The Naked Artist: Comic Book Legends (2007)
by Bryan Talbot
DAVE SIM:
(from The Blog & Mail, 13 September 2007)
Sad but true. So, as has become our new custom here on the Blog &
Mail we'll start this new session – and our second year -- with a
progress report on YHWH's War on Dave.
Everything is pretty much
"status quo" with both Secret Project I and Secret Project II on hold –
work is progressing on both, but I'm definitely starting to feel like
Israel here. If I can make it through one working session in between
Blog & Mail stints without being attacked I'll be happy to talk
about peace (i.e. scheduling the projects).
Not really sure if
this latest attack constitutes "progress" from his/her/its point of view
– on the one hand its got a proven track record of rallying everyone to
the Anti-Dave side of the fence and taking the focus off of feminism,
on the other hand, it's got all the appearance of "a dog returning to
its vomit" which could suggest that YHWH has pretty much used up
his/her/its resources artillery-wise and is now having to repeat
his/her/its self. That would be the optimistic way of looking at it and
by this point in my life I have learned to be extremely wary of any form
of optimism. But, looking on the bright side if the entire comic-book
field doesn't stampede away from me as they did in 1994 and 1999 after
reading the following then I think I can be safe in saying that we've
been eyeball-to-eyeball for thirteen years and the YHWH just blinked.
Thanks, as always, to the dozen or so retailers reading this who
continue to order the CEREBUS trades and if some or all of you feel
compelled to join in the stampede at the end of "Oh, No! Not Jeff Smith
Again" Week and never again order the CEREBUS trades, well, nothing new
there and no hard feelings.
So anyway, here's how it "went down":
The
TCAF weekend got off to a bad but completely familiar start when I ran
across Bryan Talbot's new NATIONAL INQUIRER-style volume on the
comic-book field which had just come in at the Beguiling. Sad to think
that this is the degraded level to which the author and artist of the
classic Luther Arkwright and One Bad Rat has sunk, but there you go. As
per usual, the Marxist-feminists, unable to counter the Sixteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast, resort instead to
character assassination. March 30 of this year, my Technical Director
and Research Assistant on the secret project wrote to me:
"By the way, speaking of Jeff Smith... I don't want to meddle in your affairs, but I wanted to make sure you knew that Jeff has continued to say nothing but nice things about you and CEREBUS in the press."
The
subtext being: don't say anything more about the contretemps between
the two of us: which is always the subtext in the comic-book field. I
haven't said anything, privately or personally, and I always find it
irritating when the Marxist-feminist comic-book field behaves as if I
have, selling themselves on their collectivist Crazy Dave Sim the Evil
Misogynist party line. It's always the Marxist-feminists who revive the
controversy and then blame me for responding to the character
assassination being perpetrated against my reputation, which always
amounts to Big Tough Jeff Smith staring down weak (and a new addition
this time out) out-of-shape Dave Sim who proves to be a coward. Look,
folks: I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings in your Good Jeff
Smith/Evil Dave Sim construct, but there is only one obvious source for
this calumny and that's Jeff Smith himself. I have no doubt that Jeff
continues to say nothing but nice things about me in the press but
obviously he is telling a different story at restaurant tables on his
many globe-hopping world travels, pumping himself up into the
Marxist-feminist Defender of the Faith and bane of evil misogynists
everywhere. Or do all you Marxist-feminists think that Bryan Talbot just
manufactured this pile of horse manure on his own out of whole cloth? I
think I have the right to defend myself and, yes, you're all more than
welcome to roll your eyes theatrically at this point, but here we go
again:
What actually happened – my lips to God's ear -- was:
SPACE
organizer Bob Corby came up to me about an hour into the SPACE show in
question and said, "I don't know how you want to handle this, but I
thought I should tell you that Jeff Smith just walked in." I thanked him
for letting me know and continued to talk to the occasional fan coming
by for an autograph or a sketch. My reputation having been completely
destroyed by the Marxist-feminists at that point, my table, post-1994,
has been seldom "crowded with fans" as Talbot maintains. There was
certainly no one at the table except me when Jeff had made his way
around the exhibit room – having stopped to talk to a number of
exhibitors and to buy a couple of books from them (which I thought was
nice of him, local hero and all – it would be nice if he would do it
again someday).
It's literally the only time in my life that I
made no move to shake hands with someone that I knew when he or she
approached. He had behaved in so completely under-handed and
dishonourable fashion towards me over our political differences after I
had devoted any number of hours to answering his many questions about
self-publishing and had made prodigious efforts on his behalf after he
gave me the first few issues of BONE at a Capital City Trade Show (he
was desperate for help with his comic book which was going in the toilet
– the Cap City Show was a make-or-break proposition for him -- and at
Larry Marder's behest he came to the table I was sharing with Martin
Wagner and asked me for any help I could give him which I then proceeded
to give him as I tend to do with anyone I think I can help to this day)
that I just could not bring myself to extend the courtesy of a
handshake to him.
[It's one of the unhappy repercussions of my
experiences with Jeff that even though I continue to help people, I take
it as a given that they will all turn on me at the first opportunity as
he did. I certainly noticed – and notice -- that no one I had helped
over the years had said a word about my treatment post-1994. Helping
people is still the right thing to do, so I do it. Believing that
cartoonists are decent human beings who remember people who helped them
is something I have learned to place in the "wholly mythological"
category. Live and learn.]
As far as I was – and am --
concerned, I had met Jeff more than halfway. I had notified him by
letter well ahead of time that I would give him the opportunity to make
good on his imagined threat of "decking me" or "giving me a fat lip" and
told him to name the time and place. I came in two days ahead of time
for the exact reason of giving him as many scheduling options as
possible.
By that point, I had been – and continue to be --
pretty gracious, I think, about the entire comic-book field turning
against me and had accepted my pariah status and the fact that I was
completely without any friends or allies anywhere in the comic-book
field, high or low – as I am to this day (handful of exceptions duly
noted) -- without complaint. You do what's right and if everyone else
chooses to do what's wrong – as the comic-book field unanimously chose
to do and continues to choose to do -- well that's their choice and,
ultimately, they have to live with the consequences.
That's one thing.
However,
calling me a coward in print and saying that I backed down from a
threat of unprovoked physical violence, as Jeff did, well, that was in a
whole different category. That had to do with my personal honour as a
man. You're certainly at liberty to call me a coward and say that I
backed down from a threat of unprovoked physical violence so long as you
do it in tried-and-true Marxist-feminist fashion – that is, behind my
back and in secret -- but, if you make the assertion in a public venue
like the COMICS JOURNAL, ultimately, you have to back that up. Or back
down. I waited a year after the JOURNAL interview to write "Dear Jeff
Smith" because I was annotating FORM & VOID in the back of CEREBUS –
basically writing the "To Ham & Ham Not" material that appears in
the back of the trade at the same time as I was serializing the story. I
wasn't about to interrupt something important like that for something
as ridiculous as Jeff Smith acting tough five years after the fact.
DAVE SIM:
(from The Blog & Mail, 14 September 2007)
I always try to do the right thing. The only time it becomes really
difficult is in a case of severe demonic possession where I am presented
with a Gordian Knot which presents me with one of several unpalatable
and unacceptable options. In the case of Jeff Smith's interview in the
Trilogy Tour issue of the JOURNAL, I have to admit that it took me about
a year to try to untangle what the right thing to do was. If someone is
running around saying that he threatened to deck you when he did no
such thing, is it the same thing as threatening to deck you? Ultimately,
I decided it was infinitely worse, particularly since it was only in
the COMICS JOURNAL in 1999 that this delusion on his part had become
public. However, it was pretty obvious that this was the story he had
been telling people for five years whenever they asked him about the
split with Dave Sim. It was also pretty obvious that everyone believed
him. There was certainly an urge to correct the misinformation right
away, but there was also the awareness that five years worth of damage
to my reputation had been done, that the damage was irreparable and that
six months or a year wasn't going to make a whole lot of difference. I
was already universally hated and if I dared to suggest that Jeff Smith
hadn't been wholly consistent with the truth (to say the least) it would
only serve to make me that much more universally hated. The coward's
way out was obvious: let Jeff Smith's version stand for all time and
hope that grovelling before and capitulating to Marxist-feminists would
allow me to retrieve some sort of status in the comic-book field.
[Okay,
I got to this point in the narration of events and I started realizing
how much of the back-story I have to relate in order for people in the
distant future to understand. I mean, I know that my generation is a
write-off and the generation after that is a write-off and the
generation after that is a write-off – the best I can hope for, at least
for the next two or three decades, out of this explanation is a
completely feminized "Violence is so ICKY! Only an evil person would
commit an act of violence in this day and age" coupled with "Jeff Smith
can't possibly be at fault so whatever Dave Sim did to provoke him to
threaten violence must have been REALLY, REALLY EVIL!" Witness the
reaction to the Sixteen Impossible Things. You can't discuss things
sensibly with a block of cement. But, for the sake of those people in
the far-flung future who once more take an interest in reality:]
When
I read the interview in the Trilogy Tour Issue, my primary response was
to feel sorry for Jeff Smith as I feel sorry for anyone who has
completely let go of reality in order to embrace a manufactured delusion
in place of reality (i.e. feminists). I mean, I knew what I had written
in issue 186 and comparing what I had written and what he was claiming I
wrote in his COMICS JOURNAL interview the extreme variance was glaring.
It's nothing I wasn't familiar with.
My ex-wife and
several of my girlfriends were in the category in question. They
literally couldn't relate an incident the same way twice. It's an easy
thing to check. If they tell you a story and it just doesn't sound
right, wait a couple of days and get them to tell it to you again. If
it's one of the unreal stories that they feel compelled to tell (and it
is a psychological condition: or, as I prefer to call it now, demonic
possession) it will be inconsistent from beginning to end every time
they tell it. I couldn't find my copy of the Trilogy Tour issue of the
COMICS JOURNAL (#218) when it came time to write "Dear Jeff Smith", but I
basically said, look, just read what I wrote and read what Jeff is
claiming that I wrote.
"Ultimately, Jeff's going to look really
bad out of this," I thought, and I felt bad about that on his behalf, as
I always felt bad when I saw that someone Deni had befriended had
twigged to her condition and was now putting a lot of distance between
them. The fact that these people can't help themselves is really saddest
part of their natures.
What I failed to reckon with (as usual)
was the extent to which facts and reality have nothing to do with what
the comic book field -- universally dominated by Marxist-feminists --
responds to and how it responds to it. It is already immersed in the
same condition so it tends to perceive reality based on its own
prejudices (i.e. anyone who isn't a Marxist-feminist is evil) and to
ignore anything a Marxist-feminist does wrong so long as they remain a
card-carrying Marxist-feminist. Obviously, Jeff was and is very much in
that category. It meant that "ultimately" kept getting pushed further
into the future. At first "ultimately" was "when people compare the text
in READS with what Jeff is claiming that I wrote." Then "ultimately"
was "when CEREBUS fans compare the text in READS with what Jeff is
claiming that I wrote." Then "ultimately" was "when someone who is
interested in reality compares the text in READS with what Jeff is
claiming that I wrote." That's where it stands now. My conservative
estimate being that interest in reality – as opposed to Marxist-feminism
– probably won't arrive for at least fifty to a hundred years.
[To
this day, I don't want to call anyone bad names – I trade off
"Marxist-feminist" for "misogynist": you call me a "misogynist", I will
call you a "Marxist-feminist" – but even someone
whose... distortions... effectively ruined my career and my professional
reputation... well, let's just say that Jeff didn't completely invent out
of nothing the "Big Johnson" Bone Tall-Tale-Telling character who
compulsively blows everything out of proportion in STUPID, STUPID RAT
TALES (if you catch my drift)]
Well, returning to reality (which
I always like to do) no one compared the two texts. It was then that I
realized that this was what the comic store environment had degraded
itself into: a high school girls' clique. Jeff was a Marxist-feminist
and was therefore IN and Dave Sim was an anti-feminist and was therefore
OUT and, consequently, facts had nothing to do with it. As with a high
school girls' clique. The dominant female decides who is going to be
excluded and everyone goes along with it if they know what's good for
them. If you ask them WHY the one girl was excluded they couldn't tell
you. There are no facts, no reasons, just a natural compulsion to
exclude someone that is a core part of female nature, a soul-deep
delight in the harshest forms of emotional sadism of which they can
conceive, the same sort of female nature that has, obviously, been
running the comic-book field at least since 1994. I mean, to the extent
that even CEREBUS readers – many of whom still claim to be fans of mine
(with fans like this, who needs enemies?) – didn't bother to read the
two versions.
To this day.
So, okay, I phone the
Fantagraphics 1-800 order number to buy a copy of the Trilogy Tour
issue. It's been eight years and I'm still the only person interested in
reality and it's a matter of face it, Dave, if you don't do it, it
isn't going to get done. The 800 number doesn't work from Canada. So I
send Gary Groth a fax asking if he can fax me the relevant quote from
Jeff's 1999 interview and – just for the sake of explanation – I faxed
him the actual text from page 241 of READS. I also thanked him for not
editing out the favourable reference to me in Andrew Langridge's
interview in the latest issue of the JOURNAL.
Definitely a
surprise but the return fax comes in, like, the next day. Full of
sneering sarcasm about my reviving this "nonsense" and letting me know
that I had absolutely no stature or credibility in the field – how else
would I know it was actually from Gary? – but, give the devil his due,
with the excerpt requested. I was flattered considering that I am
universally viewed as the lowest form of scum in existence in the
comic-book field. I figured I would get a snotty phone call from an
underling and I could give them my VISA number over the phone for the
copy of issue #218. Or maybe they would just fax me the information. I
really didn't think I was still in the category of meriting an actual
letter from Gary Groth.
Why? Well, this is The Big Reason right
here. You ready for it? For those of you who have been never quite sure
of WHY you're supposed to vilify and ignore and disparage Dave Sim – I
mean, you've read 186 or READS and you've been left wondering exactly
what the big deal is supposed to (even theoretically) be, as some people
were starting to do by 1999 – let Jeff Smith clear up the confusion for
you. Here, right here. This is why Dave Sim is an evil misogynist who
deserved to have his career ruined, his character assassinated and to
ensure that no good and decent person would speak to him (if they knew
what was good for them) or acknowledge his presence ever again, amen:
Oh,
heck. We're out of time. Hey, why don't you track down your own copy of
COMICS JOURNAL #218 and look it up yourself so you'll be prepared to
rationalize it away tomorrow and thereby restore what you know to be
true: Dave Sim is EVIL!
Next: Seconds Out... Round 3!
