Dave Sim's blogandmail #438 (November 23rd, 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 #4 - 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.

PANEL 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck How can you not love a title like that?). Yes, it's them wacky Panel Collective guys from Columbus, Andy Bennett, Steve Black, Craig Bogart, Tim Fischer, Tony Goins, Tim McClurg, Sean McGurr, Dara Naraghi and Tom Williams. Since I'm launching my own title this year, I'm cutting down on the 9-plaque nominees, which is a shame. This one comes with it's own 3-D glasses for the front cover by Tim Fischer and the back cover by Tom, both of which are really, really good. See what the Collective is up to at www.ferretpress.com

MINI RING KING from Jury Rigged Comics a digest comic with a boxing/wrestling theme with three of the Panel guys doing the honors, Sean "The Equalizer" McGurr, Tim "No Palooka" McClurg and Steve "Not a Tomato Can" Black. Has a full colour painted cover and four-page colour story by Steve Black. Includes pin-ups of Hulk Hogan, King Kong Bundy and Andre the Giant among others. Very nice package, stylish and (as a ring fan in recovery) it attracted my attention. Can they overcome the potential "3-plaque nomination jinx"? Stay tuned. Remember this is just the submissions stage right now.

FL!PPED: JOURNEY TO SPACE. I guess it had to happen eventually. Terry Flippo at 8-Ball Graphics contributes a 24-page digest part autobio, part fictional piece about him and the family coming out to SPACE. He's been here four times all the way from Mt. Airy Maryland. Good clean semi-pro/verging on pro style. He includes Jim Coon in his story who was one of the short-list nominees for 2006. FL!PPED was inspired by Jerry Smith's autobiographical comic SOUTHERN FRIED which you can check out at skybot99@yahoo.com.. He also submits ZACH FLIPPO'S MONSTER BOMB from Little Big Man Productions. Zach is his 10 year old son who has been drawing monsters since he was 8 and Dad gave him a hand with this digest-sized 24-pager. The inking's even better than on FL!PPED! No website for Terry (or Zach) but you can write them at 205 Breezewood Ct. in Mt. Airy, MD, 21771

High concept Hard center would describe BREAK-UP BOTS a fat mini-comic from Robert James Algeo's absentia press. Very funny. Basically each page is a different robot and a different break-up line (i.e. "Stop calling me at work." and "But you're the one who wanted to see other people" and "How can you expect me to compete with a dead person?") As it says on the indicia page: "The robots depicted in this book are fictitious. Similarities between them and any robot, living, dead, operational, decommissioned or disassembled are completely coincidental. Several robots were harmed emotionally during the making of this book."

This one has real break-out real world potential written all over it.

In an obvious effort to keep from getting typecast as the "Break-Up Robots" guy, Robert also produced a colour comic this year on high gloss paper with very high production values called SKULL PEN No.1. It's a really very straightforward title about really ordinary happenings: two friends playing video games, a computer store where they do repairs and in comes…SKULL PEN. A six foot ballpoint pen with a skull on the top of it who talks like Dr. Doom even while he's trying to just deal with the world on its own terms.

SKULL PEN: My, it seems as though you are quite the video game warrior, James. With a score of 10 to zero to your advantage, one wonders if Marshall's mind is truly focused on the matter at hand.

JAMES: Yeah, it's like he didn't even show up.

SKULL PEN: Yes…Well, on that note, I am off to participate in the drudgery of consumerism. I shall return later this eve.

JAMES: Cool. See you later, pen.

Check out both titles at: www.inabsentiapress.com

Rickey Gonzales of Pretentious Comics offers up VICTIMS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, a graphic novella, 75 pages, squarebound, digest sized. It's very accomplished material in the "Lives of Quiet Desperation" category with a multi-character cast that he manages to keep tightly reined in even as he goes to town with the narrator's introspection. A very difficult balancing act and I was very impressed. You can check it out at www.pretentiouscomics.com and this one definitely enters the graphic novel section of the Off-White House Library between Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson's ALIENS adaptation and Jimmy Gownley's AMELIA RULES volumes.





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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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