Correspondence: From Hell

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

ALAN MOORE:

...Dave, this has been a very enjoyable conversation. Thank you for giving an old man the opportunity to talk about himself at such extraordinary length and in such a prestigious forum. Of course, I realise that if you really liked me then I'd have got a cameo in Guys like my slipshod, head-omitting collaborator [Eddie Campbell] but I guess I'll learn to live with it. Cerebus, as if I need to say so, is still to comic books what Hydrogen is to the Periodic Table, and is one of the only comics that I still read and enjoy regularly every month. Alright, so this is only in the hope of finding myself face down in a pool of my own vomit in some minor panel of Guys, but you must learn to take compliments graciously.

Incidentally, I had this dream of the last issue of Cerebus - the last page or so, in fact. He was ascending towards some sort of minimalist special effect, and it was in colour. I remember there was quite a bit of azure blue. That's all I can tell you.

My very best to you and Gerhard. Get over here again soon, and we can continue this conversation over cold beers and hot temporal lobe seizures.

Take care,

Alan

DAVE SIM:

...With as much grace as I can muster, thank you for your compliments on Cerebus. Of course all of the cameo appearances in Guys were self-publishers and self-published characters ...but there are three novels remaining in the Cerebus saga and my competitive nature won't allow your incarnation in your ancestrally challenged collaborator's Bacchus series stand as the definitive Alan Moore character (which it is - at the moment) in comic book land.

The correspondence between Dave Sim and Alan Moore was originally printed in Cerebus #217-220 (April to July 1997) and was reprinted in Alan Moore: Portrait Of An Extraordinary Gentleman (2003) edited by Gary Spencer Millidge and Smokey Man. The complete Correspondence: From Hell is also available to read online.