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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rollick | |
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A little background for those who haven't been following along at home: Last month, I started the process of interviewing Dave Sim, the author of Cerebus, an impossible-to-sum-up-briefly comic series that he's been self-publishing since 1977. It ended this month — as he'd been predicting for more than 20 years — at issue #300. When I initially contacted him to request an interview, he was dubious about the entire thing, but he agreed, under the condition that we agree, in writing, not to edit him, and to print exactly what he submitted. I consulted with my boss, wrote up an agreement, and we started the process; I sent him 10 starter questions. What I got back was a mixture of concise and interesting answers, dismissals of my questions, rewrites of my questions, and a two-page transcript of a fictional game of Jeopardy, with The Onion as a contestant. I was initially utterly baffled; I had no idea if he wanted us to print it, or he was just making fun of me. So I asked. He said he thought it might make a good intro: "My way of thinking was that they would see Onion, Cerebus, and TV in the headline and would read it because they would be interested in two of those. They're already reading The Onion, and everyone expect me is interested in TV, and, of course, everyone knows the Jeopardy format, so that would keep them reading even though they don't know what they're reading about. The fact that The Onion is getting all the answers right would tell them that this is something they should know about. And then the interview would start over with the same first question. I saw it as a way of waking people up a bit by being intentionally confusing and familiar at the same time. I was under the impression that The Onion was considered this 'out on the edge' publication, so I thought, given that this isn't going to do either The Onion or Cerebus any good (either that or it will succeed where Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and others failed — good luck) why not try something with the interview structure that's actually different instead of just something that's described as different but is really just the same-old-pseudo-counter-cultural-same-ol d?" But in the same paragraph, he said he didn't mind if we didn't use it, and gave me permission to just go back to submitting questions. And while I felt that some of the attitudes he expressed in the Jeopardy parody were interesting, more Q&A with him seemed like a better use of the limited space which he kept referencing, so we skipped it and conducted the rest of a same-old-pseudo-counter-cultural-same-ol d interview. When we wrapped up, I asked for permission to post the Jeopardy parody here, since it won't be published anywhere else. And he said sure, if my boss actually took the completed interview without demanding changes (apparently a Village Voice writer has been working on a piece about the Cerebus finale too, but it was rejected and has to be completely rewritten, and Dave expected that would happen with me too) then I could publish the Jeopardy parody online if I liked. The interview sailed through editing without incident, and it should go live on the site today. So here's what we didn't run as the intro to the interview. You be the judge of whether it would have been more interesting.
Partial Transcript Of The Onion's Recent Appearance On The Cerebus TV ShowThe Onion: "Why an aardvark, specifically?" Dave Sim: That's absolutely correct. The Onion: We'll take "African Mammals" for 400. Dave Sim: "Although he started out with a more accurate elongated snout, in later years it became short and blunt." The Onion: "Who is Cerebus the Aardvark?" Dave Sim: That's absolutely correct. The Onion: We'll take "Origins" for 200. Dave Sim: A 500-page collection, it introduces many members of the cast but is so amateurish in parts and not user-friendly for people from the real world that it has been said that it serves as a lousy introduction to what 6,000-page graphic novel of the same name? The Onion: "What is Cerebus?" Dave Sim: That's absolutely correct. The Onion: We'll take "Starting Points" for 300. Dave Sim: This 500-page graphic novel which involves a dancer, her husband, her lecherous Mama's boy employer and her neighbor based on 19th-century playwright and poet Oscar Wilde has been called "witty," "insightful," "moving," and is considered the best Cerebus starting point for female readers. The Onion: Uhhhh… Dave Sim: Any ideas? The Onion: (shrugs helplessly) Dave Sim: "What is Jaka's Story?" The Onion: (makes an "Oh darn, I knew that one" gesture) Dave Sim: Next category? The Onion: We'll take "Starting Points" for 400. Dave Sim: Anyone who thinks this 20th-century American novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature is an overrated fake will find much to enjoy in the story and annotations to the 14th Cerebus graphic novel, Form & Void. The Onion: "Who is Ham Ernestway?" Dave Sim: Uh. The question was, "Anyone who thinks this 20th-century…" The Onion: "Who is Ernest Hemingway?" Dave Sim: That's right. Ham Ernestway was… The Onion: …the parody character. Ham and Mary Ernestway. Um. We'll take "Today's Society" for 100. Dave Sim: Although it purports to be an open-minded societal movement, this leftist ideology's closed-mindedness is a lot of the reason you've never heard of Cerebus. The Onion: Feminism. Dave Sim: Your answer must be in the form of a… The Onion: "What is feminism?" Dave Sim: That's absolutely correct. The Onion: We'll take "Today's Society" for 200. Dave Sim: In order to avoid censorship, undue pressure by advertisers, employers, and special-interest groups who seek to impose their standards and beliefs on other people, and to, instead, enjoy complete creative freedom, many artists and writers are turning to this recent… The Onion: "What is self-publishing?" We'll take "Today's Society" for 300. Dave Sim: Having had — for 26 years and three months — virtually unlimited space in the back of his comic book to write 100,000 and 200,000-word serialized essays on what he considered the most pressing subjects of the day — some examples being "how feminism usurped the Civil Rights movement from black men" in "Tangent," "How the Western democracies became so feminized that they failed to support the United States in the war on terrorism" in "Why Canada Slept," and "Why he chose a combination of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as his personal system of belief" in "Islam, My Islam," this controversial self-published comic-book artist — who is now being asked by many media outlets (whose formats don't allow any article longer than 4,000 words) to explain his life and work over the last quarter century in postage-stamp-sized spaces — recently published the 300th issue of his groundbreaking alternative series which began in December of 1977. The Onion: Uhhh. We give up. Dave Sim: "Who is Dave Sim?" I'm-a feelin':  curious
I'm a-hearin': the sound of me being relieved at finishing typing this
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That line seems to sum it up for me unfortunately... I've only been reading Cerebus, and reading about Sim, for a very short time, but I've been unable to get a clear picture of him in my mind... when I read something like Tangents, in isolation, that's obviously absolutely insane gibberish, not far from the level of a Jack D Ripper. But then the comics themselves (at least as far as Church & State, which is as far as I've got so far) are so different, and more importantly when he's interviewed he comes across a lot more rationally - the views he espouses in that interview are as far from my own as you can get, but they appear compatible with basic sanity, although he obviously sounds paranoid, while the views in something like Tangents are frankly barking... I think unfortunately Sim is a creative genius and probably a well-intentioned, decent person at base, but unfortunately has some severe mental health problems (he was hospitalised early in Cerebus' run due to a breakdown, and apparently at that time was diagnosed 'borderline schizophrenic'). But I don't think that his views, however abhorrent, should detract from the really monumental acheivement that Cerebus is... Incidentally, for those who are interested, there's a fascinating transcript at http://www.geocities.com/magicofalanmoore/simmoore/simmoore.html of the "Dialogue From Hell" between Sim and Alan Moore - whose own beliefs are really not that much more sane by normal standards than Sim's... |
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| From: (Anonymous) |
Date: March 31st, 2004 07:47 am (UTC) |
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My condolences on having to speak with Dave Sim
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I've glanced at Cerebus a few times, read an issue or two. It didn't strike me as being anything particularly transcendent in its brilliance at the time, and it occurs to me that perhaps I would need to read the full 6,000 pages of it in order to ascertain its true merit. Now, thanks to you, I am convinced with near absolute certainty that any such effort on my part would be a monumental waste of my time - 6,000 pages that were better left unturned.
Your interview with Dave Sim has thoroughly relieved me of any and all temptation or desire to explore his works. To start with, he appears to be an ego-maniac, comparing himself and his comics to both Doesteyevsky and Tolstoy, on no other rational grounds that I can determine beyond that all three of them wrote some, uh, really *long* books. Oh, and *sophisticated* ones at that - way over the head of most ordinary folk. Sim also seems convinced in some small way of the wide-raning social impact of his little black & white comic - he pledges to "renew the attack" on feminism if it becomes neccesary to do so. Fight the good fight, Dave! Only your Aardvark can show us all the evil falsities of Gloria Steinem!
The man also appears to be suffering from certain paranoid delusions regarding "leftists" and "marxists" and "feminists". Mr. Sim has some very peculiar and obsessively fixated ideas, which he uses as a constant point of reference, concerning the intrinsic and essentially "BAD" natures of all three of these arch-enemies of his. And he seems convinced from the start (without any reasonable explanation or provocation) that you are a card-carrying member of this unholy trinity. Every single question you ask or comment that you make somehow gives further evidence to Sim of the correctness of his grand theories regarding the foul character of the "leftist". Had you asked him his opinion on horse-racing he would have said "Ah-ha! Just like a leftist to start talking about horses racing each other instead of being made into glue! Your womanish frivolity is making you hysterical."
And feminism? Ok, well, regardless of anyone's specific opinion about feminism, I'd just like to say that Dave Sim's interview made more frequent mention of feminism (in any context) than I've come across since maybe the mid 1970's. Sim is doing more to keep alive the notion of feminism as any kind of broadly discussed issue than anyone else I've encountered lately. These fixations - where he has concretized notions of EXACTLY how whole segments of society are uniformally behaved, these scapegoat groups of his choosing - political, sexual, or the entire female gender, are distasteful at best and fascistic at worse. To him "they" (and "THEY" can probably on a given day be just about anyone who isn't "HIM") are apparently devoid of all complexity and so convenienty labeled and thus reduced in their individuality and stripped of their humanity.
Do you notice that Sim never identifies his own chosen political affiliation? He must have one, how could a person whose world view is that polarized and combative not have chosen a side for himself yet? One could assume that he is "right wing", but I'm guessing that any attempt by Sim to argue a point in the affirmative (instead of just attacking) would be an even greater exercise in incoherence than his rambling tirades denouncing "leftists".
In short, the man, despite his career painting portraits of Aardvarks, is very possibly suffering from some form of psychosis. And he appears to hate women on some fundamental level, or maybe it's just that he doesn't really know any woman and that's why he's so scared of them.
Or maybe it's just that his level of emotional maturation and self-understanding is roughly on par with that of a very early adolescent, a child. Or maybe he is just an asshole. I don't know.
I do know that I will, happily, never have to make the mistake of reading his comic book. It feels like I've accomplished something and I didn't have to do anything but plan NOT to do that.
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From: orobouros |
Date: March 31st, 2004 08:13 am (UTC) |
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Re: My condolences on having to speak with Dave Sim
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I'm not saying this to be an asshole, and whether or not I agree with Dave Sim is irrelevant (even though I am a longtime fan of Cerebus - I've been reading it for almost 20 years).
I'm going to play devil's advocate, for a moment, however.
Dave is willing to at least put his name attached to his opinions, and put himself out on the line.
Why aren't you?
You say: "I've glanced at Cerebus a few times, read an issue or two"
Based on this small sampling of 6000 pages, can you safely say it isn't literature? I agree, some of it is crap, but some of it shows incredible depths of thought, and characterization I haven't seen in any medium.
He (or someone) once compared reading an issue of Cerebus to reading a paragraph of Dickens once a month. And while you may dispute the association between him and Dickens, the actual point is that until you read it in context of the larger work, the stuff is damn confusing, and not even remotely user-friendly.
As for psychosis, yes he's been diagnosed borderline schizophrenic.
Whether you choose to read the book or not is up to you. But don't make literary critiques of things you haven't read. That makes as much sense as Christians protesting Last Temptation of Christ because they somehow "know" it's going to be "horrible".
Do you feel you've "fought the good fight" now, against the evil mysoginist deluded comic book creator?
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From: normanrafferty |
Date: April 2nd, 2004 11:15 am (UTC) |
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Thank you for The Onion interview.
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Back in the 1980s, there was the "black and white boom." Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird had exploded on the scene with their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and suddenly comic-book shops were struggling to keep up. A large number of "independent comics" sprung up, trying to tell stories other than superhero ones. About this time, the Manifesto of Creator's Rights came into being, championed by such literati as Scott McCloud and Dave Sim. The gist of this being that guys like Seigel and Schuster, if they had a runaway hit, shouldn't just be work-for-hire, and what happened to industry greats like Jack Kirby wasn't right.
In the 1990s, "creator's rights" mutated somewhat. Folks like Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane split off from their alma maters to make stuff like Spawn. While work-for-hire still continues today, creators of comic books get a lot more respect. Spinoffs of modern creator-owned comic books get mainstream media attention, such as the recent Hellboy movie. Twenty years ago, the idea that Mike Mignola would get full credit for creating a popular movie character seemed far-fetched.
This begs the question: is self-publishing over-rated?
In many ways, Dave Sim and his Cerebus represents both the good and the bad of self-publishing. Because Sim controls all levels of production, he's free to put in his comic whatever he wants, anything from painstaking artwork, to long, wordy essays, to twelve pages of letter columns.
However, there's a catch. The catch is that while Dave Sim has repeatedly extolled the virtues of self-publishing, he's also often complained about the lack of greater acceptance of his work. In his exit letter that was published in Wizard, Dave Sim wished many other self-publishers good luck, but also inserted a jab that he wished more people had followed Cerebus. The same point comes up in your interview.
The problem would appear to be two disparate ideas: "self-publishing allows you to say whatever you want" versus "lots of people should buy my art." In other words, if the strength of self-publishing is that one has complete freedom, then shouldn't one accept the risk that what one creates might only appeal to a small demographic?
For example, Dave Sim is well aware that sales dropped off after Church and State, but he doesn't care to openly ask why. He makes no excuses for any changes that may have appeared in his art since then, citing everything is "exactly the way [he] wanted it." That's fine -- that is the point of self-publishing. But to later wonder why more people aren't buying it makes little sense.
In your interview, the opening question makes it clear that Dave Sim has little or no interest in really gaining a larger audience. Here's a forum that folks like Scott McCloud envy -- the ability to explain comic books to a larger audience that might not read them, with tens of thousands of impressions, as an art form, (and without having to follow a reading of Frank Miller's Sin City and spend half the time apologizing). And immediately Sim is defensive about the whole aardvark thing. (Nice follow-up question, by the way.)
In the end, Dave Sim comes off as someone wondering why more people aren't listening to his message, and having chosen paranoia as the excuse. It appears that he can't accept that his unpopular message simply doesn't enjoy popularity.
I could on about the state of independent comics today, but I'm running out of space. Thank you again for the interview, I'm really glad it was published.
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From: rollick |
Date: April 2nd, 2004 08:42 pm (UTC) |
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I'm a pretty big believer in separating the art from the artist, myself. Particularly with visual art, I'm rarely interested in what artists have to say about what their work means in the context of their beliefs or their lives — in my opinion, if the art doesn't mean anything out of context, or requires a translator, it's already failed.
(Which sometimes makes my job ironic. But my interviews tend to focus on what a given creator's experiences are like, rather than what they want their work to Mean. I'm not a visual artist, so reports on what it's like to create art fascinate me — one of the reasons I think your LJ is so cool. But anyway…)
The problem is, Sim makes it absolutely impossible to separate him and his work — he inserted himself into his comic as a character. Several times. In different incarnations. So he could speak directly to the characters. Or so he could make points about his philosophy, for pages and pages and pages on end. So he could effectively grab his readers and shake them and say "THIS is the TRUTH."
I enjoy the artwork too — both Gerhard's background work, and Sim's composition and sense of pacing. And his lettering and experiments with comic text blow me away. But while I can deal with the misogyny of his storyline just fine, because it's a fictional story and an interesting one, it's much harder when Sim the writer is showing up as a character to point and wave and tell me What It All Means.
(And I think a giant leech would go "SCHHLLOOOOOORP.")
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| From: (Anonymous) |
Date: April 6th, 2004 10:56 am (UTC) |
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Another Side of Dave Sim
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It's funny how the people who hate Sim the most are usually people who have never actually read his work. I also find the "one lone nut against feminism" argument a bit silly. Anybody who's ready anthing by Norman Mailer or Kingsley Amis would see that Sim is building on the ideas of other writers. There are actually lots of other writers covering some of the same ground as Sim. Check out Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power, Esthar Vilar's The Manipulated Man, Christina Hoff Sommers' The War Against Boys or Lionel Tiger's The Decline of Males. Oh wait, all of those writers (including the women) are psychotic misogynist assholes as well, right?
He asks the reader to investigate the actual legislative changes to reproductive rights, alimony, common-law marriages, divorce, paternity and alimony payments, what Sim calls the "feminist nutcracker of modern matrimonial jurisprudence." If our society has a 50% divorce rate and 90% of those divorces result in husbands making indefinite support payments to an ex-wife, marriage loses much of its appeal for men. What was the actual divorce rate? What are average alimony payments for a divorced man?
Of course, nobody really wants to think about any of this stuff. It's far, far easier to portray Sim as a loon rather than address any of his ideas. So it goes.
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