Uncertainty, Disasters & Royal Screw-Ups

Cerebus #3 (April/May 1978)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Swords Of Cerebus Vol 1, 1981)

When people ask if I ever thought Cerebus would ever be this big, it is a far more difficult question to answer than it appears on the surface. Yes and no. Yes, I had a feeling that there was a need for a new kind of humour in comic books. A feeling that everyone was just a bit weary of the Will Elder style of comic book humour adorned with signs, visual puns and heavy-handed parody. There was nothing wrong with this kind of work, but comic fans had had nothing else for almost thirty years. Mad Magazine and Little Annie Fanny are still limping along on the remnants of it. We couldn't fail.

On the other hand, there are the days that Deni and I spent verging on hysteria sinking into depression and contemplating suicide. I can remember sitting at Toronto Conventions with stacks of issue number one watching people racing past without a sideways glance or (gnngsh) dropping their packages on top of those stacks of number ones while they looked through some dealer's stock of Marvel Two-In-One.

The point is: don't kid yourself. It is an easy matter to say "with issue 6 the circulation went up and then doubled with issue 16." To live through the uncertainty and the disasters, the royal screw-ups and the shaftings... not to mention the occasional good thing (sometimes they were very occasional)... is a day-to-day proposition.