Dave Sim's blogandmail #425 (November 10th, 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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Sergeant Moore plans on following the Clint Eastwood/Kurowsawa work `til you drop career trajectory.

Yeah, I pretty much came to the same conclusion except that it looks as if I'm finally getting to the point where I really will have enough money to see me through to the end of my life so publishing is starting to look a little suspect to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'll keep writing and drawing. I'm a comic-book creator. It's what I do.

But the idea of just throwing money away on ads and printing bills and promotions for comic books that I know people are just going to ignore…that looks more and more to me like a guy who just can't walk away from the blackjack tables, you know? Look at how much money you're ahead by, dude! – WALK AWAY! But no, the putz just stands there and loses every nickel back to the house until he has to walk away because he's busted flat. If I was in Clint Eastwood's situation – if I had the equivalent of his stature in the comic book field, that would be one thing. But I'm like a guy who has had a half a dozen flops in a row or a complete rookie.

Listen, bud, are you SURE you want to bet your nest egg that "Seventh Time's the Charm"?

I like to think I'm not that stupid. Fortunately if I JUST write and draw comics all it costs me is for the art board and the ink, nickels and dimes. I can pay for 120 artboards a year and all the pencils, erasers, pen nibs, brushes and inks I need to cover them, no problem. You can't do that in movies. Shooting the movie is your biggest expense. In comics publishing and promotion are your biggest expenses.

Tell you what, if I end up not publishing either of the two secret projects, I'll swap you photocopies of them for a copy of your movie. Then all I have to do is find someone with a DVD player so I can watch it.


"I'll give you another update in November. All of October will be very busy finishing DEMON JOE. I should reach a conclusion. If not it will be due to my money problems and having to do army stuff to pay the rent. I'll write again in November with either an update or a DVD. Good luck to you"

"P.S. In a small irony (I have been reading your blog) the woman who published Bryan Talbot's book also sells me my comics. Moonstone and AF Books and Comics are owned by the same people. I still haven't bought any Moonstone products, though – even with the bigger discount a Moonstone book will get me. Anyway, it's just a `small world' irony I thought I'd share. I never read "licensed" comics. That's about as much as I can say about Moonstone. I just like their comic shop. My Dad would pick up my subscriptions for me and mail them to me when I was deployed. Your phone books are all in stock so they can't be all bad."

Oh, no. I don't think there's anything wrong with the stores. I mean I can get resentful if I want that even though the CEREBUS trades keep selling that isn't going to translate into first, second or third issue sales for me. It's one of those glass half full, glass half empty deals. How many guys have work from thirty years ago that's still paying their grocery bill? No, I come at it from the other direction: pushed to the wall and forced to face facts, I am more than willing to admit that I did my only good work when I was in my early twenties and everything I've done since that has been complete crap. The good work (CEREBUS and HIGH SOCIETY) sells the best and all the crap (the stuff I did with Gerhard) sells between a half to a tenth that well based purely on momentum. It's a "how did your last project do?" environment. They don't add up how many copies of your work they've sold in total, they just look at what they're selling of, say, an individual issue of FOLLOWING CEREBUS and that's what you're worth to them.

At least I OWN CEREBUS and HIGH SOCIETY. How many guys can honestly say that they own their best-selling material? Alan Moore sure can't.

"Of course, you must judge that with the fact that I won't write anything bad for fear that you will post it on your blog and I'll have to hear about it from Lori. Y THE LAST MAN is about to be cancelled and I'll be short my 4 monthlies minimum to keep my 10% discount. Not the best time to talk trash about your local retailer. It brings dread to the words, `Let us haggle!'"

She wouldn't REALLY cut an American War Veteran's 10% discount because he doesn't have four monthly titles on it, would she? C'mon, say it ain't so, Lori. How about this. Sergeant Moore gets to keep his 10% discount and I promise not to sue you for publishing criminal libel about me in Bryan Talbot's book.

No, wait. That isn't going to work, is it? Thanks to the universal code of silence (and thank you ALL again, for that!) Kicking Dave Sim in the Nuts is considered a fundamental human freedom in the comic book field. Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to Kick Dave Sim in the Nuts. They all go together. You just watch: Lori publishes criminal libel about me, I offer to let her off the hook for the sake of 10% off on three funnybooks a month and everyone's going to jump onto her side, same as they did with Jeff Smith and Gary Groth (with the exception of Michael Zulli in the former case and Michael B. – your fax is coming up, Michael, patience, lad, patience – in both cases: thanks for being the only ones to jump onto MY side I owe you both BIG TIME, guys.)

Okay, how about this. What are funnybooks going for these days? Three bucks each, isn't it? Tell you what, Lori, you let Sergeant Moore the American War Veteran keep his 10% discount and you send me a bill for $36 and I'll pay you annually to LET him keep it.


How's that for fairness? Yeah, I know. Universal silence. What else is new?

Keep `em flyin', Sarge. And good luck wrapping up your movie.

Monday: Ted Adams at IDW checks in

Tomorrow: Not a whole lot of Sunday Edition material coming in these days, but here's a good one from right around home




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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.