More Dave Sim Batshittery.

I offered to fax [Sim] copies of the interviews I've done with Alan Moore and Scott McCloud, so he could see what kind of stuff we do. I mentioned that we look for people who have non-mainstream opinions. He said that Scott McCloud and Alan Moore ARE mainstream. I said that they've been embraced by the mainstream, but that they don't necessarily express themselves in mainstream-friendly ways; for instance, Alan Moore claims that he worships a sock puppet. Dave said something about that depending on whether it's a feminist issue. I asked how worshipping a sock puppet was a feminist issue. He said "Same pus, different zit." I said "I'm not getting you." He said "Yeah. I know."

he just fuckin lost it somewhere along the line.

It's hard to know whether to feel more horror or pity. It sucks, because Cerebus was good, and he had to go and ruin it for a lot of people by being an unhinged jerkoff.

Caveat lector!

Dave, for the last time: the feminist conspiracy isn't the reason that most people haven't heard of Cerebus. The rreason most people haven't heard of Cerebus is because it's a 6000 page, black and white, often almost unbearably oblique comic about an Aardvark, for fuck's sake.

""The dialogue between YHWH and God continues. I think YHWH's contribution back in the early 60s was Peter, Paul and Mary. I mean, it is a *way* of looking at Christianity, seeing Peter, Paul and Mary as the three cornerstones after Jesus. Of course, being YHWH her point was; if you have Peter, Paul and Mary, what do you need Jesus for? I think this amused God a great deal - to the extent that he countered with John, Paul, George and Ringo. Paul, of course, was actually James: James Paul McCartney. So John and James were leaders of the band, like the sons of Zebedee, John and James, the brothers Boanerges, the sons of thunder. John and James, of course were the ones who sought to sit on the right and left hands of Jesus in the next world (egged on by their mother, according to one Gospel account). So it was a good joke that on the cusp of becoming world famous John and James ditched Peter, Pete Best, the drummer since this is basically what the biblical John and James had attempted to do with Peter the apostle. The George part, I think, was God's way of saying that leap-frogging Peter - that is the Vatican - lands you in England and Henry VIII's decision to make himself not only king, but head of the church as well. There have been three King Georges [sic - he doesn't know all that much about British history, especially given that the British monarch is also Canadian head of state...], the last one being George III, the George whose exorbitant taxation created the impetus behind the founding of the United States. Now, having ditched Peter, that meant you had three kings or a Ring of Stars (Ringo Starr) only in the same cursory way that Peter, Paul and Mary make a ring. Of course, because this was God's idea and not YHWH's the Beatles were exponentially more sucessful and influential than were Peter, Paul and Mary the "three kings" and George III part resonated more successfully with them landing in the United States than Peter, Paul and Mary could ever have hoped to and, of course, YHWH, being a perennial sucker for music and dancing has ridden the phenomenon as far as he/she/it could. It actually ended with Charles Manson - God's point being that, separated from God, these "three English kings" are just sleazy long-haired drifters, using their music and charisma to enslave impressionable young girls, as Manson did."

More here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/stealthmunchkin/

In person, Dave is quite personable, even -- in my experience, and from what friends have said -- to the ladies. (On condition, of course, that they only talk about comics. But he was very helpful to a female friend, giving advice on her portfolio.)

I'm glad I have an editor in real life.

He took it from Gore Vidal, who noted that "homosexual" is not a noun.

They fell out when Jeff's wife took offence to something Dave said (I can't remember offhand, but it was really nothing) and insisted Jeff have it out with him. Jeff didn't, but refused to speak to him. You can imagine how Dave took this, given it was a woman that 'told' Jeff to act this way.

This led to ever-increasing ridiculousness, with Dave insisting if theyed sort it out like men and it would all be forgotten. He even hired a boxing ring at one convention and told Jeff that 3 rounds and it would never be mentioned again (irrespective of the outcome of the fight).

I'm fairly sure I'm in Collected Letters, but I haven't got it yet.

To me, taking it as a given that reason cannot prevail in any argument with emotion, there must come a point - with women and children - where verbal discipline has to be asserted, and if verbal discipline proves insufficient, that physical discipline be introduced. Women and children have soft, cushy buttocks which are, nonetheless, shot through with reasonably sensitive nerve endings.

I believe that those buttocks are there for a very specific purpose intended by their Creator.

Like much of the screed, it's more entertaining if you try to imagine it being narrated with tremendous gravitas by James Earl Jones.

ah, my days of comic con attdending.

Off the top of my head, folks.

Ooo! Puppies!

Chuck, who are you IRL? Page numbers will do.

I've been trying to drop that into conversation ever since you first mentioned it.

My real name in real life is Pau1 15aac5.

“Yes,” I said, “if you read his comics, you can sort of get that impression.”

Lots of Sim/Henry references in Collected Letters 2004, incidentally.

Convincing!

If it's true, that makes 6000 on-schedule pages an even more amazing feat.

I am so totally there, dude.

But, uh, Dave is not the most engrossing of live speakers.

Your search - douchebuggy - did not match any documents

That's called douchebuggery

But, uh, Dave is not the most engrossing of live speakers.

The weirdest things you run across on YouTube

Um... Judenhass... um... wow.

EXPLAIN PLZ

also, so not googling "Judenhass"

OK, Judenhass is Dave's SUPER SECRET PROJECT #1 which is written by DAVE-THE-WANNABE-JEW rather than DAVE-THE-JEW-HATER and is a series of hyper-realistic (think Raymond school) images of Jews in the concentration camps backed out by text from world leaders (the Americans come out particularly badly in the WWII era) and 'great' thinkers through history about how the Jews are a blight on civilisation.

It's a very, very difficult work to read and, in fact, to critique. I think everyone should read it, but I can't (for the moment) think of a reason why.

I think everyone should read it

I have literally zero desire to do so.

I believe that is what they call a 'truth bomb'

I'd argue that it's utterly critique-proof, actually.

And I didn't think it was all that secret, since previews of it have been floating around the internet for nearly two months now. Hell, I read the whole of it more than a month ago at a local shop (one of the preview copies that were circulated early to build retailer support.)

Has anyone read (I think it was called) "Glamorpuss"? His satirical (presumably) look at fashion magazines? Pretty weird prospect...

Yeah, except it isn't really. It's Dave doing something like Eddie Campbell was trying in Egomania with his 'History Of Comedy', it's Dave's version of the history and development of the Raymond School. It's actually pretty interesting, and very nice to look at (because it's Dave playing drirectly to his artistic strengths).

Definitely worth buying at the moment if you like that sort of thing.

Also, I missed that I should have responded above - SUPER SECRET PROJECT #1 was how Dave was referring to it in development, sorry, I wasn't implying nobody knew about it.

I really kinda dig it.

I just wrote this on my tumblr:

“

Unfortunately for me, there is an implied bargain in comic art: The presence of words juxtaposed with pictures draws the natural inference on the part of the reader that both together add up to a sequential narrative.

Flipping through the pages in a comic-book store, you’re going to think that this is a comic strip.

A natural inference which I’m making use of by putting my narration into these word balloons, thus creating the illusion that this is a comic-art story instead of what it is: A Raymond and Prentice “slide show” - third rate (at best) compared to their own but, outside of their extant original artwork, the only place where you can see what the “look” was made up of.
”
—

Dave Sim, on page 9 of Glamourpuss #1.

I bought it on a perverse whim — I’ve yet to read Cerebus, but I was fascinated by what his new comic-book appeared to be: A parodic serial about the world of high fashion, created by a man who is largely understood to be a disturbed misogynist.

As you might have gleaned from this quote (I wish I could have just scanned from the page, but I don’t currently own a scanner), Glamourpuss is something very different, and much more strange. It’s basically a sketchbook in which Sim either replicates drawings by his favorite photo-realist cartoonists — Al Williamson, Alex Raymond, John Prentice, Stan Drake, Neal Adams — or draws images taken from (mostly current) fashion magazines in the style. The illustrations are arranged like a typical sequential comic, and accompanied by Sim’s musings on the history of the style and its artists, and an explanation of the project. There’s definitely some fashion parody, but most of the humor is quite self-deprecating.

Glamourpuss is self-indulgent to the extreme, but the artwork is gorgeous, and Sim’s writing is very engaging if you’re the type of person who tends to be fascinated by the process of obsessive artists.

http://www.inkstuds.com/wp-content/scan.jpg

Ow my brain.

that's amazing

Lowest, most subhuman form of life, surely.

So he's not denying that he's a misogynist. He just wants you to protest the designation.

This guy.

I like the review of Glamourpuss that was all, "Why do we scream at Greg Horn for tracing, but when Dave Sim does it without even having a story attached, it's art!"

Do I mean Greg Horn? Greg Land? Something like that. The guy who traces porn, anyway.

Land has more blatantly traced in the past. Greg Horn's work is just static and dull.

That letter is HIsterical

The man's got years of lunacy left in him yet. he should give up comics from now on and concentrate on his inimitable brand of total-immersion performance art.

http://gocomics.com/poochcafe/2009/03/13/

Guest appearance by Cerebus

crossposted from the ILE Cerebus thread --

'Cerebus' Creator Dave Sim Contemplates 'Career End Point' And Economic 'Doomsday Scenario'

Glamourpuss seemed interesting, but for one or two issues, not 26.

I wonder if his self-image as a Creator is going to stop him seeking illustration jobs - that would be a shame.

I'm curious about how well Judenhass sold - it seemed that if he could keep focussed then he could still put out amazing work - though obviously it was never going to be knocking anything off the top of the charts.

(D'oh I should finish the article first - 10,000 sales of Judenhass)

Glamourpuss was up and down - the Zootanapuss 'real women look like this' stuff was a weird and, dare I say it, FEMINIST diversion for Dave. The death of Alex Raymond piece has become a bizarre conspiracy theory about how it was all Stan Drake's fault because of professional jealousy. And the letters page was just crazy, you couldn't work out what was really happening and what was Dave writing to (and arguing with) himself.

I've been part of the C&S digitisation Kickstarter and Dave's been making it pretty clear there that he's DONE done with comics. The archive of updates for that is fascinating reading, Dave's being more honest about his career than he probably ever has; how he views himself as a failure and feels guilty for encouraging people into self-publishing too, because they're also doomed to failure. You also get to find out what he knows about Twitter amongst other things. Basically he used to go into a coffee shop that had free wifi and type till they threw him out.

Not C&S, High Society.

Reckon he could definitely make a good living if he taylored his stuff just slightly for a more mainstream audience (or any audience). Glamourpuss sounds almost supernaturally niche.

The archive of updates for that is fascinating reading, Dave's being more honest about his career than he probably ever has

Yeah, the piece linked above is heartwrenchingly candid.

He seems to be so clear-eyed and rational about everything except why he's radioactive. I think he could make enough to live out his days, or at least a few more years, if he would agree to a reprint deal on Cerebus with a publisher with funds. But 100% of nothing is preferable to a percentage of anything, I guess. Someday he, Ditko, Toth and Moore are going to sit around in Funnybook Heaven going "goddammit! none of them would listen!"

plenty of ppl listen to Moore and he's doing fine

unless you mean the Walking Dead guy who's suing the other Walking Dead guy

Bundled Update: Kim Thompson And Eric Reynolds Basically Make An Open Offer To Publish Dave Sim

Thompson can't help twisting the knife, though -- "But I think he’s too deep into his Final-Station-of-Dave-Sim-the-Martyr narrative to even consider such an idea." -- great turn of phrase, mean as hell, probably accurate, seems intended to sabotage any actual movement forward towards Fanta-published Cerebus, imo.

yeah Moore has plenty of money

Judenhaas was pretty terrible. glamourpuss seemed completely inscrutable.

and yeah I'm bummed for the dude but at the same time ***MARTYR COMPLEX*** snark is totally otm

Like I said, he could totally do well for himself. He's highly talented and well thought of (artistically).

I don't know, what exactly does 'more bookshop friendly than the phonebooks' actually mean? Marketed better? Does Kim think I'm going to buy it again because it's in a hardcover with a nice dustjacket? Or does it mean dropping the text parts out of Reads, the bits that criticise the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds, omit pretty much all of Latter Days? Actually further down in text Kim suggests it's making casual readers able to pick up any volume at random. Which makes me wonder whether he's actually ever read the longest single narrative in comics. Will a single introductory page really make The Last Day able to be picked up by just anyone as a standalone book, as Kim suggests?

Also I'd suggest RASL is a bad example to be holding up as a success, having scraped through the 6000 barrier just as a final issue. For comparison, Glamourpuss sold a couple of hundred more issues of #1 as they were launched in the same month and Glamourpuss ended up just under 3000 sales in the final month having published 11 more issues in the interim. Is that close enough to being a draw? Maybe.

He seemed more focussed in my reading of it - and doesn't he say that he's not touching the crazy stuff? - like why not put enough in there that you could start with High Society (which is still what I'd recommend), or that, if it's been a year say since the last one you bought, you don't have to reread it before picking up a new one.

If that's what Kim means YMOF then I'm not surprised Dave turned it down if it was offered to him. He wants to pick and choose which bits of a single narrative get republished in the pursuit of cash? What defines 'crazy stuff'? How much of Mothers & Daughters? Does Melmoth still work as a Cerebus book outside of M&D or is it easier to just remove the panels Cerebus is in and print it just as a Wilde biography? Does Cerebus' confused sexuality in Guys/Rick's Story make sense without Reads? Is the Garth Innocent section (and Cerebus' breakdown) comprehensible without knowing about the Three Wise Fellows? How much of Woody Allen remains or makes sense without the exegesis? Does Kim in fact just mean he wants to reprint HS, C&S and Jaka's Story and fuck the rest?

Eric Reynolds' suggestion seems genuine, and Dave has alwyas said he wants to complete it as a book anyway so doing it there or doing it himself seems like a decidion that he'd be capable of making.

RASL?

Does Cerebus' confused sexuality in Guys/Rick's Story make sense without Reads?

having not read Reads I'll say yes to this one

Jeff Smith's post-Bone book. Launched the same month as Glamourpuss, lasts 15 issues.

Well these are the lines I'm mostly working from:

I’d be perfectly happy to repackage the CEREBUS material in a more bookstore-friendly format than those fucking phone books and give the material the new lease on life it (or at least the first two thirds of it) so richly deserves.

I think that by the time you get to the last third it's mostly impenetrable gibberish and the most editorially savvy attempts at presenting the material wouldn't work, but much of the rest is complex but coherent and just in need of the kind of small pre-orientation some judiciously written back cover copy, or maybe a foreword, could bring.

Rereading the first I can see that I've got him wrong - he sounds like he might be willing to publish it all, but he doesn't have any hopes for the later stuff. Which sounds fair - I'd hate to have to actually interest anyone in anything after Reads.

Does Melmoth still work as a Cerebus book outside of M&D

The answer there is surely yes, since it has always been outside of M&D?

seems intended to sabotage any actual movement forward towards Fanta-published Cerebus, imo.

dude was spitballing to three ppl on a comments thread, not making an actual offer to Sim or detailing one that he has previously made

Kim's absolutely right that the lack of any back-cover blurb or introductory material makes every volume enormously more impenetrable than they need to be.

and the martyr comments are likely to inflame Sim's martyr complex, but Dave has also always cited - whether proudly, thankfully, or despairingly depending on his mood at the time - Kim's 1979 review as the first critical attention ever paid Cerebus; that could count for something.

Reynolds seems an excellent editor for the completion of glamourpuss' Alex Raymond storyline.

Uh, Sim clearly has some mental health issues (not to be confused with moral health issues) -- I'm not sure Thompson's jibe is appropriate, even if it seems dead on.

don't think sim ever forgave fanta for (rightly, imho) not including him in their list of 100 greatest cartoonists or whatevs, back in the day. there's also 'political' differences between him and (the notably silent) gary groth that would make the prospect of cerebus at fantagraphics v v unlikely (tho iirc, only one of the two fanta owners/directors has to be behind a project for fanta to take it on.)

def. agree that cerebus needs a lot of contextualising for ppl who aren't marinated in comics and fantasy lore - and even groucho marx must be a pretty remote figure to large numbers of readers, today - and that's before you get into the repugnant sexual politics and general narrative collapse of the second half of the series.

wld much prefer fanta to be giving us - off the top of my head - properly translated breccia for the first time rather than yet another go-round for fucking cerebus, but (at least on ilx) i know i'm in the minority on that one.

it's fair to say his mental health issues sometimes exacerbate his separate martyr tendencies I reckon - it's the flipside of how proud he was to be on the outside of accepted opinion prior to #186 and the post-HW market collapse

(tho iirc, only one of the two fanta owners/directors has to be behind a project for fanta to take it on.)

Eric R is able to bring in or initiate projects himself these days too

Groth has almost never posted on the CC-era TCJ comments threads, just like he didn't post on the 90s message board but Kim loved getting into arguments or cheerfully elucidating publishing strategy; his silence is not notable, he probably doesn't even know the original post, the discussion thread, or Thompson's idle thoughts therein exist. And back in the Spirits days Sim wrote in editorials about how he and Gary enjoyed hanging out in person together even while they were tearing strips off each other in print.

dunno what Spirits is, but am happy to accept yr point.

and lol at me for thinking that the publisher of wendy whitebread might have qualms abt dave sim's female void batshittery

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/36690-2930-41008-1-cerebus_super.jpg

year of touring and co-throwing indy cons monthly and hanging out talking in hotels afterwards bcz he didn't do coke anymore

lol that's the other thing i was gonna ask - for a time, sim was making serious coin from the phonebooks etc - i remember at one 80s uk comic convention, him and gerhard shared a massive suite at the Savoy in central london, which can't have been cheap (while virtually every other convention guest made do w/ far more modest accomodation) - so did it all go up his nose, in the end?

nah: money kept flowing past the millennium, but cashflow slowed hugely as sales declined and thus more of cash-on-hand would have to be sunk into reprinting volumes, which then wouldn't pay themselves back for years; he had to pay Gerhard off when he asked to leave A-V (Ger ostensibly owned 40%; rather than actually analyse their assets, Dave said "yes" to the first figure Gerhard named and they just worked out a payment plan); and I suspect most significantly he's been tithing everything he doesn't need for groceries for many years now, instead of saving it.

altho the amount of tithing may have reduced as he's been paying off Gerhard I imagine

yeah he definitely seemed like he was flaunting wealth in the late 80s/early 90s, to a totally unheard of degree in the comics world iirc

wrt RASL it should be noted that it's pretty unreadable and I say this as something of a jeff smith fanboy

Yeah, which is why Kim hailing it as some major success is jarring.

a reasonable, self-sustaining success, I think he's saying; its numbers seem to have been more consistent than pre-Image Bone, which is remarkable in the current context, and he's found three separate serialisation modes to reach different audience preferences.

yeah he definitely seemed like he was flaunting wealth in the late 80s/early 90s, to a totally unheard of degree in the comics world iirc

staying in nice hotels occasionally is nothing next to Chris Claremont's buying a private jet! afaik Sim and Gerhard lived very moderately at home* and just lashed out on holidays (where they would continue working) and suites rather than rooms at some cons. and that was also in large part to provide an aspirational example**, to illustrate to ppl the spoils that could be theirs if they fully owned and controlled their work.

* in Kitchener Sim walked everywhere - and still doesn't have a drivers licence - but when landing in another city, going to do two radio appearances and three print interviews before going to a hotel and then to a convention, and possibly stopping for food along the way, he reckoned it was more efficient and economically sensible to book a car service rather than get separate cabs for each stop.

** or, in the case of the Savoy, also to impress British journalists that this interview booking wasn't a waste of their time:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o1yaiwq2IVE/T7jEGd3319I/AAAAAAAAA4U/1-5nqFJScRQ/s1600/photo_savoy_neil_gaiman.jpg

oh man where did you find that photo!??!! pure nostalgia - any idea who the person in the mirror is (for a moment i thought it was me, but tho' i visited sim at the savoy, it was in the evening and gaiman wasn't there...)

yeah, there was def an aspect of "look what you can have when you're a self-publishing cartoonist" abt sim's choice of luxurious digs, but he and gerhard def seemed to be living out the rock star lifestyle trip, too.

<3 gaiman's footwear

Hah my first reaction to that is holy shit at inside smoking :)

I remember that photo from an issue of Cerebus -- since it's in full color, it must have been the back cover.

yeah, he ran it on the back after Sandman became a thing - somewhere during Melmoth, so I think he probably found it to draw Oscar connections and then went "oh lol yeah" when he realised who was in it. (there was one the month before or after of Dave posing [and smoking] in the window, too)

mirror dude is probably just the next journo waiting, or possibly hired publicity dude (this would be earlier than Igor Go1dkind's time on the scene, right?). if it's not P. Grav3tt. looks shorter than Gerhard, but the angle's unhelpful.

ah yeah, looks like it was the Man At The Crossroads

nah, ig0r was def the FP/Titan publicist at the time.

i don't know if sim is avoiding mentioning something reasonably...pertinent...abt someone he talks abt in the first part of his essay, or if he didn't know, or what...

yeah that was amazing! coming from 1986 (at the time) you would assume it was Dave being aware and respectful - from 2004 Dave it feels more like... he must not have known... but is that possible?

* not in on the gossip *

:-(

sorry, not trying to be coy, and it isn't really gossip as such, just something that shldn't be discussed on a public forum w/out the relevant party's permission (who, I hasten to add, I only know in the most superficial way, and who doesn't know me from adam).

100% inferrable from our conversation and no secret AFAIK, just being polite

Interesting response from Sim on the Fantagraphics thing:

http://www.tcj.com/dave-sim-responds-to-the-fantagraphics-offer/

Sim's well-poisoning starts as soon as the phrase “New York Times-worthy” emerges from his typewriter.

He digs a ditch, jumps in, and backfills it with shit. Kinda amazing.

“An thass no lie,” as one of Crumb’s black characters might say.

xpost

and that he builds one of his classic "you probably think THIS because you're all against me" strawmen, best-ever displayed in Tasha Robinson's AV Club interview, by ignoring what Kim says about the first 2/3 of the run only and contextualising for bookstores by insisting they would want to contextualise the last third only, and for the NYT, which isn't where he belongs.

but it'll be fun if Kim & Gary do try and debate this out on the comments.

it's hard for me to understand why so many ppl want publishing rights to cerebus (assuming sim is telling the truth about like b&n) - i mean, i think it's just great but surely there isn't a huge untapped audience just waiting for groucho marx satire, mick + keith hijinks, theological/political jockeying, is there?

B&N is one company, seeking presumably the same non-exclusive digital rights that multiple other companies have due to Sim/Scrudder making deals with them, and they no doubt heard because of the High Society Digital kickstarter pulling ten times its goal

"Untapped new rights to property with a 25-year history" presumably sounds like the pure sweet chimes of cash registers to B&N.

35

So, I look at my catalogue and I go, “What have I got that’s New York Times-worthy?” My best guess would be Form & Void, the Hemingway book, or Going Home, the Fitzgerald book.

lol

going by that screed alone he is proper batshit insane.

I'm in the eyeroll camp.

have never heard of this "Hemingway was bi" argument btw

well read Form & Void then

You'll be telling us you didn't know he fucked his cats next.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-genders.html

this thread has inspired me to finish reading the batshit parts of cerebus. any recommended companion reading?

The Torah.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41JJje35GYL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

I finally got around to getting the first volume of Cerebus last weekend - it's kind of amazing how quickly he hit his stride tbh

yeah, despite all the "start with high society" talk there's plenty to enjoy in the first book.

It's always kind of amazed me that the long run of great work started with a nervous breakdown instead of ending with one.

Groth sez:

I left Dave a message telling him that I’d be willing to publish his Raymond book (assuming we could agree on terms, of course, admittedly a huge assumption). I did this mostly out of respect for his skill at and commitment to comics; and, to be honest, in order to help him out. The litany of failed strategies to make dough that he enumerated in that blog post was despairing, as was his inability to profitably continue publishing Glamourpuss himself. Basically, I was offering to jump into the breach if he’d find it helpful. Pragmatically, it’s a single book and a pretty simple prospect.

Cerebus, on the other hand — ay yi yi. I suspect that Kim and Dave could negotiate the contract for that series of books (publicly!) until one of them drops dead, which would probably be a hell of a lot sooner than if they’d never started negotiating in the first place. Good luck to them.

Sim back.

Sim's still a class A loon, but that comment thread is interesting.

wtf with this NYT obsession

Brutal question, but does Cerebus have the capacity to build a new audience? Even the first book is so date-bound to comics culture and 70s/80s politics, I just can't imagine anyone who hasn't already read Cerebus wanting to have a go. I'd say High Society and Jaka's Story maybe, but the rest, hm.

i'm kinda surprised that such an idiosyncratic work could build an audience in the first place

i think r. fiore makes a v gd point in that comments section about sim re-working/re-editing portions of the first volume of cerebus - if it was good enough for herge, why not for sim? that would help distinguish any new edition, make the whole thing 'more of a piece' (tho' i guess gerhard wouldn't participate) and reward the loyal punters who already invested in the phone books.

i can't help thinking as well that sim has a rather mundane view of literature and literary culture/criticism - wilde, hemingway, fitzgerald are all pretty canonical literary figures, 'safe' in their way, and not, i wouldn't have thought, the kind of writers likely to excite this mythical 'mainstream' audience of well-read liberal thinkers.

fwiw, if i was trying to 'sell' cerebus to the wider world i would try to position sim as a weird loner outsider figure like jandek or henry darger, and i'm sure sim wouldn't go along with that...

But Gerhard didn't do anything in the first volume so that's a moot point.

well yeah, but that's what part of what makes the first volume problematic as an introductory volume - it lacks the background lushness of the later books. again, when herge revised his work he got ppl like edgar p jacobs and bob demoor to work on the pages, even though they hadn't contributed to the original versions. perhaps if sim had looked at walt whitman or henry james instead, he might be more receptive to the idea of a text in flux.

Even the first book is so date-bound to comics culture and 70s/80s politics, I just can't imagine anyone who hasn't already read Cerebus wanting to have a go

I'd say especially the first book, but then the recommended reading order has always been second->first->second.

I think one of the things with Cerebus is that all the parodies are still funny even if you don't know the original jokes - "the kids" these days won't necessarily know who Rodney Dangerfield is, but as long as they have some frame of reference for what "a terrible borscht-belt comedian" is, and why he's funny as a counsellor, they'll be fine.

, THE TRAGIC LIVES OF HAM & MARY ERNESTWAY: A GRAPHIC FABLE BASED ON THE TRUE STORY (or…BASED ON “THE TRUE GEN”) (…or…BASED ON “HOW IT WAS”)

lol this is so stupid

feel like there's an amazingly emotionally needy vibe running through Sim's postings on this subject (PLEASE PLEASE VALIDATE ME)

xxp not so much the comics parodies. moon knight?

yeah I think his non-comics reference points (groucho, mick n keef, wilde etc) work fine but the comics/Roach stuff is gonna be nigh impenetrable to anyone not versed in 80s comics

feel like there's an amazingly emotionally needy vibe running through Sim's postings on this subject (PLEASE PLEASE VALIDATE ME)

the NYT thing has been a bugbear for decades, used to be all "I'm just the guy who's won five Eisners, but Art Spiegelman gets called by the NYT for comment, which is the best encapsulation I can think of to illustrate my position on the Big Chessboard"

Art Spiegelman aggressively promoted his I AM SERIOUS NY JEWISH ARTISTE schtick his entire career, it's no small wonder why the NYT would call him and not some nerdy Canadian crank with a much more comics-bound cultural cachet. But beyond that it's just the entire tone of it - part of which I'm sure is borne of dire economic circumstances, but also his well-developed martyr complex - comes off as both desperate for approval and resentful for even wanting that approval in the first place. It's singularly unattractive, but also very very much in character.

it's a kind of "I want you to love me, but I hate you for making me want you to love me!" sort of dynamic

I think only Elrod and Red Sophia (and maaaybe Moon Roach) are the only parodies that are going to be out of reach for new fans, and even they become strong enough characters independent that you don't need to know the backstory to get the joke...

sacred secret wars
also all that bullshit with mcfarlane
and really the stones shit
and the marx brothers
i don't know, the whole goddam book does seem fairly impenetrable really

Wait though - which bit of Keef + Mick depends on you having any idea who the Stones are? Definitely none of the Marx brothers does.

Moon Roach is a case where I can see the other side - I'd never heard of any of the Moon Knight stuff it was parodying, and so it comes through as obviously stylised nonsense - which is exactly the part it plays in the plot.

Who the fuck doesn't at least vaguely know who the Rolling Stones and the Marx Brothers are?

young people today

I think those with enough cultural curiosity to try Cerebus would.

chap otm

i think i had only a very vague idea about the marx brothers when i started reading cerebus

also dave sim writes a good groucho marx but 'mick 'n' keef' are not funny

all the moon roach, wolveroach etc shit: not funny

The Roach is great, especially the DKR parody. Mick n Keef have their moments, though I often find Sim's recreations of accents just annoying. It makes the dialogue a bit of slog sometimes.

I love Sims' Oscar Wilde, Mick & Keef and Marx Brothers stuff and don't think a prior knowledge is required to fully appreciate that stuff. I didn't know the details of Wilde's sodomy trial before reading "Jaka's story", was delighted to read later how well Sims had integrated those details into Oscar's exchange with the tavern owner (Pud?)

I ~get~ Moon Roach and he's just fine but he's probably the weakest character imo, with or without a knowledge of who he's satirizing

nothing engages new readers like twenty five year old parodies of rock stars and eighty year old parodies of slapstick comedies, unless it's biographical fanfic about oscar wilde and ernest hemingway

I dunno man, those jokes never really get old. My younger bros read Cerebus for the first time this summer and really dug it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc0ryR-1GZI

I started reading Cerebus as a teenager over 20 years ago. At that time I knew the Marx Bros well enough but not the Stones so I didn't get all the jokes but it didn't stop me from getting into it. The comics references are definitely of their time and place though. How many people are gonna get a DKR parody today? I think this stuff is minor though and doesn't really hurt the work but I can see how it might put people off.

I quit reading Marvel/DC around '93 so I didn't get any of the Rabbi/Preacher stuff. But by then the book had gone well off the rails, so I didn't feel I was missing much.

Oh man I forgot Secret Sacred Wars Roach: that might have been my favorite Roach. The whole joke of Shooter's paragraphs of expository dialogue might lose new readers, though it kind of fits in with that sublimely inexplicable atmosphere that pervades the first 100 pages of C&S II

Well, as a firm believer in both free will and predestination, I think [the non-narrative works Judenhass and glamourpuss] -- and CEREBUS -- were fully-formed when my grandfather was still in his mother's womb. But, in the sense that I see you as meaning: the conventional "physically incarnated" hatching out of our lives, yes, definitely they were gestating throughout my life. I wanted to be Neal Adams when I grew up. Or, at least, when I got taller :) It's hard to communicate the extent to which virtually EVERYONE in my generation of comic artist wanted to be Neal Adams when they grew up. It would be surprising if I would have done something else once CEREBUS was done.

It occurred to me for the first time a while ago that in a real sense most of CEREBUS could have just been a practice tee -- a 26-year and three month practice tee, if you can believe it -- getting me ready for doing THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND. He died in 1956. I was 112 days old when he died. 56 and 56 is 112. I'm 56 this year. It seems more than a little significant to me. God grinds the axes he intends to use.

And Dave grinds any axe that gets near him.

I can admire the craft, but man, I just could not get into CEREBUS.

as a firm believer in both free will and predestination

this guy

The TCJ thread where Dave & Kim and the general public have been "negotiating" has gotten out of control in a way that reminds of the old Journal message boards. Totally entertaining trainwreck, with people talking past each other and Hitler references and Gary Groth dropping a hot load on Dave's head.

Aaaagh, I just spent 90 minutes with that thread and the Hardtalk questions and I need a brain-rinse.

I did say it was like the old TCJ boards. Those always left me feeling wrong in the head.

makes me want to take up butt-chugging

upthread i wrote:

don't think sim ever forgave fanta for (rightly, imho) not including him in their list of 100 greatest cartoonists or whatevs, back in the day.

tom spurgeon wrote this today on the comics reporter site:

suspect this latest "negotiation" was entered into in somewhat bad faith by Sim, perhaps unintentionally, and as a result it quickly become a launching pad for longstanding grievances -- grievances I further suspect are more "exclusion from Top 100" oriented than "you compared me to a Nazi" oriented.

Dave posted in the middle of the night and is now pushing the goalpost of discussions into 2013. Batshittery shall never end.

Batshit is as batshit does.

Maybe we can get Neal Adams to illustrate this trainwreck and call it BATSHIT ODYSSEY. It's likely Dave Sim sits shirtless at a table narrating his adventures.

I would buy that comic.

this is very entertaining:

http://images.comiccollectorlive.com/covers/b0d/b0d36be2-e567-48fe-ba74-e771aa338c73.jpg

Dave interviewed Neal? So maybe we can get BATSHIT ODYSSEY to happen.

I know Following Cerebus existed but I've never seen one.

A booklength discussion between Dave and Neal.

This is a good description.

Okay, I just got the net up at the new place and downloaded the a/v High Society #1. I'm laughing out loud at Sim's voices for the characters. This ongoing batshittery will entertain me each week for months.

And speaking of batshittery, the way he played Fantagraphics just to be a total dick? Classic Sim.

where is this?

First issue is free here:

http://www.cerebusdownloads.com/

I backed the kickstarter for $15 so I'll get each issue free as they're released.

go to http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/ -- the "Fantagraphics Offer" updates from Oct and Sept in the sidebar summarize the stuff from here: http://www.tcj.com/dave-sim-responds-to-the-fantagraphics-offer/

The whole thing will take a while to skim and hours and hours to read thoroughly, and life is short.

EZ OTM, Dave has the instincts of a seasoned internet troll.

oh i followed the tcj thing, but the cerebus downloads is gonna be WHOA

You saw how he announced a book of Cerebus covers, and a special edition High Society Digital through IDW? And got $30,000 or something upfront? Serious douchebaggery when you consider what prompted the Fanta offer.

in the style of the fanta negosh, the "book of covers from IDW" had blown out to three, then four, then probably including the colour strips as well, within a day or so

Disingenuousness has a new name!

DiSIMgenuousness.

MAKE IT SO. FROM THIS DAY FORWARD.

For people who hadn't been keeping up, Dave has a new quarterly KS featuring 10 full size repros of pages and ancillary artwork still in his possession. Each quarter features a different phonebook/era, with the idea to keep him going to finish up Alex Raymond and to tidy up the scans of the art enough to get new phonebooks ready to publish. Assuming every quarter hits the same targets as this one, he'll achieve that goal.

the batshit part: he expects this to carry on for decades after his death

any idea how much dough was he pulling in in the mid-80s? I know he's broke/an ascetic now but back then he seemed to maintain this whole rock-star image, back cover photos of him pulling up to conventions in limos, staying in fancy hotels, bimbos hanging on him... was that all just bullshit or was he really rolling in it?

dude's arc seems like a total tragedy in retrospect

"bimbos"?

seems like the proper nomenclature for a dave sim thread

Aside from the pleasures of that kind of lifestyle, think Sim also wanted to show other comics people the riches they could earn from self-publishing (but this was at a time when creators on high-royalty earning corporate comics were also earning small fortunes - I know of one penciller who bought a house from the royalties they earned from just one single, high profile Marvel/DC crossover comic)

i'm curious. can you say what book it was?

xp what should they be called, Simbos?

"bimbos"?

not referring to Deni Loubert tbc

"bimbos"?

― Look at this joke I've recognised, do you recognise it as well? (forksclovetofu)

Voids.

lol

forks, it's not for the public prints, but i will tell you in person the next time i visit new york!

was also told - second-hand - that another very well known mainstream comics writer bought a jet out of the royalties they earned - true or not, the point is that there was an awful lot of cash sloshing around comics in the 1980s. i think the irony is is that these days, with the royalty system all but defunct, you really have to own your work - and sell it to TV/movies - to earn similar riches. so dave sim was basically...right?

oh man

http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/artists/nftp/

not referring to Deni Loubert tbc

no, you're referring to Dawn Nash ("Zee")

Aside from the pleasures of that kind of lifestyle, think Sim also wanted to show other comics people the riches they could earn from self-publishing

Also this was not necessarily a "lifestyle" - conventions weren't a 40-times-ayear proposition in the 80s because the distribution system worked, his expenses at home were probably minimal: he booked car services in other cities, but that would get him from interview to interview to store signing to hotel to convention and be a business expense, and he doesn't drive, so at home got/gets around by walking; when he and Ger went to Hawaii for a week and spent it drawing pages for the book on the balcony of their hotel, that would also likely be written off.

NFTP from 74 mentions Skidmore by name. Something in my eye.

Love how ILC springs to life whenever Dave's insanity is brought up.

I wonder what Dave Sim thinks of Donald Trump.

well there's an alarming thought

dave is kinda like a proto-redpiller i guess. who knows, maybe cerebus could be enjoy a glorious revival in alt-right circles soon

https://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cerebus_066_throwing_babies2.jpg

this pic^^^ was used to comment on a baby-related incident during the campaign: question is, sim would vote for the aardvark?

I thumbed through Cerebus in Hell at the shop the other day. it was sad.

It's more cogent that parts of Latter Days! Alas without being good.

maybe cerebus could be enjoy a glorious revival in alt-right circles soon

I... can totally imagine this.

i'd never thought about it before i wrote that tbh but if alt-righters can force themselves to read mencius moldbug then cerebus will seem like a cool refreshment by comparison

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced Sim was alt-right 25 years early. All boxes ticked.

He's probably drifted away from being pigeonholed as such more recently thanks to his affinity with the other two big Abrahamic religions.

read a couple blogs and he seems to be amused by trump rather than a devout follower

he's proto-alt-right to roughly the same degree as DEVO

that's going a little too easy on him shakes

ha I thought it was being hard on DEVO tbh

that too

I was browsing for dumb Dave things and instead found this - what an amazing cover.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kmwlU7KhnHc/U6Rf7F3dufI/AAAAAAAAMSA/IDTFkZdHIOo/s1600/cerebus_053.jpg

So, after the less than successful (either financially or artistically) Cerebus In Hell, Dave has announced an extension of his reprint/paste-in line with Batvark as the launch title. "He's comics' most notorious homophobe!" This cannot end well.The plan is that there'll be a CiH one-shot on the final Wednesday of every month, and follows the conclusion of the CiH 'plot' that "of course you didn't think the Gustav Dore Hell is the only one, do you?".

I am still doing the Archive Print series, which is tremendous stuff but isn't creating much actual income for Dave due to the the unpredictable nature of release - 3 years on and there have only been 6 sets of the "quarterly" edition. Latest one is delayed indefinitely because the third (fourth?) collaborator on the prints has just left, leaving nobody to do the stuff Dave doesn't like computers. There's also an idea about a more affordable version of the prints being called the Postage Stamp Collection but my head says this is dead as a concept now. SDoAR is plodding on, largely supported by Patreon but I don't know about progress because updates are locked to donors. And I'm not at that stage yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4d0PzWGm_U
dang we're all getting old huh

Yikes

To be fair dave’s hairline is better than mine now

welp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABYiUhM4wA

there's

uh

there's a lot going on there

not really a fan of any of it, honestly

he's completely insane.

i mean i guess it's an achievement of some kind that he keeps managing to surprise me at this stage stage of batshittery

his crooner look made me think of
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetstorage.metrolyrics.com%2Falbums%2F8560425jpg.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

nice to see you in the dave sim batshittery thread, senator romney

well, I've always been fascinated both by his exquisite lines and inventive layouts as well as his profound respect for traditional gender roles and deep faith in a cruel and inscrutable Father-God.

and who among us can say they haven't chuckled at his comical portrayals of the struggle against the dark forces of modern feminism.

pvmic

He's completely lost touch of what literally anyone in the world besides him finds relevant, interesting, or indeed comprehensible.

OTOH his singing voice is marginally better than expected.

fake fan. Dave didn't "always" have a belief, let alone a deep faith, in God

the senator has lost my vote, I'm afraid to say

The recommended videos when you check out that Youtube Dave Sim video are a trip or at the edge of the slide.

It is a strange and creepy time.