the category of 'you can get what you want and still not be very happy'. They know (most of them - some, I'll grant you, don't even suspect) when they are making unreasonable demands, intentionally slapping a guy in the face (metaphorically or in actuality). Pussy-whipped guys have basically adapted the traditional female role for their own: peace at any price, roll with the punches (metaphorically or in actuality), be understanding, be submissive, be whatever you have to be to keep the relationship intact. This does not work over any extended period of time. One of the highest accolades a woman can bestow upon a man is 'he's a real challenge'. The male world has become very unchallenging for women. Strong people admire strength and deplore weakness. The mistake that pussy-whipped men make is in thinking that strength involves 'slapping her around' or 'being macho'. that's not the kind of strength that I'm talking about; strength involves standing your ground in an argument, holding on to a contrary opinion if you believe in that opinion, setting boundaries to your own behaviour which are reasonable to you and having inviolable lines drawn in the sand of behaviour you will accept in a girlfriend or lover. One of the easiest of the glib defences of the pussy-whipped male is that 'it really doesn't make a difference to me'. Whatever makes her happy makes me happy. If this is the centrepiece of your thinking when it comes to making mutual decisions in a relationship, you have already taken the first step on the road to dissolution. If she makes all the choices, great and small, of what the two of you do or don't do, you really are little more than a housepet. If it REALLY doesn't make a difference to whether the two of you do 'a' or 'b', it's a good policy to make sure that at least half the time you are the one to make the arbitrary choice... and make it stick. If she says 'do you want to do x or y' and you say 'x' and she says 'let's do y' and you say 'whatever you want, it really doesn't matter to me', you have failed a very simple test. Someone who evinces no outward sign of having free will is an impossible person to respect. If a woman doesn't respect you, she doesn't love you. You might be a comfortable companion at that point, a whipping boy, a house pet or a surrogate son, but you are clearly not a lover in the female sense of the word. Women, whether consciously or unconsciously, are looking for a long-term scenario - 'commitment' is a camouflage for the actual goal: finding someone who remains interesting to them, who is his own person and who is aware enough to know when his psychic territory is being infiltrated or devoured. There is no greater status for women among their peers than to have a long-term relationship with a guy who - even after months or years - still has his own opinions, has his own house in order, who controls himself and stands his ground without abusing her mentally or physically. One of the commonest complaints of pussy-whipped males (or, even more deplorable, males who ASPIRE to being pussy-whipped) is that the best women pine after men who are uncaring, unfaithful and brutal. See, those guys are the longed-for 'challenge'. Implicit in this is the obvious tendency to excess. There are 'challenges' and there are 'impossibles'. Since it has become rarer and rarer for women to find men who will set any limits or boundaries on behaviour they will tolerate, who might well stand their ground and disagree even on the most cursory level, a man (as opposed to a male) is going to look pretty attractive. He passes all the tests when it comes to resisting her manipulations, and so earns her respect and interest. In the interests of achieving one of the 'impossibles' (so to speak), she becomes penis-whipped - setting no limits on the boundaries of behaviour she will tolerate.

Seth , I have no idea what your life situation is like, so I can't comment on whether I think you have been co-opted or if you are pussy-whipped. I certainly don't think that all men have been co-opted or are pussy-whipped but, from my own experience, most are. We return to percentages. From the vantage point of what I would view as pussy-whipped males, the world is moving gradually in the direction of balanced relationships between men and women where gender becomes meaningless; boy-friends with many feminine traits, girlfriends with many masculine traits; the more feminine traits a male has the better a male he is, the more masculine traits a female has the better a female she is. This philosophy enters the whirlpool at the centre where traits are no longer described as masculine or feminine - we're all just people, indistinguishable from one another and some manner of paradise beckons at the end of the road.

I think that view is full of shit.

Cerebus #213 (December 1996)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

Teaching Comics (2)

Cerebus #153 (December 1991)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:

Comic-book work is idiosyncratic. The problem with any kind of authoritarian structure implied by a schoolroom format is that it presupposes that something idiosyncratic can be taught successfully. I heard most of the educational cliches over the weekend, passed down faithfully from generation to generation. 'You have to know the rules before you can break them - the best artists know anatomy inside and out before they start distorting it.' I've always wanted to do a cartoon of a hot-shot young super-hero artist at a convention, sitting in front of a huge poster of his character with muscles piled on top of muscles in violation of every rule of anatomy, reviewing a wannabe's portfolio and saying to the kid, 'Draw from life.' Knowing anatomy inside and out is important if you want to draw accurate anatomy. If accurate anatomy interest you, you will find your way around it. I'm a big fan of Kyle Baker's work, his storytelling. What appeals to me the most is his page and panel composition, his sense of gesture, facial expression, posture. I can guarantee you that his knowledge of anatomy doesn't rival, say, Burne Hogarth's, but there is virtually nothing in Hogarth's work that appeals to me. His gestures are contrived, his facial expressions are contrived, his postures are contrived. That doesn't mean that Baker is right and Hogarth is wrong. It means that Baker occupies a point on the spectrum of interests which make up a comic-book page that is close to my own. The drawing elements that interest me evidently interest him.

There are people who have a genuine affinity for the authoritarian impulse... I'm not convinced that someone who relentlessly searches out some authority to endorse and criticise his or her efforts is well served by the process. I would suspect that for every creator who will make monumental leaps in the various disciplines by modifying his or her skills to please a teacher, there are other creators who will lose their way, lose touch with their gut instincts and individual sensibilities in attempting to create a compromise style satisfying both to themselves and their 'guide'. I'm not convinced that self-declared 'teachers' are equipped to distinguish one from the other, and their teaching of a subjective view of 'professionalism' probably damages many idiosyncratic talents - grinding down the square peg until it fits in the round hole - even as it assists those seeking a position in the traditional mainstream.

In 1995 Dave Sim spent two days at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) teaching sequential art, via workshops, portfolio reviews and lectures. He summarised the experience in his essay 'Misunderstainding Comics' printed in Cerebus #194 (May 1995).

Bill Marks & Seth

Cerebus #92, November 1986
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

EDDIE CAMPBELL:
(from the Eddie Campbell Blogspot, 4 August 2011)

I didn't pay much attention to Sim's Cerebus for a long time, until the mid-'80s when I noticed that it was cut from quite a different cloth from the others... It would be wrong to say that it didn't take itself seriously, more correct to say that Sim didn't see taking things seriously as being at odds with having Groucho Marx shuffling around in there, or Mick and Keef from the Rolling Stones. In the genre of high fantasy, this would normally be felt to have broken the spell somewhat. Our consumer culture conventionally wants its fiction in general and its fantasy in particular to come packaged along with all the stuff for putting it together, like IKEA furniture. But with Cerebus I looked for issues in which actual people were hauled in. And it was to play their own part and not that of a character. I always felt that Sim saw in a person a way of diverting the thrust of his story rather than fitting in by way of an inoffensive cameo. An early favourite of mine was issue #92 (November 1986) which had a caricature of the comicbook publisher Bill Marx, with whose imprint there was a possibility of me getting involved. Reading an issue of Cerebus is certainly no way of giving a person an audtion, but I just had to look.

...Caricature is one of the foundational cartoon skills. Sim presumably studied the work of Mort Drucker in Mad, but until Sim, nobody had integrated caricature into a narrative so well since the great Walt Kelly in Pogo. (in this case however, he obviously didn't know that Seth was going places or he'd have paid more attention to the face than the voice).

Cerebus #92, November 1986
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Note From The President, Cerebus #92, November 1986)
The springboard for this story-line was a dinner that I enjoyed, courtesy of Harry, at the Now & Then Books 15th Anniversary party. Also in attendance and seated directly opposite were Seth and Bill Marks of Toronto's Vortex Comics artist and publisher of Mister X respectively. There was this Leo Gorcey voice (Bugs Bunny to the age-impaired among you) that Ger and Bill and I fell into when discussing Bill's attitude towards creative people (like Los Bros. Hernandez whom he still owes considerable sums of money to for their work on Mr. X).

"Say I know! I'll git an ottist. Dat's it. Yeah. An ottist. I'll let him have all de fame an' I'll take all de money. Dat should woik. Ottist's is so stupid."

Having rattled your cages repeatedly on the subject of criminal exploitation of creative people by business people you might find it odd that I think there is anything funny about this. But the difference is what I find funny. Bill Marks makes no pretense of being a den mother (a la Diana Schutz, Cat Yronwode) or father-figure (a la Richard Pini). He is a hustler. But he is honest about it. Shameless, but very very funny.

...I don't recall hearing Seth say more than five words so I had to improvise his voice. I decided to use Diana Schutz's.

Cerebus #92, November 1986
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard