Madam DuFort

Madam DuFort (Cerebus #23, December 1980)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction in Swords Of Cerebus Vol 6, 1984)

I decided to do a tongue-in-cheek treatment of Chris Claremont's X-Men series. Having read (and heard) so often at the time that Chris, when faced with developing a new character in the series, would ask, sometimes rhetorically but more often not, "Is there any reason this character can't be a woman?" I decided to bring in Professor Charles X. Claremont and turn the previous story-line upside-down.

Professor Charles X. Claremont (Cerebus #24, January 1981)
Art by Dave Sim

Diary Of An Actress... Siu Ta (so far)

SIU TA:
(from the Cerebus Yahoo Group, 23 August 2006)

Dave Sim is a friend of my husband and I. Siu Ta (so far) is a comic strip Dave created based on my life as an actor. Dave chooses some production stills or photos of the projects I've worked on and writes up the strip by episodes. He's just finished the second episode that I will send to my friend to put up on the website in a week or so. Dave's currently working on the third episode and its on a tv series I acted in called This Is Wonderland. This is just for fun for Dave as it's so different from his 26 years of working on Cerebus that he completed a couple of years ago. We have plans to do four episodes of Siu Ta (so far), at most five episodes that will be posted up in the coming months.

DAVE SIM:

(from the Jinx World Forums, 25 February 2008)

I do have at least one more installment of Siu Ta (so far) to do - which is actually the first one. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately) I have a lot of other work to do in the meantime so it never quite makes it to the top of the list. It was a very helpful exercise, though, in learning some basic rules of photorealism comics which is pretty much what I was doing it for.

Siu Ta is a Vietnamese Canadian actress and independent short film producer.

Click the images to enlarge to a readable version.

Judenhass

Judenhass (2008)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction)

I decided some time ago that the term anti-Semitism (a 'coined' term of late nineteenth century origin) is completely inadequate to the abhorrent cultural phenomenon which it attempts to describe. For one thing, Arabs are Semites as well and the prejudice as it is generally understood certainly doesn't apply equally to Arabs and Jews. It was in the early stages of researching this graphic narrative that I first encountered the German term Judenhass. Literally Jew Hatered. It seemed to me that the term served to distil the ancient problem to its essence, and in such a way as to hopefully allow other non-Jews (like myself) to see the problem 'unlaundered' and through fresh eyes. Europe and various other jurisditions aren't experiencing a sudden upsurge in 'anti-Semitism'. What they are experiencing is an upsurge in Judenhass. Jew Hatered. So that's what I've chosen to call this story.

NEIL GAIMAN:

Judenhass is an astonishing piece of work. Painful and real and unflinching. I don't remember the last comic I read that made me cry, but this did.

JOE KUBERT:

To apply the term 'beautiful' to this book may be a misnomer considering the subject matter, but its impact cannot be denied.

JEAN SHUSTER PEAVY (sister of Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman):

Dave Sim's Judenhass is a noble enterprise, reminding us of a painful and shameful part of human history. His writing and artwork are dramatic.

MARV WOLFMAN:

Judenhass is endlessly disturbing, often unpleasant and incessantly horrifying in its stark coldness. The quotes should never be forgotten or made light of. It is why all people of good will say, 'Never again.'

ROBIN SNYDER:

As usual, trailblazing Dave Sim is way out in front. Look what he has accomplished in Judenhass. He begins at the beginning, defining his terms, as he looks at an ancient and world-wide problem from a fresh perspective.

Visit the Judenhass website.

Dave Sim: The Glamourpuss Interview

Page 45 in Nottingham is one of the best comics shops in the UK, and has been a strong supporter of Cerebus since opening its doors in 1994. In the following interview conducted in 2008, Page 45 co-founder, Stephen L. Holland, talks to Dave Sim about the launch of Glamourpuss, his first new comic series since the end of Cerebus in March 2004.

"I don’t want to turn heads, I want to snap necks."

Dave Sim is back. And just so we're clear, he's talking about his craft, not some newly discovered interest in martial arts. Four years after completing Cerebus, the longest sustained narrative in comicbook history, racking in at 300 issues and 6,000 pages of gentle-to-scathing sociopolitical satire - each written and drawn by himself with fellow Canadian Gerhard on backgrounds - Dave Sim is returning to the mainstream of comicbook fiction with a new title: glamourpuss.

Its theme? "If you don’t look good, don't go out."

Its style? "Gucci. Flat-out, no holds barred Gucci. And then just when you’re not expecting it: Vera Wang."

Its mood? "Something danceable with a really fabulous matching shoes, purse and nail polish thing happening. I mean, like, the identical shade."

And what can Dave tell us about its main character, the delirious Dior darling, Glamourpuss herself? "As little as possible – being a gentleman. I’m loathe to discuss a lady behind her back… or behind her comicbook for that matter." I'm being toyed with. If so far this sounds totally bonkers, do not adjust your sets: glamourpuss is deliciously bonkers, but it's also outstandingly beautiful and wickedly clever, messing so far with the proverbial fourth wall that we might have to find ourselves a fifth.

Parody Playground

Sim has always been an innovative force. From his constantly inventive approach to sequential-art storytelling in Cerebus to the pages' lettering whose calligraphic approach was often the visual equivalent of onomatopoeia, the man has pushed, smashed and rebuilt more boundaries in this medium than any single artist. And now he's doing it again. Laced with the sort of extras Alan Moore's League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen boasted (there in the form of a mock-archaic letter column; here in the form of faux-editorials, dietary regimes, style tips and next issue advertisements), glamourpuss is a comic that casts the illusion that it's also an artifact - a fashion magazine, edited by Glamourpuss herself - that doesn't actually exist.

"That couldn't exist," Sim corrects, "but which - through the bande desinée hocus pocus - does. Imagine a fashion magazine counselling its reader to 'pick one or at most two of the deadly C.A.N. - caffeine, alcohol and nicotine.' Anna Wintour would absolutely have kittens."

So what is glamourpuss? It's part-satire of the fashion industry, part-parody of fashion magazines and wicked wink at those who edit, inhabit and buy them. It's suspiciously well informed - I had no idea Dave subscribed to Vogue! This is someone, after all, who has retreated from the materialism of the modern world with all its traps and trappings, ditching the digital in favour of the Divine.

"The only one I subscribe to is Glamour although Vogue has its good points as well. It's not an issue of materialism, it's the purity of the core feminine voice discussing things with itself and relentlessly seeking to present its Best Adorned Self to the world photographically. There are undoubtedly better uses for $100 billion a year but, hey, it's not my money."

No, Dave's priorities lie elsewhere, like the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund for which he's helped raise and personally donated tens of thousands of dollars, including the whole of his scripting fee for Spawn #10, which in those days was considerable and earned Sim their first ever Defender of Liberty Award in 1996.

Scaling Mount Everest

glamourpuss also doubles as an extended exploration of photorealism in comics, as Dave Sim studies the work of Al Williamson, Neal Adams et al, works out how they achieved certain effects, discusses their techniques then emulates and adapts them within the comic he's creating. That's something for both professional and aspiring artists to get their teeth into. "Rick Veitch [Swamp Thing, Bratpack] says that part 'spoke to him' which I consider high praise indeed."

For Dave at least it's a departure from Cerebus, which featured a lot of caricature in the form of Mick Jagger, Margaret Thatcher and co., with Cerebus himself being an anthropomorphized aardvark. It was Gerhard's meticulous backgrounds which constituted the photorealistic elements in Cerebus.

"That's a good was of putting it, although there were later elements of photorealism in my depictions of Ham Ernestway and Jaka in Form & Void and Going Home, quite apart from the pure photorealism of the Woody Allen/Konigsberg material." glamourpuss, however, is on another level entirely. "[It's] a step up... a very large step up... from cartooning to Raymond School Illustration, the most exacting discipline among the many Comic Art Schools." His interest in this field began at least as far back as 1970 when Sim began collecting Rip Kirby strips in 1970, and in addition to Alex Raymond, he cites other influences for the art style including Stan Drake, John Prentice, Al Williamson, Leonard Starr, Neal Adams: "Everyone who spent time at the top of the photorealist Mount Everest."

I asked Dave if he was enjoying his own art lesson. "Enjoying would be a stretch. It's too nerve-wracking to enjoy. All that pencilling and then just one chance to get it right in the inking, which is 'done in a bold and spontaneous yet simple style' as Raymond instructs me, 67 years ago [Tom Roberts' Alex Raymond: His Life & Times]. It even works on me when I get it right - or, more accurately, less wrong. 'Gee, that looks like fun.' You'd think I would know better." Additional challenges include the switch from pen to brush. Also: "Remembering to dip the brush into the inkwell. Otherwise the pictures, just, you know, stay in my head."

Publishing & Promotion

Projected at this point to run for some 25 issues, glamourpuss shouldn't be as much hard work for readers as it will be for Sim. "Cerebus was a 26-year search for Truth or at least Reality. glamourpuss is intended to be a) fun b) funny and c) pretty."

This should come as a relief to those who feared that Sim had gone irrevocably serious on them. One look at the glamourpuss website [now off-line]  is enough to dispel that notion. A virtual warren of rabbit holes, it boasts posters you can download that poke fun at Glamourpuss, glamourpuss and even Dave himself: "The high fashion comicbook that's so six months ago..." "Are you sure Dave Sim did this...?" and "Buy it now while it's still at the "early, funnier ones" stage..."  For such a self-confessed Luddite, an awful lot of lateral thinking and interwebbery pre-planning has gone into the promotion of this new project. On top of the website, there have been internet chats, 4,500 copies of a Comicbook Industry Preview Edition of #1 dispatched in time for retailers to judge their initial orders, generous initial ordering incentives and an exclusive Fashion Industry Edition to entice real-life glamourpusses into comic shops to laugh at (or swoon over) themselves. Does Dave believe that creators and publishers need to do more for retailers than simply deliver the product?

"Well, I think so. Particularly in a field where 1) you know you'll have at least 500 pages of competition every month, 2) the orders on issue #1 are the precipice from which you will shortly plummet and 3) everyone is watching a different 'channel' on the internet." That's one of the reasons he's sticking to self-publishing. "You need that control if you want to do things differently. How could I get DC to pay my salary for three months strictly on promotion?"

How indeed, since DC doesn't even pay to fly its key UK artists over to US conventions? But what about - if just for the sake of penetration into the book stores - Dave gave up such limited distribution rights to someone as aesthetically sound and ethically unimpeachable as Chris Staros of Top Shelf publishing, home to the next incarnations of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

"No, I’m 100% exclusively interested in keeping comicbook stores alive and flourishing. I'm probably the only publisher that doesn't sell to Amazon.com." Respect.

Appearances & Perception

So what can we expect from glamourpuss or even Glamourpuss herself? Sim is renowned for having planned Cerebus' first 200 issues well in advance, however much those plans may have later evolved. Is Glamourpuss going to be languidly extolling her own glorious virtues each issue, or are we going to be following her through the trials and tribulations of accessorisation to some destination Dave has in mind other than her wardrobe? "It's ill-advised to think of any real lady in terms of a destination I've found, and the truly fashion-conscious experience no trials nor tribulations in accessorising their wardrobes, do they? That's what makes them a glamourpuss. They always get it right the first time. Always."

Joined in the first issue - very reluctantly indeed - by Glamourpuss' long-term psychotherapist Dr. Norm in the form of a letter he strongly advises her against publishing but which she turns into a column (whoops), and even longer-term evil twin sister Skanko in a laugh-out-loud Dating Guide which Dr. Norm also counsels her against incorporating into the magazine ("You are so @#%!ing dead!" shouts Skanko), Glamourpuss looks set to live out both her inner conflicts and her sibling rivalry in public on paper. In fact, she appears to relish it. Constantly referring to herself in the third person singular as 'Glamourpuss', she's obviously in love with herself, with the sound of her name, and indeed with her own social status as a glamourpuss. "Hey, wouldn't you be?"

The fact that Cerebus did the same thing Sim ascribes to "Borealan dialect" but one has to wonder - because it's an unusual verbal tick to refer to oneself like that - whether it was a subconscious decision that took him by surprise, or an entirely conscious one. "It's a good marketing ploy to associate with characters who always refer to themselves in the third person. They’re like little walking banner ads."

Nevertheless, that's two consecutive works starring two egomaniacs, with both comics also prominently featuring Dave Sim as himself or "himself" as creator of the comics in question. Is Dave Sim, perhaps, an egomaniac? "Not me. I consider myself to be neither evil nor a genius, unlike the fictional Dave Sim depicted in glamourpuss. Give the people what they, evidently, want. That's my motto."

Dave, of course, is referring to the barrage of vocal outrage spread across the internet ever since a certain issue of Cerebus (#186) in which another fictional Dave Sim (Viktor Davis) came out against what he considered the excesses of feminism, then later issues in which the editorial content confirmed it as his own political stance. Branded a misogynist (Concise Oxford Dictionary definition, 1983: "one who hates all women") he's since constantly referred to himself on his blog and elsewhere as "Dave Sim, The Evil Misogynist". Why?

"I hoped to have people reflect on the self-description and really the real foolishness is in someone thinking that holding political differences with feminism either constitutes Evil or Misogyny. Turned out to be a faint hope, as we've seen."

Where Sim can’t fail in his efforts to inspire serious reflection is in his other imminent publication Judenhass (read the Page 45 review here), which has already garnered emphatic praise from the likes of Neil Gaiman and Peter Straub.

Glamourpuss is published every other month and is available from your local comic shop (and Page 45 in Nottingham, UK). Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available at ComiXpress.

Tribute Art Round Up #2

Art by Jeremy Treece (2012)

Art by Tim Odland (2012)

Art by David Branstetter (2012)

Art by Khary Randolph (2011)

Art by Don Kelly (1985 or 1986)

Art by Shonborn (2011)

Art by Sketchy McDrawpants (2010)

Art by Ayato (2010)

Cerebus US Tour '92

Cerebus US Tour '92 Logo
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Aardvark Comment in Cerebus #199, October 1995)

Actually, I was the perfect recluse from about 1989 to 1992. There was a six- to ten-month period in the middle there where I didn't move outside of a ten-block radius of downtown Kitchener. I still remember the dazzling impact of being driven somewhere and there were all these trees going past the car window. When I started going out and promoting the book again - on the '92 US Tour - I realised that it provided a perfect balance to the hard solitary work of creativity in exactly the proportion I required. Work consisted - and consists - of long stretches of not seeing another living soul, being inwardly focused and passing unseen through my home town going to and from work. The personal appearances are the exact opposite. I can do brainless head sketched that tilt this way and that, the proportions wrong, the detail haphazard if not non-existent. I spend most of the time being flattered excessively, questioned about my opinion, meeting new people, getting caught up with old friends, and I can't walk five steps without being waylaid by someone who makes it very obvious that five minutes spent in my company is a Very Big Deal to them. One weekend a month, 7% of my day-to-day life. It's a great pressure release and makes me appreciate the quiet, solitude and introspection all the more.

Unauthorised Online Availability Of Cerebus

Sketch: Cerebus In Hell for Murray Roach (2006)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV Season 3 Episode 17, 24 February 2012)

I don't consider unauthorised [online] availability of the 6,000 page Cerebus graphic novel to be illegal, rather I do consider it free advertising and an acknowledgement that poverty is both endemic and recurrent in our society. That is, over Cerebus' 35 year history many readers and fans of the book have purchased, sold and then repurchased the same material time and again in alternating periods of personal prosperity and personal impoverishment, that to me reflect what are now in-built patterns of modern western life - tuition and text books for the university student, financial pressures of the newly married couple, the obligations of responsible parenting both single and traditional, the expense of home-ownership, and, yes, divorce and child support - are just a few of the many reasons that Cerebus fans and readers are forced to prioritise what possessions they retain and what possessions they sell. I suspect that in the future this will become even more wide spread and it seems to me a responsible policy to both acknowledge and accommodate both realities to ensure that life long Cerebus fans and readers, and potential Cerebus fans and readers have access to the story even when they can’t afford to own the print editions.

In a day and age when literally trillions of different forms of entertainment are available with the click of a mouse the only appropriate reaction to anyone accessing your intellectual property isn't "I'll sue you!", it's "Thank you. Thank you for giving the material a fair hearing. Thank you for even considering purchasing the print editions. Thank you for investing one of your most valuable possessions... your time." There are many different views of digital downloads. My view relative to my work is that each individual's time, whatever that individual's political or economic view points, is a rare valuable and irreplaceable commodity and personal investment. So I want people to not only feel free to download my work wherever they can find it, but also to be free to do so. That will be true even if I find a way in the future to offer pay-per-view downloads. And if you do decide, whoever you are, that you want print versions of my work, there’s always the Comic Shop Locator service.

UPDATE - JUNE 2014:
Dave Sim 'Bootlegs The Bootleggers'

Hemingway Is All Right!

Ham Ernestway (Cerebus #252, March 2000)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from 'Notes on Form & Void' in Cerebus #253, April 2000)

I have just tonight spoken with Eddie Campbell, the marvellous cartoonist and fellow self-publisher who has scored such a great success with the collected From Hell paperback. He told me that he has rated Going Home part one as one of the greatest comic-book stories of all time, which is a very nice thing for him to say and put it in print for everyone who reads his wonderful comic book, Bacchus, to see. However, he says that he is having second thoughts, having read the first instalment of Form & Void. "You leave Hemingway alone," warned Eddie speaking to me from his home in Australia, which is a country which is far away. "Hemingway is all right." ...Eddie told me that he can live with me being a misogynist, but he cannot abide the thought of my being a philistine.

Recommended: Eddie Campbell's Bacchus

Happy Birthday Bacchus (backcover, Bacchus #5, September 1995)
Art by Bloody Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from A Cerebus Preview of Eddie Campbell's self-published Bacchus, Cerebus #193, April 1995)

We all have those comic books which are near and dear to us. For some reason, it requires the patience of Job to remain faithful, they come out so infrequently. The stories are read and the artwork admired with the greatest restraint - 'careful now, not too fast, Dave, you mightn't see another one for... shit. It's over.' It's hard to say if Eddie Campbell's Bacchus is in that category. There are so many pages of Bacchus stories in existence (well over seven hundred) and I know I've read every one of them. Still, the doubt lingers. Could I have missed one along the way? When was the last one that I read published? Yeah? Am I sure about that? It's so hard to tell anything beyond the fact that Gods Walk the Earth.

Did Bacchus just take Eddie's fancy one day? Or did Bacchus take a fancy to Eddie? It stands to reason. All this talk of comic-book icons, new mythological figures, super-heroes as twentieth-century manifestations of the infinite human capacity for heroic fiction. If gods so exist and they were to cast a critical eye at us wee-words-'n'-pictures folks, it's hard to imagine anything catching their attention or flattering their sensibilities at, say, the San Diego Con. One might just as well scrutinise a wall full of crayon renderings by first-graders looking for a good likeness of a mum or dad. But Bacchus - Eddie's Bacchus - is a different fella altogether. Look, he might've said in the general vicinity of the hoity-toities of Olympus, the jig is up. We're getting long in the tooth. We can't cut the mustard anymore. Instead. Instead of always making out that we're better than everyone, let's just face the music. He probably lost his train of thought, which was all right; no one was listening anyway.

Show 'em, he might have said to Eddie. That's really all he had to say. He showed it to Eddie and Eddie showed it to us. He showed it to Eddie and filled Eddie so full that it would take five life-times to put it all down on paper even if every page were covered with little Alan Moore panels.

A harmless distraction, comic-books. Go wherever the comic-book people do and one thing is certain: you can always get a seat at the hotel bar. Bacchus probably has a weakness for hotel bars for those cold, impersonal moods when you just want to watch the parade go by.

A lot of us took to old Bacchus. A handful at first (even today, most comic-book conventions look like Christian Temperance Union meetings), but always someone (usually Diana - I'm sure the irony isn't lost on the God of Wine) was in a key spot to make sure the next tale appeared somewhere. And Bacchus would sit in a concealed corner of a hotel bar and listen to the comic-book fans talking about the New Gods and the penciller Gods and the inker Gods and (the ones dressed in black) about universal icons and Eternal Heroic Myths as they hurried past. Bacchus would just sip his drink, and even if you were sitting in his lap you wouldn't see his expression change: He'd be a good lad in a poker game, old Bacchus.

How many of us are there? I wonder. Tom Fassbender at Capital is one. We cackled gleefully over the phone at one another when Eddie's solicitation came in for the first issue, All the old stories are going to see the light of day again. New one's too. How do you feel about that, eh, Bacchus? Do you care? Are you excited? Are you disgusted because bar-room tales should be left in peace? What about self-publishing? Isn't it great that Eddie's self-publishing the stories - keeping them in print? All those wrinkles don't even twitch. Deadface they call 'im.

I did a sketch of Bacchus once. Someone in a bar at a con after I'd had a few (well, alright, more than a few) asked if I'd do him a Bacchus 'some day' - he collected 'em, see? Pictures of old Bacchus by other artists. I told him (I didn't ask him, I TOLD him) to get me a piece of art paper, a pencil, an eraser, a thin black pen and a thick black pen, and a picture for reference. Most fun I've had in a bar at a con ever - and that's saying something. It wasn't until I did that sketch that I realised how inspired, how magical, how hypnotising and exhilarating a creation - ahem, a 'creation' - he is.

Of course , if it's the other way 'round, and Eddie Campbell is Bacchus' creation, you only have to look at Eddie's body of work to realise that the same holds true - inspired, magical, hypnotising and exhilarating.

Cheers, mate... and - uh - cheers, Mate.

Publisher Top Shelf Productions have announced plans to reprint the entire, long out-of-print, 1,000 page Bacchas saga in a two volume omnibus.

Eddie Campbell Comics

After The Snooter (Bacchus #44, April 1999)
Art by Eddie Campbell

DAVE SIM:
(from A Cerebus Preview of Eddie Campbell's self-published Bacchus, Cerebus #192, March 1995)

...I didn't so much talk him in to self-publishing as kick the spindly legs out from under all of the half-assed reasons he had for conducting his sorry excuse for a career in the way he did right up to the present day. The kicker was the day he was explaining that he doesn't like having all his eggs in one basket, career-wise. He spreads his creativity over a number of companies so that he isn't caught short when one of them goes tits up or is late paying the bills. "Oh," I said, sneering my best highland sneer, "The Johnny Appleseed Theory." Well, Eddie cracked up. He couldn't stop laughing... he was being so serious about this crap theory of how to keep his head above water, and with one little sneer (one little sneer, mind) I had him laughing at what a stupid, half-baked, witless git he had been.

DAVE SIM:
(from a letter to Eddie Campbell originally appeared in Bacchus #46, August 1999)
Dear Mr Campbell,

Regarding the April, 1999 number of your periodical page 2 of After The Snooter in which a character identified only as Sim (which I take to be myself) enters your story in panel 1, inflates to the size of a small dirigible over panels 2 and 3 before subsiding to semi-human proportions in panel 4 and achieves a passing resemblance to myself just as I depart your story in panel 5... regarding this sequence, I find I have no rejoinder suited to it and I am forced to consider it a karmic repercussion for what I did to poor Greg Hyland in an early issue of Going Home - with an extra twenty pounds or so in panel 3 for good measure. So long as you're misremembering our fateful and life-changing visit, I hope you wouldn't mind if I had a go so that between this letter and your 5 panel in-depth memoir we might make of it a two-ply tissue of lies (as it were).

My own recollection is that you were led to seriously consider self-publishing first of all while Anne was preparing lunch and she offered the opinion over one shoulder: "It sounds perfect for you Eddie, with your compulsion to control everything." (Or words to that effect - not for the last time did I get to see Anne's high ironic wit go skimming over your crew cut as you retained only the flat assertion for future study). The second was at the fag end of the visit when we had gone to the hotel bar and I had noticed that they had vintage single malt whiskey for sale by the wee dram at prices completely unsuited to young fathers but well within the price range of ne'er-do-well divorced gentlemen. I have enough Scots blood in my veins to pick my phrasing carefully: "Well, I'm getting one. I'll get you one too, if you like or you can just sit there and eat your heart out watching me drink mine."

It was a 1963 Mc-something or other. As you sipped yours, I remember your brow unfurrowing for the first time during our visit, a smile of great serenity spreading across your mug and suddenly everything I had been saying about self-publishing began to make sense to you. "I should've tried the single malt first," I remember thinking to myself, "and we could've talked about something else for the last four days."

Eddie Campbell's autobiographical After The Snooter was originally serialised in the pages of his monthly self-published comic, Bacchus, and then collected in book form in 2002. Alec: The Years Have Pants, which collects all of Eddie Campbell's Alec stories including After The Snooter, is currently available from Top Shelf Productions. 

The Cerebus / Bacchus Crossover

The Face On The Bar-Room Floor (Bacchus #1, May 1995)
Art by Dave Sim & Eddie Campbell

EDDIE CAMPBELL:
(from Bacchus #1, May 1995)

First up is the Bacchus & Cerebus crossover, created by myself and the eminent Dave Sim. He was over here for the convention in Sydney and flew up to Brisbane afterwards. We holed up in a hotel suite for five days and improvised a five-pager around an old song from the 1890s (approximately) which was previously done in comics form by Kurtzman and Davis in MAD with the face in the final panel dropped in by the one and only Basil Wolverton. We booked adjoining rooms. We'd work in one and he'd smoke in the other. I'd sleep in among the debris and he'd sleep in the fog. But while we discussed the piece we were to create we walked in and out and the smoke was everywhere and I was trying helplessly to open a window thirteen storeys up. I have stipulated in my agreements with the accommodating Mr Sim that I get to pick the brand of cigarette next time as I had to process the smoke from each one after he was finished with it. The fire hose reel was situated outside our doors and became in our heads a traditional Scottish dance to be performed after completing each evening with a trip to the pub across the road. As for the work itself, we just passed the pages back and forth until it was done. Diana Schutz correctly recognised who did what but was miffed that we didn't cast her in the role of the barmaid. Steve Bissette was miffed that we did give him the role of the artist. He threatened to get even, and judging from his brilliant new comic, Tyrant, he knows how to go about it. It fairly oozes with primal danger.

The Face On The Bar-Room Floor (Bacchus #1, May 1995)
Art by Dave Sim & Eddie Campbell

Gerhard Answers 15 Questions

GERHARD:
(from a 15-question interview with Julinda Morrow at Sequential Highway, 2 March 2012)

I don't think that I was led to being an artist. I have a strong suspicion that we are born artists and that life drains it out of us. A first grade teacher commented that her kids are all artistic geniuses; little Picassos. You just need to know when to take the drawing paper away from them before they wreck it.

I have an early memory; I was about four years old, doodling on a blackboard in a hospital waiting room. A man came in, saw what I was doing, told me that it was really good and said that he hoped I didn't lose the talent or ability to draw as I got older. I wondered how I could lose such a thing; something that seemed to be so much a part of me. When I asked him why he thought I would lose it, he shrugged and said, "People just do."

...My schooling consisted of high school art and drafting classes most of which I didn't go to. My training was drawing as often as I could and working on over 4500 pages of Cerebus with Dave Sim. On the job training... Dave was the one in charge of writing the story. My contribution was limited to finishing pages he had already started. But I certainly witnessed firsthand and close up the near-limitless possibilities for storytelling. My own first attempts can be seen on my website on the 'Stories' page.

The Third Quarter

The Third Quarter (backcover, Cerebus #225, December 1997)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

All profits from the sale of the The Third Quarter poster (sold via comic-book stores at $15 signed and $10 unsigned) were donated to The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

The First Half

The First Half (backcover, Cerebus #150, September 1991)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

All profits from the sale of the The First Half poster were donated to The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Norman Kingsley Mailer (1923-2007)

Kingsley (Cerebus #207, June 1996)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

The author Norman Mailer (1923-2007) makes a cameo appearance in Cerebus #207 as Kingsley, drawn by Dave Sim using an Al Hirschfeld illustration style. Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars. Hirschfeld is known for hiding the name of his daughter, Nina, in most of the drawings he produced since her birth in 1945. The name would appear in a sleeve, in a hairdo, or somewhere in the background. Sometimes 'Nina' would show up more than once and Hirschfeld would helpfully add a number next to his signature, to let people know how many times her name would appear.

DAVE SIM:
(from the letters page in Cerebus #225, December 1997)

If you check your Guys volume, pages 139 (top panel) and 140 (second panel), you will see two 'Ninas' in the former picture - one at the bottom of Kingsley's right sideburn and one upside down in his hairline - and one 'Nina' in the latter picture - again in Kingsley's right sideburn.

DAVE SIM:

(from a letter to Norman Mailer dated 18 March 2004, reprinted in Dave Sim's Collected Letters Vol 1, 2005)

The tipping point is that I am finally done with my epic-length work, so I can rest easy at least that I am not sending [Reads, Guys, Form & Void and selected essays] to you for your endorsement. While the work was still in progress that might very well have been a motivation that I was hiding from myself (an existential self-doubt, to use a Mailerism). Now, that isn't the case. Now, I can be, at least reasonably sure that if, heretofore, I have had the bad literary manners to dedicate a book [Reads] to someone without asking his permission first (which I suspect is the real world protocol) and compounded that breach of good etiquette by not sending the dedicated book to him for nine years after is publication I am, at least, equally and reasonably sure that my motives would not be so transparently suspect as they might have been nine years ago when I was only a couple of hundred pages past Cerebus' projected halfway point. I wanted to make it to the end on my own. Then I wanted to acknowledge your... unimaginably large... contribution to my own life and work once I was past the finish line.

Cerebus Archive #1-6

Cerebus Archive #1-6 (April 2009 - February 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #16, October 2011)

...of course, here in 2011, this all seems terrifically beside-the-point in discussing my career. All that seems pertinent in discussing January of 1977 is the "magic moment" when I first created Cerebus. That's one of the big reasons that I'm doing Cerebus Archive - to explain what was important and what wasn't important at the time. "Magic moments" happen - but usually when your focus is elsewhere.

Back issues of Cerebus Archive are always available from ComiXpress.

Recommended: Strangehaven

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Strangehaven Vol 1: Arcadia, January 1998)

It is so very rare, you see, when you are in the business to find a story that can absorb all your attentions when it arrives in the mailbox. So very rare to find a story where you can just drop right back in and pick up the thread of the story and find out "what happened next" -- knowing full well that the author is going to raise more questions than he answers in the course of the current instalment. Or maybe trade you one-for-one as reader. For every answer you get another question. To me, anyway, those questions are far more interesting and far more intriguing than any questions I might have of what goes on behind the painted scenery and what everything and everyone was before Gary made it his own in the pages of the book you are about to read.

Strangehaven Vol 1-3 by Gary Spencer Millidge is available to buy from Top Shelf Productions.

Sim's Legacy

Sim's Legacy: An Appreciation by Gary Spencer Millidge
Strangehaven #16 (June 2004)

DAVE SIM:
(from a letter to Gary Spencer Millidge dated 18 June 2004, reprinted in Dave Sim's Collected Letters Vol 2)
Dear Gary,

Well, I got the latest issue of Strangehaven and I have to tell you that one of the entertainments I most look forward to is your annual "how this year slipped out from under me, this time" editorial and text pieces. Your description and illustrations of the Simpson's contribution you provided for Bart Simpson's Treehouse Of Horror was particularly engaging in this regard: Now, he not only spends a lot of space telling us why he's late, he even shows us examples of it. I mean, that was one of the things that always kept me on the monthly straight and narrow. Any sign that I did anything else if I was late and I'd think the backlash is going to kill me and the book. Of course, you're a lot closer to reality than I am, I think. People just take it for granted that comic books are late in the same way that no one expects a rock band to come on stage remotely close to 8pm because that's what it says on the ticket.

So imagine my surprise as I start from the back of the book and then come across your full-page tribute to Cerebus. Absolutely amazing and, of course, Ger and I are both very, very grateful for your kind and extravagant words on our behalf and on behalf of our work.

My first thought was I only hope there isn't a backlash against you for breaking so dramatically from the prescribed comic-book party line which allows only for reactions on a narrow spectrum between outright shunning on the one side and damning us with faint praise on the other. My second thought was, "Oh, well, even if there is, I won't find out about it until next year at this time."

All kidding aside, I am very pleased with what you wrote and look forward to bagging and boarding it for the Publications section of the Cerebus Archive.

Thanks again.

Strangehaven Vol 1-3 by Gary Spencer Millidge is available to buy from Top Shelf Productions.

The Sound Of A 1956 Corvette

Glamourpuss #23 (January 2012)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus TV, Season 3 Episode 11, 13 January 2012)

I even went a little crazy on the speciality lettering sound effects [in Glamourpuss #23], reasoning that there's a whole different quality of sound in a confined space like a garage... in the same way that a garage is a little darker (actually a lot darker), which meant layers and layers and layers of cross hatching... The sound of a 1956 Corvette starting up inside of a garage - what would that look like? "What would that look like?" Er, pretty complicated. Yeah, evidently. By the time he was throwing it in to reverse and backing the car out of the garage, I couldn't wait to get outside where there were no sound effects.

Glamourpuss #23 is available now from your local comic shop.
Back issues of Glamourpuss are always available from ComiXpress.

The Eye Of The Pyramid

What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One (Swords Of Cerebus Vol 3, 1981)
Art by Dave Sim & Gene Day

JEFF TUNDIS:
(from the introduction to the 4-page Conspiracy comic, Cerebus The Newsletter #14, 2009)

The Eye Of The Pyramid is a plot that was never quite resolved. Based on The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, it wove a web through the early issues of Cerebus. A war of conspiracies drawing in Lord Julius' Social Secretary (from issues 15 & 16), Adam Weisshaupt (an actual historical figure and founder of the Bavarian Illuminatti fictionalised in the book series), the Cirinists, the Illusionists (there's even one named Shea in the city of Togith) the mysterious Mr Strangis, Astoria, Michelle and (based on the password to his safe house in What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One) Gerrik.

While Dave Sim abandoned the plot thread (and several others) in favour of the more complex political and religious issues including the evolving Cirinist-Kevillist conflict, I suspect that Gerrik was actually the leader of The Eye. Both embittered by his upbringing and empowered by his familial ties, he's the perfect mole to bring about the fall of not only his mother's expanding empire but Palnu and Iest as well. By bringing in Astoria (whose ambition knows no bounds), however, he probably doomed himself... because in Women, it appears that she is the leader of an exclusively female Eye Of The Pyramid and Gerrik is never heard from again.

Order your copy of Cerebus The Newsletter #14 and read Jeff Tundis' Conspiracy, featuring Astoria and Sir Gerrik.