{"id":143,"date":"2016-08-26T11:54:17","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T15:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/?p=143"},"modified":"2016-08-26T11:54:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T15:54:17","slug":"dave-sim-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/blog\/2016\/08\/26\/dave-sim-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Sim Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

This interview was originally published in July, 2007. With Dave the first thing many people think about is his controversial views. I read his writing in issue #186 and his Tangents series as well. I must admit, when I first thought about interviewing Dave I had envision getting him in room and going after him like a pissed off Mike Wallace<\/a>\u00a0on crack over those views.<\/p>\n

But then I met him and discovered that in person Dave was extremely nice and courteous.\u00a0He also had a “spider sense” for when somebody was taking a picture of him and he would turn and smile for the camera, even while he was in conversation with others. At TCAF 2005 I saw Dave squinting at a map looking for his table as he had a signing to go to. It was in another area that I had already been to so I offered to walk him over. Later on that convention was the first Doug Wright Awards, I showed up early as did Dave and he struck up a conversation with me. They had examples of Doug’s work on the walls and we looked at them with Dave\u00a0describing what was great about Doug’s work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At another convention a female friend of mine wanted to get a sketch from Dave but was a\u00a0<\/span>apprehensions about meeting him for obvious reasons. I volunteered to get the sketch on her behalf and she stood line with me until we got close to Dave and then she left. She liked Dave’s work but didn’t want to have a bad experience meeting him. When I got to Dave he asked what I wanted and I said Cerebus and Jaka. He said he would only sketch 1 character and I chose Jaka.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0Dave did the sketch, looked over to Gerhard who was still working on backgrounds on Dave’s sketches and then did a quick Cerebus sketch too.\u00a0<\/span>Both Gerhard and Dave noticed my friend who left the line. Gerhard left his table to have a talk with her and Dave told me later on he almost did this too, but he had a long line of fans wanting sketches.<\/p>\n

I don’t think I could go as far as to say Dave and I were friends, but we were friendly to each other. I also didn’t have the heart to go after him regarding his views anymore, even though I disagreed with them. I also had doubts that Dave would allow\/agree to that type of interview\u00a0either as he had his rules. Instead I proposed doing an “introduction” type interview for comic readers who were online, but didn’t read much in the way of comic magazines. I was once one of those type of comic readers. That said, I did learn about his short stay in a psychiatric facility. I had heard other creators reference this but it was good\u00a0to get the story from him. It was also interesting to get his story about DC’s attempt to buy Cerebus from him, with actual dollar figures and why he turned it down.<\/p>\n

I should probably also say that it was once believed that Gene Day died because of how Marvel treated him. I’m friends with one of Gene’s brothers\u00a0(they live about a half hour from me) and I was told while Marvel’s treatment didn’t help, Gene’s family has a history of heart problems and Gene put his love of work and greasy burgers over his own well being.<\/p>\n

After this interview was done, Dave took all the typed questions, attempted to burn them on a CD and then mailed said CD with a sketch on it. Sadly, the burn did not go right, but Dave tried again and got it right the 2nd time. This wasn’t really necessary but Dave wanted to learn how to do it.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Dave Sim Interview<\/p>\n

Dave Sim is the creator of Cerebus. He began self publishing the comic\u00a0book in the late 70’s, promised to do 300 issues of the book and did so.\u00a0It’s a feat few see anybody else repeating. Along the way he selflessly\u00a0taught people how to self publish their own comic books, helping many to\u00a0realize their dream of publishing their creations. A few of those self\u00a0publishers managed to get rich or get better paying work afterwards.\u00a0With this interview we talk about Dave’s start with comics, Cerebus, the\u00a0help and difficulties he encountered along the way, what’s he doing now\u00a0and a lot more.<\/p>\n

Note: This interview was done via fax machine. Dave normally only allows\u00a0interviews to be 5 questions, but let me ask him 20. So an extra thank\u00a0you goes out to Dave for allowing the extra questions and for being a\u00a0great interviewee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:\u00a0<\/strong>Assuming you read comics as a boy, which ones did you read regularly?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> I read the Mort Weisinger-edited Superman line of comic books,\u00a0Superman, Action, World’s Finest, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, later\u00a0branching out into the rest of the DC line and then Marvel Comics,\u00a0Warren and then undergrounds by the time I was fifteen or sixteen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0I take it you were a big fan of Conan during the 70’s?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> No, I wasn’t really a big fan of Conan in the 70s. I had read\u00a0all of the Robert E. Howard material once and then-reading the lesser L.\u00a0Sprague DeCamp knock-offs that came later-swiftly lost interest. I\u00a0really should go back and find the Howard material at some time and\u00a0re-read it. I would pick up the occasional issue of Conan if I liked\u00a0what Barry Smith was doing on it-such as the “Frost Giant’s Daughter”\u00a0issue that reprinted the black & white strip or the two-part “Red Nails”\u00a0story as it originally appeared in Savage Tales magazine, but early\u00a0on-with Dan Adkins and Sal Buscema inking-it just looked like a really\u00a0bad Marvel comic to me. By that time I was starting to draw on my own,\u00a0so a comic needed to have something more to it in order to get me\u00a0excited creatively or make me want to swipe the style of the artist.\u00a0Barry inking himself definitely had that effect on me. Barry inked by\u00a0others definitely didn’t have that effect on me and most of his work at\u00a0Marvel was inked by very incompatible talents.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0If you didn’t like Conan, why did you create Cerebus to be a parody of\u00a0it?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> The decision to do Cerebus was based on my insight that what\u00a0had made Howard the Duck successful was the “funny animal in the world\u00a0of humans” motif whereas everyone doing work for Quack! (my intended\u00a0market) was doing all funny animal strips. Since Howard had modern-day\u00a0sown up that, to me, left the possibility of a science fiction “funny\u00a0animal in the world of humans” or a sword ‘n’ sorcery “funny animal in\u00a0the world of humans”. Science fiction required drawing a lot of straight\u00a0edges and learning how to use French curves properly, so that left only\u00a0one possibility. Coincidentally I had the unused mascot for Deni’s\u00a0fanzine and I did a sample page for Mike Friedrich which turned out to\u00a0be the splash page of issue 1. The fact that it was successful was a\u00a0very hard lesson in what happens when you do something because you think\u00a0it’s commercially viable rather than being what you want to do. I was\u00a0stuck going through the checklist of sword ‘n’ sorcery clich\u00e9s and was\u00a0quickly running out of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0Considering Cerebus started off as something you believed would be\u00a0commercially viable, if you were able to go back and re-do your comic\u00a0career all over again what would you do differently?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> I’m afraid that one of my core beliefs is to never traffic in\u00a0the hypothetical which I suspect is one of the reasons that it was\u00a0possible to finish Cerebus. If you make a choice and then live with the\u00a0consequences of that choice you are always moving forward. If you make a\u00a0choice and then spend all of your time trying to assess the different\u00a0choices you might have made and the possible outcomes of those\u00a0hypothetical choices, then you just end up spending your life treading\u00a0water and getting very little done. I conducted my comic-book career the\u00a0way that I conducted it and it ended up the way that it ended up. I only\u00a0see what happened, not what might have happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:\u00a0<\/strong>How did you meet Gene Day?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> I met Gene Day in the summer of 1974. We had started\u00a0corresponding in the fall of 1973 after John Balge and I had interviewed\u00a0Augustine Funnel for Comic Art News & Reviews. Gus had started writing\u00a0for Al Hewetson’s Skywald magazines and told us about his roommate, Gene\u00a0Day, and that we should talk to him about doing some work for CANAR and\u00a0that I should ask about doing some work for Gene’s Dark Fantasy. I had\u00a0already arranged a bus trip up to see my aunt and uncle in Ottawa so I\u00a0decided to make a side trip to Gananoque on the way and stay over for a\u00a0couple of days. It ended up being the first of many such trips.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0I’ve always heard he was your mentor. What exactly did Gene do for you?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> Gene really showed me that success in a creative field is a\u00a0matter of hard work and productivity and persistence. I had done a\u00a0handful of strips and illustrations at that point mostly for various\u00a0fanzines but I wasn’t very productive. I would do a strip or an\u00a0illustration and send it off to a potential market and then wait to find\u00a0out if they were going to use it before doing anything else. Or I’d wait\u00a0for someone to write to me and ask me to draw something. Gene was\u00a0producing artwork every day and putting it out in the mail and when it\u00a0came back he’d send it out to someone else. He would draw work for money\u00a0and then do work on spec if the paying markets dried up. He kept trying\u00a0at places where he had been rejected. He did strips, cartoons,\u00a0caricatures, covers, spot illos, anything that he might get paid for. He\u00a0gave drawing lessons and produced his own fanzines. It was easy to see\u00a0the difference, to see why he was a success and I was a failure. It was\u00a0in the fall of 1975 that I bought a calendar and started filling the\u00a0squares with whatever it was that I had produced that day and worked to\u00a0put together months-long streaks where I produced work every day. The\u00a0net result was that I started to get more paying work and a year later I\u00a0was able to move out of my parents’ house into my own one-room\u00a0apartment\/studio downtown. I doubt that would ever have happened without\u00a0Gene’s influence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0Gene died an early death. Can you tell me about Gene sleeping at\u00a0Marvel’s office to fulfill a deadline and the health problems that\u00a0stemmed from that?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> Yes, Gene died at the age of 31 from a heart attack. He had\u00a0been working for Marvel for several years at that point. He started as\u00a0an inker which was the thing that he was the fastest at, so he built up\u00a0a really good reputation as a guy who could turn a late job around in a\u00a0hurry. He was so fast, the people at Marvel were convinced that he had a\u00a0whole studio of Gene Day clones working night and day, but it was just\u00a0him. When I’d go and visit him, he’d have piles of 11×17 photocopies of\u00a0the jobs he had done-he traded his weekly Cap’n Riverrat cartoon to the\u00a0local weekly newspaper, The Gananoque Reporter for free photocopying.<\/p>\n

When Mike Zeck left Master of Kung Fu to work on Captain America, Marvel\u00a0was left without a penciller for the title and the editor persuaded Gene\u00a0to step in which instantly cut his revenue by a substantial amount-he\u00a0was a much slower penciller than he was an inker. He also ran afoul of\u00a0then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter’s strict rules about storytelling-that\u00a0you needed to do the basic six panels to a page method with occasional\u00a0lapses if you had a good reason for it. Gene, of course was a major fan\u00a0of Jim Steranko-style storytelling which was exactly what Jim Shooter\u00a0was opposed to and they locked horns over the subject many times with\u00a0Gene doing continuous backgrounds in his panel-to-panel continuity (one\u00a0large background on the page with the action taking place in individual\u00a0panels set against the one background). Shooter would tell him not to do\u00a0it and Gene would do it, finally doing I think a five-page sequence that\u00a0was all one background. At the same time he was doing outside\u00a0assignments at Marvel including a story for one of the black-and-white\u00a0magazines (I think it was) which Gene was supposed to pencil and ink.<\/p>\n

The deadline got moved up or something and they told Gene on the phone\u00a0that they were going to have the story “gang inked” over a few days. This was something that Marvel did pretty regularly in the 70s to keep\u00a0books on schedule. They’d get five or six guys to sit in the bullpen and\u00a0ink a job to get it done faster. As you would expect, the results were\u00a0usually horrible. One of P. Craig Russell’s first jobs for Marvel was\u00a0part of a gang-inking on an issue of Barry’s Conan. For the longest\u00a0time, my impression of the story was that they had phoned Gene and\u00a0wanted him to come down and ink the job and that Gene had done so out of\u00a0loyalty to Marvel even taking the train to Manhattan because he was\u00a0afraid to fly. It was years later that his brother Dan mentioned to me\u00a0that what Gene was concerned about was doing as much of the inking\u00a0himself as he could to keep the job from being a total abomination. The\u00a0more I think about that, the more it explains what happened. Gene showed\u00a0up at Marvel and they gave him the address of the hotel he would be\u00a0staying at. He went there and the place was covered in cockroaches so\u00a0Gene went back to Marvel and asked to be put up in a better hotel.\u00a0Nothing fancy, just a place without cockroaches. That was when Tom\u00a0DeFalco gave him the choice of the roach-infested hotel or sleeping on\u00a0the couch in Marvel’s reception area. Gene chose the latter, not\u00a0realizing that they turned the heat off in the building overnight (this\u00a0was in the dead of winter). So he slept there with his coat pulled over\u00a0him and developed as a result a kidney infection which stuck with him\u00a0the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, I think the problem Marvel had was\u00a0that they had no policy for the situation. They had found their\u00a0solution, they were going to get the job gang-inked. When Gene insisted\u00a0on coming down to work on it, it just didn’t make sense to them\u00a0editorially to pay for a hotel room for him given what that was going to\u00a0add to their costs on the story. For Gene, it was an obvious plus-by\u00a0coming down and working on the story it would be that much better\u00a0looking than it would be being inked by whoever happened to be around at\u00a0the time. But, how the job looked wasn’t as big a priority for Marvel as\u00a0having the job done. What to Gene looked like a sensible improvement\u00a0solution looked to Marvel like a needless expense and intrusion by a\u00a0troublemaker. The same could be said of Gene locking horns with Jim\u00a0Shooter. To Gene, he was trying to make the book better and more\u00a0interesting. To Shooter he was making it unreadable and therefore\u00a0uncommercial.<\/p>\n

On Gene’s side of the argument, sales were up on Master of\u00a0Kung Fu-it had always been a marginal title since Paul Gulacy had left,\u00a0on the verge of cancellation and now it was turning into a fan favourite\u00a0again. On Jim Shooter’s side of the argument, good nuts-and-bolts\u00a0six-panels-to-the-page storytelling always sold better in the long run\u00a0for Marvel. John Buscema’s Conan outsold Barry Smith’s by a wide margin,\u00a0as an example. Eventually Shooter fired Gene and I think that, as much\u00a0as anything, killed Gene Day. His heart and soul were at Marvel Comics.\u00a0His lifelong dream was to work in the House that Jack Built. Of course,\u00a0what he failed to see was that working in the House that Jack Built even\u00a0became an untenable prospect for Jack. And, of course, interviewing as\u00a0many professionals as I had in my fanzine days, I had a much clearer\u00a0idea of what Marvel and DC were actually like and just how ruthless the\u00a0editors could be when the situation seemed to call for ruthlessness\u00a0(which, as they saw it, it usually did). I knew that in a lot of ways\u00a0the worst thing you could bring to the table as a freelancer was\u00a0unwavering company loyalty. For many of the editors at the time, that\u00a0was just inviting them to rip your heart out. Which, to me, is exactly\u00a0what Gene did. And exactly what Marvel did.<\/p>\n

Dave Sim – 2007 Paradise Comics Toronto Comic Con<\/p><\/div>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0Prior to Cerebus you did work for other comics. What happened that\u00a0made you want to self publish instead?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> That was a combination of things. Everyone that I did work for\u00a0I was either a minor guy on their roster and so didn’t get the attention\u00a0that I thought I needed or I was a major guy on their roster only\u00a0because they were too small to get anywhere. They’d announce that the\u00a0new issue would be out in July and then write you in August saying they\u00a0hope to get it out by November. There was a sense of time slipping away\u00a0while I waiting for everyone to get to the project that I was in. Gene\u00a0was more interested in getting Dark Fantasy out than Hellhound, his\u00a0proposed comics title. And then he acquired the rights to do an\u00a0adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Pigeons from Hell and I knew that was\u00a0going to push Hellhound even further back. I had printed samples in\u00a0Quack and Oktoberfest Comics and Phantacea No.1 which I had drawn from\u00a0someone else’s script, colour covers with black & white interiors and\u00a0what I figured I needed was a few more samples like that where it was\u00a0all or mostly my work inside the book. So that was why I decided to do\u00a0three issues of Cerebus, do it bi-monthly and make sure it came out on\u00a0time, keep the price the same, keep the format the same, keep the logo\u00a0the same, have a letters page, keep it to twenty-two pages-basically do\u00a0all the things right that I thought the other guys were doing wrong and\u00a0if I fell on my face, well fine, I’d fall on my face and I’d stop\u00a0complaining about what a lousy job everyone else was doing and just go\u00a0back to doing it their way. But, at least I’d have three issues of my\u00a0own comic book to put with Oktoberfest Comics and Phantacea so that\u00a0editors could see what I was capable of. And as it turned out I was\u00a0right. To this day, I try to emphasize how important it is to come out\u00a0on time and everyone just ignores me. They want to know the secret to\u00a0self-publishing but they don’t want that secret. That secret just sounds\u00a0like a lot of hard work. Which it is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0I understand you worked for Harry Kremer at Now and Again Books, in\u00a0what years did you do that?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> I worked for Harry beginning December 1st of 1976 when he\u00a0opened up the downstairs at 103 Queen St. S. which is across the street\u00a0from where Now & Then Book is now. The hours were 10 am to 9 pm Thursday\u00a0and Friday and 10 am to 6 pm Saturday and for that I got a grand total\u00a0of $75 a month. It was all Harry could afford. And I rented my one-room\u00a0apartment at 379 Queen St. S. for $120 a month which meant that I had to\u00a0make $45 a month from drawing and writing just to keep a roof over my\u00a0head. I had about $1,000 in the bank from selling Harry my comic-book\u00a0collection to help buy some time, but it was definitely sink or swim. As\u00a0it turns out it was sink, swim or move in with your girlfriend which\u00a0Deni and I did in April of 1977 so I only had to come up with half of\u00a0the rent which I think still worked out to about $120 a month.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0How did Harry help with Cerebus?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> Harry helped in a lot of ways with Cerebus. For starters, he\u00a0was running the comic-book store that I was living in (it was really my\u00a0first home, my parents house was just where I slept and stored my comic\u00a0books) when the direct market started and he was stocking new comic\u00a0books as well as back issues, new comic books which included ground\u00a0level titles like Star*Reach which showed me that there was room on the\u00a0shelves next to Marvel and DC. Then he agreed to publish Oktoberfest\u00a0Comics in 1976. Through that experience, I found out roughly what it\u00a0cost to do a black-and-white comic on newsprint with a colour cover and\u00a0realized that it was a lot more affordable with the new high-speed web\u00a0offset presses than I had suspected which started me thinking about\u00a0doing one of my own. And before the first issue was published, he agreed\u00a0to take 500 copies which, when you consider that our two\u00a0distributors-Jim Friel of Big Rapids Distribution and Phil Seuling of\u00a0Sea Gate Distributors-were taking 500 and 1,000 copies respectively\u00a0tells you what a great vote of confidence and commitment that was from a\u00a0single comic book store. And then he would also buy artwork from time to\u00a0time. He bought the complete issue 4 for $220, $10 a page. It may not\u00a0sound like much, but it definitely paid for a lot of Kraft Dinners which\u00a0Deni and I pretty much lived on for months at a time. We had our ups and\u00a0downs over the years-he got seriously offended when I started charging\u00a0$100 a page U.S. He liked my artwork but he really didn’t think it\u00a0belonged in that price range. But there’s no question that Cerebus\u00a0couldn’t have made it through the first few years without his help and,\u00a0particularly, without the existence of Now & Then Books. Today (6 June\u00a005) would have been his fifty-ninth birthday if he had lived.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0Is it true that Cerebus was supposed to be titled Cerberus? If so, how\u00a0did it change?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> What happened was that Deni-before I knew her-had decided to\u00a0put out a fanzine modeled on Gene Day’s Dark Fantasy. When I met her, in\u00a0December of 1976, that was what she had come into the store to find\u00a0out-would Harry be willing to carry copies of her fanzine if she\u00a0published it? I volunteered to help and wrote down my name which she\u00a0recognized from the work I had had published in Dark Fantasy. The name\u00a0she had come up with for her fanzine was Cerebus. So I did a logo for\u00a0her, the one that was on the first forty-nine issues and told her she\u00a0really should have a name for her publishing company in the same way\u00a0that Dark Fantasy was published by Gene Day’s House of Shadows. Her\u00a0sister came up with Aardvark Press and her brother came up with Vanaheim\u00a0Press, so I put them together and made it Aardvark-Vanaheim Press. And\u00a0then I drew a cartoon aardvark with a sword as a mascot. At that point\u00a0someone realized that the name of the magazine was misspelled. What she\u00a0had intended to call the magazine was Cerberus, the name of the\u00a0three-headed dog in Greek mythology who guarded Hades. So I suggested\u00a0that we just say that Cerebus was the name of the cartoon mascot. The\u00a0printer in California ran off with the originals and the money for the\u00a0first issue, so the fanzine never did come out. And that was when I\u00a0started thinking about my own “funny animal in the world of humans” for\u00a0Quack! so I decided to draw a sample page of Cerebus the cartoon mascot\u00a0in my best Barry Windsor-Smith style (see question 6 above).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0Somebody made counterfeit copies of Cerebus #1. Can you tell us the\u00a0difference between the two so the online buyers won’t be fooled?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> The easiest way to distinguish the real Cerebus No.1 from the\u00a0counterfeit is that the inside covers are glossy black on the\u00a0counterfeit and a flat black on the real ones. The next easiest way is\u00a0that if you look at the areas of solid black on pages 9, 10 and 11, they\u00a0look “dusty”. That’s because the counterfeit was shot from a printed\u00a0copy where there was already a slightly speckled quality because it was\u00a0printed on cheap newsprint, so when that slightly speckled quality was\u00a0photographed, the-now doubled-slightly speckled quality ended up looking\u00a0like a fine layer of dust over the entire page because there is so much\u00a0solid black on those three pages.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0Did you ever discover who made the counterfeits?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> I have my suspicions as to who did the counterfeit but, no, the\u00a0FBI never managed to catch the guys who were selling them-the “mules”\u00a0folded their operation as soon as word started to spread-and therefore\u00a0there was no route to anyone who was behind the scam. I certainly wasn’t\u00a0about to accuse anyone publicly without evidence to support it but, yes,\u00a0I’m pretty sure I knew who did it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0I hear that after issue #11 you over-worked yourself into a nervous\u00a0breakdown. What were you doing at the time?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> Twenty-six years later on, I think it would be more accurate to\u00a0say that I had achieved a false level of transcendence that I had been\u00a0looking to achieve through LSD-the psychic equivalent of a massive and\u00a0pleasurable electric shock-that left me incapable of reassuring my wife\u00a0(within her own very limited frames of reference) that I was okay: with\u00a0the result that she freaked out at one point and called my mother and\u00a0she and my mother locked me up in a psych ward at the local hospital for\u00a0a couple of days.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0How did you recover from a nervous breakdown and continue on?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> There really wasn’t anything to “recover” from. I had gone\u00a0through the false transcendent state and come out the other side. The\u00a0only thing I really needed to recover from was the massive doses of\u00a0depressants they had given me in the psych ward. That took two or three\u00a0days during which all of my muscles and motor functions were seriously\u00a0malfunctioning-it felt as if I had pulled every muscle in my body so\u00a0that just speaking and walking required Herculean forces of will in\u00a0order to achieve. Essentially, at that point-never again wanting to\u00a0experience that severe crippling effect-I began to live two different\u00a0lives simultaneously. I learned how to portray myself as a normal person\u00a0in order to keep my wife and parents from locking me up in any more\u00a0psych wards while at the same time I began to explore all of the\u00a0thoughts and experiences that I had had over the period of the false\u00a0transcendent state and began to work towards putting them all down on\u00a0paper in the Cerebus storyline. When I realized, a month or two later,\u00a0how large and difficult a task that was going to be, I decided to make\u00a0Cerebus into a 300-issue project in order to encompass it all and leave\u00a0room for my own best assessment of the aftermath. The documentation of\u00a0the state itself went from about issue 20 to about issue 186. I was able\u00a0to stop leading my double life once I was divorced in 1983 and I no\u00a0longer had the on-going threat hanging over my head that my freedom\u00a0depended on my wife and mother believing me to be sane.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0How did you meet Gerhard?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> I had heard a great deal about Gerhard because he was the\u00a0“golden boy” of his high school clique, one of whose members was Deni’s\u00a0high-school aged sister, Karen. He was the chief set designer and star\u00a0of a high-school production “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown” and also\u00a0an illustrator and the high-school clique was his major support group.\u00a0They collectively believed in him and his prodigious abilities to the\u00a0same extent to which he didn’t believe in himself: which is to say\u00a0thoroughly and completely. At one point the high-school clique was\u00a0having a Halloween party and Karen, Deni’s sister, and Bob her boyfriend\u00a0and later husband came by the apartment to smoke a joint with Gerhard\u00a0and his (then) girlfriend Laurel. So far as we know that was how I met\u00a0Gerhard. It would’ve been Halloween of 1981 or 1982.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0I’m surprised more artists don’t try and pair up with somebody to help\u00a0out with backgrounds. Why do you think you and Gerhard have worked so\u00a0well together for the past 20 years?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> I’m surprised, as well, that more artists don’t pair up with\u00a0background artists. The history of the comic-book field is filled with\u00a0things that worked really well that no one else ever attempted. Look at\u00a0Will Eisner’s The Spirit-what a great idea to do a comic-book supplement\u00a0for newspapers and yet no one ever tried it again. It’s certainly\u00a0something that I would recommend. I suspect fine arts courses and\u00a0architectural schools are filled with guys who just have a love of\u00a0drawing still-life’s, which is all that backgrounds are. Of course\u00a0Gerhard grew to hate pen-and-ink drawing which had been one of his\u00a0abiding passions when he had to do the volume of drawing required, so\u00a0you won’t be seeing him recommending it as a career choice anytime soon.\u00a0But, yes, I do think that guys who love writing and lettering and\u00a0drawing people should look around for guys who like to draw inanimate\u00a0objects. Mutual tolerance would, I think, best describe how the\u00a0collaboration worked and how it continues to work. If I really needed\u00a0something to go in the background, I’d be specific with Gerhard but if\u00a0not, I let him do whatever he thought would look best. I always got my\u00a0own best results by doing what I thought was best and always got\u00a0second-rate results when someone was telling me what to do, so it just\u00a0seemed natural to me to treat Gerhard the same way. If you want the best\u00a0results let the guy call his own shots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0I recently read that DC made an offer to buy Cerebus from you at one\u00a0point. When did that happen and how much did they offer?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> Those negotiations took place over the course of 1985 to 1988,\u00a0I think it was. Ultimately they offered $100,000 and 10% of all licensing\u00a0and merchandising and that I would be allowed to keep doing the monthly\u00a0black-and-white and Swords of Cerebus on my own. In the middle of the\u00a0negotiations I came up with the idea of the High Society trade paperback\u00a0and selling it direct to the readers which brought in $150,000 in the\u00a0space of a few weeks and made their offer look kind of puny by\u00a0comparison. What I wanted to develop was a Superman contract-a contract\u00a0that would have been fair to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster-where DC could\u00a0pick the revenue thresholds, but at some point we would split all\u00a0revenues 50-50 just as is done with syndicated comic strips. No go. They\u00a0made a final offer to give me the whole $100,000 all at once or half now\u00a0and half later on which, to me, completely missed the point. You start\u00a0with a dollar amount and negotiate upward, you don’t say “You can put it\u00a0all in your right front pocket or you can put half in your right front\u00a0pocket and half in your back pocket.” When I realized that Paul Levitz\u00a0wasn’t going to budge, I packed it in.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:<\/strong>\u00a0Now that Cerebus is done are you more open to selling it?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> No, not really. The difficult part is done now-actually writing\u00a0and drawing the 6,000 pages so it’s more like it’s nice that the book\u00a0still keeps us busy, me with answering the mail and Ger doing the\u00a0business side and renovating the house and both of us working on\u00a0Following Cerebus and developing a website for selling the artwork and\u00a0putting together a First Half package of the first six volumes in a\u00a0boxed set for Christmas, 2006. If we sold it we’d just have a pile of\u00a0money and nothing to do. I really like being one of the two Cerebus\u00a0custodians. Part of the fun of sculpting a statue over twenty-six years\u00a0is spending the rest of your life washing the pigeon droppings off of it\u00a0every day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Note: Following Cerebus is a magazine that Dave and Gerhard work on.\u00a0You can find more info about it here: http:\/\/spectrummagazines.bizland.com\/<\/a>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamie:\u00a0<\/strong>I understand that since Cerebus ended, you are now organizing your\u00a0archives and this will likely take another few years. What do you plan\u00a0to do with your archives when you are done?<\/p>\n

Dave Sim:<\/strong> Actually I have a lot of help from the Cerebus Newsgroup\u00a0readers at Yahoo.com who are working out all the computer technicalities\u00a0and Margaret Liss of the www.cerebusfangirl.com<\/a> website who has\u00a0started scanning in all of my notebooks. After that it will be all of my\u00a0comics material starting with my first fanzine in 1970 through until the\u00a0present day, all of the paperwork and correspondence, interviews,\u00a0reviews, etc. in chronological order. As she scans that, she’ll be\u00a0“key-wording” each document so that it can be indexed for content and\u00a0you’ll be able to type in, say, “Kevin Eastman” and it will call up\u00a0every document that mentions him. The idea is to arrive at a point where\u00a0that becomes the primary research resource for Cerebus. Someone wanting\u00a0to do an interview like this, I can just go through and check off the\u00a0questions that they can find answers to in the Cerebus Archive so that I\u00a0don’t have to keep answering the same questions over and over and over.\u00a0Basically the same thing that I did with the Guide to Self-Publishing\u00a0where I went out and promoted self-publishing through the Spirits of\u00a0Independence stops for a couple of years and then wrote down everything\u00a0I had been telling people and now I can just give them a copy of the\u00a0Guide to Self-Publishing if they come to me for advice. I almost never\u00a0get asked about self-publishing anymore for that reason.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This interview was originally published in July, 2007. With Dave the first thing many people think about is his controversial views. I read his writing in issue #186 and his Tangents series as well. I must admit, when I first thought about interviewing Dave I had envision getting him in room and going after him like a pissed off Mike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,61,130,36,34,14,32,71,100],"tags":[161,159,157,162,78,158,164,163,160,165,88],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectortimes","category-conventions","category-creator-rights","category-creators","category-dc","category-graphic-novels","category-history","category-humor","category-interview","tag-cerebus","tag-conan","tag-dave-sim","tag-deni-lambert","tag-doug-wright-awards","tag-gene-day","tag-gerhard","tag-harry-kremer","tag-howard-the-duck","tag-margaret-liss","tag-paul-levitz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jamiecoville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}