Hi Al,
50 percent of nothing is still nothing, I’m afraid. For the last two years I’ve been working on a
comic book that will be roughly 40 pages long when it’s done. After that I’ll probably do a
graphic novel. Neither of these is intended to become a film, nor would I be interested in having
them turned into films. Apart from that I work between four and six days a month on The Blog
& Mail as a means of keeping the Dave Sim and Cerebus "brands" in circulation in the comicbook
field (a Cerebus reader in Rhode Island then posts them one at a time on a daily basis).
After that I can justify between three or four days a month on outside projects if those projects
pay me a minimum of 500 dollars a day (based on a twelve-hour day). This is the reason that
the best Marvel can hope for is a cover if they can get their rates up in the vicinity of $1,000 or
so and why I can’t see doing any interior work: the rates are too low ($400 at the most) and it
would take me three or four days (at least) to produce a top quality comic-book page.
If you want to hire me as a consultant on your film and give me a Co-Producer credit in order to
create the illusion that you’re working on this with “the famous graphic novelist, Dave Sim”
(which is really what this is about – the cachet of graphic novelists in Hollywood right now)
then those are my rates. You send me your script with a cheque for $1,000 and I’ll give it my
full attention for two days and make notes on it. When you get my notes that will give you a
full month to decide if you want to buy another block of two days from me and what you want
me to do with them, again, at the quoted $500-a-day rate.
If you want me to work on it for free with a promise of a 50-50 split of entirely theoretical
profits, as you can see that wouldn’t really fit into my own situation and plans.
Sincerely,
Dave Sim
From "Dave Sim's Collected Letters 2007" -- available to download now!
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