HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #8

Will the Cerebus Digital 6000 project prevent you from producing new comics work, or are you happy to take a break from that for a while?

To be honest, I have no idea what's going to happen or IS happening.  It's very possible -- in the largest possible sense -- that I'm bumping up against the end of my life when it comes to annotating all of the CEREBUS notebooks and the Archive. Might well be God's way of telling me, "Uh, Dave -- life expectancy for a North American male is like 71, 72.  Either YOU annotate the stuff or it doesn't get annotated. If you start now and work hard, you can be done issue 300 the week before you kick off."

On my part, it's all guesswork.  Putting HIGH SOCIETY AUDIO DIGITAL together has been a real ordeal because of the crushing deadline.  It definitely took me much of July and all of August, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day to finish my side of the project -- and all of June if you include co-directing the Kickstarter campaign.  It's a debilitating experience, to be honest, spending an entire month in 1981 to 1983. So, if CEREBUS DIGITAL 6000 is even possible I really have to do an honest assessment of how I plan to do my part of this.  How many hours a day, how many days a week.  There are just too many variables right now.

If we launch HIGH SOCIETY AUDIO DIGITAL #1 on October 10th and get 100,000 free downloads and the following week the #27, 28, 29, 30 "ships" 5,000 "units" at $3.99, well, okay that becomes QUITE viable.  By January I should know if anyone bought it on Comixology, iVerse or Diamond Digital at a percentage of $3.99 and $1.99 for the subsequent weeks.  

Right now the problem is getting the word out. I've done a bunch of audio tweets -- me doing the HIGH SOCIETY characters voices with little blackout comedy dialogue -- for John Scrudder to use to attract attention to the launch on Twitter (which was our primary source for people finding out about the Kickstarter campaign).  I FedExed them to him yesterday and I'm going to be writing and recording more today, Monday and Tuesday and FedExing however many that turns out to be on Tuesday.

Then I'm just going to be here doing the HARDtalk interview. Maybe with 3,000 viewers, maybe just the -- however many are reading this right now.  The audio tweets need to get OUT THERE somehow, to new people, not just the 1,140 Cerebus supporters who are already getting HIGH SOCIETY AUDIO DIGITAL as part of the Kickstarter campaign (or who already weren't able to buy the whole package ahead of time because of financial constraints and might not even be able to afford anything besides the free download).  That's why I say that there are too many variables to answer your question.  Are the major news sites going to sign up for the Virtual Tour sometime during launch week?  Is some hitherto undetected pop culture site going to cover it? Finally get Cerebus out to the Big Bad World?

I've made the tweets as funny as I know how to make them, but as I told John, I have to block out 2012 -- which I find to be a completely humourless society -- in order to do that.  I've given him carte blanche to deep six or censor any of the tweets:  launder them right down to inoffensive pablum if need be.

So here all-however-many-of-us-we-are sit, staring at each other.  If it's still just us and we're still all just sitting here and staring at each other when the clock ticks over from October 9th to October 10th, I'll probably have a much better answer to your question.

Here's our Virtual Tour question for today over at the CANADIAN COMICS ARCHIVE:

It's a silly thing and forgive me for not seeing it 'til now, but does Red Sophia intentionally have a "Byrne-girl" face or am I imagining it?  Thank you.  

Hit the link to the CANADIAN COMICS ARCHIVE for the answer to that question, and be here tomorrow for more HARDtalk Q&As.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!

Elephantmen #43

Art by Dave Sim
Click image to enlarge.

Elephantmen #43: Sleeping Partners Part 2
by Richard Starkings, Alex Medellin & Dave Sim
Image Comics, $3.99
On Sale: 26 September 2012

Synopsis:

Behind a wraparound cover by Prophet and King City's Brandon Graham, Hip Flask and Vanity Case enjoy a cup of tea and sympathy, and Miki meets Apostrophe. Preview here.

RED-HEADED MULE:
Once again, Richard Starkings & company have pulled off an amazing feat. Elephantmen is one of THE best books on the market today. It goes to show that not all comic books need to have super heroes in them. They just need an amazing story to catch the readers attention. Mr. Starkings is one of the industry’s best storytellers today and proves it time and time again in the Elephantmen saga.

Starting with the cover by Brandon Graham, I was immediately hooked. It has a simple, yet elegant, beauty to it. It reminds me of the painting “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by the Japanese artist Hokusai. Simply inspiring.

With most of the art being done by Axel Medellin (which is a brilliant artist that utilizes an astounding variety of color to bring the pages to life) and dream sequence being done by my favorite Elephantmen newcomer, Dave Sim (I LOVED THE CROSS-HATCHING!), you are once again treated with a ton of eye candy and more story than you can shake your fist at (Seriously, try it. Your arm will get tired before you are done!).

Another great thing about this book is that not only are you treated with the reason you bought it, but you also get a look at the amazing art other artists have done over the years with the Elephantmen characters. It’s always cool to see how other artists interpret characters and this is no different!

Last, and certainly not least, is a great treat!

UNLEASH THE FANBOY:
...In this issue, there’s a certain focus on Hip Flask. In particular, there is a segment that evokes the focus on Ebony in the previous issue. Unfortunately, its much shorter. Whilst the artwork in this segment is, again, a welcome break full of detail and mood, the writing itself just doesn’t compare. Ebony’s inner monologue focused on his personal feelings and cowardice towards himself. Whilst this was touching and atmospheric, Hip Flasks monologue focuses more on his base nature as a hippo. Its effective, definitely, but it doesn’t seem to connect with the character as well. Still, its something I would like to see more of in the series...

The Fantagraphics Offer: Update #6

In the final issue of his self-published Glamourpuss, Dave Sim included an essay reflecting on the end of the series, and the possible end of his professional involvement with comics. The reaction online was widespread, and soon turned to a discussion of the future of Sim's earlier work, Cerebus. On a comments thread at TCJ.com, Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson expressed his potential interest in republishing some of Sim's Cerebus material. Sim, arguably the most iconic self-publisher in comics history, responded to that 'open offer' in a lengthy article at TCJ.com, and indicated his willingness to negotiate with Kim on a possible publishing deal for Cerebus, albeit in the public forum of the comments section at the TCJ.com website. Got all that? Now read on for the highlights from yesterday's postings...

KIM THOMPSON:

...we do need to go back and unpack this line from you early on....

"I’d have to see deep inside your financial statements. What’s your track record for paying royalties? Are you late? Are you getting later? Who do you pay and how often?"

I have no idea what "see deep inside your financial statements" means. There are certainly no "financial statements" we have ever or ever plan to share with cartoonists or licensors, or pretty much anyone other than the IRS and our bank, so that’s a little mystifying. That’s just not the way it works.

Our "track record for paying royalties" is I expect the same as pretty much every other alternative publisher who’s not actively circling the drain, which is that we pay our cartoonists and creditors more or less on time at least to the point where everyone is satisfied. Generally you can tell publishers with a bad track record by the fact that cartoonists (a) stop working for them, (b) sue them, and (c) bitch about them in public or through the grapevine. As someone active in the field for 35 years, Dave, you saw plenty of examples of this (and subsequent collapses) over the 1980s and 1990s; you should know the warning signs. But there is no magic formula, or set of documents that you can reasonably request or ask to be given, that allows you total security on this front. So if any prelude to striking a deal with a publisher includes any sort of "deep" look into their financial infrastructure that somehow would reassure you of their stability, there is no publisher in the world who’s gonna agree to that.

I understand a cartoonist’s trepidation at the idea of entrusting his work to a publisher who might (a) collapse or (b) quit paying him (a.k.a. any publisher) - the latter being usually a prelude to the former - but when you sign on with a publisher that’s a leap of faith you have to take, buttressed by what you can tell about the publisher from information that’s out there already. Feel free to contact any of our cartoonists one by one if you want, but again, the fact that they keep giving us their books (or, if not that, working with us in one capacity or another, be it re-releasing older work or designing books for us, etc.) is kind of Exhibit A. Read the full post here...

ED BRUBAKER:

Funny, I just picked up a Swords of Cerebus off the shelf for 5 bucks, original cover price, at the comic store today. I was looking at Form and Void and trying to see if I’d be willing to start with Cerebus there, and when I put it back on the shelf, noticed one copy of Swords vol 2, which I immediately grabbed... I have ingrained memories of years of reading and rereading those issues and Dave’s notes before each chapter. I think all the way through Church and State, Cerebus is just so much fun, even when its serious. There’s great things in Jaka’s story and Melmoth, and after that, but those first 130 or so issues are my favorites. Even the letters pages were fun. Read the full post here...

Don't miss all the action, as it happens, at TCJ.com.

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #7

Eric and Dominick are up next for a couple of questions:

Did your having completed a 6,000 page twenty-six year narrative influence your decision to opt for largely non-narrative efforts (glamourpuss, Judenhass)?

I would say the biggest factor there was the extent to which I was being subjected to any number of situations around the end of CEREBUS that seemed intended...in the Large Chessboard Sense...to make me doubt my sanity.  A condition which persists to this day but on a much lower and more manageable scale.  To the extent that in January of 2003 as I watched the metaphorical vultures closing in, I realized, "Drinking is going to go very badly with this"... and quit cold turkey January 31st (Norman Mailer's 80th birthday, as it turned out).  So that carried over into my creative life, I would imagine, after CEREBUS was done.  A sense that I needed to hew as closely as possible to realism -- and, if possible, Realism -- if I had a hope of making it through.  CEREBUS was already written, for the most part, in my head -- particularly that last year which I had been working on mentally since around 1979.  It was more a job of transcribing than writing so, even though I was doing fiction and very exaggerated fiction at that --  CEREBUS was always cartoon realism -- I was quite distanced from it as a writer.  It was already "as" written as it was going to get.  Leaving me to deal with everything that seemed to militate against the book being completed, That Last Year.  I actually have a That Last Year shelf in my office.  I really need to write a book about it someday.

Do you think those works were gestative during the years working on CEREBUS?

Well, as a firm believer in both free will and predestination, I think those books -- and CEREBUS -- were fully-formed when my grandfather was still in his mother's womb.  But, in the sense that I see you as meaning:  the conventional "physically incarnated" hatching out of our lives, yes, definitely they were gestating throughout my life.  I wanted to be Neal Adams when I grew up.  Or, at least, when I got taller :)  It's hard to communicate the extent to which virtually EVERYONE in my generation of comic artist wanted to be Neal Adams when they grew up.  It would be surprising if I would have done something else once CEREBUS was done.

It occurred to me for the first time a while ago that in a real sense most of CEREBUS could have just been a practice tee  -- a 26-year and three month practice tee, if you can believe it -- getting me ready for doing THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND.  He died in 1956.  I was 112 days old when he died.  56 and 56 is 112.  I'm 56 this year.  It seems more than a little significant to me.  God grinds the axes he intends to use.

Okay, now we're off to THE BEAT for our next question... AND an exclusive news scoop relating to the Cerebus Archive:

Given the 35 years since Cerebus #1 first came out and your length of time in the comics’ industry and field, do you have any thoughts and opinions on the current state of the industry? Is it as dire as it seems, especially when someone like yourself who has managed to successfully self-publish 300 issues and kept 16 graphic novels in print and always seemed to have his finger on the pulse of the industry has to end 2 bi-monthly comics?

...and then I'm going to throw you a curve ball as we head off to TERMINAL DRIFT for a question from Isobel:

Hi Dave, Many people think they know the Truth, in a religious sense, but most religious people believe different things (even when they're basing their beliefs on the same texts.) What criteria do you use to evaluate claims of truthfulness? How do you sort through all of the different interpretations of the texts of the religions that you follow to determine which one to believe?  (I'm sorry for all the prepositional phrases in that last one...)

If you want to know the answers to those two questions hit the links to THE BEAT and TERMINAL DRIFT right now ... and I'll be back on tomorrow for more of your HARDtalk questions.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!

The Fantagraphics Offer: Update #5

In the final issue of his self-published Glamourpuss, Dave Sim included an essay reflecting on the end of the series, and the possible end of his professional involvement with comics. The reaction online was widespread, and soon turned to a discussion of the future of Sim's earlier work, Cerebus. On a comments thread at TCJ.com, Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson expressed his potential interest in republishing some of Sim's Cerebus material. Sim, arguably the most iconic self-publisher in comics history, responded to that 'open offer' in a lengthy article at TCJ.com, and indicated his willingness to negotiate with Kim on a possible publishing deal for Cerebus, albeit in the public forum of the comments section at the TCJ.com website. Got all that? Now read on for the highlights from yesterday's postings...

DAVE SIM:

I think Tim’s suggestion is a good one, so let’s expand the negotiations into a 4-book deal (with 4-book advance, presumably) covering GOING HOME and FORM & VOID. Is it possible to have that as a headline item (i.e. “FBI and Sim reach agreement in principle for a 4-book publishing deal: welcome ‘real time’ input from all interested parties here at the TCJ site”) using a few good quotes from the discussion so far? Read the full post here.

KIM THOMPSON:

Now we’re getting somewhere. Like Dave, I have other pressing things to attend to (I still have my post-SPX hole to dig myself out of, and I was in a deep hole before SPX to begin with), but this last exchange has been very encouraging so far as I’m concerned. We will reconvene. Thanks to the various friends of Fanta and Sim who greased the skids on this exchange, and even to wackadoodle Michael whose crazy gibberings were such outliers I think they nudged everyone else toward reasonableness. Read the full post here.

ED BRUBAKER:

I agree that if it’s about money, I would happily subscribe through Kickstarter or paypal or amazon payments or whatever, to just about any comics Sim wants to write and draw for the rest of his life. Read the full post here.

Don't miss all the action, as it happens, at TCJ.com.

Emotional Depth

Cerebus 265 (April 2001)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

THE COMICS JOURNAL
(from Irredeemable: Dave Sim's Cerebus by Tim Krieder in The Comics Journal #301, February 2011)

...Cerebus is often a much better book than Dave Sim seems to realize, or intended it to be. As D. H. Lawrence wrote of Herman Melville: "The artist is so much greater then the man." It's been little remarked upon that a man who claims to disdain emotion, and affects a pious equanimity at having cut off all contact with his parents while his mother was in the hospital, shows us, at the climax of Going Home, his protagonist falling to his knees screaming, and rending his garments in shame at having abandoned his family in their hour of need. It's as if what Sim represses in his own conscious life is what infuses his work with its emotional depth - depths to which he himself is blind. Sim would doubtless deny any connection here, just as he argues that any perception of Jaka as a Strong Female Character is pure projection on the part of his readers. But leaving room for your readers' interpretations is what makes art resonate. If a violin were a solid piece of wood it would be silent: it's the empty space inside it that makes the music.

The Fantagraphics Offer: Update #4

In the final issue of his self-published Glamourpuss, Dave Sim included an essay reflecting on the end of the series, and the possible end of his professional involvement with comics. The reaction online was widespread, and soon turned to a discussion of the future of Sim's earlier work, Cerebus. On a comments thread at TCJ.com, Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson expressed his potential interest in republishing some of Sim's Cerebus material. Sim, arguably the most iconic self-publisher in comics history, responded to that 'open offer' in a lengthy article at TCJ.com, and indicated his willingness to negotiate with Kim on a possible publishing deal for Cerebus, albeit in the public forum of the comments section at the TCJ.com website. Got all that? Now read on for the highlights from yesterday's postings...

KIM THOMPSON:

Top ten reasons I’d love to do the CEREBUS series.

1. It’s, on the whole, great work by a brilliant cartoonist, and great work like this should be made accessible to as many readers as possible.
2. Our doing it might make the difference between Dave continuing to do comics and working as a ditch digger, apparently, which I think would be a loss for comics.
3. It will make Dave some money (sort of a corollary to point 2).
4. It will make us some money.
5. This repackaging would be a fun editorial challenge for us.
6. It would ratchet up Fantagraphics’ ultimate goal of publishing every first-rate 20th century cartoonist by one more.
7. Clearly a number of Sim fans, and people who think they might be Sim fans if they didn’t have to suffer through those phone books, would be very pleased.
8. It would make a number of heads explode within the field, for a variety of reasons.
9. I’d like to have these books in a row on my own shelf myself.
10. I can’t deny the lovely symmetry of having been the one to really ignite Dave’s rise over three decades ago with that TCJ review and ending up being the one consecrating his magnum opus in a definitive, mass-market-friendly, first-rate edition.

Read the full post here.

Don't miss all the action, as it happens, at TCJ.com.

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #6

One of the big attractions for me of Cerebus was your innovative experimentation with the formal aspects of comics medium. Were you conscious of / influenced by any other comics creators in this regard or did this desire to experiment come from within yourself independently? Do you see any current comics creators who possess the same willingness to experiment with the formal aspects of the comics medium as you did with Cerebus.

To be honest, I think formal experimentation is probably overrated and passé. But, then creative people tend to undervalue the things they're good at with relatively little effort. I'm not bragging -- as Muhammad Ali said, It ain't bragging if you can do it. Lettering is like that for me, playing with the formal structure of the medium is like that for me, being funny is like that for me.  The Woody Allen Syndrome, with the aliens in STARDUST MEMORIES (I think it was) saying, "We really like your movies -- especially the early, funnier ones".  And when he really presses them for what he can do as an individual to improve reality, they say, "Tell funnier jokes." In Woody Allen's frames of reference, omniscient aliens make a good stand-in for God, so he's telling himself something that he already knows.  And he can't bring himself to do it. I can't bring MYself to do it. It seems frivolous. I did audio tweets of the HIGH SOCIETY characters to promote HIGH SOCIETY AUDIO DIGITAL. John Scrudder has them and will make them available to anyone who wants to re-tweet them. One at a time, all at a time. I don't tweet so I'll leave that up to him and Melanie.

Anyway, that's what I ended up doing for three days or so. Basically as a comedy writer. I need five of these by seven o'clock.  So I have to do five of them. I think they're pretty funny, but I'm aware of myself sitting there with this incredibly grim look on my face, listening to the playback.  WRONG reading.  WHY is it a wrong reading? It's the Rodney Dangerfield character, but it's off somewhere.  Record it and record it. Oh, the emphasis is on the ADVERB. I had it on the NOUN. I'm thinking, this is no job for a grown-up. As I say, frivolous -- and I suspect Woody Allen looks at it that way.  "If I'm going to spend a year making a movie I don't want it to be inherently, structurally frivolous. I want to actually SAY something."

I think formal experimentation had its day. Today, I'm pretty sure it's the early dawn of the Computer Colour Age and that we won't be going anywhere but further into it. What I mean is, today's top creators are determined, as an example, to make muzzle flashes look exactly action adventure film muzzle flashes. Which is WEIRD in a way, because movie muzzle flashes are incredibly fake, incredibly exaggerated. Which movies started doing because that's what they're supposed to look like. They're FAKE but they're AWESOME fake. It's cinematography. The lighting guy, the colour choices, CGI tweaking brought to the comics page. I'm not a movie person, I'm the exact opposite of a movie person.  But it's DAZZLING and they're getting WILDLY accomplished at it. The pencilling and inking are secondary, if not tertiary to that. If you want to do "a movie on paper" -- and that's what they want to do and what the audience is hungry for -- the formal aspects of the page become not only beside the point but, in fact, detrimental to the desired effect. "No, just break the page up into panels that are widescreen movie proportions and WORK THAT THANG!"

Howard Shum's FUSILLADE was an amazing example of that.  His collaborators -- they're all Howard's stories with different artists including Howard himself -- they're all 3D animation guys at DreamWorks and places like that.  But they want to do comics.  But the comics they want to do are action movies. I can't leave FUSILLADE sitting out anywhere I can see it or I'm forever compulsively thumbing through it.  Not READING it, because it's like DIE HARD 5 or whatever.  The first time you read it, you've pretty much gotten everything out of it.  I'm not casting aspersions -- even the least well-thought of action movie is INFINITELY more popular than anything I've ever done. But, that cinematography-on-paper-thing, MAN!  Have they come a long way with that and they keep moving further and further and further and deeper and deeper and deeper into it.  It's what comics now ARE. Breaking up the page is just, well, hey, whatever, Grampa.  Knock yourself out.  I'm glad I did a lot of things with it but I don't think anyone is going to be remarking on it apart from die-hard CEREBUS fans five years from now. You have avant garde comics like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly which are like avant garde movies and you have everyone else doing action movies. Experimenting with formal structure. I just don't see it having any real presence in the future.

I hope I'm wrong.

So where are we headed now? We're going over to BLEEDING COOL for a question from Old Angel Midnight:

I'd like to sign the 'I don't believe Dave Sim is a misogynist' petition but I don't have enough information. My question is:  Mr. Sim, do you believe that women are inferior to men?

Okay, everybody over to BLEEDING COOL (scroll down to post #20) for the answer. And I'll be back here on Monday for more HARDtalk.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!

The Fantagraphics Offer: Update #3

In the final issue of his self-published Glamourpuss, Dave Sim included an essay reflecting on the end of the series, and the possible end of his professional involvement with comics. The reaction online was widespread, and soon turned to a discussion of the future of Sim's earlier work, Cerebus. On a comments thread at TCJ.com, Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson expressed his potential interest in republishing some of Sim's Cerebus material. Sim, arguably the most iconic self-publisher in comics history, responded to that 'open offer' in a lengthy article at TCJ.com, and indicated his willingness to negotiate with Kim on a possible publishing deal for Cerebus, albeit in the public forum of the comments section at the TCJ.com website. Got all that? Now read on for the highlights from yesterday's postings...

KIM THOMPSON:

Despite my reservations, much of [Form & Void] is dazzling and compelling. I’ve never said Sim wasn’t a great cartoonist. Read the full post here.

KIM THOMPSON:

...By the way, I never addressed Dave’s concern that we’d be uncomfortable with (what we and nearly everyone else feels to be) the more problematic content of the later part of the series. (Thanks to Tom Spurgeon for reminding me.) The short answer: No. I might at that point incline to include at least a little something addressing and/or framing the controversy, but maybe not even that. Read the full post here.

GARY GROTH:

...The Journal has probably given Sim more space to air his views than any artist we’ve ever interviewed. In fact, I asked Dave if he’d grant us an interview after Cerebus 300 and he declined! In the most recent issue of the Journal [#301], I ran the best critical assessment/appreciation of his work ever written (by Tim Kreider) - which was specifically commissioned by me. The reason Cerebus didn’t make the Journal’s Top 100 list is because none of the critics who participated could agree on what story line qualified. splitting the vote; that said, it’s not “beyond opinion” (inelegantly put, as Mitt would say) that Cerebus belongs in or is even too good to be part of the top 100 comics ever produced; there’s a lot of competition out there. Citizen Kane (or Vertigo) it ain’t. The proposition that the Journal single handily turned the comics world against poor Dave and that Sim’s essays about women and politics or his jeremiads against publishers per se or the disastrous consequences of his self-publishing proselytizing had nothing to do with it is self-serving, scapegoating twaddle... Read the full post here.

KIM THOMPSON:

...I’ll accept that we were “part of a culture that ostracized” Sim, not that we single-handedly engineered said ostracization. There seems to be a belief among Sim fans that if that wicked, wicked COMICS JOURNAL hadn’t brought all this gender-issue stuff in CEREBUS up and bullied the entire industry, Dave would have retained all his cartoonist friends and ended CEREBUS’s run in triumph and glory. I’d be curious to hear of a single media outlet that was MORE respectful towards CEREBUS than THE COMICS JOURNAL... Read the full post here.

Don't miss all the action, as it happens, at TCJ.com.

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #5

...and were back, for another question from the HARDtalk home team:

You previously expressed your admiration for Jules Feiffer's ability to move from comics into writing plays, books and screenplays.  Is this a possible direction you can see for yourself or are you dedicated to the comics medium?

Six months ago, I would have said I was dedicated to the comics medium. I've noticed since I've been spending 12 hours a day 6 days a week since June doing Kickstarter stuff and now promoting the HIGH SOCIETY AUDIO DIGITAL release that even looking at my favourite artwork, I no longer have any urge to do the work. It used to be, all I had to do was to see a RIP KIRBY strip or a page inked by Al Williamson and I was pawing the turf wanting to get to the drawing board.  And I just don't experience that. NOW, whether that's because I'm doing the Kickstarter thing and I know I can't get back to "The Strange Death of Alex Raymond" for A! WHILE! I'm doing head sketches and Cerebus character drawings and trying to be an interesting interview subject and those things are very far away from my "inner cartoonist"...I have no idea.

But, I have to say I find the thought un-troubling for the first time in my life.  I think I'm in the first stages of resignation, possibly.  I've got only so many years left and it's getting harder to make a living and all that people want me to do is Cerebus.  Which needs to be preserved.  500 pages down, 5,500 to go.  I wonder if I'm not guilty of the thing I see in people generally -- the inability to see how old you actually are and what you need to be doing at that age -- something I always prided myself on. I'm 40, so I'm doing this, but I won't be doing it at 50. I'm 56. 6,000 pages needs to be paid attention to for the rest of my life, however long that is.

There's more of a sense -- since I scuttled glamourpuss, CEREBUS TV and CEREBUS ARCHIVE -- of work is work is work.  I've got PILES of work to do.  I start when I get up in the morning and work until I go to bed at night and I'm not even making a dent.  But, suddenly that seems fine to me. If I die next week or 40 years from now, I imagine that will still be the case.  Much work to do. Unwelcome in society, so I don't have to worry about that -- what are my obligations to my society? I'm perceived as a misogynist.  My only obligation is to stay away from everyone.

I would LIKE to write something like Feiffer's LITTLE MURDERS or HARRY THE RAT WITH WOMEN, but that's very edgy, unwelcome -- amazingly Truthful! --  material which I already have in abundance.  As unwelcome as those works were in the late 60s, early 70s, they would probably get Feiffer expelled from Quality Lit Biz society (again?) if anyone tried reviving them. I get zero response to anything that I do, so I would just be doing it for myself as I did glamourpuss. Why be edgy? Edgy for whom? Edgy about what? How many Cerebus commissions do I have to do to pay the bills?

My politics militate against anyone giving me work in the theatre, movies  or magazines. Google search Dave Sim and "misogynist" is still the third thing on the list. It's 2012, Google search is our modern age version of the Hollywood blacklist except it's not just Hollywood -- it's everywhere anyone types my name into their laptop. Oops. Misogynist. Can't give HIM a job.

I'm sure God will find something for me to do and will keep enough money coming in to pay my bills as long as I'm considered deserving. My only job is to be deserving and to do what He sends my way.

Okay, now we're heading over to BLEEDING COOL for Stefan Offenberg's question:

Dave, everyone always seems to assume the stuff you wrote in CEREBUS many years ago reflects your thinking as it remains today.  I know I can look back at things I wrote years ago and see how they were very much a product of what was going on in my life at the time.  Is that true to some extent for you, too?

Everybody head on over to BLEEDING COOL (scroll down to post #18) for the answer to that question. We'll have more HARDtalk Q&As for you tomorrow at A Moment Of Cerebus.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!

The Fantagraphics Offer: Update #2

In the final issue of his self-published Glamourpuss, Dave Sim included an essay reflecting on the end of the series, and the possible end of his professional involvement with comics. The reaction online was widespread, and soon turned to a discussion of the future of Sim's earlier work, Cerebus. On a comments thread at TCJ.com, Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson expressed his potential interest in republishing some of Sim's Cerebus material. Sim, arguably the most iconic self-publisher in comics history, responded to that 'open offer' in a lengthy article at TCJ.com, and indicated his willingness to negotiate with Kim on a possible publishing deal for Cerebus, albeit in the public forum of the comments section at the TCJ.com website. Got all that? Now read on for a summary of yesterday's postings...

KIM THOMPSON:

...I am not offering to publish CEREBUS out of "sympathy," I am offering to publish CEREBUS because it was, on and off (mostly on) a great comic by one of the great contemporary cartoonists, which up until now it appeared we had zero chance of publishing (given Dave’s self-publisher stance) so it wasn’t even on the table. If publishing it has as a side benefit allowing a great cartoonist to continue working, as opposed to leaving the field, that would be a bonus.... Read the full post here.

DAVE SIM:

...FORM & VOID is all that's on the table right now.  I don't picture Fantagraphics publishing either a glamourpuss collection or THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND (two different things), nor do I picture doing three books a year (which would still take us up to 2017-2018 with the same inherent problems:  anyone signing a contract in 2007 on the assumption that 2012 would look pretty much the same as 2007 would have been in for an awful shock). I'm willing to stake what I consider one of my most literate books on the assumption that the print book trade isn't just absolutely dying, which as we both know isn't exactly a safe assumption these days, let alone in 2018 or 2029... Read the full post here.

KIM THOMPSON:

...Dave, unsurprisingly, I see a pretty wide abyss here between what you’re interested in and my idea. Yanking out and repackaging a single story from CEREBUS into a mass-market-friendly format makes no sense to me on any number of levels - not the least of which being that I expect you to be an enormous pain in the ass to work with (I say this amicably; I assume you feel the same way about us) and producing a single book as opposed to a series is not enough reward for the seven levels of hell we’ll drag one another through. However, I am going to sit down and re-read FORM AND VOID and try to wrap my head around this idea.

Just for clarity’s sake, my idea was to reprint the entire series in nicer-looking (no offense, but aside from the covers, which are lovely, the CEREBUS books' non-comics pages look like a small-town insurance company's in-house newsletter), more bookstore-friendly versions (chopping a few of the more unwieldy books in two or more pieces), explaining CEREBUS's world more fully for readers who stumble into the 7th volume, using back cover copy to "introduce" potential readers to the series, etc… Obviously neither of us would want to contract for the entire run right off the bat, so a contract for the first four or six books which could then be renewed or not as either side saw fit, but hopefully both sides would be pleased with the results and WANT to renew... Read the full post here.

Don't miss all the action, as it happens, at TCJ.com.

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #4

We're going to switch gears and get into a glamourpuss question from Dominick and Eric:

How will glamourpuss be collected? You have advertised a digital version of the first 25 issues and the series concluded (at least in print) with issue 26. Will the digital version include both the fashion satires and the history sections? Will each section be separate or will the collection closely approximate the issues as they appeared in serialized versions? Will the covers be included or any other supplementary material?

That's all very much up in the air right now. At the time that Kickstarter hit, I had cut all of the "Death of Alex Raymond" pages out of glamourpuss issues here in the office, that whole sequence, and mocked up what it would look like as a graphic narrative.  And then as I was reading it, I was jotting down notes of things that I needed to do with it.  There are a number of instances where I finished on the left hand page and then picked up the next issue on the left hand page, so there needs to be bridging pages or chapter pages depending on what was going on.  I was treating it as a reader.  Turn over the page, look at the following page -- what sort of page would I like to see in between there?  Jot that down in my notebook.  Threads of argument that I just alluded to as coming up ahead -- jot those down.  Strictly the "Death of..." material that started in #14 I think it was.  That done, I got issues 1-13 and tackled those to see how that would work as a prologue.  Didn't make it past issue #1 where it's all mixed up together -- the fashion parody stuff and the History of Photorealism.  There are a number of ways to take it.  Do a photorealistic Dave Sim page or two to set up what people are looking at -- "here's why this seems so weird" or just say, seriously, what is actually required here?  How much did I actually say in the first 3 or 4 or however many issues that wasn't covered later?  It's actually good that I had a break because I'm really two authors of the material, the "History of Photorealism" author and "The Strange Death of Alex Raymond" author, who, arguably, have two different requirements.  "No, you can't use the first issue AT ALL because it sets the wrong tone for 'Strange Death'."  That was definitely my initial reaction.  But the "History" author worked very hard on that stuff.  He has to have his chance to make his own case in the form of a mocked up edition.  Forget "Strange Death" completely and just put together the "History" book as if nothing follows it.  THEN read the two together and see if this is some really monumental problem or just a brand new way of telling a story.

It seems likely that it would only be digital.  There are many different models for "what's left of Dave Sim's career" at this point.  The safest assumption -- the assumption which is the least likely to do any damage -- is that everything has to start with Kickstarter or IndieGoGo or something similar.  The level of interest has to be gauged.  Having raised $63,000 for CEREBUS DIGITAL, what happens if I try to raise money for "Strange Death"?  $5,000?  $10,000?  Or maybe I get surprised and it raises $50,000.  Then you can at least solicit for it.  See what the orders are.  But I suspect a lot of times I'm just going to have to say, No, I can't do it for that level of interest.  I'd LOVE to do it but it costs too much to print books and ship them around the country.  Already with the Kickstarter campaign a LOT of money has gone into packing and shipping.  $63,000 becomes $23,000 is where we stand right now.  I've worked non-stop since the beginning of June and I've, personally, only gotten paid the $1,000 a month I pay myself and roughly $6,000 for Aardvark-Vanaheim.  Might take in a lot less money if the reward is a digital download of the complete glamourpuss from No.1 to No.26, but there's no overhead.  It's just 1's and 0's.  And it ends with Raymond and Drake headed for the trees in the pouring rain.  I assume there would be SOME repeat business.  But, it's 2012 -- who knows?

Okay, the Magical Virtual Tour Bus is now heading over to MILLAR WORLD for a question from Ron Mays, Jr.:

Welcome to Millar World, Tim Webber and Dave Sim.  Thank you for visiting.

Thank you for having us.  It's a pleasure to be here.  But, then, as Groucho used to say, at my age it's a pleasure to be anywhere.

I have never read a CEREBUS comic, but kicked in $1 for the Kickstarter project based on its reputation.  I intend to read my first CEREBUS comic on ComiXology once it is available.  As a new reader, why should I read CEREBUS and what continues to make it relevant?  

Head on over to MILLAR WORLD (and scroll down to post #20) for the answer to that question, and be back here tomorrow for more HARDtalk on A Moment Of Cerebus.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!

Mark Millar

DAVE SIM:
(from HARDtalk Virtual Tour Stop #1 at Millar World, 17 September 2012) 

Mark Millar is a perfect example of someone who realized that everything that we were working on, all of the templates we were refining and tweaking were so much pixie dust and smoke because of the Internet.  Millar World occurred very early in the comic-book life of the Internet and he -- or people on his behalf and at this direction -- built it into this juggernaut.  A juggernaut that is still just ONE of his many Doc Ock arms.

He's very adroit, as you indicate, and he keeps everything on the situation board in front of him. He doesn't neglect or undervalue anything.  He shifts his balance so he's leaning one direction or the other but he's like a professional skier that way.  He gets blocked in Hollywood, he goes back to Marvel, he gets blocked at Marvel, he does something in the Indy end of things.  Hey look, a narrow window opens up in Hollywood -- zoom, he's through it before they even know they left him an opening.

MARK MILLAR:
(responding to Dave Sim's HARDtalk Virtual Tour Stop #1 at Millar World, 20 September 2012)

I just saw Dave's post while browsing through some threads this morning and had been unaware of this until now. But that's tremendously flattering and much appreciated. I think of Dave Sim existing in a pantheon of God-like creators with Moore, Miller, etc, and too busy with his own ideas to register that mere mortals like myself even EXIST. So this was an extremely nice thing to read. Naturally, I'm going to forward this to all my pals. Especially John Layman, who would save Sim from a burning building before rushing in to save blood relatives.

Mark Millar is a Scottish comic book writer, known for his work on books such as The Authority, The Ultimates, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Civil War, Wanted, and Kick-Ass, the latter two of which have been adapted into feature films.

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #3

Okay, we have a question from one of our viewers here at A Moment Of Cerebus - Dave Kopperman. Go ahead, Dave:

How open are you to criticism of your completed work and, in your mind, does it differ from editorial interference of a kind?  

Hi, Dave!  I would guess that I'm probably more open to criticism than most people are just because I've gotten so much more of it than most people do.  I can't say that I've ever received a criticism of completed work -- and I'm assuming you mean completed work in general, not just CEREBUS -- that I hadn't already considered myself.  Any comics work and its component parts are pretty intricate compared to most artistic expressions.  While you're working on it you have to always be looking at it with fresh eyes as if seeing it for the first time.  The balloons have to read in the right order.  The phrasing in the word balloons has to be specific enough to not allow for any other interpretation than the one you intend.  You have to watch for unfortunate juxtapositions.  I remember showing a comic page to Mike Kaluta when I was 17 and it was of a guy in a sleeping bag with a campfire in the background.  And Mike pointed at it and said "You have to watch that -- it looks as if his crotch is on fire." Which, as soon as he said it, WOW yes it did. Big learning moment. You have to do that for yourself because Mike Kaluta doesn't live at your house.

I also respect people's right to vent. There are a lot of people who have a "mad-on" that's not going to go away because I didn't keep doing HIGH SOCIETY for 26 years. Of course, there are people who have a "mad-on" that I didn't keep doing CEREBUS #1-20 for 26 years. If you take money for what you're doing you owe it to unhappy customers to sit there and take it. I think you do, anyway. I just got a letter from a retailer who was basically venting at me. But he did say -- in the course of telling me to do great comics instead of lousy comics -- that he considered the "Five Bar Gate" issue of CEREBUS a great comic. That's way, way, way further along in the run -- issue 267 -- than ANYone has had anything good to say about in recent memory. So, okay, if you're patient for eight years -- as I think I've been -- the impossible becomes the unlikely and then actually happens. Thanks for your question.

Okay, we sending everybody over to BLEEDING COOL, the first major news site to sign on with us. And we have a question from Daucuscarota:

The 80s are long gone now. The eighties were the years of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Bissette, Rick Veitch... what are your fondest memories of them (the 80s and these guys)? Do you still talk to them?

Head on over to BLEEDING COOL (and scroll down to post #17) right now and see if I'm longing for the 80s to return... and be back here tomorrow at A Moment Of Cerebus for more HARDtalk questions and answers.

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!

The Fantagraphics Offer: Update #1

In the final issue of his self-published Glamourpuss, Dave Sim included an essay reflecting on the end of the series, and the possible end of his professional involvement with comics. The reaction online was widespread, and soon turned to a discussion of the future of Sim's earlier work, Cerebus. On a comments thread at TCJ.com, Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson expressed his potential interest in republishing some of Sim's Cerebus material. Sim, arguably the most iconic self-publisher in comics history, responded to that 'open offer' in a lengthy article at TCJ.com, and indicated his willingness to negotiate with Kim on a possible publishing deal for Cerebus, albeit in the public forum of the comments section at the TCJ.com website. Got all that? Now read on...

GARY GROTH -- FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS:
(from a comment posted at TCJ.com, 18 September 2012)

I left Dave a message telling him that I'd be willing to publish his [Strange Death Of Alex] Raymond book (assuming we could agree on terms, of course, admittedly a huge assumption). I did this mostly out of respect for his skill at and commitment to comics; and, to be honest, in order to help him out. The litany of failed strategies to make dough that he enumerated in that blog post was despairing, as was his inability to profitably continue publishing Glamourpuss himself. Basically, I was offering to jump into the breach if he'd find it helpful. Pragmatically, it's a single book and a pretty simple prospect.

Cerebus, on the other hand — ay yi yi. I suspect that Kim and Dave could negotiate the contract for that series of books (publicly!) until one of them drops dead, which would probably be a hell of a lot sooner than if they'd never started negotiating in the first place. Good luck to them.

My offer to publish Glamourpuss as a single volume stands, though.

KIM THOMPSON -- FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS:
(from a comment posted at TCJ.com, 19 September 2012)
I’m just back from SPX, and will spend at least the rest of the week catching up. To be continued. I would like to quickly say that my talk about "contextualizing" CEREBUS would absolutely not be critical/analytical but simply in terms of offering potential readers who are not already fans of the material a way in. Plot summaries or lead-ins on the flaps or back cover, character guides once the books get moving, perhaps even a discreet explanatory supplement about some of the parodied material that has now faded into obscurity for everyone and was always a total mystery for people outside the comics bubble. There are ways of making the material presentable for new readers that in no way compromise it or overlay it with untoward interpretation… just make it less, shall we say, opaque.

I personally think that classic strip reprints on balance have a little too much historical and critical contextualization going on these days, it’s become exhausting… but you can just skip those pages. Anyway, that’s not at all what I’m talking about here.

Dunno why everyone is theorizing out these endless schedules of a book a year or whatever. I don’t see any reason not to do two or three a year. (Slowdowns on classic strip reprints occur mainly because of the amount of difficulty and labor involved in finding and processing the material, not an issue in CEREBUS’s case. And we stopped doing DENNIS THE MENACE because it didn’t sell, simply enough.)

...And I don’t think CEREBUS can or should be aimed at THE NEW YORK TIMES any more than PRISON PIT should be, but so far as I know THE NEW YORK TIMES has been quite catholic in terms of responding to, say, Grant Morrison or Frank Miller’s work, or Gary Panter’s or Robert Crumb’s, just as much as they do this semi-mythical “TIMES-worthy” group.

There are 6000 pages of CEREBUS. I’d say an ideal mass market book length would be 240-300 pages, so we’re talking 20-odd books. I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t work through those in a decade, or about one third the time Dave took to do them in the first place.

Don't miss all the action, as it happens, at TCJ.com.

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #2

Welcome back to everyone joining us from Millar World after yesterday's HARDtalk Tour stop! We'll be back there again later in the Tour. Okay, the next question goes to Tim:

During the 26 years it took you to complete CEREBUS you have obviously changed/grown as a person (and, indeed, one of the fascinating aspects of CEREBUS was that it could accomodate these changes).  If it were possible, would you have any advice to give your younger self embarking on that 26-year marathon?  

No. First, because it's one of the inherent aspects of a 26-year-project that it becomes a lifelong learning and adaptive process. Second, I tried to chart, execute AND document my trajectory simultaneously so that others would be able to follow my lead, avoid pitfalls I hit, modify choices I made to suit themselves...

(Neil Gaiman has been pretty up front that he wouldn't have attempted the 2,000 page SANDMAN if he hadn't seen someone DO 2,000 pages.  Although he -- probably wisely -- chose not to go beyond 2,000 pages: I don't picture him lying awake at night and picturing my situation and going "All of that could have been mine if I had just done 4,000 more pages" :) (I digress)

...but I had no idea of the extent to which computers and the Internet were going to change everything.  All my cartography and maps and elevations and things were for a land that has vanished like so much pixie dust.  I doubt I could have finished the 300 issues if I knew or even suspected that that would be the case and that's the plain bad news I would have for my younger self:  completing 300 issues will be completely meaningless in the world where it happens, 2004.  Not just the REAL world. It'll be meaningless in the comic-book world.  You'll still have to wake up every day trying to figure out how to pay the bills.  At any age before -- roughly -- age 50, let's say, I would not have understood that the reward is in the relentless hard work itself.  Relentless and -- in any conventional measure -- completely unrewarding work.  Since age 50, I've come to understand VERY clearly that the faster your life goes by in a blur of hard, unrelenting, virtually insurmountable piles of work, the better a life you will have led.  If I had even IMAGINE that before the age of 50, I would have cracked like F. Scott Fitzgerald's proverbial dinner plate to even IMAGINE that MIGHT be true.

No, I firmly believe if you live your life correctly you learn each lesson as you're ready to learn it. God burdens no soul beyond its ability.

Okay, and now we're off to TERMINAL DRIFT and a question from Dusquene Whistler:

As someone who can absolutely demolish a corporate contract (FABLES), do you bang your head on the desk when you hear Alan Moore say he 'didn't really read' the WATCHMEN contract?

Thank you, Dusquene! Everyone head over to TERMINAL DRIFT (the second question in the comments field) for the answer, and hurry back tomorrow for our next questions here on A Moment Of Cerebus. 

HAVE YOU GOT A QUESTION FOR DAVE SIM?
Already signed up for the HARDtalk Virtual Tour are Bleeding Cool, Millar World, Terminal Drift, Canadian Comics Archive, The Comics Journal, The Beat and Mindless Ones. Add your question for Dave Sim at one of these fine websites before 10 October and if your question is chosen (they'll need to be tough, interesting questions!) you'll receive a personalised, autographed copy of a Cerebus back-issue, with a Cerebus head-sketch by Dave Sim!