Sunday 16 September 2012

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #1

Welcome everyone to the formal start of Dave Sim's HARDtalk Virtual Tour where we run you around the Internet like your high school gym coach ran you around the track - Hustle! Hustle! Hustle! - from now until the High Society Audio Digital launch on October 10.

Our first question every day will be from one of our HARDtalk Grill Squad members you've come to know and love. Stephen Holland of Page 45, The Greatest Comic Book Store in the Known Universe Until Voyager Finds Another One; Eric Hoffman & Dominick Grace, editors of the forthcoming Dave Sim: Conversations from the University Press of Mississippi (Eric is also the editor and one of the writers of Cerebus The Barbarian Messiah a collection of essays on Dave Sim and Gerhard's Cerebus); and
Alexa Tomaszewski our only embedded journalist from Comic Book Resources

The second question each day will be from someone at one of our sponsor sites. So far: Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, and The Beat and Mindless Ones. If your question is chosen from those submitted by a sponsor site you automatically get a signed and personalized copy of a Cerebus back issue, with a head-sketch drawn by Dave. Any particular back issue, Dave? 

I'm down to the last few copies of No.161 with the BONE Preview. Pretty much everyone at the Kickstarter campaign wanted that one, it seemed. Overstreet must have really boosted the price on it. I'll do those as well as ones with lots of white space. More white space: bigger head sketch.
Right, then. First question goes to Eric and Dominick:

Are you planning on moving fully away from the print medium?  Are you now going to let the print-versions of the CEREBUS "phonebooks" go out of print?

I'm not really planning ANYthing. I don't know anyone in the business who is. Everyone is trying everything they can think of, retaining what SEEMS (note emphasis) to be working and rejecting what SEEMS not to be working. But everyone also seems to be completely changing their business model from the ground up every six months or so and are still either holding their own or losing ground slowly or quickly. Almost every conversation seems to come down to "WTF IS GOING ON?" but in a very calm, dispassionate way. Everyone seems very open about comparing their own best "WTF" guess with everyone else. "If this sounds plausible to you, feel free to steal it and use it yourself". In 35 years in business I've never seen that in ANY business. Overall, we seem to be, collectively, THE WALKING DEAD or a handful of "Niche Survivors" or both. It's interesting but (as we used to say back in the 80s) I'd much rather be watching it on TV than living through it.
Okay, and for the answer to the next question, we're going to run you all over to MILLAR WORLD where Mike Kitchen, the creator of Toronto's own SPY GUY, is over there right now. What's your question, Mike?

Mark Millar seems to have mastered the art of making a fortune with comics in this decade, what with the "Millar World" line of books, and the Hollywood projects based off of them and all... so my question is this:  would you ever consider doing a creator-owned project with Mark Millar AND would Mark Millar consider doing a creator-owned project with you?

Okay, hit the link to MILLAR WORLD (and scroll down to post #17) if you want the answer to that question. And we'll have more HARDtalk questions here at A Moment Of Cerebus for you tomorrow.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!

5 comments:

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Reaction to the Mark Millar question at Bleeding Cool.
Tim

Anonymous said...

The list of "grilling journalists" reads more like a softball list of fan hagiographers, to judge by the questions. Nice that both Dave Sim and you all find his self-referential reality so endlessly fascinating!

So - where's Gerhard? His take is about 180 degrees diametrically opposed and his assessment is far from sanguine.

To riff off a Kennedy-connection quote, "Ah Davey, we hardly knew ye."

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Hi 'Anonymous',

So what questions would you ask of Dave? He's asking for some tough questions for the HARDtalk Tour, so why not participate?

Tim

Anonymous said...

Is CBR in or out?

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Mark Millar responded to Dave's answer to this question at MILLAR WORLD (post #22):

Hi, I just saw Dave's post while browsing through some threads this morning and had been unaware of this until now. But that's tremendously flattering and much appreciated. I think of Dave Sim existing in a pantheon of God-like creators with Moore, Miller, etc, and too busy with his own ideas to register that mere mortals like myself even EXIST. So this was an extremely nice thing to read.

Naturally, I'm going to forward this to all my pals. Especially John Layman, who would save Sim from a burning building before rushing in to save blood relatives.

MM