Jeff Seiler: Dave Sim & Me

JEFF SEILER:

Eleven years ago, when Cerebus ended, Dave Sim decided to answer all of his back mail. A month or so later, he had his "Jeff Seiler Day" in which he answered multiple letters I had written over the previous year. After I received that letter, I decided to keep writing, and he kept his promise to answer every letter he received. Now, I have a foot-high stack of letters written and received over 10 years or so. I'll be running interesting excerpts from those letters each week.

13 November, 2004

Dear Jeff:

Thanks for your letter of October 24.

I would be glad to do an interview with Ethan Nahte [Ed: an employee at Titan Comics in Dallas and who was at the time working on a documentary about Robert E. Howard] but it does seem unlikely given his budget restraints[sic] and the geography problem, so I guess it will probably be better to leave it at that for the time being and just see what (if anything) changes as we go along. Very good news about Jeremy Shorr and Titan Comics. If you’re talking to him, tell him that Ger and I appreciate a great deal his keeping all of the trades in stock. Likewise with Lone Star [Comics]. I know that they are primarily a mainstream store and Buddy and I have had our differences over the years so it’s nice to know that they’re still “on board”. Did you know that Craig Miller [Ed: RIP] of Following Cerebus used to work there? I had completely forgotten about it until I ran across a copy of Lone Star Express that he used to edit where he interviewed me on the ‘82 Tour. Time flies.

I don’t think that the page Jeremy has is from Reads, but rather from “Reads”, the short story from early in Church & State. Glad he’s hung on to it all this time. [Ed: Jeremy, at my request, did send a scan of that page to Sean and Mara for the remastering of Church & State I.]

I’m not really sure if I pioneered the sequential reprinting. That honour probably goes to Russ Cochrane with his E.C. Library when he decided to reprint the entire runs of the E.C. titles, including colour covers. I think if you look at most collections of reprints, they include the covers and sometimes the advertisements. I was driving at something else, modeled more on the completed serialization that used to be done in Dickens’ and Dostoevsky’s time where the completed serialization was collected into book form. In fact, I’ve taken a lot of flack [sic] over the years for not reprinting the Cerebus covers in the trades. Just another example of me swimming upstream against the tide. To me, if you call them graphic novels, they should read sequentially from front to back with no outside material. In fact, I worked very hard to get to the point where it would be difficult if not impossible to tell where one issue ended and another began in the reprintings. That’s the exact opposite from the effect created by reprinting the covers.

I wonder myself at what the city council members think of me. They had a special tent set up in front of City Hall during the Oktoberfest opening ceremonies and, as a promotion, the Council members were all dishing up sauerkraut and wiener-schnitzel. Councillor Geoff Lorentz saw me walking by and yelled, “Hey, you should be in here doing this with us.” Which would seem to indicate a “we consider you part of the family” gesture, which was nice. I try to maintain a distance because I see myself as monitoring what’s going on rather than as a participant and I think it’s very easy to get seduced into taking their side rather than keeping an adversarial frame of mind, which seems necessary if only because I’m about the only person who’s there every week. Whenever there’s an award ceremony before the Council meeting, Mayor Zehr always tells the people who are there for the ceremony, “You’re welcome to stay for the rest of the council meeting…”. This invariably gets a big laugh. “As if!” Disheartening, for obvious reasons.

Enclosed is the latest service and return with Mr. Jeffrey. It took a lot of rewriting to keep my response calm, cool and collected.

I enjoyed your John Kerry anecdote from The Dr. Phil Show. I still find it hard to believe that there’s an interviewer named “Dr. Phil”, let alone the rest of the story. I really do wonder if the momentum is towards or away from Senator Kerry and the Ketchup Lady. Three million votes is not a huge margin of victory for an incumbent President, so a lot of folks must’ve looked at the Democrat and approved of what they saw. That is, not even being able to give a straight answer on whether he and his wife have a favourite between their two daughters--obviously that and the number of other instances of indecisiveness didn’t meet with any serious level of disapproval by a good half of the voting American public. It certainly raises questions about whether Hillary Clinton will run in 2008, whether she will get the nomination and what the Democrats and “swing” Republicans are going to of her. Revenge of the Ketchup Lady.

I intended the accusation of sophistry in the exact way, I think, that you and Billy did vis-a-vis my original viewpoint: “You can’t be serious.” Although, it seems obvious to me that we are each of us serious about our own viewpoint and incredulous about the opposing viewpoint. The reaction was more to your reaction in saying that my viewpoint on Luke 17:35 made you doubt that I was a serious thinker. I don’t think a counter-accusation of sophistry is a disproportionate response in that instance. You left it up to me to choose the extent to which you considered me an “un-serious” thinker, I left it up to you to decide which definition of sophistry and Pharisaical argument you thought I might’ve intended. In my mind, I was responding to a warning shot across my bow with a warning shot across your bow. And we’ve now arrived at a “let sleeping dogs lie” situation, which I think is only sensible. Although I’m sure we’ll be getting last words after last words “in” at each other as Billy and I did up until our most recent exchange of letters. That’s how those things tend to go, in my experience.

Well, I’ll take your word for it that you’re a supporter, even though--and I mean no offense by this--it isn’t going to affect “Dave Sim going forward”. There has been an interesting shift of viewpoint at the margins of my mail from “I think you’re wrong, but I defend your right to say what you’re saying” to “I’ve agreed with you all along, I just wasn’t aware that you were being drawn-and-quartered on the messages boards”. It’s a welcome shift but, since I’m not on the Internet, it’s just something (again) I have to take as face value on a here-and-now basis. “Nice letter” being the way I would sum up my reaction. I’ve been assured for many, many years that everything is getting better and, at this point, it’s just not in my nature to change the way I conduct my life in response to that. I think there’s probably a real chance that much of the Cerebus readership that was offended by [issue #] 186 and “Tangent”, having had time for both of them to sink in and having the inescapable face of insatiable feminism always before them, that some of them might very well be “coming around”. But agreeing with me in a letter to me is very different from vocally advancing a viewpoint. There is no question that if you speak up you will become a pariah. It’s been ten years for me and there’s no end in sight. After ten years of “holding the fort” on my own, it just isn’t sensible to stake any hope whatsoever on that changing any time soon. My assumption is that I will be the one guy “holding the fort” up until the day that I die. If something happens that will make it otherwise, fine and dandy. But I think it’s just one of the inevitabilities that become attached to deciding that this is an “until the day I die” circumstance. Once you make that decision, wishful thinking and looking on the bright side go out the window. It has to, in my opinion, The hard realism of “the rest of my life” and meaning it just won’t allow for any ifs, ands or buts.

On the subject of the gift, I do tend to react to the constant strain that I’m under at inopportune moments. Your gift, unfortunately, came in as part of a seeming wave of gifts, all of which had to be assessed on their respective merits and potential for problem-causing. Billy [Beach] sending me the issue of Watchtower being a good example. This is difficult enough, holding down a solitary position for ten years. I get multi-page letters that I reply to as best and as thoroughly as I can. It ain’t easy a lot of the time, although it is certainly easier than writing and drawing a monthly comic book. What I indicated through the gift-giving phase was that I thought that was taking unfair advantage in a general sense and I was more addressing myself to the malign spirits that I saw as the motivation behind it of which I always assume my correspondents are ignorant. I didn’t think you were sending me the book of prayer as a test, but that didn’t rule out some djinn or other suggesting it to you. So, I was drawing the line: attempting to frame a distinction that I didn’t think publications were legitimate in the context of the everyone-pile-on-Dave format, unless it was that person’s own publication. Otherwise, what would prevent someone from sending me unlimited piles of outside publications and then declaring a win because I didn’t catch something on page 98 of the twelfth one? Drawing the line in the last letter I wrote to you actually worked quite well--the outside publications dried up and I’m back to responding to letters, clippings, questions, and ideas. David W. Johnson and I discussed the Kingdom Interlinear Translation in several letters and he sent me excerpts from it--copied out by hand: he wouldn’t hear of me sending him money to photocopy the material--and when I expressed greater interest he sent me the whole thing and wrote a while ago to tell me that I can keep it. To me that’s a very different thing from just sending a book. Had you described the [Robert Louis] Stephenson book to me, I probably would’ve just passed over that part of your letter--it would’ve sounded “borderline” to me. Had you sent me a photocopied page, I probably would’ve thanked you for it and said, sorry, not really my kind of thing. The postcard, well a postcard is a postcard. It’s like a clipping. You keep it or you don’t. I think you’ve sent several clippings that I haven’t commented on when writing back. It just doesn’t apply. A book--particularly a hardcover book--is a different kind of thing. Had I just politely thanked you for it and lied and said I had found it interesting, the odds are that you would do it again or you would be apt to ask in the next letter if I had gotten the book. One way or the other, it needed to be dealt with which is, again, to me, comparable to the Watchtower situation I dealt with. Please don’t send me these. And Billy was perfectly amenable. It was an extension of the Imprimis situation as well, no question about it, which was another reason that I drew the line. Imprimis is just political commentary and it’s a periodical. I can read it in about ten minutes. Thank you. That was great. The Stephenson book of prayers was in another direction so, it seemed to me that what the malign spirit behind it was saying was “You accepted a gift, so now I get to test where your boundaries are when it comes to gifts. Here is something that may be Christian or may be pagan or it may be a little of both.” That’s very different from reading political commentary and I assume that whatever would’ve come next would’ve been worse, a little further across the borderline. All unbeknownst to you, in my opinion. THis a very unpleasant part of my job: having to explain these things at excruciating length.

What I did with the book was to put it in with the other religious texts that I keep in the bookcase in my room on the shelf below the Koran, the Torah and the Gospels. The reason that I did that was to indicate to the malign spirit that I would give the whole thing the benefit of the doubt. . .THIS TIME. Having drawn a line in the sand, I can’t see any reason to be completely ungracious and to not give a benefit of the doubt where it might be warranted. The situation is apt to be different if I start getting a wave of gifts again, but as long as the status quo has returned, I am at peace with the decision that I have made.

Thanks for the clipping from the Dallas Morning News. Yes, that was a strange one. She just phone out of clear, blue sky, told me that she was a Cerebus reader and she wanted to write about Cerebus coming to an end and wondered if I would do an interview. It was such an unusual request that I said, sure, fire away. I answered her questions for about forty minutes or so and then the last two questions were about my views on feminism and my religious beliefs. Which is usually a bad sign. It usually means that they’re softening you up and then they want the quote that they want for the smear piece. So, I was pleasantly surprised that that wasn’t the case. The quotes certainly don’t sound like me, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t accurate. When all you’re doing is pulling three sentences out of forty minutes of conversation, “out of context” is pretty much a given. I was particularly surprised that there is absolutely no reference to anti-feminism apart from the description of parts of the book containing anti-feminist treatises. I have no idea what the motivation might’ve been behind the piece being done or how the editor could have authorized it--presumably it was old news in any newspaper frame of reference--but it was definitely a “one-off”, so it didn’t bear with thinking about. Yeah, the charity thing doesn’t get mentioned much because it just doesn’t fit the profile of the raving, lunatic misogynist. People who go insane aren’t usually big contributors to charities, so that part usually just gets edited out while they’re creating their version of Dave Sim. The recurrent motif is “the edge of madness”, “the brink of madness”, I suspect to avoid possible libel actions. I’ve been considering spreading the word that I have no intention of ever suing anyone for libel as a matter of principle, so all the folks who have been holding back can really let fly. It seems to comfort them.

The article on the ranked system of voting was interesting in a way. I don’t believe it will help anything, personally. All it really does is allow a lot of minority parties to start up and get on the ballot, which essentially takes lobbyists from the influence-peddling game and puts them in the driver’s seat: “coalition building” is, to me, a discrete euphemism for influence peddling. It’s taken Italy, to cite one example, years to climb out of the pit of having too many political parties--Berlusconi is the longest-serving leader they’ve had since the Second World War. I don’t think they’re eager to go back to the days when they would have two or three governments fall within a year. First-past-the-post is still the best system, to me, and I say that as someone whose political views are nowhere represented in his country. If Canada wants Marxist-feminism, you are better off enduring eleven or fifteen or twenty years of Marxist-feminism rather than inventing a system which neutralizes Marxist-feminism by creating dozens of political ducks that can nibble it to death. Political ducks just nibble governments to death and that doesn’t get you anywhere. I’d prefer to just see more fundamental loyalty of the kind you see on the right. Republicans don’t pour out into the streets to protest something a Democratic President is doing. He got elected, he runs the show for four years. Show some loyalty.

I appreciated the [now retired four-star general of the U.S. Army] Tommy Franks article a great deal. Very calm, very matter-of-fact. Just goes to show that the War on Terror is not that complicated, it’s just very time-consuming and very expensive to do properly.

The VeriChip [Ed: a chip inserted under the skin of human beings that would contain their entire medical history and more, an idea which has just recently regained momentum] article was interesting in a vague and distant sort of way. I think I’d be the last one to actually undergo it, because of my rock-solid conviction that all health concerns are in the hand of God. I don’t know of any good medical stories [Ed: He does now]. Gene Day had a checkup and was given a clean bill of health the week before he died of a heart attack at the age of 31. I tend not to read any medical stories because of my belief that good health is a matter of taking as good care of yourself as you can and accepting that only God knows when your “best before” date is. There’s a part of the Koran which describes the ambivalence about going to war--those poor fellows who would be alive today if they hadn’t gone to war. This is sharply corrected by the observation that if they had chosen to stay at home they would’ve walked to where they are lying right now because it was God’s will that that was where they were going to die. Sounds like fatalism or predestination, but that’s my view of life. When you number is up, your number is up.

Thanks for writing.

Best,

Dave

P.S.: See, this is where I start running into problems. David Carrington has written me, I believe, two or three letters at the most, all of which I have answered. He is certainly not turning to me with “every spiritual dilemma” and I tell him the same thing I tell everyone else if they come to me for an answer: submit yourself to the will of God, acknowledge God’s sovereignty, pray and fast and pay the stated alms. I wouldn’t know what to advise beyond that. As I wrote to Billy [Beach], I think it highly unlikely that anyone would be a follower or “follower” of mine, per se. I am just too much at variance with my society for it to be possible that someone would believe what I was saying within a year of first publication. Later? Maybe. But, as I say, I’ve been out here on my own for a long time, so I think I know the difference. There are people who credit me with helping them through what I’ve written. That, I assume, is not unheard of. Norman Mailer gave me an enormous amount of help through his writing but I’d hardly describe myself as one of Mailer’s followers or even “followers”. There are a number of people who are very enthusiastic about what I have to say and credit me with breaking them out of the feminist mindset. Whether that’s actually the case, there’s no way for me, as a human being, to know. Only God knows what is actually inside of those people. I answer my mail as honestly as I can. I answer David Carrington’s letters and your letters and Billy’s letters. I’m interested in ideas and exchanges of viewpoint and I don’t trust anyone any further [sic] than I can throw them--except for God.

PPS: No, I don’t believe I’m a prophet of God. Five times a day I acknowledge my belief that Muhammad was God’s Last Messenger and Seal of Prophets. I’m just someone who thinks it makes more sense to believe that 2 out of every 100 people are going to get a passing grade on Judgment Day. I just happen to live in a time and a society where most people believe that either: a) there isn’t going to be a Judgment Day or, b) if there is a Judgment Day, it’ll be enough that you flossed after every meal to allow you to “make the cut”. I’m “reading into the record” because I assume at some point in the distant future society will begin to take Judgment Day as seriously as I do and that it will be useful to have a record of what someone who took Judgment Day seriously [today] had to say. If that resonates with anyone in the next twenty or thirty years or however long it takes for the “penny to drop”, well, hey, bonus. But to say that I don’t anticipate that to be the case seriously understates my viewpoint. I do figure that a lot of people are going to claim to agree with me, but I assume that will mostly be a tactical means of trying to distract me and get the subjects under discussion off track. That’s one of the reasons behind Collected Letter 2004: “This is what I’m saying. This is 580 pages of what I am saying. You can disagree with it if you want or you can change it if you want by paraphrasing it or misrepresenting it, but this is what I’m actually saying.” Thanks, Jeff.

Weekly Update #117: The! Most! Controversial! Graphic! Novel! Of! All! Time!

Coming soon... the restored version of The Most Controversial Graphic Novel Of All Time, Volume 9 of Cerebus: "Reads".

Sane As It Ever Was

MARGARET LISS:

A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.

We've looked at Dave Sim's notebook #5 a couple times before, it covers issues 70 to 79 of Cerebus. Dave had a lot going on back then as is witness on page 23 of the notebook, with his "calendar" for the later part of December and then January. I'm thinking it was December 1984 and January 1985, as Cerebus #71 has an inside cover date of February 1985.

Notebook 5, page 23

Looking at that calendar - he doesn't start the issue until the middle of the month, doing 2 pages a day, minus the weekends which are crossed off. The 'art prints' as far as I can guess are the First Fifth portfolio prints.

The 'Sane As It Ever Was' tagline was the cover  of issue #70 - which you can barely see a small thumbnail of on the back side of this notebook page. Looking at the calendar on page 23, Dave was "scheduled" to do the cover for issue #70 on December 28, having just finished pages 19 and 20 the day before.

Skip a few pages ahead in the notebook, to page 28, and we see another version of the calendar for January 1985:

Notebook 5, page 28

It looks like Dave managed to move up his schedule. So instead of finishing pages 9 and 10 on January 22, his schedule now has him doing those pages on January 18. Dave kept the cover due on January 30th, but then gave himself a couple of extra days off at the end of the month. It makes me wonder if he worked through weekends or if he managed to complete more than three pages per day.  Quite the pace.

All Careers End In Failure

Cerebus Vol 16: The Last Day

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

TOM WHITELEY:
(from Suggested For Mature Readers, 30 November 2015)

...This isn’t a good time to be putting the boot in to Dave Sim. Aged 60, he's in an increasingly desperate situation. Cerebus has gone out of print leaving him with no income from his life's work. He's remastering and reprinting that, volume by volume with the help of Kickstarters, but it's a costly process and the costs are all upfront. He's also preparing for his death by packaging his house, his original art, his notebooks and all the rest of his archives up as a trust, so it can be open to the public after he's gone. And he was continuing to work on SDOAR, which IDW were publishing as a OGN. That's on the rational side. But he's injured his hand so can no longer draw or even sign his name cutting off his only remaining income stream, and rather than accept medical opinion about how to fix it he's had an MRI scan and is crowdsourcing opinion about what to do next. Through a mix of misfortune, principled decisions and irrational, harmful decisions, he's in big trouble. The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, a story about wealthy, successful comic-strip illustrators with their big houses and sports cars and younger wives, may never be finished. Much of Cerebus could become unavailable, perhaps permanently. The idiosyncratic story of a comic-book artist who broke all the rules, who pioneered a model of publishing that arguably changed and saved the industry, could end like all the other stories of comic book artists. Life imprisonment at hard labour in solitary confinement, as Wally Wood called it, ending with your work being forgotten and your money all gone. I'd perhaps heard of Alex Raymond because of Flash Gordon, before I read Glamourpuss, but none of the others were familiar until I realised Al Williamson was the inker on the superb Ann Nocenti-John Romita Jr Daredevil run. He was in his 60s at the time, and that run was printed on toilet paper and largely remains uncollected. All political careers end in failure, they say, and really all careers end in failure but the failure at the end of careers in comics is more acute than most...

The above is a short excerpt from a longer review of Dave Sim's Glamourpuss. Full article here...

Comic Book Greats #4: Neal Adams

Neal Adams

Art by Dave Sim

(from Glamourpuss #1, April 2008)

DAVE SIM:
(from Following Cerebus #9, August 2006)

...He had been a guest at the first comic book convention I had attended in 1972, Cosmicon in Toronto. I had had no problem talking to Jim Steranko or Joe Kubert or Gary Morrow when the opportunities had presented themselves -- as if I had known them for years -- but at one point Neal Adams had been walking through the Dealers' Room, unattended and at a leisurely pace, and I had just watched dumbfounded -- I'm sure with my mouth agape -- as he walked past me. The convention had been held at Winters College on the campus of York University, and part of the set-up had featured six classrooms upstairs dedicated to displays of original artwork by the attending artist guests. Neal Adams' room was literally wallpapered with the original artwork to "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight" (Green Lantern / Green Arrow 76), "What Can One Man Do?" (Green Lantern / Green Arrow 87), "Night Of The Reaper" (Batman 237) and a couple of other stories and as-yet unpublished covers. I could feel my brain detaching from my body and doing backflips just standing in there looking at those pages. I literally had to leave to recover my equilibrium. That's really the point where I knew I wanted to draw comic books for a living. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that that was when I knew I wanted to be Neal Adams when I grew up, but the one ambition eventually eroded into the other one once I had come to my senses...

The JFK Gargoyle

Kevin Eastman & Dave Sim (1991)

Examining the “JFK Gargoyle” (plaster figurine with a big hole in the head I insisted had to be part of the purchase price of the Off-White House) Camp David. The figurine was found smashed to bits one morning, years later.

Dave Sim: CAN4 Kickstarter Q&A

The following (edited and reordered) Q&A with Dave Sim originally appeared in the final hours of the Cerebus Archive Number Four Kickstarter campaign in November 2015.

MORT DRUCKER

Barry Deutsch:

Did you ever meet Mort Drucker?

Dave Sim: 

Barry! Our first celebrity! The NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING AND IF HE ISN'T HE SHOULD BE GRAPHIC NOVELIST OF HEREVILLE! Welcome.

No, I never did.

Before they decided not to sign the petition, Mort Drucker was one of the only cartoonists that Seth and Chester and Joe and I agreed on as Toppermost of the Poppermost. And his best work the first STAR TREK parody. "Meaning -- it's no whip and chill but it does have a very nice flavor"

Barry Deutsch:

Heh, I wish HV was a NYT best-seller. I suspect it wouldn't change my life very much - a day spent drawing is much the same for every cartoonist. But it might be nice to be less broke, and have more readers. (Although maybe if my work was more noticed, that would be a pain in the neck, because of added responsibilities or more business stuff to deal with.)

Mo' money, mo' problems. But, as Sandeep said, "It would be nice to have SOME money and SOME problems." There's always a bright side. Being a Comic Book Pariah I don't get bugged as much as a Comic Book Superstar does. We live in North America. All of our problems are, at best, "problems".

HEALTH

Stuart Martin:

Hi Dave. I'm confused about the problem wrist - what's the current plan? Are you just waiting for some medical expert to chance upon on the MRI results hosted at AMOC? If you don't have much faith in medical expertise, why would you pay attention to e.g. surgery suggested by such a person? If however, you would be swayed by such suggestions, why not seek out medical advice straight away? Get it fixed! We just want the best artist in comics to resume work, dammit! (and not just headsketches :-)

I'm waiting for Dr. Troy to set something up in Texas with two specialists and/or for those specialists to offer a diagnosis on the current MRI. Dr. Troy is theoretically going to find me a neurologist to check on the possible Parkinson's Disease. I'm not sure what I'll decide but a lot is going to depend on whether the diagnoses and proposed treatments agree with each other. In the meantime, just resting it and -- occasionally -- two-handed typing to see how that part is coming along.

Michael Ragiel:

Lately everything about your health has been focused around your drawing hand, but it seems people have forgotten about the your other scare earlier in the year... your twisted and blocked bowel. I'm sure it has improved since there has been no recent posts. Has it improved? Have you adopted new eating habits?

That seems to be fine. I'm still fasting a lot of the time but I'm now eating bulkier food and varieties of food when I'm NOT fasting. I sort of adjust my diet to keep my face and neck from looking gaunt. More fats when I'm looking skinny. I also do 6 minutes of "ab crunches" -- sit-ups without actually sitting up -- after 4 of my 5 prayer times to keep the weight off my waistline. And I'm concentrating on my posture your more. I have to consciously "lean back" 20 degrees in my mind in order to appear upright. A lifetime of "hunching over" my mutant bowel, I suspect.

GERHARD

Michael Ragiel:

I know Gerhard won't sign the petition, but his work carried such a significant weight on Cerebus. He mentioned to me "all Dave has to do is ask". Would you ask Gerhard to contribute to future Kickstarter campaigns or for something else?

I think Gerhard's business is Gerhard's business -- gerhardart.com. He and John Funk both went to the same high school and I know John would be happy to drop off and pick up prints if Gerhard was interested in signing them. But that would have to be a separate pledge item -- Gerhard signature -- and he would have to decide what he wanted to charge. Too late for this one, but maybe the next one.

Barry Deutsch:

Hey, I have a boring "how'd you do this?" question for you, Dave, if you feel like answering it. Seeing the top graphic every time I look at this page has made me wonder about the "whudda fren' we 'ave in derrrrk-asss!" panel. Did Gerhard draw the bottles that the characters are holding? If so, did you pass the page back and forth - you do pencils, Gerhard pencils the bottles, you ink the figures, Gerhard inks the bottles - or did you do all your inks first and then Gerhard worked in the blank spaces you left for the bottles?

In the new Hereville book, I had a collaborator, my friend Adrian Wallace, who drew all the environments. (For pay and credit, obviously.) It was interesting (and I think the book looks great). Several cartoonists who heard about the arrangement independently said "oh, so you have a Gerhard now?"

The bottles the McGrew Brothers are holding, those are definitely Gerhard pen lines. The cockroach emblem on Dirty Drew's costume as seen through the bottle, I'm pretty sure those are my pen lines. It's a nebulous area that really came down to: Did I have time to do that? Because it's a creatively satisfying thing to ink with a Hunt 102, but it takes time. Gerhard is more than CAPABLE of doing it, so it becomes a self-indulgence if I do it: better I should put my time in on the things Gerhard DOESN'T do.

Lookit me, Ma! I'm Berni Wrightson!

That kind of thing.

TEACHING COMICS

Benjamin Hobbs:

What are your thoughts on The Guide to Self Publishing and/or Cerebus being used as primary texts in a college level course discussing comics or making comics? I taught a class dealing with making comics last spring and was considering using the Guide to Self Publishing as one of the texts for the class, but couldn't figure out where it could be purchased (or if it was still in print.) However, I still managed to work Cerebus into almost every lecture I gave, showing examples from the comic, and referencing the notebook pages that have been posted on AMOC.

I'm fine with anything of mine being used for educational purposes or pretty much any purposes. It's the individual's karma at stake. At essence it comes down to your own motivation. If your motivation is educating others, I think that's unimpeachable. In other words: Get thee hence unto a torrents site and be well-minded as you download Dave Sim's work.

DAVE SIM'S COLLECTED LETTERS

Daniel Callahan:

Hello. I'd like to buy the collected letters as a complete set. If you're looking for a way to sell these without up-front costs, consider Lulu.com. Lulu can be used to sell any book that's in PDF format. Speaking of which, if there's an option to buy the phonebooks online, please let me know. Thanks!

I'm going to be taking a closer look at my "old docs" to see how far along I answered the mail on computer before going back to my typewriter and to offer those, digitally, on the next Kickstarter as COLLECTED LETTERS Volume Four and then also offer Volume One and Two if I can find the digital files for those. There really is a LOT of material stored on this little laptop, I'm just not sure how interesting most of it is in a "marketable" sense.

Benjamin Hobbs:

Just wondering if it would be ok to take the PDF of the collected letters volume three and have a single copy printed for my collection. (Printed using print on demand, LULU.com or similar)
I received the PDF yesterday and am excited to read it, but I'm not excited to stare at my computer monitor while doing so. I was excited to see that the digital reward was sent out so quickly!

GO NUTS! Whoever thought computers were going to eliminate paper never tried to read anything on a computer. I also have a theory that computers are eating our pens. You notice how you can't find a pen ANYWHERE these days? The computers are jealous and eat them when we're not looking.

DIGITAL COMICS

Drew Woodworth:

Any plans to put the rest of Cerebus on Comixology with all the back matter (letters, essays, etc)? If not, why? Thanks!

Actually, I was just going through a file and found a self-addressed FedEx manifest from Shari Tischler at COMIXOLOGY with their phone number. I phoned and, no, she doesn't work there. So I explained my name was Dave Sim and I had signed with them for HIGH SOCIETY a few years ago and have never gotten paid and did they ever sell any HIGH SOCIETY? She told me she would connect me with someone. I got someone's voicemail and left a message saying all of that over again. That was Friday. And that's my story with COMIXOLOGY to date and, in fact, all "outside digital entities" to date. Thanks for your support!

CEREBUS NOSTALGIA

Jason Trimmer:

Can you believe it's been twenty years since the Spirits tour? I chaired a panel discussion at SPACE this year discussing the tour with Bob Corby, Steve Peters, Michael Neno, Max Ink, and Steve Snyder. I owe you a letter about it...

It would be helpful, I think, if you could post the COLUMBUS SPIRITS panel stuff to AMOC. It's the weird confluence in my life going on since I'm doing my BONE Commentaries as part of THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND. And I'm just at the part where Jeff is backing out of the COLUMBUS stop.

He definitely never wanted to associate with amateur and semi-pro cartoonists which always dumbfounded me. "Jeff, you were down to less than 1,000 orders on BONE No.4 when YOU came to ME for help..."

I'm not sure what the lesson is. I understand he's trying to get an event going in Columbus along the lines of his own sensibility: ELITE cartoonists.

Maybe if I'd have been like that, I would have become a millionaire. He's a millionaire isn't he?

Daryl Davis:

I've been a fan of your work for almost 40 years now. Getting old sucks, by the way... I still remember meeting you on Staten Island at a signing in 1992, where I complained about my back hurting after standing in the long line to meet you. My back still hurts, Dave, but Cerebus still brings a smile (and I still have that sketch from that signing, now hanging on my wall above a Jaka sketch from the 2012 Kickstarter...).

Staten Island '92. That would have been one of the JIM HANLEY'S UNIVERSEs I'm guessing. I always loved Jim's business card. "JIM HANLEY UNIVERSE Jim Hanley, Figurehead". I'm pretty sure the Manhattan signing was the one where someone followed me outside for my smoke break and then asked me to sign the butt for him when I was done. Which I did. That was a "first and only".

Michael Canich:

long-winded dave sim story: in the late 80s/early 90s i used to send dave my crappy little zines. he was always seemingly enthusiastic about receiving them, was always supportive and had nice things to say. dave even printed me twice in cerebus, once as a single page, and went even so far to print 18 pages of my 24 hour comic. he always responded to my letters, even when i probably had no idea what i was talking about, or nothing particularly interesting to say. 

anyway, at some point (early 90s?) dave was on one of the tours, he stopped off at dave's comics in royal oak, MI and i stood in line for 2 hours to meet him. when i eventually approached the table, i introduced myself and he remembered me (i think i had stopped doing the zines at this point). i said, "dave, i don't want anything from you, i just want to shake your hand." dave seemed confused by this, since i waited in line, and insisted that i walk away with something. he drew a cerebus head in one of the comics and wrote: TO THE CANICH UNIT - PUBLISH OR PERISH!

i can't think of a more generous comic professional that i've encountered than dave sim. i don't think any of that work i sent dave was very good, but dave's insistent "never give up!" cheerleading kept me going for awhile. i stopped drawing for many years, and have only recently started getting stuff printed again. 

not a particularly cohesive tale there, i know. but i just wanted to throw it out there.

 

Oh, hey! Michael! Hi! See, they were never "crappy little zines" to me. I can picture your work clearly because you were really prolific. Everyone who sent me their work, it was always extremely idiosyncratic, interesting stuff. More about THEM and THEIR worldview than really polished, packaged corporate stuff could ever hope to be. I'd turn out to be their "audience of one". Even better.

My favourite story from the Dave's Comics signing was a guy who worked behind the counter who was taking a break and sat on a chair slightly behind me, staring at this long line of guys going straight through the shop and out the front door.

"Yeah, I'm really just in comics for the chicks" he sighed.

I couldn't stop laughing.

Bill Ritter:

"i can't think of a more generous comic professional that i've encountered than dave sim." I'll second that.

True story: Back in earlish/mid-2k there was a NY City Yahoo/Cerebus club meet up. Ended up being, maybe 10 or so folks. Dinner and chat was suggested, so we walked to close by diner/burger joint. 1 of the group didn't order, and when pressed admitted as doing the NY con on-the-cheap and didn't really want to spend the $15 or so bucks. Dave forced him to order and picked up his tab. Did so real subtle - I only was aware because I was next to the kid and heard the conversation.

The couple other times I've met Dave, at conventions in the 90s, he was generous with every fan. Conversation, sketches, hand shakes... And obviously he has supported the medium's creators in a seemingly endless number of ways.

Yeah it's another one of those aspects which make my life much easier than a Famous Person's. Back when I used to go out in public, I would come up with things like proposing a meet-up with the Yahoos in the NYC hotel lobby (the old Penn Station Hotel: Pennsylvania 6-5000). Absolutely NO danger of more than five people showing up. Make it the LOBBY just to be sure but... okay, here's my entire NYC fan base: garcon! Table for five. Even calling that "famous" is a stretch.

Jay O'Leary:

I first saw the aardvark in I wanna say a spawn and the whole comic was black and white. I was so amazed and stoked my mind was blown. I don't know why it stayed in my memory so much and I hope it is real. I saw the last kick starter and it all flooded back to me, all the memories I had as a teen. now I am taking a crack at the whole comic book art thing and man Dave this stuff is harder than it looks. I take my hat off to you and am honored to have the last project and this one and hopefully more to come. 

I think PART of SPAWN 10 was in black and white. I still have to give Todd major points for having the guts to tell Dave Sim, "You can write WHATEVER you want. Twenty pages of Spawny sittin' on the toilet, if you want, and I'll draw it."

Larry MUST have warned him that if ANYone would take him literally, I would.

Good luck with your tattoos and your comix. You're right! They sure don't draw themselves, do they?

Michael Hunt:

In the pre-kickstarter days when you were offering Cerebus and Jaka (!) head sketches on ebay I was fortunate enough to acquire a few. As I am sure you remember they were ball-point pen sketches on A-V stationary. All of them were done with so much more care and detail than I had expected they would be, but two of them particularity stand out. 

The Jaka sketch is simply beautiful, with her eyes just peering out from under her almost-too-long bangs and her long hair spilling over the shoulders of her flower-print blouse. Just beautiful. Thank you for that.

The other is Cerebus as Cerberus. When I requested it I did mention that I thought it might well count as three Cerebus head sketches and therefore outside the parameters of what was then being offered and so explained that anything you wanted to sketch would be fine by me if that was indeed the case. What I received was Cerebus as Cerberus as I had requested with the addition of the three heads being Cerebus as each of the Three Wise Fellows, with Loshie, Moshie, and Koshie saying, "Cerebus as Cerebus! What a cheesy way to get three head sketches for the price of but one. Nyuck nyuck nyuck!" I really would have been pleased with anything, but that was extraordinarily generous of you. Thank you. So, to my question: Has anyone else asked for Cerebus as Cerberus?

Not as far as I remember. But then I just had the embarrassing situation in Leamington of someone finding a double cover CEREBUS issue and me telling them it was the first one I had seen. And then Glenn Storrie -- who was there -- telling me that he had one. And I had signed it for him. Twice.

THE CEREBUS ARCHIVE PORTFOLIOS

Jason Trimmer:

Congratulations on another successful Kickstarter campaign. I'm looking forward to reading your commentaries on these pages. For CAN 1 and 2, your notes were focused on analyzing the artwork, and you could be a little rough on your younger self. For these pages, are you finding more to appreciate in the artwork, or is there always something to critique? Either way, I enjoy reading them and think they are quite valuable to other aspiring (and professional) comic artists. 

To be honest, I look at the pages and just write about what I actually remember. So THIS time, that was Ger and I staying at the Hilton Hotel in Gainesville, Florida for a month. That was the predominant memory so that was what I talked about. It's a pretty mentally arduous process -- basically re-living January 1986 -- because I live alone and without outside stimuli. I zone out for however many hours it takes to write it and I'm 30 and zone back in and I'm 60. Whether I'm talking about the art or my personal life.

Jay O'Leary:

Well I just wanted to thank you again for a huge memory I get to own a piece of the art that made it and taking the time to talk with us. as an artist it means alot to see that people I look up to and would only dream of achieving what they have are still human. thank you for letting me help archive your work for others to enjoy for years to come. or as long as they still print things on paper. I'm old school no computers for me but every one in the industry gives me a bad time for that but I think it gives character. good luck and see ya in a couple months for the fifth archive sad I missed the first two.

Diamond definitely has all of the UNsigned CEREBUS ARCHIVES in stock. One of the things I have to get organized is including the "back issues" in the next PREVIEWS ad, with the order codes. The plan is to keep them always in print because we've had a LOT of late arrival CEREBUS fans wanting to get caught up. It just doesn't LOOK like an "always in print" item.

Good luck with your own campaign. If I knew how this worked, I'd pledge for yours as well -- and I hope some folks here will take up the slack for me.

Larry Wooten:

I wanted to ask if you were planning to release the other pages of Selling Insurance as future bonus prints?

We're sort of at the mercy of what's available based on what people have given Sean for the CEREBUS ART DRAGNET. The only complete EPIC story in the Cerebus Archive is "The Girl Next Door". I'm hesitant to put a complete story up because people then have to decide whether to make a 3-print pledge. That seems even more "fan-cruel" than the Bonus Prints themselves.

Andrew Lohmann:

I was thinking about using my head sketch balance to get the head sketch for this Archive, but am just realizing that it is not available. Are the head sketches nixed for the remainder of the Archives?

The head sketches ARE nixed for the foreseeable future. If I can get my right wrist in shape for ANY kind of drawing -- either through treatment or surgery or just letting it rest and heal for a year or two -- that drawing is going to be done on THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND. Sorry about that -- and thanks for your support!

Michael Ragiel:

I liked the business size card that came as a surprise added bonus in the CAN1 with " This card has been issued to one of the two hundred and sixty-one people helping keep a dead aardvark on life support in May of 2014". There was no mention in the last two CAN's and this current one, but any chance of resurrecting the business like card? I can't remember if it was just for only the first Kickstarter campaign.

I had forgotten that! That's actually a good idea. Another YOU ARE HERE for the folks still standing. HERE'S HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IN YOUR CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER FOUR vicinity. With the card getting darker or lighter depending on how many more or fewer people there are.

Michael Grabowski:

Greetings, Dave. Best of success to you today in communicating with us and, God willing, seeing the backer total and pledged amount rise. I wish I could participate more but I'm saving pennies for CAN5. In the meantime, I wonder if a good digital reward to offer in the future would be pdf editions of just your commentaries on the prints? I would love to read up on that history even if I generally cannot afford the portfolios.

I appreciate your good wishes. I'm really trying to avoid duplicating any of the material on these Kickstarters. That would just open the door to THE COLLECTED CEREBUS ARCHIVE MAMMOTH HARDCOVER book. Of course there's nothing to prevent a generous CEREBUS fan from scanning the commentary and sending it to you. Everyone is at different stages in their financial well-being as we go along. If you haven't got the bucks and you can find a way to get the material for free in the meantime I have no problem with that.

Matt Dow:

Question, How much would it cost to get a digital copy of a specific page from the Archive? Meaning, how much to have Sandeep scan, and Sean and the Good Doctor to "fix" a page from much later in the series? Or is this a "can of worms too far"?

Not out of the range of possibilities but WAY DOWN THE LINE when everything has been scanned and inventoried and WILDLY EXPENSIVE because of the aggravation for all concerned. The Feel-Bad Hit Movie of 2015! A CAN OF WORMS TOO FAR!

Michael Hunt:

Have you seen any of the Pen & Ink series from BOOM Studios? They are oversize (11 x 17) reprints of original black and white art from issues of selected series. They have heavy stock covers, the interior art is smaller than 11 x 17 to make room for commentary from the artist(s) along the bottom of the pages, run 48 pages, and retail at $14.99. Image also recently published a 32-page black and white 17 x 11 reprint of Black Science #1. At $19.99 retail it was not quite as nice a package as the BOOM Studio stuff, but still very very pretty to look at. I mention them as a possible revenue stream for you going forward. I know I would pay $19.99 for a artist edition of any single issue of Cerebus. With IDW's experience publishing artists editions it seems like a natural fit. If you would like to "test drive" one then let me know and I'll send one to you.

No, I haven't seen them. My gut instinct tells me to stick with this CEREBUS ARCHIVE Kickstarter format -- and branch out into GoFundMe with "always available" digital material to finance the scanning side the the restoration process. Just as there's "only one taxpayer", there's only one CEREBUS fan and I'm trying very, very hard not to tax their CEREBUS budgets too heavily -- while keeping all of the necessary "End of Life" preparations moving forward. The biggest problem would be shipping -- either selling them individually or selling them through IDW or another publisher. CEREBUS ARCHIVE seems to be the Goldilocks spot, triangulating the size of the audience, average budget and real-world realities of how much it costs to move stuff around in 2015. That could change.

Michael Hunt:

I also am fortunate enough to have the original unpublished art of JFK and Caroline you did for Glamourpuss. Would like to offer this as a bonus print? Please let me know and I will scan it and get the file to you.

Not sure if it would be a good bonus print, but from a "completist" standpoint, it would be nice to have in the Cerebus Archive. So, yes, THANK YOU! You can send it to Sean at the CEREBUS ART DRAGNET address!

Al Roney:

Super Happy to back CAN4 and best of luck with the restoration project, your hand and everything else going on. Anyway, during one of your vids I noticed the framed cover of Church and State Volume 1 in the background. Is there a chance that it, or any of the other phone-book covers, will be available as a Bonus print, standalone - anything? They'd look spectacular on the walls of my Man Cave!

All of the oversized -- larger than 11x17 -- pieces WHEN they're offered, will be offered as MegaDigital Prints. We called them Macro Prints here, but Mega is a better descriptor because of the megabytes size of them. Using your example of the JAKA'S STORY 114 or trade paperback cover. Scanned at 600 dpi, you don't have to limit yourself to "size as". How big is your wall? You could probably get it printed 2 ft by 3 ft at FedEx Kinko's on particle board for about $50.

See, that's what I mean. If we were to get them done at Kinko's here and then package them and mail them it would probably be a base cost of $175 - $200. With only a TINY FRACTION of that going to profit/restoration money. Bad use of YOUR limited funds. With a digital print, there's no overhead. You can order it, e-mail it to FedEx Kinko's in your town and they'll probably turn it around overnight or in an hour or two if they aren't busy.

We're looking at the two-page spreads, trade paperback covers, SIX DEADLY SINS plates, Silverspoon CBG pages. My HOWARD THE DUCK inside front cover.

Exhaustive selection and no overhead. As Lord Julius said, "You have to admit, it's an attractive combination."

CEREBUS MERCHANDISE

Benjamin Hobbs:

Just caught up on this weeks youtube/AMOC update. Several years ago I was one of those rare individuals that owned a Cerebus shirt. (He doesn't love you, he just wants all your money) [still available from Graphitti Designs] I wore it until there were holes in it. I considered buying a new one, but I found the shirt resulted in WAY too many conversations with stoned Best Buy employees about "that guy who was in Spawn."

Which brings me to another point. There's an untapped audience to target for future campaigns. Stoners-who-work-in-retail-who-remember-Cerebus-from-that-one-time-he-was-in-Spawn. The tagline could be "Help restore the Spawn spin-off series that was SO ahead of it's time that it premiered 15 years before Spawn!" I think it would work. But it MIGHT be too much of a niche audience.

It's really more of a joke in that way. I could picture doing a joke t-shirt: a little SPAWN 10 cover inset with DUDE! OVER 20 YEARS AGO! YOU'RE SCARING ME! Or you could do an OLD CEREBUS with "OLD FART" written over him. But who is going to buy and/or wear it? Wouldn't it be scary if Jay O'Leary is the ACTUAL GUY you were talking about? The seriously weird confluences that are going on, it wouldn't surprise me in the least!

Drew Woodworth:

I had one of those Cerebus T-shirts, as well. I miss it, but would totally buy a new Cerebus t-shirt if one was available. Crazy idea and probably a logistical nightmare, but what if dedicated Cerebus fans set up as Aardvark-Vanaheim at local cons and sold tpb's, merchandise, etc? The con scene seems to be thriving.

You know, I think with all the weird confluences going on you might have hit on one of the vectors that seems to be taking shape now that Wes Hagen of THE COMIC BOOK WAREHOUSE here in town has agreed to take the entire Recker Distribution inventory off A-Vs hands. The "CEREBUS Underground Railroad" for real.

What's the BASE COST for a "long box" of "one of each"? The comics are free but what does it cost to bag and board them and the long box itself? Wes is guessing around $30. Well, okay what can we charge CEREBUS fans for a signed and numbered decorated, shrink-wrapped long box that Wes takes to a convention he's already going to in his van? $50?

All YOU have to do is go to the Con and pick up your CEREBOX.

My mind is a playground.

Barry Deutsch:

In my experience, it's difficult to make money selling comics at comic-cons nowadays. I can sell about 50 graphic novels at a convention, and that's pretty good for a cartoonist at my level - but even so, it's often not enough to cover the cost of (table at con + travel expenses + lodging). Plus, there are the inevitable "what the hell happened" conventions at which sales are low for no discernible reason, so that's a loss you have to cover. And airlines charge for checked baggage nowadays, so getting materials to and from the con costs more than it used to. Plus, Cerebus fans tabling at cons won't have Dave as a draw.

The people making money at cons today are mostly there, not to sell comics, but to sell prints. Prints cost very little to make or to transport compared to comic books, and the successful print makers do very well at cons. But it's a highly competitive field - I went to ComiKaze in LA, and there were many dozens of people there tabling with their prints (And relatively few people there with their own comic books). The printmakers who do best generally specialize in prints of the currently popular TV and movie characters are.

Of course, it's much easier to make money going to a local con, since then you don't have to pay for airfare or lodgings.

Duly noted.

I was up half the night last night designing the FREE CEREBUS colour flier for Wes which will be discussed in next week's Update. I'm picturing local CEREBUS volunteers pitching the FREE COMIC BOOKS! angle using the flier at conventions. That is, not being set up THEMSELVES, but basically just directing people (waiting in line to get in?) to the FREE COMIC BOOKS! at the COMIC BOOK WAREHOUSE booth. CEREBUS THE WORLD'S LONGEST GRAPHIC NOVEL being a secondary consideration behind FREE COMIC BOOKS! And handing out free comic books. Free BAGGED AND BOARDED comic books.

If you've got 40,000 FREE COMIC BOOKS, you can afford to throw them around a bit. And, at the show, you'd only have, say, 500 free comic books. When they're gone, they're gone. But, presumably they're going home with 50 or 60 people who never heard of them.

Still working on it, mentally. As we all are. Wes is dropping by Leamington on his way back from the Windsor comic show next week to see EXACTLY what this entails.

Barry Deutsch:

Actually, if it's free comic books, then many cons have a table for things people are giving away for free. You don't have to pay anything to use it, and given the obvious high quality of Cerebus compared to most of what's out there, I'm sure people would pick up copies. So if the idea is to give comics away and find new readers, that might be a fruitful approach to experiment with.

Yes, but we're trying to TRIANGULATE -- to get people TO the COMIC BOOK WAREHOUSE booth, not just to the "free stuff" table. The same as I don't think we want the fliers ON the "free stuff" table. We want people -- CEREBUS enthusiasts, preferably -- handing people FREE COMIC BOOKS fliers (and a free comic book) and pointing out the COMIC BOOK WAREHOUSE booth. RIGHT THERE! "Greatest comic ever done in my opinion -- FREE! Right at that booth!"

One of the questions is "what do we insert behind the backing board" that promotes the CEREBUS trades, cerebusdownloads.com and Wes' retail warehouse outlet?

THE WEDDING PRESENT

Lee Thacker:

No questions from me, but I wanted to wish you all the best for a hopeful full recovery of your drawing arm, the completion of TSDOAR, the continuation of Cerebus Archive editions and the restoration of (for my money) the best comic book series of all time. Ooh - I just thought of a question (although I think it's been asked before) Any plans to put all of the Cerebus stories not published in the comic into a handy 'gatherum' book? Oh, and EVEN numbers are WAY better than ODD numbers!!

Another Celebrity Cartoonist! I always find it reassuring when you send me TALES FROM THE WEDDING PRESENT [Lee does the official comic book for the band of that name in the UK] material because it always seems that the band is at the same level in music that I am in comics. Just famous enough to be called "famous" but always just "hanging on by their fingernails". How IS the band doing and how is your relationship with the band these days?

The only real plan right now is to get the 6,000 pages scanned and restored and try to keep everything in print. When you're juggling 16 chainsaws the last thing you should be thinking about is how to get another chainsaw in the air. :)

Lee Thacker:

Good point regarding the chainsaws metaphor. To answer your questions, the band have been very busy this year, playing 25 gigs (so far), appearing on Radio 6, releasing a well received album and two comic books! They're not exactly 'hanging on by their fingernails' but are certainly not in the same 'fame bracket' as, say, The Rolling Stones! I'm six pages away (just need to get the inking done) from completing issue 9 - available mid December all being well. I've managed to continue to get three issues completed each year and I'll send you the next batch of three as soon as issue 9 is completed.

How old are the members of WEDDING PRESENT getting to be? What's that like -- getting to that age and NOT having the Rolling Stones money?

Lee Thacker:

David Gedge is the only remaining member of the original band and he's now 55 years old. He's always written all of the songs and retains the rights to all of the recordings. He now runs a 'cottage industry' style set up, selling records and merchandise at gigs and on a website. They don't have the wealth of The Rolling Stones but I think they're doing okay financially. I've never discussed money with David - he tends to 'pay' me with new records, putting me on guest list for gigs (plus 1 for Kirstie!) and merchandise. They still have a dedicated fan base all over the world, mostly made up of balding forty-somethings and their wives, although a lot of their teenage children are also Wedding Present fans! The line-up has changed many times over the past 30 years and the other members are considerably younger than David.

This will probably only be of interest to Dave and Jason, but I thought I should clarify how David Gedge ‘pays’ me for my comics work. As I said, I can request any of The Wedding Present records/merchandise and David puts me on the guest list for any shows I want to attend. However, all profits from the comics are split three ways: David, me and Terry (who co-writes the stories and came up with the idea). There’s no written contract. The whole venture is based on friendship and trust and David is a very trustworthy fellow, completely removed from your regular ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ star. He chats to fans before and after gigs too. We currently print 250 copies of each comic and we each get paid when ALL of the comics are sold out. So far, only issue 1 has sold out (we did a print run of 500 for that one) so at some point I should get a modest sum for the rest of the issues. David pays the printing costs and schleps them around the world to sell at gigs. I’ve also designed a few t-shirts for the band and created the artwork for their most recent album (under the name of David’s ‘other’ band ‘Cinerama’).

It's a very interesting way of doing a comic book promoting a rock band. It would seem to me worth documenting how you and David Gedge have this set up and how you arrived at that way of doing it -- pitfalls/what works/what doesn't -- and making it available to other cartoonists and bands as a template. Eliminating the need to reinvent the wheel. Virtually ALL bands are heavily reliant on the "merch" to keep going these days.

I think you should also do well out of my "Hail and Farewell, Mary" pass to try to help self-publishers. An AUTOMATIC WINNOWING system that separates the wheat from the chaff. You're on schedule and have been for three years. That puts you head and shoulders above just about every self-publisher.

Lee Thacker:

Very simply, David Gedge asked me if I’d be interested in doing it. I’d contributed to a fanzine the band published in the late 80s/early 90s called ‘Invasion of The Wedding Present’. The other two main contributors to the ‘Invasion of The Wedding Present’ fanzine (who were WAY better cartoonists than I was at the time) were also approached about illustrating some stories for TFTWP in 2011 with the idea being that the comic would be illustrated by a range of different artists. I think only one of them managed to turn in a story in the time it took me to illustrate three or four so it became clear pretty quickly that I was going to be the sole illustrator of the comic. I thought we’d just publish one issue and that would be it, but I’m currently working on the tenth issue!! 

‘One For Sorrow’ (my 800 page magnum opus) was something I worked on in complete obscurity/isolation for four years. Self promotion time! ‘One For Sorrow’ is still available here. I was in my early thirties and somehow managed to produce 200 pages of comics, record two albums’ worth of my own musical compositions, hold down a full time job, party every weekend and stay in a serious relationship (22 years and counting) with my beloved Kirstie Wilson. Every year for the four years it took to complete, I followed much of the ‘Cerebus Guide to Self Publishing’ advice, mostly the discipline of using a calendar to record my daily output of finished pages. I even put completed pages up on my bedroom/studio wall as they were completed. I still use this 'timeline template' for creating comics.

Now I’m in my late forties and it’s as much as I can do to complete 60 pages of comics a year, although ‘Tales From The Wedding Present’ has a lot more panels per page and is more challenging in terms of drawing ‘real’ people and locations. I also have to scan the artwork, create the covers, do the digital lettering, pdfs and other boring mechanical stuff myself. I annually set a self-imposed deadline for myself for each issue, giving myself 4 months to complete each issue and I’ve been trying (and succeeding so far!) to stick to April, August and December releases. 

I’m fortunate enough to a) get 13 weeks of holiday time a year (I’m a primary school teacher) b) have a very supportive girlfriend and c) no children (‘that I’m aware of’ – one of my favourite Dave Sim quotes).

Yes, even as I was urging you to consider a more general "how to cartoon for a rock band" thing, it seems to me that it's a pretty unique circumstance in a lot of ways: most particularly your productivity. It's really true that clocks and calendars work the best of all. I really didn't make any headway until I started writing what I got done that day in the little square on my calendar. 

Something that definitely works is doing a panel a day. I mean, how hopeless as a cartoonist are you if you can't do ONE. PANEL. a day. Steve Peters did a bunch of work that way, marking the date in the corner of each panel to make SURE he stuck with it -- or, at least, had numerical evidence when he "missed".

I'm definitely thinking of doing that with SDOAR IF I'm ever able to draw again.

The fanzine you're talking about was modelled on the old EC covers (or at least #1 was). Did David Gedge KNOW what EC was? Was he an actual comics fan or did a comic book just seem to him like a good, general, pop cultural idea to associate with the band?

It sounds as if Kirstie is a big part of making it work as well. You have to SHARE a cartoonist with his work to a far greater extent than most wives/girlfriends have to SHARE their husbands/boyfriends with "outside entities". Jack Kirby is Jack Kirby in a lot of ways because he spent virtually all of his marriage at the drawing board -- with Roz's blessing.

Oh, and I still consider ONE FOR SORROW to be THE best "first-time" semi-pro graphic novel EVER!

Lee Thacker:

I definitely consider Kirstie to be my own 'Roz', although I'm NOWHERE near as talented/prolific as Jack Kirby (obviously!) 

David Gedge has always been a comic book fan as far as I know. I don't know if he was into the EC comics (I discovered them quite late in life myself too, but the IDW Wally Wood Artist's Edition is one of my most prized possessions. I'm determined to draw a page for one of TFTWP issue based on his '22 panels that always work') , but he was definitely a devout follower of the Lee/Ditko era Spider-Man and the Lee/Kirby FF, as well as DC superhero comics from around the same time. 

Thank you so much for your kind comments (and your support when it was first released back when the earth was still cooling) about 'One For Sorrow'. 200+ copies sold and counting... :)

RELIGION

John Scrudder:

...What is YOUR paradise after the curtains fall? 

I really, really don't think about Paradise, John. I think it exists but that we're such simplistic beings, trying to explain Paradise or show it to us would be as difficult as explaining to a caterpillar what a butterfly is or what it would be like to be one.

Also, I would speculate that it's a long, long ways away. Even if you're one of the "2 out of 100" neutrinos/souls that manages to escape the hydrogen/helium duality of physical incarnation and head back to the site of the Big Bang -- "from God we came out and to God we are returning" as it says in the Koran -- just imagine the number of solar systems/stars/planets between here and there "as the crow flies". And even travelling faster than the speed of light, each of them is millions of light years away. Your neutrino journey is still going to take you millions of years to travel and you will see The Next Star right up ahead for a good chunk of those millions of years.

Do you do a fly-past?

Or do you make a pit stop? Essentially having millions of years to choose: giving up your hard-won neutrino state and physically incarnating again and taking the risk of being trapped by bad decision-making into the hydrogen/helium duality all over again. With no guarantee you'll come back out.

The original Koine Greek specifically identifies the Johannine Jesus as "the one who IS COMING into the world" -- a very different meaning from the usual translation "HAS COME into the world". I wondered if that's who Jesus was: a very, very advanced neutrino presence from a different solar system who elected to make a pit stop here and incarnated as the Son of God, or son of God (depending on your system of belief) at God's behest. And that the physical incarnation of "immigrant" neutrinos is on a more exalted plane than those of us who just "hatch out" from the souls that were "on board" the earth when we got all the way out here.

I've got enough on my plate praying five times a day, fasting, reading scripture aloud and working 12 hours a day. If it leads somewhere, great! If all I can do is atone for the first 40 years of my life with the next 40 (20 so far and counting), break even and really not have much to show for it. Well, God's will be done!

John Scrudder:

What is your position on the Syrian refugees and this whole terrorist attack on Paris...

Re: the Paris attacks. They believe that they're doing the will of God. I'm not God so I couldn't tell you if they are or not. I don't listen to music or drink myself and I advocate not doing so but that's all I do. For all I know that's being "wimpy" in the defence of God.

I do think that everyone who went to the Eagles of Death Metal concert to prove just how HARD. CORE. they are got a major lesson in what REAL. HARD. CORE. is. Eagles of death metal? I've got your eagles of death metal right here. Sorry if that's insensitive. How sensitive is Death Metal?

Re: the refugee thing, I don't know. Our new prime minister is admitting 25,000 before the end of the year. It reminded me of Chester Brown after 9/11 saying that he thought we should wait and see if they do something like that again instead of overreacting. We have to accept that there are people who think that's a logical way forward. If the West DOESN'T do anything about it, in a way it's very...Christian. Turn the other cheek. Which would be the Most Christian thing the society formerly known as Christendom has done in a long while.

All of the G7 leaders except for Cameron are pacifists by nature, I think.

John Scrudder:

What do you think the short term affect and long term affect would be if we found out religion (all of it) were completely false. What if we didn't have these people 'fighting for the cause' What if we didn't have nations that have been warring for thousands of years because of religious beliefs. I feel, in a way, that perhaps we would all be better off without religion. The questions of the great unknown would remain the same. So what's the problem? Would you stop trying to be a better person if you no longer believed in God. I'm trying to be a better person and I'm not putting my faith in the hands of a deity in the great beyond. What a F----d up world we live in.

We're only partway through. God, I think, created all this to allow us to explore ALL of the possibilities. I think we're the rebel spirits that couldn't get away from God fast enough because we were convinced we could do SOOOOOOO much better than He could and he engineered a way -- the Big Bang -- to get us all the way out here and prove to ourselves that we're wrong.

He was and is right, I think.

We miss the point that we don't know what happens when we die. God does know. For all we know those people who died in Paris are ecstatic with their reward because they died Making A Point that He knew needed to be made. "In my Father's house are many mansions."

Just consider the world that he created for you as an atheist KNOWING you would be an atheist. All the pleasures he's given you to enjoy knowing you would turn your back on him. The word in Koine Greek for "God's grace" translates more directly as "undeserved kindness".

As it says in the Koran, "God will not wrong you so much as the husk on a dates stone."

God allows things like Paris to happen as a warning, I think -- "Better this, now, then what would come later if this DIDN'T happen." If Paris is the "soft option" then things are getting Really. Hard.

I'd say have a little sympathy for an Omnipotent Being who knows He's right and still has to watch His creations suffer AT THEIR OWN HANDS because they just won't TRUST Him. Nothing He can do.

THAT'S A WRAP!

"Thus endeth the experiment in going out in public".

I think we need to have honest exchanges of viewpoint and I don't see that in society. Too much isn't working to keep acting as if doing everything the same way IS going to work.

But, I was thrown out of society so anything I say is completely beside the point.

That's a wrap! Drive safely everyone! 

Dave Sim's previous Kickstarter Q&As can be found here: CAN1 and CAN2.

Dave Sim's Letters: Tom Spurgeon

22 September 04

Hi Tom,

Well, yes, of course I remember you. I only try to create the impression that the Comics Journal is completely forgettable. Obviously that wasn't the case with your tenure. You did leave a mark in the comic-book field to the extent that when I saw the return address, I thought right away, "Not THE Tom Spurgeon." And what a wonderful and pleasant surprise your Cerebus Archive testimonial letter was. Thank you.

I'm still having fun with Gary [Groth]. Asked him what the Journal's policy on printing outtakes from past interviews is (potentially for Following Cerebus). He said they would withhold permission in case they want to do a Comics Library Volume sometime. A Comics Library Volume devoted to whom? (I asked, completely disingenuously) The last time I checked there were a hundred guys in line ahead of me, assuming that I'm #101 on the Top Comics of All Time right after Hal Foster. Followed that up by asking if I should negotiate directly with you and Kim for outtakes from the interviews that you did with me, or does he consider the interviews work-made-for-hire? Not a word out of him since and that was weeks ago.

As Charlie Brown famously remarked, "I get my laughs."

Enjoy your comic book and thanks again.

Sincerely,
Dave Sim

Tom Spurgeon has been winning awards as The Comics Reporter since 2004 and was previously editor of The Comics Journal between 1994 and 1999, conducting a long interview with Dave Sim which ran in The Comics Journal #184/192 in February/December 1996. This  letter was reprinted in Dave Sim's Collected Letters Vol 3 (2015).

Weekly Update #116: Dave's Christmas Card Recap

Did you send Dave a Christmas card? Well, he's been sick so he couldn't send a thank you note, but here he takes a look at all the very nice people who sent him very nice cards.

Je Suis Charlie

Charlie Hebdo (14 January 2015):

Muhammad holds a sign saying Je Suis Charlie and the caption reads "All is forgiven".

On 7 January 2015 five Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were assassinated in a terrorist attack in Paris: 

Cabu, Wolinski, Charb, Tignous & Philippe Honore

In total, 17 people were victims of the attacks in Paris between 7-9 January 2015.