Tuesday 4 October 2016

Comic Book Resources Interviews Dave Sim!

COMIC BOOK RESOURCES:
(from the interview introduction, 3 October 2016)
From 1977 until 2004, cartoonist Dave Sim chronicled the life of an anthropomorphic aardvark in the pages of his comic Cerebus. One of the most important and groundbreaking independent comics of all time, Cerebus delved into politics, religion, gender and pop culture, all seen through Sim's satiric eye, and in the 300th and final issue, exactly as Sim had long promised, Cerebus the aardvark died and passed into through a great light to something unknown.

At long last, Cerebus' afterlife fate is revealed in Sim and partner Sandeep Atwal’s new online comic strip, Cerebus in Hell? Sim and Atwal aim for the funny bone, crafting a four-panel, joke-a-day strip that tosses sharp burns at the modern world, including many japes at the comics industry in particular. Done fumetti-style, the comics feature images of Cerebus Photoshopped into classical Gustave DorĂ© illustrations inspired by Dante's Inferno.

The online strips have been well received, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg, as the duo’s best strips have apparently been set aside for a print incarnation. Cerebus in Hell? #0 ships to comic shops in September from Aardvark-Vanaheim, and if sales warrant, Sim plans to release four more issues of Cerebus in Hell? in 2017 in commemoration of Cerebus #1’s 40th anniversary.

CBR News spoke with Sim about returning to Cerebus (although Sim has never really been away), why Sim no longer draws, the importance of maintaining a creative work, and the pinnacle of the Alex Raymond school of cartooning. Read the full interview here... 

(Thanks to Travis Pelkie for the heads-up on this!)

7 comments:

Bill Ritter said...

I quite enjoyed the interview...although it seemed to end a bit abrupt.

Maybe it was my wanting more.

But, I considered this a positive all around. Thanks for doing it, Dave! (and CBR for the publication).

Hopefully it does translate into more sales of all things Cerebus...

Travis Pelkie said...

Well, if it didn't get bumped off the front page quick as can be....

Glad I caught it when I did, Tim!

Sounds like it was done several weeks back, during the Jaka origins stuff Dave was posting here.

Travis Pelkie said...

BTW, the worst part, if I read it right (I feel like I skimmed in parts), and one I don't know if Dave's made clear here before, was that Dave says he's got the tremor in both hands now. I hope that Dave will at least get a diagnosis from a doctor, even if he chooses not to have anything done about it.

Jeff Seiler said...

I first noticed the tremor in Dave's hand back in July of 2011, when I drove him from Kitchener to Toronto. I was too polite to say anything, but I remember thinking, "how can he draw all those fine lines for SDOAR with his hand shaking like that?" In retrospect, I wonder whether I should have asked him that. It did make me sad, though.

Travis Pelkie said...

You sure that wasn't just your driving, Jeff? ;)

"You Canadians drive on the left side of the road up here, don't you?"

"NOOOOOOO!!!!"

heh.

Unknown said...

Travis - No, I've got an actual tremor in my left hand when it's rotated roughly 120 degrees out of its "rest" position. I'd attribute that more to the fact that I use my left hand for pretty much everything these days.

The right hand is stabilized. I've always got the brace on it and I don't use it when I don't need to (which is most of the time -- this is the only time I type with it, switching to left-handed exclusively when the right wrist tightens up). The clinic in Chicago offered a few possibilities of what it could be in their written report and I have their MRI scan. I WAS going to go to Texas and have someone else look at it, but "T", my art patron, wanted me to send him the Chicago results to show to the specialist he knows.

Well, no.

If I see the specialist in Texas and compare what HE says with what the Chicago clinic says. And then get a third opinion and compare Texas and Chicago with that one and there's any point of intersection, between the three then -- THEORETICALLY -- there's some basis for saying, "Okay, that's possibly it." If the three opinions are completely different, I'm inclined to think they're just guessing.

That's the last I heard from "T". From which I infer: "No Chicago results, no specialist".

So that's where that rests.

But, jumping on from there...

Unknown said...

Travis II - I definitely have pain between the two joints on the middle finger of my left hand. Arthritis, I infer. Which raised the question: well, let's say that I get a diagnosis on either hand. What am I going to do about it?

Drugs? No. Definitely not. Surgery? No. Definitely not. Steroid injections? No. Definitely not.

That pretty much exhausts the possibilities.

I was a writer-artist and now I'm a writer.

Fine by me.