From: jim ottaviani@um.cc.umich.edu (Jim Ottaviani)
Subject: Dave Sim, the Usenet Interview -- reposting (IV)
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 92 12:58:30 EDT
Organization: The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

It appears that this installment didn't get to some of you (even though it
showed up on my newswatcher on Fri, 10 Apr 92 21:03:03 EDT). So here it is
again. I'm still collecting new questions for the next installment. There
aren't too many yet, so there's plenty of room for yours...

                           ***

The fourth (of five, so far) installment of the Dave Sim's answers to your 
questions. Thanks for your enthusiasm -- your positive responses -- and 
Dave's, of course -- keep this going. If you have questions for Dave, please 
send them to me (jim ottaviani@um.cc.umich.edu) and I'll pass them along.

Be sure to check out the tour dates at the end of this posting. The fifth 
installment will follow soon.

                           ***

Jeff Vogel (jvogel@jarthur.Claremont.EDU) -- I find it quite 
interesting that a person who repeatedly states he is not a feminist 
creates the most interesting and 3-dimensional characters in 
comics.

Dave Sim -- Although you didn't put it as a question, I've always 
pointed out to people that the reason my female characters are 
three-dimensional is because I portray them as human beings; part 
good and part bad. The last two Feminist Decades gave us 
characters of the female persuasion who were cardboard cut-outs 
for the same reason that you would not read Communist or Nazi 
approved literature in the hopes of finding a rich tapestry 
documenting the human condition. Dictatorial and rhetorical 
movements produce dictatorial and rhetorical entertainments. 
Fortunately we seem to be coming out of that to a degree.


Jeff -- What is the most commonly asked question?

Dave -- "Why an aardvark?


Jeff -- Could we have a quick summary of the beliefs of the 
Kevillists? Sometimes they sound very enlightened, sometimes 
very frightening.

Dave -- ...state-owned prostitution, pharmaceutically-assisted 
miscarriages, ownership of men, guaranteed minimum incomes for 
women over the age of fifteen and the inalienable right to self-
determination within those parameters... (Astoria, Church & State 
pg. 622). She accommodates a number of dissenting views and has 
a few of her own that she doesn't advance publicly, but that pretty 
much sums it up.


Jeff -- Read Sandman? Whaddaya think?

Dave -- Sandman is brilliant. If DC would stop treating the artists 
on the title as after-thoughts and interchangeable cogs in the 
machinery it would have had the potential to be the best written 
_and_ drawn title in recent memory. They're doing the same thing 
they did with Swamp Thing; spoiling the writer shamelessly and 
treating the artists like crustaceans. Why? No idea. The practice 
dates back to Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster evidently.


RM (bn981@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) -- How do you pronounce 
"Iest", anyway? "East"? "Yest"? "Yayst"? "Ice-st"?

Dave -- Ee-est. Sometimes Ee-yest. The ones from the Lower City 
tend toward the latter pronunciation.


Jeff Hildebrand (jhildeb1@cc.swarthmore.edu) -- What is the year 
at this point in the story line? Unless the snow is out of season I 
would guess that it is early in the winter of 1415-16 but enough 
unusual things have happened that it could be as late as 1418.

Dave -- As of Cerebus #156, it is, indeed early winter of 1415-16.


AS (ags10@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu) -- What work did Gerhard do 
in comic books before Cerebus?

Dave -- Gerhard did no work in the comic book field prior to 
working on Cerebus. The Young Cerebus short story His First 
Fifth in Epic #26 was his first comic book work.


Bill Sherman (sherman@math.ucla.edu) -- You promised in a 
"Swords" intro to reveal more of what really makes Elrod tick, 
around 175 or so. Is that still in the game plan? (I'm sorry about the 
incoherent letter I sent [you] a while ago.)

Dave -- Oh, hey, Bill. Whus happenin'? Don't worry about the 
incoherent letter. I get a lot of them. ... [U]h, yeeahh. I hadn't 
realized I had mentioned anything about that anywhere. We are 
definitely coming up on that part, but it's a little later in the story; 
book Four of Mothers & Daughters (Minds)...so it's actually in 
the 190's now.


Bill -- The Mind Games have returned. What about Odd 
Transformations (or any other dream stories)? These achieve a 
certain lyrical, personal quality which I love. It's a rare opportunity 
to really see inside Cerebus' head.

Dave -- Yes. Once the pace slows down a little bit in M & D (i.e. 
after Book One) there will be other dream sequences.


Bill -- What's with the sudden availability and expansiveness? We 
haven't heard much from you for a while, and then suddenly a tour, 
a Comics Interview issue, you're answering letters in Aardvark 
Comment again, and now this. Has your attitude toward the fans 
changed or what?

Dave -- No, I can't say that my attitude towards the fans has 
changed. It was a very heavy thing to back into a dispute with 
Diamond over (as I saw it) my right to sell my work whatever way 
I wanted to. Having said what I had to say through the whole 
dispute and then through the process of a Bill of Rights for 
creators, I really felt it was time to shut up for a while. You can get 
an awful reputation as an asshole very quickly by always ranting 
about this and that. I felt very strongly about the creator's rights 
issues that were coming up, so I wanted to say enough to be heard, 
but not enough to be written off as a crank. I was reasonably 
certain that events would bear out what I've been saying and if you 
check the Newswatch section of the Comics Journal, most of the 
news items since that time have fallen along familiar patterns. 
That's the biggest among several reasons for my keeping a low 
profile. There's also the fact that I like the story to speak for itself. 
Once you start explaining a story, there is this terrible fear that 
without the explanation the story won't stand on it's own; you also 
lock your readers into your own interpretation of what you're doing 
when it's always better to that they see the story through their own 
eyes, I think. Also, when I stopped answering the letters on the 
letters page, I started answering them personally. So, in a way, I 
was even more expansive than before. It was only since I started 
the tour that it became apparent that a lot of the readership took my 
absence personally. They didn't want me to write just to them, they 
wanted me to talk to everyone again.


Bill -- You stopped doing individual issue titles after Church and 
State ended. Was this to emphasize the unity of the shorter stories 
(JS and M) (it certainly achieved that) or did you simply tire of the 
device?

Dave -- I didn't much care for the structure of 20 page chapters as a 
rule; which doing the chapter titles made necessary. The idea of 
using the alternating text and comics pages in Jaka's Story to pace 
the whole thing out was an experiment. When I read the whole 
story in reprint book form, I was pretty happy with the smoothness; 
the fact that you couldn't tell when one issue ended and the other 
began. Each of the books of Mothers & Daughters will have a 
different structure. Book One could best be described as Hell Bent 
Linear.


Bill -- Why did you spell the Roach's name "Artemis" instead of 
"Artemus"? "Artemis" is/was female.

Dave -- Well, yeah. That's the point. Sort of making fun of the 
feminists who are using male spellings for their names (like Yves). 
The obvious next step is for them to start calling men by women's 
names. You know, Maybe if we give them the names of carers 
and nurturers they'll stop being evil wicked men and become 
more...well, more like us perfect beings. (bat, bat).


Rob & Steve Snell (sws1@Ra.MsState.Edu) -- Dave, how do you 
perceive the role of comic retailers in supporting independent 
publishers?

Dave -- I like to make the distinction between independent and 
alternative. Right now any bozo (or group of bozos) who want to 
put out Marvel Comics but not work for Marvel can do so and be 
called independent. Supporting those books instead of Marvel 
doesn't change or improve anything, to my way of thinking. Just to 
give you an idea of the distinction; Cerebus, Hate, Love & Rockets 
are alternatives. Not just alternatives to Marvel and DC, but 
alternatives to Dark Horse's movie adaptation manure; alternative 
to LA Law, the Terminator, Steel Magnolias. Something different 
that isn't just something to put in between the ads. I mean, 
Sandman is an alternative under this definition; which makes sense 
to me; comics is the only medium where is is possible to produce 
something really idiosyncratic and have it really quite widely 
disseminated at a very low cost. I don't know if you guys are 
retailers yourselves, but I can say that the stores that have the most 
adult clientele and who do the best with the alternatives a) are 
constantly at war with the Marvel and DC titles; always looking for  
ways to confine them to a smaller and smaller space and b) are 
always on the lookout for alternatives, buying from both Capital 
and Diamond (and any other distributor in the area) as well as 
other comic book stores (raiding their quarter piles and back issue 
bins for hard-to-find alternative books). Store owners like that, 
customers tend to trust and will buy just about anything on their 
recommendation. You have to know the tastes of your individual 
customers so you can steer them away from Marvel as they get 
sick on the endless repetition, onto other titles that they can be 
interested in. Pick what you like and display it prominently, in 
quantity and push, push, push it.


Simon Arthur 
(NEUR0MANCER%MAPLE.decnet@pine.circa.ufl.edu) -- How 
has the use of drugs influenced your work? Would there be a 
Cerebus without marijuana? Has LSD played any part in the 
creation of Cerebus?

Dave -- Lots and lots. I came late to marijuana and alcohol. Both 
were important at various times and both have remained central to 
my life. I haven't smoked any cannabis (apart from a joint at the 
San Francisco stop on the tour) in the last year or two. If I have it, I 
smoke it until it's gone. It makes me very anti-social, withdrawn, 
paranoid. I am sure there would be a Cerebus without marijuana; 
the book might even have been more coherent without it. Who 
knows? I would never have believed that I could get through a day 
without a joint and now weeks go by without me thinking about it. 
I broke up with my girl-friend in St. Louis on the tour and I had the 
phone number of a Cerebus fan who wanted to smoke me up and I 
didn't call him. Unheard of for the old Dave.

Actually the whole nature of the story-line hit me simultaneously 
while I was coming down off of about a week and a half of doing 
acid. Epiphany big-time. June 1979. I also drew about three 
quarters of issue eleven on acid; tight pencilling for the first time in 
my life (Look Ma I'm Jim Starlin!). Can't add much to what 
McCartney said about it, It'll show you doors that you never knew 
were there. But that's about it; whether you go through the door, 
which door you go through or whether you just spend your life 
standing in the doorway is up to you.

                           ***

A reminder of upcoming tour dates (speak to Dave in person!):

  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.

Remember, send your questions to me (jim ottaviani@um.cc.umich.edu) 
and I'll pass them along to Dave.

seeya
jimO