Well, since Dave won't shut up about it, I bought a copy of Idyl.
I let Dave know, he responded:
I saw something, so, because I can, I asked Dave, and got a response:
I know Dave says no, but I dunno, what do you think:
Anyway, Friend to the Blog, James Windsor Banderas-Smith has a new Papa Balloon & Cactus Kickstarter. He's offering A BRAND NEW Dave Sim variant cover on this campaign. Speaking of which, Dave sent this from James:
Aardvark Splendor made it to round two. How to vote:
Voting for the HEROIC Awards has started, and it's March Madness bracket style. Yay, said no one.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill.
___________________________
Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
Which means I gotta find that sweet, sweet Cerebus content you come to AMOC for...
Friend to the Blog, James Windsor Banderas-Smith has a new Papa Balloon & Cactus Kickstarter. He's offering A BRAND NEW Dave Sim variant cover on this campaign. As Dave faxed:
Dave's been playing up Idyl so much, I bought a copy. It arrives Tuesday...
Let's see, this one is worrying:
Hopefully Flight, Women, and Rick's Story can be completed with out the negatives. And Dave can figure out WHERE the negatives went...
Anyway, this is a sequel to this fax:
This one arrived with no explanation:
click for bigger
Dave remembered:
And Dave commented on Chad Lambert's notice of Aardvarkian Splendor getting nominated for an award:
Chad says how to vote:
Voting for the HEROIC Awards has started, and it's March Madness bracket style. Yay, said no one.
H.E.R.O.I.C Awards voting instructions
Round 1 = march 15-17
Round 2 = march 18-21
Round of 32 = march 22-25
Sweet 16 = march 26-29
Elite 8 = march 30-april 2
Final 4 = april 3-5
Championship 2 = april 6-8
STEP ONE
Go here: (If the link doesn't work, let me know. Then I gotta figure this crap out. Try this.)
STEP TWO
On the home page, enter the date on the bottom left (under the trophy)
STEP THREE
Scroll down to Bracket 53 and vote for Aardvarkian Splendor.
STEP FOUR
Scroll to the very bottom of the form and click the Submit button.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill.
___________________________
Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
Saturday: Please Hold For Dave Sim 3/2024 Part the First
Sunday: Please Hold For Dave Sim 3/2024 Part the Second
Monday: Dave's computer died two weeks ago. The new one isn't set up and given to him. So, no Monday Report, Friend to the Blog, James Windsor Banderas-Smith has a new Papa Balloon & Cactus Kickstarter. He's offering A BRAND NEW Dave Sim variant cover on this campaign. Please back this project, so I can get my new issue.
Tuesday: Jen mines the comments section for her post about The Strange Death of Alex Raymond Go Fund Me. Speaking of which, $190 until the next page is unlocked.
Wednesday: Hobbs posts an AI animation of Cerebus.
Thursday: Margaret continued looking at the first Notebook AKA Albatross 1. $100 American will get YOU your own copy so she can move on to a different notebook. How that works: Send One hundred American dollars to Dave Sim, P.O. Box 1674, Station C, Kitchener, Ontario N2G 4R2, Canada. It can be a check, a money order, or just a Ben Franklin. (Make sure that your Money Order is international. Otherwise Dave can't get paid (It's why I'm just sending him a hundred dollar bill...).)
Friday: that's this post. You're reading the Friday post right now. This is like that bit in Spaceballs.
Okay, so that was the past week in AMOC. You're welcome.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill.
___________________________
Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.
We’re continuing with the page by page look at Albatross One, which is Dave Sim’s first notebook used in the production of Cerebus. . If you want to get caught up, just use the Notebook One tag to find all past blog entries with pages from Notebook One. Since we ended last week with page 44, we’ll start with page 45 this week.
Notebook 1, page 45
And this page contains more content for Cerebus #21, just like the last couple of pages did. Page 45 goes over how Weisshaupt turned Cockroach into Captain Cockroach. We also see Dave trying out a new font along the top of the page.
The next page of the notebook has the text "Cerebus #22 (Nov 1980) The Death of Elrod” along the top of it, and Dave writing down a list of things for the ‘Message to the People’ weekly letter. All part of Weisshaupt’s plan for power.
Notebook 1, page 46
And Dave’s synopsis of Cerebus #22 at the time of writing it down in his notebook: “#21 is about the military in Beduin closing in on the Cockroach. Purpose: cut off funds that support the President. The closer they get the angrier the Cockroach gets until critical mass is reached than he just starts coming apart at the seams.”
Page 47 is a bunch of sketches of Captain Cockroach one of which has Cerebus nearby for scale. Another sketch shows the Cockroach’s special boot design to make him appear taller. This page was shown in a post from October 2016, Captain Cockroach and Bunky.
The next page of the notebook is more of Weisshaupt explaining his plan to use the Hsiffies as a scapegoat to rile up the Feldans in order to get and maintain power.
Notebook 1, page 48
Unfortunately we do not get to see the sketches of bored Cerebus listening to Weisshaupt in the finished books.
Will next week contain even more material for Cerebus #21 or will it move on to Cerebus #22? We shall see.
Lots to get through, so less banter and more rabbit holing...
1) Manly's Please Hold for Dave Sim featured a chunk on S-D-O-A-R as a throwback and followup to my February 27, 2024 post. In other words, first this, then for those who are not regular viewers...
I would be remiss if I did not give Manly a shoutout on his editing of the Please Hold videos, which have improved by leaps and bounds since the early days -- and are a genuine pleasure to digest during my weekly drives from NYC to Philadelphia and back. I mean, when I'm stuck at a light. Not whilst I'm flying down the New Jersey Turnpike at 105 MPH. Nope, not this gal!
2) Fourteen comments from last week's post! Of course sixth revolved around Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. and his mansion and a yacht. I keed! I keed! But...
Anonymous said...
Jen,
That's some good drivin'!
Cheers,
A Fake Name
And Tony said..
By the way Jen - Feel free to post more stunt driving vids here! Looks like fun!
Sure thing! Remember that Cannonball Dash I mentioned? Well, I completed my first solo Cannonball Challenge in April 2021 in 35 hours and 56 minutes. A very condensed video from my front-facing camera can be found below! Top speed in my 2016 Mustang was 148 MPH (149 MPH if my radar detector was accurate).
Dave can be sphinx-like in his responses sometimes [unless they're on Please Hold <yawn> --Jen], and ... if he's analyzed a thing to his satisfaction and drawn a conclusion, no force on Earth can move him off of that. Interestingly, his (to me) flawed analysis of that aspect of the crash actually doesn't detract from his overarching theory that Raymond harbored professional jealousy towards Drake and was likely - perhaps subconsciously - suicidal (and perhaps steered by a kind of 4D synchronicity into the crash as an inevitability).
I'd weighed saving the question for an Ask Dave session but suspect it would be politely and obliquely dismissed - and it's really kind of a red herring anyhow, as the book gets so far away from the accident that it's not even really engaged with it as anything more than window dressing.
“…Stan was absolutely convinced Alex was trying to take him with him, to make it look like an accident so his widow would get the insurance, an incredibly tortured man. Even more, Westport was definitely a hotbed of strange-ass stuff Artist-wise then; like Woodstock with Lockjaw. And when I would drive the length of road where the accident occurred, it's pretty revealing. The road is tailor made for insane acceleration.” (Bill Sienkiewicz 2015)
- Eddie
Eddie, you ruin the entire aura of being so mysteriously Anonymous if you sign your name at the end. <sigh>
Dave Kopperman said...
"I think (Stan) felt the guilt of losing Alex Raymond being part of it [...] It started to rain and they were going on this curve and he knew that Alex was going a little bit too fast, but he didn't say anything" - Tom Palmer
Not that these quotes are mutually exclusive, but it sounds like Drake was all over the place AND these are second-hand reporting on conversations that had likely happened years before - I suspect the reportage says more about Palmer and Sienkiewicz than it does about Raymond (or Drake, for that matter)
Let's just hope no one else from the brain trust chimes in...
Mouse Skull Entertainment said...
I suspect Drake suffered head trauma/PTSD from the crash, and subsequently didn't really remember what happened and spent the rest of his life trying to fill in the blanks.
So, I don't trust his narrative.
Manly Matt Dow
D'oh!
Anonymous said...
Leonard Starr interview: Alter Ego 113:
JA: Before we change subjects, I’d like to know what Stan Drake told you about the automobile accident that took Alex Raymond’s life and nearly his own.
STARR: We were both car enthusiasts, and Alex had been taking speed-driving lessons. I guess he got good at it, but not good enough, because he kept wrecking cars on the Merritt Parkway at night. Alex drove expensive cars like Mercedes, which he drew in Rip Kirby. When Alex’s body was brought to the hospital, his regular doctor was there and said, “That stupid bastard finally did it.”
Stan had just bought a new Corvette. Alex dropped by and wanted to try it out. At one point, they were driving uphill very fast as they were coming to a crossroad. Being unfamiliar with the car, Alex hit the accelerator instead of the brake, and they went up into air, off the road, and hit a tree in mid-air. Stan was thrown clear; his ear was almost torn off and his shoulder was dislocated. They managed to sew the ear back on and put his arm in a sling. He would never wear a seat beat after that. If he had been wearing one, it would’ve been all over for him. The driving shaft of the steering wheel went right through Alex.
Alex was having an affair with a certain Mrs. White. None of us met her, but he was madly in love with her, and she with him. His wife wouldn’t give him a divorce because she was devoutly Catholic, as Alex was. They had five kids, who were mostly grown by the time of the accident. Some time after the accident, a couple of insurance investigators showed up, thinking Alex deliberately crashed the car because he had a million-dollar insurance policy that would have been voided if this was suicide. Stan got furious and said, “Do you think he would have done that with me in the car? My best friend?” Stan threw them out of his house. That was the end of that.
Years later, Stan and I were sharing a studio, and were talking about it, and he started thinking about it, and says, “You know....” Well, they said Alex was an experienced driver and wouldn’t have made a mistake like that. Thinking about it, well, they have a point. Would you make that mistake?
JA: No.
STARR: It doesn’t take more than five minutes to get familiar with a new car, and then it’s like you’ve been driving it forever.
-Eddie
This is becoming one helluva post!
Dave Kopperman said...
Eddie - it's a little difficult to know what you're trying to convey with these interview clips, but this Leonard Starr interview may be the most opaque as yet. It actually lends credence to Matt's point that Drake's PTSD led to him changing key points of his narrative over the years. It also references so many things that it's highly unlikely that Starr was privy to in a first or even second-hand fashion (such as the quote from the doctor). It's ultimately nothing but somewhat informed gossip and supposition.
None of which actually gets back to my original question, which has been somewhat obscured in all of this: where Dave is making the claim that "there's no way to confuse brake and accelerator". I thought it might have something to do with manual vs. automatic, Tony said it's definitely a mistake even experienced drivers make even on manual, and Jen says (and Starr supports) that Raymond wasn't nearly as good a driver as he thought he was. All three are reasonable assumptive possibilities, but impossible to know for certain - which is why creating a narrative around it is a brilliant artistic choice.
How about we give the last word to Rick Veitch and his recent faxes to and from Dave (courtesy of Manly)...
How about that for a S-D-O-A-R post! But wait, there's more!
Just the GoFundMe Facts, Ma'am
$11,010.00 raised to date from 183 donations
59 new pages released as mocked up by Dave Sim from 11 June to 17 November 2021
80 total pages available on Dropbox, including Dave's 2019 mocked-up pages
$190.00 away from unlocking page 81
If you have not donated > $5+ donation grants access to all 80 pagesand all pages moving forward
If you have donated, thank you, but if you want to donate monthly, GoFundMe does not offer that option, so please do so as we are in the middle of month #3 of Year 2.
Dave, Um...send all the art to me, and I'll get it to a good home (smiley emoji). ... I thought one of them said in the phone interview posted yesterday as the weekly update, that Elephant was their first choice, and the actual offered cover could go to the other guy. Seems to be a win-win?
OR, if you have extra AKIMBO blanks, do two new homages, send one to each of them with full sized prints of the other four homages, signed/personalized/and with a secret message just for the recipient and keep the original three (because as the song goes, "breaking up is hard to do..."). Along with the comics with the covers like originally planned?
OR or, auction all three through Heritage and send a third of the take for the intended give-away cover to Al and a third to Jason and you keep all the rest?
OR Or or... I dunno. This is a sticky wicket, and I'm kinda glad it's not really MY sticky wicket, per se...
In the immortal words of Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride, "have fun storming the castle!"
Manly Matt Dow (Or, cut the covers in half diagonally, and tape half of one cover to half of the other cover and send a Frankenstein to each of them signed "it worked for King Solomon...Dave Sim"...)
More as this continues...
Breaking News!
James Banderas-Smith sent out:
Hey everyone! The Kickstarter is already doing very well! Thanks for all of your support! Today I got word from Kitchener Ontario, that Dave Sim will be contributing yet another variant cover! This will be $20 and limited to 50 copies! First come, first served! Now this may affect your buying decisions, so feel free to adjust your orders, I completely understand! The new cover is already available as an add on, but there isn't an image as of yet! Thank you for your patience and thank you once again!
So if you go RIGHT HERE, you can try and get you one of the other forty-nine (I'ma getting one! And you can have it when you pry it from my cold. Dead. Hands.)
We don't have an image, but it'll be in the vein of these:
And since you're taking recommendations on spending your money, why not throw a little at Lee Thacker's new book: My Nervous Breakdown?
Okay, if you still got a couple of bucks tomorrow, Jen would like a word...
Part five: Dave provides an overview on the timeline for the creation of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, and gives an update on how the work on that is going. All in service of answering a question Jen tried to answer here:
Part six: Dave answers Michael R.'s question about Marvel & DC comps, pledges to back Lee Thacker's and James Banderas-Smith's Kickstarters, and we end on a cliffhanger about the future of Collected Letters:
Friend to the Blog, James Windsor Banderas-Smith has a new Papa Balloon & Cactus Kickstarter. He's offering the Dave Sim variant cover back issues on this campaign. Please back this project, so I can get my new issue.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill.
___________________________
Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
___________________________
Next Time: Dave's not doing the Monday Report until U.S. Tax Day, so probably some faxes kicking around my desk...
Monday: Dave's computer died two weeks ago. The new one isn't set up and given to him. So, no Monday Report, so I posted more High Society (we are *this* close to being done after five years...
Tuesday: Jen mines the comments section for her post about The Strange Death of Alex Raymond Go Fund Me, and answers a question about the project. Speaking of which, $200 until the next page is unlocked.
Wednesday: Hobbs posts a painter panel from a new CiH? book.
Thursday: Margaret continued looking at the first Notebook AKA Albatross 1. $100 American will get YOU your own copy so she can move on to a different notebook. How that works: Send One hundred American dollars to Dave Sim, P.O. Box 1674, Station C, Kitchener, Ontario N2G 4R2, Canada. It can be a check, a money order, or just a Ben Franklin. (Make sure that your Money Order is international. Otherwise Dave can't get paid (It's why I'm just sending him a hundred dollar bill...).)
Friday: that's this post. You're reading the Friday post right now. This is like that bit in Spaceballs.
Okay, so that was the past week in AMOC. You're welcome.
_______________
If you missed out, CAN10 will join the others available here eventually...
Friend to the Blog, James Windsor Banderas-Smith has a new Papa Balloon & Cactus Kickstarter. He's offering the Dave Sim variant cover back issues on this campaign. Please back this project, so I can get my new issue.
The Help Out Bill Messner-Loebs Go Fund Me, or buy Rodney Schroeter's book with proceeds going to Bill.
___________________________
Oliver' Simonsen's Cerebus movie: The Absurd, Surreal, Metaphysical, and Fractured Destiny of Cerebus the Aardvark it's currently available on "Plex", "Xumo", "Vimeo On Demand", "Tubi". If you're in Brazil..., "Mometu", "Nuclear Home Video".
A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.
So far in this past month of two during our look at Dave Sim’s first notebook used in the production of Cerebus we’ve seen up to page 39, so today we’ll start with page 40. If you want to get caught up, just use the Notebook One tag to find all past blog entries with pages from Notebook One.
Last week we saw pages from the notebook which covered Cerebus #21 with Elrod and Cockroach selling bonds while Cerebus wakes up and discovers them. Page 40 of the notebook continues this, with some discussion about selling bonds and going to meet the President:
Notebook #1, page 40
We get to see one of Weisshaupt's lines: “If you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, start breeding them for stupidity.” Though the line in the finished book, and yes this line appears in Cerebus #21, is: "I firmly believe that if you can't fool all of the people all of the time, you should start breeding them for stupidity..."
The next two pages of the notebook, pages 41 & 42, were shown previously on this blog in the entry Adam Beduin. On those pages are sketches of Weisshaupt, Beduin, and Captain Cockroach.
On the next page up along the top is Dave shorthand notes:
Start talking m o conversation eo action action Elrod hurt.
Perhaps it is some plot points he wants to address?
Notebook #1, page 43
The gray spot on the page is me crossing out the address and phone number of the person whose name is written in the notebook. Then we see a bunch of sketches. I like the water reflections of the sitting Cockroach character. That Cerebus figure is . . .something else. Another shot of Beduin and Elrod. The big half naked guy must be Dave just have fun sketching.
The next page of the notebook, is only half full:
Notebook #1, page 44
Some dialogue between Weisshaupt and Cerebus along the top, another random sketch, and the little note: “C wakes up doesn’t know where he is going to supposed to be in Parmoc.” Parmoc? Really? The one note I can find on Parmoc is “the northwestern district of Palnu, containing the city of Fluroc.” Parmoc does appear on a map in the main, but doesn’t get any other mentions that I know.