The Notion Of Free Speech

NEVS COLEMAN:
(from the No One Is Innocent Blog, April 2013)

...Dave [Sim] is one of the great pioneers of this business, he pretty much created the self publishing business model in Western comics as we understand it. His comics are deep, thoughtful, funny, and Cerebus is probably the 1st comic that attempted to create a full, serialised narrative. Also, if you've ever bought, sold, created or otherwise enjoyed anything resembling a Trade Paperback, you can pretty much thank Dave for that. He's one of the great comics historians as well, as anyone who isn't a total moron and tried reading Glamourpuss will testify.

Sadly, the comics community appears to have become hyper-sensitive in the early 21st Century, and since Dave's points of view on women aren't in sync with the majority, there are attempts to try and ostracize and retcon him from comics history every once in a while. Then everyone remembers that if the history of independent comics is built on Underground Comix, which is inherently about the notion of freedom of speech, not just 'The concepts we want to hear and nothing else' and Dave just gets on with the work.

Oh, and if you have ANY aspirations of  working in comics, you need to read The Cerebus Guide To Self Publishing. NEED to. It'll open your eyes, explain the dynamics of exactly how creating a comics page work, how to talk to distributors and how you'll be talking to Diamond. It badly needs updating for the digital comics era, but beyond that, again. you NEED to read it...