HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #10

You have often cited Will Eisner’s post-Spirit graphic novel career as an inspiration. Can you see yourself going the same route, producing shorter one-off graphic novels or do you still need the discipline of a monthly comic schedule?

No, a monthly schedule is completely out of the question with the material I'm doing right now. I couldn't even do it bi-monthly at the end and do anything else.

See, I went in a completely different direction from Will.  He basically simplified his style and went from, say, base 9 pages -- nine panels to the page -- to base 2 and base 3.  And then, as he figured out what he was doing, he expanded the number of panels to the page.  Carefully, to make sure he could produce quickly. He used a much rougher style, very spontaneous, moving in the direction of "the writer who draws" instead of the "artist who writes". That was his priority, the stories he had to tell about the world he came from, the people he knew, the kind of stories they and he lived.  As long as the drawing conveyed that, that was all the drawing he was interested in doing.  He wasn't going to sit and slavishly copy Jerry Grandenetti's brush strokes on THE SPIRIT to stay in the same "eye candy" range.

That's one of those things that you earn.  You gave the audience what they wanted, now there are things YOU want to do.  He was perfectly aware that everyone wanted him to put a comparable studio together, find a new Jules Feiffer, a new Jerry Grandenetti and start cranking out new SPIRIT stories.  I would have preferred that he do that.  But it was definitely Will's turn, as it's now -- or, rather, WAS up until May of this year -- MY turn.  I gave the audience 26 years and I told them in 1979 that when it was done it's done. No untold tales of Cerebus.

I often wonder what kind of pressure it put on Will to do what he wanted to do, what sort of tension it might have caused with Anne? He obviously had a nest egg from selling his business he needed to sell when he went back to comics full time.  He had some revenue from SPIRIT reprints and the other venues Denis Kitchen would find for him.  He had advances for his books, royalties from his books, THE SPIRIT hardcovers and WILL EISNER LIBRARY at DC.  It's noteworthy that DC sold the latter as soon as they decently could to Norton.  But I'm sure he went through the same thing I'm going through:  how do you make x amount of money last when it's value is eroding at a great rate just because of inflation and things like that?  No one ever imagines how expensive things are going to become.  But, give him...and Anne!...credit.  He stuck to his guns and she backed him 100% and he did the material he wanted to do without compromise or pandering in any way.

In my case, stories stopped interesting me, in the conventional sense.  I find everything about the present political climate inherently false so I have no interest in writing what I see as politically correct propaganda and that's all I see as being allowed.

So my attention shifted to the technical side.  I learned a lot drawing CEREBUS for 26 years, to say the least.  But it was still cartoony/realistic -- like Will's stuff.  But I could, as a result of what I had learned, see more clearly what, say, Williamson had done, what Raymond had done, what Drake had done. It was up out of my reach but much closer to my reach than ever before in my life.

Could I now do it, myself?

You're talking about a "next plateau up" a very high jump from where I was.  But, your eyesight eventually erodes.  This was the only time in my life when I would be able to see this clearly when I was inking:  see the line a fresh Hunt 102 or a Gillott 290 or 303 makes and direct it.  There are limits, I find.  I just can't see as far into the page and make a tiny line as precisely as Neal Adams does, seemingly effortlessly.  That's just God's gift, genius.  I got what God gave me and I developed it, but it only develops so far for me.  "Not within a country mile of Neal" about sums it up.

But, as with Will's stories about the world he knew and being able to tell them, this is -- WAS -- I keep forgetting it's in the past tense -- my reward.  The summit was the fashion stuff.  Which everyone hated and made a great point of hating out loud and emphatically in my direction as often as possible.  The History of Photorealism stuff was my sop to the market -- what I was standing on so I could reach my own personal summit, the fashion stuff and do it for 10 days out of 60.  Dave!  Come down from there! Do THIS stuff!  Not THAT stuff!  THAT stuff is HORRIBLE, BLECHH, YUCKY.

I didn't know how to tell people, it's okay -- it's dying of oxygen deprivation already.  It'll be stone cold dead before you know it.  You don't NEED to KILL it.  Sigh.  It's 2012.  It often seems that's all people live for: killing other people's things.

I originally thought that I would wait until my eyesight eroded and go back to cartoony/realistic drawing, but I suspect I won't.  I'll do that when I have to, strictly to make money.  Cerebus commissions.  Whatever you want, this many thousands of dollars.  Try to get ahead financially and put the time in on "Strange Death of Alex Raymond" and, you never know, maybe in my late seventies I'll be able to go and buy a copy of VOGUE and do some fashion stuff just for ME.  Not show it to anyone.  Why would I bother?  I get it.  You hate it, you all hate it, it's beyond redemption.

But get back to my own personal summit before I die for however long I can spend up there.

Okay, now we're headed over to TERMINAL DRIFT for a very LONG question from Gabe McCann:

"Madane Bovary c'est moi" – Gustave Flaubert.

How much of you is there in Cerebus and vica versa? Other than the Dave character who chews a carrot and draws panels do you ever appear in Cerebus in disguise or who do you think is the closest of all the characters in Cerebus to representing you or being as close to the real "you" as possible. 

Is there a real you? Do you think any of us are really 'real' in the sense that all of us put on a mask or persona when we are with others and never reveal our true selves to anyone else? If you hadn't been succesful with Cerebus or hadn't managed to make a living in some other way in the world of comics/graphic novels what would you have done with your life to make a living?

Hit the link to TERMINAL DRIFT for the answer to that question, and be here tomorrow for more HARDtalk Q&As.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!