Dave Sim: Conversations

Conversations with Artists

by Eric Hoffman (Editor), Dominick Grace (Editor)

In 1977, Dave Sim (b. 1956) began to self-publish Cerebus , one of the earliest and most significant independent comics, which ran for 300 issues and ended, as Sim had planned from early on, in 2004. Over the run of the comic, Sim used it as a springboard to explore not only the potential of the comics medium but also many of the core assumptions of Western society. Through it he analyzed politics, the dynamics of love, religion, and, most controversially, the influence of feminism―which Sim believes has had a negative impact on society. Moreover, Sim inserted himself squarely into the comic as Cerebus's creator, thereby inviting criticism not only of the creation, but also of the creator.

What few interviews Sim gave often pushed the limits of what an interview might be in much the same way that Cerebus pushed the limits of what a comic might be. In interviews Sim is generous, expansive, provocative, and sometimes even antagonistic. Regardless of mood, he is always insightful and fascinating. His discursive style is not conducive to the sound bite or to easy summary. Many of these interviews have been out of print for years. And, while the interviews range from very general, career-spanning explorations of his complex work and ideas, to tightly focused discussions on specific details of Cerebus , all the interviews contained herein are engaging and revealing.

Genres: Comics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 29, 2013

Reviews

[Kaoru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sooo... Dave Sim. He rarely gives any interviews, which means that almost all of them are collected in this book. Even the infamous one for The Onion is included (which still happens to be online after all these years, and still garners discussion in its comments section).

A lot has been made of his mental health, and for very good reason. The most widely accepted view is that one can witness Sim's mind disintegrating over the course of the entire "Cerebus" run, or at least in its last third. (And not just necessarily because of its content. Just flip through "Latter Days" for instance and look at all these layouts. Something just doesn't seem right there.) And well, the same applies his interviews. Halfway through paranoia starts to seep into them until... well... we're reaching said interview for The Onion, which didn't do him any favours whatsoever.

My take on it? If you're cutting off most of your social ties so you could concentrate on finishing your book then sooner or later it WILL affect your head, especially if you're prone to it and already have a bit of a mental record. And since he finished his last issue of "Cerebus" he seems to be much more stable as a person than he did in the later stages of the book. At least he's not mentioning Yoohwooh or any of that sort anymore. But maybe that's just because lately nobody asked him on that topic.

But enough about the crackpot part (which covers only a small part of this book anyway). If you have interest in this book you want to know more about the making of "Cerebus" than Sim's mental health anyway. And in that regard this collection really is very insightful and highly recommended. There are several career spanning interviews, and very long ones at that. And the fact that there's very little repetition in responses and information just shows how much there actually is to know. You get deep insights into the conception up of "Cerebus" until the "Rick's Story" (because around that time he stopped doing interviews altogether for the rest of the series' run), much more than you could get on any fan page out there.

This book might cost a bit of dough, but it's absolutely worth its money. Most interviews in here are extremely rare and impossible to find online. So if your "Cerebus" collection exceeds a stray copy of "High Society" on your shelves you need to have this one too.

[Larry Thellini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of rare, out of print interviews with the controversial yet fascinating Dave Sim. Essential for fans of Sim, comics scholars, or anyone interested in indie comics. An essential book for future explicators of Sim, especially his magnum opus CEREBUS, this book also features a concise yet informative introduction and a handy chronology by its editors, Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace. Highly recommended.

[Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening, for sure. Sim knows what his work is about and the interviews bring out the themes that he was striving to illustrate during the 26 year course of Cerebus. He is famous (infamous?) for his rants about feminism. He repeats these in the interviews, but doesn't seem to give many details about his arguments. These seem to have been published elsewhere; I may need to look them up online.

I read the series as it was being published and around the 2/3 point or so, it got to be tough slogging through each month's issue. At that point, as Sim notes in one of the interviews, if there was a decision that would affect the monthly "story" or the novel that he was constructing, he would decide in favor of the collected novel. Besides this point and now knowing what Sim was trying to say within each of the novels, I am wanting to read through these again without having to wait thirty days between each 20-page segment.