From: jim ottaviani@um.cc.umich.edu (Jim Ottaviani)
Subject: Dave Sim, the Usenet Interview -- Dave answers your questions (V)
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 17:25:25 EDT
Organization: The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

The fifth (of five, so far) installment of Dave's answers to your questions. 
If these prompt new ones, or if you've had some in the back of your mind for 
a while -- say, for the last 15 +/- years of Cerebus -- send them to me 
(jim ottaviani@um.cc.umich.edu) and I'll pass them along -- as you've seen, 
Dave responds thoughtfully and in detail.

Check out the tour dates at the end of this posting too. Don't miss your 
chance to chat with Dave in person.

                           ***

Lawrence (hor2@quads.uchicago.edu) -- Dave: You talked about 
how we have always lived in a matriarchy, and about how 
society/civilization/whatever is very sensitive about protecting its 
infants. If this overprotectiveness is an indication of matriarchy, 
why is pro-choice a feminist movement? Why do women so 
adamantly defend the right to kill unborn children?

Dave -- Well, because feminists are the anti-Matriarchy. Feminists 
are Kevillists, not Cirinists. Feminism largely consists of Women 
can do whatever they want whenever they want.. They can't be 
kept out of male sanctuaries, but they can keep males out of their 
Take Back the Night Marches. They get to keep the children in the 
event of a divorce and the men get to pay for them. The fact that 
they consider a baby to be part of their body and, consequently, 
subject to their will reaches its natural conclusion in the power of 
life or death over that baby. Just as an aside, Astoria is not pro-
choice, Astoria is pro-abortion. If you have the slightest doubt 
about being pregnant, terminate it.


Lawrence -- [D]o you personally feel oppressed by matriarchy?

Dave -- I don't feel oppressed by the Matriarchy, but then, after a 
few minutes contact with me, the average Mother has sized me up 
as one of THOSE. Since their only weaponry consists of a 
withering gaze and phrases intended to induce guilt, if you ignore 
both of those there isn't much they can do. I live in constant fear of 
the Matriarchy equation of irate mother + cop = busted comic book 
store, however.


Pat Hall (pathall@as.arizona.edu) -- So we have a "Cerebus: The 
First Half" T-shirt celebrating the first 150 issues. After M&D is 
finished in #200 do you plan to have Cerebus dressed up in a 
hockey uniform for a "Cerebus: The First Two Periods" T-shirt?

Dave -- What a wonderful idea. He could be holding two used 
tampons in either hockey glove.


Pat -- In #156 you mention that _Misspent Youth_ is on your list of 
top ten comics. I'm sure it's not a hard-and-fast list, but what might 
some of your other favorites be?

Dave -- Hate, Naughty Bits, Sandman, Groo, Eisner's new stuff, 
From Hell, Flaming Carrot, Yahoo, Yummy Fur, Joe Matt's new 
book which I forget the name of.


Pat -- I was intrigued by your comment in the previous interview 
about whether or not we can ever find out what "actually 
happened" during a particular event, JFK's assassination for 
example. I agree that in the "real world" where we must piece 
together events from the memories of different people, we'll 
probably never have all the loose ends tied up, and some great 
literature reflects this (and comics too, like _Moonshadow_). But 
don't you think that good literature can also be written where an 
omniscient narrator _is_ used, or do you really feel that the world 
is always so full of loose ends that it's a disservice to ever imagine, 
even in fiction, that we could ever know what "actually happened" 
in some situation?

Dave -- I'm not much of one for hard and fast rules. I'm sure there 
is no end of brilliant works of fiction that tie everything into a neat 
bundle at the end without a loose thread showing anywhere. It's 
only my personal view that a large work of fiction like Cerebus 
should reflect the ambiguity and over-lapping and contradictory 
interpretations of reality that I see everywhere around me. It would 
be a disservice to my story from my viewpoint as an author, but I 
am quite aware that that view is very often seen as a disservice to 
my readership.


Pat -- The other comment that intrigued me was the one about 
Hawking's _A Brief History Of Time_. I'm an astronomer myself, 
so I tend a little more toward the scientific bent than perhaps you 
do, but did I interpret it right that you see Hawking's thesis on the 
origin and evolution of the universe as not necessarily any more or 
less valid than any other belief system? Of course everyone is free 
to believe what they want, but the scientific method by which 
scientists have arrived at a picture of the history of the universe 
which is generally perceived (among scientists, anyway) to be 
reasonably accurate, if incomplete, did not seem to make any 
difference to you, which I find a little curious.

Dave -- Hawking's theories, to me, are the list of facts without a 
binding story,whereas Genesis is a story that takes great liberty 
with the facts. Because they didn't know the facts. Church & State 
and Mothers & Daughters is an attempt to take what is known 
about the origin of the universe and make a more plausible story 
out of it. Science includes everything except the Hidden; and 
mistakes the Hidden for the Difficult to See. Witness the Hubble 
space telescope fiasco. That's what you get for trying to look up 
Mother's Skirts you Filthy Little Boys.


Howard Shum (shumhm@mentor.cc.purdue.edu) -- [Do you have] 
any plans on collecting the Cerebus stories that appeared in Epic 
Illustrated into a volume?

Dave -- We plan on releasing a volume of the in-between stories 
and possibly including some of the Swords backup stories, and the 
Epic stories in half-tone (we're not shelling out for colour printing), 
next year at the very earliest.


Howard -- I know that [you are] mainly a self-taught artist and I 
would like to know what art books [you] used [or] any other things 
that [you] did to become the artist [you are] now.

Dave -- The only thing you can do is draw every day. The comic 
books you admire the most are your textbook and a sheet of white 
paper is your classroom.


Jim Ottaviani (jim ottaviani@um.cc.umich.edu) -- What are your 
feelings on the importance and effects of community? Isolation? 
On the one hand, it seems to me you've built/are building 
community
     by living in Kitchener for so long,
     as the first self-publisher with staying power able to truly help 
others get started,
     through the format and content of the letters page, and
     with your encouragement of other creators in the Singles Pages 
and Cerebus
     Previews.
On the other hand, much of your work is solitary (apparently by 
choice and design), and Cerebus himself is very alone.

Dave -- Isolation is critical. Isolation and complete silence for 
hours on end. If you can't hack that you can't do comic books for 
the most part. You have to relish being by yourself. Relish it. 
Community is an evasion of this, I think. I've heard all the reasons 
as to why you need to be in contact with other artists but all of the 
experiments I've seen with it have proven to be failures. I used to 
draw more and better usable work visiting Gene Day, but that 
wasn't because of the community thing; that was because he sat 
down at ten o'clock in the morning and drew until eleven o'clock at 
night. Half an hour for dinner, a sandwich at the drawing board for 
lunch and aside from that just cigarettes and coffee, cigarettes and 
coffee. If you stopped drawing to read a comic book, or quit 
because you got a page done, it made you feel like the biggest sloth 
to ever hit the medium. You'd start your next page or pencil an 
illustration or ink a panel of Gene's Marvel work just to keep from 
feeling guilty.

Community (friends, family, lovers) kept to its place and confined 
to a few hours here and there can, on very infrequent occasions, 
and to a small degree, be viewed as not destructive of creativity.

                           ***

A reminder of upcoming tour dates:

  April 26
  Chicago, Hyatt Regency -- Woodfield Road, Schaumburg (Moondogs in 
Mt. Prospect on April 24, Moondogs in Lincoln Park on April 25)

  May 3
  Miami, Park Plaza Hotel -- Palmetto Expressway & NW 103rd St. 

  May 31
  Kansas City, Marriott -- Metcalf Ave. in Overland Park 

  June 7
  Minneapolis, Marriott Bloomington -- I-495 at Cedar Ave.

  June 21
  Indianapolis, Sheraton -- 7701 East 42nd St.

seeya
jimO