What is Dave Simm so angry about?

Cafe Society
41

Just to clarify: it’s not so much that the males are boring–they’re not. They’re generally more entertaining to read than the female characters. But they’re caractures–they’ve got no depth. Astoria is as real a “person” as a comic book character can get. Elrod (who, IMO, stopped being a parody (other than visually) of Elric around the election in #34–no more “last king of a dying race”, no more "black sword “Seersucker”* etc) isn’t. He’s funny to read, but there’s no depth, nuance or facets to his personality. Can you imagine Elrod going through a change as profound as Astoria did? I can’t: it would destroy the character. Ditto with the Roach, Lord Julius, and so forth. I love the male characters, but they’re generally either funny (Roach, Lord J, Elrod) or stupid (Cerebus, Bear). The female characters are simply (to me, of course) richer.

Except that Sim apparently believes something similar as well. That’s what makes 'em so screwball. And they’re so damned misogynistic that they’re not even funny to read except in a screwball, tinfoil hat, “Protocols of the Elders Of Zion–it would be funny if it wasn’t so creepy” way (to me).

I agree with you: I want Cerebus to finally find peace and that’s how I choose to personally interpret it as well. But Sim is very clear in interviews with the hand being a claw, and Cerebus’s eventual destination. (I don’t have issue numbers handy. I just skimmed the Torah stuff (and the Victor Reid stuff) this time around, so I’m going on memory. The "squished into the sun for all eternity/“Yahwoo=the light=the false female wanna-be God” bit should be easy to find though, as there’s a lot of pictures of the sun in that issue and it’s towards the end of the Torah stuff. Work backwards from the end and you’ll find it pretty quickly.

I’ve got a Yahoo group posting of a transcript between a caller and Dave Sim that I’ll post next. I think it’ll give some insights into what Sim say about #300 (it doesn’t mention the hand-> claw bit, but Sim clearly says where Cerebus ends up.)

As an aside, newsgroup/yahoo group posts have been considered fair game: they’re not protected by copyright, so I’m going to quote the whole post (until they start chatting about non-relevant stuff–I’m also leaving off the everyone’s last name, since the SDMB has a much wider audience than the Yahoo Cerebus group)

You can also see the transcript of the on-line chathere

One relevant quote from that page:

In that same transcript Sim makes it clear that he does believe in the screwball Torah commentaries (including Yahwooh):

It’s an utterly fascinating chat: by and for fans, not the press, so there’s tons of cool tidbits given out.

Fenris

*“Tarim! Who’d have belived a sword could get so rusty as to turn black?”

42

I love this thread. My question has not only been competantly and completely answered, but also Fenris and Ogre have done an outstanding job of illustrating how a work of art can go beyond its creator. I intend to read up to the end of Rick’s Story. Especially because teenyweenie type that runs together is a sign of an unbalanced mind, except on soap bottle labels.

43

Fenris: OK, I can’t argue with Sim and reading his comments makes things clear. You can get what you want and still not be happy indeed.

Ogre: Forget the first trade, have her start with High Society, then go back to Vol 1. As you recall, the only things that are really missing then is 1) Who is Elrod? 2) Who is the Roach and 3) Why was being the kitchen staff supervisor such a big deal? You can explain the first two when she asks, but the kss joke is a lot funnier when you don’t know that Julius purposely named it that way. And finding out who Julius is is a lot funnier in that volume than the standard ABC method in volume 1. Of course, by vol. 3, she should have read vol. 1 to figure out a lot of the in jokes.

44

I dunno: I’ll argue with Sim about the meaning of “Going Home” all day. The fact that he wrote one story while intending to write another doesn’t change just because he wants it to. :slight_smile:

I’d quibble just a hair about this. You must know who Jaka is for the “The Night Before” issue (#36?) to rip your heart out and stomp on it–. Maybe have her just read issue 6 (if you don’t have the original, just bookmark the “chapter” in the first phonebook) and then follow Chairman Pow’s advice.

45

I have to confess that despite being an early reader of the series (I have the first issues not as singles but as the smaller compilations of five issues each) I gave up on the whole thing shortly after Cerebus returns from the moon. The pacing started to seriously drag, the whole gynocracy thing seemed pointlessly nasty, the tangents were getting more frequent and worse, and I just didn’t care anymore.

46

Fenris sez:
---- 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 monstrous voids who consume and devour male creativity, he sure makes them pretty damned interesting.

Yeah, but I’m wondering whether Astoria or Cirin really count. Cirin is an Aardvark. I had the sense that Dave S. concluded that Astoria was actually more male in outlook, her female exterior notwithstanding. Astoria’s epiphany may have been a method of shooing her off the stage.

I bought a couple of phone books a year in the early 1990s. Then I started in on the issues. By the end of Going Home, I felt I had cut Dave more than enough slack. I draw the line when half of the issue is half-assed printed diatribe. Am I pissed at Dave? Yeah.

I haven’t decided whether I would purchase the next 2 phone books (one of which is currently available). Ok, I probably will, eventually.

Not only is Dave a misogynist, he’s also a boring one: even when it was originally published, Dave was addressing issues in feminism/ popular culture that were at least 10 out of date, probably more.

Baldaron
------ He spouts off all these essays in his comic where there is a distinct lack of peer review. Let him try these views at any university department with feminists, leftists, or homosexualists. He would figuratively be torn apart

No need to go to the university: he would be demolished on this board! Then again, 100 blindfolded chimpanzees could probably outponder the man as well.

All the same, I believe that refusing to list Dave Sim in the, “Top 100 Comic Book Artists”, list that Fantagraphic put out around 2000 was ridiculous. A lot of Dave’s work was highly innovative and visually compelling. I even remember being stunned by some of his work in “Going Home”. (I’m thinking of the boat scenes)*. Unfortunately, all my issues are currently in storage, as it were, so I can’t give further substantiation.

47

Oh yeah, I thought that one yahoo poster’s charactization of issue 300 was interesting:

“More of a grand finally, than a grand finale.”

48

Interesting how - because he, too, was passing off someone else’s line as his own work to anyone who didn’t know the source?

49

That was the way Sim himself mentioned someone describing the end of Church & State, as I recall.

And, just to prove we’re everywhere…

Check out the phrase about Tatsuya’s name on yesterday’s Sinfest (Don’t worry, despite the name it’s safe for work).

50

It probably was, but since he could have had her killed or (worse) Jakafied her (No, she was always stoopid. ALWAYS. Ignore what was printed. You’re just misinterpreting it.), I’m grateful that she got a good ending.

I do disagree with the idea that Astoria had a male outlook. She’s everything that Sim hates in women–bitchy, mecurial, emotional when she can manipulate you, frosty-cold when she can’t (remember the scene in High Society when someone sends Cerebus a packet of drugs and she pretends to be stoned just so she can mess around with Cerebus?). I got the feeling that Sim was sorry he removed Astoria, as “New Joanne” did exactly the sort of things (once she had Shep-Shep) that Astoria would have instituted if Astoria had been given the power to enact them.

Yeah, but no-one cares what Fantagraphics thinks, IMO. IIRC, The Comics Journal has a circulation less than 1500 copies a month. No cites, I’m going from memory, but… And remember the story Sim told (that Gaiman and others have backed up) when, in the mid-80s, Sim and Groth were talking and Sim mentioned how exciting Sandman was (it was starting the “Game of You” arc, I think)–and Groth not only hadn’t read it, he hadn’t even heard of it!!) No wonder no one reads TCJ.

Fenris

51

I didn’t know that the yahoo-poster was quoting Dave S. (I suspect that he or she figured everyone would get the reference. Oops.)

----- I do disagree with the idea that Astoria had a male outlook. She’s everything that Sim hates in women–bitchy, mercurial, emotional when she can manipulate you, frosty-cold when she can’t (remember the scene in High Society when someone sends Cerebus a packet of drugs and she pretends to be stoned just so she can mess around with Cerebus?).

Good point. Consider my paradigm shifted.

Thinking back to the drug-packet scene, it occurs to me that Astoria, while not quite the protagonist, tended to steal the stage whenever she appeared. Furthermore, she secured the reader’s sympathies, perhaps because she was more reasonable than Cerebus. Her deviousness inspired more admiration than repulsion.

Up until 10 minutes ago, I might have thought that this was merely a result of Sim’s, “Making a statement true by putting it into the mouth of a beautiful women,” as my paraphrase of Rick puts it. Now I am much less sure.

In the 1970s, those tired of Superhero comics wondered why they stunk so much. Explanations included the concentration of titles under 2 corporate umbrellas, the dreaded Comics Code, and evil market pressures under capitalism.

I think we’ve learned a little about market pressures since then. On the one hand, they tend to encourage a formulaic approach: it is understandable that an investor (or an editor) would tend to support things that have sold in the past. This is unfortunate, IM-not-so-HO.

However. Market pressures also curb creator self-indulgence. I really believe that Dave Sim potentially has some terrific work ahead of him. At the same time, he is in desperate need of a strong editor.* A little external pressure might do wonders for his output.

  • Davy doesn’t hire editors though: he only permits his genius to be filtered by proofreaders. :rolleyes:
52

In need of an editor or not, recall that Dave was probably comic’s biggest auteur. That is, according to his Onion:

I think Dave would consider an editor baggage (of course, one could argue that if he added Gerhard and this is included in telling the story “the way I wante to say it,” it wouldn’t have been too difficult to add an editor as well). The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing has an interesting section on how he keeps his thoughts focused (i.e. he handwrites everything and if he finds himself rewriting a passage two or three times, he knows he’s not focused enough)which one can argue takes the place of an editor’s job.

Regarding Fenris’ comments about Dave meaning to put meaning into the book where the text suggests an alternate meaning (or at least knowledge that a reader would not have otherwise): perhaps we should alter his statement to read, “…what I wanted to say, exactly the way I wanted to say it, even if it wasn’t clear enough to someone who isn’t me.”

Fenris:

Get ready for a lack of cites: As previously noted, Sim wanted to have a conversation occur on what the Torah meant to someone who was reading it compeltely free of any extra-textual associations (the same that you or I would have in today’s world). That Sim chose to adopt these interpretations into his own belief systems follows from his non-feminist/homosexualist axis views (read: intellectual).*

If you’re having trouble with the Protocols, simply change the name from “…of Zion” to “…of the Illuminati,” as some believe it was originally titled. Maybe it gets funnier then.

  • As an aside: does he ever call himself a “masculinist?” or is the issue, in his mind, ot that divided?
53

Thanks for the link Chairman. I wasn’t aware of Onion’s spinoff, OnionAV, by the way.

I have decided to be optimistic about Dave’s prospects: after all, the man has developed a pretty solid skill set.

(OTOH, being a leftist, I recognized that I must first “…destroy Dave Sim as an individual and… ignore his work.” Yes, he really said that. Now, I’ve already muffed the 2nd part, so it behooved me to get serious about the character assassination. The pressure was really on until I realized that no effort was necessary: Dave would finish the job for me himself.)

Ok, yucks aside, here’s what Sim has to say about his future work:

That’s a nice aspiration. But, of course, there’s a problem:

Never mind the fact that many stories don’t address gender relations. Set that aside. Sim’s commentary was always far more dubious/offensive than his comics. Provided he limits himself to a couple of pages of useless pontificating, I think he may be able to pull this off.

[sub]Note to Dave: If you want to share your um interesting ideas, try a blog. That’s what they’re for, after all.[/sub]

54

Say, Dave never wrote about the Stylites (Pillar Saints,) did he? If not, he should have, since he’s attempting to become the modern-day equivalent of a pillar-sitting religious ascetic, shouting to the crowds below and living a life of worldly denial.

I remember a movie from years ago where a traveler happened upon a religious ascetic hermit that had been sitting in a cauldron of oil for years and years, with the vague idea of withering his penis away in the oil.

That’s Dave Sim these days. Anybody remember that movie?

55

I never saw the movie, but I read the novelisation. It’s Circle of Iron, and the scene as written is hilarious.

56

Yeah, this is a common response I get when I read some particularly huffy piece of blowhardism that somebody who’s used to having a media megaphone to spew his opinions has come up with. I wonder how long they’d last if they had to run their opinions through a public discussion board where people who think your ideas are full of, er, baloney, can say so and then explain why at length with circles and arrows on the back to show everyone that you’re full of baloney.

I think a guy like Sims wouldn’t last a week in the SDMB. He’d feel like he’d been through a meat grinder by the end of it.

57

No he wouldn’t.

He’d be one of those types who continues to insist that we don’t see the brilliance of his arguments because we’re not smart enough to understand it or we’ve been mind-controlled by the ‘media’ (run by women this time and not jews) to be unable to think logically about the issue.

That sort of smugness…you know what I mean?

58

That’s it! Thanks! I seem to remember the look on Carradine’s face when the guy in the oil leaned back to show him that he’d damn near succeeded in his penile, um, dissolution.