LSD DAY II

DAVE SIM:
The fullest description of "the events of May June 1979" is in the DIALOGUE: FROM HELL with Alan Moore.  Shulgan's version is pretty much what you would expect from a crack-head "pulling a cheque" appealing to a mainstream Toronto audience.

Actually, I made a math error:  the original plan had been to do 156 bi-monthly issues, concluding in  2003.  When I decided to go monthly, that got revised to 300 issues ending in 2003.  It was (I'm not sure how many) years later that I figured out the actual date was March, 2004. VERY disheartening.

I had inferred that there would be a LOT of Ground Zero Literature being produced, timed to conclude with January 1, 2000 -- had inferred, in fact, that a LOT of it was already being produced -- and that CEREBUS would be "one of many" which would "come to light" in the late 1990s.  (I think Prince sensed the same thing when he did "Party Like It's 1999": and turned out to be the only person besides me who was thinking about it).  That is, that there would be a GZL metaphysical roller derby -- all of us becoming aware of each other late in the day and charging for the same spot -- and I had decided that I wanted to avoid being part of that.  I wasn't sure how "far past" the date it was necessary to go to avoid whatever it was that I sensed on the horizon.

GZL turned out to be non-existant.  Had I known that, I would have timed the ending of CEREBUS for January, 2000.

I do think I was right in anticipating the metaphysical realities.  But, instead, they took the form of a metaphysical "head fake" --  the Y2K computer glitch which was going to bring about a worldwide
apocalypse -- and the actual Watershed Millennial Moment -- 9/11.

It wasn't I don't think Owsley's Acid that we were doing by the 1970s.  The "speed" revolution was already engulfing the remains of the pot and acid "all you need is love" context.  If it was the 1970s and it was a pill and a speed freak manufactured it, it was going to have a lot of speed in it. Speed freaks are like ketchup junkies who put ketchup on everything.  "No drug can't be exponentially improved with a generous helping of amphetamines."

That was more my experience than anything that could be described as hallucinogenic.  REALLY awake.  I pencilled a bunch of pages of CEREBUS No.11 (I was going to make note of the pages and forgot -- I'll try to remember for tomorrow) and was definitely "seeing differently".  I was TIGHT-pencilling for one thing which I tended not to do since I was inking the book myself.  It was an impressive pile of pages until I "came down" and thought, "Well, yeah, but they aren't FINISHED. They're just PENCILLED.  I still have to LETTER and INK and TONE them."  I went from perceiving myself as having done several days' work in a few hours to recognizing that I had probably done about a day's work...in a day.  Except the day had been all night.

I reverted to my "page a day" standard:  if you finish the page, you have a page done.  Anything else and you're just kidding yourself as most semi-pro guys do.  "I GOT FOUR PAGES PENCILLED IN ONE DAY!"  How long ago was that?  "About a week!"  "So, you pencil a page every two days."  "NO WAY!  FOUR PAGES IN ONE DAY!"

Seeing "mothers and daughters" as a primary division in the nature of Reality, arguably, came out of the acid experience, because I was already embarked upon creating as plausible a matriarchy as I could. I realized that I needed a term for "daughter: ????" that was an equivalent of "mother: matriarchy".

I think acid helped me to "think outside the box", but I was perceiving it the way the Beatles had: a source of enlightenment.  A higher state of being.  A higher consciousness.

I DID experience that for the first time fasting in Ramadan.  "Oh, so THIS was what I was looking for."

The average North American is going to opt for acid in that "either/or" circumstance, I think.

Dave Sim's John Funk Update 3/9/16

"Prepare Detailed Portfolio Order List" is at the top of the agenda:  slated for Mar 1 through Mar 5, John reports that he's 35% of the way through.  So, officially, he's four days behind on the REVISED schedule IF he gets that the other 65% done today.

So, hypothetical Real Time (he MIGHT be able to make up ground elsewhere) we're now looking at April 19 as the earliest possible full completion date.

I'll try to do this every time I get an updated report from John: project a NEW completion date.

Back Spasm!

Cerebus #264 (March 2001)

Art by Dave Sim

Dave Sim's John Funk Daily Update

Got a fax from John indicating some progress.  GREAT!  I'll try to cross-reference his target dates with the dates when I don't hear from him, so we can keep track of what SHOULD be done on that day.

Sandeep's Project is at the "crossing the t's" and "dotting the i's" stage.  When I start talking about the individual CEREBUS pictures involved, you'll know we're actually in "countdown" mode.

Sim's LSD Breakthrough

Cerebus Vol 9: Reads (1994)

Original art for cover detail

 Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

CHRISTOPHER SHULGAN:
(from Saturday Night magazine, November 2003)

...Sim's breakthrough came via a path melodramatically retro enough to be a cliche. One day, shortly after Sim had been invited to appear at a comics convention in the eastern United States, an acquaintance gave him four or five hits of LSD. As a heavy marijuana smoker, Sim was not uncomfortable with drug use. "I had always done Cerebus stoned," he recalled, years later. "I did everything stoned." Curious about how the acid would affect his work and anxious for a release from the anxiety brought on by the impending public appearance, Sim took the drug, He liked the perspective it gave him. His work seemed effortless. When the acid's effects faded, he swallowed another tab. That first day on LSD turned into two, then three. His behaviour began to alarm his wife [Deni Loubert]. With the comics convention only weeks away, Loubert heard Sim speaking to people who didn't exist. After days cycling through moods of apoplectic rage and odd passivity, Sim found himself in the psychiatric ward of Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital. (It was Loubert who had had him hospitalized.)

Sim came to realize he had experienced a breakdown brought on by a combination of stress and LSD. When he realized the hospital couldn't hold him against his will, he left. Soon after, the ideas and inspiration generated during the acid trip coalesced into a creative epiphany that spawned his life's work: he would use Cerebus to tell the story of a life. Unlike Peter Parker or Clark Kent, Sim's aardvark would age. He'd change jobs and girlfriends, suffer setbacks, grow wise. And at the end of the run, the main character would die.

How would Sim know when to end it? The most celebrated long run by a single creative team was the 102 consecutive issues that writer Stan Lee and artist lack Kirby created for Mavel Comics' Fantastic Four, and Superman, which had had many different artists and writers through the years, had passed the mark of 300 issues a few years before. By the time he got to the convention, Sim was telling people about the grand vision he had for the story of Cerebus, which, he said, would not end until he was in his late 40s. Later in 1979, sales were high enough to warrant moving to a monthly publishing schedule, and Sim became more specific about his goal.

The story of Cerebus would last 300 issues, he said, And it would finish in March 2004...

(Submitted by Paul Slade. Thanks!)

Damian vs. Seiler Sat 5 Mar

DAVE SIM:
I've always been an advocate of pluralism as a societal given -- and certainly have always found it more than a little weird when I find myself having to explain the concept of pluralism to a grown-up and even weirder when I see myself "drawing a blank" in doing so (most famously when visiting Jeff Smith  back in '93 -- see BONE COMMENTARIES now on Patreon).

I think Jeff S. went "over the edge" throwing  the "disabled card" in the discussion about Charles Krauthammer.  WAY stretching a point to make "armchair" into an insult.  But, then, I really dislike "identity politics" of any kind.  (i.e. I pray five times a day and fast in Ramadan and read the Koran aloud on a daily basis so before you criticize me, THINK WHAT THAT MAKES YOU) (stick to answering my points and I don't care what you think of my religious observance).

I think Tim W and Damian are pretty much on the same team which I would define as COMICS JOURNAL UBER ALLES.  It was as a reward for Tim -- the fact that he would create and maintain a site like this without compensation in a universally-hostile-to-Dave-Sim environment -- that I engaged with the TCJ website back in 2012.  I could see that Tim had a complete blind spot about THE COMICS JOURNAL's and FANTAGRAPHICS' underlying (and so far as I can see irredeemable) nature and he really wanted ALL of the comics he loved -- including CEREBUS -- to be included in that context.

It was a major fiasco from the git-go.  Which was not MY doing. I was cordial and as eloquent as I could be and the CJUA team -- here represented primarily by Damian -- has been attempting to "spin" the resulting fiasco as a win for TCJ ever since.  Look how open-minded they are!  Look how inclusive they are!  Look how supportive of Dave Sim they are!

Which is complete b.s.  I told Tim EXACTLY what would happen.  I would go over there and do a thread.  The thread would go ballistic and they would shut it down. Which is exactly what happened.
Because. That's. The. Kind. Of. People. They. Are.  And. That's. The. Kind. Of. People. They. Attract.

To me, shutting down threads is the antithesis of pluralism.  It's:  as long as my team is winning, we are all engaging in free speech and good for us.  As soon as my team is losing or even being made to look bad, it's time to end the discussion.

That's what the threat to shut down the comments section on Saturday looks like to me.  Again, no surprise TO ME, because CJUA has that as an entrenched viewpoint and Tim W (no offence meant, Tim: just identifying what I see as the core relevant point) is a "CJUA kind of guy".

Granted: Damian "winds" Jeff up.  It's also true that Jeff "winds" Damian up.  Genuine pluralism is ABOUT "winding" people up.  Or, more fruitfully, avoiding winding them up and just saying what you have to say FACTUALLY or AS AN OPINION.

I appreciate the fact that, TO ME, I now have a couple of defenders on this site: Sandeep and Jeff.  I appreciate them defending me -- while also appreciating that they're always being careful to SPECIFY that they don't speak FOR me.

I'm hoping that Jeff will not allow the CJUA forces to "head fake" him into abandoning me when he agrees with me so that AMOC goes back to being an environment where, as is the "received wisdom" everywhere else, Dave Sim is Crazy, Period.  End of discussion.

It seems to me that Damian's subtext is always "Dave Sim is Crazy" so I think it only reasonable to give space to the only two people who are willing, on an on-going basis, to assert the contrary.

I'm glad to see that cooler heads seem to have prevailed.

And, Jeff?  Please keep leaving phone messages when you think someone is being critical of my opinions.  I'm not sure this WORKS, but clearly just letting "Dave Sim is Crazy" stand unchallenged WASN'T working.

So, let's keep doing it this way.   

Dave Sim John Funk Update 3/7/16

No word from John Saturday or Sunday or -- so far -- today.

On Sale 25 Years Ago: Cerebus #144

Cerebus #144 (March 1991)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

Celebrate Will Eisner Week!

DAVE SIM:
(100 Hour Internet Tour at Newsarama, February 2008)

I think it's worth remarking on this occasion that Will Eisner was one of the earliest and most devoted citizens of the worldwide Comic Book Nation. Practically from the minute that he laid eyes on one of Phil Seuling's July 4 New York Comic Cons -- getting a crash course from Denis [Kitchen] in the new wave of creative freedom in the field in the process -- he literally couldn't divest himself of his other business interests fast enough.

As he said several times of his epiphany, "I could see it was TIME": that the comic-book field as he had always envisioned it, as he always tried to make it and as he never stopped believing it could be had now become a reality. He moved bag and baggage into the Direct Market and never once considered doing anything else in the remaining three decades of his life. As Denis said of the day that word came down that the SPIRIT TV pilot was going to get made, "I was more excited about it than he was."

Well, yes, because Will wasn't excited at all. Hollywood interested in him about as much as career in the NBA. It was a fine life for someone, but Will's heart and soul all along belonged to the comic-book field and that's where he put his time, his energy and attentions.

Thanks, as always, to Ann for taking such good care of him all those years so that all he really needed to think about was "What subject and I going to tackle next in comics and how am I going to tackle it?"

I like to think he would have been happy to find out that I was back working again. It seems a little pretentious to add a dedication to a project the length of Secret Project One [Judenhass] (49 pages), but the only person I would have considered dedicating it to is Will.

I miss him a great deal as we all do. We must rededicate ourselves every day to "doing good" IN comics and FOR comics.

It's the only tribute that would have meant anything to him...

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.

Continuing sequentially and chronologically, we come next to a letter from Dave dated 24 October, 2005, when I still lived in Addison, Texas. This is a timely post, given that I am currently beginning what will (I hope) become a long time of proofreading the reprints of the Cerebus volumes. Two down, one half done, 13 to go.

Dear Jeff:

Thanks for your letter and enclosures of October 16.

No offence intended by my remark on red pens. [Ed: A reference to my having started proofreading the first volume of Collected Letters.] I used to pick up on the same thing from Diana Schutz [Ed: A former proofreader and girlfriend(?) of Dave’s.] that it really does become an addiction. I think anyone who knows the universal symbols (which I don’t) is already pretty far gone. They not only correct things, but they have to correct things CORRECTLY. My own proof-reader [sic.] nature is all “ear”. I fix it until it sounds right to me. Proper lilt, proper cadence which is very often not the same thing as grammar and phraseology.

[Ed: May I just, as an aside, say here that, when I proofread Cerebus volumes, I don’t mess with the “voices” or the sound of things. And, rarely, with the cadence. I look first for the typographical errors {straight-up errors}, then punctuation, and misused words. Plus, Dave told me that his use of single quotation marks in, say, Reads, was an affectation and that they all needed to be fixed, except, of course, when they set off a quotation within a quotation. That’s why the proofreading on Reads took 30 hours. What’s that? Oh, no; not straight through. Do you think I’m crazy?]

Glad you finally got the postcard. [Ed: From when he went to Niagara Falls {his favorite place}, to meet Neal Adams to do the interview/conversation that was printed in Following Cerebus.]

Glad as well that you weren’t offended at my “red cape in front of a bull” analogy in announcing celibacy to a woman. It isn’t just the woman in question: remember, they’re all linked up both in the conventional terms of gossip and telepathically or “telepathically” with those with whom they’re sympatico. You set it in motion and it will come back to bite you on the ass. Fair warning is all.

Tried reading the Critical Thinking brochure [Ed: That I sent to him. I have forgotten where I got it or what it contained, other than generally speaking.] and I’m afraid that there were areas of it with which I disagreed. As with grammar and phraseology (and theology and any number of subjects) I just don’t do it by prescribed numbers. I doubt I would’ve “smelled a rat” in feminism going A to B to C to D in proper alignments. Nor would I have come up with the [Ed: then] 14 Impossible Things To Believe Before Breakfast. As it says in the Koran: You to Your Religion and Me to Mine.

When I’m watching Niagara Falls, I am literally just experiencing watching Niagara Falls. I watch a particle descend from the precipice and then watch another. Then I look at the overall picture. Then I look at the mist. Then I look at the people standing at the edge and compare them to various dips in the water right before it goes over. Several of them are twice the height of an average man. If you were in the river, you would descend twice your full height and then suddenly get hurled aloft just before going over the edge. I watch the shale jutting out below the surface shimmering in that dark coloured green that it has, counterbalanced by the “Coke bottle bottom” green of the descending water, marvelling at the fact that it’s seventeen-feet deep but, owing to the refraction of the light, it looks as if you could put your foot down and push off from the precipice. The fact that it never stops. Every second, 50,000 bathtub’s worth of water is plunging over the edge. Realizing that the channel at the base of the falls is the same height as the falls. Watching the way the thin ribbon of water at Prospect Point sways from side to side. That’s really it. Five hours, six hours, twelve hours. I paid eighteen dollars for two cookies and two bottles of peach juice at the Starbucks in the lobby just because I didn’t want to be away from the Falls (and I was finishing my four-day fast).

Thanks for the clippings. Yes, the Cathy Young quote was interesting [Ed: {excerpt}: What’s clear is that, in the 40 years since the rise of the modern women’s movement, large numbers of women blessed with the opportunities denied to previous generations have not followed the egalitarian feminist script. Instead, they have, to a greater or lesser extent, embraced traditional female roles--much to the chagrin of feminists such as Yale’s women’s and gender studies professor Laura Wexler. “I really believed 25 years ago,” Dr. Wexler told The New York TImes, “that this would be solved by now.”].

I forget how it goes but there’s a quote that insanity consists of repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result. The vast majority of women want to wives and mothers. Because a small percentage finds that inconceivable, we have to run society as if they are in the majority for as long as it takes them to realize that they aren’t. Given their intransigent natures in virtually everything that’s going to be quite a spell, I reckon.

Likewise, thanks for the clipping on Charles Carroll. [Ed: From the Dallas Morning News, October 1, 2005. It pertained to a talk to be given by one Scott McDermott, a then circulation librarian at the Vanderbilt University. Carroll was, obscurely, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. {Excerpts from the article: “How may well-educated Americans -- even well-educated Catholic Americans -- can name the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence? Charles Carroll was that man. He was the richest of the signers, and he outlived all the rest, dying in 1832 at age 95.” Carroll “signed the Declaration of Independence not on July 4, 1776, but on August 2, 1776, as did most of the other signers.” He “served on the Board of War and Ordnance” during the Revolutionary War. And, “he invented the first working electoral college in the United States, for the election of Maryland state senators.” “He was briefly both a U.S. senator and a Maryland state senator. When the Maryland Legislature declared that state politicians could only hold one office at a time, he resigned his U.S. Senate seat.”}]

It’s always good to be reminded that there have [sic.] been no shortage of impediments along the way and that feminism is just the latest one. I can understand your regret at missing Mr. McDermott’s lecture. Thanks again for writing--gotta run. I’ve got a prayer time in fifteen minutes. Twenty down, inshallah 10 to go!

Best,

Dave

John Funk Update 3/4/16

Got a fax from John about 10 pm last night.  Welcome back, John!

I think one of the "systems" things we need to work on -- and I hope Eric B. (who has volunteered to help us with the "systems" side of Kickstarter) is reading this -- is the surveys situation.  I think we've gotten into a "feedback loop" where people are slow getting their surveys in because they figure "Well, they aren't going to actually DO anything for a while, so plenty of time".  Which leads to, "Well, can't really do anything until all of the surveys are in, so plenty of time".

The one time that CEREBUS got seriously off-schedule -- about two years into The Gerhard Years -- was a similar thing.  Gerhard slowed down doing the backgrounds and I went, "Well, I'm still four or five pages ahead. I can afford to kick back a bit."  The more I slowed down the more Gerhard slowed down and pretty soon we were off-schedule.  Lesson learned:  try to pick up a few days leeway a month.  Don't measure progress by where Gerhard is.  Run your own race.

I'd appreciate comments from Kickstarter veterans as to what the protocol(s) should be.  Whatever we do we're looking for the "Goldilocks" spot between not wanting to BUG anyone unduly, but making it apparent that we don't want the minority of people getting in the way of the majority of people.

Is that a safe assumption, that the...vast?...majority of people would really like it if we could shorten the window considerably?  I'm aware that a lot of Kickstarters never deliver anything and that delivery windows measured in months, if not years, are not unheard of.  (look! a dangling participle for Jeff S.! Happy Early Birthday, Jeff!)  Most of the posted comments tend to be, "Really, I'm fine waiting."  But I never know if that's honestly the way people think or if you're all just bucking to become...like, Honorary Canadians, eh?

The core problem is the numbering.  If you don't get your survey in -- especially if you order Bonus Prints -- there's a danger of not getting a numbered print.

I want to avoid penalizing people so, what would be the response (do you think) if we set a cut-off for the surveys of (you call it: two weeks? three weeks?) and if you don't get yours in by then, we can't guarantee your number BUT we can offer an alternative like "You'll get (x#) of Bonus Prints personalized to you"?  And then the inventory would reflect that. This is the number of FIRST RELEASE prints that were signed and numbered.  This was the number of FIRST RELEASE prints that were personalized.

My printing isn't GREAT, but it's as plausible as my cheque-writing these days.  You can figure out what it says without a translator.

What I'm looking for is a "systems" date for John that's carved-in-stone.  So, on that date he "goes forward" no matter how many surveys have come in without thinking that he's putting a DING in our customer service cred.

Weekly Update #124: Making The Cover Of Reads

Watch closely as Dave reveals the many, intricate complicated individual elements that make up the cover of the most controversial graphic novel ever created!

===========================

 JOHN FUNK:

(from CAN4 Kickstarter Update #6, 4 March 2016)

Hi Folks,

I'll be starting the work of putting the survey results together and double checking all the order details this weekend. Almost all of the surveys are in now, but there are still three that have not been submitted. I have sent personal messages out to each of those three backers as well. Please complete that in the next 36 hours so that I properly assign the total numbers as well as your specific selections.

We've completed three rounds of proofs in order to get the images and the notes perfected. The quality of the content in the notes and the images and the print quality looked very good to me and I hope you will be pleased.

Once the above is completed we can begin printing - that should be in a couple of weeks from now.

Thanks for your support.

Christopher Woerner's NEW FUN

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

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

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

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

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

It really is more funny than depressing.  

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

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

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

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

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

Honk honk.      

Dave Sim John Funk Update 3 March 16

No word from John as of 1:28 pm today.

Not The Trial

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 #8 several times already. The first time was in August 2014 in The Final Ascension, next was in October 2014 in So. . .You Already Said That, and most recently in September 2015 in Endgame. Notebook #8 covers issues #96 through 102. It originally had 140 pages, but only 114 were scanned, there were 15 blanks pages and the rest were missing.

There are times in his notebooks were Dave will write a first draft, and then later in the notebook you'll see a second draft, something that is either a bit closer to the finished page(s) or exactly what appears on the finished pages. Usually the first draft can be linked to the finished page. Occasionally it cannot.

Take page 12 of notebook #8 for example. Page 12 has a summary of what Cerebus does after Astoria tells him how she killed the Lion of Serrea. It looks like originally Cerebus was going execute her, but a letter from Cirin gets read and we see what her forces are doing.

Notebook #8, page 12

In Cerebus #98, The Trial, Cirin's message is never read. In fact, it isn't read at all in the finished issues, we only get a mention of it in Cerebus #100 when we finally see Cirin.

The next time we see some material that doesn't become part of the finished paged is on page #17.

Notebook #8, page 17

At first it looks like dialogue for the issue where  Cerebus is talking to Astoria in her cell about what he should do (Cerebus #97), but it isn't. It is Astoria talking to Cerebus and then Bishop Powers chiming in.

Cerebus then says "Most Holy would like a BIG bottle of sacremental (sic) wine". That is crossed out and Powers continues asking what is Cerebus' plan. Cerebus states "Plan? Cerebus intends plans to drink until someone comes and chop his head off. . ." Powers responses in a couple different ways, and then Cerebus states "GET MOST HOLY SOME WHISKEY".

None of that happened, instead we get Astoria and Cerebus experiencing an echo of a trial that had them on the other sides and how that ended.

MY RIGHT WRIST 3/1/16

DAVE SIM:
These small daily posts are "tests" of the right wrist.  It's a) nowhere close to being able to ink in my photorealism style b) not in use in my 12-hours-a-day RIP KIRBY COMMENTARIES (I'm up to October 5, 1949 "My Little Runaway") -- that's all left-handed typing and c) good enough to INTERMITTENTLY type on a computer keyboard.  So, I alternate left-handed typing and two-handed typing.  When the right wrist starts to tighten up, I switch back to strictly left-handed typing.  Over the course of the last few weeks there hasn't been any appreciable improvement in the amount of two-handed typing I can do, but there hasn't been any appreciable worsening either as we passed the one-year anniversary Feb 27.  I use the right wrist for anything and it tightens up.

The plan remains to just keep scripting and researching and then -- when I have a finished script -- photocopying and pasting up THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND.  At the end of that however-long-years-long process I'll see how the right wrist is doing.

Sandeep and I have been trying to develop a promotional CEREBUS product since he started coming in every week.  I think we're GETTING THERE but it's very difficult figuring out something that will actually WORK as opposed to wishful thinking "Wow! Wouldn't it be cool if...?" wool-gathering. With the limited resources available -- and THANK YOU -- all those resources come from you guys, we can't afford to do anything else that doesn't work from Day One.

Okay, back to my left-handed RIP KIRBY COMMENTARIES and my right hand at "parade rest".

10,000 CEREBUS ARCHIVE FIRST RELEASE GOLD SEALS

DAVE SIM:
We're getting geared up for the MARATHON or Marathon or "marathon" FREE CEREBUS giveaway at Kitchener Comic Con April 2.  10,000 certificates of authenticity, 10,000 bags and boards being picked up from Wes' WAREHOUSE OF WONDERS tomorrow and I just got the phone message from Sterling Marking Products that the 10,000 gold seals have arrived.

How many free comic books can you give away and how fast can you give them away?

Sandeep and Fisher will find out (God willing) April 2nd.

PS:  Thanks to everyone who's signed the petition in the last week! And to Kitchener Comic Con for running a request on their website.  This is EASILY the biggest surge since Carma Chan, Oliver's significant other, decided she was going to get all 2,000 in one "go" a few years back.  She definitely got around 20 just on her own.  Anything more than 1 or 2 a month is definitely a hockey stick curve.

Tim? Are you home from work yet?  

The reason that I ask is that the gold seals from the last order were "dull gold" (the most recent bonus prints) and this batch is -- like the first batch -- "bright gold".  Can you scan yours and post the images attached to this post?

Dave Sim's John Funk Update

John's promised "daily update" streak on CEREBUS ARCHIVE 4 progress ends at one:  February 29th. Nothing yesterday.

I'll keep you all posted.

Not looking good, though.

"Jack Chick In A World Without Christians"

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

..."I had arrived at my career end point," Dave wrote in the back of [Glamourpuss] #26. By then, the comic was down to 2,400 readers. I wasn't one; I'd bought the first five issues but, going to comic shops infrequently, missed a few and gave up. I thought maybe I'd get the collection when it came out, a method of reading comics pioneered by Aardvark-Vanaheim and Dave Sim. In my absence the comic had devolved from a professional presentation, with variant covers and all, to something more closely resembling the fanzine scene where Cerebus began. Back covers were ads for back issues or the Cerebus Archive which ran concurrently. The Notes From Glamourpuss in the frontispiece had been replaced first by random reminiscences from Russ Heath then by unreadable letters from the comic's only regular correspondent, Johnny McPhanbot. The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, known as SDOAR at this point, is gathering momentum but everything else has visibly run out of velocity, interest, steam. "It was very weird and doomed to failure from Day One... but it was a lot of fun while it lasted," is Dave's final line. There seems little conviction in it.

There's something simultaneously admirable and pitiable about Dave's decision, when faced with financial adversity, to do exactly the same thing he did 31 years earlier. Launching a bi-monthly comic he wrote and drew with no real idea what the content will be worked the first time, so why not again? And the same miracle, arguable pre-disposed because of his work ethic and talent, does happen again; he finds something to write about, and a flailing mess of a comic gets a focus. But Dave was lucky enough in the 70s to launch into a market receptive to his kind of work, and that took shape in some part around it. In the 00s the comics audience wasn’t receptive to a black-and-white comic with no idea what it was saying or where it was going and it wasn't receptive to a Dave Sim comic. The B&W independent comics hit comes via original graphic novels in bookshops, and everyone's had enough of Dave Sim's politics. He's not the pariah he insists he is. A Dave Sim project could sell. But his curved psychology means everything comes back to his refutations of feminism, and nobody except a small coterie of superfans finds anything worthwhile in them. Jack Chick in a world without Christians.

One of the elements in Dave Sim's famous revelation, the one where he decided to write and draw Cerebus for 26 years and 6,000 pages, was that he could put everything in there. He didn't have to write different stories, different characters, different worlds, because everything he wanted to say could go into this. Neil Gaiman, in a tribute to Cerebus, remembered when he interviewed Sim: "I remember asking him what he'd do if there was something he wanted to write about, something he had to say that didn’t fit into Cerebus. 'I'd use a big hammer,' he grinned. 'I'd get it in somehow.'" And he did, and he got everything in, unusual as it all turned out to be, and left himself without anything he wanted to write about. And that's Glamourpuss.

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

JEFF SEILER'S DAILY PHONE MESSAGE 1 March 16

DAVE SIM:
You really couldn't make that up.  Thanks, Jeff.

I'm not sure if we shouldn't make a "reaction exception" for Damian (Saturday's comment section) since I don't think we're likely to see eye-to-eye on too many subjects and I think he's about the closest to a troll or a "troll" as we're likely to see around these parts  (Speaking as the Feminist Theocracy's Greatest Troll or "Troll").

Yes, it's certainly true that I base my attitudes on the Middle East around Scripture.  I believe the Torah is an historical document.  THE historical document.

I don't think, as an example, that the Philistine -- excuse me, Palestinian -- "received wisdom" that Israel never actually existed, that there never was an Israeli and Judaic Monarchy and that there never was a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, that the Wailing Wall is not an artefact of that Temple, etc. etc. is worth discussing seriously.

We'll find out on Judgement Day, but I'm pretty confident that the historical accuracy of the Torah  WON'T be one of the Big Surprises, but will, rather, be one of the Irrefutable Givens.