Dave Sim's blogandmail #329 (August 6th, 2007)

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Fifteen 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.

15. Legislature Seats must be allocated to women and women must be allowed to bypass the democratic winnowing process in order to guarantee female representation and, thereby, make democracy fairer.

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ANOTHER Elephantmen Week Here on the Blog & Mail? Didn't we just HAVE one of these?

Well, yes and here we have another one. I'll try to make this a little quicker.

#002 AUG 2006 – The numbering, by the way, is Richard saying that he plans to at least make it to issue 100, thus the three placeholders. This is an interesting one because it opens with two quotes on the inside front cover, Genesis 1:24-28 and then a quote from Howard Stern: "I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the Pope wearing a large hate and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock." This is followed by "Behemoth and Leviathan" – basically selected verses from the Book of Job 40 and 41 (the 1611 King James is really a much better version, but this one is probably easier to follow for the Image kids) – serving as narration for an underwater battle between Elijah Delaney – a mutated crocodile – and Hip Flask, our favourite gritty hippo detective who bites Elijah's tail off.


I don't THINK that's what chapters 40 and 41 of the Book of Job are actually about, but there are honest disagreements about all things Biblical, as I know only too well.


Then the "flip story" on the other side of the book is Herman Strumm, a Shock Jock radio host who reminds us of someone who once had a quote of his on the inside front cover of issue #002. There are differences. I've seen the unnamed someone's black female sidekick and she's a very nice looking middle-aged woman. Strumm's female sidekick is called Rabbi and (Zero Mostel voice) WOWwowWOWWOWOWwowwow. These Weaned on Image Kids know their way around bootylicious, I should hope to tell the world. And some of them – Moritat being one – prefer real breasts to implants. But it's the sweet faces. Absolutely amazing. Thematically, this one goes right over the edge with Strumm bringing on two bikini-clad beauties to get a rise out of the mutated crocodile. Again, we seem to be back at miscegenation, this time with the Shock Jock titillating the audience ("Go on, TOUCH their breasts, test the water willya? They won't mind, right, girls?") with the prospect. What are we supposed to make of this? I mean, metaphorically, what does this apply to? We SHOULD be this way? We SHOULDN'T be this way?


Issue #003 – Absolutely gorgeous Brian Bolland cover. Is there any other kind? Joe Pruett said he would send me the ART OF BRIAN BOLLAND book that he did as thanks for doing the P. Craig Russell intro. I can't wait. "The Elephant in the Room". Art by Tom Scioli. The nearest analogy I can come to on this is Neil getting Marc Hempel to draw a good chunk of "The Kindly Ones" section of SANDMAN. Don't get me wrong. I love Marc Hempel's work. I love Tom Scioli's work – I had the pleasure of being set up next to him at SPACE the first year when he was still self-publishing OPUS 8 and presenting him with a Day Prize nominee plaque the following year for the same – he does the best, bar none, DC era Jack Kirby of anyone in the business. But in the former case we were a long way from Dringenberg and Jones III when we got there and here we are a long way from Ladronn's Wide-screen Hollywood Blockbuster look. Since I've never had to face the fact of having the original artist or art team have to take a powder on me, I'm not unsympathetic. There are going to be more times when it happens on a long-term book than when it isn't going to happen. If you can persuade everyone that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" more power to you. If you have some drops of sweat on your upper lip when you say it, it can come out sounding more like "I change my mind a lot for no reason". And I have to say that Neil waited until issue 57 of a 75-issue book before he attempted it. We're only three months into the monthly serialization. The flip cover story is right-side up this time (i.e. no flip cover – but with Brian Bolland who needs it?) and introduces Miki. Moritat again. Boy can he draw the cuties. Miki is A-Honking-Dorable an' thass no lie. All fourteen pages of her. The story's called "Good Look". Has there ever been a more appropriate title? If you only buy one issue of ELEPHANTMEN, this would be it for the Bolland cover and (sigh) Miki.


Tomorrow: Seven More to Go, Kids



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