Dave Sim's blogandmail #396 (October 12th, 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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You couldn't make this up. At least I couldn't. A very flattering letter from Lorenzo Garcia Garcia of Barcelona inquiring if I'm interested in having a Spanish translation of CEREBUS done. It's addressed to Dave Smith. Pass.

Note from John Tran, sending me back the $20 I gave him to buy me one of the autographed MOUSE GUARD volumes that David Petersen was flogging at Torontocon when he went back on Sunday. Turns out he didn't go back on Sunday. It's from a "home sweet home" notepad. I'm looking forward to seeing the new house if he ever comes in for a landing.

Jimmy Gownley of AMELIA RULES checks in:

"Dear Dave

"I want to send you a belated thank you for the blog entry. I look forward to reading the Blog and Mail every day, so it was a thrill to see my name in it. I couldn't believe the entire entry was about me & AMELIA RULES. Karen [Jimmy's wife] has often joked about how long I could continue smashing my head against a wall, but in her version it was brick instead of granite. Karen was incredibly amused that you had the same take on the situation as she did.

"AMELIA is going great. We're planning a third printing of Volume 1 and second printing of Vols 2 & 3. Volume 4 is due out in December. Also we've just been chosen to be a part of Scholastic Book Clubs and Book Fairs. The initial orders for this special edition are over 80,000. We also just received our first orders from Borders and Barnes & Noble. Needless to say, we're thrilled, and my headache is starting to go away.

"The other reason I wanted to write was to let you know about AMELIA RULES! #18: THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE. I don't know if this dovetails with your interests at all, but this story deals with a character's father being sent to war. The book was guest-edited by Iraq war veteran Major Stephen Murphy and his 9-year-old son, Taegen. I wanted to do it as a tribute to them, since I didn't see anything done that honored the sacrifices kids make when their parents are sent to war.

"This November, we're holding an art auction to raise money for Disabled American Veterans. The Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust supports physical and psychological rehabilitation programs, meets the special needs of veterans with specific disabilities – such as amputation and blindness – and aids and shelters homeless veterans (www.dav.org.)

"Along with original art from AMELIA RULES! we've received art from Greg Evans (the LUANN newspaper strip), Terry Moore (STRANGERS IN PARADISE), and John Gallagher (BUZZBOY) and have commitments from several more. We're hoping to collect art from as many artists as possible to be included as part of the auction. The work will be auctioned off on eBay, beginning Veterans Day, November 11th.

"I'm wondering if you would be interested in donating something to be included in the auction. Anything you would be willing to give – a sketch, preliminary drawing, even a signed book – would be greatly appreciated and would help the cause tremendously.

"If you have any questions, feel free to write me at the above address, or call me [phone number deleted].

"Obviously, we'd love to include you, but I understand that you're extremely busy (I can't wait for the secret project), so if you are unable to participate don't worry about it.

"I hope this letter finds you well and I look forward to hearing from you soon."

"P.S. I just now read that you've scrubbed the secret project. I'm very sorry to hear that. I hope it's only temporary. Your work is too beautiful to be hidden away."

Thanks for writing, Jimmy. Both secret projects are moving ahead. The caption borders question on secret project #1 ended up taking a few weeks to iron out (I'm sticking with the idea of not letting anything go until I'm completely satisfied with it) so all that's left to do there is the inside front cover note on the promo edition. Likewise the first issue of secret project #2 where Sandeep has to do some designing and typography and then the promo edition on that one is a go. I spent Saturday working on the website for SP #1 and made some progress and the website for SP #2 is going to be my first priority when I get this batch of Blog & Mails done.

I've been in regular communication with Brian Hibbs at COMIX EXPERIENCE and through him to the ComicsPRO membership ever since I supported their position paper on variant covers in this space the last time out. They really aren't set up for direct dealings with publishers but it looks as if I will be making a pitch to them on SP #2 sometime in the next month or so. It's really a good news/bad news thing. I got a grand total of two responses from retailers to my request for a ballpark figure on what they would order sight unseen of a Dave Sim first issue (Jeremy Shorr of TITAN COMICS in Dallas and Matt Lehmann from COMICOPIA in Boston. Thanks Jeremy, thanks, Matt). Both said between 20 and 50 copies. If that held true across all 3,000 stores that would be good news. If it only holds true across the ComicsPRO membership of 130 stores, that would be bad news.

I'm still not sure that I can get a fair hearing for my work in the comic-book field. The field perceives itself as being composed of open-minded liberals but, at least so far (relative to me) has proven itself to made up largely of closed-minded Marxist-feminists so there is a problem from my perspective in spending thousands of dollars of my own money based on the former assumption if the latter is the reality (and I also have a problem with betting thousands of dollars on an underlying assumption of which I have seen very little evidence).

I made it from the last Blog & Mail session to this one without being subjected to any more attacks or character assassination so, looking on the bright side, that's one in a row! Whether the projects ever actually see the light of day (I'd estimate a 30% chance at this point) it's good discipline to work on them. Thanks for asking.

Tomorrow: AMELIA RULES #18 "The Things I Cannot Change" and Steve Ditko's concluding paragraphs to "An Issue, Question"



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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

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