Dave Sim's blogandmail #178 (March 8th, 2007)

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Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast That Make You a Good Feminist

1. A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the raising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time.

2. It makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society.

3. A woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus.

4. So long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice.

5. A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership.

6. It is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be women only environments from which men are excluded.

7. Because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society.

8. It is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public.

9. Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically.

10. Having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone.

11. Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals.

12. An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more.

13. A man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself.

14. Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist.

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Hold STILL YOU…nnngh…

RETAILER…I'M ALMOST DONE

JUST…nnNNNGGhhh…four MORE

…TRADE PAPERBACKS…

oh THAT DIDN'T HURT…

STAR10981 GOING HOME

STAR13500 FORM & VOID

AUGO31920 LATTER DAYS

APRO42189 THE LAST DAY

I was kidding with the "wee Timmy Corrigan" reference. As a fellow SPACE Lifetime Achievement Award winner, we both officially qualify as being "older than dirt" (come to think of it, the other winner of the award, Matt Feazell, probably does, too, but gets a pass because of the porkpie hat and Elvis Costello glasses). Anyway, I've got a whack of stuff of here from Tim, starting with the Mighty Guy: The Vintage Collection and The Best of Fred `N' Marvin volume one [Fred (reading a copy of the book): "We actually DID all this stuff?! I don't remember ANY of this!!"] which are from my "Bring to the Attention of the Yahoos From the Day Prize submissions box". I already decided Tim doesn't qualify for the Day Prize at SPACE because he won the SPACE Lifetime Achievement Award. Which he can look at as a "Don't be greedy, you already got your award" or as a "you got a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT Award: that means the only thing left for you is to DIE!" I have to admit it was hard for me not to look at it in the latter context, myself. Anyway, as the designation indicates, in the run-up to the announcement of the Day Prize Short List next week, I've got a few items that I thought I should bring to your collective Yahoo attention for one reason or another.


The premise of Mighty Guy, like the premise of Static, is that all the power is in the suit. If you have the Mighty Guy suit on, you have all of Mighty Guy's powers, see? And Fred and Marvin are comic-book publishers who own the suit. This is how Fred explains it to Mike McZiltcho in the first episode:


Fred: It's easy!! All you gotta do is put on this suit. It'll give you fantastic powers!! You go out and fight psychotic villains who have the strength of ten men, get your brains beat in and report back here!! We publish your adventures and get rich! It's that simple!


And it really is. It's that simple a concept but it's pretty funny. And Tim's been milking it for all it's…that is, developing and refining it since 1984, all as a sideline to his regular sign-painting business in Houghton, so there is a massive amount of material which Tim is reprinting starting with that first episode and "200 pages of Classic Stories!" and starting in this first volume which sells for $16.95 US and two $8.95 volumes of 100 pages each – the Fred `n' Marvin volume one (short back-up strips, as Tim describes them on the back cover)…:


During the Small Press/Independent boom of the late 80s, I sent 1 or 2 page contributions to dozens of publishers all over America. Many of these featured Fred and Marvin, which included a running series of strips for Allen Freeman's Slam Bang digest which are collected here for the first time! Also collected here are several all-new strips which have never before been seen by Human eyes (which does not include my own orbs, obviously).


…and Mighty Guy Summer Fun Spectacular (which features Mighty Guy and Marvin changing a tire on their van in a raging snow storm) (which I assume is a comment on the track record of comic book publishers to miss their deadlines badly on "seasonal theme" titles – one of those things you notice when you're older than dirt like me and Tim and remember when Hallowe'en Specials didn't used to come out the following Easter).


Tim will take checks or money orders at Tim Corrigan, POB 25, Houghton, NY, 14744. You can also email him at timcorrigannewvoicemedia@hotmail.com


Still not convinced?


Well, how about this: Mighty Guy is being published MONTHLY in black-and-white digest form. It's true. And I've got issues 2, 3, 4 and 5 of TIM CORRIGAN'S COMICS AND STORIES right here to prove it with parts I, II and III of "Big Book Signing" where Mighty Guy and Fred and Marvin do a signing at a comic book store. 12 issues for $12.


See, that's why I put these aside in my "straight to Yahoo" pile. There really aren't any monthly comics now that Cerebus is done, right? So maybe you won't like Mighty Guy. On the other hand, if you try and it and you do like it, then at least you'll have a monthly comic book to read! I know, I know. To quote Peter Bagge "I scream, you scream we all scream for HEROIN!" But, heck, give wee Timmy Corrigan's methadone a try. It might at least get rid of your runny nose and the shakes.


Oh, right. This one was supposed to come after the pitch from Mark Innes at Blind Bat Press in the category of I Really Should Know Better (than to take on any more work) but then I found the Robin Snyder letter and forgot what I was doing:


Dear Mr. Sim:


I hope this letter finds you well and without incident – I assumed that the Box 1674 one was still the best to use. My name is Aubrey Sitterson and we actually met fairly recently at a Big Apple Con in New York City about a year ago, you were signing and fund-raising at the time, so I'd be shocked (and impressed!) if you remembered. I'm a big fan of your work – Cerebus Phonebooks being one of the things that kept me reading comics through college. I've also been enjoying Siu Ta:So Far though I have to say that your lettering is missed in those instalments.


Well, it's always fun to shock and impress people just by remembering them, so I was hoping it was the cop with the Green Lantern sketchbook or the guy I talked to about religion for a while.


Currently, I am employed as an assistant editor at Marvel Comics.


Well, THAT was easy. How often is an assistant editor at Marvel Comics going to talk to the Pariah King of Comics?


In fact, when we initially spoke, the subject of you doing some work with us came up. This was soon after DC had tried the same (on an issue of Fables, I believe?) and you directed me to the website that housed the scans of the contracts you marked up. As I'm sure you've noticed, I never contacted you regarding Marvel work – this, however, has more to do with finding the right project than with your contract requirements.


Well, that's good – and surprising -- news. Of course, I had assumed that as soon as he saw what I had done with the Fables contract that would have been "all she wrote" – and no hard feelings on my side.


In fact there have been times in the past that we have had larger discussions about contracts & we pride ourselves in being more flexible than our friends across town. So, I'm sure you can see where this is leading:


And, I'm sure you can all see where this is leading as well, but I'm going to have to cut it off there since I don't know how much is public knowledge about the project that he's talking about and I would be uncomfortable blowing the lid off of anything here. Anyway, I just called him and we talked about the idea in a general way and I explained that I'm really only doing the Blog & Mail and my secret project right now – which are non-negotiable for the moment in terms of where I'm putting my time -- and apart from that I'm doing one commissioned piece a month (and I told him exactly what I had been getting for them) so I would have to justify sacrificing that income or edging it out of the way temporarily.


So, there you go. The danger of being a terminal fanboy and theoretically ha-ha retired cartoonist. We'll see what comes of it.

There's MORE for

You in TODAY's

BLOG &…MAAAILLL!

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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.