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Dave Sim's Collected Letters #2
Dave Sim's Collected Letters
Before there was the blog and E-mail, there was good, old-fashioned snail mail. While Volume One covered January through May 2004, this new volume covers the months of June and July. As series coordinator Claude Flowers said, "A lot of letters in June and July!" Volume Two comes with a nifty wraparound photorealism comic strip by Dave Sim featuring himself, Chester Brown, and a completely irrelevant picture of three pretty teenaged girls. The first letter is to Gary Groth. You won't want to miss a moment of the action!
- GenresComics
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
8 people want to read
About the author
Dave Sim
1,048 books137 followersDavid Victor Sim is a Canadian comic book, artist and publisher, best known as the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 27, 2013
What an odd book. With saying that I don't mean its content (because the proper word for that would be "bizarre") but its shape. So far every book by Aardvark-Vanaheim came in near A4, but this one is just barely half in regular Cerebus size and comes in "just" 224 pages. Which makes it a bit of a headache to place it next to them on your shelves, nevermind the headache you get by wondering why on earth it got this shape in the first place. And that's not where it stops. There's no introduction to give you any context whatsoever, not even a credit page that tells who printed the book in the first place. (It could have just as well been published by Penguin Books as far as I can tell.) Instead you're starting straight with page 1 when you open the cover. I don't think I've ever seen a book before that's being so upfront. It's like it's saying: "You want to read me then? Fine! Here! START!" But anyway, why is this volume so much shorter than the first one? Why aren't any more letters included? Why were there so many years between the first and second volume? What, how, why, where? I'm confused.
Nevertheless, the content. Basically it's just more of the same, and actually even a direct continuation of the same. Correspondances that were still running in the first book get resolved (Or rahter: not resolved. Or rather: NOT YET) in this one, others are starting, some others are really getting started. Which means: Not that much more of Toc Fetch talk (Good riddance. I didn't really get what the talk was about in the first place, and I suspect neither did Sim nor Fetch.), almost nothing by Peter Straub (Thankfully, those letters were the least interesting bits about the first volume. At least there were if you have never read his books) and less letters from the religious folks.
And what can I say? Sim is the most interesting when he's talking (candidly) about his experiences in the comic field, telling anecdotes about fellow artists and publishers. So every letter he writes to Sonny Strait is inherently interesting. And yeah, of course there's all the feminist stuf. Feminist with a CAPITAL F, that is. Thing point to a high with this book's Tasha Robinson, one Jayne Kulikauskas. The correspondance started at the tail end of the first volume, but little did you know how deranged she would turn out to be. Full of apparent self-loathing and (by her own admission) "infected by feminist garbage" of which she wishes to get rid of if she just could, she seeks for approval by Sim. A thing that is hopeless by nature since he's always looking for the disagreement and the counter argument, and never failing. And since she's a woman it's a lost case for her from the outset. But her very apparent crush on him makes her try nevertheless without ever letting go. And so it goes on and on and on. Oh my YHWH.
Which just leaves me the straight out wacky bits to talk about. And since this book is so much shorter than the first one there's so much less wacky stuff to point out. But what it lacks in quantity it makes up in quality, saving the best bit for the last few pages. Sim mentions the plan he once had, sending his Cerebus trade paperbacks to Queen Elisabeth (What? Why?) because he started the series during her Silver Jubilee and finished it during her Golden Jubilee (This is a reason?), but ultimately had to abandon this idea because of "our feminist society" would frown upon if he, as an anti-feminist, would try to lure the Queen into saying something nice about the books. Err, well. In that case... it's very considerate of him? I guess?
But whatever the case, this probably is the last letters collection that he'll ever put out. I mean, it has been more than five years since it had been published and it's highly unlikely that there's going to be at least one more of them - for better or worse. Which is a bit of a pity, because... what am I going to do after all these months reading Uncle Dave's Views on the World? Well, going through the entire "Cerebus" again, I suppose. Those phonebooks have been feeling all alone for far too long now, anyway.
Nevertheless, the content. Basically it's just more of the same, and actually even a direct continuation of the same. Correspondances that were still running in the first book get resolved (Or rahter: not resolved. Or rather: NOT YET) in this one, others are starting, some others are really getting started. Which means: Not that much more of Toc Fetch talk (Good riddance. I didn't really get what the talk was about in the first place, and I suspect neither did Sim nor Fetch.), almost nothing by Peter Straub (Thankfully, those letters were the least interesting bits about the first volume. At least there were if you have never read his books) and less letters from the religious folks.
And what can I say? Sim is the most interesting when he's talking (candidly) about his experiences in the comic field, telling anecdotes about fellow artists and publishers. So every letter he writes to Sonny Strait is inherently interesting. And yeah, of course there's all the feminist stuf. Feminist with a CAPITAL F, that is. Thing point to a high with this book's Tasha Robinson, one Jayne Kulikauskas. The correspondance started at the tail end of the first volume, but little did you know how deranged she would turn out to be. Full of apparent self-loathing and (by her own admission) "infected by feminist garbage" of which she wishes to get rid of if she just could, she seeks for approval by Sim. A thing that is hopeless by nature since he's always looking for the disagreement and the counter argument, and never failing. And since she's a woman it's a lost case for her from the outset. But her very apparent crush on him makes her try nevertheless without ever letting go. And so it goes on and on and on. Oh my YHWH.
Which just leaves me the straight out wacky bits to talk about. And since this book is so much shorter than the first one there's so much less wacky stuff to point out. But what it lacks in quantity it makes up in quality, saving the best bit for the last few pages. Sim mentions the plan he once had, sending his Cerebus trade paperbacks to Queen Elisabeth (What? Why?) because he started the series during her Silver Jubilee and finished it during her Golden Jubilee (This is a reason?), but ultimately had to abandon this idea because of "our feminist society" would frown upon if he, as an anti-feminist, would try to lure the Queen into saying something nice about the books. Err, well. In that case... it's very considerate of him? I guess?
But whatever the case, this probably is the last letters collection that he'll ever put out. I mean, it has been more than five years since it had been published and it's highly unlikely that there's going to be at least one more of them - for better or worse. Which is a bit of a pity, because... what am I going to do after all these months reading Uncle Dave's Views on the World? Well, going through the entire "Cerebus" again, I suppose. Those phonebooks have been feeling all alone for far too long now, anyway.
Displaying 1 of 1 review