A MOMENT OF CEREBUS

The Sound Of A 1956 Corvette

2012-03-03T00:30:00.002Z

Glamourpuss #23 (January 2012)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV, Season 3 Episode 11, 13 January 2012)

I even went a little crazy on the speciality lettering sound effects [in Glamourpuss #23], reasoning that there's a whole different quality of sound in a confined space like a garage... in the same way that a garage is a little darker (actually a lot darker), which meant layers and layers and layers of cross hatching... The sound of a 1956 Corvette starting up inside of a garage - what would that look like? "What would that look like?" Er, pretty complicated. Yeah, evidently. By the time he was throwing it in to reverse and backing the car out of the garage, I couldn't wait to get outside where there were no sound effects.

Glamourpuss #23 is available now from your local comic shop.
Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Cerebus TV Season 3

2012-03-03T00:29:00.001Z

Cerebus TV: Season 3 - New Episodes Every Friday

The Eye Of The Pyramid

2012-03-02T00:30:00.002Z

What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One (Swords Of Cerebus Vol 3, 1981)
Art by Dave Sim & Gene Day

JEFF TUNDIS:
(from the introduction to the 4-page Conspiracy comic, Cerebus The Newsletter #14, 2009)

The Eye Of The Pyramid is a plot that was never quite resolved. Based on The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, it wove a web through the early issues of Cerebus. A war of conspiracies drawing in Lord Julius' Social Secretary (from issues 15 & 16), Adam Weisshaupt (an actual historical figure and founder of the Bavarian Illuminatti fictionalised in the book series), the Cirinists, the Illusionists (there's even one named Shea in the city of Togith) the mysterious Mr Strangis, Astoria, Michelle and (based on the password to his safe house in What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One) Gerrik.

While Dave Sim abandoned the plot thread (and several others) in favour of the more complex political and religious issues including the evolving Cirinist-Kevillist conflict, I suspect that Gerrik was actually the leader of The Eye. Both embittered by his upbringing and empowered by his familial ties, he's the perfect mole to bring about the fall of not only his mother's expanding empire but Palnu and Iest as well. By bringing in Astoria (whose ambition knows no bounds), however, he probably doomed himself... because in Women, it appears that she is the leader of an exclusively female Eye Of The Pyramid and Gerrik is never heard from again.

Order your copy of Cerebus The Newsletter #14 and read Jeff Tundis' Conspiracy, featuring Astoria and Sir Gerrik.

Cerebus TV Season 3

2012-03-02T00:29:00.001Z

Cerebus TV: Season 3 - New Episodes Every Friday

The S-indie-cate

2012-03-01T00:30:00.000Z

The Sindiecate is a website where each week a group of artists create an image related to a new theme. Between 6-11 February 2012 the choosen theme was Cerebus.

DAVID LAFUENTE:

I chose this week’s topic, Cerebus. I think it’s a brilliant piece of storytelling. And impossible in today’s marketplace. A slow-paced story with strong, complex characters and delicate artwork. I recommend Jaka's Story or Women for example. Granted you would feel that you are jumping in the middle of a longer story yet within a few pages you’ll be sucked in. As a foot note I should mention Dave Sim. Much has been said about his sociopolitical views. Don’t let labels spoil a good reading. Creator and creation are different things.

JORGE F MUNOZ:

Cerebus week, not much to say, just a few things:

Cerebus is one of the greatest accomplishments in world comic history. 27 years commited to one project. (when was the last time you commited to something for ONE YEAR?)
Dave N' Ger achieved art symbiosis perfection. I mention Gerhard because he's so great, often forgotten when discussing Cerebus, but without Gerhard there's no Cerebus.
Dave Sim is The Greatest Letterer In Comics History, I think that's a no contest, if you have doubts, flip through Guys and tell me otherwise.
Cerebus is a great read, like nothing you have read before, and very very entertaining, even the second half of the series where most people think Dave went crazy. I read Latter Days and I see a couple of creators at the top of their game.

COLLEEN COOVER:

I was in high school when I started reading Cerebus, in the middle of the High Society story arc. It was witty and cynical and hilarious. I didn’t understand half of the humor (I was fourteen years old!) but the storytelling was brilliant, and I always admired the texture effects Sim and Gerhard accomplished with crosshatching. Most of my sketches are digital, but I busted out a nib pen for this one! I only wish I had the kind of fluid line Sim and Gerhard achieved.

RYAN OTTLEY:

Cerebus! Thought I’d play around with Graphite for this one.

JAMES HARREN:

No, I’m not being cheeky by leaving the background blank to tribute an artist who has someone else draw his backgrounds for him. I’ve got an INSANE amount of work to do this week and this weekend so this, unfortunately, is as far as I got. The other bit of bad news is that I didn’t even get a chance to read Cerebus yet! So you folks will just have to go by the recommendation of the fine Sindiecate members below. I’ll be catching up on my Cerebus reading next week and, maybe, I’ll be able to get the rest of this piece sorted out.

Cerebus TV Season 3

2012-03-01T00:29:00.001Z

Cerebus TV: Season 3 - New Episodes Every Friday

Remembering Frank Frazetta

2012-02-29T00:30:00.003Z

Varkzetta Sketches (2010)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(promoting the Cerebus TV special on Frank Frazetta, June 2010)

There's never been before and never will be again a Frank Frazetta in the world of comics. If Michaelangelo had been fired by Al Capp, as Frank was, there might have been thought balloons on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel! ...All of us in "The Comic Book Nation" owe so much to Frank's genius...

Commission: Bonfire Of The Super-Heroes
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:

(discussing the commission Bonfire Of The Super-Heroes at Cerebus Art)

Intended to be the centrepiece of a triptych, this is Bonfire Of The Super-Heroes. The specific request was for Cerebus a la Frank Frazetta's Conan The Destroyer cover art, only in this case with Jaka holding onto one leg and Red Sophia holding onto the other. This is a good example of getting your money's worth. Once I had the Cerebus, Jaka and Red Sophia figures done, that left the question of what the pile of dead adversaries was going to be and I tried just roughing in a few corpses (it's a pretty vague aspect of Frazetta's original painting. There's an arm sticking up and a rib cage, but that's about it). Ger and I did one of these commissions years ago, that consisted of Cerebus standing atop a pile of dead Smurfs so, really hating to repeat myself… that was when I got the idea of doing Marvel and DC characters. A natural gag. Of course, if that had been part of the request, I would have said we needed to get more money for it, but since it was my idea, Patron A is basically getting a bunch of extra characters for free. It's not a guarantee that that's going to happen but I'd have to say that it happens a lot more often than it doesn't.

Cerebus TV Season 3

2012-02-29T00:29:00.000Z

Cerebus TV: Season 3 - New Episodes Every Friday

Jamming With Chester Brown

2012-02-28T00:30:00.001Z

From a 19-page jam comic in Cerebus World Tour Book 1995
Art by Dave Sim & Chester Brown

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus World Tour Book 1995)

Chester Brown and Bob Burden were both guests at one of those We're Going To Do The Definitive Toronto Con Toronto cons that happen, it seems, just about every other weekend. I went down to get them and bring them back to Kitchener (Toronto people just HATE it when I do that) to work on a jam story. Bob broke a tooth and went home early, so it was just me and Chet. I ruled up a page, put border tapes on and asked him to draw the first panel. Then I sat down and did the second panel. Then he did the third panel. We kept the story going by mail (until, unfortunately, the 1992 US Tour planning knocked it off my list of priorities). We'll get it going again. Chet suggests that we get some other guys in on it, which sounds like a good idea. Don't know WHOM we'd get, but it sounds like a good idea. I feel safe in saying that, whatever happens, the story will never make any sense. That's half the fun right there.

I told Chet I'd send him a cheque when I asked him about printing the story here [in Cerebus World Tour Book 1995]. He said the thought hadn't occurred to him. So I told him I won't be sending him a cheque and not to think about it anymore.

Cerebus For Dictator

2012-02-27T00:30:00.000Z

T-Shirt Advert: Cerebus For Dictator (Cerebus #23, December 1980)
Art by Dave Sim

The Cerebus For Dictator T-shirt is currently available from Graphitti Designs.

Too Much Coffee Man

2012-02-26T00:30:00.008Z

Too Much Coffee Man #22 (2005)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV Season 3 Episode 15, 11 February 2012)

Well, I can't think of anything more appropriate for episode 99 of the television show that is largely caffine powered. I have one large coffee every 10 days on Cerebus TV Day and it gets me through the sometimes 18 to 20 hour stretch. What could be more appropriate than Too Much Coffee Man and Shannon Wheeler’s new omnibus Too Much Coffee Man collection from Dark Horse Books... I'll always appreciate Shannon giving me honest paying work in the aftermath of Cerebus coming to an end. I'm pretty sure it wasn't what the Portland, Oregon resident was thinking of for the cover of his War issue – Too Much Coffee Man as a member of US Forces.

Was Too Much Coffee Man's appearance in Guys (pages 234-235) - an unauthorised appearance! - my audition for Shannon picking me to do a Too Much Coffee Man cover? I don't know. See, I was doing all these indie-comics characters - my versions of them - in Guys and I thought "How the heck do you work a guy with a giant coffee cup on his head into Guys?" I decided to make him a salesman for Too Much Coffee Liqueur – Pure Coffee & Pure Alcohol! Too Much For Me Please! - see what I thought was "A guy named Too Much Coffee Man, you figure he's got to be talking a little faster than he does in Shannon's strips." So it's just him and Cerebus sitting up way late, Too Much Coffee Man drumming his fingers, shaking his foot up and down real quick.

Cerebus #211 (October 1996)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

Squinteye The Sailor

2012-02-25T00:30:00.006Z

Cerebus Jam #1 (April 1985)
Art by Terry Austin, Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Squinteye in Cerebus Jam #1)

Terry Austin is known for drawing Popeye into the backgrounds of comic book pages. Fortunately they are usually pages he is working on so no one gets upset. Terry got the pages with border tape, lettering, finished Cerebus figures and roughed in Popeye and Bluto figures. All of Squinteye's costume detail, wooden leg and dead jeep were Terry's innovations pencil and ink. Quite simply, Terry is the best, cleanest and most versatile inker in the business. Period. Gerhard did everything else, but his love of the sea slowed him down to about a half page a day pace. He's such a Spunky.

TERRY AUSTIN:
(from a letter to Dave Sim published in Cerebus #153, December 1991)

Dear Dave,

This is a belated thank you for your return of the artwork from Cerebus Jam #1 and to finally pass along this xerox from my sketchbook of that period. I've have had it sitting around the studio for a month or more, but it took the arrival of your recent Cerebus reprint issue with your own Squinteye sketchbook page that provided the push for me to finally bundle it up and get it out of here and into your hands.

It is the page where I sat down to hammer out what the finished version of Squinteye would be after receiving your pages with 'Squinkeye' sketched in. Finding extra room on the page after finishing up, my mind turned to other cast members ageing and what effect that might have. I decided Olive would rebel against growing older by dressing younger, hair dye and (carrying it to the extreme, of course) joining a punk band. Bluto's incarnation came after dinner at a local Mexican restaurant with Bret and Pat Blevins. We were seated near a too-loud, 3-piece suited, chain smoking, martini-swilling commuter-type who made dining a chore for the rest of us by his determination to have more BIG FUN than anyone else in the room and make sure that we all knew it too! At some point I realised he was Bluto, shaven, cleaned up a bit, but still a bully... Swee'pea, I realised would want to rebel against his adopted daddy when he hit his teen-aged years, eschewing violence for a more sedate philosophy.

Anyway, I was amused when I ran across this page recently and I thought I'd pass it along to you be way of saying thanks. Feel free to print it somewhere if you'd like (and your lawyer deems it prudent...)

Your current work continues to interest and oft-times astonish. You and Ger do a consistently fine job.

Thanks again for all the comics!

Squinteye preparatory sketches (circa 1985)
Art by Terry Austin

Popeye Vols 1-6 by E.C. Segar are available to buy from Fantagraphics Books.

New Releases: February & March 2012

2012-02-24T00:30:00.009Z

Glamourpuss #24
by Dave Sim
Aardvark-Vanaheim
$3.00

Things were getting pretty heated last issue with charges of homophobia, racism, and Islamophobia being thrown around in the Zootanapuss and Bunny vs. High Fashion Models smackdown leading to this 'Sudden Death' issue. Who 'buys the farm' as glamourpuss comes to the end of its fourth year? glamourpuss? Zootanapuss? Bunny? Plan Nine from Mogadishu? Junkie Haute Couture? Find out on page 10! Also, in the 'History of Photorealism' section, Stan Drake and Alex Raymond tool around Westport, Connecticut and environs in Drake's ill-fated 1956 Corvette.

On sale: 28 March 2012
Available from your local comics shop

Cerebus Archive #18
by Dave Sim
Aardvark-Vanaheim
$4.00

Dave Sim takes a closer look at his work on The Beavers in Quack #4, using preliminary sketches and correspondence with Quack editor and publisher, Mike Friedrich. How did Sgt. Duck of the Mounties and Duck Trek begin to lead him, even subconsciously, in the direction of Cerebus (then less than a year away)? Also, in the "TMI" section, Sim finds himself necking with his then 18-year-old future sister-in-law when Deni is away on vacation with her parents. A good example of how his (up 'til then) simple life was getting way more complicated.

On sale: 29 February 2012
Available to pre-order now from ComiXpress

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
The Ultimate Collection Vol 2
by Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman, Dave Sim & Others
IDW Publishing
$49.99

The classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action continues in the second volume of IDW's Ultimate Collections. In this outing, uncover issues #8-11, along with the Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and Donatello "micro-series" one-shots, presented in an oversized hardcover. This volume reprints TMNT #8, originally first published in 1986, with Cerebus character art and dialogue by Dave Sim.

On sale: 27 March 2012
Available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Like-A-Looks

2012-02-23T00:30:00.002Z

Like-A-Looks (Cerebus #138, September 1990)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Cerebus #137-138 in Cerebus #0, June 1993)

Stories have circulated since World War II that Adolf Hitler had a number of look-a-like imitators that the Nazis used for public appearances when it seemed that there was too great a chance of danger to send the real Adolf. Much of the Illuminati mythology concerns itself with the fact that General George Washington was replaced by Adam Weisshaupt some time before he was made the first President of the United States. There have even been reports that Winston Churchill and FDR did the same thing.

Altogether unlikely, but it does make a great theory. Since I have far too much time on my hands, I started thinking that that would make a very neat explanation of why the Grandlord of Palnu would have a painted on eyebrows and a moustache. As can be seen from the 'mirror scene' in Duck Soup, anyone wearing the right clothes and having painted on eyebrows and a moustache is going to look like Groucho. What if that was Lord Julius' plan, so that he could always have a look-a-like on hand if he wanted to go away on vacation. I had even toyed with the idea of writing a story at some point in which Lord Julius is interviewing candidates for like-a-look and if they can keep up with him verbally so that by the end of the interview he can't figure out whether he or they is/are the real Lord Julius they're hired... The upshot of the whole enterprise was to show people that the Lord Julius in a dress [who appeared in Jaka's Story] was not the real Lord Julius. The first three letters I got on Like-a-Looks all said, "Loved the story; but why was Lord Julius wearing a dress at the beginning?"

You can't win.

Oscar Meets Lord Julius

2012-02-22T00:30:00.001Z

Cerebus #125 (August 1989)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Like-A-Looks in Cerebus World Tour Book 1995)

One of the few moments of comedy relief in Jaka's Story occurs when Oscar (based on Oscar Wilde) has a run-in with Lord Julius who, inexplicably, is wearing a dress. I quite liked that. The idea of Lord Julius in a dress attempting to flee Iest in the face of the Cirinist (matriarchal fascists) invasion and take-over. In the few pages that I set aside for it, I got to have a little sport with Oscar Wilde's well-known weakness for the aristocracy (the very soul and essence of composure in the rest of the story-line, he degenerates into a fumbling, bumbling obsequious sycophant in the face of a chance meeting with the legendary Grandlord of Palnu. Naturally, Lord Julius makes short work of him. I wrote the dialogue, I know it off by heart and it still makes me chuckle when I think of it. Nice feeling.) as well as doing a variety of facial expressions in the space of a handful of panels that the restrained nature of the rest of the story-line would not permit.

Of course then the mail started coming in. "Was that the real Lord Julius?" "What's he doing in Iest?" "How did he get there after the invasion?"

The Synchronicity Triptych

2012-02-21T00:30:00.003Z

The Synchronicity Triptych: Original art for Cerebus covers #74-76 (May-July 1985)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard
Sold at auction for $10,100

DAVE SIM:
(from The Synchronicity Triptych Essay, 2003)

The covers of issues 74, 75 and 76 - the Synchronicity covers - was the first time that I realized the extent to which Gerhard's backgrounds really "ground" the book, giving it a solidity and a "look" all its own and keeping my (infrequent at these extremes, anyway) experimentation less jarring, less "over the top" looking. The three covers get progressively more stylized and experimental as they go along. The picture of Jaka in the background of the yellow cover is flat, a series of geometric shapes (the bottom of her skirt is virtually horizontal). I thought that was as far out to the "design" edge from the "illustrative" school as I could go without falling off. Once Gerhard had put in the background, his solid room, done with accurate perspective (except for the arm of the sofa, where he’s trying to get the perspective to compensate for the horizontal bottom of Jaka’s skirt: I drive him nuts with things like that) and put the flat yellow over top, highlighting the darker areas with a sepia tone and adding white highlights with paint, it just looks like a traditional illustrative Cerebus cover. Since I was trying to be very "cutting edge," I bore that in mind when it came time to do the next cover. The picture of President Weisshaupt on the cover of issue 76 is, consequently, the most "un" illustrative picture I've ever done in or on Cerebus, where I really allowed myself to go completely over the edge, not giving a moment’s thought to anatomy, but instead going for a completely dessicated, virtually inhuman picture which was all emotional content. All feel and no think. "Here" I was (in effect) saying to Ger: "Try making this one look normal." At which point even Gerhard got into the "out on the edge, Bill Sienkiewicz" spirit of the thing, not even trying to create the illusion of curvature on the spines of the books on the bookshelf, just drawing and colouring them as a stack of rectangles. Although the door is done with his usual exacting precision. As soon as the cover to issue 76 was separated, I had the three covers matted and framed together as a triptych, which is how I had conceived of them in the first place, even using Bill's distinctive "initials signature" (modifying the "B" into a "D").

The Heart Of Juliet Jones

2012-02-20T00:30:00.000Z

The Complete Heart Of Juliet Jones
by Stan Drake & Elliot Caplin
Classic Comics Press

DAVE SIM:
(from Glamourpuss #9, September 2009)

It was certainly a red letter day for me when the first volume of Classic Comics Press' The Heart Of Juliet Jones reprinting arrived. The only previous effort, from Arcadia Press in the late 1980s, petered out after three volumes or so. The reproduction runs hot and cold but even second generation Stan Drake is better than first generation most-anybody-else. I strongly urge anyone even remotely interested to get their local store to order a copy or go to Classic Comics Press and get it there. Apart from IDW's proposed Rip Kirby reprinting, this is the 'complete' series that that I'm looking forward to the most. Many thanks to Charles Pelto, publisher and editor, for this long-awaited dream come true.

Glamourpuss #9 (September 2009)
Art by Dave Sim (after Stan Drake)

Cerebus The Newsletter

2012-02-19T00:30:00.006Z

A Moment of Cerebus is most definitely "standing on the shoulders" of several Cerebus enthusiasts and scholars. Most notable amongst them is Cerebus Fan Girl, Margaret Liss. Between maintaining her indispensable Cerebus Fan Girl web-site, blog, Cerebus-Wiki, and the co-moderating of the Cerebus Yahoo Group, Margaret also finds the time to edit and publish Cerebus The Newsletter. Our thanks to Margaret for kindly agreeing (and finding the time!) to answer a few questions about Cerebus The Newsletter, its history and her future plans for it.

A Moment Of Cerebus:

So Margaret, if somebody sends you $12 (plus p&p) for Cerebus The Newsletter #14-21, what can they expect to read, and looking back, what have been the highlights for you as editor/publisher?

Margaret Liss:

They can always expect a newsletter which is 24 pages filled with art, articles and essays about Cerebus created by Cerebus readers for other Cerebus readers. Some of those are comics which deal with the stories that Dave didn't tell - about Sir Gerrick's linage in Conspiracy by Jeff Tundis, Jaka's death in Laid to Rest by Paul Sloboda, an elderly Cerebus dreaming about his old life in Cerebus Reflection by Brian John Mitchell and Jason Young, et al. The essays range from Cerebus fans talking about how they came to read Cerebus and why they like the series so intensely to write an essay on it - these always fascinate me as every Cerebus reader comes to Cerebus with a different set of experiences and knowledge so every essay is unique and usually presents me with a fresh perspective on Cerebus - to articles on different themes or issues in the series itself to the different Cerebus collectibles.

The highlight for me is receiving all these materials in and being able to see them before publication.

You weren't the first editor of Cerebus The Newsletter. Can you tell us a little about its history and how you became involved with it?

The first incarnation of Cerebus the Newsletter happened when Fred Patten answered the call published in Aardvark Comment in Cerebus #14: Aardvark-Vanaheim couldn't do it, so a Cerebus reader who had the time could start it themselves. Fred published the newsletter for just over a year with issues #1 (early 1981) to #5 (early 1982). Steve Hendricks was set to be the next editor/publisher and had issue #6 about ready to go when Deni Loubert sent Steve a letter telling him that she was concerned about the financial strain the newsletter would entail on him. So Aardvark-Vanaheim published issues #6 through 13, when Dave ended it in October 1985.

In 2008 there was discussion on the Cerebus Yahoo! Group about having in depth discussions of different Cerebus items which would then be edited together for Following Cerebus. As the last issue of Following Cerebus had been published in November 2007 and at the time there was no confirmation from Craig Miller that our efforts would be published in an issue (he later stated that he would be inclined to publish it) - when I was asked what I thought of it in October 2008, I stated "I say we just do our own fanzine." In email discussions off the list later in 2008 with Jeff Tundis and Lenny Cooper, the other two moderators of the Cerebus Yahoo! Group, we discussed the possibility of getting some items together for such a fanzine to bring with us to the group's annual gathering at the SPACE (Small Press and Alternative Comics) convention in Columbus, Ohio in early 2009. Jeff suggested using the Cerebus the Newsletter name from the Friends of Cerebus fan club days. I contacted Fred Patten and Dave Sim and asked permission from both to use the name for our fanzine. Jeff Tundis created a bunch of items, from a comic to the cover to an article on "Collecting Cerebus". I also did some work for it, put it together and then published Cerebus the Newsletter #14 in April 2009, just in time for the SPACE convention.

You have a team of contributors working on Cerebus The Newsletter. Can you tell us a little about them and how you all got together on the project?

I asked for contributions via the Cerebus Yahoo! Group, on the Cerebus Facebook group and on my blog. Some of them have done mini-press / independent comics work and some are just fellow Cerebus readers - they all have one thing in common: they have been inspired by the series to create a piece of art or write an essay about it. I've only solicited a couple people for artwork - commissions of Cerebus that I've requested for my personal collection and decided to share with other Cerebus readers via the newsletter.

Anyone can contribute artwork and essays to me for inclusion in the newsletter. I can only offer my thanks and five comp copies to them in return as the newsletter is sold almost at cost.

Nothing can replace the thrill of receiving a package of ‘hardcopy’ magazines in the post. However, in this age of internet and instant blogs, what motivates you to invest your time and energy into publishing/editing a physical magazine?

While there are other online venues for myself and other Cerebus readers to publish their work, nothing beats holding your creation in your hands. And while the internet would appear to have no likelihood of disappearing anytime soon, websites do vanish and the "Wayback Machine" can't keep everything in the same original format. Also no special device is required for reading a hardcopy other then eyes and perhaps corrective lenses of some sort.

What plans do you have for Cerebus The Newsletter in 2012 and / or for you personally?

Hopefully more issues. At one point I was thinking of reprinting the first thirteen issues in a small volume via a POD publisher - as finding the issues are difficult and costly. As with the newsletters, I wouldn't do it for profit, but to widen the availability of the issues to those that couldn't get them the first time around and find them hard and expensive to collect now. Perhaps if I get some feedback on a reprint volume, I'll continue to pursue it.

How did you first discover Cerebus and at what point did you go beyond just being a casual reader to a more serious supporter, ultimately leading to your Cerebus-related web-site, blog and wiki?

I discovered Cerebus with issue #114, the cover of which drew me in and the story and art hooked me. For personal reasons I gave up Cerebus for a time in the Mothers & Daughters storyline, only to come back during Guys. At that time I had given up on the mainstream comics I had read since a kid, and in Cerebus I saw something more mature and meaningful then the X-Men and JLA comics I had read. A reread of the early issues confirmed that even while I had read some of those issue already, there was another level on which Cerebus could be read.

I was looking online for a checklist of Cerebus related items, and couldn't find one. All the Cerebus websites I found were either not updated in a while or didn't have the information I was looking for. So I created a Cerebus checklist from other sources and what I had in my collection and what I could find on eBay and in comic stores. I added a links page to connect all the Cerebus websites I could find and organize them so one could find what they were looking for quickly. The site just grew from there either due to me not finding something on the internet and adding it to the site or another Cerebus reader didn't have the time to keep up with their Cerebus website allowing me to bring it into the CFG site - for example, the owner of the original Dave Sim Notes From the President Memorial Archive, Barry Deutsch, allowed me to take over the DSNFPMA when that area of his site went offline. I kept adding to it and Dave and Ger saw fit to allow me to reprint different texts from the series on the website.

Do you know if Dave Sim has seen or read The Newsletter? Have you received any feedback from him, and how supportive is he of all your on-line efforts?

Dave is very supportive and I can't thank him enough for all that he has given to me - both knowledge wise and materials wise. Gerhard and Dave both have given permission for me to reprint the stories you see on the site and the likes of the Notes From The President among other essays by Dave. I have sent copies of every issue of the Newsletter to Dave and the feedback is positive. He also has mentioned the newsletter and myself on CerebusTV several times - nothing makes me get a bit fangirlish than to see this:

And finally, what comics are you reading at the moment and would recommend to a Cerebus fan?

I'm picking up Dave's Glamourpuss and Cerebus Archive. Cerebus Archive is a detailed look at the creation of Cerebus - not much actual Cerebus in it during the first year, but Dave is showing us what led up his self publishing Cerebus. He just got to his meeting with Deni Loubert and the creation of the logo for the ill-fated fanzine, Cerebus the Fanzine.

I'm currently reading Terry Moore's Rachel Rising and really enjoyed his recent series Echo as well. Which now that I think about it, Glamourpuss and Batwoman are the only ongoing series that I make a point of picking up when I remember to swing by a comic store. Most of the time I'm picking up trade paperbacks online: Atomic Robo by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, Chiaroscuro by Troy Little and Life With Mr. Dangerous by Paul Hornschemeier are a few that jump to mind.

You can read more about the history behind Cerebus The Newsletter at Friends Of Cerebus and be sure to order your copies of Cerebus The Newsletter #14-21 from Margaret.

The Wrong Thing

2012-02-18T00:30:00.012Z

The Beavers (Quack #4, Star*Reach Productions, 1977)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from page 58, The Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing, 2010)

This is a tough point to understand. It is possible to work for two years on something (I did a weekly strip for two years before I did Cerebus) and have it be the wrong thing. If it's the wrong thing, nothing will happen, no matter if you get a Xeric grant and a circulation of 20,000 copies. If there's something in the back of your head that keeps gnawing at you while you're developing one story, start putting the one that's gnawing at you down on paper. I was convinced that I was either a newspaper-strip artist, a political cartoonist, or a short story comic-book writer/artist through most of the 1970s. Then I decided I was an inker. Early on I decided I was a Playboy cartoonist because they paid several thousand dollars for one cartoon and that sounded good to me. Cover all of my expenses with one cartoon and then do whatever else I wanted with the rest of the month.

The key was that I was trying all of the options that were out there. I pursued each of them with great determination. I never quit on anything. But nothing "happened". At any point, I could have been working on a super-hero series I created for a publisher (Revolt 3000) or drawing and lettering a story from someone else’s script (Phantacea) or doing political cartoons for the local paper. In each of those cases, it went for a little while and then it died, usually in a period of a few months. Each thing told me, "Well, I guess that wasn't it." The difference with writing and drawing and self-publishing Cerebus was overwhelming. Things got in the way, but I could go over, around, or through them. That’s what told me that Cerebus was "it".

You can find out more about Dave Sim's pre-Cerebus career in the bi-monthly magazine, Cerebus Archive - back issues are always available from ComiXpress.

New Gerhard Website!

2012-02-17T00:30:00.006Z

Visit the Gerhard's brand new website at GerhardArt.com.

Out Now: Glamourpuss #23

2012-02-16T00:30:00.004Z

Glamourpuss #23 (January 2012)
Art by Dave Sim

THE SOLICITATION BLURB:

It's the knock-down, drag-out battle to the death you've been waiting for! High Fashion models versus Zootanapuss & Bunny, The One Rabbit Wrecking Crew! Only one faction will survive and the other will be exiled forever from the pages of glamourous! Subtitled 'Crisis on Infinite Aardvark-Vanaheims,' you won't want to miss a minute of the action in this multi-part thriller which will change the shape of the Aardvark-Vanaheim Universe for all time (or at least until sales are, once again, in the toilet) - it's like the classic two-part Hulk versus Thing only better because all the action takes place in smartly tailored clothing and features a really cute bunny! The history of Photorealism in Comics section continues with the events of September 6, 1956.

Glamourpuss #23 is available to buy from your local comic shop.
Back-issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

A Difficult Interview

2012-02-15T00:30:00.002Z

Illustration in The Comics Journal 130 (July 1989)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV Season 3 Episode 13, 28 January 2012)

...I gotta tell you, most of the time when you hear that someone is a difficult interview it just means that they’re not playing badminton with you. You know, "You lob it over the net and I’ll lob it back at you." It’s "I’m gonna answer your question exactly the way it occurs to me to answer it right away." I’ve done that on occasion and its usually just, "Hey, this is gonna go like a 'for real' conversation. I’m not going to play babminton with you."

...It may be a bad analogy, but I remember Dan Vado, years before Slave Labor Graphics, telling me was going through a time period in his life where he couldn’t get laid walking through a red light district with a $100 bill taped to his forehead. In an analogous sense, every comic book artist goes through periods – sometimes months, sometimes years – where its like "You say that I’m in demand... that’s great, but believe me my phone ain’t ringing off the hook and I ain’t getting a lot of emails" ...something comes along eventually, it always does if you just keep working, but no, not unusual in the least. But if somebody asks you "What is it like to be in demand?" when you’re going through a stretch where that’s not the case, that's exactly the reaction you get out of me... "It’s news to me!"

...ask me about Cerebus and High Society, that’s fine... but [sarcastically] don’t ask me about Glamourpuss and ask me to name my top 10 favourite photo-realists in the comics field and then ask me about High Society. It’s like "Oh man, we’re not going back to that are we?" It doesn’t matter who you are as an artist, what you want to talk about is the latest thing, not something you did 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, or – for some of us getting really long in the tooth – like 30 years ago. It doesn’t mean we’re a difficult interview, it means we don’t like getting conversational whiplash. "WHOAH!" You see what I’m saying?

...and definitely, definitely, you don’t want to say, "Are you doing anything else?" If I tell you, "I'm doing Glamourpuss, Cerebus Archive and Cerebus TV. It's eating my life. I work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week," please don’t make it sound as if that’s not enough! As if I should be saying "Oh, on the side I’m about half way through adapting War and Peace, but I’m doing it with turtles, its kind of a Kevin Eastman-Pete Laird kinda treatment!"

Love Struck In The Rain

2012-02-14T00:30:00.005Z

Images Of Omaha #2 (Kitchen Sink Press, 1992)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

Between 1984 and 1995 artist Reed Waller and writer Kate Worley produced 24 issues of the erotic anthropomorphic comic Omaha The Cat Dancer. In 1991, Reed was diagnosed with colon cancer. His fellow comics pros - including some of the best-known comics artists and writers in the world - stepped up and contributed art and stories to the two-part benefit comic Images of Omaha. The outpouring of affection and respect by professionals and fans alike made Images of Omaha a success, defraying Reed’s considerable medical expenses. When those expensive procedures saved his life, it was a double victory for all. Omaha ceased publication in 1995 as the creators went their separate ways. Ostensibly retired from comics, Reed never completely left the world of Omaha behind, however; fan demand kept him busy turning out sketches and finished drawings of his beloved characters ever since the series ended. In 2003, Reed and Kate agreed to complete the story of Omaha. Kate's death in 2004 was a blow on both professional and personal levels. But - now collaborating with her husband James Vance, who is editing and fleshing out Kate's scripts for the final chapters - Reed returned to his critically acclaimed and sorely missed masterpiece, Omaha The Cat Dancer. Between 2005 and 2008, NBM Publishing published seven volumes of the The Complete Omaha The Cat Dancer. For all the latest Omaha news visit the official Omaha The Cat Dancer web-site.

Free Speeches

2012-02-13T00:30:00.000Z

Illustration from Free Speeches, Oni Press (1998)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Free Speeches, Oni Press, 1998)

If we are to be a free people and if we are to set ourselves apart from those who practice and advocate suppression, censorship, the imposition of one person or group's sensibilities upon another, then we must adhere to the absolutism of our position. If the forces which are interested in suppressing or labeling or sequestering Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell are to be kept at bay, we must resist efforts along the same lines with a work like A Taste Of Cherry in Verotika #4... To give censors an inch on Verotika is to invite them to take a mile - and within the confines of that mile might well exist From Hell, Sandman, Stray Bullets, Love & Rockets - perhaps even Spiegelman's Maus or Eisner's Dropsie Avenue.

Dear Mr Mauldin

2012-02-12T00:30:00.002Z

Willie & Joe (Cerebus #295, October 2003)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from a letter to Bill Mauldin in The Last Annotations, Cerebus Vol 16: The Last Day, 2004)

Dear Mr Mauldin,

A recent issue of the Comics Buyer's Guide mentioned that you had had a run of bad luck lately with your health and that you might appreciate hearing from any army veterans and admirers of your work. I regret to say that I am not a veteran, but rather one of the very fortunate beneficiaries of the "blood, sweat and tears" which you and your generation so willingly gave on our behalf. So, first of all, thank you for that.

Second of all, I am very much an admirer of your work, as is my Uncle Vic, and my dad, Ken Sim. The first time I saw your Willie and Joe cartoons, it would have been in the hard-cover collection Up Front, which my uncle always had, ready-to-hand, in his bookshelf. I don't remember exactly the first time I saw your work, but - as was mentioned by you as a common occurrence in an old interview excerpted in the CBG article - I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that it began with my uncle and my father at the dining room table quoting cations of Willie and Joe cartoons to each other and busting up laughing. Any occasion for a boy when he sees his father bust up laughing (as long as it isn't at the boy himself) is sure to excite a level of interest. Curious as to where my father would have first seen the Willie and Joe cartoons (like myself he is a beneficiary of the sacrifices of veterans but not a veteran himself), I phoned him yesterday. He knew right away, that the first time that he had read Up Front would've been a copy that he got from the Book of the Month club shortly after he and my mother were married (which puts it at 1951 or shortly thereafter)... Anyway, once I had explained to Dad the reason that I was asking about his personal history with Up Front (and once he had ascertained that I wasn't harbouring any delusions that I was going to get his copy. I am blood of his blood and flesh of his flesh, but there are - as I well understand - limits to these things), he then remarked that he and Uncle Vic know the Willie and Joe cartoons just from their captions. "Ord'nance? Ahm havin' trouble with mah shootin' arn," He said.

...I phoned my Uncle Vic this morning to get his recollections of Up Front... [and he] reminded me of your later career as a political cartoonist and that your cartoons would often turn up in Time magazine and other places illustrating articles on current events. Like most people I thought you deserved a Pulitzer Prize for your cartoon on the occasion of JFK's assassination depicting the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial weeping.

...the Willie and Joe cartoons still hold up as tip-top examples of the cartoonist's craft more than half a century later. Great composition, great expression, great body language, great execution, buoyant spontaneous brush strokes, spotting of blacks. I'll stop now before I start sporting a beret and a pointy little goatee. But to say the least, you always made the most difficult parts of cartooning look easy... If even a handful of my own readers still find my own work half so memorable decades after I have at last put down my pen and brush, I will count myself fortunate, indeed. To use the phrase which always denoted my father's highest accolade, Mr Mauldin, "Y'done good."

Hope you are feeling better soon.
Sincerely,
Dave Sim

TODD DePASTINO:

(from the biography posted on Bill Mauldin.com)

Bill Mauldin retired from cartooning in 1991 after an injury to his drawing hand. Stricken by Alzheimer’s disease, he entered a nursing home in 2002 . In the months before he died, old veterans and their relatives sent him over 10,000 cards and letters They thanked him for keeping their humanity alive during that most savage of wars. These tributes, more than any honor or award, rank Bill Mauldin as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. Bill Mauldin died on January 22, 2003. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Up Front by Bill Mauldin was originally published in 1945 and is one of the most famous books to emerge from World War II. In a text generously illustrated with a selection of his Willie & Joe cartoons, he describes his time serving with the 45th Infantry Division and other outfits during World War II. He received the purple heart for wounds received in Italy, where he created the majority of his Willie & Joe cartoons. Up Front remains in print and is widely available to this day.

Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front is the biography written by Todd DePastino, which was published by WW Norton in 2008. You can read a fascinating in-depth interview with Todd at The Comics Reporter, in which he discusses the impact learning about Bill Mauldin's life has had on his own.

Two collections of Willie & Joe cartoons, The WWII Years and Back Home (both edited by Todd DePastino) are currently available from Fantagraphics Books.

Now I’ll Ask You One... With Jimmy Gownley

2012-02-11T00:30:00.003Z

Amelia Rules!, Cerebus Governs (Reconsiders?) (2011)
Art by Jimmy Gownley & Dave Sim

Between 14 March to 26 March 2011, Dave Sim entered into a 'Now I'll Ask You One' conversation with the writer/artist of Amelia Rules!, Jimmy Gownley. The complete conversation is available to read on Jimmy Gownley’s Facebook page (head down to the 14 March 2011 blog post... but you'll need to be a registered Facebook user to read it), or you can read the first 6 parts (up to 18 March) on Jimmy's web-blog (...guess he just forgot to post the rest of it there!). Here are some highlights from the conversation:

DAVE SIM:

On Promoting Other Comics (15 March 2011):

Of all the comics that I’ve promoted over the years only a handful were successful. Just because I like it doesn't mean it will sell. Just because I don't think there’s a market for it doesn’t mean there isn't. At the time I would have given B. C. Boyer's Hilly Rose the edge over Bone by a wide margin.

On Cerebus Reaching #300 (16 March 2011):

The mental image I had was of walking along an elevated sidewalk for 26 years... My job was to keep from walking off the sidewalk and plunging to my death, so I was very aware of where the edge of the side walk was and who or what in my life (not naming any names) was trying to push me off the sidewalk. "Hmm. I'm not in the middle of the sidewalk anymore. I'm close to the edge. Why is that?" You develop a heightened sense of the internal (me and Cerebus) and the external (everyone else). And a very sharp awareness that no one perceives themselves as trying to push you off the sidewalk.

On Two Positive Aspects Of The Current Comics Environment (17 March 2011):

Web comics and print on demand... The low cost to actually build a website or get a computer geek friend to do it, the ability to publish 2 or 3 times a week (or, if you’re an over achiever like Danielle Corsetto [creator of Girls With Slingshots] FIVE days a week and sometimes on the weekends)... and Print On Demand lets you test a book for a low cost – print up a couple of hundred, get a table at a small press show and then, 9 times out of 10, die a slow death. But a slow death that's a learning experience.

On Not Archiving Cerebus TV Episodes On Youtube (18 March 2011):

...the Youtube model is pretty much universal - why don't you post all 63 episodes so people can download them like on Youtube? ...If you can download something any time, you take it for granted and your "default setting" is opting out. Who has the time to watch 36 hours of Cerebus TV? Therefore, I won’t watch any of it... The closer you are to broadcast and the further from universally available download the more visible you are. You can watch a Cerebus TV episode anytime in the release week and then you can't see it. You can only watch the new one.

On His Motivation For Glamourpuss (20 March 2011):

...the Alex Raymond/Stan Drake narrative was intended from the beginning. The idea was that I would teach myself the photorealism newspaper strip riffs over the course of the first year and, presumably, be good enough at them to do a creditable job when the time came sometime around the beginning of year three. I'm getting there, but I'm no where near being in those guys' leagues. You really need to do over 300 strips a year to start having really brilliant stuff coming out. My work is too laborious. And I'm 54. I’m at the end or close to the end of my career not at the peak. Whether or not I do another narrative depends on what I find when I research the other photorealists, but I don't imagine there are many - if any - September 6, 1956 stories [the day Alex Raymond died in a car crash].

On Promoting Self-Publishing (21 March 2011):

What I was hoping to accomplish with the Spirits [of Independence] stops was to prove that all cartoonists could self-publish... so, no, it wasn't successful since it showed that very few cartoonists could self-publish and - even worse - even fewer were interested in self-publishing. For most cartoonists it was a stepping stone to something else. Self-publishing wasn't a destination it was a departure lounge.

On Productivity (22 March 2011):

It's one of the reasons that I’m so drawn to Rip Kirby and The Heart Of Juiliet Jones and Al Williamson’s work on Secret Agent X-9. These guys were forced to be very productive just by virtue of what they were doing so there's this exponential improvement, a high water mark that they hit and then hold. I think Gerhard and I did that on Cerebus. For me, the book got better and better because we worked very hard and there was no let up. As I mentioned on one of the Cerebus TV episodes, Gerhard would get page 20 done and tell me. I'd put down what I was working on and go over and look at the finished issue for about 10 seconds and then say, "Okay, take it down." And he'd take it down and get it ready to ship to Preney. That was pretty much our monthly victory lap.

On Committing To 300 Issues Of Cerebus For 26 years (24 March 2011):

There's really nothing that remotely compares to it creatively. Most people will never experience that. I traded virtually everything else in my life for Cerebus and I definitely think I came out ahead on the deal. Well ahead. If no one else ever gets to experience it, well, you can't miss what you never had.

Other 'Now I'll Ask You One' Conversations:
Dave Sim & Steve Bissette
Dave Sim & The Kitchen Brothers

Amazing Hero

2012-02-10T00:30:00.005Z

Cover detail, Amazing Heroes #201 (May 1992)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

JASON SACKS:

(from the introduction to an interview with Dave Sim in Amazing Heroes #201, May 1992)

The first issue of Cerebus came out in December, 1977. The artist, writer and publisher of that comic was Dave Sim. The comic was in black and white. All of those facts made it unique then, as did Cerebus' storyline - he was a three foot tall gray aardvark in a medieval land full of humans.

As I write this it's February, 1992. Cerebus #154 is sitting on my kitchen table. The book is still pencilled, written and published by Dave Sim, now with the assistance of Gerhard. Compare that record with the record of Spectacular Spider-Man, which premiered at around the same time but which has literally hundreds of creators work on it, though still published by Marvel.

In those 154 issues, Cerebus has been a barbarian, kitchen staff supervisor, Prime Minister, ex-Prime Minister, husband, Prime Minister again, Pope and houseguest. Spider-Man, in contrast, is still that crime fighter with the webs.

The fifth Cerebus novel, Mothers & Daughters, has recently begun. The previous novels, High Society, Church & State, Jaka's Story and Melmoth, have explored such weighty topics as politics, organised religion, power, love and death. Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man still just fights the good fight against evil-doers.

All of this description makes the book sound serious and weighty. At times it is. I'd put the ending of Jaka's Story up against Shakespeare in terms of its tragedy. But the series is also often quite hilarious. I'd put the scenes in High Society with Lord Julius (a Groucho Marx character), Duke Leonardi (a Chico Marx character) and Cerebus up against Monty Python or the Marx Brothers in terms of uproariousness.

In a comics world of hologram covers, short-lived hot artists with limited talents, silly crossover stories and tacky attempts at realism, Sim continues to present his complex, fascinating comic every month. He's even announced he'll be doing the book until it ends with issue 300. Eight years ago that sounded like a joke. Now it sounds like fact.

Rip Kirby Vol 4

2012-02-09T00:30:00.000Z

Rip Kirby: The First Modern Detective
The Complete Comic Strips Volume 4: 1954 1956
$49.99, IDW Publishing, 2011
by Alex Raymond

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV Season 3 Episode 13, 28 January 2012)

I'm recording this on Christmas Eve and I gotta tell you folks, its a very merry Christmas here at the off-White House, because I just got in Rip Kirby Volume 4 1954-56 and it's a jaw-dropper. "It's all good" as they say... no scratch that, "It's all amazing!" ...Alex Raymond just got better and better over the last three years of his life, which is what we’re looking at. All of it printed from syndicate proofs. If you’re only going to have one volume of Rip Kirby in your collection, I would definitely recommend that this be the one. The really good news is that IDW is obviously working in close co-operation with Heritage Auctions and is making use of their high quality scans of the original artwork that they have auctioned over the years on Rip Kirby. Look at the lines on that mail box. Look at those lines on those car headlights. Look at the detailed fine-lined brush-inking on the lurking thug. When its a 100%, which it is on so many pages in this volume, it is a thing of beauty.

Rip Kirby concept sketches (Glamourpuss #2, July 2008)
Art by Dave Sim (after Alex Raymond)

Rip Kirby Vol 4 is available from IDW Publishing.

Pressing Problems Of The Day

2012-02-08T00:30:00.009Z

Cerebus #143, February 1991
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Note From The President, Cerebus #142, January 1991)

Fellow wrote and asked me a while ago why it is that I never address the "pressing problems of the day". Probably because I don't see them as problems. Most of them are just opposing quirks (ie. we say that unemployment is a problem at the same time we are replacing people with machines; we say overpopulation is a problem but we let anyone who wants to have a baby). With opposing quirks all you can do is shrug and soldier on as best you can.

We're afraid of death which is a lot like being afraid of exhaling or falling asleep. You will breath. You will fall asleep. You will die. We've eliminated or curtailed virtually every known cause of death. 'Cancer can be beaten' but death is still inevitable. Do you know anyone on the planet we can't do without? There isn't anyone. We are all perfectly expendable. The last one you could even make a case for was Albert Einstein, and after E=MC2 we'd already gotten out of him the best that he had to offer. If all the AIDS patients died tomorrow there wouldn't even be a hiccup in the history books. If all the people with blue eyes died tomorrow we'd still be drastically overpopulated. I love, by the way, the Anarcho-witch-feminist argument against overpopulation; that if everyone in the world turned 'vegomatic' tomorrow we could support ten times the population we have now. I swear those broads won't be happy until the whole planet looks like one big Woodstock festival (minus any music or loud talking for fear we'll "wake the babies").

Check the news, man. Any night. "Twenty die in India bus catastrophe." Twenty people. Like, we won't somehow muddle along without twenty Indians ...or Mexicans ...or Canadians ...or Germans. Where is our fucking sense of proportion? Scour a globe with 5.3 BILLION inhabitants and the best you can turn up is twenty dead. If everyone lined up on the Saudi border died in the first day of fighting it would still only be a drop in the bucket. One million dead. Two million.

Childbirth is not a miracle. Life is not sacred. When you have twenty-thousand nomads huddled between two rivers in the Middle East and that's it for Homo sapiens; when one in five children is a live birth, one in ten living past the age of ten, then childbirth is a miracle and life is sacred. When the average age of a grandmother in Philadelphia's housing projects is twenty-five, to call childbirth a miracle is at the least a tasteless joke and at worst a true obscenity.

We can feel the pressure building when we dare to look at it. "All you need is love" must have tickled Thanatos to his ice-cold, moss-covered, maggot-ridden heart. We find ourselves in a "Life Out of Balance" circumstance of boggling proportions. If there is transmigration of souls, everyone who ever lived on this planet ever is back here right now. Death is not fooled. We haven't eliminated Him. He is very, very, very, very, patient.

You know what I think happens when the last soul emerges again from some goo-gooing, placid, beatific anarcho-witch-vegetarian so that there's no more souls to draw on? I think its happened before in the distant past. Several times. On that day (I believe) we can all go out to the graveyard and watch the gray blue fingers pushing up through the sod; coming for us; for all of us. I think that's where those stories come from; and they only become popular when the time is near. Very near.

"Pressing problems of the day".

"Newspaper, radio and TV ga-ga", because nobody will just buy the advertising.

***************

Ah, I probably don't believe half of that. The other half is still worth thinking about, though. Don't you think?

The True North

2012-02-07T00:30:00.017Z

The True North (1987) & The True North II (1991)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

RACHEL PEABODY:
(from the Comics Syurp Blog, October 2011))

In September of 1987, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized 192 comics from a comic book shop called Comic Legends in Calgary, Alberta. They also charged owners Julie Warren, Darren Ott and Dale Clarke with circulating obscene materials. The comics in question were adult comics and were never intended for children, nor were they sold to children. The reason for the search and confiscation of the comics was that a 14-year-old boy purchased a copy of Warlock 5 by Aircel Comics, and his mother complained. Warlock 5 was not a comic that was seized that day.

When comic artists caught wind of this, as they would, they were outraged. As a result, Paul Stockton, Leonard S Wong, Liz Schiller and Derek McCulloch formed the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund (hereafter CLLDF). In order to raise funds for Warren, Ott and Clarke, CLLDF published an anti-censorship comic book anthology called The True North. Despite the unfavourable circumstances with which it was created, the comic book is an excellent testament to the conviction of the comic book industry both in and outside Canada. It also features a fantastic array of Canada’s writers and artists, as well as some Americans, spanning [every] style, era and genre.

Unfortunately, all three shopkeepers were convicted with a fine of $5500. Although they did appeal with the help of CLLDF, the result was only a reduced fine.

In 1991, the CLLDF published True North II, a second anthology collection, again anti-censorship, and again, a great collector’s item. What I love most about these comics is the sampling of so many different Canadian writers and artists.

Bigger Blacker Kiss

2012-02-06T00:30:00.003Z

Bigger Blacker Kiss (26/27 October 1990)
Art by Dave Sim

24 HOUR COMICS ALL-STARS (About Comics, 2005):
(from the introduction to Bigger Blacker Kiss)

Dave Sim, whose 300 issue run of Cerebus is hailed as one of the high points of both vision and dedication in the North American comics field, is a key person in the history of the 24 hour comic. He published not only his own 24 hour comic but also several of the other early examples in the back of Cerebus. By doing so, he exposed a much larger audience to a challenge which had mainly been known to a few comic book insiders. Dave's visual style for this story is minimalist: one character, few panels and no backgrounds (for most of the run of Cerebus, another artist drew the backgrounds). However, as a work of character study, it's intense and unblinking. Completed in under fifteen hours Bigger Blacker Kiss is an achievement in speed, but not endurance. Staying up for fifteen hours is no feat, but with the decades that Sim dedicated to chronicling the adventures of an aardvark, he has nothing to prove to anyone on the endurance front. The title was an intentional reference to the Howard Chaykin adult comic book series Black Kiss, which had been compiled into a single volume named Big Black Kiss.

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Bigger Blacker Kiss in Cerebus #142, January 1991)

Here it is. My twenty-four hour comic produced in just a little over fifteen hours. What a rush. Seriously, if you are a cartoonist you have to give it a try. Makes you feel as if you have the strength of ten Grinches plus two. I'd like to dedicate it to Audrey (whose phone number I got and never used, which prompted the first few pages), Angela (whose hair I used), Gerhard (because doing a 'solo album' is always going to be a bit offensive no matter how innocent the intention), Monique (for not interrupting), Eric (for the black hash) and the Adolph Coors company for the sustenance around 12:30am. Oh, and to Lil Reid for the carrot cake because man does not live by Coors alone. Thanks, grandma.

(from Now I'll Ask You One... David Branstetter, 29 July 2011)

Depending on who you ask, Bigger Blacker Kiss was "before the misogyny thing". I think, for the Scott McClouds of this world it's all one thing. Dave Sim does an unsympathetic treatment of a female character (read: not outright unquestioning portrayal of women as Absolutely Good and Noble, Universally, Period) because he hates women. Well, I don't think so. Particularly since 1970 I think there's a lot to be said about the difference between who women have chosen to be (generally and specifically) and how they perceive themselves. That's what good writing is: here's the portrayal and here's the actuality. The woman in the story is on a downward slide into oblivion but still thinks that she's a dominant figure. So we see how she is and see how she sees herself and see that Big Trouble is the only possible result and then the kicker: she's pregnant and thinking that this will improve everything. I don't think the story is far-fetched or misogynistic or sensationalistic. I think it's a good example of how the drift of our society is in one direction and our perception of society is that it is rising exponentially. The character's personal Big Trouble is also society's Even Bigger Trouble - Bigger, Blacker, Kiss.

What Happened Between Issues Eleven & Twelve?

2012-02-05T00:30:00.006Z

Cerebus #11 & 12 (August & October 1979)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Cerebus #11 in Swords Of Cerebus Vol 3, 1981)

The first introduction I wrote for this story was a lengthy dissertation on the nervous breakdown I suffered after this issue was finished. It ran to about twice the length of this one, at least, but in the end, it sounded like what it was; a self-serving rationalisation of a very insane couple of weeks. I realised when I had it done, that my intention had been primarily to reassure everyone reading it that it wouldn't happen again. Including me. It was the culmination of many different threads in my life coming together at once. Personal stuff, professional stuff, problems, ambitions, accomplishments and failures. Writing that introduction was a very therapeutic exercise, but the final product was pretty dull.

When Kevin Davies of Myriad did the interview with me, he asked me if I could have avoided the nervous breakdown, a question I really didn't consider too extensively until I saw it again in print. I don't think I could have, and in many ways it came at exactly the right time. It was a warning that I am only human and it was an indication to me of just how fragile humans can be. I've learned to accept only as much pressure as I can comfortably handle, and too keep my own feelings as the primary focus for my decision-making. Talking to people like Wendy Pini, I began to realize that the people attracted to success (and success is the honey for a specific kind of fly) can bleed you white if you let them, all with the best of intentions.

I realised writing the introduction that I was trying to help anyone who might find themselves in the same situation I did. I was hoping in some way to reach anyone who might be feeling themselves losing control - babbling endlessly about nothing, swinging from elation to depression and back in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, it's a pit that you either climb out of or slip into permanently. But the answers have to come from inside.

Enthusing about Marshall Rogers, The Batman, and the pleasure I can get out of a steel point barely a half-inch in length and a bottle of ink, rather than rehashing a dead end period of my life, is one of those answers.

For me.

DAVE SIM:
(from the Coville Clubhouse interview, July 2005)

Twenty-six years later on, I think it would be more accurate to say that I had achieved a false level of transcendence that I had been looking to achieve through LSD - the psychic equivalent of a massive and pleasurable electric shock-that left me incapable of reassuring my wife (within her own very limited frames of reference) that I was okay: with the result that she freaked out at one point and called my mother and she and my mother locked me up in a psych ward at the local hospital for a couple of days.

There really wasn't anything to "recover" from. I had gone through the false transcendent state and come out the other side. The only thing I really needed to recover from was the massive doses of depressants they had given me in the psych ward. That took two or three days during which all of my muscles and motor functions were seriously malfunctioning - it felt as if I had pulled every muscle in my body so that just speaking and walking required Herculean forces of will in order to achieve. Essentially, at that point - never again wanting to experience that severe crippling effect - I began to live two different lives simultaneously. I learned how to portray myself as a normal person in order to keep my wife and parents from locking me up in any more psych wards while at the same time I began to explore all of the thoughts and experiences that I had had over the period of the false transcendent state and began to work towards putting them all down on paper in the Cerebus storyline. When I realized, a month or two later, how large and difficult a task that was going to be, I decided to make Cerebus into a 300-issue project in order to encompass it all and leave room for my own best assessment of the aftermath. The documentation of the state itself went from about issue 20 to about issue 186. I was able to stop leading my double life once I was divorced in 1983 and I no longer had the on-going threat hanging over my head that my freedom depended on my wife and mother believing me to be sane.

I Have To Live With This Guy!

2012-02-04T00:30:00.003Z

I Have To Live With This Guy! (Tomorrows Publishing, 2002)
by Blake Bell , cover art by Steve Ditko

PUBLISHER'S BLURB:

Will Eisner does what? Alan Moore said that? Dave Sim is really like that? Take a deep look into what its been like living with comic book creators over the past 60 years, with the people who know them best! This trade paperback explores the lives of the partners and wives of Will Eisner, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, John Romita, Gene Colan, Dan DeCarlo, Dick Ayers, Archie Goodwin, Ric Estrada, Dave Sim, Howard Cruse, Dave Cooper and more! In addition to sharing memories and anecdotes you'll find nowhere else, their better halves have opened up private files to unearth personal photos, momentos, and never-before-seen art by the top creators in comics! Once you've read this book, you'll see: You only thought you knew them!

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV, Season 3 Episode 7, 16 December 2011)
...I never read Deni [Loubert]'s part in Blake Bell’s book I Have To Live With This Guy. The time that came out I told Chester Brown and Joe Matt, "Look, if you want to read it and ask me questions about it, that’s fine. I’ll be happy to tell you my side of it - strictly in personal conversation." Joe couldn't believe I wasn’t interested in reading it, but then I stopped reading reviews of my work years ago, so it’s even less likely that I would be interested in reading reviews of my life.

Spider-Ham

2012-02-03T00:30:00.001Z

Spider-Ham Goes Mad (2006-7)
Art by Dave Sim

Above is Dave Sim's contribution to the Ultimate Spider-Man #100 Project, which was a tribute to Bendis & Bagley's run on that title, later auctioned in aid of the Hero Initiative, benefiting comic creators in need. The cover features the 'Cerebus-esque' Spider-Ham (in place of Spider-Man) in an homage to a classic Steve Ditko cover to Spider-Man #24. You can view all the Ditko Spider-Man covers at Cover Browser.

Spider-Ham (July 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

(Via Comic Art Fans)

Recommended: The Art Of P. Craig Russell

2012-02-02T00:30:00.003Z

The Art Of P. Craig Russell: A Retrospective
Desperado Publishing, 2007

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction)

The question arrives - as it often does - alongside the "Art of..." volume: How did P. Craig Russell come to be one of the great unsung heroes of the comic-book field? As you are about to bear witness, it is an illustrious and near to flawless career that goes back thirty years - more than thirty years.

...Why didn't we hear more about this stuff a) at the time b) in the interim and c) since? The perhaps more apt question: Why didn't we say more about this stuff? Then the personal self-indictment: When was the last time that I mentioned Craig's work in conversation?

...An amazing collection.

The Art Of P. Craig Russell is available from Desperado Publishing.

The Comics Journal #301

2012-02-01T00:30:00.004Z

Cerebus #300 (March 2004)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

TIM KRIEDER:
(from Irredeemable: Dave Sim's Cerebus in The Comics Journal #301, February 2011)

Even though Cerebus isn't as good a book as Maus or Fun Home or Persepolis, it's much more interesting than any of them. You sometimes hate reading Cerebus, but when you're finished you catch yourself envying friends who are beginning it. I would rather reread it, and would much rather look at it, than any of those other, better books. Frankly, Spiegelman and Bechdel and Satrapi all seem to me to be minor talents who put their limited abilities to the best possible use because they each had one great story to tell. Their draftsmanship gets the job done, but it looks undistinguished and dull compared to Sim's fluid command of expression and gesture, his pyrotechnical talent and inexhaustible visual invention. Those more celebrated books are all relatively short, unified, traditional narratives, they're all memoirs (the hot commercial literary form of the last decade), and they're all about politically fashionable subjects; Cerebus, on the other hand, is a sprawling, sloppy, lopsided mess, hard to classify by form or genre or anything else, its subject resolutely uncool, and its politics are so reactionary as to be widely regarded as hate speech or evidence of a clinical disorder. It is brilliant and hilarious and incredibly boring, very, very annoying, infuriating and beautiful, defiantly inaccessible, arguably insane, arguably, great. I'm not sure it should even be called a "book"; it's something bigger than that - a complete document of one man's artistic, intellectual and spiritual life. To appeal to mainstream tastes, it seems, comics have to compromise, conforming to more respectable literary conventions. Dave Sim is - and this is one epithet he would relish - undomesticable.

The Comics Journal #301 is available from Fantagraphics Books.

Whatever Happened To Jaka?

2012-01-31T00:30:00.001Z

Cerebus #265 (April 2001)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:

(from The Blog & Mail, 22 December 2006)

Jaka post-Form & Void? That would be a tough call and not one that I've given any amount of thought to. I would say that given that these things tend to occur in a symmetrical way, yes, I would imagine that whatever her life ended up being like it would probably have resembled Cerebus's traumatic beginning to Latter Days spinning out in a comparable "can't win for losing" way. Probably not quite AS traumatic because I would assume that she had closed off most of herself in the aftermath of the end of her marriage. The ending to the marriage was too traumatic, too brutal and with no room to manufacture an alternative happy reality in her own mind that would fit the known facts but allow her to escape the tragedy personally. No, the Cirinists do their work too well for that. The core question would be "How much in love with Cerebus was she?" which is another way of asking "How much had she closed herself off at that point?" And that I would no more attempt to answer than I would attempt to answer for which (if any!) of my own girlfriends or my wife I was their greatest and most significant relationship and for which of them I was just one of the guys they acted out their "strong, independent woman" role against - going through the motions for the sake of having a boyfriend or husband - before moving on to their next "strong, independent woman" drama with their new Best Supporting Actor. They were upset for a period of time, but then the next guy came along and it's "happily ever after" "I've never felt this way before" time again. Certainly in the case of Jaka, she wasn't wife and mother material so I think I'm safe in saying that although she thought of herself as monogamous and bonding for life, she was actually just doing the "I've never felt this way before" "Oh no its coming to an end" "Boohoohoo" "NEXT!" trip. Very possibly she just saw Cerebus as the safe option because he was always in love with her every time she saw him. There was never the remotest danger that she had lost him even when he was married to Red Sophia or when she was married to Rick. Women tend to find that incredibly boring but after a series of traumatic dramas where they win more than lose a lot of them will opt for the safe option at least for a period of time either to rebuild their egos or just to have a nice rest.

Support Cerebus TV

2012-01-30T00:30:00.004Z

Signed & Numbered Print: Cape Ends (1992)
Art by Dave Sim

The signed and numbered print above (limited to 63 copies) can be yours for a $20 donation to Cerebus TV. Hurry while stocks last.

Comic Book Styles

2012-01-29T00:30:00.002Z

'Comic Book Schools' featuring Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Art Adams & Bruce Timm.
from Glamourpuss #2 (July 2008)
Art by Dave Sim

Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Comic Strip Styles

2012-01-28T00:30:00.002Z

'Comic Strip Schools' featuring Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff & Charles Schulz
from Glamourpuss #2 (July 2008)
Art by Dave Sim

Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Wolveroach

2012-01-27T00:30:00.003Z

Cerebus #54-56 (September-November 1983)
Art by Dave Sim
(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:

(from an interview in The Comics Journal #184, 1996)

When it came time to do a Roach character that had the ambiance of religious fervor surrounding him, it had to be Wolverine. The fact that Marvel got so upset about me putting Wolverine on the successive covers. "It's not a parody; you are now stealing the central icon of our church," was to me revelatory. "Well, there you go. Yes, I picked the right one." I didn't realize I was going to be putting my foot in it this badly. I thought parody's parody, but you can take that chalice called Captain America and do a parody of that, you can take this subaltern and do Moon Knight, but by God don't you touch our Wolverine. That's the center of our church.

DAVE SIM:

(from the essay 'Dave Sim On Parody & Copyright' in Following Cerebus #3, February 2005)

...when Marvel did Peter Porker, The Amazing Spider-Ham - I suspect largely as a warning shot across my bow over my doing Wolverroach. Essentially they did Cerebus in a Spider-Man costume. It was an attempt to play some hardball with me. You want to play cute, we can play cute too. Of course my theory, which dates from that time period, is that you protect your trademark and copyright by being good at what you do. Twenty years later on, Wolveroach is far more memorable than Spider-Ham, even though there was, in my view, a far greater level of appropriation going on in the later case.

Official Cerebus T-Shirts

2012-01-26T00:30:00.012Z

Available from World Of Strange: Cerebus in Chains
Art by Dave Sim

Available from Graphitti Designs: Cerebus: He Doesn't Love You & Cerebus For Dictator
Art by Dave Sim

Available from World Of Strange: Cerebus Covers #1-5
Art by Dave Sim

Oscar Wilde

2012-01-25T00:30:00.009Z

Cerebus #120 (March 1989)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:

(from Note From The President, Cerebus #148, July 1991)

The more I learned about Oscar [Wilde], the more I resented his lack of productivity. Aside from one really good play (Importance of Being Earnest) and one really good short novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), most of his work is derivative or second rate. I like it but I think I'm objective enough to admit that very little of what he did stands the test of time for most people. I resent the fact that most of his time was spent entertaining second and third-rate intellects; or even more loathsome, the aristocracy. He is almost universally acknowledged as the greatest conversationalist of his day. In a time when the ability to hold the attention of a table of diners was a thing for which many were noted, Oscar reigned supreme. Only a handful of his stories, anecdotes and discourses have survived even as fragments (thanks mostly to the Roberts; Sherard and Ross, and Richard le Gallienne).

And, yet, that was Oscar wasn't it?

How much better to entertain a roomful of strangers, lingering over a bottle of good wine and innumerable cigarettes, playing with notions and ideas, weaving epigrams and fables; striking just the right note with each companion so that even those who were the most scornful of him, who had arrived determined to despise him and to revile him, found themselves smiling, then laughing; charmed, captivated; having the time of their lives.

How much better that, than seclusion and study. Why be prolific when one could be charming? Why produce when there's so much to consume?

I have to credit all the research that I did on Oscar Wilde for convincing me that I don't want to be like that. If I can end my life with a large body of completed works and a reputation as a cantankerous old hermit I'll consider my time well spent.

Spawn

2012-01-24T00:30:00.001Z

Spawn #10, 1994
Art by Todd McFarlane, written by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

(from the PRO/CON Speech, April 1993, reprinted in The Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing)

Image is the first sensible reaction to the basic truth of the direct market. Will Spawn always be the No. 1 comic book? No. Of course not. How long will it be at or near the top? There's no way of knowing. The critical difference with Spawn is that Todd McFarlane recognised that he was hot now, while he was working on Spider-Man. He recognised that he was making an enormous amount of money for Marvel Comics and that the percentage of that money that he was being paid was minuscule. He recognised that there was a window of opportunity now to make his future financially secure and to take control of his career. He recognised that, at Marvel, his career was out of his control. A change of editor, of editorial policy, of company ownership, any number of things could throw him out in the street at a moment's notice. If Marvel could throw Chris Claremont away after 15 years, refusing even to let him write a farewell note on the letters pages of the book [X-Men] he had made into the industry standard, what security is there? Todd McFarlane recognised that there is no security. There never has been, and there never will be.

1001 Comics To Read Before You Die

2012-01-23T00:30:00.006Z

Cerebus Vol 2: High Society (collecting #26-50, 1981-1983)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

BART BEATY:
(a review of High Society in 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, edited by Paul Gravett, 2011)

What stands out as one of the oddest experiments of the 1980s wound up as one of the most transformative comics of all time. Since 1977, Dave Sim had been serializing the adventures of Cerebus the Aardvark, a deft parody of Conan the Barbarian that was quickly running out of steam. With the twenty-sixth issue he dramatically changed the tone and direction of his work, thrusting his marauding antihero into the claustrophobic world of politics and high finance.

In the fictional city-state of Iest, Cerebus becomes a pawn in a highly fraught political game played against the diabolically clever Lord Julius. Aided by the manipulative Astoria, Cerebus struggles to negotiate a complex world that he does not fully understand. When the tense election is resolved, in hilarious fashion, by the vote of a single farmer in a snowy field, Cerebus finds himself Prime Minister. With his world literally turned on its head - Sim drew and printed the final pages of the book sideways - Cerebus is overwhelmed by his powerful position, enduring crisis after crisis before his government is toppled.

The image of politics Sim paints in the graphic novel is a dark one in which the primary characters are driven by vanity and greed. This is a lacerating view of human weakness, leavened by moments of humor that seem lifted from the best of the Marx Brothers's movies. Throughout, Sim experiments with new visual styles and storytelling formats, shedding his history as a simple parodist and emerging as a significant creative voice in his own right.

The Last Signing

2012-01-22T00:30:00.001Z

Poster: The Last Signing (2010)
Art by Dave Sim

Mike Kitchen (the creator of Spy Guy) and Blair Kitchen (the creator of The Possum) go on a comic book pilgrimage to see Dave Sim (the creator of Cerebus) at The Last Signing, which took place at the Strange Adventures comic store in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 24 September 2010:

Zootanapuss #2

2012-01-21T00:30:00.002Z

Zootanapuss #2 (variant cover for Glamourpuss #23, January 2012)

Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV, Season 3 Episode 11, 13 January 2012)

I'm really hoping that Zootanapus vs High Fashion Models will help keep [Glamourpuss] alive... and so far so good. Actually, the sales on the signed and numbered [Glamourpuss variant cover] Zootanapus #2 are up from Zootanapus #1. There have been many, many days over the last three years when I never thought I would get Stan Drake and Alex Raymond to Chateau Drake on West Parish Road in West Point. Or get a chance to draw my own version of Elizabeth 'Betty Lou' Drake (nee Smith). Or put her in a few different outfits, including "Oh! Hey! What if she was in her bath-robe and curlers when they got there?" A lot of big and small emergencies that I was just batting away like flies, 'cos I’m going, "I can't believe it. I got them in the garage. Stan Drake is getting into the Corvette."

Glamourpuss #23 is available from the end of January 2011 at your local comics shop.
Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Cerebus At The Local Tavern

2012-01-20T00:30:00.004Z

Cerebus At The Local Tavern (Commission, 2001)
Art by Dave Sim and Gerhard

MATTHEW E:

This piece is AMAZING!! Look at the cross hatching detail from head to toe. Now get this... This piece measures 28x48 inches. Dave Sim said its the largest image of Cerebus he ever did. Gerhard went to town on this baby doing everything you see around Cerebus. Gerhard is a superhuman talent.

(via Comic Art Fans)

Recommended: The Complete Crumb Comics

2012-01-19T00:30:00.001Z

The Complete Crumb Comics Vol 1-17
by Robert Crumb

DAVE SIM:
(from an interview in The Comics Journal #184, 1996)

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 into because this is where we are going." He was able to put on the page very, very effectively the '60s shysters and sharpies and the whole Charles Manson "Hey we can shape this to our own needs." 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 ran against the grain. He swam against the current that favoured him and that to me is great artistic integrity. In terms of the sort of world that's two steps down and hidden behind the veil, to me that's in all of his stuff too. The Devil Girl stuff, Mr Natural and Flakey Foont, it's as much about human relationships as it is, "Hey isn't this funny that way Flakey is just drooling all over this chick?" There are so many levels of meaning. If you're just buying to enjoy the cosmetics of it, you're still going to get full value for your money, but there's a lot more story under there to me.

...when Fantagraphics started doing The Collected Crumb and occasionally going back and looking at the old undergrounds and seeing them in context... there was a lot of Crumb stuff that I had missed, but many I've carried forward through each purge of my collection since 1974. I just look at it and say "By God, there's a guy who really had his head screwed on straight at a time when it would not be a stretch to say it was impossible that anybody had their head screwed on straight."

...I can look through my favourites of Crumb's pieces and that will get me charged up, sitting down and drawing.

The Complete Crumb Comics Vol 1-17 are available from Fantagraphics Books.

Zombie Variant Covers

2012-01-18T00:30:00.020Z

Cerebus Archive #1-4, zombie variant covers (2009)
Glamourpuss #4-5, zombie variant covers (2008)
Art by Dave Sim

Following a trend established by Marvel Comics, Aardvark Vanaheim released a series of zombie-variant covers to Cerebus Archive and Glamourpuss, which were offered to comics retailers as an ordering incentive (for every 10 copies ordered of the standard cover version they received a complimentary zombie-variant issue) and were available for purchase by comics readers for $15 each.

Back issues of Cerebus Archive are always available at ComiXpress.
Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available at ComiXpress.

Logan & Rockets

2012-01-17T00:30:00.002Z

Visions Of An Icon: Wolverine (2009)

Art by Dave Sim

(Click image to enlarge)

The illustration above was one of over 40 pieces of original artwork featuring Wolverine donated to the Joe Shuster Awards for the Visions Of An Icon Art Show by Canadian artists. The pieces were exhibited twice in 2009 - at the Joe Shuster Awards ceremony in September and at the Speakeasy Comic Art Show in November. The original art pieces were auctioned off on eBay in March 2010.

World Without Cerebus

2012-01-16T00:30:00.001Z

BRIAN COPPOLA:
(From the introduction to World Without Cerebus)

As a long-time fan of the Cerebus series, and given the role that Cerebus original art has played in my art-curating life, I have been, and continue to be, blown away by the contribution that Gerhard made to about 5000 pages of this story... a contribution sometimes eclipsed by the real-world drama(s) associated with the personalities, stories, and other falderal that swirled (and still continues to swirl) around creator, publisher, author, artist, and visionary Dave Sim.

Gerhard... or as I like to think of him, Saint Gerhard the Brilliant... has responded to what I think is a simple and (thank-you-kindly) elegant idea: to feature his creative skills in a series of 100% Gerhard drawings that bring to the foreground the settings, circumstances, episodes and ideas that live in the background of the original series.

Thus: WWC - The World Without Cerebus - even without the main characters, the literal context in which they lived *IS* an independent and fully realized creative work. I have been suggesting the scenario (mainly the episode), and then Ger runs with it with some small, meagre comments from me every now and then. As an homage to Dave Sim, and following the tradition of Hirschfeld and his incorporation of his daughter's name (Nina) into his drawings, Dave's initials (DVS) are integrated into the WWC pieces.

World Without Cerebus: Collateral Damage, Torn Asunder, Fallen Idol, 27
Art by Gerhard

Now I'll Ask You One... The Kitchen Brothers

2012-01-15T00:30:00.001Z

Dave Sim invited the self-publishing cartoonists Kitchen Bros. - Mike (Spy Guy) and Blair (The Possum) - to participate in a discussion to coincide with a Possum special on Cerebus TV. The conversation took place between 28 March and 8 April, 2011: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.

Highlights from the discussion include:

DAVE SIM:
On Collaborating With Gerhard (Part 3):
I can't say that I lost any sleep over it but, at the same time, it wasn't a decision that you take lightly when you've already done six years and 64 issues on your own. Particularly when you're of a mind to be seen as the Comic Book Elvis or the Comic Book Frank Sinatra. Being Half of the Comic Book Simon and Garfunkel or Comic Book Everly Brothers seems like an obvious giant step down. That weighed very heavily in the one balance pan. On the other hand, I had the results on the His First Fifth strip for Epic magazine which were really astonishing for a complete rookie and which Gerhard had finished very quickly.

On Glamourpuss (Part 7):
...I'm not doing a Glamourpuss trade [collection]. The sales are so far down that I can make roughly the same amount of money doing POD [Print On Demand] periodicals as I can doing a bi-monthly comic book... I make my money from commissions and the Cerebus trades, some licensing and some foreign reprints. It would have been nice if Glamourpuss had been a hit, but its not... I make as much off of the 15 issues of Glamourpuss and 13 issues of Cerebus Archive available 24/7 from ComiXpress as I do from the latest issue of Glamourpuss Diamond is selling. Not much.

On Cerebus (Part 11):
Fiction seems crazy to me as a thing to do. There are degrees of insanity in doing fiction. An aardvark in the world of humans is pretty crazy. If -- as I tried to do -- you see it as a metaphor for alienation (we're EACH of us an aardvark in the world of humans) then it becomes less crazy. Kafka doesn't believe that a human being evolves into a cockroach. Orwell didn't believe that animals would walk on their hind legs and take over a farm. It's using crazy metaphors to comment on a world that is mostly insane but views itself as sane.

On Ink (Part 19):
...GET RID OF OLD INK. Particularly if you're using Speedball Super-Black. Diluting it and letting it evaporate to thin it and darken it was taking up a lot of time and something in the back of my head kept saying "It's the ink -- it's past its best before date"... It seems incredibly wasteful. I have a 16 ounce bottle that's still half full if not three quarters full. Yes, but for the sake of being afraid to throw away $9 worth of ink, you're adding a good half hour to forty minutes to each working day.

On Falling Sales (Part 21):
My job is to just calmly fly straight into the ground doing everything that my nearly forty years of training have taught me and, as always, trying to learn new things every day that I haven't crashed. "Keeping a tight "as***ole" as the guys put it who have been in a real firefight. No matter how bad things get, sh***ing your pants isn't going to improve them.

Other 'Now I'll Ask You One' Conversations:
Dave Sim & Steve Bissette
Dave Sim & Jimmy Gownley

C-Minus Is C-Minus

2012-01-14T00:30:00.004Z

Sketch: Mr C-Minus (April 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

KEITH BROWN:

(9 May 2010)

Dave Sim is again selling Cerebus head sketches (ball point pen on Aardvark-Vanaheim stationary) on E-Bay. The sketches can be just of Cerebus, or have him decked out as the character of your choice. The price is $25.00 U.S. and it's the second time these types of sketches have gone on sale. I found out about the offer from watching Cerebus TV -new episodes come on Friday's at 9:00 central time. The current episode is a memoriam to the late, great, Dick Giordano, and Dave Sim talking about his Ditkomania cover (also on sale) featuring Steve Ditko's Miss Eerie. I enjoy the Cerebus TV episodes a lot, plenty of interesting comics history gets covered, and you should really check it out. [This is] the first Cerebus head sketch I got.

The above (forgive my poor scanning) is Dave Sim drawing Cerebus as Steve Ditko's Mr. A, which becomes Mr. C-! I'm a big fan of Mr. A and Steve Ditko's most recent work so no surprise that was my request. I'm thrilled with my sketch, really enjoyed the funny spin on Mr. A, and wanted the chance to get a few more. No way do I have the cash to fight it out in a art auction, so this is the next best thing. Lucky for me, by popular demand, the sketch offer was brought back I already put in my new order for Cerebus drawn as Judge Dredd, and Cerebus drawn as the Green Hornet. Eclipso (the 60s' version or the one from his own series), or Nukla were the other options I considered.

Where Is Mrs Hannon?

2012-01-13T00:30:00.002Z

Cerebus #274 (January 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard, additional dialogue by Nicholas Zivkovik

DAVE SIM:
(from a letter to Nicholas Zivkovik dated 30 October 2001, reprinted in Cerebus 274)

I'm not sure if I ever wrote back to you about the comic strip samples that you sent me for comment back in 1993. The strip was called Kilhook ...The reason that I am writing to you now is that I hung onto the strips at the time because - although the artwork was amateurish, certainly too amateurish for a newspaper syndicate (even assuming that they might have an interest in historical fantasy) - the writing had just the right note of authenticity in the dialogue for a Dark Ages battle scene. Knowing that I had a Dark Ages battle scene coming up in Cerebus (a hundred or so issues down the road), I put your samples in with my "way off up ahead" file of reference material. Having arrived at "way off up ahead," I pulled your samples out to retread for the first time in eight years. And realized -- pretty much right away that I couldn't improve on what you had written. So I just extracted those lines which most impressed me and best suited the tone I was looking for - and then whittled them down from there (I wish I had more pages to work with, but that proved not to be the case). Anyway, I am enclosing a cheque for $100 US - which I hope will cover my unauthorised use of your material.

NICHOLAS ZIVKOVIK:
(from The Comics Journal #241, February 2002)

I thought it was cool. I've been a Cerebus fan for a long time. He does some cool things... It's not a project I'm pursuing to any degree. For a fanboy to be included in this, that's a cool tip of the hat.

Kilhook (1993)
Art by Nicholas Zivkovik

Gun Fu: Showgirls Are For Ever

2012-01-12T00:30:00.004Z

Gun Fu: Showgirls Are Forever (Image Comics, 2006)
Art by Dave Sim, Gerhard, Joey Manson & Howard Shum

In 2006 Dave Sim wrote Gun Fu: Showgirls Are Forever one-shot which was illustrated by Darryl Young and Howard Shum: The year is 1941. France has succeeded in Setting the world record for the quickest surrender to Nazi Germany without putting up a fight. Cheng Bo Sen is a Hong Kong cop and British Secret Service Agent. He also speaks hip-hop which no one seems to notice...

DAVE SIM:

(from an interview at Comic Book Resources, January 2006)

I've been a huge fan of Gun Fu from the beginning. Howard asked if I'd do a pin-up for the book about a month or two after issue [Cerebus] #300 came out so Gerhard and I did the parody of the James Bond movie poster for Diamonds Are Forever; 'Showgirls Are Forever' that Howard ran on the back cover of The Lost City mini-series (issue #4). I said I'd be up for it if he ever wanted to turn it into a Gun Fu story. I figured maybe a year or two later after he had done his own projects. Instead in his next letter, he just threw out a couple of ideas and I picked up on them and we were off and running!

(from an interview at The Pulse, February 2006)

I guess the most interesting thing was the challenge of getting an entire story into a single issue - something that I hadn’t done, really, since the first three years of Cerebus - 1977 to 1980. At several points I thought we were spilling over into a second issue or a mini-series, but Howard kept a tight rein on things... Howard had been sending me Gun Fu since the first issue and I really liked the very stylized, almost geometric look that he and Joey Mason had developed between them. The first issue seemed to be too closely adhering to the Manga approach of few panels to the page so I suggested that Joey try putting more panels in - basically breaking the pages into quadrants where each quadrant could still have a Manga tone to it while giving the reader four times the entertainment. As soon as he upped the panel count he seemed to push the whole thing to a new level and then I just sat back in amazement with everyone else. And I’ve been sitting back in amazement ever since... The hip-hop dialect, y’all, comin’ from an Asian character in the late 1930s - and no one appearing even to notice. That was just too funny as far as I was concerned. Howard ran a class photo in an early issue that was half black kids and about a half dozen Asian kids. I really didn’t know until just a few weeks ago that Howard was one of the Asian kids. Before that I just assumed he was black.

Tribute Art Round-Up

2012-01-11T00:30:00.000Z

Cerebus (2011)
by Amancay Nahuelpan

Wild Cerebus (1998)
by Loren Lorente

Alone. Unmourned. Unloved. (2011)
by Christopher Mitten

Cerebus The Barbarian (2006)
by Chris Samnee

Cerebus (2009)
by Ben Templesmith

I Am A Grey Pig
by Travis Charest

Curls & Cerebus (2011)
by Carolyn Belefski

Retired (2004)
by Tim Hulsizer

Diamondback Cards

2012-01-10T00:30:00.001Z

Diamondback Cards (1981)
Top row: Magician, Priestess, Queen; Bottom row: King, Priest, Backcover
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

(from the essay at The Beguiling, 2004)

Oddly enough, even while we were running the Cerebus’ Six Deadly Sins portfolio ad on the inside back cover of issues 26 through 30, the only mention of the first series of Diamondback Cards came in Deni's Note from the Publisher in issue 29, indicating that they were to be offered as a fan-club premium and would be sent to anyone joining the fan club prior to the 1981 San Diego Con. Shortly thereafter we would take over the running of the fan club from Fred Patten for several years but, the inescapable fact remained that Cerebus was never really a 'fan club' type of thing. As I recall, the first series of Diamondback Cards were our attempt to give Fred something to really attract enough fans to make his efforts worthwhile - they were printed on good quality cardstock, with four-colour backs and an illustrated envelope. But it was all for naught and when we folded the fan club we ended up selling most of the decks through Now & Then Books and through the mail at $3.00 or so per pack after the distributors had ordered an initial number of decks (as Deni mentioned in her Note from the Publisher in issue 32). The direct market, at the time, just wasn't set up to sell cards in any great quantity. Kind of funny when you consider that the collectible card market virtually swamped the comic-book field for a period of time in the late eighties and early nineties.

I really worked to make the cards as attractive as possible and even incorporated the images into the Cerebus Held Hostage sequence in issue 27 (High Society pages 40 to 46) to get that 'tie-in' thing happening. In doing the hand separations on the back, I used some of the most subtle four-colour combinations I had in my separations book and made sure every one of them was cut as cleanly as I could with an X-acto knife. A subtle shade of brown, a subtle shade of ruby red. Then the cards came back and Cerebus was an albino. I had forgotten to slap a basic 30% gray on 'im. D’OH!

Recommended: Jules Feiffer

2012-01-09T00:30:00.001Z

George's Moon (reprinted in Passionella & Other Stories)
by Jules Feiffer

DAVE SIM:
(from Note From The President, Cerebus #109, April 1988)

In anticipation of doing "Walking on the Moon" inspired by the Judge in Jules Feiffer's Little Murders, I have been surrounding myself with Feiffer Totems... Passionella & Other Stories including George's Moon a major inspiration for Book Seven [of Church & State], the original stage play of Little Murders (which Steve Bissette loaned to me and is never getting back. Sorry, Steve), Sick, Sick, Sick an early Feiffer collection, the Lonely Machine and Hostileman (the best comic book work ever published in Playboy) and, most significantly, Feiffer's interview in the September 1971 issue of Playboy.

It was the first issue of Playboy I ever bought for myself... all of fifteen years old I was. At that time a dollar would buy five comic books, so it was quite an investment. It had Gilbert Shelton's Feds & Heds game in it, fiction by Irwin Shaw, Kurtzman's Annie Fannie.

But the highlight was the Feiffer interview.

Playboy Magazine:
Right: the October 1965 issue contains Jules Feiffer's essay 'The Great Comic Book Heroes'
Left: the September 1971 issue contains the Jules Feiffer interview

Everything a fifteen year old needed to know about the world is contained in it. He talks about dope, getting laid, not getting laid, Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, random violence, politics, the snob appeal of the Village Voice. It is amazing to see how much history has come-to-pass exactly as he envisioned it; how many insights he had into the workings of the American political system... insights that would have been dismissed as leftlib paranoia at the time (remember this was a year before Watergate) but which have gradually become conventional wisdom; common sense.

I owe an enormous debt because he answered all of the questions I had about being a grown-up and being creative for a living. The story that sticks in every comic fan's mind about Jules Feiffer is the one he relates in his wonderful book The Great Comic Book Heroes. He describes going to work for Will Eisner as an assistant. One of his first tasks was to sign "Will Eisner" to the stories and (everybody on three) he was instantly better at it than Eisner was.

I think more than anything else, this was a major leg up for a lot of would-be Eisner's. He took the fannish delight in duplicating an idol's signature (to this day when people ask me if I'll sign their counterfeit Cerebus No. 1, I offer them a choice of Neal Adams or Frank Frazetta) and raised it from a petty ego-thing to a rich and on-going tradition.

That Feiffer became Feiffer and not a substitute Eisner is important as well, because it ended the traditional master/apprentice relationship. A teenaged Feiffer could seek out Will Eisner Studios and offer to do any kind of work, just to be able to be there; to learn. The teen-age Dave Sim had no such option. What could I do for Feiffer? He drew his own stuff. He wrote his own stuff. He lettered his own stuff. The rest of the time he wrote novels, plays. He was self-contained.

So I became self-contained.

And in large measure, it was because of that interview and the clarity of vision that shone through. It ends with Feiffer saying he hoped his comments wouldn't lead anyone to despair. In my case, nothing could be further from the truth and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank him publicly. Words are inadequate to describe my admiration. Suffice to say his work and his success, to me, represent the high water mark in the comic book medium.

Hell.

When I'm done Cerebus I'll probably write a play.

Cerebus #107 (February 1988)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

Books of Jules Feiffer's comics and cartoons are available from Fantagraphics Books.

You Die Alone. Unmourned. And Unloved

2012-01-08T00:30:00.002Z

Cerebus # 111 (June 1988)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from an interview with Amazing Heroes #201, May 1992)

It's interesting, the reactions people have to Cerebus "dying alone, unmourned and unloved". Everyone dies alone. You could have a room full of people, they could even be lying in bed with you if you want, but you're still going to die alone... A lot of what I was trying to point out with Cerebus in Melmoth is that you can be surrounded by people and still be unmourned and unloved. A lot of us delude ourselves that we are loved, and you have to say to people, "How many people do you still know, and have an interesting relationship with, that you did three years ago?"

Remembering The Self-Publishing Movement

2012-01-07T00:30:00.002Z

Self-Publishers Limited Edition Print (1993)
Art by Dave Sim, Colleen Doran, James Owen, Martin Wagner & Jeff Smith

JEFF SMITH:

(from the Boneville Blog, 4 February 2008)

It’s been pointed out in numerous places that Dave Sim, Terry Moore, and I are all returning to our self-publishing roots with new comic book series – all within weeks of each other. But what exactly are those self-publishing roots?

It’s been 15 years since I met Larry Marder, who introduced me to Dave Sim. Who in turn introduced me to Colleen Doran. Soon, along with James Owen and Martin Wagner, we created a limited edition print featuring all our characters to sign and give away to comic book store retailers.

We did this at a 1993 Diamond Comics Distributors retail show – a few months after the industry was stunned by the announcement that six of Marvel’s top artists were forming their own company called Image Comics. The resulting rumors that we might be planning to form our own super group was irresistible. This was the beginning of what would be called The Self-Publishing Movement. The craziness that followed can best be summed up by this quote from Colleen:

“There was a period of nearly three years where we couldn’t go to a convention without being mobbed. We would start at 9 in the morning and we couldn’t get away to eat – we couldn’t get away to go to the bathroom. We’d get a short break for dinner, then rush back to the hotel bar or up to Dave’s suite and sign autographs and draw sketches for retailers until 3 or 4 in the morning.”

We spent hours together on the road and in hotels, at restaurants, and at convention booths. We talked about making comics and selling them. We had radical ideas about owning and controlling our own work. I remember very specific conversations about trying to change the retailing model of comic book stores from periodical collectables to that of replaceable stock – i.e. our trade books.

Self-publishing pretty much started with Cerebus and Elfquest in the late 70s. The success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brought about visions of fame and fortune. Some of the indie cartoonists in those heady days, lead by Scott McCloud, got together and drafted a Creators Bill of Rights. By the time The Self-Publishing Movement began, Comics – the community and the industry – was poised for anything. Hundreds, if not thousands of artists picked up their pens and had a go at making their own books. At the height of the movement, self-published titles made up 17% of the comics market.

As I looked around the showroom at this year’s SPX, filled with hundreds of dedicated, enthusiastic indie comics creators working in every genre and every possible medium, I thought it might be fun to look back at those roots.

When I asked Larry Marder to write about it, he responded this way:

“Sure, I'd be glad to toss my 2 cents into this topic. This is a weird time anyway — you, Terry, and Sim returning to publishing with new projects and me returning to Beanworld, my only comic project. I personally do believe there is a direct line from today's creators backwards to our hopes and dreams in the 80s and 90s…but what a circuitous path!”

As I read the essays coming in, I’m reminded how much fun we had analyzing the industry and the comics community, and making up rules as we went along. But I’m also reminded how difficult it was. Our credo was to own and control your work. Something that isn’t as easy as you might think.

I hope you enjoy this series of guest blogs:

Stephen Weiner (101 Graphic Novels, The Will Eisner Companion)

Rick Veitch - Part 1, Part 2 (Brat Pack)

Larry Marder - Part 1, Part 2 (Bean World)

Joshua Smeaton (Haunted)

Collen Doran - Part 1, Part 2 (A Distant Soil)

Diana Schutz (Dark Horse Comics)

Terry Moore (Strangers In Paradise)

Craig Thompson (Blankets, Habibi)

Success With Glamourpuss

2012-01-06T00:30:00.005Z

Reproduction of panel from The Heart of Juliet Jones by Stan Drake (7 August 1956)
Glamourpuss #19 (May 2011)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from the QRD interview with Dave Sim, February 2011)
...glamourpuss [sells] around 2,700 copies every other month...

(from Now I'll Ask You One... With The Kitchen Bros, April 2011)

...my idea of success with Glamourpuss is really just being able to keep doing it. I'm reading Howard Chaykin: Conversations right now from University Press of Mississippi (which I got because they printed my interview with Howard from 1974 -- the earliest one in the book. So props for my 18-year-old-self for that!) and he mentions a couple of times that he's working in a field where the audience wants big muscle-bound guys beating each other up and he wants to draw a pretty girl talking on the telephone. That's it exactly. There's really no experience like flipping through Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and hitting The Right Photograph that just hits that same hot button with Al Williamson blond hair, Stan Drake eye make-up, Alex Raymond horizontal stripes, Neal Adams leather textures or whatever it is. I GET TO do this picture! ME! I GET TO! And then being able to read and re-read and re-re-read something like the May to September '56 Heart Of Juliet Jones 'Larry and Andy Hone' sequence both for the unconscious foreshadowing of the car accident and re-creating Stan Drake's panels. Yesterday was the August 7 third panel which is basically a landscape and a car with all of the detail filled in to black or just GONE. Putting that side-by-side with a 1960 photocopy from Syracuse University with the same mid-afternoon outdoor light patterns and shadows. And working huge: 250% of the printed size. Took most of Wednesday and a good part of Thursday. Never want to do it again but there it is. I did it! Me! It's very peculiar, no one wants to talk about these guys, no one wants to work in their styles in black and white...

Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Weird Crime Theatre

2012-01-05T00:30:00.008Z

Weird Crime Theatre (2005)
By Kumar Sivasubramanian, Mulele Jarvis & Dave Sim

KUMAR SIVASUBRAMANIAN:

(by email, December 2011)

Back around fall 2005 Dave Sim kindly and graciously jammed on 3 pages of my (web)comic Weird Crime Theater; pencilling, inking, lettering, and ad-libbing Cerebus. The pages begin here, the full story begins here, and I discuss the collaboration here. We are still intending (as we have been from the start) to do a print version -- next year. (For real this time? Really?! Really?!??)

DAVE SIM:
(from The Blog & Mail, 10 October 2006)

I don't know if it's coincidental but starting this Blog & Mail has finally caused the mail to taper off dramatically. Maybe I've scared everyone back into the woods now that they can't be certain if parts of their letters are going to end up on the Internet. And I certainly apologize to everyone - including our next "contestant" - if that makes them uncomfortable. I really don't mean any offence by it. Most of the time it just seems like a good chance to publicize some things that might otherwise not get publicized.

Like Weird Crime Theater's first two issues which I just got in from Kumar Sivasubramanian (who I'll just be referring to as "Kumar" from now on for obvious reasons) in photocopied form. He called me a while back (a year ago? Year and a half ago?) from Australia where he lives to see if I was willing to let him use Cerebus in his second issue which, at the time, was going to be published by Dan Vado's Slave Labor Graphics (which was one of the reasons that I not only agreed but suggested that I draw Cerebus myself - I've never been published by Dan Vado before!). Kumar writes the book and does the digital lettering and Mulele Jarvis does the art and the digital sound effects.

...Anyway, it's always a fun experience to work on a cross-over cameo (Cerebus is in 14 panels over three pages) and then actually read it for the first time in context months later. As it says on the title page for issue 2: Cerebus pencilled, inked, lettered, adlibbed copyright, appears courtesy of and a very special thanks to Dave Sim. I basically wrote it as if it was a career move on Cerebus' part, alternating the dialogue with Cerebus' internal thoughts about the gig ("It's a minor role. But it's one that the critics and the other publishers are going to notice - you know, like Howard the Duck in Giant Size Man-Thing or John Travolta in Pulp Fiction").

Anyway, I guess Dan's decided to stand pat with what he's publishing right now at least for the time being and told Kumar to resubmit in another six months and feel free to show the project around to other publishers in the meantime. As Kumar writes "So, unfortunately, we're back to the submission - rejection - depression cycle for the time being" - which really seems to add a whole other layer of resonance to the gag. Not only can Cerebus only get a walk-on cameo these days the producers can't even get a distribution deal from a major studio! Makes Cerebus grateful for all his trade paperback royalties. Looks like Melissa will be back to waitressing for the time being.

Kumar's so desperate he's actually talking about self-publishing!

Anyway there's two issues "in the can" if any publishers out there are interested in taking a look over the next six months. THE Dan Vado at one time was VERY interested in the project. VERY interested.

Check it out at Weird Crime Theater or e-mail the guys at mail@weirdcrimetheater.com.

Comics Revue Magazine

2012-01-04T00:30:00.009Z

Tribute to Comics Revue magazine, Cerebus #295 (October 2003)
Art by Dave Sim & Chester Brown

Comics Revue was first published in 1986 and in 2011 it reached its 300th issue, making it the longest running independent comic book (beating the record of Cerebus!). It reprints classic comic strips, such as The Phantom by Lee Falk and Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray.

A Page 45 Review: Judenhass

2012-01-03T00:30:00.003Z

Page 45 in Nottingham is one of the best comics shops in the UK, and has been a strong supporter of Cerebus since it opened its doors in 1994. In the following review, Page 45 co-founder, Stephen L. Holland, details his reaction to reading Dave Sim's Judenhass. Buy your copy of Judenhass now from Page 45.

"The only thing to me more horrific than those final expressions was the all-too-human urge to look away. How dare I? How dare any of us?"

Fifty-six of the most important and affecting pages you will ever read for just £2-75/$4.00.

Never in my life have I read anything in any medium that has set my heart pounding so violently in my chest. It was a physical reaction to a mental stimulation without any sensationalist emotions, as I was concentrated (not concentrating) on every single panel of individual human beings reduced to husks. It will halt you to an extent that cinematic record, most certainly awful, actually doesn't.

It's a documentation and exploration of Judenhass: literally, a "Hatred of Jews", because as Dave Sim points out, the word "Anti-Semitism" is wholly inadequate to describe what the Jewish people and Jewish individuals have been subjected to over the past two millennia, in the form of an unremitting barrage of hatred, disdain, prejudice, smear campaigns, impediment and very real violence including wholesale slaughter -- and not just the once.

Within Sim contends that the Holocaust was not an unthinkable act, as we like to comfort ourselves, which came about because of a "one-in-a-million happenstance which could only have happened in Germany and only under the Nazi regime" but - given the historical proliferation, vehemence and tolerance of Anti-Semitism - it was, at some point, wholly inevitable. He makes his compelling case by presenting a series of quotations throughout history, some from otherwise respected quarters. President Harry Truman's pronouncements in particular had me aghast.

It begins inside the bleak barracks of Auschwitz in their full, freezing horror, and the gaunt faces of their skeletal occupants crammed onto stacks of hard, wooden racks, as Dave Sim, with calm and considered words, explains why he believes that every creative spirit should attempt such a work in their life-time, particularly in the US comicbook field built by so many Jewish creators who, but for a "geographical happenstance" might have been abused then slaughtered in concentration camps themselves. Also, why it's important that non-Jews like himself join the Jewish voices in remembering and recognising the horrors of Jew hatred across the years.

So this is where I'd beg teachers - particularly those educating students in history, religious or cultural studies - to please take a look at this book and consider not just stocking it in your school library, but using it as a set text during lessons. If pupils' attention spans are a concern, there are rarely more than a few sentences per page which inclines one to focus on each single defamation all the harder.

For our part, Page 45 will be sending a free copy out to each school library we've ever dealt with, in the hope that those librarians who've already recognised the merits then seen the benefits of comics to their literacy rates, can persuade the relevant teachers for us. I want this taught as a set text in as many schools as possible. My very grateful thanks to Pat Sullivan and co. at Diamond UK for helping me with this.

Parental warning: this website created for the comic by Jeff Tundis is harrowing.

Buy your copy of Judenhass now from Page 45.

Alan Moore

2012-01-02T00:30:00.007Z

Cerebus #239 (February 1999)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

ALAN MOORE:
(from A Correspondence From Hell with Dave Sim, Cerebus #220, July 1997)

I think something happened in the middle eighties. Basically, all of our dreams came true and turned out to have been small dreams after all. I’ve been involved with comics one way or another since my days on the peripheries of the British comics fan scene in the late sixties, and the dream was always pretty much the same, with minor seasonal variations. The idea was that we all recognised that comics were as noble and valid a form of art as anything else, that they didn’t have to be aimed solely at kids, and that if we were only given a chance, then everybody else would see this too. Comics would be given the serious public and critical attention that they deserved, and then, well, and then everybody would live happily ever after, I guess. Something like that. Mostly, our fantasies didn’t get that far. Virgins fantasising about first coitus, we only took our dream to the point of orgasm. We didn’t waste time on thinking about avoiding the wet spot afterwards or what we were going to say to each other in the morning. And now it’s morning.

The middle eighties was when comic books finally got laid. Media attention. Frank Miller in Rolling Stone, MTV. Maus cops the Pulitzer. Watchmen on University reading lists. The style and music press raving about Love & Rockets. Fuck, man, we had the "Cerebus-the-Aardvark Party" running in British elections in ‘88. Reason tottered on its throne. Everybody was on Top Of The Pops. We got everything we ever asked for, just as one often finds in real life or the better fairy stories, and just like in real life or the better fairy stories it turned out to be shit. For a few years there, everything we touched turned to gold, and now what the fuck are we going to do with all this gold? All this shit? With honest and sincere effort, we made comics what we wanted them to be: as popular as any other 20th-century medium. As respected as any other 20th-century medium. What on earth were we thinking?

The comics medium, its pure and platonic essence, remains unchanged by the above. It is only our relationship to it that has changed. Much of what provided the drive and motivation for that Darwinian struggle up from the gore-rich mud of the fifties to the evolutionary pinnacle of the eighties turns out to have been delusion. The beautiful room, to borrow a phrase from author Edmund White, is empty. Our Darwinian view of a steady but sure upwards progress and development has been superseded by catastrophe theory. Put crudely, catastrophe theory states that it really doesn’t matter how bloody evolved or fit for survival you are if you happen to be under a big enough mudslide, a falling comet, or a long enough ice age. With a big enough wipe-out, God or the DNA simply has no choice but to slowly rebuild by diversifying whatever few fragments of life managed to survive the destruction.

Our vision was limited. Our reason for doing Comic books... to elevate the medium to it’s proper cultural position…has disintegrated upon accomplishment under the weight of realising that the culture we were trying to find our place in is no culture at all. We need a new reason to carry on doing this stuff, a reason that is unconnected with fad, fashion, and the myopic short-term concerns of the industry. We need to create good comics with no social agenda, no goal that is based upon contemporary notions of success. In the course of a twenty-five-year (?) monsterpiece like Cerebus, you yourself have seen the comics industry shift and fluctuate more than most, and yet Cerebus has a constancy that suggests that the work itself is the most important thing, rather than the work viewed in relation to the comics field. In fifty years, I doubt that anybody will be much interested in, say, the relationship of Dave Sim’s Cerebus to the late-eighties comic-book self-publishing phenomenon. What they’ll be interested in is Cerebus itself; the fact that it was created, was brought to fruition over such an astounding period of time. They will be interested, in short, in the timeless elements of art that are undoubtedly in the work, rather than the work’s relationship to the comics field of its day.

The work itself is the only thing. From Hell was created with no thought to how the comics industry might receive it, or of any effect it might have on the medium. It had no agenda and simply was itself. Cerebus is the same, as are a number of the other fine titles that currently grace the medium. It seems to me that our only course of action can be to let the comic-book medium be its own motivation, so that our motivation is simply to produce good and enduring comic books of whatever stripe with no aspirations for the medium beyond that. The work will speak for itself; and if what it says has any profundity then it will endure. We should not concern ourselves with anything further.

From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell is available to buy from Top Shelf Productions.

Please Consider Signing The Petition

2012-01-01T00:30:00.034Z

As at 31st December 2011, 319 people have signed the petition confirming that they do not believe Dave Sim is a misogynist. Whether you agree or disagree with Dave Sim's wider views, please consider showing your support for one of the comics medium's most unique talents by signing the petition. Some of the people who already have are:

Stephen R Bissette (81):
Cartoonist, writer, fellow Spirit of Independence traveler, longtime CEREBUS reader, TABOO co-creator/co-creator/publisher/co-publisher who was originally bankrolled by Dave, and artist who owes a debt of thanks to Dave.

Michael Peterson (90):
Dave Sim has been an inspiration for over ten years of my life - and I most decidedly do not believe that he is a misogynist, an opinion I can hold after fully reading his essays and correspondence, and in contradiction to vague smear comments of all varieties.

Tyrone Biljan (91):
Dave has been and continues to be a great guy to me personally. He's never talked negatively about women in my presence.

Suley Fattah (100):
Dave has always been a gentleman whenever my wife and I met up with him.

Amanda Meadows (102):
Huge fan slash woman. If he feels this is necessary than so do I.

Thadeus Zebroski (110):
I appreciate the medium of comic art and especially the work Dave Sim has done in Cerebus. While he has been critical of feminist ideas I don't believe Dave Sim is a misogynist.

Paul Weil (116):
Criticism does not denote fear or hatred...

John W. Hacker (119):
I've had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Sim several times over the years at different conventions. I found him to be a pleasant and intelligent fellow who was very interested in talking to the public about any number of subjects. Dave and I have vastly different views on politics, religion and several other subjects. While he does have very strong opinions about women and women's roles I'm convinced that the man is not a misogynist.

Gary Spencer Millidge (122):
Writer/artist, Strangehaven
I think if Dave Sim was a misogynist then he wouldn't have any trouble admitting it. So I don't believe he is. I even looked up what it meant.

Mel Smith (132):
I don't believe Dave Sim is a misogynist " in fact just the opposite. I believe Dave Sim has stood for nothing more than pure fucking artistic genius since day one in 1977! I have seen Dave fight for many, many, many people in and out of the comics family and to think some turds would treat a man of his grace this way makes me sick. I am proud to call Dave Sim my friend, mentor, and idol without whom I would never had published Gumby Comics or any other projects for that matter. Respectfully - Mel Smith

Dave Fisher (135):
I met Dave several years ago, and actually did some work for him before reading even a single page of Cerebus (he says sheepishly). His reputation preceded him of course, but IMO is ridiculously exaggerated. Dave is a thoroughly decent, stand-up human being. I have since read some Cerebus, but more than anything my opinion has been formulated by several challenging & stimulating sit-down conversations with Dave at his home. If I believed that Dave was truly a misogynist, I would find him loathesome and not waste my time, any more than he wants to waste his time and energy engaging disagreeable narrow-minded people who despise him. Sim has some very, very strong opinions, and I don't agree with all of them, but I do believe my own world view is better informed and sharpened for having his challenging thoughts and opinions expressed to me without apology or fear. Do I believe Dave has strong opinions against feminism Absolutely! Do I believe he hates women No, I honestly don't believe that to be true.

Stephen L Holland (168):
Owner, Page 45 comics shop, Nottingham, UK
...no, I do not believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist and I have nothing but contempt for those ignorant and illiterate few who have caused such a disproportionate stirr/tsunami amounting to character assassination over the last fifteen years.

James Owen (170):
Colleague and Friend. Dave and I disagree about many things, but I do not believe he is a misogynist. I realized that the reasons I have not signed the petition to this point have more to do with my differences with others on the periphery than they have to do with Dave. And were I to be asked in person what he asked for in his letter, as his colleague, I would not decline to support him. If it was presented to me at face value that he needed the support of his friends, I would not decline to have his back. Because whether or not Dave is still my friend, I am still his.

Logan DeAngelis (224):
President of ComiXpress.com, a long time Cerebus reader, and admirer of Dave and his works.

Brian K. Smith (229):
Comics fan and self publisher of small-press comics. To see one of our mediums greatest geniuses treated so disrespectfully, and to have one of comics greatest achievements swept under the rug is embarrassing. I've always loved comics since I was a kid because of the no-rules freedom of expression they offer. Too bad so many don't see it that way. Fuck them, I still do.

James Loh (230):
As a kid growing up reading comic books, Cerebus showed me what the medium was capable of, and as I've grown older, how few creators, at least in the mainstream, rise to the challenge. I do not believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist/hates women, and I find no evidence of this in any of his writings. People have inaccurately described a very talented man clearly and concisely laying out his opinions as being hateful, when I would argue that Sim's opinions have been expressed without any malice, or emotive statements. You may disagree with him, you may STRONGLY disagree with him, but to respond with such anger as to label a man a misogynist is discrimination in itself; to hate a person for their difference of opinion.

John Garvin (276):
Labels like this, whether applied to Dave Sim or anyone else, are politically-correct bullshit attempts to censor freedom of thought, let alone freedom of speech. Cerebus, probably more than any other comic, has had the greatest impact on me as a creator and artist, and Sim should not be marginalized just because his views on gender, cosmology or ??? piss off the intelligentsia who are currently in vogue. Shame on everyone who wants to ignore 300 issues of complex storytelling because they deem the author "unclean."

Bill Willingham (282):
Writer of Fables and other books and stories.

Terry Phelps (288):
Dave Sim is not a misoginist, he's just made an in-depth and fascinatingly idiosyncratic stand on the issue of the dark side of feminism. Let us remember that feminism is a political movement. It is not "women", and it is not a vunerable victim to be protected from "brutish men". As a man who came of age during the birth of 70's femisim, Sim's courageous and heartfelt position is a unique testament to the social effects of a widespread and oft-irrational social movement that sought to disenfranchise talented young men like himself. Those who criticise Sim ought to do a self-check. You can go to one "women's studies' lecture and call yourself a feminist. Cheap entry. What Sim has done - whether you subscribe to every detail in Sim's worldview or not - is to compose a highly detailed and thought-through philosophical response to an overwhelmingly more powerful political movement than his lone voice. Regarding such a unique viewpoint, one is hardly going to agree with every aspect. But this effort will rank as one of the first sustained, complex responses in the postfeminist world to the unaknowledged evils of the feminist socio-political machine. I can't pretend to understand or agree with Sim's religious views. But I'm sure his social commentary will inform generations to come.

Kevin Eastman (294):
Co-creator Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
A proud friend and a huge fan!

The Scariest Comic Book Moments Ever

2011-12-31T00:30:00.002Z

Cerebus #136 (July 1990)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

BRIAN DOUGLAS AHERN:

(from the 2010 article at Prism Comics: Part 1, Part 2)

My final offering of the scariest moments in comics comes from Dave Sim's series Cerebus, in the final installment of the extraordinary Jaka's Story. The story ran from issues 114 to 136, ended in 1990 and spanned nearly two years in the telling. Unlike in my previous examples, I will be sparse in the details on this one. Suffice it to say that the journey of the titular character is not an easy one. We follow her in her day-to-day life with her well-meaning but relatively clueless husband Rick in their isolated existence with scattered encounters with their reserved grocer and demonstrative neighbor. Cerebus the aardvark arrives and injects himself into Jaka's life in the hopes of winning back her love, something we know will never happen. The story is peppered with flashbacks from Jaka's past, written in lengthy and lurid prose in emulation of an author from a long ago time. The stretches of prose are accompanied by exquisite illustrations by Sim and Gerhard, making the comic appear to be regularly interrupted by a late 1800s storybook. The flashbacks at first seem intrusive and unwieldy, but in very short order draw the reader in, much like any good ghost story told in an intimate setting.

The matriarchal society of Cerebus's world forces itself into Jaka's life just as she begins to find herself and she, her husband, and her neighbor are attacked by female soldiers and imprisoned during a time when Cerebus, the only one who could have protected them, is gone on an errand. Jaka's stay in prison is arduous and painful, and we suffer it with her. At the story's climax in issue #136, both Jaka and Rick, the husband from whom she had been separated during her time behind bars, are brought before the villain of the picture, a woman known only as Mrs. Thatcher. This woman knows something about Jaka's past that was not covered in the lavish flashbacks and she intends to bring it to light.

What follows is one the best, and most intense, examples of comic book storytelling ever depicted. Using every aspect of the craft, from facial expressions to gestures to sound effects right down to the very size and shape of the lettering in the dialogue balloons, Dave Sim leads us down a path of suspense and growing unease as he has his villain do her work. She speaks, she has her massive female guard prevent Jaka from doing the same, and Mrs. Thatcher addresses Rick while her words do what all the best - and worst - horror stories do. They get inside your head.

Upon realization of what he's been told, Rick, ever the loving and doting husband, crumbles and is utterly destroyed, and we are undone along with him. Even Rick being escorted to freedom is shattering to see, and the final pages, illustrated with no captions or dialogue whatever, shake the reader to the core. As to the content of those pages, of Thatcher's scheming, and Jaka's secret, I will say no more. Pick up the story and read it for yourself. Just brace yourself beforehand.

Following the conclusion of that storyline, Sim released T-shirts which read "I survived Jaka's Story". The statement could not have been more telling. And yes, I bought one. Those who had not followed the story thought the shirt was in reference to its length, or the extensive use of prose pages within the text. I knew better. I had followed the story of this remarkable young woman, slowly fallen in love with her, and bore witness to her emotional destruction. That, my friends, is scary.

T-Shirt Design: I Survived Jaka's Story (1990)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

Howard The Duck

2011-12-30T00:30:00.002Z

Howard The Duck #8 (Marvel Comics, November 1980)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from an interview in The Comics Journal #82, July 1983)

...that was Marvel's serpent-in-the-garden phone call. Marvel is well known for their serpent-in-the-garden phone calls. Just when you get set on what you're going to do, Marvel phones up and asks if you want to work for them... For me it was a phone call from Bill Mantlo, saying that they had decided to do try-out pieces for Howard The Duck to be used as frontispieces, and they were paying real money for them, and it could be whatever I wanted to do. "How Dave Sim would handle Howard The Duck." And I did that for the experience of it, for the exposure; I mean, nothing succeeds like Marvel in fan's eyes. Like being able to tell them I did a story for Epic now. For a lot of them it's like you really exist now. Before you were off in a Never-Never Land. I think it was after that that Lynn Graeme called and said that Bill Mantlo had quit Howard after I had done the page (just a coincidence) and that they liked the page I did. Would I be interested in writing it? And at the time I had just decided to go monthly with Cerebus. If the phone call had come two months before I would have thought, "Well, great, I'll write Howard The Duck one month and do Cerebus the other month." They didn't have any interest in me drawing it, which - this has been a lot of the drawback with a lot of places. If you want to get to Dave Sim you best bet is to ask him to draw something for you and tell him that you're not crazy about his writing since I've heard the other side so many times.

I never really actually "almost wrote" Howard The Duck. I decided against it after about five seconds.

A-Z of Awesomeness

2011-12-29T00:30:00.007Z

C Is For... Captain Britain Cuddling Cerebus
from the A-Z of Awesomeness (2009)
Art by Neill Cameron

NEILL CAMERON:

My name’s Neill Cameron, and I make a living by writing and drawing stuff. Why not go and look at some of it? My Mecha Action Schoolgirl Comedy Opus Mo-Bot High appeared in weekly children’s comic The DFC, and I’ve recently been working on some comics stuff for Panini, the BBC and a couple of educational publishers. Anyway, a recent rash of deadlines had left me feeling a little tired and burned out, so I decided I needed to just draw something for myself. Something fun. Something… Awesome. Which brings us here.

This project was inspired by my friend and fellow creator Garen Ewing, (whose book The Rainbow Orchid is being published in a couple of months by Egmont UK and is going to be absolutely fantastic, incidentally). Last year Garen did an A-Z of Comic Strip Characters, drawing a character each day based on suggestions from Facebook. I thought this looked like a fun challenge, and decided to give it a go myself, but widening out the remit from just comic strips to characters from the wider world of pop cultural entertainment: film, animation, TV, literature… anywhere, really, so long as it meets the basic requirement of being AWESOME. I decided it would be fun to encourage people to include imaginative alliteration in their suggestions. As you will see, this rapidly got completely, spectacularly out of hand. It ended up being a lot of fun, with over 600 people joining the Facebook group and coming up with all manner of insane suggestions every day.

You can now buy poster-sized prints of the A-Z of Awesomeness, with all profits being donated to SSNAP (Support for the Sick Newborn And their Parents), a charity which supports the Intensive Special Care Nurseries (Neonatal Unit) at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. It's a place and a team of people to which I owe more than I could ever hope to repay in this lifetime, but maybe a few quid from selling some silly posters will make a start.

Neill Cameron is a UK-based writer and comics artist who has illustrated projects ranging from Doctor Who, Thor and Transfomers to Shakespeare and comics about traffic safety. His first graphic novel, the giant robot school comedy epic Mo-Bot High, is available now as part of the DFC Library series. Neill is currently working on new projects combining dinosaurs, pirates, monkeys and numerous other Things That Are Awesome for new UK weekly children's comic The Phoenix, launching on 7th January 2012.

Following Cerebus With David Petersen

2011-12-28T00:30:00.000Z

Cover art for Following Cerebus #12 (2011)
Art by Dave Sim & David Petersen

DAVID PETERSEN (MOUSE GUARD):

(from David Petersen's Blog, 23 August 2011)

Back in 2007 I was asked by Dave Sim to do an interview for his magazine Following Cerebus. In the process of the interview by correspondence Dave also asked if I'd like to do a Cerebus/Mouse Guard jam cover. Well after several years, the issue has been released and I can share the process of the cover art (which I now cringe at in terms of inking & coloring crudeness).

Dave sent over the inks for his piece. The idea he had was to have Cerebus waking up to find guardmice climbing on him. I told Dave to ink his piece in fully, that instead of jaming on the layout, just to finish his own drawing and inks, so the styles would only look different between the characters, not from the top to bottom of the image.

I drew & inked my mice on a sheet of bristol on the lighbox with a printout of Dave's inks behind it. That way I was able to match up the contact points where Saxon's sword is touching Cerebus' nose, the mouse feet touch Cerebus' belly etc. It also allowed me to get the shadows to fall in the right spots on the fence and Cerebus himself.

I merged the inked pieces together in photoshop and edited out the inkwork where the two pieces overlapped. Then I colored the piece. The colors look a bit over-saturated and over textured to my eye now, but I do remember at the time wanting to do less texture on Cerebus than the mice to push the idea of two different artistic styles coming together.

Frank Thorne

2011-12-27T00:30:00.005Z

Red Sonja & Ghita by Frank Thorne

DAVE SIM:
(from Dave Sim On Parody & Copyright, Following Cerebus #3, February 2005)

Frank Thorne was very enthusiastic about the Red Sophia and Geet-a parodies, which meant a great deal to me at the time, because he was such a huge success at the time with Red Sonja. Just completely over-the-top in sending me colour sketches and fan letters. I can't even imagine how much mail he must have been getting at the time. I think he singled me out for a little more that an average amount of attention because I had done an interview with him for CANAR back when he was working on Korak, Son Of Tarzan at DC in the pre-Sonja days. He was always seen as the poor man's Joe Kubert, so I think he appreciated my level of interest and, certainly, I took a lot of inspiration back in 1978-79 from the fact that an artist who had been seen as a second-stringer and an also-ran could suddenly have a hit after years of being a marginal figure in the field. [Laughs] It never happened for me, but it did help to keep me going that it was at least possible.

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to issue 3 in Swords Of Cerebus Vol 1, 1981)
A struggling professional needs Frank Thorne - be they elf or aardvark. I mean, Frank loves everything... without qualification or inhibition. Phone the guy to talk and he laughs. He laughs when you say hello, he laughs when you ask him if he's rich yet. He laughs when you tell him you haven't got money for groceries and your mother needs an operation (this last part is made up of course). Frank sends you sketches. Bizarre little Pantone and flair jobbies. I got a sketch when I sent him #1. I got a sketch when I sent him #3. I got a cover for #7 just for sending him xeroxes of the first ten pages. I got another sketch when I won the Alley Award. The most recent sketch was for the Ghita parody in #19. I still have to do Son of Tomahawk, Mighty Sampson and Dr. Guy Bennet (who?). By the end of the decade, I'll be able to wallpaper the cat's room with Frank Thorne artwork... and yes, it is true, the wizard was drawn so he looked like Frank.

Buy Frank Thorne books at Fantagraphics Books, Dynamite Entertainment and Dark Horse.

Cerebus #7 (December 1978)
Art by Frank Thorne

Cerebus #1-12

2011-12-26T00:30:00.003Z

Cerebus #1-12 (December 1977 to October 1979)
Art by Dave Sim, except #7 by Frank Thorne

The following review of Cerebus #1-12 by Fantagraphics Books publisher Kim Thompson appeared in The Comics Journal #52 in December 1979. It was the first major review the Cerebus series received and The Comics Journal was not known for handing out praise lightly.

GOOD AARDVARK ART

High points in comics art frequently have odd geneses. Carl Bark's magnum opus sprang from the use of established characters from the Disney canon, one of the most limiting and repressive environments imaginable. George Herriman's masterpiece began as a postscript to an otherwise not terribly distinguished strip called The Family Upstairs. And Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's finest creation originated as a near throwaway in a moribund comic, Amazing Adult Fantasy.

From such unpromising beginnings sprang Uncle Scrooge, Krazy Kat, and Spider-Man, three high-water marks in comics history. It should therefore come as no great surprise that a strip mingling a funny-animal protagonist and a backdrop begun as a line-for-line pastiche of Roy Thomas and Barry Smith's Conan should have developed into one of the best comics of the late 70s. Cerebus The Aardvark has surmounted its origins, both stylistic and thematic, to stand on its own two (rather tubular) feet as a delightful and admirable work of art, and is busily propelling its creator, Dave Sim, to the very forefront of artists currently working in comics. If he is not already recognised as one of tomorrow's masters, it is, I think, because he is not busy writing trendy, opportunistically "relevant" stories or filling his pages with semi-legible, self-conscious stylistic posturing. Instead, he has chosen to put his ever-increasing craftsmanship in the service of telling a straightforward and articulate manner, highly entertaining and witty stories featuring well-developed and affecting characters. Cerebus is (and I do not say this lightly) a true heir to Carl Barks's duck stories. What Barks and Sim have in common, and what so few other creators, particularly nowadays, seem to have, is honesty vis-a-vis their creations. Barks wrote straight from the heart; Sim, once he'd shucked off the initial parodic shallowness in Cerebus, seems similarly sincere. It is tempting to say that at some point characters "take on a life of their own," but that would be doing their creators an injustice. What people like Barks and Sim have is the sensitivity to develop an almost organic feel for their characters that is far removed from (although not totally incompatible with) coldly intellectual manipulation. Gerber never succeeded with Howard The Duck, for instance, because he was insistent on using him to make points in his stories, and worse, making certain that the readers were fully aware of that he was using them to make those points. Claremont hasn't succeeded in doing it in the X-Men because the devices are too obvious and too calculated. Like good dancing, good characterisation has to be virtually sublimated into the subconscious - if you're still counting "one, two, three" and concentrating on your feet, you've got a was to go.

Despite lapses early on in the canon (such as the second issue, where Cerebus stabs a defeated opponent for a gag - a deliciously blackhearted gag I would have relished in any other context, but here a jolting bit of nastiness), Cerebus and his various supporting characters have acquired dimension. This is doubly remarkable given the fact that most of them (Elrod, Red Sophia, the Cockroach) began as parodies: once Sim had turned the originals inside out, he found that the resultant contortion had its own charm and took off from there. Sophia is still a trifle uncomfortable (probably not least because of the moderately unhealthy nature of her Marvel counterpart and inspiration), but Elrod's portentously amiable goofball persona has divorced itself from its parodic aspects and is no longer a spoof of Elric (except visually), but an original and appealing character.

And, of course, Cerebus himself is a delight. Tempering his initial sullenness with a wicked sense of wit, Sim has evolved Cerebus into a sterling protagonist, with a sharply defined personality, bringing to light traits both positive (keen intelligence, humor, persistence, inventiveness, and an underlying - sometimes far under indeed - ethic) and negative (greed, sarcasm, drunkenness, rudeness, and a coldness toward everyone he meets, usually laced with a deep contempt) and usually staying within his own boundaries. Sim has been coy about how and why an aardvark is doing a Howard the Duck number on Conan's world (his attempts at providing a theological background for aardvarks in #5 and #7are not, I think, to be taken quite seriously), and it doesn't really matter any more than what a dog, mouse and genderless cat are doing beaning each other with bricks in a surrealistic landscape. Sim has wisely kept the "Why... y-y-you're and aardvark!" stuff to a minimum, forsaking it altogether where it would impede the story flow.

Quite apart from the great charm of Sim's characters, the efficient command of of the comics language evident throughout the series is one of its major assets. Sim displays that rarest and most precious of talents: a clean, uncluttered, pleasant story-telling style that is neither overly flashy (the more excessive Byrne jobs), stilted (Gulacy), stolid (Starlin), or hackneyed (the Buscema Brothers [John and Sal]). The layouts of Cerebus provide an object lesson in fluid narrative: viewing the page is like being navigated through busy streets by a skilled driver.

Sim uses the vocabulary of comics with such lucidity and craft that the techniques, most of which are frequently paraded about with no good reason (when not directly misused) by lesser talents, are perfectly integrated. Sim knows exactly when to use split panels, tilted and odd-shaped panels, silhouettes, triptychs, zooms, and does so so expertly that these techniques blend into the fabric of the narrative to create a seamless tapestry of images.

Well, almost seamless. Sim is capable of flubs as well as anyone else. For instance, the rooftop sequence in #11, it is never quite clear when and how the Cockroach gets down to the street; the rest of the sequence however, flows so smoothly that I didn't notice the lapse until the fourth reading. When the merchant wakes up on page 11 of that same story, Sim reverses viewpoints at an inopportune moment: the penultimate panel on the preceding page establishes Cerebus stage right, Merchant stage left; in the first panel on page 11, Cerebus is startled by a voice coming from stage right; and in panel three, the Merchant and Cerebus are again in their original positions vis-a-vis one another.. Where Sim blows it is panel one, where the reversed angle gives the impression that Cerebus is being startled by a voice from behind, ie in a room different from the Merchant's.

But these and other weaknesses are, given Sim's youth, quite pardonable. Better to commend him for his adeptness at sustaining mood with abstract and semi-abstract renderings in the background, for example. Smith kept the reader informed as to Conan's whereabouts by ceaselessly littering the decor with elaborate architechure, sculptures, and decorative wallpaper. Sim, aware that this more often than not diverts the eye from the basic flow of the action, frequently draws page after page set against a background composed of vey simple designs - mostly simple pen strokes - after establishing the decor in the opening shot. Despite some goofs that crop up here, too (the 'marble patterns' during the fight with the Panrovian in #9 are coarse and distracting, for instance), this technique serves Sim, who can indicate a persistent rain storm merely by filling the page with vertical lines, very well indeed.

Sim's rendering, originally a curious scuffle between Smith-pastiche and his own nascent style, is becoming more efficient and less derivative. There is still a curious stylistic clash between Cerebus, who is deliniated with the clean-cut clarity of an animation cell, and the rest of the book, but it works remarkably well, and in fact facilitates continuity by making the protagonist stand out graphically (although an argument could be made that when the protagonist is only three-foot, furry, long-snouted character in the series, one does not really have to go out of one's way to make him stand out graphically). In the latest issue, Sim has adopted the use of zipatone and seems to have gone a little nuts with it. Aside from a personal prejudice in favour of artists who can do their rendering without cutting and pasting dot designs on their pages, I think it has lost him a bit of his individuality, although I suspect that practise will allow Sim to master the technique and add it to his repertoire of comics tools. Issue 12 is a bit dark and muddy here and there, thus graphically inferior to its immediate predecessors, but it shows a considerable amount of promise.

One very unfortunate aspect of the book is the covers. Sim's gift for comics art does not extend to cover art; they are neither effective action scenes nor effective parodies of such, and are mostly awkward and ill-conceived. (There are also commercially not very sound: why does #12, which features Elrod, have a cover illustration of Cerebus fighting two anonymous goons?). In addition to this, the colour separations are simply awful; sloppily cut and with no attention paid to angling the screens so as to avoid moires. If Cerebus is not selling as well as it might be, much of the credit must go to its unappealing exteriors.

But I recommend Cerebus heartily, warts and all. And those who scrutinise the alternative press in search of future masters, and then delight in charting their progress, would do well to follow Cerebus as well. Because Sim is here to stay - if we are fortunate.

Your Card...

2011-12-25T00:30:00.001Z

Your Card... (2006)
Art by Dave Sim, based on Mr. A by Steve Ditko

Cerebus #301 (?)

2011-12-24T00:30:00.014Z

Cerebus #301 (?)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from an interview, The Coast, 20 September 2010)

The only way I would revisit the character - and here's a Coast exclusive for you - is if I was to do a miniseries or graphic novel, Cerebus: The Afterlife, which I have a few mental notes floating around in my head about. I might have to wait a few years. People were squeamish enough about seeing Cerebus in his old age, not wanting to think about getting - or being - old. Speculations on an afterlife would really push some hot buttons, I think.

New Releases: December 2011 & January 2012

2011-12-23T00:30:00.009Z

Glamourpuss #23
by Dave Sim
Aardvark-Vanaheim
$3.00

It's the knock-down, drag-out battle to the death you've been waiting for! High Fashion models versus Zootanapuss & Bunny, The One Rabbit Wrecking Crew! Only one faction will survive and the other will be exiled forever from the pages of glamourous! Subtitled "Crisis on Infinite Aardvark-Vanaheims," you won't want to miss a minute of the action in this multi-part thriller which will change the shape of the Aardvark-Vanaheim Universe for all time (or at least until sales are, once again, in the toilet) - it's like the classic two-part Hulk versus Thing only better because all the action takes place in smartly tailored clothing and features a really cute bunny! The history of Photorealism in Comics section continues with the events of September 6, 1956.

On sale: 25 January 2012
Available from your local comics shop

Cerebus Archive #17
by Dave Sim
Aardvark-Vanaheim
$4.00

An examination of Quack! #3 (1977) cover featuring The Beavers and what seemed to be, at the time a real breakthrough for Dave Sim and his brand new weekly newspaper strip. Excerpts from Quack! publisher Mike Friedrich’s, letters of the time demonstrates that Sim was oscillating between wanting to be a good team player at Star*Reach and not wanting to have his creativity messed with by an editor/publisher. His views have changed substantially since that time. Find out how.

On sale: 27 December 2011
Available from ComiXpress

Master Of The Balletic Arts

2011-12-22T00:30:00.003Z

Doctor Strangeroach Commission (2006)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

(from The Blog & Mail, 21 November 2006)

...Ger brought in Sean M's commission request for a Doctor Strangeroach, a la Steve Ditko. I told Ger to give him the number here and I'd talk to him about it which I did just a little while ago. He's one of those really good art collectors who likes to give artists a lot of latitude. Major Steve Ditko fan so I wanted to know what his level of compulsion was. I don't remember a lot about Dr. Strange, but I did remember that they changed his costume pretty quickly after he first appeared in Strange Tales #110. It was sort of a subdued blue number to begin with. Sean mentioned that the amulet used to look different, that it actually had something sculpted on it, a figure or something. I had definitely forgotten that part and wished I had some reference to check (yes, I know, if I was hooked up to the Internet I could just Google it and there it would be). He told me about another artist who's working on a commission for him where it's going to have all these giant disembodied floating eyes with devouring maws. Because we're talking about Steve Ditko, I instantly get a definite mental image. Sean said that he had mentioned it to his wife (who shares his love of comics, lucky guy) and she said, "How could an eye have a devouring maw?" I think you have to have grown up with Steve Ditko for that to be second nature. So, all right, now I'm getting the range and this was what I was interested in - Steve Ditko's way with drawing otherworldly dimensions. Nobody else even comes close. And he's going to give me the latitude to do whatever I want in that way, so specific preference for the earliest Doctor Strange over the later Doctor Strange.

(Via FPI Blog and AW Yeah Comics!)

Mrs Henrot-Gutch

2011-12-21T00:30:00.010Z

The first appearance of Mrs Henrot-Gutch, Cerebus #57 (December 1983)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(on 'Giles' cartoons, The Comics Journal #100, July 1985)

They're just one-panel cartoons, but it's this English family, it's been running for, God, like 25 or 40 years. Maybe even longer than that. And, one of the best characters in the strip is the grandmother character. And when I was trying to think of a mother-in-law for Cerebus, it had to be the most difficult, grotesque, belligerent, obnoxious, self-centered individual I could think of, and she kept popping into my mind. So, well, what the hell, I guess that's Cerebus's mother-in-law.

Read more about Carl Giles (1916-1995) and his cartoons at Giles Cartoons and the British Cartoon Archive.

Lost Kisses

2011-12-20T00:30:00.003Z

Extract from Lost Kisses #11 (2009)
Story and words by Brian John Mitchell, art by Dave Sim

The complete Lost Kisses #11 is available to read as a free downloadable pdf. Also available to read online are Lost Kisses #1-10 by Brian John Mitchell.

What Ever Happened To...?

2011-12-19T00:30:00.004Z

Cerebus vs The X-Men
Art by Dave Sim & Paul Smith

The proposed Cerebus / X-Men cross-over of the 1980s unfortunately never got beyond the initial planning stages between Dave Sim and X-Men artist Paul Smith. The relevant pages from Dave Sim's production notebooks can be viewed here...

Back & Forth: Steve Bissette & Dave Sim

2011-12-18T00:30:00.015Z

In December 2010 and January 2011, Dave Sim invited comics writer/artist Steve Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant) to discuss his experiences in the field of self-publishing and the battle for creator's rights. A wide-ranging 15-part chat ensued: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Highlights from the discussion include:

DAVE SIM:

(on creator responsibility - part 1)

I was curious as to whether you had come to any definitive conclusions about the whole Spirits/Creator's Rights experience now that we're far enough past it to achieve a species of overview. Personally, I think there should have been more emphasis on Creator's Responsibility: that you have to deliver what you promise when you promise it and that the good results flow from that. I had to laugh at Erik Larsen's sheer disbelief at the outright lies he got when trying to work with other creators on Savage Dragon. That seemed the core misapprehension on my part: that if you created an environment and assisted people in that environment they'll respond to that be being reliable. Living the Dream will overcome human lethargy and procrastination. But creativity is both an attractive and a repulsive fact in the creator's life because it devours your life. I work 12 hours a day six days a week. It's not hard to see how that would repel most people.

(on terminating his business links with Gerhard - part 3)
The split with Gerhard was, on his side, pretty acrimonious, although I'm not sure how much of that was a theatrical aspect of his credo "There's no problem too big that you can't run away from it." He wanted Absolutely Out and named a dollar figure that I accepted immediately -- can you imagine the grief I would take for haggling or even making a counter-offer? Probably not from Gerhard, but I think posterity would have judged me quite harshly.

(on brush techniques - part 5)
It really is something you can only teach effectively in person -- the "skating" verses "walking" quality of brush inking. Kids when they're learning to skate try, basically, walking on the ice. It's what they're familiar with. It takes a lot of practise to lose the fear of slipping and to understand what smooth and controlled slipping is like. It's the best analogy I've found for "fear of the brush".

(on his pre-Cerebus early work - part 8)
...if anyone showed me work as completely amateurish as what I was producing in 1972-73 and said, "Listen, this guy is thinking about dropping out of high school to do this for a living," I would seriously encourage him not to do that. And -- as it turned out -- I would have been completely wrong.

(on Tundra - part 9)
I think it was Larry Marder who pointed out that Kevin [Eastman, Tundra publisher] lost a lot of money on Tundra because he had never been a free-lancer and, consequently, paid a lot of big ticket advances figuring people would deliver and then got stiffed any number of times. The Image guys, with a freelancing background, knew that you make most, if not all the compensation "back end" to ensure the work is actually delivered.

(on compensating Gerhard - part 11)
As far as I know, Gerhard is the only background artist in the history of the medium to actually be credited as such and to be designated as co-creator... It was unprecedented [transferring to him 40% ownership of Aardvark-Vanaheim]... and I suspect that guys who have used background artists - Stan Drake on Heart Of Juliet Jones and Leonard Starr on On Stage - in a comparably lucrative situation would have said I was nuts.

(on Renegade Press - part 13)
Eclipse and A-V -- later Renegade -- published TOO MANY TITLES and died of cash flow starvation. Deni went out of business owing Preney $250,000 which -- oddly enough -- is about how much money they were short when they finally went out of business a few years back. I'm just saying. I never owed Preney anything because I kept the business side confined and kept well within my means.

Tyrant & Aardvark (from Cerebus #159, June 1992)
Art by Steve Bissette, Dave Sim & Gerhard
Auctioned for the benefit of the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund

Other 'Now I'll Ask You One' Conversations:
Dave Sim & Jimmy Gownley
Dave Sim & The Kitchen Brothers

The Animated Cerebus

2011-12-17T00:30:00.010Z

The Animated Cerebus Portfolio (1983)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

(from the introduction to The Animated Cerebus Portfolio, 1983)

It was last August when, after a tentative offer by an animation studio to look at any proposals for a Cerebus animated film, that I finally sat down and tried to picture what a Cerebus animated film would be like.

Actually, like a number of people I have talked to, I at first thought that High Society would make a good feature length animated film. Of course, that was before Elrod and Jaka and Lord Julius and the Cootie started popping up. I either had to abandon the idea of doing it as a film, or try to talk someone into printing up programs to hand out at the box office to explain who everyone was.

It was at this point that I decided the best course of action would be to write a story that took place before #1, which would avoid complicated introductions for the major characters or (shudder) new versions of their first appearance for the sake of filmic continuity (double shudder).

Well, I wandered around for a few weeks after that, complimenting myself on being such a clever chap. Yes sir, that was the best way to go. It would all take place before #1. From there I tried to start on a 'treatment'. A quick five or six paragraphs that would have every producer of animation who read it rolling in the aisles (or behind his desk). Something witty and at the same time poignant. Hilarious but thought provoking. It took me a could of weeks to figure out that those five or six paragraphs don't exist, which returned me to square one.

Then I thought of the idea of producing a portfolio of short vignettes that would appear in the film. Just quick little stories that would give people a clearer idea of what kind of a film it was I intended to make some day. I finally had a goal that was clear enough that I could sit down and give it a try.

So, there I sat tapping a pencil on the edge of the dining room table, trying to do a thing I absolutely hate trying to do: writing pictures.

A Well Equipped Bar

(view the animation online at Comicrazys)

Please don't read this until you've looked at the story... not that anyone would, but who knows? Somewhere out there, is some disturbed individual (a lot of them are Cerebus fans, you know) who upon opening this portfolio decided to read the fine print before he looked at the pictures. Well, whoever you are, this is your last warning. Don't read this until you look at the plates. Onward.

I started sifting through the Earth-Pig's past (he does have one, I just haven't spilled the cat all over the bean bag yet) going over locations and incidents. Naturally the one that came up the most frequently was 'the bar', 'the tavern', 'a corner table'.

I heard a joke some years ago (like, when I was ten) about two fellows having a bet that no one in the bar would dare drink the contents of the spittoon nearby. There is an elaborate description of each patron of the bar having a try. So and so tries and he barely tilts it up before he gets sick. So and so tries etc. etc. Finally one guys drinks it all down. and one of the first two fellows says, "that's amazing. How can you do that?" The answer is the punch line and for the life of me I can't remember it. But it was this story that my mind strayed to (as is its wont when forced to write pictures). I had this over-riding feeling that if I could just remember the punchline, I would have the ideal vignette. After twisting my limited grey matter this way and that I had a sudden burst of insight. The punch-line wasn't the key element. The key element was the profound chord that the words "drink the contents of the spittoon" strike in the human animal. I did a quick sketch of the first frames, then jotted down little notes like (2) looks left (3) looks right (4) tiptoeing. The next day I went in and drew it. One down.

Add One Mummified Bat

(view the animation online at Comicrazys)

It was Deni who suggested the idea for this one. Deni always suggests ideas when I'm chewing the drapes and the carpet and threatening to go out and drink myself into oblivion. Sometimes it works. "Why don't you do one about the time he was a magician's apprentice? Everyone wants to know about that." She was right, so I told her it was impossible and that I had already thought of that and why didn't she go somewhere and publish something.

Fortunately I had a mouthful of broadloom so it didn't come out clearly enough for her to take offence.

I thought about it tapping my pencil on the dining room table, picking broadloom fibres out of my teeth. I always pictured Magnus Doran's studio as one that Gene Day had drawn years ago for an animation sample. The picture was dominated by a bubbling cauldron, while the over-laid cells were of a magician gesturing over his head with his arms. Gene never took it any further and I always wondered what would have come out of that cauldron. I decided it would be a gaseous spirit like one in The Wizard of Id.

This story featured the youngest Cerebus I had drawn to date. Looks nice in a turtleneck, don't you think?

His First Sword

(view the animation online at Comicrazys)

I went through a number of ideas before I came up with this one. Again. Not much to say about it really.

I had recently seen a Fleischer Popeye cartoon that I recalled quite vividly from my days as a wee tad when I would watch an hour of Popeye every morning. All the action took place in a blacksmith shop as Popeye and Bluto competed in shoe-ing horses. So Bluto was very much on my mind as an archetype Blacksmith as I contemplated young Cerebus eagerly awaiting the completion of his first sword. It's also something of a comment on the mentality of those enamoured of articles of destruction. But primarily it is just another incident in the young earth-pig's life.

The cover was originally going to feature 'His Sixth Birthday', but I decided you weren't ready for that young an aardvark yet. Maybe in the next portfolio.

All of these vignettes happen before the opening credits in that grand and far-off dream of a one-hour special hovering in the back of my mind.

Most of it is still pretty hazy at this point, but one thing is for sure. It won't have a single heart-warming moment in it.

Take that, Walt.

Dave Sim, February 18, 1983
Kitchener, Ontario

Anything Goes!

2011-12-16T00:30:00.009Z

Anything Goes! #3 (Fantagraphics Books, March 1986)
Art by Neal Adams

DAVE SIM:
(from the essay 'Neal Adams, Niagara Falls & Other Forces Of Nature' in Following Cerebus #9, August 2006)

It's no stretch to say that for the wannabe photorealism school comic-book creators of my generation, Continuity Associates - 9 E. 48th Street: I think I could forget my own address sooner than forget that one - was like the Kennedy White House and King Arthur's Round Table combined. To be one of the Crusty Bunkers, working elbow-to-elbow with THE Neal Adams, learning from the master and, under his patronage, gaining entree into Marvel and DC, being handed plum commercial assignments - fanboy dreams were made of this. Of course, that's how it was seen by those of us who hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of ever being part of it. (I'd drift off to sleep picturing Neal Adams at his drawing board peering at the cover of Quack No.3. "This guy. Get me this guy on the phone. I want him here and working by the end of the week").

Quack! #3 (Star Reach Productions, 1977)
Art by Dave Sim & Steve Leialoha

Back issues of Following Cerebus are available from Win-Mill Productions.

Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch & Roy Thomas on Glamourpuss

2011-12-15T00:30:00.004Z

The 'Photo-Realism' School: Alex Raymond, Stan Drake, Al Williamson & Neal Adams
From Glamourpuss #1, 6 & 11
Art by Dave Sim

STEVE BISSETTE (Swamp Thing, Tyrant):

(from the Back & Forth discussion with Dave Sim)

My excitement at Glamourpuss when I saw the first issue (and thank you, too, for the special unsolicited mailing of the zombie cover issue; I never thanked you when you sent it, which was my bad) was the gobsmacking fact that you were (a) doing an essay on inking in comics form, and (b) you were teaching. Of course, you’d been actually doing that for a long time - I was among your most bone-headed students, remember? - but you didn’t see it as such. Clearly, The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (in all its incarnations and editions) was and is that, too. And a mighty fine, insightful teacher you’ve been in Glamourpuss, too. It was a pleasure to catch up last year on the whole run to date, and see where you took it (I don’t have a local comics shop, and finally just direct-ordered a set from your publisher and partners on this venture).

RICK VEITCH (Brat Pack, The One):
(from the Glamourpuss #2 letters page)
Hey Dave, thanks for sending the preview copy of Glamourpuss. Parts of it really spoke to me. I mean that not in the old log-rolling manner of buddy-buddy authors promoting each other's books, but that your meditations on exploring craft REALLY SPOKE TO ME. Glamourpuss is the first comic to unpack process from the inside out. It stands apart from Scott McCloud who is on the outside looking in (if that makes sense). One thing about Raymond and those who followed him, is that they were unabashed ladies men. I've always seen their fluid brush and linework as a zen-like extension of their innate horniness. So I've got to ask, since you've gone public with your own celibacy, if that lust factor plays any part in your approach to mastering the Raymond style?

ROY THOMAS (comics writer/editor):
(from the back-cover of Glamourpuss #1)

Dave has taken his fascination with the modern style of fashion art and photography and utilises it in issue #1 to examine the Alex Raymond/Rip Kirby school of comic art, with a few side trips along the way involving too-tight shoes, sweat glands, and Mahatma Gandhi. Hopefully, he's found a way to seduce a new generation of post-super-hero graphic novel freaks into reading and perhaps synthesising his knowledge and opinions while they think they're just looking at a bunch of fashion models in exquisite clothes. And all because of his self-stated intention to make his new major post-Cerebus project "cute teenaged girls in [his] best Al Williamson photo-realism style."

Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

The Critics On Glamourpuss

2011-12-14T00:30:00.014Z

Glamourpuss #14 (July 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

FPI BLOG:

(review by Richard Burton, FPI Blog, July 2008)

Here’s Glamourpuss #1. Beautiful images of 20 year old models in fantastic clothes all done in his best Al Williamson photo-realism style. And whatever else you can say about Glamourpuss, I wouldn’t think anyone would be able to doubt it’s an absolute work of artistic beauty. Because through all of his years as Dave Sim; evil genius comics mastermind, people did tend to forget that he was also Dave Sim; bloody good artist. His illustrations here are just perfection, with a mix of styles as the page demands. But everything in the book just looks sublime. Also of note, as always, is his use of lettering. Sim should, if nothing else, go down as one of the most creative letterers in the comics business. It’s toned down slightly here from some of the absolutely incredible and radical work in Cerebus, but it’s still inventive and downright clever how he plays with his typography and lettering... As a book full of extremely pretty pictures, Glamourpuss works. As a book looking at the technical qualities of an art style I think (from my non-artistic point of view) that it works. As a book chronicling the development of the photo-realistic style in the 50s and 60s it works as a piece of journalism. Finally as a wacky parody of high fashion magazines it... well, it sort of works.

BLEEDING COOL:

(review by Rich Johnson, Bleeding Cool, November 2009)

Dave Sim’s Glamourpuss is one of my favourite regular comics. A grand departure from Cerebus, it’s a strange brew of the history of inking and photorealism styles in comics through the twentieth century, with Dave Sim first reproducing the pages in question, then taking those relearned skills to reproduce fashion magazine images, upon which he places a self-knowing satire on the magazines and those who write and read them. It’s an immersive experience, educational and amusing in equal measure. And no one’s reading it. Fix that, people, fix that.

THE COMICS JOURNAL:

(review by Rich Kreiner, The Comics Journal, January 2010)

...a scrupulously cultivated, astute and thrilling analysis by an artist of a visual style and its masters... what Glamourpuss offers, what Sim is able to present, is compelling. Here are comic strips and panels in slow motion, enriched by informative commentary and authoritative explication woven together with industry scuttlebutt and the medium’s history. The results are so cumulatively engrossing and persuasively intriguing that although I can never recall glancing at Rip Kirby or The Heart of Juliet Jones in the funny pages while growing up, I’ve snapped up the recent Kirby reprint volume from IDW and have been likewise tempted by Classic Comics Press’ inaugural release of their The Heart of… series.

COMICS ALLIANCE:

(review by John Parker, Comics Alliance, February 2010)

An appreciation of the photo-realism thread in comics wrapped in a parody of fashion magazines, Glamourpuss is a book to be consumed on several levels. As a scholarly work, it provides a unique depth and insight into the lives and works of Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, Stan Drake, and other artists whose contributions to the medium are immeasurable. By copying from the best-possible sources, Sim shows a glimpse of what long out-of-print strips might look like with restored fidelity, tuned to brush lines the thickness of a single hair. It is, of course, still Sim's art. Copies of copies of copies doesn't equal the real thing. So while it's Raymond's art that Sim is appreciating, we're appreciating his. It doesn't take much time to be reminded that whatever else he may be (more on that later), he is also a virtuoso of the medium. In both his translations of the photo-realists' works and fashion magazine photos, he brings depth, character, and flair to each image. Usually with those maddeningly meticulous cross-hatchings that helped define his style in Cerebus. Even the layout and flow of the book is impressive, and the design and digital production work of Sandeep Atwal smooths the reader's ride from parody to narrative to appreciation and back again. Each issue is a visual experience from cover to cover.

WEDNESDAY'S HAUL:
(from the Wednesday's Haul blog, May 2008)
...You see, it is all about fashion and beautiful women. Well, that and the men who were perfectly able to capture them in ink during the fifties and sixties. Dave Sim’s first major published work since Cerebus isn’t about politics, religion or the sexes but about Alex Raymond, All Williamson, Neal Adams and John Prentice, the photo-realist comic strip artists who are Sim’s idols and inspiration. One part history lesson and one part art lesson, Glamourpuss is Dave Sim’s very public attempt to define elements of these artists’ work and to learn how to become one of them. And what better way to do that than by trying to draw beautiful, fashionable and glamorous women in their photo-realistic style... In Glamourpuss Sim remains as much up and center, hijacking the narrative by the second page to turn the book to be about himself and about his artistic heroes. Dave Sim ruminating on his favorite artists is a lot easier to accept and digest than his ruminating on gender roles ever was. And as he’s writing about these artists, he’s recreating panels of theirs. The book is filled with Sim’s attempts to recreate and learn from some great artwork of the photo realists. Sim admits that they’re tracings of Prentice’s or Williamson’s work but he’s trying to pull them apart and put them back together. He’s attempting to learn from them. He then applies those lessons to his own artwork through recreating photographs out of fashion magazines in pen, brush and ink.

JOHN SEVEN:
(from the Flotsam & Jetpack blog, August 2008)
It's no surprise to me that Dave Sim’s new project Glamourpuss lampoons the world of fashion, and the magazines that cover that sphere. What does surprise me is that he mixes the satire with an amiable and rather cute sort of cartoonist geekery. At one moment he’s being pretty funny narrating the vapid thoughts of a high fashion model, the next he's griping while giving a historical rundown of Alex Raymond's rapidly disappearing thin lines. In the weirdest sort of way, this dynamic makes Glamourpuss a very personal work, though not with the intensity that usually accompanies such items. It's not intense — it's jolly. Glamourpuss is personal in the sense that it is a comic book representation of one side of a conversation you would have with Dave Sim if, in fact, you were having a conversation with him about the photo-realism cartooning style that kept being interspersed with a few giggles at the expense of haute couture.

JARETT KOBECK:
(reviewed by Jarett Kobeck, October 2009)
...Best comic ever?

Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

The Making Of Glamourpuss (one of them anyway)

2011-12-13T00:30:00.001Z

Glamourpuss #2, July 2008

Art by Dave Sim

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Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Why Glamourpuss?

2011-12-12T00:30:00.009Z

Glamourpuss #1 (April 2008)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

(from the essay 'Glamourpuss No. 1: The Post-Game Show', Glamourpuss #1, 2008)

No more mucking about. I want to do photorealism pictures of pretty girls, so that's what I'm going to do. The words were an afterthought. Okay, let's stick with that. So that's what I did. Then it turned into the meditations on comic strip photorealism that you see. Then later I thought of the "Origin of Glamourpuss" framing device. In comic-book stores if you have a No. 1 and an "Origin of..." story, no matter how pointless, it's going to boost your sales (I know. Sad, isn't it?). The same with turning a fashion magazine pictorial into a photorealistic comic-book story. If that's what it takes to introduce a whole new generation to Alex Raymond's NOT FLASH GORDON strip, well, hey, that's what it takes. By the way, if you don't like this issues's "Origin of Glamourpuss" don't sweat it. I plan on doing a different origin next issue.

I considered just scanning the Alex Raymond artwork from my reprint collections, but that would already add two generation of reproduction to what is already a seriously degraded strip. Just to show you an example, this is a panel from Comic Art No. 2 shot from the original artwork and this is how the same panel appears in my Spanish Rip Kirby reprint collection volume 6.

Now to be fair to King Features Syndicate, those are some of the skinniest lines that I have ever seen on a piece of comic art and I sure would hate to be the one in charge of having to get them thick enough to reproduce in the catch-as-catch-can reproduction methods favoured by daily newspapers back in 1956. I asked Neal Adams about that a year or so ago. "You guys had some of the worst reproduction imaginable and yet you were using the thinnest lines ever attempted in commercial illustration." "The really thin lines, I did for myself," he said, simply. I've been trying to bear that in mind, since I've got infinitely better reproduction to work with here. "Go ultra thin or go home."

I have to admit that when I look at the Rip Kirby strips - particularly panels that I know would be sensational to re-do but that I can't use because there's just too little information left to even guess what they're supposed to look like - I think to myself; it is more than fifty years later and I would certainly hope that there would be accurate reproductions of all the strips on file with King Features against the day when hey would be reproduced on something besides daily newspaper pulp. I suspect that I would be disappointed in that. As Al Williamson has said, it's the same with newspaper strips that it is with movies: the people who preserve the material are the collectors. The studios and the syndicates really couldn't care less. The licensors pay for what they get, but I'm pretty sure they aren't getting what the pay for.

I try not to go too far down that path, mentally, because the whole thing is pretty depressing. Obviously there won't be a state-of-the-art Rip Kirby collection until we find out if those terrible microfilms are all that King Features has and how many Rip Kirby originals and/or syndicate proofs (the week's worth they used to send to the newspapers) still exist.

So, I would try to remind myself: the point of the whole Glamourpuss exercise is photorealism pictures of pretty girls and, to me, the best guys at doing that were from the Alex Raymond School. No offence to the legions of Milt Caniff readers but the Dragon Lady does nothing for me. She's a cartoon. Raymond and Prentice and Stan Drake and Neal Adams and Al Williamson drew as-close-to-realistic women as you could get and that as-close-to-realistic look, to me, was created by Alex Raymond. So why not go back to the source and attempt to teach myself the Alex Raymond drawing method by extrapolating it from bad reproduction?

So far, not so good. I think they're reasonably successful reproductions and I think I've managed to take some of the thin lines back down to what they were, but most of the time, I have no idea what I'm copying. Why THAT solution? Why a series of thin brush strokes here and one big fat one there? As I indicated in this issues's "story", I begin to fear that the answer is: you really have to not give a s--t. You're over-analysing it. If you feel like putting in some thin ones, put in some thin ones. You want to put in a fatter one, put in a fatter one. So for the first few issues, that might be all that I'm able to teach myself: stop caring so much and just ink. It's one of the reasons that I'm alternating the pages of copied panels and the self-generated pages. It is already a lot easier to ink an original drawing of my own, traced from a photograph than to duplicate an Alex Raymond panel as accurately as I can. Just moving from the latter to the former is a liberating experience.

I'll try not to try harder next time.

Back in 2008 Dave Sim embarked on a '100 Hours Internet Tour' to promote Glamourpuss - Cerebus Fan Girl has all the links. Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.