Holy Smokes! I thought I'd just drop over here and post a message that I'll be in the Drawing Board section instead of the Playroom. I didn't expect there to be this many posts this early in the game. Okay, this is going to tax my two-week old Internet skills to the breaking point and possibly beyond, but maybe I can go back there and change my mind, publicly. "Dave Sim Caught in Official Flip-Flop: Playroom/Drawing Board Debacle Devastates glamourpuss Promotion Campaign on IMWAN: Film at 11"

Do what you've gotta do, Dave.

Dave, which place will you be at?

OOPS never mind... it looks like its here...

Okay, Jeff the Mod has evidently locked the other thread, so my Playroom/Drawing Board spanning heroics were for naught. Thank you, Jeff and thank you Linda for your cordial welcome. I'm going to backtrack and get right to the questions. Please Stand By. Luddite On The Loose.

We could move this entire thread into the Drawing Board, if you'd like?

Hello JurisFlash! Say is that the Jay Garrick of Earth Supreme Court? (nyuck nyuck nyuck)

Dave IS in the chatroom, y'all. Let's all GIVE IT UP for Dave! Oh, wait a minute. I'M Dave. Never mind.

You can blame me, Dave. Everyone else does.
My questions are, can you tell us anything more about some of your other projects you have coming up? Is Glamourpuss intended as an ongoing bimonthly for the foreseeable future, or do you have a certain number of issues in mind?
Thanks, and thanks for visiting us!

DAVE SIM HAS LEFT THE INTERNET FOREVER!!??? SAY IT AIN'T SO, CLARENCE THOMAS FLASH!!! OH THE HUMANITY!! Oh wait a minute. I'M Dave. Never mind.

Dave, I've been meaning to ask you this since I got a Elrod bunny doodle from you in Chicago back in '84 -- how often do people tell you that you look like George Thorogood?

C'mon, honestly.

It's like you guys were separated at birth.

I'm just sayin'.

Hey! I'm seeing Thorogood for my birthday this year!

(And you really do look like Thorogood, Dave...)

I think it's time we stopped pussy-footing around and got down the the REALLY important questions:

Dave -

Marvel or DC?

The Beatles or The Stones?

Dogs or cats?

Kirby or Ditko?

Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny?

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Thanks for your time.

Hi, Hank. I don't know why, but any time I come up with a comic book (and this is twice now) it ends up being something that just doesn't lend itself to Hollywood-style "elevator pitch" descriptions. The closest I could get to that was the flash animation Jeff Tundis did at http://www.glamourpusscomic.com, so I'd definitely suggest that you check that out. What I didn't anticipate was the pretty much universal response: "I can't picture how Dave would do these three publications in one." It's as if I said I was going to do a high dive into a small swimming pool and then roller skate out of it and do a triple barrel roll in mid-air.

The question isn't so much HOW at that point as WHY (would you do that?).

Anyway, the short answer to your narrative structure/something different question is "yes" on both counts.

That's one of the reasons that I've sent out 4500 copies of glamourpuss No.1 with DIAMOND DATELINE cover-dated today, February 13. If your store buys from Diamond Comics, either today or tomorrow, Friday or Monday they should have their free copy of THE COMICS INDUSTRY PREVIEW EDITION of glamourpuss No.1. If you're a mainstream Marvel and DC fan particularly, I'd strongly urge you to ask your local store if you can take a look. If you read all or most of the first issue -- should take about 20 minutes -- you'll know pretty quickly if it's something you're going to want to add to your subscription list or not.

As I've been saying, I can't give you the twenty minutes back, but I can maybe save you the three bucks if glamourpuss isn't your cup of tea.

The only other thing I can maybe say to persuade you to give the book a try is that I sent out 300 autographed copies -- 100 in Canada and 200 in the US about a month ago and so far, not one of them is on eBay. Retailers are a notoriously tough audience since they've "read it all" by now: so I think there is at least anecdotal evidence that glamourpuss is actually something new and different and GOOD.

Ask to see No.1 the next time you're in picking up your books and see if you don't agree.

Thanks for your question!

Thanks, Ross! Say, did DC revive that strange Batman-style Robin that debuted in JLA No.55? I think it was 55. Murphy Anderson inked the cover over Mike Sekowsky's pencils thus creating one of the great Untold Alternative Earth concepts: Sekowsky Justice League inked by Murphy Anderson. Excuse me, I'm drooling.

Hey Dave,

Jason Powell here. First of all, wanted to tell you I'm a huge fan of Cerebus -- I even did a two-part analysis (that probably got everything wrong) of the full work for a newspaper here in Milwaukee.

Secondly, I wanted to bring up something I remember you saying in the "Comic Book Rebels" interview book that Steve Bissette did. In that, you brought up something you remembered John Byrne saying about how when he quit doing a monthly comic -- for what he thought was a long time -- he ended up immediately going back to doing monthly comics because it was "in his blood."

You said that you wouldn't be surprised if, six months after Cerebus 300, you'd be back to doing a monthly comic because it was in your blood, and that it "wouldn't surprise you."

Now, of course, it is closer to six years than six months since Cerebus ended, but I had to ask: Is the impending debut of "Glamourpuss" proof that monthly comics are, indeed, in your blood?

I don't know, but judging by his photo, he looks like that weird Batman/Robin combo that debuted in JLA No.55. If you want to keep that "heterosexual" appellation out of quotation marks, you might want to avoid being seen going into Starbucks with him.

Not that there's anything wrong with that -- I'm just saying.

Sorry, I'm a little late answering this one, stanleylieber, I ended up staring too long at the background on your picture and when I "came to" my pockets were stuffed with rare slabbed sports cards, many of which John had priced at $100 or more (rookie cards).

You arch fiend! Trying to make me into your hypnotized henchman, eh? Fortunately my basic all-round Canadian niceness came through and I put everything back where I found it (except the Joe Sakic -- it's wicked cool).

I'll be hopping around quite a bit but also trying to stay sort of linear. On issue two, I get into the cause-and-effect relationship between RIP KIRBY and Milt Caniff's work: the Beyond Noir style, as I call it. That leads forward to Stan Drake but also back to the relationship between Raymond's FLASH GORDON and Foster's PRINCE VALIANT (Oh, DO grow up: I mean in terms of composition and ink line and density). It'll be my "addled middle-aged man voice": "Oh, and I forgot to tell you earlier..." and "I told you THAT story so I could tell you THIS one...". Feel free to bring along your whittlin'

"Joy" -- in quotation marks? Where would we be today if Beethoven had written an "Ode to 'Joy'"? Face down in a big, stinky pile of irony is my guess.

Thanks for dropping by.

Hi, Trevor! Because most of the photorealist stuff that's out there is pretty expensive -- when it's even available -- I'd suggest checking out Prof. Armando Mendez's website where he has devoted a section to each of them. The site isn't specifically CALLED that (I believe it's something about Good Girl Art) but if you want a "crash course" you can't do better than that.
If you're already in the Advanced Class, Checker Book has a good series of FLASH GORDON collections shot from the printed strips and with the colour tweaked on computer. Uneven results. Starland Strips in California sells the actual strips for a (relatively) reasonable price particularly if it's just a half dozen or so from say 1934 or 1936. Fulls -- full pages -- are best, followed by halves -- half pages -- tabs -- tabloids. You can actually see the linework and the photo-engraving is the best that can be done with William Randolph Hearst's pocket change (i.e. tens of thousands of dollars). You want to see The Top of the Comics Mountain, FLASH GORDON/JUNGLE JIM Fulls from 1934 to 1944 (when Raymond went in the service) PRINCE VALIANT Fulls from 1937 through to (literally) the late 60s.

I'm skewing this towards the artwork, and you're asking about stuff to READ, which is really another thing. Neither strip is exactly Pulitzer Prize material so you're going to be getting more for your visual than reading dollar.

The best WRITTEN photorealist strip, in my opinion, is Leonard Starr's MARY PERKINS ON STAGE which is being reprinted right now and is up to volume three. It isn't exactly Death of a Salesman, either, but it is definitely surprising in terms of the plot twists, internal resonances and so on. Starr actually wrote the strip himself, which was VERY unusual. In the latest volume he describes trying to work with a writer early on and the guy basically just sat there taking dictation and feeding back to Starr exactly what he said -- who needs to share the profits with someone like that? -- so he started writing the strip himself and did a heck of a job. And it's a beautiful piece of work. Leonard Starr is still alive and doing covers for the books -- I even got a signed and numbered print by him with the first volume by paying a premium price of an extra 10 or 15 bucks. I don't know if they have any of those left, but you definitely can't have mine. The latest volume also offers a gorgeous signed and numbered print of an illustration by him from the 50s which I will be ordering.

Diamond has them onthe Star System I'm pretty sure. MARY PERKINS ON STAGE. Mary comes on stage in the photorealism history in 1957, so Leonard Starr will be after Stan Drake -- issue 8 or 9 of glamourpuss?



I appreciate the compliment.



Several things: I'm uni-lingual so I can't translate them myself or check someone else's translation. CEREBUS constituted a Search for Truth (or at least Reality) and that's going to get modified by a translator in a way I'm not comfortable with. Most translations are actually new stories transmogrified into the second language. The story is so long that it would involve hiring someone to work on it probably for a decade or so to keep the translation consistent -- I think anyone good enough to do that would be better served spending a decade on his or her own work. Most foreign publishers want you to sign a contract with them -- I don't want to do that for the same reason I don't want to sign a contract with Marvel or DC: loss of control.

The only thing I'm "on board" with right now is translations on the Internet on the Wiki model. Start your own CEREBUS volume translation in Spanish or French or German and leave it open for other people to modify.debate choices of phraseology, dialect, etc. Arguably if you had two dozen people over the course of a decade "hashing it out" at the end of that decade you might have the most accurate translation possible -- or, more likely, a dozen contesting translations and a lot of people no longer speaking to each other.

I'm considering translations of glamourpuss because I'm not as personally invested in it: the point of it is the drawings of the pretty girls with the Raymond School "scholarship" to give it a little more "heft".

Hope that answers your question.

I think that will probably be left for future generations to do...you know: when I'm not getting a cut and the editors at Mid 21st Century Easton Press who will be able to definitively explain all my motivations without any dissenting viewpoint from me, the dearly departed. I have high hopes for Cerebus Yahoos The Next Generation ("My great-great grandfather was Larry Hart and his last words were that Easton Press is full of s--t")



You might want to try a FEW stores in T.O. The Beguiling doesn't exactly make its rent from premium back issues. There's Paradise Comics way up North just off Yonge near Downsview. Ask for Pete Dixon or Doug Simpson. Play them off against each other. It won't work, but it'll make you feel like a cagey Big Time Comics Investor.

Okay, prayer time -- back as soon as I can -- probably around one pm EDST!

No kidding! Someone got me the JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION for Christmas. I've never seen this stuff before.