I've never read a volume of Cerebus, if only because I have no way of reading those multi-volume epics unless there's a local library that stocks them.

I browsed those letters, Sim has a really fascinating theological outlook. I'd like to learn more.

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Last time I checked, more than three quarters of the full story was circulating on BitTorrent.

A lot of his prose writing is available through http://www.cerebusfangirl.com.

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I wonder if he's a Dominionist. He may want to think about applying for U.S. citizenship to ensure he doesn't burn for eternity.

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I believe his response to a similar statement was that he thinks it is his responsibility to stay in Canada and try to influence his fellow Canadians.

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okay so crap I remember reading at least one of your letters in the lettercols, and it stuck in my memory because of Sim's particularly inept response.

(it was the one with the line "I. Am. So. Tired. Of. Explaining." I filed it carefully in my mind because, had Sim been in the room with me, I would have turned to him at that point and asked "...you mean you already started?" or I would have kicked him in the crotch. I find these hypotheticals difficult.)

do you feel as though his answers to you-- the published ones as well as the unpublished-- have been responses as opposed to ongoing installments of Sim's internal monologue? I always wondered that when I read repeat letters in Cerebus, because I inevitably felt, well why did you continue writing to Sim when he'd made it clear that he would never consider incoming letters as anything more than excuses to say things he wanted to write anyway, but was too self-conscious to just blurt out. okay, that was phrased horribly, but do you feel as though he engaged with you?

because this comment sounds really harsh, I should say that I find Sim fascinating, and would gladly read long tracts drawn from his internal monologue, and most of my mixed feelings towards him come from that seemingly paranoid-schizophrenic side of him which seems to strip incoming data of any semantic content in favor of easy categorization as "feminist propaganda" or "pedantic evasiveness" or "liberal whatever."

like, his thoughts are often fascinating, if usually selfish, frequently dishonest, and often incoherent. his tendency to actively ignore contradictory input is what makes me consider him a "nut" rather than a "thinker." it's what makes me read him the way I read Francis E. Dec or Susan Sontag rather than the way I read Heidegger or Alan Moore. and I wish I could find a way to read Sim's work (by which I mean his polemic; I can already read Cerebus without any problem) without having to relegate him to a certain intellectual scrapheap in the back of my mind.

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You have it pretty much exactly right here. He does tend to talk past you, which is something I brought up in later letters (and he brushed aside casually). I did eventually stop writing to him, essentially for this very reason. He can be friendly and thoughtful, but after a while I began to realize that his selfless campaign to answer every possible question at great length was mainly a function of his desire to fill Collected Letters 2004 with more thorough explications of things he's already said. There didn't seem to be a great deal of 'give and take' going on. As I wrote to him after his first long response to me, he's already made his decisions and is completely disinterested in continuing to examine his positions for possible areas where they could be refined.

I kept writing primarily to 'get it all said.' I was under the mistaken impression that he would be publishing my half of these exchanges as well, and so I wanted to make sure and cover all the bases that I didn't think other letter writers had approached very well in Aardvark Comment, re his politics. I wanted to give him a chance to clarify such that I might better understand where he was coming from. Well, now I do. As Cerebus says in Church & State, 'Sometimes you can get what you want and still not be very happy.'

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I think Sim's decision to publish just his own half of his correspondence is awfully telling, here. the very idea that his letters can be taken completely out of context and still be interesting/intelligible/coherent speaks volumes about the value he placed on his correspondents in the first place, ja?

but it was always a shame to me that Sim wouldn't engage. occasionally someone (usually a well-spoken liberal/feminist/whatever) would write a fascinating letter, which Sim would print in its entirety, and which he would then reduce to five or six numbered points to which he would respond in a sentence or three each, and which were as often as not stylistic issues or vocabulary choices rather than the meat of the letter. and it was hella frustrating, because anyone who's been reading Cerebus knows what Dave thinks by now-- the interesting question, I think, is why (or maybe how) he thinks these things, and watching him defend his points would go a long way towards illuminating this question.

unless, of course, he can't defend them.

unless, of course, he's just crazy. it is understandable, in light of his behavior, I think, that so many readers (myself included) write him off this way.

and it's a terrible shame, because he can present himself well. he did it in his correspondence with Moore; I assume that was because of his respect for Moore, but he certainly seemed sane in that conversation to an extent which he has very, very rarely been in the last ten years. and maybe he's just been going for sales-by-controversy for a while now, in which case seeming bugfuck crazy might be lucrative, but if not I just wish someone would tell him how much more persuasive he is when he doesn't refer to feminist conspiracies, when he doesn't engage in scattershot ad hominem against people he's never met, and when he responds to his conversants rather than writing off huge swathes of the conversation as already-conquered ground in his weird tri-monotheistic misogynist historical-revisionist battlefield.

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If he was doing this for sales, it was a dismal failure, as Cerebus struggled to maintain a circulation of 6,000 in the last several years of its publication. Sim acknowledges that #186 made him persona non grata in the comics community -- he seems to enjoy the distinction. He's deadly serious about the ideas he puts forward in his essays.

I thought he spent most of the Moore dialogue back-pedaling. In one of my letters I accuse him of using #289/290 to 'answer' Moore. I think his theology (as outlined through Cerebus' Torah commentaries in the 'Latter Days' book, which Dave says dovetails with his own beliefs) took many of the turns it did partly as a method of countering many of the ideas Moore posited in the dialogue. In the Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman tribute book, which reprinted that whole piece, Dave contributed an introduction in which he suggests that Moore is possessed by a demon, and takes a number of cheap shots at him (as he also does in much of his newer writing when things turn towards 'Moore-like' territory).

Have you read Tangent?

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If he was doing this for sales, it was a dismal failure, as Cerebus struggled to maintain a circulation of 6,000 in the last several years of its publication.

I would posit that the only way the last several years of Cerebus managed a circulation anywhere near 6,000 was through controversy. Sim sacrificed any cogent plot well before the series wound up, and honestly there aren't that many afficionadoes of the sequential art form dedicated enough to the advancement of the art form to plod through the last 5 or so years purely on the strength of penmanship and layout. if you're pointing out that, had Sim wanted sales above all else, he could have certainly done better, I agree-- but taking for granted that Sim wanted to write a long and circuitous treatise on his own obsessive religious beliefs, I think he got some incredible sales numbers through the magic of pissing people off.

I mean, I sure as hell couldn't convince 6,000 people to subscribe to my religious tracts at $2.95 a month.

I also think he used his own sales figures to validate his conspiracy beliefs in a deeply ugly way. "oh, people aren't buying my book anymore, because they're feminized faggots who can't handle the harsh light of my male brilliance!" sure, Dave. it has nothing to do with the fact that you've stopped telling stories.

that being said, and with the caveat that I enjoyed Cerebus up through the very last issue...

the cheap shots Sim takes at Gaiman in the "Portrait" book are worth the price of admission alone. because I love Neil Gaiman but he desperately needs people to take him less seriously in public. and Sim's shots are perfect.

and, yeah. I can see how you could read Sim's appearance in the Moore dialogue as backpedaling. I think of it more as an attempt to engage with Moore-- Moore seems like someone who enjoys fervent argumentation but doesn't readily tolerate non sequiturs, which I think cramps Sim's style. still, I feel like that conversation includes some of the best quotes on religion Moore's ever put out for public consumption, as well as some of the most acceptable comments Sim's ever made on the same topic.

maybe that's it; Dave Sim needs to spend more time in public conversation with people who don't put up with his shit, or with whom he's suitably cowed not to try pulling anything in the first place. when he's writing in his own book, he goes crazy; but when he's actually constrained by social factors, one begins to suspect that he actually has something to say.

and Tangent was the last thing I read before I stopped paying to read Dave Sim's work. there may or may not be a causal relationship there; I can neither confirm nor deny speculation on those grounds. it's a pretty worthless piece of writing by almost any standards, though. I suggest you play my Tangent drinking game, and take a shot every time you hit a clearly-defined logical fallacy, and two shots if the fallacy occurs in a sentence in which Sim mocks women for being illogical.

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That would just make me pass out.

There are a lot of Cerebus readers who held out with the book mainly because they wanted to make it to #300, just so they could tell themselves they did. Probably a majority of readers fell of Sim's turnip truck with #186, but it must be conceded that there are a few (I've met some) who actually agree with a lot of what he says (as unpallatable as that might seem).

Most of those vocal about the controversy surrounding Sim never seemed to have read the book regularly anyway -- or at least, stopped long before #186 made him the object of scorn in the industry. However, I think you may underestimate a field where the predominant attitude towards purchases seems to (still) hinge on cartooning skill and artwork above storylines. It's likely most of Sim's most inflamatory writing never got read by many Cerebus loyalists. I know that even many longtime, hardcore readers didn't bother with much of the teensy-tiny type in 'Latter Days'.

Have you ever visited the Cerebus Yahoo group?

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I agree with you for the most part, except that I really don't think many people will buy a book if "cartooning skill" (I'm quoting it just because it's such an abstract idea) is its only redeeming factor. I do believe that the savvy of the experienced comics reader is such that it's an important point, but I can't think of any comics other than Cerebus which managed sustained sales without a marketable premise/plot/content/joke. I agree with you if we're saying just that cartooning skill is important to most readers, but I'm not sure I can empathize if you're saying that cartooning skill is enough to compensate for a lack of story in today's market.

which, I think, is what we have to talk about when we talk about the final third (almost) of Cerebus.

the Cerebus Yahoo! group: damn, that's a lot of messages for such an small group of active members! I wouldn't know where to start.

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It's a pretty high-traffic list. I get the e-mails in digest format (25 each); usually 3-4 per day. I don't always keep up with them.

However, it's the one online outlet where Dave and Gerhard actually participate (to an extent). Every month the list votes on a set of questions that are sent to Dave, and he then answers (usually at great length). Gerhard actually posts on his own, from time to time.

Here are some links to archived messages Dave has sent:

http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/archivereport.html
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/archivereport2.html
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/archivereport3.html



Answers to some of the monthly lists of questions:

http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/0604talk.html
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/0704talk.html
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/0804talk.html
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/0904talk.html
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/1204talk.html
http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/0105talk.html



I do read over a lot of the digests, but the group spends so much time talking about television shows and arguing with the resident creationist/anti-abortion/self-congratulatory trolls that it is usually pushed way down on my priority list.

Each year the group meets with Dave at the S.P.A.C.E. convention in Columbus, Ohio. I exhibited my books there last year, and was scheduled to appear there this year, but have had to cancel.

Here is my report from last year.

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hey, I just wanted to say I quite enjoyed reading Apophenia, particularly the second issue. I also read your SPACE trip report so I know you don't handle people saying that they enjoy your comics all that well, so I'll leave it at that, except to say that it's inspired me to pick up some of the open-ended collage-diary project I haven't touched in the last five years and see if I still enjoy working with it.

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Thank you for the feedback. It's cool that you are going to work on your project again!

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More on Dave and Neil Gaiman.

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much like with Tangent, I am struck with a tremendous impulse to actually respond, but then I look at how long it is, and realize that if I were to call Sim on all the shit he pulls in that... diary entry? novella? "essay"?... I'd be at it all night. he has hypergraphia on his side, and I've got ADD on mine, and I think it's clear who'll be the last one standing.

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I find it impressive that you are so prolific.

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This is why they took my pens away from me in school.

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I know very little about comics. I just read David Sim's biography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Sim

And see he is from Hamilton. A grim, dirty place. That in itself could explain many things.

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I believe I contributed to this entry once upon a time, but I see no trace of my contribution here anymore.

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