Just A Job?

Cerebus #269 (August 2001)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard
(click image to enlarge)

GERHARD:
(from The Craft Behind Cerebus, TCJ.com, February 2011)

...It was always treated like a job. In a lot of respects Dave treated it that way too. Although Dave lived and breathed this book - he was always writing and he was always thinking about it. But for me I would go in every day and it was a 9-to-5 thing. I would try to get so much done before lunch, and try to get my page and a half done by 5-6 o'clock, pack up and go home. So in a lot of respects it was a job from day one. But - especially early on - it was a learning thing and very exciting and challenging in that way. But by the time we were at Guys, at least for me, the important thing was to get the pages done by the end of the day. At the same time I had to be happy with or at least accepting of how the pages turned out. And some of the days were better than others. One of the nice things was we always had twenty nails in the wall with clips on them and when the pages were done they would go up on the wall, and you could stand back and look at what you had done that day or that week or that month. The depressing part was taking them all down and having a wall to fill up again... But like I said, some days are better than others. That early stuff. But you have to consider the time constraints. I look back on it now and look at the stack of artwork that we’ve got, you know, it’s 6,000 pages. Who in the hell does 6,000 pages? Who were those guys? How did we ever manage to do that?...

"The Sacred Wars Are Over!"

Amazing Heroes Preview Special #4 (Fantagraphics, 1986)
Art by Sergio Aargones, Dave Sim & Gerhard

HEIDI MacDONALD:
(from Amazing Heroes Previews Special #4, Fantagraphics, 1986)

"The Sacred Wars are over," announces Dave Sim. "It's like it's down to the final two combatants. We've eliminated Nazi Germany, but that still leaves the US and USSR, who are Cerebus and Astoria."

Indeed, Book V of Church & State finds Astoria and Cerebus both trying to stake a claim to being the true Messiah. This will involve several issues of long conversations between the two, which Sim predicts will leave fans just as disgruntled as ever.

"This will be the next time that everybody decides I don't know what I'm doing - when I have four or five issues of Astoria and Cerebus talking - but I already know they're really good, so I'm not concerned. I would say, at this point, climatic events are building up towards #100, probably not specifically in #100, probably in #99 or #101, but probably around there."

The book may continue on the somewhat erratic schedule that it's had of late, or it may not. Sim admits to being a bit disheartened at the state of comics these days. "The fanzines and everything are so full of the same crap. It's getting kind of disheartening to go on. It's all this Dark Knight and Superman and revitalised super-heroes and five-issue this and six-issue that. You feel after a while that everything's passed you by. I'm going to keep going, but there's no real impetus to keep to a schedule or anything, because it's largely just this sniping sort of 'we all like to say that we know Dave Sim but  we all like to cut him down' sort of thing. These people want more mutants and funny animal parodies of Frank Miller, so there's certainly enough of those to keep them going. The only thing they can count on is that, five years from now, they'll be reading Cerebus #150, but they're not smart enough to figure that out."

No signs of Cerebus Jam #2 at this point. "I don't push creative people for the sake of reviewers," is Sim's only comment. There are also many interesting projects on tap from Aardvark One International, but expect these to suddenly appear, without warning. Fans are advised to stay alert.

Jaka Laid To Rest

Laid To Rest (2010)
by Paul Sloboda
(from Cerebus The Newsletter #18)

Dave Sim: "My Neil Gaiman Story"

My Neil Gaiman Story
by Dave Sim
from Guest Of Honor: Neil Gaiman
(Moondog's Inc, 1993)

Weekly Update #9: 'Cerebus' & 'High Society' Reprinting

Previously on 'A Moment Of Cerebus':

Dave Sim, working with George Peter Gatsis, has remastered the first two collected volumes of Cerebus to restore details and quality in the artwork lost over the thirty years since they were originally published (as detailed here and here). After Cerebus' original printer Preney Print closed its doors, Dave Sim moved his printing to Lebonfon in 2007 as at that time they were still capable of working with photographic negatives and making printing plates as Preney had done. And then Lebonfon switched to digital scanning and printing - a technology which struggles to faithfully reproduce Cerebus' tone without creating moire patterns (as detailed in Crisis On Infinite Pixels). Dave Sim continues to work with Lebonfon to ensure the print-quality of the new Cerebus and High Society editions (as detailed in Collections Stalled). Now read on...

WEEKLY REPORT ON CEREBUS (16th PRINTING) &

HIGH SOCIETY 30TH ANNIVERSARY S&N GOLD LOGO (11th PRINTING)

DAVE SIM:
(by fax, 13 December 2013)

It turned out that George WASN'T able to get the last few digital files last weekend because of  a greater than usual amount of work he had to do in his regular job (all of George's work is volunteer and pro bono).

He's hoping that he will get to the files this weekend and be able to e-mail them to Lebonfon on Sunday.

cc:
Matt Demory, DIAMOND COMIC DISTRIBUTORS
George Gatsis, THE BLACK DIAMOND EFFECT
Patrick Jodoin, IMPRIMERIE LEBONFON

Betrayals, Disappointments & Deaths

Cerebus #278 (May 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

ALLEN RUBINSTEIN:
(from a comment posted at TCJ.com, 24 June 2011)

The Three Stooges material is one of the high points of Cerebus. It starts as a "wacky" treatment of the Stooges as we all know them, in character, and slowly evolves into a telling of their later lives, betrayals, disappointments and deaths. It's really quite moving, brilliantly told and even Uncle Miltie shows up! If you take this section and the Mary Hemingway diary issues, you've got a master class in comics storytelling. I've said it before, and I will again - Cerebus contains some of the all-time best and some of the all-time worst comics I've ever read in thirty years. Nobody, but nobody is making comics today the way he has. I expect this statement to continue to be true in my lifetime.

Slap Shtick

Cerebus #269 (August 2001)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Notes On Latter Days, Cerebus Vol 15: Latter Days, 2003)

...What is interesting is that the [Three Stooges] shorts, themselves are, indeed, not very good. I mean, as entertainment, if you're talking about the writing and acting - apart from the Stooges themselves who are beautifully crafted "shorthand" personalities - the shorts are terrible. The actresses especially all have that look about them: immaculate babes who are just not actresses. The Stooges shorts scream "casting couch", even for a time when all movie acting was pretty broad and pretty unrealistic. There's something "off" about each of the actresses: too tall, voice to nasal, nose tilted wrong, eyes uneven, bad posture. Amazing "casting couch" material but, I mean, Lucille Ball comes off like Katherine Hepburn in this crowd. They seem "foisted" onto the Stooges machine, as does the writing.

And machine it was. 97 shorts in thirteen year, until Curly had his stroke in the middle of filming Half-Wits Holiday in '47. And they finished the day's work without him and then brought Shemp back for Fright Night. Amazing work ethic.

I would maintain that the success of the Stooges' shorts - and unbeknownst to them, Columbia was using the shorts as leverage to get the movie houses to show Columbia's films they weren't really interested in showing, that's how wide and deep the Stooges' popularity was - was attributable to that timing, that razor sharpness and the personalities that they developed in interacting with each other. As Sterenko wrote about the 1940s Superman, he was invulnerable, even bad scripts couldn't hurt him. That was the Stooges. Most of their scripts are so badly cobbled together, so filled with non-sequiters that you would swear someone lost a page and they just kept filming anyway, taking it as a given that it really didn't matter who the girl was or why her father said that or why the chief of police waked in at that moment. It was all just so much driftwood on which to hang that immaculate ballet of Stooge timing. The script could have consisted of everyone else reading the phone book aloud and "Stooges do shtick here" and you still would have had a hit.

Comic-Book Timing

Cerebus #269 (August 2001)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Notes On Latter Days, Cerebus Vol 15: Latter Days, 2003)

...the biggest problem I faced was translating "Stooge timing" into "comic-book timing". One of the reasons that I had chosen not to use Harpo in the book when I "did" Chico and Groucho was the massive number of panels  required to do pantomime effectively. You eat up a lot of panels just having Harpo ask for directions, right? Slapstick (or "slap shtick", the original Yiddish term) is in the same category and it needed a balance of sound effects, sharp changes in posture and facial expressions, off-panel dialogue and almost exclusively forward and back "camera movement" (so the reader is compelled to do a series of "takes" in reaction to the mayhem transpiring on the page) to even approximate...

...I forgot which Stooges short I found the Moe vs Curly sequence in but it sure was tough figuring out how to do all of that Curly "hand waving" in and around Moe's face in one panel.

"More Moe, Less Curly!"

Cerebus #268 (July 2001)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Notes On Latter Days, Cerebus Vol 15: Latter Days, 2003)

...There was no question that Curly was the pacifist character in the trio. It's one of the reasons that The Three Stooges is "guy" humour. Every guy when he's a kid has been a Curly and every guy when he's a kid has been a Moe. It's a pecking order thing. Curly knows that Moe is the leader and he knows that Moe has a short fuse, so he should be working at staying on Moe's "good side" or... "less bad" side, anyway. And he can't do it. He literally can't go ten seconds without pissing Moe off royally, usually by making a joke out of something (nyuck nyuck nyuck) that Moe is taking seriously (Schmeck! Ow!). Curly, Larry and Moe used to promote The Three Stooges shorts - and make some extra money - by touring movie theatres when the film unit was on hiatus, doing their routines live as they had done them with Ted Healy in Vaudeville...

...and Moe used to say that when he hit Curly, the people in the audience would be yelling, "Hit him back, Curly, hit him back." I may be reading too much into it, but I think there was an essential schism in the Judaic racial character being acted out between Moshe and Jerome Horowitz in those watershed moments of the 1930s and 40s. You can (and most did, and do) fault "the Moe character" for being too aggressive, too belligerent and too quick to resort to violence - like, say Ariel Sharon in our own age. But, it is equally true that the fanatical pacifistic nature of the Curly character - when it came to self-defence, being clearly incapable of anything more effective than child-like impatience, fuming in his high-pitched voice and using ineffectual hand gestures - was instrumental in leading most of a generation of European Jewry to concentration camps and to the Nazi gas chambers of World War II with an air of placid acceptance that was nearly universal.

"More Moe, less Curly"seems to me a good motto for 21st century Judaism.

As I say, I may be reading too much into it.

The Three Wise Fellows

Cerebus #270 (September 2001)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Notes On Latter Days, Cerebus Vol 15, 2003)

I made the decision a long, long time ago (relatively speaking) that The Three Stooges were going to be the link between Rick and Cerebus and the "coming to fruition" of the religious text first developed in Rick's Story, basing them loosely on the "Wise Men" of Matthew's Gospel (2:1-1:12)... Anyway, I remember coming in from a night of drinking late Friday (which is to say, early Saturday) and Channel 29, the Fox outlet out of Buffalo was running the latest Three Stooges syndicated package (their packaging has always been horrible and the new one hit a new low), so I just hit record and went to bed. When I got up the next morning and went through them, I thought, Whoa, boy. This is not going to be easy. I put the tape away on the top shelf of my linen closet and thought, I really don't envy me two years or so from now.

Well, I was right...

...It was tough. It was the toughest drawing and writing job that I had ever attempted, so it became a kind of multi-layered house-of-mirrors joke. It's hard to describe what I mean by that, but let me give it a try: what I had chosen to do was a grinding, arduous task knowing that virtually everyone would look down on the result. Sweating bullets for days and weeks on end to get it right and I knew that virtually everyone's reaction would be, "Oh, the Three Stooges, they're stupid." But, then, my work had been completely ignored since the notorious issue 186, so it became very funny to do two "highbrow" graphic novels, Going Home and Form & Void, about "highbrow" subjects, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, knowing that they would both just be ignored and then to have the Three Stooges as the apex of the pyramid.

And they were. They were several magnitudes of difficulty above Fitzgerald and Hemingway. At that point from an artistic credibility standpoint, it didn't make any difference. Artistic credibility? What artistic credibility? All I hear are crickets chirping. Seth relayed word through Chester [Brown] that I had done an amazing job capturing their body language (Chester had only vaguest idea who the Three Stooges were) and Bruce Costa, a columnist for Comics Retailer thanked me for doing right by his beloved Stooges (I sent him several Stooges tracing paper drawings as a sincere thank you).

Dave Sim: The BBC & Corporate Metaphysics

Rejected cover art for Doctor Who: Prisoners Of Time #8 (2013)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:

All done STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND #3. Very tough. I'm hoping it's the toughest issue because it took me a month longer than I thought it would. I checked in with the Kickstarter folks and now I'm checking in at A Moment of Cerebus.  I send Tim ideas for items when I think of them -- like The Judge from "Little Murders" piece. Great to see the monologue after all these years!

Anyway, I happened to be in the coffee shop downloading some photoreference for STRANGE DEATH #3 and saw the "BBC Censors Dave Sim" piece.

Well, no, personally I wouldn't call it censorship.  I remember when Jim Shooter was testifying at one of the rights trials (Howard the Duck? Blade? I forget) and was asked who had created whatever it was. And he said, under oath, "Marvel Comics." Which everyone gave him grief about (or a lot of people did), but, legally, it was forensically accurate. That's what work-made-for-hire is. It legally substitutes the company for the creator because there's no other way to cover ALL rights. And I never forgot that. Any time I do work-made-for-hire or talked about it, it was with my eyes WIDE OPEN about that exact thing. Which is what the IDW variant covers was all about.

Try picturing it this way. You're out somewhere with a friend and he buys a vase. And you think, Nice vase. And then you go over to his place a week later and he has it in a place of honour.  But he's painted it this -- to you -- strange colour.  And you're thinking, "It was a nice vase. What was he thinking?"  But you don't say anything, because a) obviously he painted the vase and b) obviously he thinks he improved it or he wouldn't have it in a place of honour.

Doing a work-made-for-hire cover, I get the satisfaction of a) doing it, b) getting paid for it and c) selling the original. That's it. That's the extent of my involvement.

Rejected cover art for Doctor Who: Prisoners Of Time #9 (2013)
Art by Dave Sim

There was, I suspect, an element of competing Comic Art Metaphysics and Corporate Metaphysics.

I thought, I think the cover will sell for more if it has a logo on it. So I traced the logo out of PREVIEWS.  And I did think for a  moment, I wonder if I should be doing this?  Because, face it, the BBC is not exactly JAZZED about a DOCTOR WHO comic book PER SE. It's part of a big across the board push for the 50th anniversary. But comic books are not HUGE any more. They're just another thing you can do with an intellectual property.

So a primary concern is going to be what? I'd say the logo. That's what they want. We live in an age where "Brand" has become capitalized and turned into a verb.  So, that's the primary concern, I think.  So they get the cover and they look at it and right away they know that it's not their logo.  It looks LIKE their logo but in a corporate context, that's just...sloppy.  Amateurish.  It's also insubordination.  Whoever IDW is dealing with is, on the ladder, Up There.  IDW is down...let's say, off to one side, yes?...and Dave Sim, pair of hands hired by IDW, is way, way, way down here. Dave Sim doing his own logo in such a way that it can't be excised because it's PART of the artwork. That's not a Happy Thing for someone Up There.

I'm guessing, but I suspect what they were doing was "dealing with it" in what is a sensible corporate way of doing things. "You have messed with our logo.  We can't tell if this was done innocently or if you're just being a little pr--k.  Regardless, you are off your turf, way above your station and you are on MY turf. So, I'm going to make sure you understand where you are in the pecking order."

It WAS done innocently in the sense that I thought, "They won't care. As long as it looks LIKE the logo, it's a comic book. The BBC is not going to lose sleep over a comic book cover by someone they've never heard of and wouldn't care if you explained Dave Sim in a one-hour lecture to them. I'm beneath notice." Yes, I am.  But the logo isn't.

I really should have pushed IDW for printed logos, but that just...isn't how covers are done now.  I'm going to be doing a CHEW cover for John Layman and I've asked him for a logo. It's easier to conceive of the cover if you can see what is going to -- bottom line -- be on there. Here's the logo, here's the price, here's the company bullet, here's how the number is going to be done. But, it's a pain to do that. Particularly when you have to mail it to the guy instead of e-mailing him a digital file.  Here! Print your own damn logo. Which is why I TRY to be somewhat careful. People take a dimmer and dimmer view of someone without e-mail as we go along. So I really need to factor that in when I decide to try doing something like work-made-for-hire covers. REALLY factor it in. This is a MAJOR pain for 21st century people.  If you really don't want to join (and I REALLY don't want to join the whole online thing), well, pay the price and stay out of people's ways.  

Rejected cover art for Doctor Who: Prisoners Of Time #10 (2013)
Art by Dave Sim

And in terms of Comic Art Metaphysics: when I saw the doctored covers to #9 and 10, I thought, there's a message in this, too. Here. This is all IDW wanted. This is all the BBC wanted. Big picture of DOCTOR WHO. Close-up, head and shoulders. Boom. Done. But, I'm thinking, well there are Dave Sim completists who are going to be buying WAY too many copies of this book to get my variant cover. I have to do a cover that's worth what they're paying for it. That's fine. As long as it doesn't in any way affect the Corporate Metaphysics.  It's nice of me (in a way) to be concerned about Dave Sim completists but the LOGO is a Corporate Metaphysics no-brainer.  A simple clear picture of The Star, the physical icon that is what is actually being sold (and which the BBC also owns), that's what we're doing here.  If that makes for a not very exciting Dave Sim cover for Dave Sim fans, that's really, really, really beside the point.

As soon as I thought, Hang on, maybe I shouldn't be hand-drawing the logo, I really needed to think about it.  I'm the only guy who would do that because lettering is a major part of my "skill set", but that means you have to think it through MORE thoroughly.  If I'm the ONLY guy who would do this, THINK what this looks like to someone who works at the BBC and is in charge of B*R*A*N*D*I*N*G. And, of course, by the time the #8 cover had been consolidated to a single figure from my tri-level artsy-fartsy traced logo piece, the other covers were all done and all of them had traced logos. You have to do the thinking IN THE MOMENT.

Well, that's really all I wanted to say. Pretty cool to see Eddie's Cuba photos!

Okay, I'll be back whenever I have STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND #4 done -- hopefully this time it's not going to take three months! But at least two, guaranteed.

Thanks everyone!  See you in a couple of months!

Help finance Dave Sim to complete 'The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond' 
by making a monthly donation at Patreon or a one-off Paypal donation.

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.

The 'Almost Complete' Dave Sim Awakening Comics Offer

Comicverse #1-3 (Awakening Comics)
by Steve Peters & Bianca Alu-Marr

DAVE SIM:
(from Kickstarter Update #167, 6 December 2013)

Steve contacted me a few months ago to ask if I was up for a commission for his AWAKENING COMICS. "No way, Steve. I can't afford the time to draw ANYTHING besides STRANGE DEATH." He was ready for me. "What about a script?" No one ever asks for a script. Uh. Yeah. I could do that. Drawing I have to do at the drawing board and the drawing board is full of STRANGE DEATH (there's a song title for you). A script I can write in the shower, on the way to the grocery store, taking out the garbage. So we agreed. He wanted it for his new title, COMICVERSE, which I imagine many, if not ALL of you have already seen. Maybe a delusion on my part. I had seen, I think, the first half of the first issue in photocopy form. Turns out he and his co-plotter, co-creator Bianca Alu-Marr have done four issues so far. So I asked him to send me the four issues so I knew what I was supposed to be doing. "This is the comic book store on the space station a thousand years in the future in a galaxy far, far away, right?" That's the one. "And it was something about a Steve Peters stand-in having a discussion with someone in the store about  CEREBUS and the Steve Peters stand-in was pro-CEREBUS and the person he was talking to was anti-CEREBUS." That, too, was the one. Okay, yeah, I can write that. How many pages? He figured anywhere between  four and eight. How much would I charge? Pay me whatever you think is fair after you read it. Okay.

So that's what I did.

At first just thinking about it during non-STRANGE DEATH moments and then eventually typing the dialogue I pictured into my MacBook. Then breaking it down into pages and panels, pacing it. Boom. Done. Six pages. Sent it to him two weeks ago. Today I got the cheque from him. He paid for the new motor for my furnace! The bill for which just came in today as well.

So, I thought. Well, okay. I'm doing this Update, so let's give the HIGH SOCIETY Kickstarter people the news first? And, what about this? What if Steve offers all of you a deal on the four COMICVERSE issues? No, wait! What if he offers you a deal on the COMICVERSE issues AND a package of every AWAKENING COMIC that has my work in it?  Uh. I tell you what, Steve, I'll leave it with you. Just leave me a message before Friday night and I'll pitch them the deal. (Figuring, what? $15, $20.  Knock a third off of that. Everyone goes home happy.)

$58. You're kidding me.

No, he wasn't kidding me. All the Dave Sim stuff (and he's getting low on some things) and COMICVERSE, a COMICVERSE button, COMICVERSE trading cards, an AWAKENING COMICS SKETCH CARD with a Steve Peters CEREBUS on it (mail it to me when you get it and I'll put a Dave Sim CEREBUS headsketch on there if you have a self-addressed envelope and send me $5 to help with postage), a copy of CEREBUS #146 with Steve's SINGLE PAGE in it (signed by both of us) (I forgot I gave him those).

I realized that I've done more work for AWAKENING COMICS than for Marvel and DC put together.

So, he's knocking it down from $58 to $45 (plus $5 to help with postage) while he still has ALL the Dave Sim stuff.  Including, like, Jeff Seiler's CEREBUS READERS IN CRISIS #4 which I did the cover for of me and Steve over the last decade or so and which contains his story, "ME vs. Dave Sim" about our dust-up back in the 1990s. All my letters to him and his letters to me. THE ORIGIN OF SPARKY (his main title before COMICVERSE). The only song I ever wrote part of. Steve's a musician so I just made my lead-off tier of panels the first line of "The Musical Origin of Sparky". And then he did the next tier with the next line. Until there was a song. And then he recorded it. I realize I've never heard it.  Never had a way to play music in those pre-MacBook days. So, that's part of the deal: the comic book with the story/song in it and a CD of Steve's music with that on it.  (Steve's going to jump into the comments section after this if I'm getting any of this wrong).

Cerebus Readers In Crisis #4 (2009)
by Steve Peters & Dave Sim

Which is why it's kind of important that you are finding out about this first. Because Tim of A MOMENT OF CEREBUS is going to announce the deal whenever he decompresses from his High! Intensity! New! Job! (which he tells me now takes until sometime on Sunday) at which time it's the KICKSTARTER/A MOMENT OF CEREBUS DEAL.

And then Steve starts making a smaller package every time he sells out of something.  ALMOST COMPLETE DAVE SIM AWAKENING COMICS.  That kind of thing. But as of 7:37 pm Friday as I'm typing this, he still has all of them. 

Which reminds me:  STEVE! (sorry, didn't mean to be that loud). I went through the short box, PERIODICALS/COMIC BOOK/SIM/SIM-GERHARD/NON-AARDVARK VANAHEIM 1992 to 2006 and I'm missing some Dave Sim AWAKENING COMICS stuff.  I need AWAKENING COMICS #1 and 2, 3 copies each (the ones with panels by Rick Veitch, THE James Kolchlka, Matt Feazell and Greg Hyland).  So, if you've only got three of them, DON'T sell them to ANY...(ahem)....of these very nice Kickstarter people...until the Cerebus Archive has three each of them.  I've got 3 EVERWINDS SHROOMS (which, you know, I better -- only comic book EVER with a panel by me and by Moebius) (and Terry Laban did one, I think) (Yes, yes he did).  I also need 3 of the CD's with the "Musical Origin of Sparky" on it.  I've only got TWO TAILS OF SPARKY #1-- they ended up hiding between my three COMIC EYES and the SPIDER-MAN hardcover I did a SPIDER-MAN for.  But only two of them.  I've got 3 of the CEREBUS READERS IN CRISIS #4, but if you've got three SPARE copies of CEREBUS #146 we both signed, I'll take three of those.  Otherwise I'll just send you 3 more and get you to sign them.

And if I'm missing anything from off of the COMPLETE DAVE SIM AWAKENING COMICS list, uh, the Cerebus Archive can use three of those. :)

$45 is a lot of money, though.  So if you were to ask ME which SINGLE issue to get, I'd say either CHEMISTRY (Steve's Day Prize winning comic book/music CD combo) or THE ORIGIN OF SPARKY (which I find inherently funny:  basically he just improvises as many Origins for Sparky as he can fit into 32 pages.  Some of them are jam stories, some are collaborations and the lead story is actually how Steve came up with Sparky.  Very "re-readable".

Links:
Awakening Comics
Steve Peters on Facebook
Comicverse on Facebook

UPDATE #1

STEVE PETERS:

Thanks so much, Dave, and thanks to everyone who scooped up the package deal so quickly! The full set is GONE! So nobody buy any further sets please, until I can change it to the "ALMOST COMPLETE DAVE SIM AWAKENING COMICS" package. I will also be adding shipping costs to Canada and a few other countries (it's a bit steep, but it IS a lotta books). Look for another comment from me below to see if I have the new package deal ready.

UPDATE #2

STEVE PETERS:

O.K., so I'm sold out of Cerebus Readers In Crisis #4, so I've posted a new "ALMOST COMPLETE DAVE SIM AWAKENING COMICS" package without that issue and priced accordingly. So now it's a $53 value and I'm offering it for $40, plus $4 shipping in the USA, and I've added shipping rates for Canada, the UK, and Australia, the three other countries that I most get orders from. If you get this package let me know if you want something specific for your Cerebus sketch (take a look at my Sketch Card Comic to see what I've done for others.

Weekly Update #8: 'Cerebus' & 'High Society' Reprinting

Previously on 'A Moment Of Cerebus':

Dave Sim, working with George Peter Gatsis, has remastered the first two collected volumes of Cerebus to restore details and quality in the artwork lost over the thirty years since they were originally published (as detailed here and here). After Cerebus' original printer Preney Print closed its doors, Dave Sim moved his printing to Lebonfon in 2007 as at that time they were still capable of working with photographic negatives and making printing plates as Preney had done. And then Lebonfon switched to digital scanning and printing - a technology which struggles to faithfully reproduce Cerebus' tone without creating moire patterns (as detailed in Crisis On Infinite Pixels). Dave Sim continues to work with Lebonfon to ensure the print-quality of the new Cerebus and High Society editions (as detailed in Collections Stalled). Now read on...

WEEKLY REPORT ON CEREBUS (16th PRINTING) &

HIGH SOCIETY 30TH ANNIVERSARY S&N GOLD LOGO (11th PRINTING)

DAVE SIM:
(by fax, 6 December 2013)

George has had a very hetic week at work and so was unable to work with the last 12 digital files that need manipulation.

He has cleared the decks for action tomorrow (December 7) and "if all look good, I will email the updated files to Lebonfon for them to run proofs of the fixed pages and send back to me."

We're getting there. One baby step at a time.

cc:
Matt Demory, DIAMOND COMIC DISTRIBUTORS
George Gatsis, THE BLACK DIAMOND EFFECT
Patrick Jodoin, IMPRIMERIE LEBONFON

Dave Sim vs Woody Allen

Cerebus #281 (August 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

CARSTEN KNOX:
(from Dave Sim Comes To Halifax, 20 September 2010)

...At a press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival this month, [Woody] Allen was quoted as saying this about growing old: "I think things get worse and worse. I see no advantages of aging whatsoever. You become shrivelled, you become decrepit, you lose your faculties, your peer group passes away."

In this, Allen and Sim's opinions parallel.

"The plain fact of the matter is is that life doesn't get any funnier as it goes along," writes Sim, in response to the suggestion that people are more fond of his early work. "The ability to do humour effectively in your 20s and 30s really comes from a fundamental ignorance of how mordant and depressing life is."

Sim is now 54 and quite devout, incorporating in his worship a mix of elements of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. He no longer uses a computer, preferring a typewriter. He still creates and publishes comics, including a 56-page graphic narrative about the Holocaust and anti-semitism called Judenhass and the ongoing "fashion and pop-culture parody" glamourpuss, as well as a web TV series at cerebustv.com.

My interview with him was conducted by fax. I compared his work and public persona to Allen's -- since both have been steadily and inexorably devoted to their craft, both incorporated much more humour in their early work and then became more serious, both have endured criticism for their personal beliefs and choices, and both are fans of the Marx Brothers. Sim had both praise and serious criticism's of Allen's work.

The praise: "The line from Allen's Stardust Memories. 'We like your movies, especially the early, funnier ones.' And telling him when he asks what he can do to make the world a better place, 'Tell funnier jokes.' It's a magnificent piece of writing, totally cruel, totally cold, but totally fair ---and self-directed. I can definitely relate."

And the criticism: "His job in the totalitarian construct is no longer to write funnier jokes but to make Scarlett Johannsen (sp) sound like a genius, as he attempted to do with Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. He's not very good at it. He keeps wanting to write women who sound like women, but that's not what the Marxist-feminists are looking for. They're looking for transformational rationales that will make their husbands and boyfriends go, 'Oh, WOW! YES! YES! THIS is what women are ACTUALLY like!' They mistook Annie Hall for a genuine creative expression instead of the serial womanizer tactic it was."

Sim remarks that Allan has had an easier time of it that he has, from the press and public, and muses that other comic creators, specifically Bryan Lee O'Malley of Scott Pilgrim fame, are never questioned or assessed based on whether their work is autobiographical -- many see the stubborn aardvark as Sim in fur with a sword. "Is [Hope Larson, O'Malley's wife, also a cartoonist] the girl in the film? The question never came up as far as I know."

As Sim completes what he calls The Last Signing, the question of whether his beloved creation Cerebus will ever make a return will certainly come up. He does, in fact, have plans.

"The only way I would revisit the character -- and here's a Coast exclusive for you -- is if I was to do a miniseries or graphic novel, Cerebus: The Afterlife, which I have a few mental notes floating around in my head about. I might have to wait a few years. People were squeamish enough about seeing Cerebus in his old age, not wanting to think about getting -- or being -- old. Speculations on an afterlife would really push some hot buttons, I think."

Gerhard's Subconscious

Cerebus #119 (February 1989)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

EDDIE KHANNA:
This one I always thought was interesting 'after the fact' realization.

From Gerhard's Interview in 'Feature Magazine' (Winter 1997):

FEATURE:

Dave has in the past mentioned that Cerebus' environment is a reflection of his mental state, so how do you go about creating an environment to achieve such an effect?

GERHARD:

I try not to do it too consciously. The environment is a device for portraying time and place and setting the mood. Because I'm aware of what's going on in the story, there's a certain amount that comes through just on a subconscious level. There's one panel in Jaka's Story - it's one of those single illustrations with the text running down the side - of Jaka leaning in the doorway of the forbidden room and there's a skylight above her. Somebody had written in saying that the whole skylight and archway above the door looks like the head of the young Cerebus from the Epic stories. And it really does. I look at it and go "Yep, that's a young Cerebus up there", but I had no conscious idea I was doing anything like that.

FEATURE:

What do you attribute those storytelling coincidences to?

GERHARD:

Just operating on a subconscious level. Dave has said when you're working on a story, you're working on it on a level or a certain number of levels. When you go back and read it years later you find that it works on a completely different level that you didn't realize at the time.

Ernest Hemingway In Cuba

Forma y Vac’o en Cuba.

As part of a recent trip to Cuba, I figured what the hey let's visit some Hemingway haunts and try and take some pictures  with a copy of Form & Void in them. I mean what's the worst that could happen?

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to see La Floridita, one of his more famous bar hang outs in Havana where he was said to have created his own version of the daiquiri (yes, I said daiquiri. He liked his daiquiri). But I did manage to see the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana, where he first stayed after moving to Cuba and began writing For Whom the Bell Tolls. They have quite the Hemingway shrine on the main floor, with pictures of him (and Mary) all over the walls.

(I apologize in advance for the roughness of some of these pictures. It's hard to take a picture with one hand while also holding a graphic novel in the other and checking over your shoulder for anyone coming up to you and asking, "Pardon, Amigo. But what exactly do you think you are doing?")

 I didn't find out until after I had left that the room where he stayed upstairs has been made into a mini museum and can be looked at (no one there told me this at the time).

The home (or mansion, if you prefer) that Hemingway later built and lived in for many years after moving out of the hotel was called Finca La Vigia, and has also been turned into a Hemingway Museum. Unfortunately it's off the beaten path from where I was (it's about 10 miles outside of Havana in a town called San Francisco de Paula), and I originally wasn't going to go. But then I thought to myself, no. I can't let the millions of Form & Void fans down. At the very least, I owe it to Dave and Ger for the hellish amount of work they put into it, especially the Africa sequence which sounds like it was about as much fun to work on as having bamboo splinters shoved under your fingernails.

I wasn't allowed into the actual house, which is where the actual museum with all the Hemingway memorabilia is, but you're allowed to wander around the outside the house and poke your head in through the windows and take some pictures. At one point one of the Museum guides kindly offered to take my camera and get some pictures from the inside.

Standing right outside the window to Hemingway's working office while he took some shots, I took my chance and pulled out my copy of Form & Void and asked if he wouldn't mind taking a picture of it in the office. "It's a Hemingway book" I told him. He put it on Hemingway's desk and took a picture. SCORE!

As he was handing it back he looked at it, and I could tell he was thinking, "Dave Sim and Gerhard? Qu?" I opened up the book and showed him a picture of Hemingway and he went, "Ahh! Si! Si!" and it was all good.

And for Ger, here are some pictures of Hemingway's boat, the Pilar.

Urban Turban

A MOST INTERESTING BUSINESS PROPOSAL

Dear Ms. glamourpuss,

Please be allowing me to introduce myself. My name is Anthony L. Tandoori. Together with my brothers Ravi and Pinky, we form Tandoori lndustries, lnc.

You may have heard of us from our mutually acquainted Derek Chutney. PhD. He is actually our mother's second cousin's uncle's brother-in-law's neighbour's grandfather's son-in-law twice removed (once, l am having to be regretting to say, forcibly from our same village (it is, indeed, a small world...or, perhaps an extremely large and overpopulated one depending with which side of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada computer database you find yourself most in sympathy) (and those with whom you are not so much, but which the database masters are having the short and the curlies). It was the mostly esteemed Mr. Chutney who showed us your highly prestigious graphic fashion periodical novel and suggested you might be overripe for a marketing venture of great mutuality.

At Tandoori lndustries we have been developing for many years an invention which will revolutionize not only the fashion industry but also the aforementioned entire small and/or large world: The URBANturban!

Glamourpuss #19 (May 2011)

Art by Dave Sim, text by Eddie Khanna

EDDIE KHANNA:

This began with me writing to glamourshots under the alias Anthony (Tony) Tandoori of Tandoori Industries. It all started from a few issues previous when Dave was forced to run an Anime postcard with ramblings on it in the letter column section glamourshots, due to what I assumed was a lack of letters and feedback (other than Johnny McPhanbot). At this point I quickly realized that it was ‘open season’ on glamourshot letters and a pretty sure way to get a letter published in a comic book (eat your heart out T.M. Maple). Note for young letter column writers: When a comic is forced to publish an anime postcard with what appears to be drunken ramblings on the other side, they’re probably scraping the barrel for letters to choose from.

At this point I thought, well, let’s come up with something I’ve had an idea for a while that I thought would be pretty funny, the Urban Turban, and combine it with the fashion magazine models in glamourpuss. So I photocopied a bunch of the glamourpuss models from previous issues, drew some turbans on them, (thinking the whole time, I may not have any artistic ability, but by Rama Kushna and the Wandering Spirit of Boston Brand, I am gonna give it my all trying to draw some photo-realistic turbans. Some people draw moustaches on pictures, I guess I do this.) and wrote a mock proposal under the above alias listing built-in cell phone features for it and sent it off to Dave, along with a picture from a fashion magazine of a model wearing a turban I had found.

Dave wrote back saying that he had enjoyed the letter, and that he was going to run it glamourshots, and do a drawing using the fashion picture I had sent him and trying to incorporate as many of the features listed. Which he not only did, but added a few of his own which were way funnier than anything I had come up with (and Dave is responsible for some of the funniest comics in the history of the medium), including the ‘Internally Crispy Micro Processor Chip (plain or barbecue), the USB ports connected to Fibres In Your Optic Injury to Eye Motif cables, and the My Thumbs Fly Like The Winds Easy Texting, which had me laughing out loud for days.

And, the icing on the cake: he very generously and graciously sent me the Urban Turban artwork he drew!!!! It was like that scene between Jaka and M. Zulli, in Minds, only with photo-realistic turbans instead of carved wooden boxes and egg shells. 

Synchronously, after the issue was published, I began to see examples of it everywhere. For example, in the same month that the above glamourpuss issue was published (May 2011), there was an on-line fashion article about how Karl Lagerfeld wanted to introduce something similar called the ‘Murban’ because 2011 had been declared the year of the Urban Turban for women. And then afterwards a South Asian Magazine did a fashion shoot with stylish turbans that they actually called the Urban Turban. I guess in the same way Alan Moore talks about Steam Engine Idea time, it was Urban Turban idea time.

It’s too bad that glamourpuss ended when it did, otherwise in my next letter I was going to start a Tandoori Industries membership drive for an organization called "The Friends of Apu".

Chasing Mulu Chasing Viktor Davis

DAVE SIM:
(From the introduction to Cerebus Volume 8: Women)

'Mothers & Daughters' continues in this, the second volume of the four volume series. As I write these words, I am edging closer and closer to the core of Cerebus story-line. Books three and four, (if I am able to do the central idea justice) will come as close anything I have written to expressing reality as I see it. I am edging around my concept, encircling it, containing it with a loose network of ideas and concepts. There is a recoil effect in writing these things: a psychic backlash which I anticipated and which I am unable to escape. the laws governing action and reaction seem to be universal even (maybe especially) in the realm of creativity

EDDIE KHANNA:

I always wondered at the time Dave wrote that what kind of 'recoil effect' he might have been talking about. It wasn't until after Reads and Minds came out and realizing the extent of just how high and overarching his literary ambitions were (basically all the way up to and beyond capital 'R' Reality, and addressing those who may inhabit those upper levels), that I think I began to see an example of how such a 'psychic backlash' might manifest shortly afterwards.

Which turned out to be (in all places) in a 90s music video for 'Be My Pusscat' by British trip hop band Mulu:

Maybe it's just me, but doesn’t that look like some kind of a metaphysical response to Reads? I mean, from the fact the central character in the video looks like Dave (or is that Victor Reid? or Viktor Davis? It's probably one of the legions of Viktors, just like the legions of Oscar Wildes in the story) to the fact that there are scenes that are exact visual depictions from Reads (the part about male house pets) to the fact the singer (albeit in different forms and guises) is constantly stalking the protagonist and he has to disguise himself as Sylvester the Cat from Looney Tunes to get away.

Like-A-Looks:
Guy from Mulu video circa 1997 (left); Dave Sim circa 1994 (right)

And then there’s the fact that 'Mulu' (Mooloo?) sounds a lot like 'Yoowhoo'. And don't get me started on the lyrics connecting with the later Torah commentaries.

Or maybe the director for the video was just a big Cerebus fan and said to the record company "All right, now for this video, I have a vision. We are going to go out and cast an actor who looks like the self-publisher of a relatively unknown black-white comic book and shoot scenes that are exact references to issues #175-#186 of his 300 issue comic book where the lead singer of the band is a proxy for an overarching metaphysical female force that has ensnared other men and is now attempting to do the same to our central character, only he manages to escape her by disguising himself as Sylvester the Cat from the old Warner Bros cartoons. It’s called an homage."

But somehow, I don't think so.

Anyone else have any Cerebus or Dave sightings?

Rick Nash's Knife Wound

Cerebus #220 (July 1997)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

EDDIE KHANNA:

In the history of comics has there ever been a more realized, vividly fleshed out, and sympathetic character than Rick Nash? I always wondered where his knife wound came from (which, like his head wound, is never revealed in the series).

I wrote and asked Dave about it a while back and his response was as follows:

Dear Eddie:

Rick's knife wound is analogous to Cerebus' eye injury in that both responded in exactly the wrong way to what should have been a major corrective -- "straighten up and fly right" -- in their respective lives: in Cerebus' case by keeping the bandage on long past the point it was necessary and in Rick's case using it as means of forestalling criticism. He had learned that he could be as caustic and provocative as he wanted when he had been drinking and, just when his listener(s) had been provoked beyond a reasonable level of tolerance he'd rip his shirt open revealing his garish wound and be "off the hook".

Presumably, that's how he got the wound in the first place -- through those kinds of behaviour and he came up against someone who just decided enough was enough and "here's what you get" for having a big mouth and no means to back it up physically. Again, exactly the wrong response: incorporating it into his "act" instead of seeing it as a serious, serious warning. Cerebus didn’t actually go through it, but he did have a cautionary dream about it -- where his "friends" had cut off his other ear. That was enough to check his own behaviour. Rick actually had to go through it -- and still didn't really learn his lesson. It was his equivalent of what Jaka was for Cerebus: a lesson he just wouldn't learn. As he became a devout believer in God, that put him in line for a Grand Martyrdom. Having not learned the lesson from the knife wound in the chest he then suffers a head wound which he intentionally doesn't treat, wanting it to look worse than it is in order to generate sympathy.

Indirectly it issues from Jaka -- she provoked him in a very vulnerable area by aborting his son. Which caused him to hit her, which caused him to get his thumb broken, which set his extreme relationship with violence in an extreme downward trajectory which caricatured the core moment: aborting his son was profoundly wrong, so his response was proportional, right and true. If anything, in his mind, he UNDERreacted. But the result was profound physical pain heaped on top of his emotional pain. Which he then proceeded to act out through the rest of his life. He was being caustic and provocative, but he was also being honest, right and true… out of which he would either suffer another extreme physical pain for his honesty or be spared it depending on which way his listener tilted in response.

It would be an interesting question as to how God would assess Rick's life in toto. Did he deserve what he got (indeed did he deserve more)? Or was he a profoundly honest and truthful person whose sufferings were mostly unwarranted and cumulative?

You're right in indentifying me as Rick's "creator" in that context. I illustrated his post-Jaka's Story situation in anecdotal fashion just to give the reader an outline sketch of his serious problematic depths -- and to show exactly how "ill-fated" he was. But, in terms of making an equitable assessment of whether he was a "net positive" or "net negative" figure, that's both beyond my scope as a "creator", author, and non-divinity and the scope of the work which shows many aspects of Rick in successive episodes years apart but doesn’t show enough to allow for an honest assessment of all of his decision-making and choices.

He was one of those characters where I wouldn't WANT to know everything about him even as his "creator" (maybe ESPECIALLY as his "creator"). Does he redeem himself with his martyrdom? I don’t know: is a gruesome demise NECESSARILY martyrdom or can it just be a messy life made even messier that’s really just self destructiveness raised to a lunatic extreme? If you relentlessly provoke people in such a way that they feel compelled to execute you in a gruesome fashion, have you done anything besides find a really convoluted way to commit suicide?

Interesting questions.

Sincerely,

Dave

Spacey Elves

Welcome to AMOC Guest Editorial Week, with me your host, Eddie Khanna. Tim's left the lights on, the fridge freshly stocked with some good food and drink, and light music is playing on the stereo while a cozy fire is crackling on this cold night. I'll be the temporary host and proprietor for the next week of this most distinguished and excellent blog-site (and BIG thanks to Tim for all the great hard work he's done on it). Hopefully I won't trash the place and get yanked off faster than you can say "DC doesn't believe in Super-Hero Marriages, even for Lesbian Bat Women" (that should really be the name of a band if it isn't already) ("These Reboots were made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do...")

If I didn't know better, I'd say they were taking a page from Church & State. "So many Forces at work... So many Crossovers, so many Tie-ins, so many Relaunches... we need... more... character! And we all know the way to get more character, don't we? That's right! Annulled Marriages!"

Better get used to it folks; you're stuck with me all week.

Anyways, let's start off with one of the more popular Roach parodies in Cerebus: Swoon and the whole Family of the Clueless (which really took the whole idea of super-hero parody, especially within the context of the series, to a whole new level).

Cerebus #167 (February 1993)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

From Following Cerebus #10, "Dave On Dreams":

Craig Miller: 

Of course, the decision to parody Sandman - which you could not have known in the early years of Cerebus - adds to the number of dreams, particularly in the Women volume. Did the opportunity to include more dreams influence your decision to focus on Neil Gaiman's series?

Dave Sim:

No, not consciously (nyuck, nyuck, nycuk). The storyline was "surfacing" towards what I hoped - two years up ahead in what would become Reads - would be Reality or at least "Reality". A core part of that Reality or "Reality" involved the Roach parodies coming to an end - the more real the world the less possible it is to include super-heroes, even parody super-heroes in it. Neil's Sandman seemed an opportune exit since, on the one hand, he (Sandman, I mean) had a super-natural (ergo super-hero) aspect to him but on the other hand he was also an iconic representation of larger ideas. He was the character Sandman but he was also Dream, an incarnation of a state of existence. Did (and do) such Super Realities as Beings exist? In addition to the fact that all people dream is there such a thing as The Dreaming and/or Dream? That was the conscious writing intention with the dreams themselves just being the most effective way to ask and hopefully begin to answer the question.

Cerebus #167 (February 1993)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

From The Cerebus Companion #2:

Dave Sim:

Usually, the Roach parodies are very fortuitous. They're not anticipated; I never plan ahead for them. I don't sit down and say, at this specific point in Mothers & Daughters, I will do a parody. The Roach parodies are always left for the time when I know I'm going to be sitting down to them. I know that he's coming in, and I know what contribution he's going to make to the plot, and I just look around and see what’s going on in comics and try to find the most readily-apparent thing to do a parody of. It was just a great stroke of fortune that the Endless happened to be coming out. And I don't know how much of a stroke of fortune it is, because when something fits that neatly in there, it's almost like there's a much larger story being written here by somebody.

It's always been interesting (well to me, anyways) that we see all of the Endless parodied except for Delirium (other than Destruction that is, but technically he had left the Family by then) (I never realized until I just typed that exactly how much the Endless sound like the mafia). I mean, even Henrot-Gutch gets a couple of panels as 'Sulk', despite the fact that a 'large cast would be unwieldy'.

Cerebus #169 (April 1993)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

It's not explicitly shown, but reading between the lines (or panels), I don't think it’s too much of a stretch to cast the Regency Elf in the role of Delirium/Spacey. The question I've always wondered is: did Dave intentionally intend for her to be the Delirium analogue and he just couldn't fit it into the story to explicitly show it, or was it another example of a much larger story being written, and one of those things that isn't seen until afterwards? 

Cerebus #169 (April 1993), by Dave Sim & Gerhard
Sandman #59 (April 1994), by Neil Gaiman & Marc Hempel

Of course, never mind the fact that the Delirium page above from the Kindley Ones came out AFTER the above sequence in Mothers & Daughters, so on one level it's as if Delirium in Sandman is channeling the Regency Elf in Cerebus who is channeling Delirium in Sandman, like some kind of self-referential (elf-referential?) Marx Brothers' routine.

I mean, in addition to the fact that the Regency Elf predates Delirium by several years in comics, which makes me wonder if perhaps she was an influence on Neil when he came up with Delirium.

All of which only adds weight to the idea that it may have all been part of a much larger story being written by someone 'up there'.

From ‘exit Sandman’ (Dave’s chat with Neil):

Dave Sim:

It's very much like 'Delight' becoming 'Delirium'. It's not as elaborate, but it says a lot of what I was trying to get across in Mothers & Daughters. (Some days later, I had the thought that the real-world transformation of 'Delight' into 'Delirium' was the death of Marilyn Monroe.)