Who's Got Money?

Hi, Everybody!

67 more sleeps:

Coming soon to The Waverly Press, Holiday Bundles still available if you're interested.

Okay,

Who's Got Money?

Heritage has many Dave Sim/Cerebus/Strange Death of Alex Raymond items. So I ask again:

Who's Got Money?

Oh no you @#%&ING don't. Kevin Eastman's ORIGINAL cover Painting to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8. Current bid: $26,000!

Well, since you don't have the price of a new car laying around...

Who's Got Money? 2

Cerebus #26 page 1. Pretty iconic. First page of the second volume of Cerebus. Current bid: $2,200!

That's almost attainable.

Who's Got Money? 3

Cerebus #27 page 8. Cerebus leaves the McGrew brothers to deliver his ransom message. Signed by Dave "to Glen". Current bid: $410. That's reasonable.

Who's Got Money? 4

Cerebus #16 page 3. I'm winning this one until one of you moneybag bastards reads this and decides to shit in my cornflakes. Current bid: $40 (but that's gonna change before I type the next "Who's Got Money?"...) It's even signed by Dave...to "Glen". It even ties into something Dave sent me the week:

Click for bigger

Who's Got Money? 5

Dave Sim and Gerhard Cerebus #234 page 4. This is a pretty good one. It's signed by Dave AND Gerhard: "Best Wishes to Darren 13 November 01". Current bid: $210

Who's Got Money? 6

Dave Sim "Journey" Parody Wolverine MacAlistaire and Cerebus Illustration. We've talked about this in the past. How can you get one of the 50 prints Mike Jones made?

The prints are currently available to William Messner-Loebs’ Patrons only. Become a Patron and get yours while they last. Only 50 prints were made. www.patreon.com/billmessnerloebs

Current bid: $210

Bullshit, you ain't got money still...

Cerebus #1 graded 8.0. One of the most recent copies in this grade they auctioned, sold for $8,610. Just sayin'. Current bid: $500

But if you DID have money...

Dave Sim Quack #4 and #5 "The Beavers" Story Pages Group of 6. Six pages of original art from the two stories in Quack #s 4 and 5. Current bid: $52

But if you DID have money... 2

Complete 7-Page Story "On The Back Of A Pro" Original Art. The complete parody of T. Casey Brennan's story On the Wings of a Bird. Current bid: $92

But if you did have money... 3

The Strange Death of Alex Raymond Story Page 119. One of Carson's pages from SDOAR. Current bid: $42

But if you did have money... 4

You Don't Know Jack: Two-Fisted Comic Store Manager! Story Page 32. Carson told me he sent a bunch of his SDOAR and You Don't Know Jack! pages to Heritage, so if you're looking for one, you might be able to pick one up for a decent price. Current bid: $92

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Cerebus in Hell?

There's a new one:

CIH? Presents AV TEAM UP featuring CEREBUS & THE WOMAN THING

And AV Team-up Signed.

Last few days for CIH? Presents Cancel America #1 and CIH? Presents Cancel America #1 Signed

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Physical copies of Cerebus Archives on CerebusDownloads.com

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Oliver'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... And now on Mometu.

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The AMOC TeePublic Shoppe

Up to 35% off site-wide: 

For the next day or so.

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!

And I added a new design.

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Next Time: Christmas Time It's Christmas Time.

The Beavers: The Ticket

The Beavers: The Ticket

by Dave Sim

(Oktoberfest #1, Now & Then Publications, 1976)

DAVE SIM:

(Cerebus Archive #8, June 2010)

...Wintario was the, then, revolutionary provincial lottery whose motto was "With Wintario we all win"...

Before Cerebus #1 was published in December 1977, Dave Sim created The Beavers newspaper strip, which ran in weekly installments in The Kitchener-Waterloo Record between 1976-1977.

The Beavers: "The Great Canadian Newspaper Strip"

The Beavers: October

by Dave Sim

(Oktoberfest #1, Now & Then Publications, 1976)

DAVE SIM:

(Cerebus Archive #8, June 2010)

...At the time, what "salvaged" Oktoberfest for me was the Beavers strips on the inside front and inside back covers: published appearances that would make them appear successful... and a 4-page interior strip, "The Trophy"... The Kitchener-Waterloo Record had agreed to carry the weekly The Beavers strip in their entertainment supplement Pulse. I was sure it was going to be "The Great Canadian Newspaper Strip."

Before Cerebus #1 was published in December 1977, Dave Sim created The Beavers newspaper strip, which ran in weekly installments in The Kitchener-Waterloo Record between 1976-1977.

The Beavers #4

The Beavers (1976)

by Dave Sim

(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #2, June 2009)

...On the fourth strip the problems are still persisting. I'm still trying for the classic pen line / brush line look but it's still too dark, especially for a theoretically "gorgeous day". I'm trying to be such a purest that I've eliminated the dot tone from Red's sweater in favour of a horizontal stripe.

(It's really an important step... ultimately I would decide that the visual impact of tone against pen lines was more important than "pen line purism"... and that would evolve... eventually... into the decision to do a completely grey tone character against pen line backgrounds: Cerebus)

But for the moment Gene [Day]'s offer to ink the strips was a godsend: all the inking questions would be up to him. I already had made all the writing, design and pencilling choices.

The Beavers #3

The Beavers (1976)

by Dave Sim

(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #2, June 2009)

...On the third strip (now called The Beavers... some glimmering of basic common sense had squirmed out from under my uber-liberal sensibility indicating that How's Your Beaver? wasn't the best foot forward getting into family newspapers) I eliminated most of the cross-hatching to try and brighten the interiors but as you can see I'm unconsciously doing a neo-Victorian motif -- wing-back arm chair, ornate picture frame, heavy bureau. I was also trying to copy the light pattern of cross hatching used by Aislen, Petersen and Mort Drucker. "Trying" was all I could do with a C-6 Speedball nib. "Maybe you have to do it faster... or there's some wrist action or secret technique."

No. The nib is just too thick... what I needed was a nice crow-quill like the Hunt 102.

Robert Stanfield (April 11, 1914 - December 16, 2003) leader of the progressive conservative party from 1967 to 1976. He played Canada's Richard Nixon to Pierre Trudeau's John F. Kennedy ("Nonsense, lad, of course Canada has its own identity")  for most of his political career...

How's Your Beaver #2

How's Your Beaver (1976)

by Dave Sim

(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #1, April 2009)

...I was off to the races or so I thought until I did the second strip. All that cross-hatching made it look like something out of Charles Dickens' Bleak House... instead of a typical Canadian suburban home. It was a hard lesson in comic strip design... the "look" needs to be versatile enough to convey a range of settings. My choice of dip pen -- a C-6 Speedball nib -- was okay for lettering but not enough for "doing" Aislin or Roy Peterson. The strip went way onto my mental back burner.

Barbara Frum (1937-1992) CBC radio host of "As It Happens", a Canadian institution at the time... uber liberal (like most Canadians). Her son is David Frum. a conservative commentator who severed briefly in the George W. Bush White House and reportedly was the one who coined the term "Axis of Evil" to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea in the President's first State of the Union Address.

Ironic, eh?

How's Your Beaver #1

How's Your Beaver (1976)

by Dave Sim
(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #1, April 2009)

...Okay, here's something I never thought I would admit to publicly. Highway Bookshop in Cobalt, Ontario had a Northern Ontario cult hit with a cartoon book called Outhouses Of The North... mostly variations on the crescent moon in the door. It was in its twentieth printing or something. Lonely... quiet... place, Northern Ontario. Anyway, they were looking for a follow-up hit and commissioned me to do a cartoon book [How's Your Beaver] for $125, the most I'd ever been paid for anything. So I got a template shot of my beaver character done at Kwik Kopy and did the whole thing in about three days. The good news? I made $40 a day. The bad news? The monstrosity now existed and had my name on it.

Couple of hard lesson: Never "write down" to the level of a book called Outhouses Of The North and remember that once it's in print... someone is going to see a copy somewhere, someday. And if you have an ounce of integrity decades later you'll have to make your mea culpas in public. Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa.

I don't think it occurred to me how "over the top" the double entendre was... I was a huge Lenny Bruce fan and figured the more like Lenny we could all be, the better off we'd all be. How to talk dirty and influence people. I was hard at work on the sequel: Son Of How's Your Beaver and determined to pick up the quality. So here I am really  striving to pick up my game a few hundred notches. I was going back to the "Aislen Solution" -- lots of little pen lines for a realistic background and then cartoon-y characters in the foreground. I was using a dip pen and felt tips... It's the Cerebus solution "in vitro" as well: using 30% tone on Red's shirt (there were now two beavers: Red and Whitey, the colours of the Canadian flag).

After Highway pulled the plug on Son Of I thought the next logical way to go was a newspaper strip. Yonge St. in Toronto was Canada's answer to Times Square in the 1970s. It's since been cleaned up so it's almost as nice as, well, Time Square.

CANAR #25/26/27 Triple Issue

December 1974

The Beavers: The Untold Origin Of Junior!

Cerebus Archive #7 (April 2010)

by Dave Sim

The Beavers: Debut Strip!

Beaver Debut Strip (1976)
by Dave Sim & Gene Day
(Reprinted in Cerebus Archive #14, June 2011)

The Origin Of 'The Beavers'

(via Brian Coppola at Comic Art Fans)

"Ducks? Who Cares About Ducks!"

Quack! #3 (Star*Reach, 1977)
Final cover by Dave Sim & Steve Leialoha; Preliminary sketch by Dave Sim
(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:
(from Following Cerebus #7, February 2006)

...Your reproduction of the cover of Quack! No.3 reminded me of a couple of other trains of thought that were occupying my attention at the time both of which were clarified, at least indirectly, by Mike Friedrich around this time. As you can see from my preliminary sketch, I had taken Mike's initial idea and done what I considered to be a funny cover for a humour comic. The gag is dependent on the fact that it's called the "Special Dead Duck Issue" and that my character, Whitey, is depicted reading a copy of Quack! which he and his brother Red are evidently discussing, Red's bottom reaction being "Ducks? Who cares about ducks?" In the background I've attempted to do a Chuck Jones-style Daffy Duck, holding up  his "Help!" sign as he's about to get crushed by a safe. Not exactly a laugh riot, but with all three elements in place it was, I figured, a good chance to raise a smile.

Now when you look at the finished cover, first of all you notice that the angle has been reversed. This was Mike making use of the old adage that you should never have your characters walking "out" of the comic book. Seemed to me like one of those "editor" things, but Mike was the editor so the choice was out of my hands. Of course the first net result of that was that the front cover is no longer visible in Whitey's hands, ergo the self-referential gag of the two of them discussing the comic book they're actually in is lost. Instead it looks as if Red in interrupting Whitey's reading with a non-sequitur about the imminent fate of the unnamed duck they aren't even looking at. Add to that the fact that the "Special Dead Duck Issue" cover copy has been deleted and suddenly you have a virtually Seinfeldian cover that used to be about dead ducks that is now about... nothing. In fact, arguably the last thin you want to have is a comic book called Quack! with the central character on the cover saying "Ducks?!, Who cares?" You are practically ordering the reader not to buy the thing. You also lose the Yiddish flavour of "Ducks!, Who cares about ducks!" The "book-ending" of the observation with the inherently funny word "ducks". The exclamation mark and question mark on the only use of the term "Ducks?!" and the inflated size of the lettering throws off the humour, calling attention to the emphasis - the size of the lettering and the question mark and the exclamation mark - rather than the word itself. And of course the duck has changed from the hapless Daffy version into a generic Donald/Howard version. Daffy is funny, Donald isn't. I hate to break that to any Disney fans in the audience, but Donald Duck isn't funny and never has been. The Clarence Nash voice is funny, but that's it.

It really stuck with me because it seemed to call attention to the fact that no one seemed to know or care about doing actual humour in comics. It was either Kurtzman/Elder variants (filling the background with funny signs, book titles, bill boards) or underground humour which hinged on finding dope-smoking and getting the munchies inherently hilarious by using the comic strip conventions invented by Elzie Segar and Floyd Gottfredson and others.

It was really the cover to Quack! No.3 that made me realise that there was a irresolvable dilemma inherent between being a good obedient contributor that  did what my editor - Mike - asked me to do and producing actual humour. There was no way to draw a line in the sand over the fact that "Ducks!, Who cares about ducks!" is a funnier line that "Ducks? Who cares?" without being seen as a nitpicking prima donna. Either you understand that the one line is funnier and the other isn't or you don't. Mike didn't so that was the end of the discussion. The net result was that in my widest-ever exposure on the cover of a comic book, it meant that I had to take the blame for a cover being unfunny and not selling even though the decisions of how to make it  funny so it would sell were taken out of my hands. Ultimately this would be a major motivation to do my own comic book where I was the final arbiter of what was funny and what wasn't funny and where I would be in the position to decide what worked and what didn't.

It was no small point and I appreciate the fact that it was brought home to me so completely by this particular episode. The best lessons are usually those that are the hardest to take at the time.

Mike Friedrich published 18 issues of the science fiction and fantasy comics anthology Star*Reach between 1974 and 1979, one of the first mainstream independent comic books, which bridged the gap between the countercultural underground comics and traditional Marvel/DC Comics fare. Friedrich's company grew into a small publishing house in Hayward, California, that published the comic book series Quack, Imagine and a number of one-shot comics. The company ceased publishing in 1979.

Cerebus Archive #17 (December 2011)
Art by Dave Sim

The Wrong Thing

The Beavers (Quack #4, Star*Reach Productions, 1977)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from page 58, The Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing, 2010)

This is a tough point to understand. It is possible to work for two years on something (I did a weekly strip for two years before I did Cerebus) and have it be the wrong thing. If it's the wrong thing, nothing will happen, no matter if you get a Xeric grant and a circulation of 20,000 copies. If there's something in the back of your head that keeps gnawing at you while you're developing one story, start putting the one that's gnawing at you down on paper. I was convinced that I was either a newspaper-strip artist, a political cartoonist, or a short story comic-book writer/artist through most of the 1970s. Then I decided I was an inker. Early on I decided I was a Playboy cartoonist because they paid several thousand dollars for one cartoon and that sounded good to me. Cover all of my expenses with one cartoon and then do whatever else I wanted with the rest of the month.

The key was that I was trying all of the options that were out there. I pursued each of them with great determination. I never quit on anything. But nothing "happened". At any point, I could have been working on a super-hero series I created for a publisher (Revolt 3000) or drawing and lettering a story from someone else’s script (Phantacea) or doing political cartoons for the local paper. In each of those cases, it went for a little while and then it died, usually in a period of a few months. Each thing told me, "Well, I guess that wasn't it." The difference with writing and drawing and self-publishing Cerebus was overwhelming. Things got in the way, but I could go over, around, or through them. That’s what told me that Cerebus was "it".

You can find out more about Dave Sim's pre-Cerebus career in the bi-monthly magazine, Cerebus Archive - back issues are always available from ComiXpress.