Amazing Hero

Cover detail, Amazing Heroes #201 (May 1992)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

JASON SACKS:

(from the introduction to an interview with Dave Sim in Amazing Heroes #201, May 1992)

The first issue of Cerebus came out in December, 1977. The artist, writer and publisher of that comic was Dave Sim. The comic was in black and white. All of those facts made it unique then, as did Cerebus' storyline - he was a three foot tall gray aardvark in a medieval land full of humans.

As I write this it's February, 1992. Cerebus #154 is sitting on my kitchen table. The book is still pencilled, written and published by Dave Sim, now with the assistance of Gerhard. Compare that record with the record of Spectacular Spider-Man, which premiered at around the same time but which has literally hundreds of creators work on it, though still published by Marvel.

In those 154 issues, Cerebus has been a barbarian, kitchen staff supervisor, Prime Minister, ex-Prime Minister, husband, Prime Minister again, Pope and houseguest. Spider-Man, in contrast, is still that crime fighter with the webs.

The fifth Cerebus novel, Mothers & Daughters, has recently begun. The previous novels, High Society, Church & State, Jaka's Story and Melmoth, have explored such weighty topics as politics, organised religion, power, love and death. Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man still just fights the good fight against evil-doers.

All of this description makes the book sound serious and weighty. At times it is. I'd put the ending of Jaka's Story up against Shakespeare in terms of its tragedy. But the series is also often quite hilarious. I'd put the scenes in High Society with Lord Julius (a Groucho Marx character), Duke Leonardi (a Chico Marx character) and Cerebus up against Monty Python or the Marx Brothers in terms of uproariousness.

In a comics world of hologram covers, short-lived hot artists with limited talents, silly crossover stories and tacky attempts at realism, Sim continues to present his complex, fascinating comic every month. He's even announced he'll be doing the book until it ends with issue 300. Eight years ago that sounded like a joke. Now it sounds like fact.

Rip Kirby Vol 4

Rip Kirby: The First Modern Detective
The Complete Comic Strips Volume 4: 1954 1956
$49.99, IDW Publishing, 2011
by Alex Raymond

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV Season 3 Episode 13, 28 January 2012)

I'm recording this on Christmas Eve and I gotta tell you folks, its a very merry Christmas here at the off-White House, because I just got in Rip Kirby Volume 4 1954-56 and it's a jaw-dropper. "It's all good" as they say... no scratch that, "It's all amazing!" ...Alex Raymond just got better and better over the last three years of his life, which is what we’re looking at. All of it printed from syndicate proofs. If you’re only going to have one volume of Rip Kirby in your collection, I would definitely recommend that this be the one. The really good news is that IDW is obviously working in close co-operation with Heritage Auctions and is making use of their high quality scans of the original artwork that they have auctioned over the years on Rip Kirby. Look at the lines on that mail box. Look at those lines on those car headlights. Look at the detailed fine-lined brush-inking on the lurking thug. When its a 100%, which it is on so many pages in this volume, it is a thing of beauty.

Rip Kirby concept sketches (Glamourpuss #2, July 2008)
Art by Dave Sim (after Alex Raymond)

Rip Kirby Vol 4 is available from IDW Publishing.

Pressing Problems Of The Day

Cerebus #143, February 1991
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Note From The President, Cerebus #142, January 1991)

Fellow wrote and asked me a while ago why it is that I never address the "pressing problems of the day". Probably because I don't see them as problems. Most of them are just opposing quirks (ie. we say that unemployment is a problem at the same time we are replacing people with machines; we say overpopulation is a problem but we let anyone who wants to have a baby). With opposing quirks all you can do is shrug and soldier on as best you can.

We're afraid of death which is a lot like being afraid of exhaling or falling asleep. You will breath. You will fall asleep. You will die. We've eliminated or curtailed virtually every known cause of death. 'Cancer can be beaten' but death is still inevitable. Do you know anyone on the planet we can't do without? There isn't anyone. We are all perfectly expendable. The last one you could even make a case for was Albert Einstein, and after E=MC2 we'd already gotten out of him the best that he had to offer. If all the AIDS patients died tomorrow there wouldn't even be a hiccup in the history books. If all the people with blue eyes died tomorrow we'd still be drastically overpopulated. I love, by the way, the Anarcho-witch-feminist argument against overpopulation; that if everyone in the world turned 'vegomatic' tomorrow we could support ten times the population we have now. I swear those broads won't be happy until the whole planet looks like one big Woodstock festival (minus any music or loud talking for fear we'll "wake the babies").

Check the news, man. Any night. "Twenty die in India bus catastrophe." Twenty people. Like, we won't somehow muddle along without twenty Indians ...or Mexicans ...or Canadians ...or Germans. Where is our fucking sense of proportion? Scour a globe with 5.3 BILLION inhabitants and the best you can turn up is twenty dead. If everyone lined up on the Saudi border died in the first day of fighting it would still only be a drop in the bucket. One million dead. Two million.

Childbirth is not a miracle. Life is not sacred. When you have twenty-thousand nomads huddled between two rivers in the Middle East and that's it for Homo sapiens; when one in five children is a live birth, one in ten living past the age of ten, then childbirth is a miracle and life is sacred. When the average age of a grandmother in Philadelphia's housing projects is twenty-five, to call childbirth a miracle is at the least a tasteless joke and at worst a true obscenity. 

We can feel the pressure building when we dare to look at it. "All you need is love" must have tickled Thanatos to his ice-cold, moss-covered, maggot-ridden heart. We find ourselves in a "Life Out of Balance" circumstance of boggling proportions. If there is transmigration of souls, everyone who ever lived on this planet ever is back here right now. Death is not fooled. We haven't eliminated Him. He is very, very, very, very, patient.

You know what I think happens when the last soul emerges again from some goo-gooing, placid, beatific anarcho-witch-vegetarian so that there's no more souls to draw on? I think its happened before in the distant past. Several times. On that day (I believe) we can all go out to the graveyard and watch the gray blue fingers pushing up through the sod; coming for us; for all of us. I think that's where those stories come from; and they only become popular when the time is near. Very near.

"Pressing problems of the day".

"Newspaper, radio and TV ga-ga", because nobody will just buy the advertising.

***************

Ah, I probably don't believe half of that. The other half is still worth thinking about, though. Don't you think?

The True North

The True North (1987) & The True North II (1991)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

RACHEL PEABODY:
(from the Comics Syurp Blog, October 2011))

In September of 1987, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized 192 comics from a comic book shop called Comic Legends in Calgary, Alberta. They also charged owners Julie Warren, Darren Ott and Dale Clarke with circulating obscene materials. The comics in question were adult comics and were never intended for children, nor were they sold to children. The reason for the search and confiscation of the comics was that a 14-year-old boy purchased a copy of Warlock 5 by Aircel Comics, and his mother complained. Warlock 5 was not a comic that was seized that day.

When comic artists caught wind of this, as they would, they were outraged. As a result, Paul Stockton, Leonard S Wong, Liz Schiller and Derek McCulloch formed the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund (hereafter CLLDF). In order to raise funds for Warren, Ott and Clarke, CLLDF published an anti-censorship comic book anthology called The True North. Despite the unfavourable circumstances with which it was created, the comic book is an excellent testament to the conviction of the comic book industry both in and outside Canada. It also features a fantastic array of Canada’s writers and artists, as well as some Americans, spanning [every] style, era and genre.

Unfortunately, all three shopkeepers were convicted with a fine of $5500. Although they did appeal with the help of CLLDF, the result was only a reduced fine.

In 1991, the CLLDF published True North II, a second anthology collection, again anti-censorship, and again, a great collector’s item. What I love most about these comics is the sampling of so many different Canadian writers and artists.

Bigger Blacker Kiss

Bigger Blacker Kiss (26/27 October 1990)
Art by Dave Sim

24 HOUR COMICS ALL-STARS (About Comics, 2005):
(from the introduction to Bigger Blacker Kiss)

Dave Sim, whose 300 issue run of Cerebus is hailed as one of the high points of both vision and dedication in the North American comics field, is a key person in the history of the 24 hour comic. He published not only his own 24 hour comic but also several of the other early examples in the back of Cerebus. By doing so, he exposed a much larger audience to a challenge which had mainly been known to a few comic book insiders. Dave's visual style for this story is minimalist: one character, few panels and no backgrounds (for most of the run of Cerebus, another artist drew the backgrounds). However, as a work of character study, it's intense and unblinking. Completed in under fifteen hours Bigger Blacker Kiss is an achievement in speed, but not endurance. Staying up for fifteen hours is no feat, but with the decades that Sim dedicated to chronicling the adventures of an aardvark, he has nothing to prove to anyone on the endurance front. The title was an intentional reference to the Howard Chaykin adult comic book series Black Kiss, which had been compiled into a single volume named Big Black Kiss.

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Bigger Blacker Kiss in Cerebus #142, January 1991)

Here it is. My twenty-four hour comic produced in just a little over fifteen hours. What a rush. Seriously, if you are a cartoonist you have to give it a try. Makes you feel as if you have the strength of ten Grinches plus two. I'd like to dedicate it to Audrey (whose phone number I got and never used, which prompted the first few pages), Angela (whose hair I used), Gerhard (because doing a 'solo album' is always going to be a bit offensive no matter how innocent the intention), Monique (for not interrupting), Eric (for the black hash) and the Adolph Coors company for the sustenance around 12:30am. Oh, and to Lil Reid for the carrot cake because man does not live by Coors alone. Thanks, grandma.

(from Now I'll Ask You One... David Branstetter, 29 July 2011)

Depending on who you ask, Bigger Blacker Kiss was "before the misogyny thing". I think, for the Scott McClouds of this world it's all one thing. Dave Sim does an unsympathetic treatment of a female character (read: not outright unquestioning portrayal of women as Absolutely Good and Noble, Universally, Period) because he hates women. Well, I don't think so. Particularly since 1970 I think there's a lot to be said about the difference between who women have chosen to be (generally and specifically) and how they perceive themselves. That's what good writing is: here's the portrayal and here's the actuality. The woman in the story is on a downward slide into oblivion but still thinks that she's a dominant figure. So we see how she is and see how she sees herself and see that Big Trouble is the only possible result and then the kicker: she's pregnant and thinking that this will improve everything. I don't think the story is far-fetched or misogynistic or sensationalistic. I think it's a good example of how the drift of our society is in one direction and our perception of society is that it is rising exponentially. The character's personal Big Trouble is also society's Even Bigger Trouble - Bigger, Blacker, Kiss.

What Happened Between Issues Eleven & Twelve?

Cerebus #11 & 12 (August & October 1979)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Cerebus #11 in Swords Of Cerebus Vol 3, 1981)

The first introduction I wrote for this story was a lengthy dissertation on the nervous breakdown I suffered after this issue was finished. It ran to about twice the length of this one, at least, but in the end, it sounded like what it was; a self-serving rationalisation of a very insane couple of weeks. I realised when I had it done, that my intention had been primarily to reassure everyone reading it that it wouldn't happen again. Including me. It was the culmination of many different threads in my life coming together at once. Personal stuff, professional stuff, problems, ambitions, accomplishments and failures. Writing that introduction was a very therapeutic exercise, but the final product was pretty dull.

When Kevin Davies of Myriad did the interview with me, he asked me if I could have avoided the nervous breakdown, a question I really didn't consider too extensively until I saw it again in print. I don't think I could have, and in many ways it came at exactly the right time. It was a warning that I am only human and it was an indication to me of just how fragile humans can be. I've learned to accept only as much pressure as I can comfortably handle, and too keep my own feelings as the primary focus for my decision-making. Talking to people like Wendy Pini, I began to realize that the people attracted to success (and success is the honey for a specific kind of fly) can bleed you white if you let them, all with the best of intentions.

I realised writing the introduction that I was trying to help anyone who might find themselves in the same situation I did. I was hoping in some way to reach anyone who might be feeling themselves losing control - babbling endlessly about nothing, swinging from elation to depression and back in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, it's a pit that you either climb out of or slip into permanently. But the answers have to come from inside.

Enthusing about Marshall Rogers, The Batman, and the pleasure I can get out of a steel point barely a half-inch in length and a bottle of ink, rather than rehashing a dead end period of my life, is one of those answers.

For me.

DAVE SIM:
(from the Coville Clubhouse interview, July 2005)

Twenty-six years later on, I think it would be more accurate to say that I had achieved a false level of transcendence that I had been looking to achieve through LSD - the psychic equivalent of a massive and pleasurable electric shock-that left me incapable of reassuring my wife (within her own very limited frames of reference) that I was okay: with the result that she freaked out at one point and called my mother and she and my mother locked me up in a psych ward at the local hospital for a couple of days.

There really wasn't anything to "recover" from. I had gone through the false transcendent state and come out the other side. The only thing I really needed to recover from was the massive doses of depressants they had given me in the psych ward. That took two or three days during which all of my muscles and motor functions were seriously malfunctioning - it felt as if I had pulled every muscle in my body so that just speaking and walking required Herculean forces of will in order to achieve. Essentially, at that point - never again wanting to experience that severe crippling effect - I began to live two different lives simultaneously. I learned how to portray myself as a normal person in order to keep my wife and parents from locking me up in any more psych wards while at the same time I began to explore all of the thoughts and experiences that I had had over the period of the false transcendent state and began to work towards putting them all down on paper in the Cerebus storyline. When I realized, a month or two later, how large and difficult a task that was going to be, I decided to make Cerebus into a 300-issue project in order to encompass it all and leave room for my own best assessment of the aftermath. The documentation of the state itself went from about issue 20 to about issue 186. I was able to stop leading my double life once I was divorced in 1983 and I no longer had the on-going threat hanging over my head that my freedom depended on my wife and mother believing me to be sane.

I Have To Live With This Guy!

I Have To Live With This Guy! (Tomorrows Publishing, 2002)
by Blake Bell , cover art by Bill Everett

PUBLISHER'S BLURB:

Will Eisner does what? Alan Moore said that? Dave Sim is really like that? Take a deep look into what its been like living with comic book creators over the past 60 years, with the people who know them best! This trade paperback explores the lives of the partners and wives of Will Eisner, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, John Romita, Gene Colan, Dan DeCarlo, Dick Ayers, Archie Goodwin, Ric Estrada, Dave Sim, Howard Cruse, Dave Cooper and more! In addition to sharing memories and anecdotes you'll find nowhere else, their better halves have opened up private files to unearth personal photos, momentos, and never-before-seen art by the top creators in comics! Once you've read this book, you'll see: You only thought you knew them!

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV, Season 3 Episode 7, 16 December 2011)
...I never read Deni [Loubert]'s part in Blake Bell’s book I Have To Live With This Guy. The time that came out I told Chester Brown and Joe Matt, "Look, if you want to read it and ask me questions about it, that's fine. I’ll be happy to tell you my side of it - strictly in personal conversation." Joe couldn't believe I wasn’t interested in reading it, but then I stopped reading reviews of my work years ago, so it's even less likely that I would be interested in reading reviews of my life.

Spider-Ham

Spider-Ham Goes Mad (2007)
Art by Dave Sim

Above is Dave Sim's contribution to the Ultimate Spider-Man #100 Project, which was a tribute to Bendis & Bagley's run on that title, later auctioned in aid of the Hero Initiative, benefiting comic creators in need. The cover features the 'Cerebus-esque' Spider-Ham (in place of Spider-Man) in an homage to a classic Steve Ditko cover to Spider-Man #24. You can view all the Ditko Spider-Man covers at Cover Browser.

DAVE SIM:
(from The Blog & Mail #411, 27 October 2007)
Nice note from Jim McLauchlin at Hero Initiative. You might remember that I did a Spider-Ham riff on Steve Ditko's cover to SPIDER-MAN 24 as part of the ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN 100 PROJECT where Marvel printed up 100 copies of USM 100 with a blank space and got 100 cartoonists to do drawings on them to support Hero Initiative.

Well, according to Jeff Tundis (who was bidding, so he should know), it went for around $1500. Jim sent along a list of the winning bids. Todd McFarlane was Top Dog by a wide margin with a bid of $6,701 (it was that last dollar that killed somebody I guess). Frank Cho was just a little bit back of him at $5,116.88 (which looks as if the winning bidder drained his bank account and then went scrounging for change in the sofa cushions as the clock was winding down). Joe Quesada/Danny Miki clocked in at $3,000, Tim Sale at $2,500, J. Scott Campbell at $2,247, Joe Benitez at $2,000 Ty Templeton at $2,000 (so there went my chance to be Top Canadian Resident), Tone Rodriguez at $2,000, Neil Gaiman/Joe Rubinstein at $1,945, Joe Linsner at $1,682, George Perez at $1,526... 

The grand total was $81,475.21. I even got a Noncash Charitable Contributions form with it (#8283). I can't use if for anything, but it makes a lovely souvenir from Uncle Sam. It's a great book, too (I got a free hardcover). I had it sitting out on the coffee table and I picked it up frequently the first week just to thumb through it. You can order it in hardcover or softcover at www.HeroInitiative.org. Tell 'em Spider-Ham sent you.

Spider-Ham (July 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

(Via Comic Art Fans) 

Recommended: The Art Of P. Craig Russell

The Art Of P. Craig Russell: A Retrospective
Desperado Publishing, 2007

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction)

The question arrives - as it often does - alongside the "Art of..." volume: How did P. Craig Russell come to be one of the great unsung heroes of the comic-book field? As you are about to bear witness, it is an illustrious and near to flawless career that goes back thirty years - more than thirty years.

...Why didn't we hear more about this stuff a) at the time b) in the interim and c) since? The perhaps more apt question: Why didn't we say more about this stuff? Then the personal self-indictment: When was the last time that I mentioned Craig's work in conversation?

...An amazing collection.

The Art Of P. Craig Russell is available from Desperado Publishing.

The Comics Journal #301

Cerebus #300 (March 2004)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

TIM KRIEDER:
(from Irredeemable: Dave Sim's Cerebus in The Comics Journal #301, February 2011)

Even though Cerebus isn't as good a book as Maus or Fun Home or Persepolis, it's much more interesting than any of them. You sometimes hate reading Cerebus, but when you're finished you catch yourself envying friends who are beginning it. I would rather reread it, and would much rather look at it, than any of those other, better books. Frankly, Spiegelman and Bechdel and Satrapi all seem to me to be minor talents who put their limited abilities to the best possible use because they each had one great story to tell. Their draftsmanship gets the job done, but it looks undistinguished and dull compared to Sim's fluid command of expression and gesture, his pyrotechnical talent and inexhaustible visual invention. Those more celebrated books are all relatively short, unified, traditional narratives, they're all memoirs (the hot commercial literary form of the last decade), and they're all about politically fashionable subjects; Cerebus, on the other hand, is a sprawling, sloppy, lopsided mess, hard to classify by form or genre or anything else, its subject resolutely uncool, and its politics are so reactionary as to be  widely regarded as hate speech or evidence of a clinical disorder. It is brilliant and hilarious and incredibly boring, very, very annoying, infuriating and beautiful, defiantly inaccessible, arguably insane, arguably, great. I'm not sure it should even be called a "book"; it's something bigger than that - a complete document of one man's artistic, intellectual and spiritual life. To appeal to mainstream tastes, it seems, comics have to compromise, conforming to more respectable literary conventions. Dave Sim is - and this is one epithet he would relish - undomesticable.

The Comics Journal #301 is available from Fantagraphics Books.

Whatever Happened To Jaka?

Cerebus #265 (April 2001)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:

(from The Blog & Mail, 22 December 2006)

Jaka post-Form & Void? That would be a tough call and not one that I've given any amount of thought to. I would say that given that these things tend to occur in a symmetrical way, yes, I would imagine that whatever her life ended up being like it would probably have resembled Cerebus's traumatic beginning to Latter Days spinning out in a comparable "can't win for losing" way. Probably not quite AS traumatic because I would assume that she had closed off most of herself in the aftermath of the end of her marriage. The ending to the marriage was too traumatic, too brutal and with no room to manufacture an alternative happy reality in her own mind that would fit the known facts but allow her to escape the tragedy personally. No, the Cirinists do their work too well for that. The core question would be "How much in love with Cerebus was she?" which is another way of asking "How much had she closed herself off at that point?" And that I would no more attempt to answer than I would attempt to answer for which (if any!) of my own girlfriends or my wife I was their greatest and most significant relationship and for which of them I was just one of the guys they acted out their "strong, independent woman" role against - going through the motions for the sake of having a boyfriend or husband - before moving on to their next "strong, independent woman" drama with their new Best Supporting Actor. They were upset for a period of time, but then the next guy came along and it's "happily ever after" "I've never felt this way before" time again. Certainly in the case of Jaka, she wasn't wife and mother material so I think I'm safe in saying that although she thought of herself as monogamous and bonding for life, she was actually just doing the "I've never felt this way before" "Oh no its coming to an end" "Boohoohoo" "NEXT!" trip. Very possibly she just saw Cerebus as the safe option because he was always in love with her every time she saw him. There was never the remotest danger that she had lost him even when he was married to Red Sophia or when she was married to Rick. Women tend to find that incredibly boring but after a series of traumatic dramas where they win more than lose a lot of them will opt for the safe option at least for a period of time either to rebuild their egos or just to have a nice rest.

Support Cerebus TV

Signed & Numbered Print: Cape Ends (1992)
Art by Dave Sim

The signed and numbered print above (limited to 63 copies) can be yours for a $20 donation to Cerebus TV. Hurry while stocks last.

Comic Book Styles

'Comic Book Schools' featuring Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Art Adams & Bruce Timm.
from Glamourpuss #2 (July 2008)
Art by Dave Sim

Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Comic Strip Styles

'Comic Strip Schools' featuring Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff & Charles Schulz
from Glamourpuss #2 (July 2008)
Art by Dave Sim

Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

Wolveroach

Cerebus #54-56 (September-November 1983)
Art by Dave Sim
(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:

(from an interview in The Comics Journal #184, 1996)

When it came time to do a Roach character that had the ambiance of religious fervor surrounding him, it had to be Wolverine. The fact that Marvel got so upset about me putting Wolverine on the successive covers. "It's not a parody; you are now stealing the central icon of our church," was to me revelatory. "Well, there you go. Yes, I picked the right one." I didn't realize I was going to be putting my foot in it this badly. I thought parody's parody, but you can take that chalice called Captain America and do a parody of that, you can take this subaltern and do Moon Knight, but by God don't you touch our Wolverine. That's the center of our church.

DAVE SIM:

(from the essay 'Dave Sim On Parody & Copyright' in Following Cerebus #3, February 2005)

...when Marvel did Peter Porker, The Amazing Spider-Ham - I suspect largely as a warning shot across my bow over my doing Wolverroach. Essentially they did Cerebus in a Spider-Man costume. It was an attempt to play some hardball with me. You want to play cute, we can play cute too. Of course my theory, which dates from that time period, is that you protect your trademark and copyright by being good at what you do. Twenty years later on, Wolveroach is far more memorable than Spider-Ham, even though there was, in my view, a far greater level of appropriation going on in the later case.

Official Cerebus T-Shirts

Cerebus: He Doesn't Love You & Cerebus For Dictator
Available from Graphitti Designs

Cerebus in Chains
Available from World Of Strange

Cerebus Covers #1-5
Available from World Of Strange

Oscar Wilde

Cerebus #120 (March 1989)

Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:

(from Note From The President, Cerebus #148, July 1991)

The more I learned about Oscar [Wilde], the more I resented his lack of productivity. Aside from one really good play (Importance of Being Earnest) and one really good short novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), most of his work is derivative or second rate. I like it but I think I'm objective enough to admit that very little of what he did stands the test of time for most people. I resent the fact that most of his time was spent entertaining second and third-rate intellects; or even more loathsome, the aristocracy. He is almost universally acknowledged as the greatest conversationalist of his day. In a time when the ability to hold the attention of a table of diners was a thing for which many were noted, Oscar reigned supreme. Only a handful of his stories, anecdotes and discourses have survived even as fragments (thanks mostly to the Roberts; Sherard and Ross, and Richard le Gallienne). 

And, yet, that was Oscar wasn't it?

How much better to entertain a roomful of strangers, lingering over a bottle of good wine and innumerable cigarettes, playing with notions and ideas, weaving epigrams and fables; striking just the right note with each companion so that even those who were the most scornful of him, who had arrived determined to despise him and to revile him, found themselves smiling, then laughing; charmed, captivated; having the time of their lives. 

How much better that, than seclusion and study. Why be prolific when one could be charming? Why produce when there's so much to consume?

I have to credit all the research that I did on Oscar Wilde for convincing me that I don't want to be like that. If I can end my life with a large body of completed works and a reputation as a cantankerous old hermit I'll consider my time well spent.

Spawn

Spawn #10, 1994
Art by Todd McFarlane, written by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

(from the PRO/CON Speech, April 1993, reprinted in The Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing)

Image is the first sensible reaction to the basic truth of the direct market. Will Spawn always be the No. 1 comic book? No. Of course not. How long will it be at or near the top? There's no way of knowing. The critical difference with Spawn is that Todd McFarlane recognised that he was hot now, while he was working on Spider-Man. He recognised that he was making an enormous amount of money for Marvel Comics and that the percentage of that money that he was being paid was minuscule. He recognised that there was a window of opportunity now to make his future financially secure and to take control of his career. He recognised that, at Marvel, his career was out of his control. A change of editor, of editorial policy, of company ownership, any number of things could throw him out in the street at a moment's notice. If Marvel could throw Chris Claremont away after 15 years, refusing even to let him write a farewell note on the letters pages of the book [X-Men] he had made into the industry standard, what security is there? Todd McFarlane recognised that there is no security. There never has been, and there never will be.

1001 Comics To Read Before You Die

Cerebus Vol 2: High Society (collecting #26-50, 1981-1983)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

BART BEATY:
(a review of High Society in 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, edited by Paul Gravett, 2011)

What stands out as one of the oddest experiments of the 1980s wound up as one of the most transformative comics of all time. Since 1977, Dave Sim had been serializing the adventures of Cerebus the Aardvark, a deft parody of Conan the Barbarian that was quickly running out of steam. With the twenty-sixth issue he dramatically changed the tone and direction of his work, thrusting his marauding antihero into the claustrophobic world of politics and high finance.

In the fictional city-state of Iest, Cerebus becomes a pawn in a highly fraught political game played against the diabolically clever Lord Julius. Aided by the manipulative Astoria, Cerebus struggles to negotiate a complex world that he does not fully understand. When the tense election is resolved, in hilarious fashion, by the vote of a single farmer in a snowy field, Cerebus finds himself Prime Minister. With his world literally turned on its head - Sim drew and printed the final pages of the book sideways - Cerebus is overwhelmed by his powerful position, enduring crisis after crisis before his government is toppled.

The image of politics Sim paints in the graphic novel is a dark one in which the primary characters are driven by vanity and greed. This is a lacerating view of human weakness, leavened by moments of humor that seem lifted from the best of the Marx Brothers's movies. Throughout, Sim experiments with new visual styles and storytelling formats, shedding his history as a simple parodist and emerging as a significant creative voice in his own right.

The Last Signing

Poster: The Last Signing (2010)
Art by Dave Sim

Mike Kitchen (the creator of Spy Guy) and Blair Kitchen (the creator of The Possum) go on a comic book pilgrimage to see Dave Sim (the creator of Cerebus) at The Last Signing, which took place at the Strange Adventures comic store in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 24 September 2010: