I read the first two Cerebus graphic novels back in the early nineties. I thought “hmm, a bit uneven, but promising”. I did not notice any unusual hostilty towards women. I then forgot about him for about a decade, as I don’t much like the combination of long written work/comic book narrative. I still kind of liked his support for other artists and the importance he placed on owning the rights to your work.
When I heard Cerebus had reached #300 (the end) I thought, “Hey, thats a pretty big work, I should go get some of the Cerebus phone books and catch up”. So I looked for him online, and I found the Onion A.V. club interview.
I apologize. I was trying to create a link, and ended up posting instead. I was just going to mention that the interview had such a an angry and defensive quality that now I am not sure if I should look into his work further. He uses the phrase “raised to be women” like it is a bad thing, but I could not find out exactly what his points of argument are. I remember liking his early work, and wanted to like the rest of it, but I am not sure I want to bring home 300 issues of anger. I also see I misspelled his name in the OP, due to my mis-link problem. Am I missing some backstory here? 
He’s the link to The Onion’s A.V. Club website. The Dave Sim interview is a “feature”, so I suspect it’ll eventually be archived…
Interesting article. I really don’t know much, if anything, about Sim, besides the fact that he’s the man behind Cerebus. (Which I’ve never read, but have often considering checking out.) But he does sound somewhat defensive. Since he seems to have a problem with leftists (I may be putting that mildly, based on the interview), he may have been expecting to have to defend himself, being interviewed by someone from The Onion.
Anyhoo, I can’t wait to read what everyone else has to say about Sim, Cerebus, “Tangent”, The Onion, feminism, the “left”, and anything else this thread sparks discussion about. Bring it on!
Speaking as someone who has read, re-read, put down, come back to, and digested every single word Sim has ever put down, either in graphic or in essay or in missive form in Cerebus, believe me when I say I have no fucking clue. Some of his work is brilliant. It’s emotionally charged, well-conceived and written, and satisfying on a deep level. Sometimes, however, it’s right fucking paranoid and vicious. That’s what makes him interesting, I suppose - the fact that he’s so very skilled and so very different and original.
But Christ almighty, is the guy ever a lonely, paranoid, borderline-insane prick.
He has always struck me as someone who desperately wishes he had all the answers, and who desperately wishes that everyone acknowledge that he has all the answers, but who ultimately knows that he’s not nearly as intelligent as he wants to be. So instead, he’s bitter.
He’s a misogynist, but he’d rather think that he’s merely anti-feminism. He’s invented a personal Dave Sim religion that he finds intellectually superior to the religions of the rabble (read Cerebus for a more detailed treatment.) He’s become supposedly immune to emotion, yet his life’s work fairly DRIPS with it.
The guy’s a big ball of confusion.
But, Lord, I love his work. Can’t help it.
I’m not a Dave Sim fan/follower, but my understanding is that he got out of a long-term relationship with his girlfriend, and ended up just totally pissed at all women in general as a result.
The infamous essay, “Tangents”, has been copyright-waived and can be read online here. It’s quite interesting and espouses faultless logic. Therefore it is true.
It’s kind of interesting that a lot of people - women especially - respond by saying he’s mentally ill, just plain crazy, for his viewpoints. Even after he goes out of his way to say: you can roll your eyes theatrically and huff and sigh and stomp off… “but the hard questions remain”.
Pffft. It espouses faultless logic, but follows from a false assumption, or rather, a set of them - that “all women are emotional creatures,” or more to the point, that men aren’t. Pure blind, wrongheaded foolishness. I’ve seen women on these very boards who can out-logic most intelligent men I’ve ever known, and men who couldn’t follow a logical argument if it were a ten-lane highway.
In his case, he makes willful generalizations, proclaiming them to be iron-clad truth, but is logically impervious to the inescapable fact that if one case can be shown to go against his pet theory, then the theory is blown.
It’s easy to find a logical woman. I’d love to see him get into an argument with, say, Anthracite or Jodi, and see how long his theory survives.
See, it’s ironic that just one truthful anecdote would be enough to bring the whole thing down. Poetic, even, considering his misogyny.
Keep in mind, Sim’s idea of “hard questions” are things like “Are all women really castrating bitches (aka “demons, vipers and scorpions”) who have turned the world from being a male-dominated paradise into the mess it is today?” or “Does the “homosexualist*-feminist axis” try to recruit normal men to be sissy boys?” or “IS there a secret (or overt! :eek: ) conspiracy of “homosexualist-feminists” who are trying to turn REAL men into sissy-boys through laws, drugs (ritalin, for example) or societal pressure?”
Um, Dave, dood? These aren’t hard issues. The answer is “no”. See? Nothing remains. I can’t disprove these things in the same way I can’t disprove Santa Claus. It’s up to you to prove it and you haven’t.
He’s nuts. I’m sorry, but he is. He is a member of the tin-foil hat brigade. Politically, I’m somewhat to the right of him and I still think that he’s nuts. I mean, he can function in society and can hold down a job and all, but he’s still nuts, IMO.
And keep in mind that “Tangents” is his starting point. He’s taken his argument about 2000% further in the same direction since then. Lookit his whole psychotic “Torah” interpretations where there’s a male deity (THE LORD) and a female false-deity (Yahwooh (sp) ) trying to usurp him? Or the bit where he says that Cain was right to kill Abel ‘cause Abel was a homosexualist tryin’ to put the moves on Cain? Or that the Abraham/Isaac story was about Yahwooh trying to piss off THE LORD? Ain’t in my version of the Torah.
Plus, he’s wrong about his own work. I mean objectively wrong. No margin for error. This isn’t a matter of opinion.
I’m gonna spoil the “Going Home” arc, inasmuch as it can be spoiled.
[spoiler]
In “Going Home”, Cerebus and Jaka have finally gotten together after 220 issues. Cerebus has spent the last 3 years (minimum) drunk in a tavern and at least four more years roaming around the continent. And he wants to take Jaka home to meet his parents. She agrees but she’s got a quirk. She wants to buy a new outfit every morning so each morning before they get going, they have to stop at a clothing store so she can shop. But Cerebus has his quirks too–they have to walk. “Carriages are for old people and cripples” (all quotes are paraphrased)
This bugs Cerebus, but he doesn’t say anything. The only time limit he puts on things is to let her know that they have to get over so-and-so pass by such-and-such date or they’ll have to wait until spring.
When it becomes clear that Jaka can’t/won’t make the 15 miles/day schedule that Cerebus wants, Cerebus gets a carriage. He still doesn’t show much more urgency than you would if you didn’t want to be late for a party. I certainly got the impression that if they had to wait 'till spring, no big deal, which is pretty much what Cerebus tells Jaka. And he never lets her know that she’s pissing him off so we don’t know if she’d have tried to change.
They get on a boat and some Cirinists (stereotypical “bull-dykes” (they’re all built like Russian shot-putters) with crossbows who currently control the continent) decide that Cerebus is abusing Jaka. She risks her life to prevent them from killing him. Somewhere around here, the “Going to meet the parents” somehow has morphed into “We’re going to go live with them until they can build a house for us and we’re going to live in this little logging villiage in the middle of nowhere.” There wasn’t any real discussion of this with Jaka.
As they continue, they meet up with a literary hero of Cerebus’s (Ernest Hemmingway, more or less) and Cerebus spends day trying to talk to Hemmingway as they meander slowly to the pass (no urgency from Cerebus here, he’s quite happy to hang with Ernest) Eventually Hemmingway blows his brains out. Cerebus and Jaka run away and get trapped in a blizzard.
About this time, Cerebus mentions that this villiage is hyper-orthodox Tarimite so she’ll have to speak when spoken to, she’ll be a housewife, she’ll be expected to be a good little Tarimite woman. Oh and she should pretend that they’re married. This is kinda news to Jaka, but she still puts up with it. She notes that they don’t have rings and Cerebus tells her that she’s a woman. In a Tarimite village, she should just say “Golly, I don’t know what happened to it. You should ask my husband.” She rolls her eyes and then gets a wicked grin.
While trapped in the tent, Jaka (who’s never experienced any real hardship) kinda freaks and eats the remaining food and uses up the remaining matches. Not admirable but understandible and she’s pretty ashamed of herself after.
Finally, they get to the village and all the doors and shutters are shut tight. No one’s around or outside. Cerebus’s parent’s house is empty. Cerebus seems worried but doesn’t discuss it with Jaka—she’s still under the impression that they’ve moved to a new house or something. Jaka gets an evil grin and takes off a glove, exposing her ringless finger. Finally they find a neighbor who’ll open his door. He notices that Jaka’s finger is bare, tells Cerebus that Cerebus’s father died and it’s the duty of sons to be with their fathers when they die, not hanging out with “harlots” and refuses to show Cerebus where his father’s grave is.
Cerebus walks out on Jaka forever. The end.
Ok. Here’s the thing. Dave Sim thinks this story shows that Jaka is a spoiled princess who was so selfish that she wouldn’t hurry up so that Cerebus could be with his dad when he died.
Um. But the first we (and Jaka) heard about it was the final issue of the arc. If Cerebus was all that concerned with being with his dad, he had 3 years of hanging out in a tavern where he coulda gone. And while granted, it wasn’t the best moment for Jaka to wave her ringless finger around, but since the entire town boarded itself up before Jaka took off her glove (indeed, before they even got into town), so while the gloveless hand may have sealed Cerebus’s fate with the neighbor, Jaka didn’t know that Cerebus’s parents were dead at that moment because Cerebus didn’t tell her. Overall a sad (and overly long–I learned a whole lot more about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemmingway than I really cared to, thanks) story arc. In any case, since we didn’t know (and neither did Jaka or Cerebus) that Cerebus’s dad was sick, let alone died, Jaka can hardly be blamed for not hurrying.
Regardless of what Sim thinks now, the story shows how Cerebus learns that relationships require both compromise and honesty. Cerebus spends most issues hiding his frustration with Jaka’s pace, Jaka’s habits, etc. In other words, he’s learning that relationships are harder than they look.
If Sim had really wanted to tell the “Jaka is a spoiled princess” story, how 'but actually telling it rather than saying in the letter column that that’s what the story is about. [/spoiler]
(I just reread Cerebus 1-300 and that bit really bugged me. Not as much as Sim’s screwball “Torah” commentaries, perhaps, but still.)
Oh, and the ending? Number 300? Where Cerebus
dies and goes to hell? (Note that it is Hell, not heaven. #1. Note that “girly-boy” isn’t there. That’s Ham, not Rick. #2) Lookit Jaka’s hand in the last panel that shows it. It becomes a claw. Also remember from the screwball Torah commentaries that “the light” is “Yahwooh” and anyone who follows “the light” will end up burning and squished inside the sun for all eternity. Ergo, Cerebus goes to Hell. Feh.
It sucked.
Sim said “…the near-death experience. My first question is, who is it I’m seeing, these people, who’ll be making it into Paradise? That’s the assumption, [we all assume we’re going to get into Paradise, especially back when we were all going to church, and so] when you see these people, these are the people you
expect to go into Paradise. But of all the people I know, [all the
people I’ve met in my life,] unless God has set the bar really, really
low where almost anyone can get in, I can’t think of anyone I know who’s
going to get in.”
He goes on to say that if he saw all his buddies waiting for him in afterlife, he’d be sure he’s going to hell.
Apparently that gang o’ people who Cerebus sees at the end of the tunnel of light were there to tempt him into hell. (per Sim, the three people he sees ( Bear, Ham and Jaka) are the people represent the “three most important people to the wrong side of Cerebus.” The side that gets distracted and makes bad choices. He still has a last choice and he choses to be with the people he actually cares about, the only people to whom he’s tried to behave decently to and therefore ends up in hell, rather than going to heaven and spending eternity with “Girly-boy”. Me, I’d rather go to Hell.
< ahem >
Back to the OP. Yes. He’s nuts. I put anyone who believes in ‘huge organized conspiracy that only I can see! You blind fools! Bwhahahaha!’ type stuff in the “nuts” category. There is not a secret (or not so secret) “homosexualist-feminist” cabal out to castrate True-Men. The fact that he believes there is and that they control every thing puts him in the same boat as those who belive in the Illuminati or the Jewish-Masonic cabal or…
Fenris
*his term, not mine. A “homosexualist” is one who practices homosexuality. :rolleyes:
One of the fascinating things about the whole Cerebus experience is that you can feel Sim getting crazier as the issues roll by. I, for one, would like to see how he would treat a story about Oscar Wilde now. I’m betting it wouldn’t be a tenth so sympathetic as it was in Melmoth.
He ain’t crazy, but he has certainly picked up some … interesting… beliefs.
A shame, too. He was one of the original gurus of self-publishing, and made some real breakthroughs in the field.
Agreed. And the other “Oscar” (from Jaka’s Story) was one of the great characters.
On the “Women are the dark, evil, consumers that absorb and posess men and their wisdom” thing what’s weird is that for all that Sim is so whacked out about women, the women are almost the only original characters with depth and personalities.
Cerebus? Obnoxious, stoopid, mean. He’s got a personality but he’s pretty damned shallow.
Elrod? He’s Foghorn Leghorn. Not original.
Lord Julius? Groucho Marx. Not original
The Fleagle Brothers? Yosemite Sam. Not original.
Bear? No personality at all.
Boobah? Ditto.
Lord Keef and Lord Mick? Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Not original.
The Judge? Lou Jacobi. Not original
“Oscar”? Oscar Wilde
The Roach (and varients)-In order: Batman, Captain America, Moon Knight, Superman (“Frostonite!”), a bunch of others in the “wuffa-wuffa-wuffa guy” issue, Sgt Preston, Some priest joke that I didn’t get, Wolverine, normalman, The Punisher, Dream and then Destiny (when he had the book).
I’m not gonna list all the bar cronies from Guys, but they’re all taken from other sources.
Rick (aka “Girley Boy”)? The “Rick” from Jaka’s Story does have a personality. He’s nice, but semi-retarded. That’s about it. The “Rick” from “Guys” is a punching bag who becomes magical for no apparent reason.
Suetenus Po is the one really original major male character–he’s complex, he has depth and he’s in the book for…what? 30 pages? 60 pages out of 6000.
Now the major female characters:
Mrs Thatcher: Duh. Not original.
Red Sophia: Started out as a (very funny) Red Sonja parody but became somewhat more complex as time went on. Certainly reached the same level of “depth” as “Girly-boy”
Jaka: Very complex and multifaceted. She’s tough (she survived dancing in taverns at age 14), caring (when she tried to get Cerebus to leave as Prime Minister), vain (or not. She had an abortion because she didn’t want to lose her figure. BUT, she was also just barely putting food on her and Rick’s table by dancing in a tavern since Rick refused to get a job. A baby would have been a disaster in that situation, especially since she wouldn’t have been able to dance with an infant around.)
Cirin: She’s nuts, but she’s got motivation, she’s smart and she’s ambitious. And she certainly has a personality.
Finally there’s Astoria, who is unique in the entire series since she’s the only character, the ONLY one in the entire 6000 pages who actually grows, changes and learns.
For someone who thinks women are anti-creative monsterous voids who consume and devour male creativity, he sure makes them pretty damned interesting.
Fenris
Fenris, there’s no reason to believe that Cerebus knew his dad was dying. The way I read that was that Cerebus realizes that he was spending his time trying to appease Jaka rather than realizing what was important: his family (read: masculinity), not some chick. Minor point though.
Also, are you arguing that villains can’t (or shouldn’t) be interesting? You mention the women being the only original characters (sans Po) as if that makes Sim wrong about men being better than women.
Certainly, the story changes over time, first from some dope fiend parodying the status quo, to a guy who got excited about what he could do with the comic medium to a guy who thought that he could tell a story of an entire life, certianly where people change.
For those of you (I’ll have to wait for the collection) who were lucky enough to hvae the commetnary/essays from the original issue, there’s another great story going on wherein Sim changes throughout his life. Granted, he is crazy, but I think the story of the genius trying to create an opus that’s probably ruining his life while creating this religion/philosphy on the side and trying to live up to its morals is fascinating.
Then there’s Gerhard, who, as I understand it is married and just wants to build his boat. What a great straight man for Sim’s goofball.
I’ve been reading Cerebus since about issue 15, no fooling. Sometime in 1979-80 or so.
And yes, he’s quite (HAHAHA) mad. And increasingly so. I met him three times (I think) at various things. The first time was in the early 80s on his first (I think) US Tour at Geppi’s in Silver Spring, MD. He was down in the basement with his wife, Deni. He was warm and personable (though he refused to answer the ‘Why an aardvark’ question) and quite loving and affectionate to Deni. They constantly talked to each other and touched and so forth. There was no one there so I got to hang out for quite a while and even got Deni to do some graffiti on the walls of the Regency Hotel in one of the issues Sim signed.
The other times I met him were after the divorce and he was beginning to go around the bend. Still personable but getting more sharp and bitter. Though he did sign one poster for a pal of mine “To Will: Because you hate Cerebus I’m coming to get you” which was, let’s admit, funny.
He is a truly screwed up guy. God alone knows what he’s going to do (if anything) now. He claims to be celibate (even avoiding masturbation…which is quite a trick from my point of view), to have made up his own religion that’s a mix of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and to have the clearest view of male-female relations on the planet.
Really, I see him being one of those crazy guys who ends up cutting his own dick off just so those women can’t get him.
I seem to recall his bitching about the divorce settlement one time in the book. He was complaining that Deni got stock and part ownership of A-V and she’d done nothing at all to earn it. Notwithstanding the whole ‘support’ him thing, I suppose.
God help the talented.
On follow up I want to highlight this…
Sim has publicly admitted (in the letters column, no less) that most of the first third or more of the run he spent the vast majority of his working time strung out on a variety of drugs.
He ran a photo of himself rolling a joint on the back cover once and got a letter later saying he was making a bad example and that he shouldn’t chance ruining his creativity with drugs. His reply just stated that he was stoned ALL THE TIME when he did the book.
I’m not saying there’s a connection there but many years of rampant drug abuse can lead to some serious unhinging. Especially if it takes the dry out and slide back (repeat) form of abuse.
Oh. I think I see it now. I agree that his work does cover a lot of ground, and that it can be emotionally complex- I think that is the thing that I found interesting. But I just tried to read read a little bit of Tangents. Dave Sim is not very good at essays. It takes a while to sort through that stuff, and for such a smugly logical fellow, he appears to make some large assumptions. More significantly, being entirely logical is hardly a desireable thing for a human. Look at what happens to people whose brains have been damaged at the amygdala and related emtional-regulating sites: without that extra kick of emotion in their decision-making processes, they have trouble making good, rational choices, even though they still have the ability to think with flawless logic ( April 2004 Discover magazine has a really good article about this).
I found Tangents to be so…tangential that I am not sure what he thinks the foundation of feminism is. Ogre and Fenris, I think you are both right. He seems a little nutty. I may still read the Cerebus phone books, but clearly it was a good idea to skip the letter pages and essays.
Heck, mabey I will buy all the collections. I will have some graphic novels to read AND the happy feeling of knowing I have helped someone make the payment on his tinfoil hat.
He wrote a follow-up to “Tangent” in the letters page of the two mosat recent issues of The Comics Journal. A few points:
–He challenged any woman so inclined to refute his arguments (“Ten Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast”, iirc) point by point, and found no takers. He takes this as evidence that he’s correct. I take it as evidence that few or no women actually hold the belief system he attributes to the entire gender.
–If you want to fault women for being illogical, it’s a bad idea to bolster your arguments with Bible/Koran quotations.
You are correct. I don’t know any women who hold the beliefs he attributes. Many of the things he thinks women hold sacred (government child care, for instance) are things women don’t agree on. And it is a foolish thing to try to support logic by relying on spiritual authorities. I apologize my many typos, I am still typing with a parrot on the keyboard.
Good interpretation and, IMO, quite valid. However, per Sim, it’s WRONG! It was that Cerebus realized that Jaka was and had always been a spoiled, evil, stoopid princess and Cerebus finally realized it when Jaka stopped Cerebus from getting back in time to be with his father as he was dying! And, per Sim, that’s the only valid interpretation.
Um. But he’s wrong. I like yours (or mine) better. They fit the facts presented, for one.
That’s not what I’m trying to say. Lemme rephrase: The only characters that are have depth and insight and grow and change are the women. But, per Sim, women are shallow and emotional and leeches sucking onto men and draining their creativity (along, presumbly, with their precious bodily fluids) since women can’t be creative on their own. It’s fine for a villian to be interesting, but Sim’s bad-guys (women) show the opposite of the flaws that Sim claims. Look at Astoria and Cirin vs Lord Julius and Cerebus. Cerebus and Lord Julius react. They have no grand plans, no “creativity”–they wait for stuff to occur and then they respond. Astoria and Cirin have grand plans, great vision, etc… in other words, in “real life” Sim claims that women are creativitity-leeches (read his Torah commentaries regarding “Yahwooh” vs THE LORD) but in his books, the only creative characters are the women.
Except that, excluding Astoria (who’s change at the end of “Minds”(?) was probably the most profound and moving moment in the entire 6000 pages, and Jaka (which doesn’t count–he just said “POOF! She’s different!” (How’d the 14 year old Jaka who danced in taverns for pennies afford her “new dress a day” habit? Ditto with Jaka when she was married to Rick-she certainly lived without her dress-a-day habit then), not one character changed or grew. Even Cerebus, after all those years of studying (and messing up) the Torah, in the end (per Sim) didn’t grow or change.