From: 4224_5201@uwovax.uwo.ca (John LaRocque)
Subject: Sin, Gaiman defend Spawn, Image
Organization: University of Western Ont, London
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 03:12:09 GMT

     I thought it would be a service to all the Cerebus fans out there to
point out that Wizard  #17 has an intervieew with Dave Sim and an
actual color humor-panel from Dave and Ger. But the real story is Dave's 
comments on Image Comics.

[much deleted... interview continues... pg 59]

WIZARD: What do you think of Image Comics?

SIM: I fin dht ereaction there was to Marvel Comics when they first came out. 
"They're too weird. They're not drawn well enough." People have to remember
that Jack Kirby was not considered a first-string talent in the 1950s and
early '60s. A number of peoplel who are otherwise reasonably open-minded just
dismiss Image out of hand as garbage. I don't think that's the case. It's 
just the future.

If a 13-year-old comes intio your store and picks something up and goes 
"Cool!" and then flips the page and goes "Way Cool!!", that's a great comic
book. We have to understand that we're all old, that our perceptions are as
carved in stone as those people at DC when the Fantastic Four started, and
thought "Oh, it's just a fad." This is a positive step forward. This is the
inevitable process that we've seen evolving over 50 years, that's been 
frustrated at every turn, where eventually the business has to pass into the
hands of the creators.

It's not all going to be pretty. It's like the Spider-Man line, "With great
power comes great responsiblilty." There's a sense abroad in the land that
there's some great power being unleashed contained in the very young hands, 
and God help us if they turn to "evil purposes".

[ END OF QUOTE ]

[FLAME ON!]

While on the subject of Wizard magazine, I have been dying to respond to 
Gary Groth's dismissal of this magazine as part of the speculator craze.
In this issue alone I read interviews of Dave Sim and Barry Windsor Smith
and Bob Layton - all seasoned comics professionals. As well, this magazine
had highly recommended the following comics: Cerebus, Bone, Maus, Raw,
Peter Miligan's Skin, Rick Veitch's Maximortal and Frank Miller's Sin
City. Stick it in your opinionated ear, Gary!

[FLAME OFF]

Also in the latest Comics Interview (#116) Neil Gaiman was interviewed.
Possible spoilers on the new Death miniseries have been deleted, as have
spoilers on the latest in Spawn by Moore/Sim/Gaiman. But I have decided to
reprint below his comments on how he got to write Spawn and what he thinks
of Spawn and Image Comics.

[much extracted, interview continues on pg 19, 20 ]

GAIMAN: ... (on the Atlanta Con and Todd McFarlane)... So at the end of..
I think it was the last day.. no, it was the Saturday of the con, I went over
and I said hi to Todd after I'd finished signing. I think there was a level on
which he seemed a little nervous that I was coming over, because it was sort
of like, you know, he didn't know what I thought of his stuff or anything. We
chatted, and I thought, gee he's really nice. Then at the awards ceremony
that evening, we met again, and I thought, this is a really nice guy.

Then about three or four weeks ago, I got a phone call out of the blue, "Hey,
Neil, it's Todd McFarlane," and he said, "How would you like to write an
issue of SPAWN?".   No, actually the day before... the night before I got the
phone call from Todd, I'd been chatting to Alan Moore on the phone... and he
was saying he was going to be writing an issue of SPAWN. He told me a little
of what he was doing, and it sounded kind of fascinating.

Then I got a phone call from Todd the next day, saying would I write one? 
Basically what he said was, the critics have been on his back about the 
writing. He said people have been bitching about the quality of the writing in
the Image comics and so on and so forth, and he for one wanted to do something
about it. So he figured he'd go out and get some award-winning, good writers to
write something. 

So what do I do at this point? I have two options; either I take a moral stand
and say, no, Image comics have bad writing, and therefore I will not write
an episode, or I could do something to improve it. And it was sort of like...
well, OK. Yeah, fine, I have no moral objections to a well-written Image comic
. What the hell, they are creator owned things, there is a million times less
compromise than the Marvels and stuff.. yeah, sure. So his attitude was
basically, you have carte blanche. I will draw it but that's as far as it goes,
you have complete and utter carte blanche...

[more stuff on Sim and Moore deleted ]...

Spawn is no sillier or stranger a hero or villain or whatever than Batman or
Swamp Thing or anything like that, and it's actually kind of neat...

[spoilers on the Moore and Sim issues ]

[end of quote]


Hope you find these quotes interesting. I sure did.










-- 

John P. LaRocque
vader@uwo.ca
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario


"Urk..urk..."
"Apology accepted, Captain Nida", Darth Vader