Dave Sim's blogandmail #180 (March 10th, 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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OH YEAH I FORGOT

HERE'S MORE STUFF

I PUT ASIDE TO TELL THE

YAHOOS ABOUT FROM

THE DAY PRIZE SUBMISSION

PILE


I have seriously got to get more organized about this. I promise, starting with the next batch that I will be answering the mail in the order in which it was received instead of just pulling things out and going, "What's this all about?" So this time out I'm pretty sure that I've found all of the Day Prize items that for one reason or another didn't make the cut but that I thought warranted a heads-up to the Yahoos leading up to the Short List later in the week (I announced the Finalists in January, SPACE is April 21-22 – see www.backporchcomics.com for details -- so I thought the Short List should go up in the middle of March and we're pretty much there).




Plastic Farm


Was it last year or the year before that I went down to the exhibit room when everyone was setting up – it was the year before, I think, the last year we were at the hotel, yup, that was it. The year before last – and I came across this table with, like, eight or ten comic books on it, all of which said "Plastic Farm" on the front, but none of which looked remotely similar. Each one the logo was different, the design was different, which was really attention-getting (which is half the battle in the comics field, right?). So, I remarked on it and introduced myself to Rafer Roberts, writer/artist/publisher and he either gave me a set of them on the spot or sent me a set later on and I read them and I thought, "That's one of the strangest comic books I've ever read." Jeff Chon of Savant magazine wrote, "This comic is a garage band on the verge of rock superstardom, and those of you who miss out will, well, hopefully you'll die rotten horrible deaths. Which would be really tragic, I guess." Incoherent as that might be, it does seem to communicate the overall tone of this title. I mean, my first reaction was "Oh, man, complete amateur in the execution department – just happens to have a good instinct for design and packaging." But, I've learned not to let that be the last word on the subject. Always try reading it and if it goes nowhere you'll know pretty soon. And this was the opposite situation. I got engrossed in it and devoured however many I had. Now the problem with it relative to the Day Prize is that I couldn't really single out an individual issue and Short List it and it seemed kind of unfair to nominate issues 1-8 or 1-9 or whatever I had. And, of course, that's only later and more so now that he has 12 of them out. So, I've got one of the Tom Williams' specially designed SPACE shopping bags here with the first 12 issues that Rafer submitted (he even signed issue 1 "Thanks! Rafer 2006", so I really thought that I should do something with them. Every week or so I'd run across the bag in my room or in the office and I'd go, "What's in there again? Something important." And I'd open it up and go, Oh, right. Plastic Farm.


It's a really strange, really engrossing good comic book and the guy obviously knows what he's doing even though a comic book with each individual issue having a completely different look is probably something that works better on your table in Artist's Alley than it's going to work when they're seen one at a time in the comic-book store. So, it seemed to me that the best I could do was to promote it to the only people I know of who are interested in strange, really engrossing comic books especially now that he's up to issue 12. That and actually pay for a copy of issues 13 and 14 if they're out at SPACE this year since up to now I've been freeloading pretty good. And having decided to do that, I can now take them out of the plastic bag and put them on one of the shelves in the Off-White House Library without feeling completely as if I came by them dishonestly.


Plastic Farm #1-12, $2.95 each

3856 Shadywood Dr. #3C, Jefferson, MD 21755 www.plasticfarm.com




Zombie Preschool

I already picked Jim Coon for his Beaver mini-comic and thought I really shouldn't nominate two of his minis the same year. And then I went ahead and nominated two of Pat Lewis' digests in the same year. D'OH! I really do have to get organized. Anyway, it's a great title and a real bargain for a buck.

Zombie Preschool

Eight Ball Graphics (Jim Coon) 174 Madison St. Cortland, NY 13045

www.ebg.bizhosting.com




Doctor Dremo

Disqualified this one partly because Matt Dembicki who coordinated the whole thing has already been nominated for a Day Prize with Attic Witt and partly because it's a jam strip with all the inconsistencies that that tends to lead to. But, I read it right around the time that I was writing about Dr. Strange here on the Blog & Mail and, as Matt says on the inside front cover of issue 2:


A few words about Vol.1: I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Neilalien.com, the premiere website for all things Dr. Strange, for reviewing the book and honouring it with the coveted 2005 Neilalien Award for Best Appearance of a Dr. Strange-Affiliated Character, Accoutrement, Parody, etc. The review and consequent award resulted in numerous Dr. Strange fans from across North America ordering copies of the blue-faced shaman's debut book.


So, I thought I should at least mention it to you guys so I could let you know that Neilalien.com exists in case anyone wants to check that out and also to mention that the book is a production of D.C. Conspiracy, a collaborative of comic book creators in the Washington, D.C. area who meet monthly in Arlington, VA at Dr. Dremo's Taphouse, "a fairly inconspicuous microbrew bar and pool hall that was once a car dealership showroom." I'm not sure if they allow spectators or if they're interested in new contributors but if you're in the vicinity of Washington, you can check out http://home.dcconspiracy.com/blog.html or just stalk Dr. Dremo's Taphouse until a bunch of cartoonists show up and start jamming.


The two volumes are $3 each.


Okay, that takes care of that. Let's see what I have left here. Long letter from Jeff Seiler that really needs to be dealt with separately and in some depth. REALLY long letter from Mike Kitchen which will probably take up the better part of a week. I was going to get them typed but then Steve Peters wrote and told me that there are scanners you can buy for $100 that will scan text and turn it into word files. Get out of Dodge. No, I'm sure he's right so that made actually paying to have stuff typed seem wasteful but I still have enough inertia that I'm not going out and getting one right, you know, today but I'm trying to finish this up in a hurry so that means that I'll have to type it out myself. THANK YOU, STEVE!! I really must come out to your grocery store sometime and tell you something that ties you up in knots and leaves you having a lot more work to do that you thought someone else was going to do.


I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Sort of.


And this is Saturday, is it not? I need a co-host or a band leader or something. Yes, it is, it's Saturday. So that means Scriptural Subject for tomorrow. It's a toss-up between the article Jeff sent on Elizabeth Fox-Genovese from the Dallas Morning News ("Cathy Young analyzes the journey of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese from Marxist feminist to conservative Catholic") and the middle of Mike Kitchen's long, long letter – without establishing who Mike Kitchen is. What the heck, I've done everything out of order so far this time around, let's go with that.

Tomorrow: Mike Kitchen actually reads this Sunday stuff. Are you sure you want to know any more about him?



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