HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #19

You have always been very respectful towards the comics writers and artists of earlier generations, and in your writing / essays / annotations you have drawn attention to their achievements and importance for the next generation. Would you consider writing a series of occasional articles (for A Moment Of Cerebus or another publication) to continue that process?

I'd certainly consider it. Right at the moment if I never see the inside of this coffee shop again, I will die a happy man. Just kidding. It's a very nice place with great owners and a wonderful staff. What I think needs to happen is for me to come to the end of the Virtual Tour and then for us to examine how to coordinate A Moment of Cerebus and CerebusDownloads.com. Maybe an "Every Friday" question on the same basis? Get a free autographed comic with head sketch if your question is selected? That way if you don't get any questions, you could just ask me to talk about a specific creator and what I see as their importance and what I think cartoonists in any age can learn from them.

A lot is still up in the air. The Dave Sim Art site just wasn't going to work. Too difficult to maintain for too little return. George is up to his eyeballs in the HIGH SOCIETY AUDIO DIGITAL end of things, but theoretically, we're still going to have downloads of the CEREBUS TV episodes either on their own site or at Cerebus TV Downloads. But none of this is going to happen in the next five minutes...

Okay. Everybody over to BLEEDING COOL for a question from Cory Foster.  Actually one question and then a follow-up with a little background info.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for creating one of the most important pieces of art in my life. Let it be known that I finally got a friend to check it out after 17 years of only being able to talk about it to myself (though I had to actually purchase the volumes for him!).

My question is about your pacing of the issues after you had decided to go for 300. Aside from your assertion a couple days ago in which you state that the story was predestined, even before your grandfather was born, do you think back on Cerebus and have other ideas for spacing events out over the years? Specifically, do you ever regret introducing yourself into the story during Minds rather than perhaps another 25 issues later?

I personally find idea of this little grey character trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his now action-stunted life quite rewarding, but I know there's also a lot of criticism out there regarding the reflective 100 issue epilogue.

My aforementioned friend made me think of this, as he just finished HS and the first book of C&S and noted that there's some issues in which the plot isn't moved forward. I mentioned to him your quote from years ago in which you state that when telling a complete life story, you have to take into account that there will be days when nothing happens. Nobody's life is action all the time.

Hit the link to BLEEDING COOL for the answer to that question, and I'll see you tomorrow for more HARDtalk.

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!