Dave Sim's blogandmail #30 (October 11th, 2006)

All This Week! The Blog & Mail is brought to you by

RETURNED FRIENDS OF CEREBUS

FAN CLUB PACKAGES!

Unearthed during the Cerebus Archive basement excavation these are

FAN CLUB NEWSLETTERS AND FAN CLUB PREMIUMS IN THE ORIGINAL ENVELOPES RETURNED BY THE POST OFFICE BACK IN 1983

TODAY'S RETURNED PACKAGES:

Tim Maroney of Chapel Hill, N.C.

Contains Newsletter #11 and the 1984 Friends of Cerebus notepad

Tom Vogel of South Burlington, VT.

Contains Newsletter #12 and the 1984 Friends of Cerebus fridge magnet

The INDIVIDUAL ORDERING THE MOST NUMBER OF TRADE PAPERBACKS IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER

WINS BOTH

Aardvark-Vanaheim reserves the right to substitute two other returned packages if it turns out that Tim Maroney and Tom Vogel have been lost in the Andes for 23 years and have—either jointly or separately— turned up only in the last week or so, and that their first question on returning to civilization was to wonder what happened to their Cerebus Fan Club stuff

Blog & Mail Blast From the Future: You won't read when I found out about this until FRIDAY but

STARTING TODAY

CHESTER BROWN IS

ON TOUR

IN WESTERN CANADA

WHAT A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO DO SOME BLOG & MAIL MARKET RESEARCH. IS THERE ANY CHET/DAVE CROSSOVER AUDIENCE AT PORTAGE & MAIN? ACROSS THE VAST WHEATFIELDS OF THE PROVINCE THAT GAVE US JOHN DIEFENBAKER (GOD REST HIS SOUL)? IN THE TARSANDS OIL PATCH? IN OVEPRICED DEFINITELY NOT STARBUCKS COFFEE HOUSES IN VANCOUVER & VICTORIA? IF THE BLOG & MAIL OFFERS TO MAIL THEM A SIGNED COPY OF CEREBUS (SIGNED BY CHESTER, DAVE & GERHARD) WITH PART OF THE "GETTING RIEL" DIALOGUE

JUST FOR SHOWING UP WITH A PIECE OF PAPER WITH THEIR NAME AND ADDRESS ON IT AND GIVING IT TO CHET

WILL THEY DO IT?* HOW MANY OF THEM WILL DO IT*? ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT!

[*PLUS OR MINUS 3 TO 5% 19 TIMES OUT OF TWENTY IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN TIME ZONE. I ALSO SUGGESTED THAT CHET AND I COULD DO A JAM DRAWING OF LOUIS RIEL AND CEREBUS FOR ANYONE SHOWING UP DRESSED AS LOUIS RIEL AND CHET LAUGHED REALLY LOUDLY BUT THE IMPRESSION THAT I GOT WAS THAT THIS WAS NOT EXACTLY THE WAY HE WANTED TO BE SEEN AT THE VARIOUS HIGH-END BOOKSTORES AND WRITERS' CONFERENCES HE'S BEEN INVITED TO SO I CAN'T GUARANTEE ANYTHING BUT IF ANY YAHOOS WANT TO, YOU KNOW, GIVE IT A TRY AND POST A PICTURE HERE OF THEM DRESSED AS LOUIS RIEL WITH CHESTER AT ANY OF THE TOUR STOPS…]

COME ON, WESTERN CANADA!

DON'T LET THAT EASTERN BASTARD FREEZE IN THE DARK!

COME OUT & SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR CHESTER BROWN!


WINNIPEG

TONIGHT – 8 PM MCNALLY ROBINSON 1120 GRANT AVE.


BRANDON

OCT. 12 – 3 TO 5 PM SIGNING AT PENNYWISE BOOKS ROSSER AVE

OCT. 12 – 7-9 PM ART GALLERY OF SOUTHWESTERN MANITOBA


SASKATOON

OCT.13 – 7 PM MCNALLY-ROBINSON


CALGARY

OCT.14 –2 TO 3 PM CALGARY WORDFEST


EDMONTON

OCT.16 –7:30 PM GREENWOODS BOOKSHOPPE 104 ST.


VANCOUVER

OCT.18 – 1 PM VANCOUVER INT'L WRITERS FESTIVAL –

REVUE THEATRE $13.50

OCT.20 – 1 PM VANCOUVER INT'L WRITER'S FESTIVAL

PTC STUDIO $12.00

VICTORIA

OCT.22 – 7 PM. BOLEN BOOKS HILLSIDE AVE.

A Day in the Blog & Mail Life

3:04 am: Wake up from a movie dream: See You at the St. James Set in New York City in the late 1970s it concerns a female impersonator who pretends to be Carol Channing (evidently then starring in a revival of Hello Dolly at the St. James Theatre in New York) to help out a friend in danger of having his inheritance cut off by two dowager aunts coming to visit him from the Midwest. At the climax of the film there's a very funny scene where "Carol" and his friend are escorting the two dowager aunts to the St. James Theatre to see the play only to discover that the St. James had gone bankrupt the week before and was now closed. In the dream the dowager aunts were played by Betty White and my maternal grandmother. Have no idea if there is a St. James Theatre in New York, but the Carol Channing angle seems like the major hook. Too much research unless there's a lot of money up front.

3:05 am: Get the newspaper from the front porch, stripping out the interior sections and putting them in the recycle box. No Sports or Arts & Life during Ramadan. Can't shake the dream. Is it an actual idea? Decide to jot it down in my notebook under my last dream idea: Australian Rules Baseball. Very funny Snakes on a Plane concept but requires knowledge of the distinction between Football and Australian Rules Football. Maybe an Australian comedy special. No, that wouldn't work. They would have no idea what baseball is.

Both ideas available and copyright Dave Sim 2006.

3:08 am: Read National Post front section except for "Public spaces could use more piazza" puff piece on the Toronto page. Andrew Coyne's piece on the Liberal leadership matches my own assessments. "It's anybody's game."

5:20: Shave preparatory to ritual ablutions. Perform ritual ablutions, change into prayer clothes.

5:31: Read aloud last half of Sura 21 "The Prophets" and most of Sura 22 "The Pilgrimage" before Fajr (pre-sunrise) prayer.

6:04: Begin Fajr prayer [see inside back cover of Cerebus 300]

6:04:57: End Fajr prayer

6:05: Read aloud the remainder of "The Pilgrimage".

6:35: Upstairs to begin writing "A Day in the Life". Resolve to get entire week's Blog & Mail done in one day after last week's two days.

6:46: Finish writing up to 6:46. Time for breakfast.

6:51: Breakfast, two bowls of Frosted Mini-Wheats and a glass of orange juice. Consider pitching a commercial endorsement "During Ramadan I find that eating only bland, uninteresting foods really give me that religious lift I'm looking for. That's why I swear by Frosted Mini-Wheats. They taste just like little sugar frosted brillo pads!" Box contains "Xbox mini-game". Must give it a try after Ramadan.

7:15: Floss teeth and read a few pages of the new Comics Journal. The teeth flossing part was pretty interesting.

I'm KIDDING. I'm KIDDING. Very good coverage of the death of Jack "Jaxon" Jackson with interviews with all the "Austin Mafia" the guys with whom he founded Rip Off Press, also Rob't Crumb (who, no surprise, has more to say about Jackson's hot girlfriend at the time he knew him than about Jackson himself) and others. Can't read the reviews/Comics Journal gang-bang of Lost Girls until after Ramadan. Just started the Bill Willingham interview where he is carefully coming out of the "conservative" closet—or perhaps just admitting to be "less liberal". In either case, one of the signs of the Apocalypse (or the Day of Separation—"that will be a day witnessed"—as it's called in the Koran) in the extreme leftist Comics Journal world so I expect it will be pretty entertaining as it goes along.

7:40: Begin writing Blog & Mail proper.

Cerebus stars in 3D Animated Film!

A 3D animated film starring Cerebus is set to begin actual animation after eight months of extensive pre-animation work. Among the animators working on the film are veterans of "countless Jim Henson projects", Labyrinth, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Return of the Jedi, The Dark Crystal, Jurassic Park, a Bug's Life and Star Wars Episode 2. According to the Los Angeles based coordinator of the project, "We have kept a pretty tight lid on our project so far."

How tight a lid? Pretty tight. This is really the first that Cerebus creator Dave Sim has heard of it.

That's not entirely true. I did recognize the name from personal correspondence earlier this year and I have a vague recollection of some back-and-forth on the subject of animation. Unfortunately, Gerhard has archived the Collected Letters from the beginning of the year somewhere that I'm not computer-literate enough to find. I spent an hour going through the January to March '06 hard copy files as well as doing a word search on the finished Collected Letters 2 and turned up nothing. Which is really a useless way to fritter away an hour that I don't really have to throw away which is a good example of why these things are pretty irritating. My best guess/recollection is that the guy contacted me and wanted to know if I was interested in doing a Cerebus film which, no, I'm not interested in doing and that he was pretty disappointed. So what I told him, as I have told other animation buffs over the years, was that if he wanted to do some Cerebus animation on his own, he was welcome to do so and I'd be happy to take a look at it when he was done but that, frankly, he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of my approving anything since, as I say, a Cerebus film couldn't interest me less.

He goes on to say:

"Despite our low profile, we have 50 3D artists from around the world on board, ranging from novices to the legendary—including voice-over actors and a 20-year veteran TV/movie composer with a state-of-the-art recording studio. I didn't know these people beforehand and they are all so kind and supportive even though most are more talented and experienced than I.

"I truly hope we can sully this whole affair somehow with money—I already know that we'll garner fame. We're all hoping that somehow someone will come forth with an acceptable deal for you. In the meantime we're really just taking it a step at a time and we'll see what happens. I think we are all a little amazed and certain it will go well. I hope you have some kind words that I may share with the rest of the group."

"I'll, if you don't mind, write more and keep you more regularly updated now that it seems we really have something here.

"Our storyboard has been redone countless times as our project keeps growing in scope."

Do I have some words to share with the rest of the group? Oh, yes. I'll leave it up to you Yahoos to decide how kind they are as the week progresses.

8:25 am: Shower and make the bed.

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REPLIES POSTED ON THE CEREBUS YAHOO! GROUP
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If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

Looking for a place to purchase Cerebus phonebooks? You can do so online through Win-Mill Productions -- producers of Following Cerebus. Convenient payment with PayPal:

Win-Mill Productions

Or, you can check out Mars Import:

Mars Import

Or ask your local retailer to order them for you through Diamond Comics distributors.