Dave Sim: Conversations

Introduction

vii INTRODUCTION Dave Sim. Chances are, if you’re reading this book, that you probably know who Dave Sim is, and you probably have strong opinions about him and his work. For better or worse, Sim’s outspoken opinions concerning publishing, comics, artists’ rights, the relationship between the sexes, and religion, among other things, have caused various flare-ups of controversy. Only a true original , someone whose ideas provoke and inspire, draws the kind of praise and criticism commonly directed at Sim. Sim poured his creativity and ideology into Cerebus, his ground-breaking 300-issue comic-book magnum opus, ultimately producing some 6,000 pages in the series, most in collaboration with his background artist Gerhard, who became Sim’s background artist in 1984. In addition to the comic proper, Sim filled the back pages of Cerebus not only with traditional material such as letter columns or previews of other work but also with essays, annotations, and dialogues with other creators such as Alan Moore and Chester Brown. Consequently, differentiating between the comic book (the fiction) and Sim’s own beliefs and opinions (most often expressed in the back of the book) is challenging and explains to some extent why Sim is often granted less latitude than other creators. Though current trends in literary criticism dictate that art and artist are wholly distinct, Sim does not generally benefit from this differentiation. Admittedly, to a considerable extent Sim invited this confusion not only by publishing essays in the comic book but also by introducing himself as a character, Cerebus’s creator “Dave,” mid-way into the narrative. (Though the book is not autobiographical in any conventional sense, elements of Sim’s life, such as the fact that Sim’s home town of Kitchener was originally named Sand Hills, which is also the name of Cerebus’s home town, do appear from time to time.) As a result, among its numerous innovative strategies, Cerebus becomes a complex metafictive text in which the character Cerebus engages in dialogue with his creator, and the comic depicts its own creation as a comic book. Nevertheless , regardless of how people have reacted to Sim, Cerebus remains one of the high-water marks of the comics medium and Sim among the most talented viii introduction and fascinating comics creators. The interviews included in this collection provide insight into both the man and the work and help to clarify why Sim and Cerebus matter, regardless of what you think of his ideology. Cerebus was a key transitional work in a period of considerable transformation in the audience, production, and distribution of comic books, resulting in the rise of alternative and art comics in the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to the late 1970s, comic books in North America were considered ephemeral entertainment for children. Though occasional titles from mainstream comics publishers, such as the EC comics of the 1950s, were later generally accorded artistic merit by purveyors of taste, and though the underground comix movement of the late 1960s to the early 1970s demonstrated that comics could deal with mature subject matters, particularly politics and sexuality, by the late 1970s, the comics medium was struggling. The once fairly diverse range of genres and companies was collapsing, with superhero comics becoming the predominant “mainstream” form (only in the world of comic books could adolescent stories rooted in the generic conventions of science fiction and fantasy be considered mainstream) and most of the once-popular companies such as Dell, Gold Key, Harvey, and even Charlton were shrinking and closing down, leaving the “mainstream” to the hegemonic control of two major superhero publishers, Marvel and DC. The promise of the undergrounds had largely burned out, as the propensity for graphic excess that dominated them ultimately defined their limits for wide success, at least in the relatively censorious world of the late 1970s. There were few alternatives other than Marvel and DC for either readers or prospective comics artists; indeed, the “alternative” comics publishing phenomenon would have to wait until the early 1980s to have any significant impact. While a handful of companies publishing non-mainstream work did exist (e.g., Last Gasp, Kitchen Sink, Warren—though by the end of the 1970s Warren was dying as well), the alternative comics movement spearheaded by publishers such as Fantagraphics (which was founded in 1976 but did not start publishing comics until 1982) or Art Spiegelman with RAW (which began in 1980) did not yet exist. However, in 1977...