365 Days Of Cerebus: High Society

Cerebus #49 (April 1983)
Art by Dave Sim

MATTHEW MAYLIKHOV:
(from 365 Day Of Cerebus: Part 2, posted at Multiversity Comics, 28 February 2013)

...Yet the astonishing thing is that High Society overall really isn't all that dated. In fact, a very easy parallel to make would be looking at Cerebus' campaign to Obama’s first campaign for office, at least in terms of Cerebus' platform representing everything the people wanted (against a goat), yet when he finally got to office his attitude seemingly changed and nothing necessarily got better due to the pit dug before Cerebus took office. It's one of those weird little "life imitating art" things that's only visible in hindsight, but it’s interesting none the less. Granted, Cerebus' goals are relatively disengenuous, as he's doing this all for himself rather than for anyone else, but it's never not impressive how Sim has managed to make the book not excessively dated with its subject matter given how out-of-date these things can often become. It’s one of Cerebus' many overall strengths; there are certainly some things lost in the sands of time, but the repetitive nature of the cultures Sim frequently pokes fun at does allow the book to stay relevant to modern day issues during a 2013 reading...

Cerebus #49 (April 1983)
Art by Dave Sim

...The craftmanship that goes into the issues within this arc is also pretty stunning as well, and it's amazing to see the work that Sim was doing in comics two decades ago that today are lauded as modern innovations. For example, a recent issue of Batman (#5 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo) required readers to rotate the comics as Batman traveled down a maze; Cerebus #49 features a drunk Cerebus stumbling through the events of the issue while readers are required to rotate the comic in order to follow him along in his disorienting journey. There are quite a few examples of this forward-thinking storytelling throughout in terms of the narrative technique that Sim employs, including how well the book transforms with Guided View [at Comixology]... It's also of note that High Society is where Sim begins balancing prose portions into the story (whether as a transcription from an event or an excerpt from a non-fiction novel) which will be more recurring later, and while I don’t think it fair to credit Sim with the origination of this idea or any of the other tricks of the trade (possible, but I’ve not researched it to confirm either way), it’s never the less still impressive to see how much creativity Sim was using in these books that we somewhat take for granted in today's modern comic-reading culture. Not to knock Batman, but the way that Sim utilizes the rotating book technique is certainly much more interesting, and a touch less stunt-y...

Cerebus #49 (April 1983)
Art by Dave Sim

Gene Day (1951-1982)

Gene Day

DAVE SIM:
(from The Comics Journal #77, November 1982)

The life and the work of Gene Day. To me, to most people, the two were interchangeable. It is very painful for me to write this now that the life and work are at an end. I have lost a mentor, a supporter, a cherished friend and my sanctuary from things that go bump in the artistic night.

Gene worked for hours at a time, pausing infrequently to eat and even more infrequently to sleep. He desired perfection in all that he did. It is hard to believe that I won’t someday read his Shadow book for Fantagraphics, see the definitive Gene Day Batman, thumb through a new Gene Day Indiana Jones book. I’ll never be able to listen, enraptured, to his album of synthesiser music he intended to publish in the spring.

If he had lived to be a hundred, though, there would have been countless unfinished Gene Day projects. Gene wasn’t happy if he didn’t have at least a half-dozen projects underway. A couple of weeks before his death, we talked for almost two hours on the phone; me cross-hatching a background for the cover of Cerebus #43 and Gene inking small background figures. I would often save such "one-handed" work for these times, as did Gene. He spoke of the future, of his upcoming tasks as he always did – enthusiastically, unafraid – filled with that untiring desire for perfection. We had made tentative plans to work on a Batman story together now that he was at DC, talked of recording some additional synthesiser background music for Cerebus the Radio Show.

Gene never slowed down, never paused to catch his breath before plunging into his next work. Had he found a publisher who would have doubled his wage, he would have seen it as an opportunity to increase his output, plowing the extra money into another publishing venture, a portfolio, a revived Dark Fantasy, an underground comic. He would have found it inconceivable to cut back his production and take some time off.

He was relentless, Gene was, a consummate entertainer and, in a field so often known for its whiners, its prima donnas, its buck-passers, the consummate professional.

Sadly, like so many other who were privileged to call him friend, I thought he was superhuman.

He had told me many times that he wanted to die at the drawing board, pursuing the perfection he always felt to be far from his grasp, the perfection he could never see in himself, but which was always there in my eyes. His life was a testament to his will, lived in the manner he chose, and no one deflected him from the path once chosen. I feel sorry for the people who never met Gene. I feel sorry for the people who knew him only briefly or who only met him in a convention art room or comics shop. To see Gene in the house he loved, with those he loved, Gale and Danny, hunched over the drawing board he had hammered together in his early teens out of scrap wood, and seated in the old kitchen chair on the worn cushion (the only place he could truly, comfortably draw), surrounded by model airplanes, comic book figurines, magazines, photo references, stacks or artwork and works in progress; to see him there was to know him as the Lord of the Manor, the King of All he Surveyed, the Master of his Craft, the Enthusiastic Student, the Ardent Practitioner. The beacon of creativity.

The beacon is, sadly for us – for all of us – gone now. The light remains; the resolute spirit, the gentle humor, the awesome dedication, the voluminous output.

If you wish to honor his memory, do good work. If you would follow in his footsteps, do your best work. If you wish, one day, to reach the same lofty plateau of excellence and individuality that he showed us all, never be satisfied with what you have done and always look forward to your next task, resolving to do better.

I miss him more than I can say. My heart goes out to everyone who feels the loss, everyone who was touched by his work, by his personality, by his creativity.

We’ve lost a publisher, a patron, an editor, a writer, a penciller, an inker, an illustrator, a colourist, a designer, a collector, a fan, a reader, a friend, and an inspiration.

If you feel the loss, now, wherever you are – create something. Write a story, draw a picture, create a costume, design a character, paste up an ad, sketch an outline.

If you can’t do that, encourage a struggling amateur, applaud a professional, buy a fanzine, or just write an enthusiastic letter to an editor of a comic book that you enjoy.

It’s the only tribute that would have mattered to him.

Goodbye Gene.

Howard Eugene Day (1951-1982) was the Canadian comic book artist best known for Marvel Comics' Master of Kung Fu and Star Wars series. Dave Sim credits Gene as his earliest and most influential mentor, and the inspiration for his own self-publishing efforts. From 1985 to 1986, Deni Loubert's Renegade Press published four issues of Gene Day's Black Zeppelin, an anthology series primarily featuring stories and painted covers Day completed before his death of a coronary on 23 September 1982 at the age of 31. From 2002-2006, Dave Sim and Gerhard created The Day Prize, an annual award given to a comic creator chosen by them from the exhibitors at SPACE (Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo) held in Columbus, Ohio. In February 2009, the Shuster Awards received permission from Gene Day's widow, Gale, and brothers to name the annual Gene Day Award For Self-Publishing in his memory. Gene was inducted into the Shuster Hall of Fame in 2007.

NYC Auction Winning Bidders: Kenneth Thomas & Greg

Cerebus #36, Page 1 (March 1982)
Art by Dave Sim
(Sold at auction for $2,800, February 2013)

KENNETH THOMAS:
(from the comments at Brian Coppola's Aartvark Blog, 22 February 2013)

Very interesting to find this site... I'm the person who bought the #36 splash. Yes, I know I way overpaid for it, but I'm a seller's (and auction house's) dream - someone who is willing to pay over market because of sentimental attachment (and no spouse to stop my recklessness). When I think of Cerebus, the 36 splash is almost always the image that comes to mind first. I actually didn't even know about this auction until the Wednesday before, and I only looked into it because of an idle curiosity about what original Cerebus pages were going for (I collect comics, not original art). My jaw dropped when I saw the 36 splash, and it was pretty much over for me at that point, with Cerebus being my favorite comic and this being my own personal favorite iconic image.

The pre-internet bidding closed at $1600 - my max proxy bid was $1750 and I hoped to get the page for under $2000 (which would have been reasonable for this one, I think). The highest proxy bid was $2600, though, so I had to go next increment up (half bid was unavailable to me, I had already used it). I might've hit it once over $3000, but I wouldn't go higher. I know the bidder's premium is a rip-off, but as long as saps like me will pay it...even worse, I live in Texas and have to pay sales tax.

Unless my life takes an absolute nosedive, I will never, ever sell this. I have a large comic book collection and have never sold an item, so I'm confident about that.

Cerebus #50, Page 1 (May 1983)
Art by Dave Sim
Sold at auction for $2,600, February 2013

GREG:
(from the comments at Brian Coppola's Aartvark Blog, 22 February 2013)

I hadn't realized that Dave himself consigned these pages until reading the entry and comments here. Now I feel substantially better about having overspent so heavily on the one I bought!... It must have been very gratifying for him to see his artwork making so much money in person. That makes me a little happy, to have been a part of that (though once the credit card bills start coming in, I might not feel quite the same about the whole thing!). Either way, I got a piece that was very personally meaningful from my childhood when I first read High Society... so I can live with the price...

Yeah, Kenneth - I paid almost as much for the page I bought (the splash from issue 50) as you did for yours, and even I think that from an artistic standpoint, yours is FAR superior to mine. Just like you, though, the DENOUEMENT page really resonates with me for some personal reasons and I felt that I had to have it. It might be the first original art page I've ever bought where I placed a bid absolutely certain that I'll never be able to break even should I choose to sell, but that's the price I paid for something that gives me happy thoughts of my younger days.

[Deleted]'s Tribute Art

"I got dem 'Memory Hole' Blues a'gin..."

DAVE SIM:
(by fax, 26 February 2013)

Tim, attached is a piece of CEREBUS fan art that was given to me at the NYC auction by one [Deleted]. I forgot to get his address to send him a thank you letter. Would you mind running this on your site to make up for my faux pas? He did an image from each of the CEREBUS storylines (which is pretty impressive I think).

UPDATE 2/2020:
I got a message from [Deleted] asking me to take down his image as "I do not and did not wish to have this drawing online."

While a part of me is loathe to edit a post from the Tim-era, especially nearly SEVEN Years after the fact!, [Deleted] was very polite in his message. And it's not like Dave could ask him one way or the other.

So..."I got dem 'Memory Hole' Blues a'gin..."
-Matt Dow
Interim Editor 
A Moment of Cerebus

Prostitution

Paying For It (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011)
by Chester Brown

CHESTER BROWN:
(from A John's Gospel interview, TCJ.com, 9 May 2011)

...I was considering, at a certain point, having Dave [Sim] as a character in [Paying For It], in the way that Seth and Joe [Matt] are, because Dave and I had lots of discussions about prostitution, and he was very disapproving... he disapproved of paying for sex. He thinks women shouldn't have jobs. He wants them at home getting pregnant and raising children, not out in the world having jobs. And so prostitution, for him, is just another job that keeps them away from their real role in life. That's why he disapproves of it. So I was considering having us talk about all that kind of stuff. But at a certain point I decided not to put him in there, which turned out to be a good idea once our friendship fell through. Then I would have felt funny about getting his permission for depicting him in the book.

THE COMICS JOURNAL:
(from the article 'Chester Brown's True Romance Comix', The Comics Journal #302, 2013 )

...In a Comics Journal interview Chester Brown says that Dave Sim disapproves of his whoremongering, which you would expect, but for reasons you wouldn't: It's not because he feels Brown's exploiting women or endangering his immortal soul but because he disapproves of women having jobs. You gotta love Dave Sim, sort of like you had to love Col. Muammar Qaddafi - anytime you think you've got him figured, he always proves to be even crazier than you could've imagined...

DAVE SIM:
(by fax, 25 February 2013)

Hi Tim: Sorry to bother you again. Just got in COMICS JOURNAL 302 from Fantagraphics and hit the footnote on page 513 of the article on Chester. If you get a chance can you run this? Ordinarily, I would suggest leaving out the actual footnote but comparing me to Muammar Qaddafi, to me, once more puts Fantagraphics beyond the pale of fair debate:

No. I disapproved of Chester's whoremongering because I think that prostitution is wrong. But I tend to think it's a masculine wrong primarily. If guys don't "pay for it", voila, no prostitution. And I think a world without prostitution -- and strippers -- would be an exponentially better world. I used to say to him at lunch, "You can't really believe that it's a GOOD thing." And yes he did. He really does believe if you're nice to your hooker and make it a positive experience that makes it okay. I just can't see how selling your body to a stranger can BE a positive experience. Or even a neutral experience. I used to say to him, believe me, if I thought it was a positive experience or even a neutral experience, I'd be right there. Go shopping on the internet and pick your make and model? No. I tried it a couple of times and it was like going to see strippers. I couldn't wait to go and see strippers when I was 13 or 14. Women who just take their clothes off in from of you because they HAVE to? Because that's their JOB? Which strip club will I live at? And when I tried going it was "Oh." Because, they -- I don't know how else to put it -- they're dead inside. Or if they've been doing it a while, they're dying inside. But it's far worse than that. Their insides aren't dead or dying from natural causes. They've been killed by men or are being killed by men. And that's what I was participating in. I'd TRY and tell myself that I was just imagining it or I was going on anecdotal evidence. But, once a thing is seen it can't be unseen.

I have no problem with women working. Female cops and female soldiers I only have a problem with if you're lowering your standards so you can have more women cops and more women soldiers. As long as everyone has to pass the same physical tests and hit the same standards, no problem. But I think it's obvious that it is structurally unsound to have -- whatever we have now -- 90% of women out working. Half the population is capable of producing 100% of the births. If 90% of those people are working, as a society you are committing suicide.

I do take the side of Erika Kitchen, stay-at-home full-time wife and mother (whose husband is Mike Kitchen, creator of the SPY GUY indy comic book when she says she wants to get 'Too Good For Daycare' t-shirts done for daughters Anika and Raina and sons Erikson, Marcus and Zack. The more women who think that way, the healthier your society is (in my opinion).

On Governing

(Cerebus #52, July 1983)

"Governing a city-state in today's world is very very difficult. There are many problems. It is hoped that my own experiences as a leader will help to guide future leaders. The first thing you have to do is ignore Lord Julius. Listening to him can cause you to lose up to ten thousand crowns a day. No Joke! The second thing is to invade only really rich countries and not listen to Lord Julius when he tells you which ones are rich. The third thing is to fire all your advisors once a week so they don't drive you crazy! The fourth thing is to sell everything that isn't nailed down to hire armies. Fire any advisor you says you can't do this. 

Eat only expensive food and drink only expensive liquor. It's the only good thing about being a leader. Don't attend meetings and fire advisors who tell you you have to. All you do is sit there for hours while a bunch of whiners tell you what's wrong and you can't go to the bathroom. The only other good thing about being a leader is quitting... everyone who bugged you all the time is unemployed or under arrest. ha-ha. It looks good on them, too!!..."

Meeting Harlan Ellison

Dave Sim & Harlan Ellison, 1982
(Backcover photo, Cerebus #292, July 2003)

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus #292, July 2003)

Meeting Harlan Ellison on the last stop of the U.S. Tour 1982. He was scheduled to do a signing two days or so after ours at one of Chuck Rozanski's Mile High Stores in Colorado. I saw one of the fliers and mentioned that I was sorry I couldn't be there because I would sure like to meet him. The staff at the store heaved a sign of relief. Evidently he was in town and they asked if he wanted to meet us and he had said that he wanted to meet us if we wanted to meet him and they couldn't think of a diplomatic way to ask if we wnted to meet him. I had no idea that that was how the world of fame worked, but it is a very good rule of thumb. Make sure somebody wants to meet you before you agree to meet them. He actually read Cerebus, which was mind-boggling to me. He invited me to come out to visit him at Ellison Wonderland, which I did sometime in the next year. He was going through a backlash at the time, as I recall. Having been considered the ne plus ultra of science fiction authors for a number of years he was suddenly being assailed right, left and center. It got a whole lot worse for him before it started getting better. I remember him telling me that I would hear a lot of awful stories about him that weren't true. Being just a kid and unwise to the ways of the world, I couldn't for the life of me see why anyone would want to say bad things about Harlan Ellison. In the ensuing twenty years, of course, I've had more than sufficient first-hand experience with what seems to be the centerpiece of human nature. Of course, Dave Sim and Cerebus have never been acknowledged in the comic book field as being anything so for me it has really been a matter of going from being universally ignored to being universally hated - not altogether different conditions. I can't imagine what it must have been like to go from being universally exalted by the madding crowd to attracting the level of vituperation that Harlan went through. "Living well is the best revenge," he told me on that visit. Revenge? I remember thinking. What does Harlan Ellison need to have revenge for? Harlan's life was just one continuous victory, wasn't it? Like I say, I was just a kid and unwise to the ways of the world.

Creativity & Aging

Cerebus #295 (October 2003)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from The Blog & Mail #413, 29 October 2007)

...the ability to make comics doesn't get taken away, but the ability to produce them quickly -- which is really the core element of successful comic books: not only being able to produce them but being able to produce pages in sufficient volume to hold an audience between issues -- does erode as you move from your thirties into your forties. The idea that you will always be able to produce comics at the same pace originates in the sense of immortality that everyone in their twenties and thirties possesses. "I will always be like this." Well, no you won't. The decision to do Cerebus as a monthly until I was 46 was a decision only a twenty-three year old could make... I can only reiterate that drawing comics in your forties is a very different deal from drawing them in your thirties... At the age of 51, I'm hoping that I have enough juice left to produce a bi-monthly title for an indefinite period of time but monthly is definitely beyond me at this point – and, really, was beyond me for at least the last two years of Cerebus.

Dave Sim: NYC Art Auction 'Post-Match Analysis'

Help finance Dave Sim to complete 'The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond'.

Originally serialised within the pages of the self-published Glamourpuss #1-26 (April 2008 to July 2012), The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond is an as yet uncompleted work-in-progress in which Dave Sim investigates the history of photorealism in comics and specifically focuses on the work of comic-strip artist Alex Raymond and the circumstances of his death on 6 September 1956 at the wheel of fellow artist Stan Drake's Corvette at the age of 46.

DAVE SIM:

(from Kickstarter Update #143, 25 February 2013)

Much obliged to everyone who continues to donate to the Dave Sim Fund, helping (in a BIG way) to finance my as-yet-undetermined period of writing THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND.  Still in the pure research phase, it's really sprawling all over the place, but is in a relatively neat and orderly form somewhere in the back of my head.  "Yes, I can do this. I'm pretty sure I can do this. I sure hope I can do this" (rinse and repeat).

I've had to get my slide rule out, trying to figure out how to allocate the money coming in. We are getting VERY close to the release of the GOLD LOGO SIGNED AND NUMBERED CEREBUS and GOLD LOGO SIGNED AND NUMBERED HIGH SOCIETY and I'm having to decide how many to print.  The more I print, the lower the per unit cost, but sales being down across the board in ANY book publishing, there's no way of knowing if I'd be printing a three-year supply (a good use of limited resources) or a ten-year supply (a bad use of limited resources).  Is the book business just plain DYING? Just resting its eyes?  If it IS dying will it continue to die at the same rate or is it going to expire quickly (leaving me holding the bag on a 20-year supply of CEREBUS and HIGH SOCIETY?  Just asking.

Right now donations [to The Dave Sim Fund] are about a third of the revenue stream, so, I mean, REALLY! THANK YOU!

Heritage Auctions at The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, NYC

The auction of the "High Society Collection" in NYC last week was certainly the best news for the Dave Sim Fund since this Kickstarter campaign last year.  Lon Allen and I had the ambition to try to get the price-per-page up from the $700 area (generally) to around $1,000.  The average price at the auction was $1,700 with the most expensive going for $3,000. Very good news indeed. The $15,000 or so that the Dave Sim Fund will get out of that will definitely buy several months of STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND writing time (and maybe drawing time -- depends on how long it takes to write it).

Tim of A MOMENT OF CEREBUS faxed me:  "It must have been pretty exciting to attend and watch the live auction as the bidding went up."  Well, yeah, exciting is one word for it. More like riding a roller coaster without the roll bar locked into place.  The actual auction goes VERY VERY fast. Kathleen and Andrea, Heritage's auctioneers, are amazingly good.  I did Kathleen a sketch of Cerebus while she was reviewing her notes and I asked her if she got butterflies when she's about to go on.  Well, yeah, of course. Anyone who is really good at something has butterflies.  You don't want to just get by, you want excel.  The real level of excitement comes with the complete unknowns. The $240,000 bid for the Romita SPIDER-MAN cover for the death of Gwen Stacey had everyone's jaws dropping on ARRIVAL (very gratifying that the "NIGHT BEFORE" splash was next to it in the display case...

(and made a great news item for Heritage on the local CBS morning news show.  Ed Jaster did that interview and I watched it on his laptop when someone downloaded it for him, like, two hours later -- ah the modern Internet.  The starting bid on the SPIDER-MAN cover was $240,000 and the guy who had consigned it had bought it for $700.  Morning news gold.  I got to share in it a bit when Ed told me that he had committed me without asking -- but figured it was all right -- the producer of the news show was a huge CEREBUS fan and wanted to know when I would be doing sketches and Ed said "Dave's a pretty nice guy, I'm sure he'll be glad to do one for you and I'll send it over."  Which, of course, I did.  But I just did the quickie head sketch I was doing on the little Heritage Auctions notepads they had for people in the display room.  I'm doing it and I'm thinking.  This is a news producer at CBS New York City.  I should do a GOOD head sketch. And I told Ed as I handed it over. "This will be fine, he'll be delighted."  Yeah, but I was more talking to myself.  A REALLY GOOD full figure sketch might make the difference between a one-time item on the morning news and maybe getting the next three NYC Heritage Auctions on the morning news.  You really want to stick in their minds.  Live and, hopefully, learn.)

...but it was the auction of the first WATCHMEN cover -- a great unknown, that iconic smiley face button with the blood drop on it, how much would it go for?  It started, I think, at $19K and then just took off.  I was sitting next to long-time CEREBUS patron James Santangelo.  "Here we go," I said.  It topped out at $130K and everyone just naturally broke into applause. A record-shattering gold medal performance at the Indoor Comic Art Olympics.

In that context, you need to give yourself a good talking to -- YOUR pages are NOT going to do that.  YOUR pages are going to amount, in total, to a ROUNDING ERROR in that context.

There are different patterns to the bidding.  Sometimes its maxed out with the starting bid. Someone guessed exactly what everyone would bid, bid a little higher than that and then got it.  Some guys obviously intend to scare everyone else away with a Big First Jump.  Starting bid of $8,000 and the first bid is $14,000.  Sometimes it works, but most times it doesn't.  It's like pouring too much blood in the water, you just attract bigger sharks. 

Glamourpuss #16 (November 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

Tim asked:  "I was wondering if you had any 'post-match analysis' you'd care to share on AMOC?"

That's a very apt way to put it. After my part of the auction was over, I was dazed and wondering, Okay, why did that one go for YAY much and this one went for almost four times as much?  I'm still looking at the starting bid and finishing bid and looking at the page and trying to figure out what the bidders saw.  It's very much like a football match when the whole auction is over.  Albert Moy, a legendary art dealer and CEREBUS supporter asked me if I'd come over and see him after the auction and sign a couple of things for him.  Sure.  And I was signing some stuff for a couple of guys who had come in -- "Winston" and Michael -- and I'm really in shock, to be honest. WOW! 17 HUNDRED DOLLARS! and trying to wrap my head around 17 THOUSAND DOLLARS and still do a plausible head sketch and make conversation with two guys who had come WAY, WAY uptown just to see me.  AND trying to remember "DO NOT WALK OUT OF HERE WITHOUT GOING AND SEEING ALBERT MOY!"

One of the things Albert wanted me to sign was the original cover for CEREBUS No.24 and he mentioned that he had sent a scan to Scott Dunbier for the CEREBUS COVERS book.  Which is great because it printed TERRIBLY and even the match print is washed out.  It's still in really good shape.  And Todd Hignite of Heritage came up and the three of us sat together and Todd asked, "So, do you want to do more CEREBUS pages?"

Man, I didn't KNOW.  And I STILL don't know.

I'm the kind of guy who CAN and DOES walk away from the blackjack table if I have a sudden run of luck. If that's what it is. Of course I haven't gambled in a good fifteen years, but that was always my nature. Walk away while you're ahead. Or way ahead as I see myself being with the ten pages.

It was like three sports guys sitting around after the big game and just wondering at it.  Why did that go for that much?  What happened with that one?  It was a seller's auction so I was very lucky.  I asked James at one point -- since he buys a lot of artwork -- if the pieces were coming in on the mark, under-performing or over-performing?  Everything was going for more than he had thought it would, a LOT more.  No idea why that was.

Tim also wrote: "Brian Coppola offers some reaction to the auction (he thinks they all over-paid!) over at his Artvark site (if you're interested)." I don't have to READ it, I wouldn't have expected Brian to say otherwise.  That's why I'm on the spot.  I'm SUPPOSED to be preserving the Cerebus artwork in perpetuity in THE CEREBUS ARCHIVE.  If I'd have known that the bump up in payroll taxes was going to be taking place in the US at the beginning of February, I wouldn't have gone near the February auction. WalMart had reported the WORST first two weeks of a month in a long, long time. If I could have pulled the pages when I read that in the financial section of the NATIONAL POST I would have -- in a New York Minute. And it would have been the WRONG call even though the internal logic was, as far as I was concerned, irrefutable.

You have to be careful not to let it go to your head.  FINALLY my genius is being appreciated! Yeah right. Was it a fluke? How much of a fluke was it? When your pages go for $700 and a page goes for $3,000 the odds are it's a fluke.  Will it fluke again or fluke the other way?  I faxed Steve and Debbie at Heritage this morning.  Three-page fax covering all the angles the best I can.  We still have a LOT to talk about.  And the next auction isn't until May in Dallas.  So I have 'til the beginning of April to make some hard decisions. Which is really starting to seem like trying to calculate how many face cards the dealer has in his "shoe" in Vegas.

You feel lucky today? Punk.

Glamourpuss #16 (November 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

Tim concludes: "My e-mail-shot the weekend before the auction resulted in 7 comics news sites running features on the auction of varying lengths, which I was pretty pleased with.  I've listed the sites with links on Saturday's 'auction results' post (if you're interested).  It might not have helped towards the final auction total, but it's all good profile-raising stuff."

It might NOT have helped or it could be the way the fellow or lady who bid $3,000 on the Cerebus changing into his suit page found out about it.  (I told James if I'd have known it would go for $3,000 someday, I'd have done a whole issue of him changing into his suit.) It's all so hidden from view.

Thanks, Tim, but the last thing I need to do is to read my own press clippings.

But I do seem to have backed into having my own NEWS SERVICE in A MOMENT OF CEREBUS. So thanks to Tim for that.  Which came in handy in this case because of the confusion about whether my going to the Heritage Auction qualified as a signing or not.  Um. It wasn't my intention, but it was borderline.  To me it was a private event and was only supposed to be publicized INTERNALLY by Heritage Auctions.  I still don't think that a misogynist should go out in public.  I was going as a consignee of my own work to see how the whole process worked.  But it was also a four-storey mansion filled with comic-book people.  I couldn't very well say, no, I won't sign an autograph for you.  Buddy has spent a CHUNK of change on me over the years and I haven't been to The City since 2005.  To me, that's just a little too Frank Sinatra for words.  Noah Fleisher, Heritage's crackerjack Park Avenue Public Relations Director for their NYC auctions, turned out to be the world's biggest CEREBUS fan and misconstrued what I had said to him on Wednesday that I was more than willing to do head sketches and autographs FOR THE BIDDERS and did a more general "come one, come all" announcement.  Natural mistake. This was less of a problem in NYC than it would have been elsewhere.  As Nate Oberstein said when I was hanging out with him (he, coincidentally arrived back in the City Friday night from a trip to California), "The only reason anyone in New York would go up to 79th and Fifth Avenue is if they lived there or they were going to one of the uptown Museums or they were passing through on their way to another borough."

So the handful of people who did show up over the few days were obviously REALLY dedicated and realized when they got there that it wasn't structurally a signing and were very cool about just sneaking over and handing me some stuff to sign, or giving me something of theirs and then sitting down and watching the auction.  I did want to clarify that the September 24th signing in 2010 at Cal Johnston's STRANGE ADVENTURES in Halifax is still THE LAST SIGNING.  BUT! If I have to be somewhere on business and people who are there know who I am and want a couple of autographs and a sketch, I'll be glad to do it for them.  I'll revisit the question of doing conventions or signings if we get 2,000 signatures on the I DON'T BELIEVE DAVE SIM IS A MISOGYNIST petition but, really, right now we're about 1,500 signatures shy of that after four years which means I'm not going to be revisiting the question until around 2028 when I'm 72.  And the fact that it took until I was 72 will definitely factor into my decision. "Let's check back when I'm in my 80s. Gum, gum, gum."

The only thing carved in stone with Heritage Auctions right now is the IDW covers -- which everyone quite liked when I showed them to people in NYC -- which will be in their weekly auctions.  Not being on the Internet, I have NO idea how you sign up for their weekly auctions but I'm sure you can find out at HA.com.  Remember, EVERY piece starts at $1.  The way we're setting it up is that when I get the printed copies of the comic book that I did a cover for, I'm going to sign and number 5 copies (HERITAGE 1/5, HERITAGE 2/5, etc.) bag and board them, put them in with the cover and FedEx the lot to Heritage which they'll hopefully get up on the site ROUGHLY at the same time that comic is in the stores. You bid on the package, the cover and the signed and numbered books.

The first one is the CEREBUS ATTACKS cover which I'll be FedExing to them as soon as I get caught up on all the stuff I've fallen behind on while I was gone (and all the stuff I brought back with me), so that should be up and offered for bids before you know it.

I was very tempted to stay down there for a couple of extra days and go up to Westport to see the crash site, but I'm still really paranoid about HOW LONG I have to make the cash on hand last. It's 2013. Money EVAPORATES as you've, no doubt, noticed.

The ONLY work I took down with me was the 1603 version of HAMLET (which ties in by way of Leonard Starr's MARY PERKINS ON STAGE).  Did you know there were two versions of HAMLET?  The 1603 First Quarto which Eddie found for me online was completely revised the following year, 1604, with much of the material rearranged and  a lot of material added.  Which seems kind of...screwy.  With the expense of actually typesetting and printing a play (this was EARLY in the days of moveable type), why would you go to all that expense and then basically redo the whole thing the next year?  Anyway, Shakespeare was never my best subject (although I can still remember most of "The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth..." speech from A MERCHANT OF VENICE and "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks..." from ROMEO AND JULIET, grades nine and ten respectively) so I really needed to focus on it and the best way to focus on it is to a) make sure I have nothing else with me I can work on and b) basically perform it.  So, that's what I did, pacing around my room for two and half hours, getting completely lost and then following it again and getting completely lost and... fortunately... finding what it was I was looking for.  If it's in the 1604 version (which I also read) it's in a different form.  You want to know how dedicated that is?  The New York Rangers were playing the Ottawa Senators on the MSG (Madison Square Garden) network.  And I turned it off at the end of the first period.  For a Canadian who doesn't have a TV of his own?  THAT'S dedicated.

Glamourpuss #16 (November 2010)
Art by Dave Sim

When I got home, the fax machine had spewed pretty much all over the office.  As I was picking up the ones that had just landed I had a WTF moment.  "Typewriter type? I'm the only person on the PLANET who still uses a typewriter. Who could this be from?" It was from Arlen Schumer and IT WAS THE ORIGINAL POLICE REPORT for the car crash that killed Alex Raymond!!!! I could not have BEEN more surprised.  Wiped out a big chunk of my speculations in One Swell Foop, answered a number of others and posed a number of brand new questions.

HUGE step forward.  HUGE step forward.

Apart from that, I've got a lot of stuff to get caught up on. I'm sure the mailbox is stuffed and I've gotten compulsive about having a completely clear desk. NO unanswered mail.  But I am now on the other side of the New York trip and it's now completely uninterrupted work, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.  And I've still got three days of catching-up work and HOPEFULLY some writing I can get in before it's time to do my four IDW covers for March starting next Monday.

And, just for the record, the revenues from the Dave Sim Fund donations were $1,000 for the first month, another $800 up to February 14 and another $400 between Feb 14 and today.  A lot times it's paying for pretty prosaic stuff -- $500 (minimum) for the warehouse storage, $1,000 a month for heating, $800 every other month for municipal taxes, bookkeeper bills, accountant, printing bills when necessary, $1,000 for me, groceries, Federal taxes, etc. etc.  It may not SEEM like much, but it's a big psychological lift when I get a $500 bill in for something and there's $400 in donations.  "It will be FINE, Dave. CHILL! WRITE! They're paying you to WRITE!"

Okay, I'm off to the post office.

...And, again, THANK YOU for your $1, $5 and $10 donations.  I'm really starting to think that THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND is actually going to happen!

Back in a couple of weeks!

Varks Of The Endless

Eric Van Oosten's 'Digital High Society' Kickstarter Rewards (2012)

Art by Dave Sim

The 75 issues of Neil Gaiman's epic mythological fantasy Sandman were published by DC Comics between January 1989 and March 1996, and featured the seven 'Endless', who embodied destiny, death, dream, destruction, desire, despair, delight, and delirium.

IDW Covers: The Colonized #2

The Colonized #2 (IDW, May 2013)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

Chris Ryall's description of this one was (from his 11/20 fax):

"I love that first cover. If you want to keep a similar creepy '50s-movie vibe for the next one, that'd be great with me. For this one if there can be an alien and one of the humans (the lead guy with the bushy moustache in the #1 pages) being menaced by a zombie horse ridden by a zombie human, that could work for me. But, as always, I defer to anything else you might have in mind, too."

Thank God for Google Image! You can literally just type in "horse skeleton" and there you go: it looks like a giant colourful Lost Equine Graveyard. So I basically just picked the best angle they had -- a rearing horse and then went looking for "horse and rider" -- show jumping -- and found the one that was the closest to that angle and then tweaked it so the flesh and bone dovetailed as closely as possible. Then I drew the guy in the foreground and his rifle from Drew Moss' image in #1 adding in a battery powered lantern to (hopefully) add some dazzle to the exposed bones on the horse and rider. So, I did the guy first, pencil and ink, and then the horse and rider. Because the alien doesn't overlap the horse and rider, I did him third. I think the first folds I did on the space suit were on the left thigh with my Series 7 #2 brush and they landed just right. I don't know why, but they did. And that meant I could finish the rest of the space suit and helmet at a higher level of sharpness than I'm usually able to hit. Luck of the draw.

I used birch trees because birch trees are very versatile backdrops. You get a nice black and white pattern that you can either have "go gray" by rendering it as pen strokes or just use a solid black. A lot of it's going to fill in when it's reduced but there should be enough "fuzz" left to get the idea across.

On the "topper" piece, I tried to get an animation effect on the spotlights coming in to the left and through the "ALIENS" lettering. In retrospect, I think I should have extended the beam between the "A" and the "L" between the "L" and the "I" and the "I" and the "E". TECHNICALLY, the beam illuminating the alien figure occupies a "panel" between the "L" and the "N" which is what I stuck with, but it makes the previous light beam too short to register as that.

Live and learn.

IDW Covers: Doctor Who - The Prisoners Of Time #5

Doctor Who - The Prisoners Of Time #5 (IDW, May 2013)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

I'm pretty far outside the loop "DR. WHO-wise". I did read in the paper that this is the 50th anniversary of DR. WHO -- I had no idea it had been going on that long! So, I gather that's what IDW is making artful use of.

We haven't gotten to STAR TREK yet, but Chris had asked me to do a generic-variant cover and had sent images from the recent movie. And I ended up just doing Shatner and Nimoy, which he bought for another book but explained that they have the licence for the recent movies so I need to do those characters. So, when DR. WHO came up and the photo reference hadn't arrived, I thought AHA! They'll be doing the most recent DR.! So I looked him up on Google Image and did that. No, DR. WHO is the other way round: they're doing them in order and I was supposed to do No.5 and No.6 and had ended up doing No.11. AARGGH! He bought No.11 though.

However, now I'm all organised and I have about 30 or 40 images of each DOCTOR to pick from, I've just revisited the scans for No.5 to revisit my thought processes.

My idea, is "glamourpuss by stealth." I'll do DOCTOR WHO so that I can draw his pretty assistant (he always had a pretty assistant). Going through them again, I'm moved to wonder "Why didn't I do NYSSA?" She's stunningly pretty. The answer is she was always in the background and hard to draw clearly. Then I found a clear shot of her but she had changed her hairstyle from tight billowy perm to a "big Hair" wave which doesn't look nearly as good on her -- and she's wearing a really unfortunate (in my view) outfit. There was another companion named Tegan, though, so I started looking at her.

The last image in the "No.5 DOCTOR" file was a head and shoulders shot of her with a pixy cut. I found it kind of endearing because she was too old for a pixy cut at that point. At a certain age it can let you hang onto "young" for a couple of more years, but either she was past that age or she just didn't have the right facial structure to support it. Maybe both. So decided to draw what I figured she had been hoping she would look like with a pixy cut. Put a couple of gleams in her eyes and... this and that... the miracle of pen and ink plastic surgery!

The DOCTOR himself, I found a good Al Williamson shot of him kneeling next to the Tardis in a  sylvan setting which definitely gave the vertical strips on his pants that Al Williamson quality. I even grafted in a characteristic Al Williamson spotted toadstool.

Of course at that size, getting a good likeness is all but impossible, but that's what magnifying glasses and brand new Hunt 102 nibs are for. It's actually a better likeness that I remembered it being. I still have a lot to learn in that area, though.

Dave Sim's 'High Society' Art Auction: Winning Bids

Heritage Auction's 'live' auction held in NYC on 22 February for Dave Sim's 10 pages of High Society original art resulted in total winning bids of $17,250 (excluding HA's 19.5% Buyers' Premium). Many thanks to all the comics news sites that featured the auction in it's last week, including: The Comics Reporter, The Beat, Comic Book Resources, ICv2, Comics Alliance, Forbidden Planet International Blog and TCJ.com.

Cerebus And The Woman-Thing

JUST A GUY NAMED JOE:
(from The Official Cerebus Facebook Group, 18 February 2013)

Check it out! I finally got a Dave Sim commission! Here's his take on my all-time favorite comicbook cover: Marvel Team-Up 68 originally by John Byrne! I thought people here would appreciate a look!

Dave Sim's Last Girlfriend

Dave Sim's Last Girfriend:
The Collected Letters & Faxes Of Dave Sim & Susan Alston
(Simon & Schuster, April 2016)

DAVE SIM:
(from a letter to Susan Alston dated 19 March 2004, reprinted in 'Dave Sim's Collected Letters 2004')

You certainly don't need any permission to print your own views on what you remember of myself or Cerebus, nor am I any kind of stickler for keeping my correspondence or personal memorabilia private. I would caution you against such a course of action only because Cerebus isn't really that kind of thing. I'm reminded of the memoir of Adele Morales of her marriage to Norman Mailer (which cost me an exorbitant sum when I found it in Chapters). I knew going in that it was probably not going to contain anything interesting, merely the salacious and the mundane and in that I wasn't disappointed. A good example was dinner with Edmund Wilson. Having just excerpted his F. Scott Fitzgerald parody from Discordant Encounters in the annotations to Going Home, I was on the edge of my seat to see what he and Mailer would discuss. All Adele remembered was that Wilson had a piece of food lodged in one of his teeth throughout the dinner and that that had repelled her. And that was all she had to say about Edmund Wilson. "Serves me right," I thought, remembering the sixty dollars or so the hardcover volume had cost me. "Serves me bloody well right."

...if you have something to add to any discussion of the creative side of the book or if you remember any of the conversations that I had with [Steve] Bissette or with [Rick] Veitch about various aspects of the comic-book medium or with Larry [Marder] about the business, that would be useful in its own way... But, as I recall, the start of those discussions was usually when you decided it was time to go to bed.

As well as being Dave Sim's last girlfriend, Susan Alston served as executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund.

Colleen Doran: Surviving The Self-Publishing Movement

A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran
(Image / Shadowline, from April 2013)

COLLEEN DORAN:
(from an interview at Comic Book Resources, 8 February 2013)

...after getting battered around by the small press for awhile, I just didn't see why I should sign a contract with another one of these companies. They had no more qualifications than I did, so why should I bother to work with them? I doubted I could screw things up half as much. I spent some time asking around about how to self publish, and Dave Sim was particularly helpful with that. I took the plunge one day, ironically with funds from a legal settlement from one of the small publishers which ripped me off.

Self publishing was a great learning experience. I made very good money for awhile, too. When the distributor system collapsed in the mid-1990s, I took a serious hit, but then I went to Image, thanks to Erik Larsen.

I'm really glad I self published: I learned so much about the business end that I use to this day. I understand discount structures, the importance of getting books done far in advance, trade publishing, a great deal. Real nuts and bolts stuff. I actually learned to appreciate some of my publishing clients more, because I came to understand some of the rules they imposed: they didn't seem so arbitrary.

Self publishing isn't for everybody. It's very labor intensive in ways I don't think anyone who does it really likes. You put a lot of time and effort into packing and shipping product, for example. I'd rather be writing and drawing.

Of course, self publishing on the web is an option that did not exist at the time. You don't have to sink a huge amount of money into printing until you are sure you've actually got an audience to sell it to, which is a huge advantage.

But for print, when I started self publishing, it was a wide open market. There wasn't much competition, certainly not like there is now. It's ridiculous how deluded some people are about their success in the 1980s/1990s. It was a license to print money for awhile. A self published book like mine could sell tens of thousands of copies, more than many mainstream comics do now: it was no big deal.

It got to be a big deal if you held on to your audience after that initial rush. Me, Jeff Smith, Dave Sim, Terry Moore, few people survived. One day, there were a half dozen of us, then there were hundreds. And creators whose books sold tens of thousands saw their sales drop to a few thousand within a decade. It was harsh. I don't think some folks ever quite got over it, or understood what happened.

Anyway, the real test is not how well you do when there's no competition, it's how well you do when there is. No big deal to sell your fantasy comic when there's no alternative. Now there are so many fantasy comics, I can't count them all.

I consider myself lucky, not only to have new readers today, but to have so many readers who stuck with me. I'm very grateful.

After a six-year hiatus, Colleen Doran brings A Distant Soil back to a comic-book store near you via Image Comics/Shadowline with #39 in April 2013. A frontrunner of the '80s indie comics scene, A Distant Soil was more recently derailed by illness and the loss of film negatives. Colleen Doran's sci-fi/adventure series originally broke several barriers both in creation and subject matter. Doran was one of the first women in the indie comics scene to write and draw creator-owned comics and A Distant Soil broke ground by featuring openly gay characters as series stars.

Dave Sim Appearing At New York Auction Thursday/Friday

HERITAGE AUCTIONS:

(from HA.com, 20 Febraury 2013)
We're thrilled to tell you that the great Dave Sim will be attending both days of our Comics auction this week, February 21 and 22. He will be signing autographs and doing sketches for fans (for free). Come meet him in person! The auction will be held at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion (aka Ukrainian Institute of America) at 2 E. 79th Street, New York, NY. The auction sessions begin at noon Eastern both days. Mr. Sim has consigned ten key pages from comics' first 500-page graphic novel, High Society, to this auction. You can browse and bid on them here.

Comic Arts Patrons #1

(Click image to enlarge)

Own a piece of Cerebus! Dave Sim is auctioning 10 pages of High Society original art at Heritage Auctions. Internet bids can be placed until 21 February, or you can bid in person at the live auction held in the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, 2 East 79th Street, New York on 22 February. The pages being auctioned are:

Cerebus #26 Page 10; Cerebus #29 Page 9; Cerebus #30 Page 13;

Cerebus #32 Page 16; Cerebus #34 Page 12; Cerebus #35 Page 19;

Cerebus #36 Page 1; Cerebus #39 Page 17; Cerebus #44 Page 1; Cerebus #50 Page 1.

Comic Arts Patrons #2

Own a piece of Cerebus! Dave Sim is auctioning 10 pages of High Society original art at Heritage Auctions. Internet bids can be placed until 21 February, or you can bid in person at the live auction held in the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, 2 East 79th Street, New York on 22 February. The pages being auctioned are:

Cerebus #26 Page 10; Cerebus #29 Page 9; Cerebus #30 Page 13;

Cerebus #32 Page 16; Cerebus #34 Page 12; Cerebus #35 Page 19;

Cerebus #36 Page 1; Cerebus #39 Page 17; Cerebus #44 Page 1; Cerebus #50 Page 1.

Photorealistic Pin-Up #2: JFK

John F Kennedy (1917-1963)
Art by Dave Sim (Glamourpuss #17, January 2011)