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That actually made me smile. Way to go Dave.

You got #34, Rich got #33, and I got #19 — http://www.savagecritic.com/uncategorized/sure-happy-to-help-plug-cerebus-in-hell-when-you-do-it-like-this/ — Where are all of the rest?!?!

-B

Wow, so jealous!

http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/2016/06/cerebus-in-hell-retailer-exclusives.html

It’s in Cerebus In Hell #0

Needs more Girard.

So Rich, after you nagged us to cover this unsourced story it turns out you had transcribed the issue number wrong.

IF this is not a metaphor for the entire state of Comics Journo nothing is.

Sure, Dave’s views may be a big part of the problem, but I think the biggest reason Cerebus doesn’t get as talked about among the “great comics runs” is because its out of print, and can only be found in beat-up phone book copies on Amazon.

American Flagg gets overlooked for much of the same reason. Hopefully Sim can strike a deal with IDW or some other publisher to get Church and State into the really handsome collection it deserves. It’s a towering achievement.

Dave actually drew and lettered Cerebus throughout TMNT 8 (he was not involved in the cover). It’s actually pretty cool to see these characters drawn by their creators interacting seamlessly in the same panels.

As for Cerebus being out of print, only the first two volumes were for a time (not any longer). Diamond should have them all available for order, with the first two being recently remastered (from original art, where possible) and looking better than they ever have.

Kyle: AMERICAN FLAGG *is* in print, and has been since… ’08, I think?

Jason: No, there was at least one point where either six or eight of the CEREBUS phonebooks were entirely unavailable from the marketplace. Checking Diamond right now CHURCH & STATE 1, READS and RICK’S STORY are all OOS.

-B

“How long does it take to get out of the cesspool political situation we live in..?”

How long will it take to repeal women’s suffrage, Mr Sim? How about never, ever, not in a million years (thank God), which is fine with me.

I don’t buy Dave Sim comics for the same reason I don’t watch Mel Gibson movies or vote (in the Hugos) for Theodore Beale-sponsored novels. Plurality in art and society are fine things, but I draw the line at funding (to borrow a phrase from Alan Moore) “bad craziness”.

“It’s also, from about the halfway point on, a bit of a trudge through all kinds of religious and philosophical diatribes.”

That’s a nice way to put it. “Unreadable” is the word I’d use.

But then, Claremont’s X-Men also became unreadable after 10 years, so Sim isn’t the only talented creator to falter. He also isn’t the only one to subscribe to bizarre right-wing philosophies. (Hello, Steve Ditko and Frank Miller.)

Sim is not a right wing extremist. He has his own belief system which isn’t easily categorized. I reject a lot of his thinking, but he came up with it on his own. He’s a true original.

“A true original” he may be, Heidi (as in, probably a good thing there aren’t too many of those running around), but as I understand it, he fully represents the Canadian version of a Rupert Murdoch media devotee. I’ve read comments from Canadians that a lot of the BS he slings about the current state of world affairs are preoccupations lifted straight from Murdoch’s international lie factory. Not to say those are the only things he believes or thinks about (the religious tenets he preaches are a whole other ball of wax), but I don’t think it’s wrong to call him right wing while he’s calling everyone with a remotely liberal bent “Marxists”.

Dave really is one of the most brilliant comic creators ever. Cerebus brought so much to comics and it still has so much hasn’t been utilized in other books. It’s an amazing achievement. THAT SAID, he’s a bit crazy. He was really, really influential to me, right around the time he went off the deep end. I remember Dave’s descent into wherever he is now, and thinking how I can see flaws of feminism, but there’s no way to be a part of society and follow that philosophy (I was about 15-16, so I was pretty impressionable, yet he still lost me). I remember how he called his ‘friends’ out, like Jeff Smith and said Jeff was ruled by his wife. Colleen Doran got similar treatment in the same issue. Dave gets cred for being an original, but man, he’s just an asshole who doesn’t know how the world works anymore. Tragic that his talent can’t be put to better use.

“A true original”? Sim’s corpus is grand but it’s not unique: Herge worked on Tintin for 50 years, as did Schultz on Peanuts, while Osamu Akimoto’s ‘Kochikame’ has been running since 1976 and Takao Saito’s ‘Golgo 13′ longer still. None of them ever called for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, either — Herge actually grew *less* conservative as he aged.

I tell you, Gerhard had absolutely the right idea, cutting ties and walking away from the crazy.

Oliver come on…my “true original” is in reference to Sim’s style and subject matter not just his longevity.

Creative genius is often married to mental struggle — from quirkiness to insanity. It’s how things are.

Sequential is IOS only? Ouch.

I was wondering why I did not have Sequential installed, but Bill is right, it appears to be iOS only. It’s their decision on how to allocate resources, but it seems to be an unnecessarily self-inflicted wound to not have an Android app. It can’t be that hard to whip one up, I would think.

[…] Tweet […]

“what WAS that Audio Cerebus thing anyway?”

There’s a digital version of Cerebus, at least High Society where Dave Sim reads out all the text of the comic all done the voices of the various characters. He does a pretty good job of the majority of characters.

Is this guy always so dramatic? So basically, to make a living, he’s doing work-for-hire and selling his art. Wasn’t that always an option? Why’d he have to basically threaten to shuffle off and die in the dark to do it? People do it all the time.

” you can’t ignore the only 6,000 page graphic novel forever, I don’t think but it has been ignored for twenty years and there’s no sign of it being paid attention to.”

Eh. I tried the first CEREBUS phone book and was underwhelmed. A lot of folks talk about how great it gets later on, but…

1. Why should I invest time in something like that when there’s so much great stuff out there which doesn’t require me to wade through the merely okay?

2. Much of the praise of CEREBUS is that it becomes so artistically/creatively interesting and not that it’s a really outstanding piece of entertainment.

Dave Sim seems like a great example in comics that everyone needs and editor and that doing high quality work isn’t enough in and of itself. You have to do stuff people actually want to read.

Mike

@MBunge Cerebus is one of the few comics that successfully self published -for 300 issues no less. An amazing feat unequalled by anybody. It’s a testament to both it’s artistic and “stuff people actually want to read” (as you put it lol) appeal.

“Cerebus is one of the few comics that successfully self published -for 300 issues no less.”

Where’s the money? I mean, maybe Dave Sim lived life like a rap star with a posse and gold chains and “makin’ it rain” at the strip club every Friday night, but that’s not the impression I got. The impression I get is that Sim spend a long time publishing a comic that relatively few people read and which isn’t proving to be a perennial best seller in the trade market.

Mike

Well, actually he was quite a “rapstar/rockstar” back in the day when he was younger:) Cerebus was one the closest things to rock in the comic book industry back then. Considering how many years ago since the last new Cerebus material -and that he and Gerhard have been basically living off that…i don’t know too many examples in the comicbook industry you’ll find that even compares. On the contrary it’s an industry that has a reputation for treating it’s artists abysmally.

“Considering how many years ago since the last new Cerebus material -and that he and Gerhard have been basically living off that”

I’d appreciate it if anyone can correct me, but my impression is that the last few years of producing Cerebus were like the Bataan Death March. The book wasn’t selling. They weren’t making any money off it. They were just bound and determined to see the thing through.

Mike

Most self-publishers would have killed for the the numbers they were getting even towards the end lol Sure all art, indie movies, books, music etc could stop being alternative and go mainstream and make even more money.

“Is this guy always so dramatic?”

Obviously you are not very familiar with Dave Sim.

“Most self-publishers would have killed for the the numbers they were getting even towards the end lol”

1. Do you know what those numbers were?

2. The homeless guy who has to cover himself with newspapers while he sleeps envies the homeless guy who has a refrigerator box to live in. That doesn’t mean the guy living in the cardboard box really has it that good.

You can be as arty and indy as you want. I certainly salute Sim for doing it the way he wanted it done. But we should all understand there can be and often is a big downside to that sort of thing.

Mike

Is Cerebus worth reading/entertaining? I’d place “High Society,” “Church & State,” & “Jaka’s Story” alongside the best comics of the 1980s.

There’s a huge downside to integrity period -for sure. But considering that Dave lives in one of the nicest neighborhoods there is in what is probably a million dollar home all paid for….he’s hardly homeless.

@MBunge: Don’t even bother “wading through,” then. The second, third, and fourth Cerebus phonebooks (“High Society,” “Church & State I,” “Church & State II”) are some of the finest comics I’ve ever read (yes, as pure entertainment, not merely as political statement or creative curiosity), and you won’t be lost by skipping the Conan pastiche that the book started out as.

@MBunge: “Do you know what those numbers were?”

Plucking a random issue from the Comichron archives, #287 (just over a year before the end) sold 6805 copies through Diamond, which would usually put it around position 200-250 on the sales chart. That’s at a level better than most lower tier Image/Dark Horse/IDW/Dynamite/etc. books.

As many have above have said, High Society, Church and State and Jaka’s Story are all high water marks in comics, both from an artistic and entertainment standpoint. Essential reading for any fan of the art. We’re talking something like issues 26-136 or so.

Things started getting a bit wonky with Melmoth. The artistry was still there, but it got a bit dry.

Picked up nicely again with the next plotline, Flight, which began to unveil much of the backstory Sim had been teasing us with for 150 issues. That plotline (along with Women, Reads and Minds) took us through issue 200 whereupon the “plot” portion of Cerebus was basically done.

Sadly around issue 186 Sim went on an anti female rant, declaring women to be “voids” consuming the substance of the masculine or something like that., that caused him to sever ties with many of his allies in the industry, most notably Jeff “Bone” Smith. Smith and his wife appears in that very issue, thinly disguised. This was around the time that Sim had a religious conversion.

The last 100 issues are gorgeous to look at, but difficult to read. Things hit a low-point in Latter Days when Cerebus spends 20 issues or so reading the Torah with his acolytes the Stooges while ranting about Woody Allen (I kid you not.)

I really wonder how Cerebus would have ended if Sim had written the ending when he was in his 20′s. The Sim who wrote High Society was not the same Sim who wrote Latter Days.

Y’know, for someone who’s gone on and about the dangers of the feminization of males in modern society, Sim is just a huge drama queen.