 |
| Cerebus #300 (March 2004) Art by Gerhard |
(from Diamond Previews, January 2004)
First of all, I'd like to thank our Diamond rep, Filip Sablik, and
Previews editor Marty Grosser (who has to be closing in on three hundred
issues himself) for offering me this space - so disproportionately large compared
with Cerebus and Ger's and my modest standing in the comic-book field - for
this "Hail & farewell".
Secondly, I'd like to express Ger's and my
gratitude to the comic book stores who have - "above and beyond the call of
duty" - actively supported (and hopefully will continue to support)
Cerebus; and the seven thousand or so readers, many of whom have stuck
with the monthly title, through thick and thin, whatever they might have thought
of it personally at any given point in the 300-issue run. As my two-foot tall
stack of unanswered correspondence (and answering every one of those letters
will be my first priority after Cerebus, God willing, is completed)
attests, I have been blessed with an extremely thoughtful, extremely eloquent
and (most important to me) extremely tolerant readership. Mere thanks is
insufficient for all those stores and individuals-some of whom are still with us
and some of whom, unfortunately (like my friends and mentors Harry Kremer and
Gene Day) didn't live to see the conclusion of this project they were
instrumental in launching: those stores and individuals who, financially, made
comics' first 6,000 page graphic novel a reality, despite our many pitfalls and
missteps along the way. We'd also like to thank the Cerebus art patrons
whose extraordinary confidence in seeing value in our original artwork - and whose
ongoing individual efforts in "raising the bar" of benchmark prices - constitute
the brightest hope for Ger and myself here at the "finish line".
Thirdly, I'd like to congratulate Wendy and Richard Pini - whose
Elfquest series debuted at the same time as Cerebus back before there was
a Diamond Comic Distributors - on their recent decision to join forces with DC
Comics to bring the complete Elfquest epic to a new generation of "real
world" readers and congratulate Jeff Smith and Vijaya Iyer on their completion
of Bone, Elfquest's only serious contender for the title of the
direct market's most beloved "all ages" self-published series.
Although
Cerebus never once cracked the Diamond top 100, although we never had a
best-selling trade paperback, although Aardvark-Vanaheim has never been
successful enough to warrant a "pie slice" of market share either in North
America or in the U.K. and although we are seldom mentioned favourably in the
comics press (while somehow still being described as a "critical success") I
find it difficult - even with all the irrefutable evidence pointing away from any
"real world" success - to view the twenty-six-year-and-three-month Cerebus
project as a failure. The fact that Ger and I enter our respective retirements
unencumbered by any debt, the fact that we have never been forced by financial
necessity to relinquish any part of our absolute control over Cerebus as
a creative work and the fact that I am typing these words in a 100-year old
Victorian house fully paid for by our joint creativity is a source of no small
gratification to us and, more importantly, a testament to what can be
accomplished in this remarkable environment of ours, a success that would have
been unthinkable before the advent of the direct market in the
mid-1970s - single-handedly brought into existence by Phil Seuling (may God rest
his soul).
Having seen so many extraordinary success stories in the
"independent comics" end of our field over the last quarter century - Wendy and Richard's aforementioned Elfquest, Kevin Eastman and Pete Laird's
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Image phenomenon of Erik Larsen, RobLiefield, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino and their undisputed leader,
Todd McFarlane, Pat Lee's Transformers, Jeff Smith and Vijaya Iyer's
Bone - the hope never once deserted me that Cerebus might some day
experience that kind of success - as that same hope, I am sure, has never once
deserted other veteran small pressers like Poison Elves' Drew Hayes - still
going strong at seventy-six issues - and will, I'm sure, never desert rookies like
Gun Fu's Howard M. Shum and Joey Mason.
Having (finally!)
surrendered my place in the front row of the self-publishing parade to the new
"first-among-equals" - Strangers in Paradise's Terry and Robin Moore and
Supernatural Law's Batton Lash and Jackie Estrada (who, through their
tireless efforts and shining example, might yet serve to rechristen
"self-publishing" as "wife-publishing") - it is in the spirit of that
aforementioned undiminished hope that I look forward to making it my new
PART-time job to work with the Diamond sales team and interested retailers in
the years and decades to come in attempting to achieve for Cerebus a
genuine, large and (I hope) central presence in the direct market that has
eluded us while the story was being serialized.
Given that - in the
"real" world - it often seems that all avenues to success based on merit alone are
closed and it really is a matter not of "what you know" but "who you know," I
think we can all take heart that the comic-book direct market exists in the form
that it does - as close to a level playing field as could be imagined, where the
best of the "little guys" genuinely compete with the best of the "big guys" and
where a first-time self-publisher's work appears in the same catalogue with the
work of one of the founders of our industry, the irreplaceable Mr. Will Eisner.
And - no matter how furious that competition becomes - no matter who comes first or
who comes second, ultimately, we all share in each other's success and we all
help to make each other successful.
Or (as the writer of the second longest
series by a collaborative team would
say):
Excelsior!
Excelsior! The motto of New York
state, meaning "Upward," is a succinct and a valuable distillation of that
spirit which governs our efforts when we are at our best: as is, "with great
power comes great responsibility." We, all of us, owe a great debt to the man,
Stan the Man, who, when most of us - from the president of Diamond Comic
Distributors to the owner of the smallest comic-book store - were barely out of
infancy, pointed us in the right direction and who has made those two
philosophies the foundation of his own imperishable legacy in our industry
and - if we can rise to the challenge they present to us and to our successors - the
basis of our greatest mutual heritage which is the comic-book medium
itself.
In closing, let me say that over the last quarter century-plus,
whatever my too-human failings (and, like anyone else, I have no shortage of
those) I strove always to be an individual who did his duty - as another
much-criticized and controversial figure, General Douglas MacArthur, said in his
farewell address to a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress in April of 1951 - "as
God gave him the light to see that duty." I make no apology for the free-will
choices I have made but only for any entirely inadvertent harm, real or
perceived, that those choices may have caused to others.
Farewell, thank
you, and may God continue to bless our worldwide comic-book nation.
Dave Sim
Kitchener, Ontario
11 October 2003
No comments:
Post a Comment