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