The seventh installment of Dave's answers. If you've read this or know of friends who have, and haven't done so already, please send me a short message with your/their name, affiliation -- i.e. your company/school/profession -- and geographic location (at jim [o--v--i] at [um.cc.umich.edu] OR [bv 446] at [cleveland.freenet.edu] -- though I prefer the um address). I'm curious about the distribution of Cerebus fans on the net. Dave might be interested too... As usual, upcoming tour dates and some thank youUs are at the end of this posting. *** Jeff Reilly ([j w reilly] at [mipos2.intel.com]) -- Dave, do you ever go back and reread past Cerebus issues? Or are you always looking forward to doing future issues? Dave Sim -- The only time I really go back and read Cerebus back issues is if I'm checking a story point or a costume design or whatnot. On occasion I have found myself reading a bunch of consecutive pages in the reprint volumes. It's always a funny experience when I make myself laugh with a sequence I had forgotten. I do try to keep the re-reading to a minimum so that the Cerebus story-line is more like a real life and Cerebus' life is like a life to me; remembering past events as opposed to re-experiencing them. Jeff -- Is original art from Cerebus going to be made available at any point in the future, through the mail or conventions or anywhere else? And of course many thanks for producing a work of art I not only enjoy rereading but eagerly look forward to each month. Dave -- Yes it will. This is a real problem, though. You start selling it at the conventions (as we have been doing on the Tour; $100 a page). You figure, okay, IUm doing them a favour. And then they want to know if you'll sell to them by mail. Or they want to know if they can get such and such a page. Or they want to haggle over buying three pages at a discount. They always want pages with Cerebus on them, so you end up with four pages out of the issue you could have sold fifty times over and sixteen pages that everyone skips over. Then of course you have the people who come up and whine that they ASKED you if they could have first crack at such and such a page FIVE YEARS AGO and NOW YOU SOLD IT TO SOMEONE ELSE. WeUre experimenting with auctioning pages in the back of the book, but if all that shit happens again, I'll just decide not to sell the artwork again. It really is enough to drive you mad, sometimes. Thank you for your kind words. Craig ([C H GARNETT] at [amherst.edu]) -- You mentioned that you were going to be getting back to the fire sneezes. Dave -- No what I said was I've _been_ explaining the fire sneezes for the last while, but I will keep explaining them until everyone gets it. Craig -- That reminded me of one of the other "oddities" from Church and State: Bran "notices" that four different documents written by different people in Iest all have the same handwriting: Cerebus'. While the sneezes seem to come back occasionally, the handwriting thing hasn't, and I'd love to know what was going on/what it meant. Dave -- That will be explained fully in the fourth book of Mothers & Daughters. Craig -- The order of hands for Diamondback seems to have changed. Back in Swords of Cerebus, a pair of Priestesses was a very high hand...but in the decks I got on the tour, it's not even mentioned, and when I asked, it rated someplace toward the bottom of the barrel. Is this a "different variations" thing? Thanks! Dave -- Priestess-priestess has the same ranking as it had previously; the omission was a typesetting error. YouUre welcome! Alexx ([A--e--x] at [world.std.com]) -- I've got a follow-up question. Since [you] mentioned in a recent installment the source for the lengthy quote in "Walking on the Moon", I got to wondering: Why isn't this credited anywhere? Traditionally, this sort of thing gets credited in the small print opposite the title page. I have no idea whether or not copyright laws require such a thing in this case, but I should think that such an ardent supporter of creator's rights would be willing to give credit where it's due. (And this, just a few issues after "With apologies to Jules Feiffer and Lou Jacobi"...) Dave -- I'm sure the copyright laws specify that this must be done on pain of an excruciating lawsuit, an extended prison sentence and a punitive financial cost. D.H. Lawrence is dead and I'm not interested in making concessions to his parasitical descendants any more than I'm interested in making concessions to Groucho Marx's parasitical descendants. I think that art should be without borders or passports. Someone on the upper chessboards decided to test me on that one with the Spermbirds "Something to Prove" cover with Cerebus on it uncredited. Get it? Spermbirds? Something way up there shooting its wad at you? "Something to Prove"? We don't believe you for a minute that you really believe in the free use of someone else's creativity so weUre going to arrange this little test and we're betting dollars to donuts that you get your lawyer and crush them. I wish all the tests were that easy. I also wanted to see if anyone had any curiosity about the origin of the passage. You're the first. *** Upcoming tour dates: July 12 Indianapolis, Sheraton -- 7701 East 42nd St. July 26 Detroit!, Marriott -- 200 W. Big Beaver in Troy, MI (DaveUs Comics in Royal Oak on July 25) August 23 Atlanta, Castlegate Hotel & Conference Centre (Oxford Books on August 21) ThatUs all for now. Remember that all installments of the interview are available by anonymous ftp. Connect to "asylum.sf.ca.us". The interviews are in "/pub/cerebus/sim- interview/1-7" (Please give John some time to get 7 "up", though. Yah yah, bad pun. No, I am not sorry.). A mini comic version of the whole thing will be available soon. Thanks again to John Romkey for helping out. Thank you for reading and responding. And thanks to Dave, who gave us all much more than our due. jimO