That being said, of those on his list I can offer up a quick recommendation for artist Kirsten Brown as I own some of her work myself, the site grinding as it is among the top feeds I check, the game work of Zachary Anderson who I fortunately know in real life, albeit not as well as I’d like, and the also wonderful art of Ben Templesmith (the 21st century’s answer to Bill Sienkiewicz, not that Mr. Sienkiewicz is not still producing great work, but if you like the latter, you’ll probably like the former and vice versa).

Once we got back to the hotel, Jeff T, Margaret, Dave and myself drove over to the Super Wal-Mart to do some shopping for the spaghetti dinner planned for later in the evening. Second surreal moment of the trip: food shopping at Wal-Mart with Dave Sim (and both Jeff and Margaret asked me at separate points how surreal it was for me). As I said to Margaret, I’m doing my best to keep my inner fanboy bottled up (again, for most of you, imagine standing around Wal-Mart with Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore and you’ll get an idea of what it was like).

Once back at the hotel, preparing for the spaghetti dinner began, with all cooking duties handled by Jeff T, who cooks a wonderful sausage. At dinner we were joined by the rest of the Yahoos and the creators of the Day Prize winning book Mr. Big. After dinner had settled they began recording Cerebus Live III, where Dave and the Yahoos do a voice recording of selections from Cerebus. Here’s a recording of a scene from High Society from Cerebus Live II; the rest can be found on YouTube as well. First up was issue 51, “Exodus” which was quite hilarious. After that they recorded a lot of other scenes (more than any other year I think), largely from Church and State I and Guys, though they also pulled off a wonderful reading of issue 11 where the Cockroach first appears. (As I think everyone here knows I gave up on being in front of a camera years ago so I stuck to merely being the audience.)

Shortly I’ll be heading off to breakfast followed by SPACE itself, ostensibly the reason for coming, though if I had to leave right now it still would have been a worthwhile trip. More to come though.

for those who were asking, I am in Columbus, Ohio for the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, or just SPACE. I’m here because Dave Sim is here as are many members of the Cerebus Yahoo group. Since arriving I’ve met three of them and used Google Maps on my iPhone to help find a Kinko’s. I have also gotten to see first hand the amazing original art for Dave’s new comicJudenhass and see a preview copy.

On that subject, if you want a copy but can’t afford it or maybe don’t want to support Dave directly due to some of his views, I’ll buy a copy for you out of my own pocket. It’s an amazing work and I want to do what I can to make sure everyone gets to see it. Should sign off now and go link back up with the other Yahoos though. Expect regular blogging or twitters over the next couple of days.

To promote it, he’s currently doing an internet “tour” visiting a number of comic message boards, taking questions. His postings to date can be found on the cerebusfangirl site and the schedule can be found here.

The second comic is titled, well, only Dave knows right now. He’ll be revealing the title at SPACE and, as I’ll be there, I’ll post it here when he does. It’s a one shot and apparently he considers it controversial so he won’t be promoting it. It’s scheduled for release in May.

Bruce Campbell as Rex Libris.
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And every once in a while someone will say to me, “Boy, you must get a lot of weird mail.” Again, bit of a surprise, I don’t actually. So, it is something of an event when I do get a piece of mail that I would genuinely categorize as “weird”. How weird? So weird that I actually have no idea how to answer it and so choose not to.

So what is this weird bit of mail. Here are a couple of choice bits:

I am writing to you today concerning a story I have been working on for a few years now. It is the first book of what I am hoping to be a three book series. I have completed the first book and I am currently doing well upon the start of the second book.

The story is entitled Inevitable Will and is set in the future in the sear 2281 A.D. where anthropomorphic Furrs are slaves to the human race doing anything that their Masters or Mistress’ order them to do.

So far, just a random unsolicited query, though with hints of veering into weird territory. And then:

I have written the above short description, which does not do the story justice in its shortness, for I have come across this address of yours on a internet site entitled “Furry Publishers” whom said that you and your staff publishes books in the Furr genre.

Uh. Uh.

I wrote this story for all my time upon the internet searching and reading stories written of Furrs I have yet found one that appeals to my sense of action and sexual curiosity as an adult. I find that most of them are written as real life scenarios that are enjoyable to read but are so close to my daily life that they are not enjoyable to me completely for my daily life is not all that interesting.

Dave Sim just got asked to publish a sci-fi furry epic. Does this guy even know anything about Dave Sim?

My characters are diverse and there are not discrimination factors against any minorities. Seeing how that for the most part every one of my characters are bisexual there are no parts in the story where gays are talked badly of or any parts for that matter where a religion is bashed.

Ah. Clearly not. It does all bring one rather disturbing realization to my mind though. Cerebus is an anthropomorphic aardvark who does fornicate several times over the course of the story so does that make Cerebus a furry book?

Comic: 14 pages outlined, four pages written, and I’ve got a good notion of what the big turn (60 to 80 pages down the road) will involve. Screenplay: After reading the second draft, the producer decided he wants it twice as long and wants more conflict for the protagonist. After smashing my head against the wall while cackling madly for an hour, I figured out how to do both without having to toss every word I’ve written.

sunday night worked on comic >stop< was too upbeat to work on the horror film >stop< have almost nothing to show for three hours work >stop< discovered how to write it though so next time will spew many words onto disk >stop< you never sent scotch so had to buy my own >stop< the killer otters are coming for you >stop<

Finally made it through the large stack of graphic novels and back to the Dave Sim collected letters volume, which is now setting my brain on fire. It’s quite an intriguing mix of brilliant and questionable insights (and I’m not even halfway through). The fragments of my brain not being consumed by that are hopping into the conflagration struck alight by the collision of the two projects I’m writing.

(Started this post on the camera phone, which is probably where most of the posts will be coming from, as I have discovered the predictive text function and I am a lazy bastard who likes being able to post from wherever the hell I am. It does mean the posts will likely be shorter (this one cut off in the middle of the word “writing”), but there will be pictures to go along with the posts. Anyway, I’m off to pick up something for the girlfriend before we run off to see My Morning Jacket)

Working on the second draft of a screenplay for a friend >stop< Have begun to collaborate with a damn fine artist on what will either be a webcomic or a full blown graphic novel >stop< As a result need more scotch >stop<