cerebus: free comic (correct)

But the crazy old man that regularly comes in, Sarge, LOVES it. He says he's got ALL but ONE of the single issues. So then the question was posed to me by the store owner: "Do you really want to get involved in a series that Sarge thinks is the best thing in the world? Look at him! [pointing] Do you?"

Er, the answer was no.

The good news is that I got the 1300 page complete Bone book.

Alexx Kay (akay@isis.cs.du.edu) -- Are there musicians in Estarcion? We've never seen a band playing around Jaka, and there didn't seem to be room for one to be hiding at Pud's. We've heard people singing, but I can't recall any reference to musical instruments (discounting the fiddler from the Barry Smith "Cerebus Dreams" story). Is this an oversight, or are musical instruments something that hasn't been invented yet?

Dave Sim -- Musical instruments are something that I've intentionally left out of the Cerebus story-line, although not many people have noticed. A part of it is that comics is a 'mute' medium and I like to reflect that. It would be impossible to do "Jaka's Story" in any other narrative form because you would have to have musicians to accompany the dancing which would spoil the balance of the cast. Part of it is that I despise music unless I'm drunk or stoned. I stopped listening to it while drawing several years ago and I think this has brought a definite improvement to my work. I get a lot of music tapes in the mail, I think because people figure that with all the bands getting mentioned on the letters page that I must be a really big fan of music. Call it wishful thinking; that at some point in the distant past music didn't exist and never evolved. My own personal heaven.

VG: Book 6 (Melmoth) is definitely worth $7 as a standalone story, even if you don't want any of the other stories.

As to bitter and twisted though Martin, I'm not sure he is - well, not that much. Yes, he may pick on the "feminist homosexualist axis" as responsible for his sizeable downturn in sales - which were felt across the industry as a whole, of course - but he certainly wasn't helped by the attacks on him. Yes, he may have shown his chin to these people, and for what it's worth I think (and have told him as much) for every valid point he makes, he makes another which shoots him in the foot so badly it almost eliminates any value he's added to the debate, but he was really torn apart. He seems far more bitter about the overtures and promises made to him by the likes of DC/Vertigo and Dark Horse - without being treated like that he certainly wouldn't have become such a vocal proponent of self-publishing.

Yay!

The Onion: If you could send one message to the children of the world, what would it be?

Dave Sim: "Don't make the mistake of believing that because you weren't punished immediately for a sin that there is no God or that sin goes unpunished. If you steal or lie or blaspheme against Him, God isn't going to hit you with a lightning bolt or turn you into a pillar of salt. He will give you space and time to repent. In some cases, that will be years. But ultimately, if you don't repent, you will be punished. When you see miserably unhappy adults who punish themselves with alcohol and unhappy relationships and who are filled with so much fear and hatred that it makes you afraid to think of being with them or being like them, they didn't get that way overnight. Somewhere, long ago, when they were your age, they intentionally did something wrong and decided, because they weren't hit with a lightning bolt, that they had 'gotten away with it.' Look at them. Do you think they 'got away with it'? And that's only in this world. Imagine what they're going to experience in the next world. Do the things that are right and don't do things that are wrong. You know the difference."

Now he's taken to scaring the kiddies.