Dave Sim's blogandmail #450 (December 5th, 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 #8 - 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.

ZEPHYR & REGINALD MINIONS FOR HIRE (issue No.2) in "Despot Industries, Inc. World Conquest Division" is a good example of one of those books that is closer to the amateur side, art-wise, than to semi-pro that you can't dismiss out of hand without missing out on a very funny comic book. Again, for those of you who love the really traditional super-hero stuff, this is a really good parody. The cover, a parody of FF #1 features the Legion of Good Girls (Unseen Crusader, `Lectric Lass and Widget Woman) attacking the Kirby monster while in the foreground the head of Despot Industries is saying to Zephyr and Reginald, "Will you idiots do something?!? Those girls are hurting my monster!"

Well, I laughed anyway. Art by Gynn Stella, written and edited by Rick Silva and Gynn Stella for Dandelion Studios out of Osterville, MA, www.dandelionstudios.com

ACT OF CONTRITION is a self-contained graphic novel written by Nik Havert, drawn by Wes Sweetser and lettered by Craig DeBoard. Wes has a ways to go in the "finish" department but he has a very good compositional sense along the lines of Alex Toth's work for Warren Publishing (like "Daddy and the Pi") where panel borders were pretty much non-existent and you "discovered" the story image by image and word balloon by word balloon which is not the easiest way in the world to tell a story (he said, speaking from experience). Wes doesn't get it right 100% but he does have a very high batting average in an approach where a newcomer is going to lose you a lot more often than he finds you.

SPOILER WARNING (SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH)

It's a whodunit and, well, the priest did it. Which, in this secular age, I pretty much knew from the time the priest entered the story around page 6 or so, so I don't even think it really rates a SPOILER WARNING because that was the first thing I thought: "Oh," I thought, "This being the 21st century, obviously the priest did it." Hoped that wouldn't be the case. "Please surprise me and have someone else do it and just have all the evidence point towards the priest." Nope, the priest did it. Which is too bad because the writing almost entirely avoids clichés, the characters are all nicely developed.

It's a really nice piece of work, more accomplished and tightened up and sharper delineation towards the end than the beginning which is the way you want it to be. So I have really high hopes for the next book these guys do together. www.picklepress.net

Hey, you probably thought we were all done with Chad Lambert, but we're not. It's Steve Noppenberger's POTLATCH PROJECT from Angry Dog Press and it has two, count `em two Chad Lambert stories, one drawn by Amanda Morley and lettered by Jaymes called "Depression" and the other drawn by his Possum at Large collaborator Joe Gravel "Possum at Large: the Broken Record". I'm only obliged to read the submitted material but I always feel guilty if I don't flip through everything. Nice to see fellow Canadian Joanne Ellen Mutch back with a pin-up. I didn't know she (is/used to be) a store owner. Another pin-up by the always brilliant Brad W. Foster. A very funny strip by Lou Copeland (that name rings a bell somehow). Bob Corby is in here. A nice couple of pages by Fran Matera who I'm ashamed to say I never heard of before considering

Fran Matera graduated high school, '42 and received his first assignment illustrating comics with Quality Comics. Fran eventually enlisted in the US Marine Corps. While in the Marines, Fran is credited with drawing a portrait of President Truman…

Maybe I have heard of Fran Matera if the portrait of President Truman – which Truman autographed – was in an issue of Roy Thomas' ALTER EGO a while back. If it's the same one, it was a beaut.

…After being discharged from the Marines Fran was then hired by Al Andriola to pencil the KERRY DRAKE strip. Later Fran would replace Coulton Waugh on Milt Caniff's DICKIE DARE. Then Fran drew DICKIE DARE for a two-year contract. In the early 1960s, Fran worked on TREASURE CHEST COMICS and the CHUCK WHITE AND FRIENDS feature. He drew many strips and comics during his prolific career including: ghosting on REX MORGAN for 3 years, STEVE ROPER, BRUCE LEE, MR. HOLIDAY, drawing TARZAN and HULK and other comic books for Marvel. In addition Fran Matera has worked on Will Eisner's DOLLMAN. Visit Fran at www.penandbrush.net/matera_.html

If I was on the Internet, I'd be there already. And then I'd never get through the rest of these Day Prize submissions.

Eric Adams' LACKLUSTER WORLD is still going strong at issue 4 from Generation Eric publishing (Gen Eric, get it?) at www.lacklusterworld.com. For those of us who have been keeping up, the issue starts off with a bang with an extreme flashback to when three of the main characters were kids.

It's very heavily anti-organized religion (hey, what isn't nowadays?) but also pretty engaging and the use of the "Where Were You The Day You Died?" t-shirt in the comic book, I would imagine, moves a lot of Eric's "Where Were You The Day You Died" t-shirts on the Internet. Hey, I bet if you go over there right now you can buy one in your size and get caught up on back issues at the same time!





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Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

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