Dave Sim's blogandmail #435 (November 20th, 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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STOCK INTRO INSERTION #1 - As you are reading this, Dave Sim is quickly running out of things to do on Secret Project #2 that fall into the "intellectual exercise" category and is, consequently, coming up on the point where he is going to have to decide if the project is a Go or a No Go. Fortunately, he also needs to be doing the Blog & Mail so, at least for the moment, he is able to use that as an excuse to postpone making a decision. Please stay tuned as he makes his way through the Day Prize submissions one at a time. Somewhere up ahead he has to make up his mind about Secret Project #2 – in the next week or two weeks, tops.

Okay, I'm back from the opening of the Graphic Lit exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. As promised, here (and for the next couple of weeks) are Dave Sim's Capsule Reviews of all of the Day Prize submissions for 2007. Well, except for Matt Dow's RACECAR COMICS. I just saw Matt and Paula in Stockbridge (they drove sixteen hours from Wisconsin!) and Matt said submitting RACECAR COMICS was Jeff Seiler's idea. So Matt wins the MOST ENTHUSIASTIC NEWCOMER AWARD (a politically correct way of saying "don't quit your day job") which has no cash prize and no plaque. But, hey, at least he won something. And my vote for the newest Mouseskull Entertainment character sensation is Break-Dancing Buddha. More on this later.

Matt had this idea for a super-hero story (he has way too much time on his hands at his day job, by his own admission and that tends to spill over even when he's socializing in my suite at the "Since 1773" Red Lion Inn) so I'm toying with the idea of submitting Matt's ideas to Marvel and DC as my own and then splitting the money with him. You know, in all of my ha-ha spare time.

I intended to answer Asa M. Larsson's letter first but that's going to require re-reading all of the news clippings I've got stuffed in her envelope and, as far as I know, there's still no reply to my most recent letter to Gary Groth which means that if you clicked to go over there when I suggested it in the posting for 15 November you just saw his most recent response which has been up for about a month now.

There's always a danger of my capitulating structurally to Marxist feminism in the popular imagination just by continuing to allow Marxist-feminists like Larsson and Groth to dominate the debate and, consequently, the Blog & Mail which could otherwise be the comic world's only Marxist-feminist-free zone. So, ultimately it seemed more sensible to reply first to Groth (which I've done and which will be posted when his reply comes in) and then to do my promised capsule reviews of the Day Prize submissions this year before getting around to Asa M. Larsson's multi-page letter.

So, starting with the biggest and thickest of the Day Prize submissions (and the last one I read), Rafer Roberts' PLASTIC FARM volume one, SOWING SEEDS ON FERTILE SOIL, has been collected as a (wait for it) 300-page graphic novel. Assisting Rafe on the book is (ladies first!) Danielle Corsetto (chapter 16) Wendi Strang-Frost (chapter 10) (returning the favour: Rafe illustrated DOPE FIENDS OF THE ZOMBIE CAFÉ written by her husband Sean for Wendi's Hula Cat Comics imprint http://www.hulacatcomics.com) Nan Roberts (Muse and Proof reader), Dave Morgan on chapters 2 and 13 and Dennis Culver on chapter 11 (what sort of bad financial luck do you have when you draw "Chapter 11"?), Jake Warrenfeltz (chapters 3, 5 and 7).

Rafe would have qualified as a MOST ENTHUSIASTIC NEWCOMER on the PROLOGUE to the first volume, but it's still pretty interesting and engaging material, very low on the "eye candy" quotient. It's something I've gotten used to in reading a lot of amateur and semi-pro material and I never rule something out purely on the basis of the quality of the artwork (although I understand why Diamond has to). Danielle and Dennis are about the most professional of Rafe's team (although you might forget that because Danielle – who has done some inking for Marvel -- also draws the ultimate gross-out drawing assignment) (she writes and draws her own, presumably LESS gross-out webcomic "Girls with Slingshots" Tuesdays and Thursdays at www.girlswithslingshots.com ).

PLASTIC FARM remains innovative although sincerely demented. As the back cover quote of Johanna Draper Carlson says, "I have to admit I still don't get it…and what I do get disgusts me."

That's okay, Rafe, she hates my guts too.

PLASTIC FARM officially enters the Off-White House Library between Joel Priddy's PULPATOON PILGRIMAGE and Alex Robinson's TRICKED. Check it out at www.plasticfarm.com

Next up, we have Book #1 of 19TH CENTURY DETECTIVE: THE GRAYBRIDGE TERROR and Book #2 AN INSANE ARMY featuring Lane Brain. Story and pencils by Larnad Justin (and inks by our old pal Tim Corrigan on Book #1). I'm afraid that this is in the same MOST ENTHUSIASTIC NEWCOMER category vis-à-vis the artwork, although the storyline is pretty intricate and as a writer who draws rather than an artist who writes, I always tend to make allowances (and often picture how I would have drawn it). It even comes with an "Open ONLY after reading Book one" stamped envelope with a sheet inside explaining what Larnad was driving at which is a very funky extra touch. www.candidcartoons.com





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If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

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P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

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