Hmm...Ive never really explored newspaper strips outside a bit of Tarzan. Any other recommendations? Doesn't have to be photorealism. My Amazon.ca cart currently has the first volumes of Flash Gordon, Peanuts, Popeye and Terry & The Pirates.

Most of the Beatles fans 'round these parts all list Revolver, Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper as our faves.

Thank you Dave for your responses...

3 more questions just jumped at me...

1) have you ever audio-wise envisioned what Cerebus would sound like?
2) if I were to model and animate Cerebus in my movie... what would you want... Seriously.
3) How long is Glamourpuss going to run for? Limited or till you hit something like 300 strong?

I'd have to say that I think that both companies are very, very strong and it's impossible to picture the history of comic books being anything but the poorer if we didn't have the high water marks of both companies.

You know, John Lennon once said, "I'm in the wrong band!" That's arguably the case and certainly says a great deal about the relative merits of the respective groups. What the Beatles didn't have, the Stones had in spades...and vice versa.

Well, I think you might be comparing apples and oranges there. Ferocious loyalty and good-heartedness versus mystical sleekeness and intrinsic mystery...and class!

There is no one who has made a greater contribution in volume of pages alone than Kirby and no one who has so thoroughly developed a character as Ditko did with Spider-man. Speaking as someone who has tried to "do" both styles on different occasions, they both function on a very lofty plateau of style and ability.

Mickey Mouse is the foundation upon which modern animation is built and there is nothing flat-out funnier than a primo Bugs Bunny cartoon.

How could you pick between two franchises that have so ignited the imaginations and warmed the hearts of so many generations of science fiction fans?

Sorry about that. It's election year. I get swept up in the whole thing of not alienating any constituencies

Speaking of Cerebus, I kinda link Cerebus with Elfquest and First Kingdom in me head because of that ad in Marvel comics back in the day. I'm pretty much up on Cerebus and Elfquest (man, I wish Wendy had never let anyone else touch that property! I'm scared to buy new Elfqeust stuff now after all the crappy spin-off stuff they put out), but I'm not really familiar with The First Kingdom. I ordered the first eight issues off of eBay, and they should be in soon so I guess I'll know sooner or later. Do you feel any kinship with those two series at all?

i concur

However, one should never discount the U.S. release of Magical Mystery Tour.

Or the White Album. Or Rubber Soul. Or...

...to be completely fair, Lennon was quoted once (and I'm absolutely paraphrasing here) as saying something to the effect that each album they worked on was the best they could do at the time that they were making it, because they never knew which was going to be their last album and they always wanted to go out on a high note. He also had many disparaging things to say about Let It Be, so there you go.

Sir Paul, on the other side of the coin, has stated that he considers their first album his favorite.

I think Lennon's comment reflects pretty much how any true artist approaches his work -- Joe Kubert once told our class that every drawing you do should be your absolute favorite when you're doing it, and you should consider it absolute crap (again, I paraphrase -- Joe would never have said "crap") when you're done. Only in that way can you truly improve your craft.

...And to bring this back 'round to what Dave's promoting, it's for this reason that I really look forward to seeing the first issue of glamourpuss -- what I've seen of the artwork so far is absolutely fantastic and shows that Dave's not just been resting on his laurels.

Hi Jason! thanks for dropping by: can you send me (if you haven't already) tearsheets or good photocopies of the article? I'm trying to keep the Cerebus Archive as complete as possible.

I'm really doing with glamourpuss what I did with CEREBUS: getting three bi-monthly issues out on schedule and in such a way that it represents my best work. The third issue, God willing, will be out in September (I'm skipping June so that the retailers have a couple of weeks selling No.1 before they have to havetheir orders in for No.2). At THAT point, I'll look at all the information to hand -- the scheduling, the orders, the inventory, how much time I need for doing the business side and so on -- and make a decision either to keep going on a bi-monthly schedule, switch to just producing pages and releasing them as an original graphic novel in 2011 or so, or what. I tend to be very, very cautious when it comes to my street cred with the retailers. If I tell them I'm doing a bi-monthly title, I'm going to make darned sure that I can do it bi-monthly. I didn't switch to monthly on CEREBUS until year three for that reason. I had to make sure I could do twenty pages a month, plus cover, plus letters page, plus promotion, plus business GUARANTEED before I would attempt that.

The same thing holds true with glamourpuss. I've done one and a half issues in roughly eight weeks so far and I haven't done anything on the writing and drawing since mid-November when the Go Launch decision was made: I have fifteen days left in my three month glamourpuss promotion campaign. March I start writing and drawing again. A lot depends on how long it takes me to finish issue two and all of issue three. I'll be making the decisions on the hard evidence of my productivity when I have thehard evidence to go on.

I'd LIKE to do a monthly book and it might be in my blood. But at age 51, what I want to do and what I CAN do may be two different things.

Mostly I just don't want to let down the retailers and readers who are going out of their way to support me this time out. I will never knowingly tell either group that I'm going to do something that I can't say...as close to 100% as possible...that I'm capable of doing. Shared Risk, Shared Responsibility and Shared Rewards. That's the promise I intend to fulfill to the best of my abilities. So help me God.

Okay, I have to drop off a FedEx package at the Four Points Hotel drop box and then I have a prayer time. I should back around 3:30 EDST or so

This has to be the most unexpected thing of yours that I've ever read.

I think I might quote this for my sig line.

"can you send me (if you haven't already) tearsheets or good photocopies of the article? I'm trying to keep the Cerebus Archive as complete as possible. "

Will do, Dave, although the essay is, with hindsight, rather embarrassingly naive.

Dave- Do you feel at all responsible for the "always in print" culture in todays industry?

Just a quick note to Dave; Showcase HOM Vol. 2 has been out for a while now. The b&w art is awesome throughout, predictably enough.
Think I'll check out #206 tonight.

JO

Hi Dave. Great answers!

I'm just a casual observer (though I'll give Glamourpuss a looksie fer sure). I only have the first Cerebus trade/phonebook... and 'Minds' in single issues (which was terrific by the way). I guess its high time I pick up the books for my library. Cheers!

In the end, I decided on going all Raymond this order. I picked up the "His Life, His Art" book, and the first seven volumes of Flash Gordon. I think Imwan gets some Amazon bucks from this one... I tried, anyway.

That's good to know. It's always hard to tell if it's just a sentimental attachment to the stuff that blew your mind when you were 8-10 years old and there's no "there" there. I got the JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION as a comp from TwoMorrows and it's definitely one of those books that I would've been glad to buy. They've got access to so much original artwork because of their industry connections that I'm finally able to see what the actual artwork looks like without the muddy off-register colour on top of it. It's really a dream come true. Five good full page reproductions in black and white and I've gotten my money's worth.

The same thing is true with Brian Kane's book on Hal Foster and Tom Roberts new book on Alex Raymond. They run a LOT of colour material and a LOT of photos, but between both books there are about a dozen full-sized black and white pieces on slick paper that are more than worth the price of admission. There you go, Dave. That's the high water mark for what you're doing in glamourpuss.

Jump, boy. Jump!

It's actually a lot of fun watching the professionals at it. Someone asked Hillary Clinton "Diamonds or pearls?" And she said, "Both." Sandeep thought it was an example of insatiable female materialism. I think it was not wanting to offend either diamond or pearl people. Like Obama's "change" riff. As long as he can stick with that -- and so far he's been able to -- he never has to explain changing FROM what TO what. It makes "It's the economy, stupid" look positively divisive by comparison.

Hey, if you want to send a cover letter with it explaining the context, I'm not going to stop you. Just the opposite. It's really one of the obligations that I've always thought I owe to posterity. You never know what future generations are going to be interested in or where they're going to find a trend or a watershed moment which is why I try to be as complete as possible. Particularly reviews: here's what the book looked like at this point in its history. You can't beat that with a stick for an Archive.

And thanks in advance!

If Jeff Tundis or cerebusfangirl's collection gets rolled into the Cerebus Archive at some future date, that's going to make it as close to complete as you can hope to get.

Who's Sandeep?

They had the Brian Kane book at my local library back when I saw your article in THE COMICS JOURNAL WINTER SPECIAL 2002. It really was mind-blowing. I'm definitely going to pick up the Tom Roberts Alex Raymond book. I've never seen much Raymond stuff prior to your mentioning it. RIP KIRBY looks amazing. There was a series of paperbacks reprinting most of the strip that came out (I believe) back in the '80s. The other day I was searching for that John Tesh photo and I noticed that you used to run ads in the back of CEREBUS that offered a bunch of really nice strip collections from Raymond, Foster, Drake, etc. I wondered if you were into that stuff back then, as well.

No, and I won't rest until they do. That early issue is one of the first comics I ever read, seeing Robin all grown up made him such an interesting character... a legacy character before there even was such a thing!

Agreed on the Sekowsky/Anderson pairing, I wish we had gotten more of that. I have a page of Irv Novick/Murphy Anderson art from Flash and it is one of my prized posessions.