Random Thoughts

Cerebus Archive (2009) #1-18 by Dave Sim

This is the next-to-last post in this blog series, but the final post will have to wait a couple weeks while I wait for some missing issues to arrive…

Not that this (re-)reading is complete: I apparently forgot to buy issues #4-6 while the series was new, and these issues are impossible to find now. Issue #5 was apparently when the series went to Print On Demand (because of low sales), and the POD company used by Sim, Comixpress shut down in 2013. Sim didn’t take the series over to some other POD service for reasons unknown to me, so I’m guessing I’ll never be able to read #4-6. Which is fine.

(Googling for the issues aren’t easy, either, since Sim reused the name “Cerebus Archive” for a later portfolio series…)

But let’s have a look at the 15 issues I do have.

The series is called “Cerebus Archives”, but it’s really the story of Sim’s attempts at becoming a comics pro — and we start when he’s 16 and has apparently convinced Harry Kremer to publish a fanzine. This is how the first issue starts — there’s no explanation what this fanzine is, or what Sim’s role in it is (editor?), or anything.

And as we can see, Sim’s art chops are pretty typical for a sixteen-year-old. And like many teenagers, he’d worked out some pretty complex visions of how he was going to become famous — this was apparently a take on Uncle Sam, and what he envisioned as becoming the new Canadian symbol — a beaver.

Is “How’s Your Beaver?” really that over the top? Hm…

Er… no? That David Frum’s mother was liberal isn’t even ironic in the Alanis Morisette meaning of the word. As is often the case with Sim, stuff like this leaves you scratching your head — he’s going for “sage speaker of truths” and ends up as “nonsensical but smarmy”.

Sim was submitting stories to lots of places (Warren, Charlton, etc), and some of these were illustrated by others — we get them all here (well, the ones Sim still have). This seems like a very thorough archive project… but a Sim archive, not a Cerebus archive.

Gene Day was Sim’s idol, so we get a lot of mail from Day to Sim (annotated for this publication).

Sim includes the John Byrne-penned cover for a fanzine as an illustration of just how bad the aesthetics of some editors are (the pink/green is indeed pretty bizarre). “Your one-stop shopping outlet for Dave Sim self-degradation” is a good tag line, though, but it makes me wonder — is Sim really so ashamed of these old things, or is he hamming it up?

Some of these old strips aren’t that bad, really. But mostly when Sim manages to come up with a story to match his limited rendering skills.

But I guess things like this are really, really embarrassing — he was submitting covers to Marvel, and jokes to Playgirl, all of them rejected, of course. But hey, teenagers are teenagers.

Even Charlton was rejecting him. That must have hurt.

Like I said, I don’t have issues #4-6, so we skip ahead to #7 — and this (and the rest) are Print On Demand issues, because sales had slipped so low that Diamond no longer wanted to carry the book. I’m guessing that’s why Sim stopped doing Cerebus on the covers, even though there was no Cerebus material inside — he no longer had to trick people into buying the book on the stands.

It also means that these books don’t lie flat, which is sooo annoying (Note To Editor: Insert Homer Picture Here). Even after spending a decade in a shortbox, the issues still bulge.

The printing from Comixpress seems fine, though…

And Sim’s artwork improves by leaps and bounds (but he’s 20 by now, I think).

Sim tries his best at doing editorial cartoons, and he really nails it. By that I mean that’s it’s dreadfully tedious, just like professional editorial cartoons.

And that’s rather a thing with all of Sim’s comics here — they just aren’t actually funny. Which is surprising for a teenager — they’re usually brimming with gags and bits, and some of them are sometimes even funny. But he’s doing all of this stuff like he’s an old man, which is pretty odd.

Sim reprints the Oktoberfest comic he managed to get Kremer to finance in full. It’s a riff on a Carl Barks story, and as Sim notes, it was badly thought out as a concept. (And it’s not very good.)

And it didn’t sell.

Uhm… why is it creepy moving into an apt previously occupied by your sister’s boyfriend?

We finally get something that’s tangentially related to Cerebus! It’s Sim’s Ali Baba story, and Sim notes how much he unconsciously recirculated from this story in the first Cerebus issue.

Sim, of course, finds a lot of portents in what he’s written, since it involves Christian/Muslim/Judaic stuff (and he would make his own syncretic religion some decades later).

“And ‘The Fire Jewels of Shem… … are now just ‘The Fire Gems’. Like I say, interesting.” Er… is this a reference to Shemp in the three Stooges? Sheshep, Cerebus’ son? It can be hard to tell whatever weird things Sim is making connections — Sim really uses that smarmy tone so well.

This bit was moderately interesting — Sim prints two versions of the same strip, one drawn by himself, and one by Gene Day.

Sim touches on one of his beliefs — that writing a comic book about something can make it come true, I think?

Eh… uhm… Yes, Anne Rice created goths, not Siouxsie Sioux, Bauhaus, The Cure or anybody… Very few people know this!

As the series progresses, the texts become more digressive — here Sim goes on about how horrific it is to demand a certain percentage of women in the Afghanistan parliament, because that would mean that you dictate the outcome of elections. Sim is apparently unaware that in many countries you vote for a party, and not specific people, so the mix of people you end up with depends on the mix of people nominated by the parties.

Finally! An aardvark! Sim seems to be saying that drawing this aardvark (from a T. Casey Brennan) later led Deni Loubert’s brother (I think) to come up with “aardvark” as half of the “Aardvark-Vanaheim” company name through mystical means? A simpler explanation might be that the brother had seen this strip, or that Sim had mentioned it, perhaps.

Anyway.

Brennan sure lays it on thickly.

Sim continues his “comics sure are dangerous” thing:

Er, OK. I’m guessing T. Casey Brennan only had himself to thank for whatever happened to him.

But we’re getting closer to Dave meeting Deni!

It’s such a momentous meeting that Sim actually draws it. Nice!

But we’re now solidly into autobio territory, and not so much a “Cerebus Archive” or even a “Dave Sim Archive”. It’s pretty self indulgent. But on the other hand, this is a Print On Demand book with (I’m sure) tens and tens of readers, so why not? Not more self indulgent than writing a blog series about this series, you say?

Sim does his best to keep the tension up.

But like I said, it gets less and less… er… relevant.

And it grows uglier and more amateurish, so I flipped to the indicia, and it seems like Sandeep Atwal, who was doing the layouts, has now left, and Sim is doing the layouts himself, which explains a lot — nobody has ever accused Sim of having sensible aesthetics.

Anyway, Sim wanted to do some research into the place he had been living at the time, so Sim sends a letter to his old address and recounts the story of how he went to a party at his landlord’s place (the landlord was gay and also named “Dave”). In the letter he describes how his landlord was into S&M, apparently, and perhaps tried to come onto Sim (who made an exit instead).

Which is a totally normal thing to send to somebody unknown, I guess? Anyway, the letter was returned.

Then he says how the landlord killed himself the next day, but Sim reassures us that it probably wasn’t because he was too heartbroken over having been turned down by Sim.

That’s a relief!

This series is a whopping eighteen issues, so you’d think he’d reach Cerebus #1, but he keeps on yapping on about whatever is on his mind, so it’s not looking good.

Aargh! Sandeep! Come back! The book looks ever more amateurish…

Finally, some more comics — and they’re drawn by Fabio Gasbarri, and they look really interesting. The first story is about a rock star that gets killed at a concert, and the audience laps it up.

Sim seems to imply that this story was the reason John Lennon was killed? Or is he just Asking The Questions? I mean, the story was ‘”asking for trouble” on higher planes of existence’, and the timeline pans out, so I guess it’s an open and shut case.

We get a number of Beavers strips, and this is generally the level of funniness.

He did, of course, have well thought out reasons for doing jokes about Gordon Sinclair — it was an iron clad plan to become rich and famous.

Finally! Cerebus!

But it’s Cerebus the fanzine, and not Cerebus #1.

But this is kinda interesting — Sim tried to create a logo for “Aardvark-Vanaheim” and failed, so he did an Aardvark mascot instead.

Two interesting things here — at a party, he started making out with Deni’s 17 year old sister, but had no recollection of how that could have happened (and he notes how out of character for him forgetting was). But — on the same page here, he is continuing the story of how he sent a fake invoice to a newspaper for the Beavers strip. The newspaper sent back a letter saying “what the fuck is this?!”, and Sim can’t explain why he did that, either.

Kudos to Sim for including stuff like this, though.

In the final issue, we get a longer Beavers story that had been run by Star*Reach in Quack…

… and then the series ends like this: With a promise of more to come. The last issue says “February 2012”. Comixpress (who printed Cerebus Archive) went out of business in 2013, so I’m guessing that’s not the reason Sim cancelled Cerebus Archive. But Sim ended Glamourpuss in late 2012, so perhaps he stopped Cerebus Archive at the same time, because he was just fed up with everything?

Ah, yes:

Yes: this IS the last issue of glamourpuss… As soon as I saw the sales on the first issue – 16,000 – I knew that the title and my career were doomed.

[…]

I pulled the plug first on Cerebus Archive, then on Cerebus TV and then on glamourpuss. Not really saying anything to anyone, just walking away and starting my Doomsday Scenario — selling my Cerebus original artwork as slowly as possible, and looking at ways to liquidate the Cerebus Archive itself, up to and including just sending all of it to a landfill site or paying 1-800-GOT-JUNK to haul it all away, selling the house, liquidating the last of my RRSPs and my life insurance policy and just… disappearing.

Reader, he did not disappear.

But I’ve been unable to find any review of Cerebus Archive on the net? Am I the only one who’s read it?

And now I’m free! Free! For a couple of weeks, and then I have to read and post about Glamourpuss (which is *sigh* 26 issues). See you then.

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.

Cerebus in Hell? (2016) by Dave Sim and others

I was going to do Glamourpuss today, but then it turned out that I’m missing issues #2-7… so I’ve ordered those, because after re-reading #1, I’m kinda interested in seeing how those early issues developed.

So you’re getting a brief post about Cerebus in Hell? instead… and I don’t have all of those, either. I’ve only got three issues, and there’s been at least 80 issues of that thing. But I’m not buying those! There are limits for what I’m willing to subject myself to, even for a stupid blog series like this.

But let’s have a peek.

So, Sim got RSI after trying to draw like Alex Raymond for several years (it turns out to be really hard), and he didn’t see a doctor about it. Not that there’s necessarily anything a doctor can do with hand injuries like that, but there are treatments that can be helpful for some people. Sim negotiated all this at length on various internet fora, and if I remember correctly, he alternately seemed to take it as a sign from god that he should stop whatever he was doing, to allowing some fans to set up an appointment with doctors in… Texas? But he denied them access to his medical records, because he didn’t want them to be tainted by other doctors’ opinions, or something. I may be misremembering! And it’s not that this is necessarily the wrong approach or anything! Lots of doctors are pretty bad at what they do? So I understand the scepticism… but anyway, here we are, and where we are is here:

Oops, sideways? Yes, the entire issue is sideways. Let me fix that for you:

Sim helpfully recaps the Cerebus series…

… and then the rest of the book (and the series, I think?) is basically this: Sim’s assistant, Sandeep Atwal, scanned the Doré illustrations from the Dante, and then they have Cerebus in a few poses as clip art to superimpose over the drawings.

And then there are jokes. And the jokes are all pretty bad?

I’ve only got three issues, and while you’d perhaps expect a lot of political jokes, it’s mostly just pretty lame gags based on the setting. Except for this #aarvarklivesmatter bit.

Sim was renowned for his funny bits in Cerebus, but this just isn’t funny, I think? And it’s an annoying format: You have to turn the book to read the text up in the heading (and I guess if this was an online strip, that’d be the hover text).

The Big Bang Theory dis is solid. Now that’s humour!

They acknowledge that the idea for this came from Wondermark. The difference is that Wondermark can be very funny, and is visually more interesting.

And after three issues of this, I was “nope; I’m out”.

Cerebus in Hell? was refashioned into a series of #1s — all parodying various comic book covers, but with interiors that are supposed to still resemble this stuff?

Like this.

Atwal disappeared from the production after a while, but a number of other people have stepped up to co-write the book (as well as doing the production, if I understand correctly).

Some people like it:

I love this comic because it showcases how funny Cerebus is just by being an amoral jerk aardvark. His obstinate nature creates chaos and reacts to the absurd situations he’s put into in Hell, and the resulting reactions by Virgil and Dante to his asshole nature are funny.

And there has to be more than a few, because otherwise how could they publish nearly a hundred of these? There’s even reprint volumes! In softcover and hardcover!

Not much of a rating at Goodreads, though.

It’s hard to find reviews:

And after two issues of this, I’m like… this has been a very interesting bus ride, overall, and I’m glad I was on it for so long, despite everything, and now I am getting off the bus.

Some people are less than impressed and find the whole project to be a scam:

And with each one-shot, tries to parody some aspect of comics and comics history in its cover and name, hoping to get some confused sales along the way along with a new issue number one. And, drop by drop, destroying what remains of his creative reputation. Maybe it’s not too late to turn it around? He’s doing signed versions as well now for an extra $11.

Well, that’s nice…

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.

Following Cerebus (2004) #1-11 edited by Craig Miller, John Thorne and Dave Sim

What’s this then? Isn’t this a blog series about Renegade Press and Aardvark-Vanaheim, and isn’t this series published by Win-Mill Productions? Well, yes and yes, but: It’s presented as being “co-produced” by Aardvark-Vanaheim, and it’s basically another venue for Sim to spout off on whatever he wanted.

This was the original ad, and the value proposition was “Here’s the critical question: Is Dave guilty of presenting the second half of the story in such a way that is says about the first half, ‘Just kidding’?”

My guess is that Sim wanted to control the critical response, so he co-opted Following Cerebus — he’s doing the covers, and provides seemingly unlimited access for interviews etc.

I was reading The Paris Review yesterday, and this comment by Louise Glück was striking in this context:

This is not Sim’s approach, to put it mildly. What’s on the page is seldom what Sim meant, and he’ll go on at length at any chance to explain what it was that he meant, and how marxist-feminist-homosexualist it is of everybody to just not get it. This led first to him including extensive backmatter explaining what he meant to have put on the page, and then for him to do things like this:

Explaining in-text what the motivations of the characters are while they’re having conversations, and so on, making everything a chore to read.

So co-opting Following Cerebus makes total sense — it’s another way to insist on shaping how Cerebus should be read and interpreted. You see the same thing with A Moment of Cerebus, which has this masthead:

But where Sim posts his bible readings every week, and does weekly video and phone calls, and virtually all of the rest of the posts are about hawking Sim’s wares to his fans.

Anyway! Let’s have a look at Following Cerebus — even if I’m not going to actually re-read it. I read it back when it was new, and I think that suffices…

The publishers explain how this book came to be.

The reproduction of most of the artworks in the first issue is really horrifying. It looks like the printer took some colour JPEG thumbnails and blew them up.

And as you’d expect with something that involves Dave Sim, he writes most of the text himself. Here he explains how he won a Harvey Award — it’s because the Fantagraphics vote was split. (Which might even be accurate, for all I know.)

There aren’t really any pieces in Following Cerebus that are critiques, really — it’s mostly texts from Sim, and then a few scattered explorations of various things in Cerebus — like this article that gives an overview of all the instances of “something fell”, and what they might mean. (Sim then chimes in and says that that’s a pretty nerdy thing to do, and that people are making to much of a surface level detail like that. (I’m paraphrasing.))

There’s a Gerhard interview, and then another article about Gerhard and fishing in a later issue, but there’s not a lot of Gerhard material here.

Which is a shame, because some of this is pretty interesting — like how he used 3D software to lay out some of the interiors.

The editors tip-toe around the issue of whether they should be publishing somebody with such, er, controversial opinions as Sim, without really stating it outright…

We’re told that we’d be getting many shorter strips like this from other creators — but we only get two, I think?

For the first couple of issues, we get ads for Win-Mill’s other publications, but that stopped — space issues?

The few articles that are about the Cerebus comic book mostly follow this format: First you get the article itself…

… and then they as Sim what he thinks about it all. It makes sense, but it gives Sim the last word on everything, which gets feeling rather claustrophobic after a few issues.

Sim explains why it’s necessary to add so much backmatter to explain what the comic book is “really” about — “none of my ideas were getting through, just the emotional cosmetics, the entertainment gloss”. He doesn’t then go that extra step to “perhaps I’m not really good at getting his ideas across”; it’s all the fault of the feminist readers.

And more along those lines — he’d meant the readers to consider that both Mrs. Thatcher and Jaka (in that interaction) might have a point, and was disappointed when everybody was on Jaka’s side. Now, Mrs. Thatcher had several of Jaka’s friends killed and/or tortured, and had Jaka tied up in a dungeon (I think; it’s been a couple years since I read that issue), and then Sim is disappointed that readers aren’t both-sidesing it? “Yes… certainly Thatcher is a murderous lunatic, but she brings up some good points.” Annotations to the rescue, apparently.

We get some old interview Sim did with some influences back in the early 70s, and these do indeed seem to be pretty appropriate for a Cerebus fanzine.

And they apparently got Fantagraphics to take out an ad?

And we get a reprint of one old lost Cerebus story, which is nice.

And on the “Sim has the last word” tip — each issue has a column called “About Last Issue” where Sim gets to comment on all the contents of the previous issue, and “correct” things, I guess. The later devolves into a sort of “About Last About Last Issue” where Sim comments on his previous column…

One of the other fanzines published by Win-Mill was about Buffy The Vampire Slayer, so the editors have Sim commenting a picture from Buffy — it’s a fun idea, but Sim seems to take it a bit too seriously.

For one issue, we get three different parody covers. Sim would return to this theme later with the parody covers for the Cerebus In Hell? series.

Sim explains that Peter Porker, Spider-Ham was definitely a dig at Cerebus and not somebody at Marvel coming up with a groan-worthy joke and then put Elmer Fudd into a costume. And that’s not all: Sim states that his Wolveroach is better remembered than Spider-Ham.

We get an entire issue mostly devoted to copyright issues, which is pretty pertinent for Cerebus (as Sim says he’s letting Cerebus into the public domain after he dies).

Remember those Buffy images? Yeah, Sim is an expert at mind reading people from images — at length. And here he was writing about how women are mind readers!

We get one issue that’s all about Will Eisner, and… er… Eisner was a Sim influence, so I guess that’s somewhat relevant for a Cerebus fanzine.

We get one issue that’s all about editing and stuff, and it’s all Sim interviewing various people about what feedback they get on their works. Some of it’s pretty interesting, but some of it’s pretty odd — like here when Sim is adding in-text annotations to his interview with Eisner.

It’s not all the people you’d expect, either — like Craig Thompson.

T. Casey Brennan was possible the Alan Moore of the 70s, apparently.

Remember that Thompson interview? In the next issue, Sim (of course) comments on that in his About Last Issue column, and displays a perhaps not very surprising degree of angst about the idea of calling Art Spiegelman on the phone.

They finally get Sim to watch an episode of Buffy, and he writes a review (he felt that it wasn’t very good)…

… but the most amusing part is the article about the review, where Sim tries to shame the editors about watching a “chick show”, and then them explaining that it’s OK since it’s really an “anti-feminist feminist” show.

By this point, Sim has taken over the book almost completely, and we just get what he wants to put in. So he’s commissioned Roberta Gregory to do a strip about Cerebus, which she’s happy to do.

Heh heh, Sim is going to blow his gasket over that “just because YOU can’t get laid” line, even though she walks away from it immediately.

I think this bit is her point about Cerebus: Sim sees what he expects to see.

Chester Brown, Seth and Joe Matt do a jam comic. (Joe Matt then writes about why it didn’t work — because Seth didn’t want to do it, and his panel (the third one) totally derailed it.

Sim uses his amazing interpretive powers to deduce that Sarah Michelle Gellar was worrying about being old in this picture, but fortunately Sim can reassure her that she’s not. Phew!

The ninth issue is a Neal Adams special, which, er… It’s 104 pages long, and it’s all a moment by moment recounting of a day Sim spent with him in Niagara. (All text written by Sim.)

It’s got some interesting stuff — like this thing where Neal Adams got twice as many colours for DC Comics by making a phone call. That Sol Harrison guy sounds like an ass.

But we also get an introduction to Adams’ theory about how the Earth is growing. How come insects were so big in the olden days? Because Earth was smaller, and gravity was smaller! Makes sense to me! And how about how all the continents fit together? Isn’t that just continental drift? Nope; it’s because the Earth is increasing in size like a balloon, and matter is being created at the Earth’s center.

Sim’s response can be summed up as “great, great”.

But we do get something that’s slightly relevant to Cerebus — a handful of pages about where Sim ripped off Adams drawings.

Next issue we get a response from Sim, as well as the letter he sent her. It turns out that Sim had been on a comp list for Bitchy Bitch all these years — I’m guessing that Gregory didn’t know, and it was just a prank by somebody at Fantagraphics because they’d assume he’d hate the book (which he didn’t) — and consequently Sim had put Gregory on the comp list for Cerebus (but she apparently never read the issues).

Sim is incensed! But he keeps his response to two paragraphs (but manages to squeeze in a bit about how misspelling “Tangent” as “Tangents” is deeply indicative of a feminist conspiray), because Gregory said that he used blocks of text as a defensive wall.

Instead we get a Mort Drucker style response where Sim is indeed incensed about the “not getting laid” bit…

… and, er, then we get a wall of text. I especially like the “Continued on page 35” bit at the end.

I think Gregory won that exchange, and she may not even have been aware that it was a competition.

And then we get another issue about dreams.

I don’t have the twelfth issue, which was apparently an “all Dave issue”. Was is published after the publisher, Craig Miller, died?

So… it’s a really weird publication. It seemed to have been planned as a place where writers could write about Cerebus, but it turned almost immediately into a place where Sim could write about anything he wanted. The only pices that seemed particularly relevant to the subject matter were written by the editors — unless I missed something, there were no “third party” articles.

If this was all a gambit on Sim’s part — to shape Cerebus’ post publishing narrative — I don’t think it was all that successful, because all of that was already happening on the Internet, not in a fanzine like this.

Hoo boy… only two more posts to go, which I hope to get to before I go on a short trip to London.

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.

Cerebus Would Tour Book (1995) by Dave Sim and others

OK, just (I think) three more posts to go, and we can put this Renegade Press/Aardvark-Vanaheim blog post series to bed (again).

Cerebus is saying what we’re all thinking.

This book is a sort of promotional tool for the self-publishers tour Sim was arranging around this time, and I’m guessing he also sold it at the tour?

The book basically just reprints the extras from the Swords of Cerebus series, which is nice, I guess. I mean, Cerebus fans no longer had to pick up that series just to get the extras. But it also illustrates the slightly odd situation Cerebus readers were in (and still are in, I guess, if there still are any Cerebus readers): It’s rather hard to read the complete Cerebus odyssey. The collected editions collect almost the entire main series, but then the… four? missing issues are collected in Cerebus Zero, and then there’s this. And there’s more Cerebus stories by Sim floating around out there.

But I guess it didn’t seem urgent to issue a nice fat collection of this material (it must be 150-200 pages?) at the time, and now there’s no interest.

Most of the extras from Swords of Cerebus were collaborations, but this one’s drawn fully by Barry Windsor Smith.

But! Then there’s new material! 19 pages of it. And it’s a jam strip by Dave Sim and Chester Brown. 19 pages!

I’m not sure what storyline there is here, but it looks kinda interesting, at least.

And you can play the “which panel is by Sim and which by Brown” game.

And this is how it ends.

I don’t think this has been reprinted anywhere…

And as expected, there’s a text from Sim at the end where he gives some credits, and as usual, there’s some unexpected gossip: Marshall Rogers was Deni Sim’s lover for a time?

Sim explains how the Chester Brown jam came to be, and they apparently did it one panel at a time, mostly via mail? Huh.

Hero Illustrated reckons that the book is a good buy.

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.