100 Hour Tour: The "Last Day"

What follows are the posts from Dave Sim made to several different message boards as part of the last day of his "100 Hour Internet Tour".

CFG notes: make what you will of the times posted. I just posted what each forum stated

Pixel & Panel

27 Feb 15:38

Yes, I don't know if a 24-day comic book is a good idea or not: I think there's a good idea in there somewhere but that we'd have to have someone try it out and succeed at it...or a bunch of people try it out and at least one of them succeed at it. There's a difficult balance to be struck because what I'm proposing is giving people a much clearer idea of the amount of work that's involved and their ability and inclination to actually do that work (as opposed to just saying they'll do that work).

The immediate problem with a 24-day comic book is how many people will get discouraged because they can't do it or they can't do it and produce anything with a marketable level of quality to it. If you stick with 24 days what you're doing is a litmus test for a monthly frequency and it's pretty much a given in the field that a monthly frequency is this unachievable ambition. A page a day. That's what you're talking about. No excuses. If you don't get a full page done today you have to do a page and a half tomorrow. Most people today if you tell them to do a full page a day they're going to want to report you to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. "Libya! Make Dave Sim stop TORTURING me here!"

You could change it to a 48-day comic book -- 24 pages in 48 days which is a bi-monthly, leaving you twelve days to play around with, take up the slack, do business things, etc.

But there I think the air starts to go out of it. "48 days! Wow! I can dick around and do nothing for two weeks but play video games and I'll still have plenty of time!"

But, I do think there's a worthwhile idea in there somewhere.

27 Feb 15:40

Thanks Mark...hope I can get some useful information down in the mere hour and a half I have here during The Big Four Website Finale.

27 Feb 15:42

Hi, Rick -- me too. Get some Gillott 290 pen nibs from www.johnrnealbooks.com and try those for a while if you REALLY want to appreciate the Hunt 102!

27 Feb 15:51

Hi Leland.

I'd take issue with the idea that my "controversial views" have been "widely discussed". I think my "controversial views" have been widely ALLUDED to -- labelled inaccurately as misogyny and homophobia -- with all the attendant name-calling and character assassination that typically goes with it, but I think I'm safe in saying, also, it's an enormous stretch to call that "discussed" let alone "widely discussed".

That having been said, I definitely appreciate Neil being willing to go on record as recommending JUDENHASS. It would be nice to think that it would be a "plus" for the book and not a "minus" for Neil.

I'd hate to think that he stuck his neck out just so we could both get our heads chopped off by the usual suspects.

Time will tell.

27 Feb 16:02

This was the big reason that the announcement of JUDENHASS was supposed to come later in the week when I had left the Internet for good. It was pretty much inevitable that people would accuse me of trivializing the Holocaust and ascribe as many negative motives to me as they could possibly come up with. When you're Dave Sim it always has to be factored in. The comic-book field has exhibited no tendency to do anything else over the last number of years.

The ADVANCE PREVIEW EDITION of JUDENHASS was moved from Lebonfon to Quebecor yesterday and is going to be inserted in the March 12 DIAMOND DATELINE.

As with glamourpuss, it would be nice if people would go in and look at the PREVIEW copy of JUDENHASS and decide for themselves if it's something they want to own. As with glamourpuss I have no idea if that's going to happen. People in comics always prefer to believe the venomous things they "hear about" Dave Sim and his work and, in my extensive experience, are always loathe to let any facts get in the way.

Hate to sound like a broken record, but we'll see.

27 Feb 16:21

Hi, Jason.

Yes, as you say, the central thesis of the book is that Judenhass -- Jew Hatred -- isn't something peculiar to Germany in the 1930s and that, it seemed to me, it's really been built into our

society as a cornerstone and is still a central reality in a number of places: the United Nations foremost among them. I'm very proud as a Canadian that the Harper government has already announced it won't be attending Durban II because it's a sham event centered on and with only one motivation: Jew Hatred.

There is a virulent strain of Jew Hatred in Islam (which is where it originates at the UN) that genuinely wonders what Christians -- ANY Christians -- are doing on the side of Israel: that the only sensible way to deal with Jews is to exterminate them as revenge for the Jews murdering God's prophets and messengers.

I think it is unique peril that has been visited almost exclusively on the Jews.

I think expanding the frame of reference to include other examples of genocide trivializes the Holocaust and the central lesson that needs to be learned: all non-Jews are culpable for the Shoah. Evading responsibility as non-Jews is exactly what we DON'T want to start playing with.

27 Feb 16:27

Well, I also wouldn't characterize them as "exchanges". If you examine "Gail Simone vs. Dave Sim" at the Brian Bendis message board -- up to the point where I made a surprise appearance -- you'll see what I'm talking about. It's people trying to outdo each other saying terrible, libelous things about me. How can you call that an "exchange"?

That's the same as the Nuremburg Trial Gary Groth held at Comicon or Wondercon where I was denounced and found guilty of crimes against humanity without even being notified that it was going to take place. To me that's all the Internet has been: the place where the Star Chamber/Stalinist show trials of Dave Sim have taken place over the last decade or so.

However, I do appreciate your apology.

27 Feb 16:36

Okay, that'll do it.

Thanks to Rantz Hosely for hosting me here. I hope that somewhere in all of this I've been able to impart some information that might be of use and I hope everyone can enjoy the success in the Direct Market that I've been privileged to enjoy over the last thirty years.

I'll be at http://forums.millarworld.tv/index.php?showforum=61 starting around 12:30 EDST.

Hope to see some of you over there, maybe.

Millarworld

Feb 27 2008, 06:13 PM

Oh, you're quite welcome: I'll be back here between 12:30 and 2:30 EDST February 27 for stop #2 on the Four Website Finale and I'll answer the last couple of posts then.

Actually Oliver Simonsen has been working on a "CEREBUS in 3D" animation for the last while with a lot of volunteer help from other people. I've told him I'll look at it when it's done and either give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down as far as anything being done with it professionally. It's really just a fan project.

In terms of my actually signing off on a series or a movie, no. I don't have any cachet in Hollywood and in that situation all you can really do is sign off on it and let the producers do whatever they want and hope for the best. It's already an uphill struggle to get CEREBUS treated with any amount of respect -- a lousy movie or a lousy series would only make that more difficult.

With glamourpuss I've already decided to sell an option to whoever comes up with a reasonable amount of money, give them a few ideas and then let them do whatever they want with it. Pretty much the same approach that Will Eisner had with THE SPIRIT. Cut me an option check, let the option lapse and then get another option check a couple of years later. Of course, eventually they made a 90-minute disaster of a TV pilot that made Will's toes curl, but that's the chance you're always taking when you take the option money.

No, I think that's just built in with the combination of the assembly line structure that exists at DC and Marvel and the fact that they retain trademark and copyright on virtually everything they publish.

It's certainly a sea change from the structure of the newspaper strip field where it was taken as a given that the cartoonist and the property were an integrated whole -- if you did take over from another cartoonist or "ghosted" for him, you were expected to imitate his style as completely as possible.

It's a good news/bad news thing.

Good news because it gives a Neal Adams or a Jim Lee a lot more options because it's their style that you're buying or renting which to a degree diminishes the intellectual property that they're working on in favour of their own creativity: that has to benefit creators' rights in a "rising tide floats all boats" construct.

It's a bad news thing because the characters stop being as reliable a fixed commodity for the core reader/fan/collector and continuity tends to go out the window. You have as many viable properties as you have reliable top-flight writers and artists. Same thing as pro baseball: the more teams you have the more you dilute the pitching and the more you change the shape of the game itself. But each individual top-flight pitcher makes a LOT of money.

Feb 27 2008, 06:36 PM

I am very much a fan of Mac Raboy, but my interest really peaks with his CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. covers. It would be interesting to find out how many of those covers still exist in original form and see about getting prints done in black and white. I always prefer black-and-white so you can see what the artist was doing. Elvis Presley was a huge CAPTAIN MARVEL JR fan when he was a kid and took a lot of his stage look from Raboy's CMJ.

The actual drawing and writing of JUDENHASS was done by the point that I started doing glamourpuss pages -- done all the way to the pasted-up mock-ups of each page that Lou Copeland was working from but Lou had so much work left to do and there was the whole process of sending proofs back and forth and tweaking everything that I really thought I needed something else to work on to try and take my mind off it. See, the guiding idea behind JUDENHASS was that I wasn't going to let go of it until it looked exactly the way that I wanted it to look and that meant the finish line was pretty indefinite. JUDENHASS was really my own penance as a non-Jew for what non-Jews had done to Jews over the centuries so it wasn't intended to be fun and it definitely wasn't. Once the actual work was done, I wanted to do something fun and that turned out to be glamourpuss.

The faxes between me and Lou discussing JUDENHASS over the three years are about an inch-and-a-quarter thick at this point, a lot of them taken up with really fine-tuned nuances and technical problems.

No, I don't think it would be possible to do both projects at the same time, the contrast would just be too jarring.

Feb 27 2008, 07:13 PM

Well, to be honest, I hadn't really considered anything past the 100 Hours of Internet promotion. Let's see what THAT does -- when I get my orders in March sometime. I did have indirect discussions with the ComicsPRO retailers back when I was doing the Blog & Mail pointing out that I'll be happy to work with them and give 110% from my side of the scrimmage line, but there are choices to be made.

Right now, I've made the decision to stop working on glamourpuss for three months to do nothing but promote the book. At least theoretically, I put in the three months and then I go back to the drawing board and work to put out the best comic book that I can. Hopefully the orders are high enough to make it viable even after the retailers cut the orders down on issue 2 and issue 3.

If the retailers WANT I can work for three months, promote for three months, work for three months. But the odds are I won't be able to stick to a bi-monthly schedule and I probably won't get much better at the Raymond School look that I'm shooting for. But the book might sell better.

It's one of the ways that the comic book field is like rock n roll on a teensy-weensy miniscule scale. You cut your record and then you go out and play live and promote it for six months and when you come back home all you know how to do is to play the same song over and over again and answer the same questions over and over again, neither of which are very helpful when it comes to being creative. I sit down at the drawing board and do a #5 head sketch of Cerebus. Mm. No. I think it has to be a *little* bit more creative than that. Then just when you're back to remembering how to write and draw and do a usable page, it's time to go out and do the same Cerebus head over and over and answer all the same questions.

I think that I'll probably say, okay, three months full time is enough and hope that I get large enough orders on number one so that I don't have to revisit the problem until I get the orders on number two in mid-June sometime. Of course, by then it might be too late. I can also look into doing a limited version of this campaign every time I have a new issue being solicited -- a week instead of a month.

But, of course, the biggest thing is I want to get SOME time to just write and draw which I'll hopefully have starting next Tuesday. Of course, I'll probably also get a wave of people who have been holding off on contacting me because they knew I was doing this.

But that's part of the "skill set" as well -- prioritizing who I need to talk to and how soon.

I have to get a cover done for #2 and a "glamourpuss EVENTS" screen for Motor City Con, the Las Vegas Retailer Summit and THEN I can actually get to finish issue #2 -- God willing.

Feb 27 2008, 07:39 PM

You know, the really sad part is that I can. No problem.

It's one of those things about getting old that virtually everything around you changes. I used to know this great old guy in my building at 221 Queen the last few years he was alive and I'd talk to him about downtown Kitchener -- he'd lived here since the twenties. Everything was "You know where the ____ is now? Well during World War II, that was a recruiting center." Those kinds of things. The back of 279 Queen where I created CEREBUS has been completely remodeled. 48 Weber East where I drew the first three issues -- and which was the model for the house where Rick and Jaka and Cerebus lived -- got torn down to put up a huge office building. 47 King West got torn down to put up the CANADA TRUST TD Madonna's Bra building.

It all just points towards "it's getting time to go". The guy I talked about, you could see that was the way he was. Still enthusiastic, still friendly, still interested in everything under the sun -- but Kitchener was so unfamiliar you just realize that you're in the exit ramp.

As it became apparent that JUDENHASS was actually nearing completion, the question then became "When am I going to release it?"

[Actually there was also the question as to WHETHER I was going to release it: as soon as it was done, the urge to see it published was pretty well gone. It wasn't until I had figured out a way to actually reach the audience without the project getting eviscerated in advance on the message boards -- the PREVIEW copy in Diamond Dateline -- that I decided to go ahead and publish it]

In a world dominated by Jew Hatred I thought the least I can do is release it the same month as the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel since, as far as I know, that month is going to be dominated by the UN's Jew Hatred Durban II shindig in South Africa. That tended to push glamourpuss and JUDENHASS together.

Thanks for stopping by!

Okay, it looks like that will do it for MillarWorld. Thanks to everyone who came out for the second leg of the Four Website Finale. Two more to go: IMWAN at http://www.imwan.com/phpBB3/ucp.php from 3:30 to 5:30 and then Comic Forums at http://www.thecomicforums.com/forum2/ from 6:15 to 7 pm EDST

Hope to see you there!

Comic Forums:

9:15pm

Thanks, "WR" I appreciate the sentiment. Sorry I'm so late getting back, but I had to make up an invoice for the CEREBUS trades LOOKIN FOR HEROES has sold in the last month I've been here.

I'm hoping the inclusion of the comic-book legends in JUDENHASS will make it an easier "sell" to schools -- in a way a sad commentary that you would have to frame it in those terms: No Jerry Siegel, no Superman -- but at this late date anything that makes the Shoah more real for school kids, the better, in my view.

I hope Will would be proud of me.

I'm glad you are.

Lou said he was up pretty late last night answering e-mails. Said it was all good news and he'll be faxing me some stuff over the weekend while I'm gone.

Nice to hear but I've been in this business and I've been Dave Sim for too long to read too much into that. People have a tendency to vanish into the woodwork when the Journal message boards have a chance to figure out what high crime or misdemeanour I've committed this time.

We'll see what the orders look like in mid-April. That's a long ways away.

9:19pm

I'll take your word for it. And "Mal" I'll look forward to signing your TURTLES #8 at NYCC. The inside front cover is the only really good white area -- apart from the big display picture of Cerebus which I can never find when I need to.

9:22pm

Thanks lionsunmind. No, I never get tired of in-depth Cerebus-tradition letters. Of course I haven't got a computer any more so all of my responses are going to be in the form of very short handwritten courtesy notes from now on but if you can live with that, by all means send the letter when you get it written -- and thank you, again.

Best to you and the best of success in your current and future endeavours as well!

9:34pm

I'd like to apologize for not getting the announcement on here that I was going to be back today until I was already here. One thing I will definitely not miss is typing in URL's and trying to figure out/remember how to navigate my way around a new/old site. It was just too much to picture typing in four of them in a row last night.

CGS is more my speed -- blah blah blah into a phone and then I'm done. Next one is FLIGHT, so I'll look forward to hearing from Jamie, Peter and Bryan when it's time again!

9:36pm

Thanks, Mario -- for taking time out of what is, I imagine, a busy schedule with the magazine!

9:49pm

Hi, Steve. That's some beautiful work there (I threw caution to the winds and actually went to look at your website). I was interested in your comments on trying to get work on IDW's ANGEL book. When Rob Walton and Chester Brown were up visiting, we got into a discussion about the BUFFY comic -- Chet hadn't seen it yet -- which led to a discussion about photorealism as it applies to movie and TV adaptations. One of the best that I ever saw was Sean Scofield's work on the ...science fiction show (my memory is going) X-FILES (that's the nice thing about doing this in a comic book store -- I just walked out of the office and said "Science fiction show, two FBI agents, the paranormal...no brainer...

It was incredibly accurate, very good likenesses of the cast. But it took him too long to do. Most places will trade a good likeness for being able to turn the pages around in a hurry on a licensed property (in no small part because there's no way of telling how long the property is going to be hot). The difficulty in doing a good likeness is always underrated. The average person is going to say, "Well, you're the artist, make with the art -- make it look like this person." I've often wondered how much photo reference Neal got for SUPERMAN VS. MUHAMMAD ALI. He's got some beauts in there but I suspect he used up everything they gave him -- and the Ali camp would just go, "Well here's ten pictures of The Champ" how many do you need?

Well, how good a likeness do you want it to be?

Anyway, I like what you're doing here. A LOT. Don't get discouraged.

9:52pm

Well, I'm very glad you thought so. After thirty-one days, it's all starting to blend into One Big Thread but I'm glad you found some insight on this one.

Thanks for posting!.

10:20pm

Okay, I'm headed over to IMWAN. I think I got these in the wrong order. Then I have a prayer time. Then we're all done.

IMWAN:

Feb 27, 2008 6:28 pm

Okay...here it is, the final, abbreviated stop on my month-long glamourpuss Internet promotion tour. It doesn't look as if there are any new questions since the last time I was here, so I'll just mention that I've got a prayer time right now -- roughly 5:30 pm EDST Feb 27. I'll be back a little after six and then at 7 pm I'm all done when the store closes!

Feb 27, 2008 7:25 pm

Hi, Jeff. Thanks for the hospitality. I got IMWAN and Comics Forums confused and ended up over there for the two hours between 3:30 and 5:30. Sincere apologies for the confusion on my part.

Feb 27, 2008 7:27 pm

Yes, I'm afraid that I got Comic Forums and IMWAN confused. I appreciate you sticking around for the last half hour of the Tour, though!

ARE you going to be at S.P.A.C.E.?

Feb 27, 2008 7:28 pm

Thanks, Darren -- I appreciate the welcome. Sorry again for my stupidity.

Feb 27, 2008 7:29 pm

Thanks, Ron. I appreciate you giving them both a fair chance!

Feb 27, 2008 7:55 pm

Hi, Jim. I'm glad that I was able to make it through the tour more or less in once piece. It was nice to hear from people I hadn't heard from in a long while like Rantz and Derek, John Mitchell. It was a lot more tiring than I thought it would be. I thought I'd be able to get three or four more hours work done every night when I got home, but most nights I just had something to eat and went to bed.

I expected more of a bloodbath, actually, given the level of venom that's been directed at me on the Internet over the years: that was the reason that I started with the Comics Journal message boards. Might as well get the worst over right at the beginning. Instead even the guys who I have a history with were content to discuss things in a civil way. Of course most people just didn't show up and I suspect they're already back to Dave bashing with impunity.

I'll have to wait and see if I even get enough orders to even DO glamourpuss. One of the problems with our post-modern world is that things are often not remotely as they seem. I like to think that three solid months of promotion will add up to something but I always have to be prepared for complete non-reaction coupled with negative reaction since I've had a lot more experience with those than with anything else in the comic book field. If I do get good orders on glamourpuss, I will probably be back anytime I need to do some promotion although just from the "feel" of things I think I'd put more time into phoning retailers than talking on the Internet.

Oh, yes, definitely. This will be it for the foreseeable future. There isn't a great urge to socialize -- either in person or electronically -- when everyone is so vehemently opposed to everything you have to say. On the contrary, most of the time it seems the nicest thing to just leave people alone completely because they're so thin-skinned and so easily upset and offended these days. Most of what I do I take it as a given that it won't actually reach an audience until decades after I'm dead, so "connecting" with people in any way in the "here and now" is just too wildly improbable to factor into my thinking. They're interesting and enjoyable to be around as long as you don't talk about anything important, but that's not really me -- not talking about important things to keep from offending people. People go their way, I go my way.

Oh, well, if you're actually one of the handful of people who is actually interested in what I have to say, there's always the essays on Margaret's http://www.cerebusfangirl.com website and the COLLECTED LETTERS volumes not to mentioned the archived BLOG & MAIL which runs to a good thousand pages or so.

To be honest I think God pulled the plug on my computer back in December as a way of telling me that I was finally all done after 30 years. I did what I was supposed to do, it's all there for people to read if they're interested. The biggest message to me out of the whole experience was "They're not listening because they're not ready." Maybe they will be someday, who knows? My writing should be there anytime they think they are ready.

There will be a DVD of all the Aardvark Comments somewhere up ahead as well so you won't have to miss out on them either!

Thanks. I think I'm going to need it!

Feb 27, 2008 7:57 pm

No, just comic-book stores. Always just in comic-book stores. Although I will sell them to schools if the stores don't.

Feb 27, 2008 7:59 pm

No, maybe the new owners will but Cold Cut had a tendency to order books and not pay for them for long periods of time.

Feb 27, 2008 8:01 pm

Sorry to hear that, you will be missed.

Anyway, it's 7:00 and John's closing up so...thanks everyone who posted throughout the campaign. Hope to see as many of you as possible in Columbus at S.P.A.C.E. on Saturday March 1.