Welcome Dave Sim!

[Dave Sim]

Originally Posted by CraigRJ

Glad to be of service!

Actually, aren't there three schools of people who use quotations:

one who remember their favourite quotes and just bang them out;

another who vaguely remember but check carefully before using them;

and the third who just bang out whatever comes into mind and attribute it to someone likely...

As a writer of fiction who makes things up for a living, obviously you fit into category three...

Can you imagine if Teddy Kennedy actually said that in a speech sometime? "We'll drive off that bridge when we come to it."

Cue oil-painting-shot of the audience.

WHAAAA...?

[Dave Sim]

Originally Posted by James A. Owen

Dave posted: Someone mailed me a printout from Jeff's Boneville site where he's printing essays about the Self-Publishing Movement [?] of the mid-90s. I guess Colleen did one. Have you done one yet? Inquiring minds want to know.
You were the one who came up with The Fatal Five -- which everyone else hated I think.

Weren't they LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES super-villains back in Shooter's first round of scripting the book?

Anyway, thanks again for posting.

Well, that's self-publishing for you. It probably was me - but considering how giddy some of those days/nights got (self-publisher theme songs!?), it could have been worse - like in Atlanta, when Neal Adams' daughter overheard her dad being described as "the old guy with the self-publishers", and moved him to a separate table...

I think Larry's assessment (the RASHOMON comparison) is the most clear-sighted: it was a collective procession of converging individual experiences. And yes, I did Do one (Jeff asked a few weeks ago).

Glad you liked the Adams Joker drawing.

Funny your should mention that: that was what I was thinking of writing about. Jeff Smith was the TONIGHT SHOW theme. "da da DA JEFF SMITH daddadada." You were "We Are The Champions" "I...am...JAMES OWEN...OF THE WORRLLLDDD!" Couldn't remember Colleen's or mine. Martin Wagner was that lead-up to "CHARGE" that they do on the organ at sports events. "MarTinWagNer..MarTinWagNer...MarTinWagNer".
And me sitting there waiting for someone to say something relevant to Today's Self-Publishing so I could pass it on to the next newbie who asked me.

"Theme Songs." That's the key to self-publishing success in 1995. "Every self-publisher has to have his own Theme Song, kid."

[Dave Sim]

Speaking of Self-Publishing:

This seems like as good a time as any to announce the recipient of the

2007 HOWARD E. DAY MEMORIAL PRIZE:

It's MR. BIG by Matt and Carol Dembicki of Little Foot Comics in Fairfax, Virginia.

Those interested in checking out MR BIG can do so at

www.littlefootcomics.com

I don't know if they have Paypal over there, but the book is $10 plus $2 postage.

Sincere congratulations: Matt and Carol are coming up to Columbus for S.P.A.C.E. along with their two sons, one of whom is (two?) and the other is two months old. They're both looking forward to leaving the boys with Carol's parents (who live in Columbus) and...hopefully ...joining me and the Yahoos for the big spaghetti dinner Friday night that we keep hearing about and which is being prepared in anyone's room but mine.

Remember that website is www.littlefootcomics.com!

[Dave Sim]

Okay, prayer time: I'll be back around 3:40 pm EDST.

[Dave Sim]

Sorry, I'm a little late getting back. I'm trying to put in a full day here and also trying to get ready for the trip to Columbus on Thursday.

I've brought in a copy of the PREVIEW EDITION of JUDENHASS to LOOKIN FOR HEROES and they now have it up on the wall along with glamourpuss No.1.

I figured Duane was the first person I showed glamourpuss to so he might as well be the first person to see a printed copy of JUDENHASS (apart from my technical director on the project, Lou Copeland, who got his twenty copies in the mail the other day).

LOOKIN FOR HEROES customers can drop in any time to have a look.

The website is also up and running at www.judenhass.com

[Talon T M]

One of these days they will have SPACE in the summer and I will finally be able to attend...and get to meet Dave again, and see all these YAHOOS for the first time in person.

Hmmmm...Dave, would that be a good thing?

[Dave Sim]

I also went over and checked the Self-Publishing history that Jeff has up at www.boneville.com and -- while it's certainly interesting -- I've never really thought of self-publishing as anything that was sufficiently static to examine in that way. I'd certainly agree with Larry Marder's ROSHOMON comparison in the sense that each person who went through the experience in the mid-90s experienced it a different way.

I think a persuasive argument could be mounted that most of the participants in that time period saw the massive consolidation of the Direct Market with Diamond emerging preeminent in the distribution end of things as being apocalyptic. In retrospect I might have invested some more time and effort in letting people know that change is very much the norm in the comic-book field. It was, I suspect, a failing on my part to not try to get that across more.

We certainly hadn't experienced those sorts of convulsions on the distribution side before, but I was a veteran of comic book companies that declared themselves to be the next big thing and pretty much while you were contemplating that, they'd disappear. Pacific Comics, Eclipse, First Comics. They were all pretty big deals and lasted long enough that everyone factored them into their thinking through the 1980s only to have them all just sort of POOF go away.

I've also become more emphatic about on-time shipping since those days -- James Turner certainly credits me with drilling that into his head when he was first developing REX LIBRIS. Of the self-publishers who dominated the mid-90s there were barely a handful who came anywhere close to on-time shipping.

Did I put too much reliance on there being this Huge Difference between when CEREBUS started and when everyone else started? I think that could be true. Put your book out on time and if things don't work, then come and talk to me.

Well, here I go again with glamourpuss. I'm going to get three issues out on a strict bi-monthly schedule and try to maintain the quality. I don't think the retailers or the fans are unreasonable asking for that. I really don't.

[Dave Sim]

Originally Posted by Talon T M

One of these days they will have SPACE in the summer and I will finally be able to attend...and get to meet Dave again, and see all these YAHOOS for the first time in person.

Hmmmm...Dave, would that be a good thing?

The more the merrier when it comes to the Yahoos. It's always funny watching them meeting each other for the first time because it often happens in front of my table.

You know, Bob Corby kept trying to get the folks at APE to tell him when they were having their show -- last year they scheduled for the same weekend -- and no one would get back to him, so he finally picked the beginning of March figuring that would leave APE most of March, all of April and all of May to pick from.

So they ended up scheduling APE for the beginning of November.

The problem with a summer date for SPACE is that you end up competing with the big summer cons.

It's thrown me off a little bit, I admit. I always associate the arrival of spring with going over to Tomkar on Francis Street to pick up the Day Prize plaques. Not this year, boy.

Originally Posted by Dave Sim

Women get easily offended and Being Offended comes with its own very, very severe consequences. Men tend not to get offended and Not Being Offended tends not to have any consequences.

"And blessed is, whosoever shall not be offended in me." Luke 7:23

[Jeff Tundis]

Originally Posted by Dave Sim

READING 6,000 PAGES ON A COMPUTER SCREEN? Jeez, Craig, I'll be able to hear your eyeballs crackling from here.

Even if a COMPLETE CEREBUS DVD does happen, i'm pretty sure it won't be by next week

(unless I can talk all the Yahoos into skipping the Thurber House, the spaghetti dinner, the CEREBUS LIVE III taping --issue 51 this year -- S.P.A.C.E., the Day Prize Ceremony, their road trip to the Laughing Ogre and dinner at Schmidt House in Columbus Ohio's Germantown in favour of a 24-hour, three trade paperback scanning marathon)

(What do you say, Guys-and-Margaret?)

(Mmm. It's not looking good, Craig)

Feel free to download any illegal copies that are lurking on the Internet to supplement whatever you can't carry comfortably. Happy reading.

Hey! Don't encourage him!

Got enough problems with torrents and folks on eBay trying to get away with that.

Actually, there is a DVD project in the works. Long delayed due to other obligations, but it will (eventually) reprint everything *not* in the phonebooks digitally (covers, letters, essays, etc).

-Jeff