HARDtalk: The Dave Sim Interview (15)

Can you tell us more about your next project THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND.  Is this to be a print version graphic novel or, like glamourpuss will it be digital only?  Is this new material or a reprint of the Alex Raymond material from glamourpuss, or some combination of the two?

A combination of the two.  I think the new structure of indy comics for old guys like me is that you have to do a Kickstarter campaign to see if something is worth doing.  If it brings in enough money to make the project possible, then you go ahead.  If it tanks, you Deep Six the project and do something else.  At some point I'll do that with STRANGE DEATH... but probably not until after at least doing a digital version of the CEREBUS trade.  The digital version of glamourpuss will be one of the pledge items for the Kickstarter campaign -- signed and numbered on disk.  Here's the complete glamourpuss including roughly 150 pages of STRANGE DEATH and the cliffhanger it ended on in #26 -- shipping in August (#26, I mean).

I actually cut up #14 to #26 and made a mock-up of the graphic novel and then read it, making notes to myself of where pages need to be added, stray threads that I'd forgotten about.  It's pretty solid as it is -- much more solid than I thought it would be until I read it.  "Hey, I really know what I'm doing here."

It's a very intricate piece of work and everything has to be explained in a specific order, but I definitely want to do it more than anything that I'm actually doing right now or other things that are still in the discussion stage.

The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond (Glamourpuss #14, July 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

I'm concerned that I'm losing my photorealism "chops" being away from working on it for this long.  But I still have a lot of drawing to do for the Kickstarter Cerebus pieces, recording the audio for HIGH SOCIETY, writing commentaries on the Notebooks and Cerebus Archive stuff.  It all takes time.  But people aren't going to pay me to do "Strange Death of Alex Raymond".  They will pay me to do Cerebus stuff.  At least I still OWN the work that I'm best known for, looking on the bright side.

Stephen -- you're being awfully quiet over there.  Have you got one for our cliffhanger?

Your appearance in Eddie Campbell's BACCHUS.  What you were doing in CEREBUS with other creators at the time?  Apposite.  Did you find it funny and/or clever?

Okay -- doing all those Indy characters and creators in GUYS while Eddie was doing a lot the same thing in BACCHUS.  Coincidence or conspiracy?  Tune in on Monday, SAME Moment of Cerebus Time, SAME Moment of Cerebus Channel!