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ABOUT
DAVE SIM: |
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Dave Sim spent 26 years of his life producing
300 monthly issues of Cerebus - an award-winning, black and
white, self-published comic.
Cerebus concluded in 2004 and is possibly
one of the most innovative, thought provoking and controversial
comics of all time, utilising complex political and religious
storylines, coupled with innovative storytelling techniques. More
details here.
If you know of any other comic-related reading
recommendations made by Dave Sim in interviews or articles
we would love to hear from you. Please provide a scan and/or
link if possible.
Email: recommended [at] readyourselfraw [dot] com |
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RECOMMENDED
BOOKS: |
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(reprinted
in Schizophrenia)
by Vaughn Bodé
"...Vaughn Bodé's The Man,
that was an enormous influence on me looking at however many
pages that is, maybe 32. Just cover, copyright page, 32 pages
of story, you're out of there. That's a really effecting piece
of work. It's not complicated, anybody can follow it, every time
you read it you can get something else out of it."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #184
"Vaughn Bodé's The Man,
the underground that he did, I consider a definitive piece of
comic book art. I still own it and wouldn't part with it for
love or money."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #83 |
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by Chester Brown
"Two
notable instances of my being as wrong as one person can be: when I first heard
about your doing a book on Louis Riel, I thought, as I told you, Chet's
nuts. No one outside of Canada is going to be interested in reading about Riel.
And when I saw it , I thought, Chet's nuts.
No one is going to buy a comic book that's an inch shorter and
half an inch narrower than a real comic book."
In conversation with Chester Brown, from Getting Riel,
Cerebus #295-297
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(reprinted
in The Little Man: Short Strips)
by Chester Brown
"...
I was gratified to see Chester Brown's My
Mother Was A Schizophrenic. Here's a comic book writer
taking issue with an entire field of experts' opinion on schizophrenia.
And, of course, he's reaping the whirlwind with a massive letter
from one of those experts, having to patiently dismantle the
guy's letter paragraph by paragraph. Chester, making full use
of the potential both of the medium and unedited creative freedom.
We can use a lot more of that in my view."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #192
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by Joe Chiappetta
"[Joe Chiappetta is] among that small breed of great comic artists."
From the back cover blurb |
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by Robert Crumb
"I am consistently amazed at how lucid he was about the
hypocrisy of the flower power generation while it was theoretically
still going on and while it was still perceived by a fair number
of people as "What we were all going to have to evolve in
to because this is where we are going." He was able to put
on the page very, very effectively the 60's shysters and sharpies
and the whole Charles Manson "Hey, we can shape this to
our own ends." Considering by his own admission he was fucked
up on drugs the whole time, that's pretty good insight to not
slide underneath it and say "Look, all I have to do is play
the game these other guys are playing and the world is my oyster." He
really swam against the grain. He swam against the current that
favoured him and that to me is great artistic integrity... I
can look through my favourites of Crumb's pieces and that will
get me charged up, sitting down and drawing."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #184
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"I remember the first few times having lunch with Seth, Chester
Brown and Joe
Matt, and trying to find common areas of interest.
I'd always think they were kidding when they would all be enthusing
about some cartoonist I just don't rate very highly, like John
Stanley or Harold Gray, and then I'd bring up something like
Sienkiewicz's
Stray Toasters and they'd think I
was the one who was kidding. One time I mentioned Mort Drucker,
and that was very strange because we all ranked Mort Drucker
very highly. I think he is still the only cartoonist in that
category. We all remembered the first Star
Trek parody that he did. I reread it a while ago,
and it still holds up very well."
Dave Sim on Parody & Copyright, Following Cerebus #3 |
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by Will Eisner
"I
kept putting off buying A Contract
With God for a long time because I knew it would be
a long time before I saw another Contract
With God, and when I read it, it was just like, Oh,
if there were only 18 things coming out like this."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #83
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by Will Eisner
"Every story that he tackled was new and untrammelled
territory. It was no surprise that the subject matter he returned
to, time and again, was his own background in 1920s and 1930s New
York City while still making occasional forays into the vast reaches
of untapped literary territory such as Sundiata,
A Legend Of Africa. It was the New York eras he had lived
through that were being lost with each passing year, and he felt
an obvious and compelling need - as a member of those eras' dwindling
custodial constituency - to document and preserve his recollections
of it. The sense of urgency compounded itself as his eighties
(his eighties!) were disappearing behind him. I have no doubt
that the inescapable fact that he was now down to his last two
or three or (as it turned out) his final graphic novel was the
driving force that led to the decision to do The
Plot, the actual
history behind The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion hoax. It struck
me as a wise choice..."
From a tribute to Will Eisner in Following Cerebus #4 |
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by Jules Feiffer
"The really funny stuff that Jules Feiffer does makes me
laugh out load. The way he constructs it, the progression of
this character and what they're saying is so skillful you can
follow the train of thought. When you get to the punchline, it's
not just what he said, but the way he said it that makes you
see through it and beyond it to something else."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #83
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by Jules Feiffer
"The Man In The Ceiling is a deceptive
work. It's a book intended for children - at least that's what
it it purports to be - more accurately that's what its dust jacket
purports it to be. I'd prefer not to take the dust jacket's word
for it myself... The
Man In The Ceiling is a Trojan horse, you see... What is
compelling about
The Man In The Ceiling (and what makes
it a seminal work of its kind) is that it constitutes a creator's
direct communication with the would be creator.. It documents
the birth of the creative mind, creative awareness, creative sensibility... The
Man In The Ceiling should be in every comic-book store in
the world. If you know a kid around the age of ten or eleven who
is starting to draw his own comic books, you can do him (or her)
no greater favour than to give him (yeah, probably him) a copy.
Just don't let his Aunt Tilly or his Mum or Dad read past the first
ten pages."
Book review from Cerebus #200 |
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by Neil Gaiman
"At one point, I explained to Neil what it meant to me
to actually read Sandman straight
through, the reason that I set two days aside for the task, rather
than reading the books where and when I found time. It was the
only opportunity I would have to do so - for the next decade
or so - to sit down with a real graphic novel (according to my
own definition), knowing that I had the whole thing in front
of me. Beginning, middle and end. As I said to Neil, I read both
volumes of Maus in an afternoon. I
read A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron in
about thirty minutes. In terms of a reading experience, that's
very different from a novel - any novel... I remember thinking
(I told him) about halfway through Sandman: we
shouldn't be allowed to do this... The quality of immersion
- the shoreline you departed from is out of sight behind you
and the shoreline of your destination is out of sight ahead of
you..."
From the article My Chat With Neil, Cerebus
#209
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by Marc Hempel
"Marc
Hempel's Tug & Buster has
joined Bacchus, Rare
Bit Fiends, and From Hell as
a comic book Ger and I will come to blows over - as in, 'who
gets to read it first.' Hempel's company, Art & Soul
Comics, is aptly named. There's more of both in any given issue
of Tug & Buster than in all the
slick, computer-coloured funny books produced in the last five
years. In a day and age when any old retread is described as
'unique' and 'one of a kind', Tug & Buster is
the genuine article."
From the back cover blurb of Tug & Buster
#6
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by Ed Hillyer
"Tits. Absolute tits."
From the back cover blurb |
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by Bernie Krigstein
"All they have to do is give him his own book, as they did with Kurtzman, and
comic books could have jumped three or four decades in maturity inside of a
year. No go. In fact, just the opposite happens. They start cutting the page
count. To me it was an object lesson in the fact that innovation and business
interests, while completely compatible are seen by businessmen as completely
incompatible...
If in later years, long after I'm dead, someone sees something in my work that
seems - to them - as innovative as Master Race seemed
- and seems - to me... Well, I'm pretty sure they will also see that what I achieved
was only possible through self-publishing and, hopefully, I will have saved a
handful of future creators from hitting a brick wall at their innovative peak
that Feldstein and Gaines forced Krigstein to hit at his own creative high point."
From an interview at www.twohandedman.com |
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by Harvey
Kurtzman & Wally Wood
"People ask me if it bothers me that the Tick seems so much like
the Roach. Listen, neither of them would've existed without Superduperman.
To be able to see for the first time exactly the level of exaggeration
necessary, my hat is off to Wally Wood."
Dave Sim on Parody & Copyright, Following Cerebus #3 |
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by Joe Matt
"Wow. You are really into this thing up to your eyeballs, aren't
you? I think you may have gathered that I am a world away from
your subject matter, now. Oddly, I do think that what you are doing
- in Peep Show - has value. Not in the psychiatric/therapuetic
sense, but in the Hey, is it just me? sense.
It's an addiction, sure, but I think you've tapped into a centrepiece
of masculine thinking."
From a letter published in Peep Show #13 |
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by Scott McCloud
"… an invaluable reference work about the medium… Entertaining,
delightful, thought-provoking and innovative. Bravo!"
From the back cover blurb
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by Howard Shum & Joe
Mason
"Now Gun Fu is a perfect comic book, beautifully crafted and
laugh-out-loud funny. That is, Police Inspector Cheng Bo Sen
is in the house. Dave Sim be chillin' in his crib with the Nazi
monkeys and Jaguar Girl. Comic-book bling-bling and that be word,
mo fo."
From the advertising blurb |
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by Gary Spencer Millidge
"I
have no idea how long the finished Strangehaven story
is going to be. I have no idea if Gary knows - vaguely or specifically.
Again, I'm not even curious. If this first volume is any indication,
Gary Spencer Millidge will tell his story with infinite care
and infinite patience, giving full value to each minor or major
episode in its turn, making the characters real and engaging,
page by page and panel by panel... speaking for myself, I'm in
for the duration."
From the introduction
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by Alan Moore & Eddie
Campbell
"I thought that From Hell was a high water mark
for the comic-book medium, a graphic novel in every sense of the word, mature,
majestic, sweeping, beautifully conceived, beautifully realized..."
From Alan Moore: Portrait Of An Extraordinary
Gentleman |
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by Tom Roberts
"Although Raymond owed a debt to Noel Sickles, Milt Caniff and others, he
brought a new quality of photo-realism to the comics page which would establish
an entire school of photo-realistic artists like Al Williamson, Stan Drake, Leonard
Starr, John Prentice and Neal Adams. To me, the fact that it is impossible to
tell which panels contain photo reference... and which don't... is testimony
to the success of Raymond's experiment. For those of us who believe that the
Closet Approximation of Reality is the goal in drawing a comics panel, Alex Raymond's Rip
Kirby remains the standard by which all others are measured - even forty-five
years after Raymond's untimely death."
From The Raymond School article, The Comics Journal Winter
2002 Special |
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by Bill Sienkiewicz
"I just saw Bill at Torontocon a couple of weeks ago and told
him that that's still very much at the top of my personal pantheon
of Great Comics Works which - there are more people in the comic
book field with question marks on their faces about that one -
but it was exactly what Bill had to say. And it seemed to me that
it was a definite step up from Elektra: Assassin,
which was the big question at the time. How do you follow Elektra:
Assassin?
Nobody had ever seen storytelling like that and certainly not painted
storytelling like that."
From Following Cerebus #5 |
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by Rick Smith
"I don't think any explanation could do it justice, but how about: What
if Seth and Alan
Moore decided to do a ghost story with a George
Herriman feel to it?"
From the Top Shelf website |
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by Karl Stevens
"From the cover right through to the last page, Karl Stevens
manages the difficult feat of balancing multi-layered content,
relationship humour, thought provoking slice of life vignettes
and 'eye-candy' photo realism into a coherent and engaging whole."
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The Day Prize is an annual
award given to a comic creator chosen by Dave Sim and Gerhard
from the exhibitors at SPACE (Small
Press & Alternative Comics Expo) held in Columbus,
Ohio. The Day Prize is Dave
Sim's way of honouring the memory of his friend and fellow
comic artist, Gene Day, who died suddenly of a heart attack,
at the age of 31, in 1982.
"... I remember that Gerhard (in another context)
had mentioned that it was a shame that we couldn't come up with
some way of honouring Gene Day, some sort of memorial or other.
That was when I thought of having a kind of Festival Prize, named
in Gene's honour which everyone attending SPACE would
qualify for just for exhibiting at SPACE.
Not a huge prize. $500 US, a plaque and a Cerebus Preview style
excerpt published in the back of the book... Awards shouldn't
mean anything. The work itself should be the reward. Just the
fact that - in a day and age when most people never complete
anything - that someone did complete something, a mini-comic,
a first issue, a graphic novel, should be, in itself, a cause
for celebration and should be an enduring source of gratification.
That I made this myself (we should - all - be able to say to
ourselves, in a more perfect world) is sufficient."
Dave Sim, Cerebus #285 (December 2002)
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Winner:
Mr. Big by Matt & Carol Dembicki
(Little
Foot Comics)
Nominees:
Skull Pen #1 by Robert
James Algeo (Inabsentia
Press)
W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G Technical Pamphlet by Ed
Piskor (Self Published)
The Ineffables: Political
Science by
Craig Bogart (Self Published)
Victims at the End
of the World by
Rickey Gonzales (Pretenious
Comics)
Day Break Vol
1 by Brian Ralph (Bodega
Distribution)
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Winner:
Chemistry
by Steve
Peters
"Chemistry started as an experiment. I decided I wanted
to draw a panel a day for a year with no preconceived notions as to what
the story would be. At
the end of the year, I would hopefully have a complete comic. As I went
along, I began hiding the date in each panel, and for some readers, looking at
the book becomes a game of trying to find where the date is hidden.
The comic immediately became autobiographical. I happened to be in a new
relationship when I started it, and the first few pages are a reflection of my
happiness. By the end of the third page, however, things are starting to
go wrong, and from that point on the pages become very dark as the character
based on me begins to grapple with his inner demons of doubt and insecurity.
By the time I was halfway finished drawing the comic, the relationship was over. The
demons have all consolidated into one entity who tries to destroy any self-confidence
left.
From then on, I begin to examine what went wrong in the relationship. I
start at the end, and gradually work my way backwards. We watch
as time is reversed and see the couple begin to grow happier and happier.
The comic ends at the beginning of the relationship. Chemistry consists
of many little leaps of faith that things would work out somehow, since I
was not working with a script but just an outline instead, and I was consistently
amazed at how well everything seemed to fall into place. It
seemed very much that this book was meant to be."
Steve Peters "I was just remarking to myself when I was looking at Chemistry - your candidate for the Day Prize this year - boy the kid
has never given up. You've certainly been across the spectrum of
Large Questions over, under and back again and it's all here in
black-and-white, metaphorically, literally and every other way
imaginable. A real comic-book Pilgrim's Progress."
Dave Sim
Other Nominees:
Abominable by Pat Lewis
Beaver by Jim
Coon
Being Different by Michelle Arcand
Guitar Solo by Mike
Dawson
One Horse Town by Pat Lewis
Potlatch #5 Too
Much Matheson by Chad Lambert & Tom Williams
Under
the Midnight Sun by Dusty Neal &
Christopher Studabaker |
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Winner:
The
Lone & Level Sands
by A David
Lewis, mpMann & Jennifer Rodgers
"I really couldn't disagree more with A David Lewis' perspective
on Exodus and the Koran. It seems to me that all attempts to
diminish the divinely-inspired to the merely human and to submit
one's self to the perennial seduction of Egypt's poisonous trappings,
whether in ancient days or in the twenty-first century, well...
it would be hard to imagine anyone who would rather - having
experienced both first hand - be ruled by twenty-first century
Cairo than any twenty-first century democracy. Still, the protection
of multiplicity of view-points is the core of what we are and
the core of what we are fighting to advance, to entrench, and
to maintain around the world in the face of the contrary impulse
which has always found a home in Egypt. And that advancement,
and maintenance has to include what I see personally as misguided
and unfounded romanticism if it is to have any meaning whatsoever.
Although I am mostly Muslim and have been since 1999, I cannot
share the view point of Muslims which we have seen exhibited so
dramatically in recent months that the pictorial portrayal of
God's prophets and messengers is something that should be forbidden.
It can be cautioned against and in my own case, it is an untenable
creative decision for me, personally, but that is a very different
thing from compulsion, for or against. Likewise it would seem an
anathema to the history of the democratic impulse and the protection
of the right of free speech for me as the composer of the Short
List for the Day Prize this year to either refuse to read a book
like The Lone And Level Sands because
it is a retelling of the story of Moses an Aaron from what its
author believes to be Pharaoh's side or to dismiss the book itself
with its gorgeous front and back covers and its spare graphic style,
the work of artist mpMann, which neatly complements its austere
treatment of its subject, a graphic novel that, in the words of
its back cover copy, "tells the story of a man trying to rule
wisely, love his family well, and deal justly in the face of a
divine wrath.
There is always the danger that, as a fully liberalised Westerner,
I might have been erring on the side of overcompensation, nominating
an inferior work as a means of demonstrating that I'm not prejudiced
against it.
The fact that The Lone And Level Sands was
unquestionably Gerhard's first choice in his capacity as the selector
of the Day Prize recipient for 2005 would seem to indicate to me,
and I hope to all of you and most particularly to A David Lewis
and mpMann, that that was very much the case.
And so I'm pleased that, in addition to saluting this thought-provoking
and carefully crafted work, that we are also acknowledging the
genuine "lone and level sands" in our democratic society
which will always favour the protected free speech of everyone,
regardless of personal belief and personal preference.
Please join us in welcoming to the stage A David Lewis and mpMann,
the creators of the 2005 Day Prize recipient, The
Lone And Level Sands."
Dave Sim, from Following Cerebus #8, 2006
Other Nominees:
Icecreamlandia #2 by Eve Englezos & Josh
Moutray
Justin's
Big Chance in Slam Bang #7 by Anton Bogaty
Maxwell the Demon in Attic
Wit #6 by Tonia
Walden
Point Pleasant #1 by Chad Lambert, Steve Black,
Ryan Scott, Dan Barlow & Jason Moser
Static Dreaming by Erik K. Siano
Zig Zag #1 by J.
Chris Campbell
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Winner:
Owly:
The Way Home
by
Andy
Runton
"I've been drawing my entire life but I never really considered a career
in cartooning. I only took, maybe one or two art classes in high school. In college,
I settled on Industrial Design and that certainly taught me a lot. But as far
as cartooning, my professional career is brand new. I recently found some old
comics I drew in high school and I tried a few little stories before Owly,
but nothing ever felt right. I knew I was forcing it. I have always drawn the
kinds of characters I'm drawing now but they just never fit into my stories or
into my job in corporate America. That was before I found Top Shelf and independent
comics, though. I had never read stories that were as personal as those. I knew
that was their strength. So when it came time for me to write my own stories,
that was my inspiration. So, Owly is my career so
far!"
Andy Runton Read
the full interview conducted by Gerhard here.
Other Nominees:
Chromosome Crossroads by Karl Kressbach
Detached #1 by Jim Coon
Lackluster World #1 by Eric
Adams
Max Hamm, Fairy Tale Detective by Frank
Cammuso
Nisha #1 by Robert Gavila
Obsessive Crush by
Pat Lewis
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Winner:
Askari
Hodari
by Glenn Brewer
"I knew from a very young age that I wanted to draw comic books and that
if I was to be good at it, I should probably go to school. After receiving
my Bachelors in Fine Arts, I went about the task of trying to put my $40,000
degree to use. I sent out tonnes of samples to the major comic labels
only to receive tonnes of rejections letters in return. I became frustrated
and disillusioned. Comic book editors were telling me I had all of these
problems with my art, yet some of the artists they hired had the same deficiencies.
I finally decided that I did not need these big comic companies to validate
my work. I felt that I could create stories that people wanted to read and
illustrations that people wanted to see. So with that Askari
Hodari was
born."
Glenn Brewer Other Nominees:
Attic Wit #4 by Dembicki, Gosieniecki,
Turek, Zawadzki & Kaluszka
The Gypsy
Lounge by Jasen Lex
Happy Town #7 by Justin Madson
Pop Gun War # 2, 4 & 5 by Farel
Dalrymple
Possum at Large #1 by Chad Lambert
Street Angel #1 by Dick Troutman & Brian Maruca
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Winner:
MISA
by Tom
Williams
"I had always been drawing comics. Stapled ball point pen studies in sequentiality.
To this day I still sketch primarily in ball point pen. Pencil I save for comps.
Depends on who you ask, but my work didn't start to become readable till the
late 90's. Late high school/early college I was exposed to indie comics and some
European stuff (ala Heavy Metal). A foriegn concept
to me - non-superhero comics. My parents weren't exactly hippies back in the
day so I never heard of Crumb or
underground comix till college. Influences and new artists popped into my lexicon.
Stuff that would have never been available to me. This is all pre-internet."
Tom Williams, from his biogrpahy at Open Crash Comics. Other Nominees:
Amelia
Rules! #2 by Jimmy Gownley
Askari Hodari #2 by Glen
Brewer
Insignificant Gods #1 by Evan Derian
Myth of 8-Opus #5 by Thomas Scioli
Sequential
Book Seven: Stand On A Mountain, Look Back by Paul
Hornschemeier
Teenagers From Mars #1,
by Rick Spears & Rob G
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Winner:Faith: A Fable
by Bill Knapp
"Faith: A Fable is, I believe, a prime example
of the sort of material of which comics are capable, yet could never be done
by the 'mainstream' comics publishers
(unless maybe written by Alan
Moore) because it IS about something, not just
a reason to string together fight scenes. The main theme of the book is that
you are responsible for your own life. While you may look to others for help
in making a decision, ultimately, you have to be the one that says 'This
is the choice I will make' and then be responsible for the outcome. No
matter what advice anyone gives you, you are the one that has to live your life
and decide what is the best path to follow. "
Bill Knapp Read
the full interview at Sequential Tart. Other Nominees:
All The Wrong Places by Tom Galambos
Askari Hodari #1 by Glen Brewer
Darklanders #1 by Philip Alan Gregory
Happy Ever After in the
Marketplace by Tony
Consiglio
Jumbo Jape by Sean Bieri
Reporter #1 by Dylan Williams
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