![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Profile
Scans Daily
![[community profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_daily strives to provide an atmosphere which is LGBTQ-friendly, anti-racist, anti-ableist, woman-friendly and otherwise discrimination and harassment free. Bottom line: If slash, feminism or anti-oppressive practice makes you react negatively,
scans_daily is probably not for you.Please read the community ethos and rules before posting or commenting.
Links
Expand Cut Tags
No cut tags
no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 08:05 am (UTC)Good point.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 05:40 am (UTC)The hostility towards women and gay men and the references to women as all-consuming psychic voids who want to control him, contrasted with the sensitive depiction of female characters in CEREBUS and the meticulous, obsessively detailed focus on women's fashion and clothing and shoes and hairstyles here...is it just me, or is it really really obvious what's actually going on?
I'm asking this out of compassion and pity, not mockery. He seems to have a sharp, logical mind and be very clever -- and those are the ones who fuck themselves up the worst. If he's repressing what he really wants this completely, life must be pretty miserable for him.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 01:45 pm (UTC)His homophobia seems like a typical straight man's disgust at something he just doesn't understand.
the meticulous, obsessively detailed focus on women's fashion and clothing and shoes and hairstyles here...is it just me, or is it really really obvious what's actually going on?
A lot of heterosexual men are very fascinated by female clothing. Just look at shoe, and stocking, and lingerie fetishists. They have a very, very clear idea of exactly what they like. That said, I think the care Sim puts into female clothing is probably more to do with the fact that he is an artist and very visually oriented.
Who knows what the root of Sim's misogyny is? All we do know is that 1. he is legitimately mentally ill (he has mentioned his schizophrenia diagnosis in the past), and 2. His misogyny seemed to get worse when his wife Deni Loubert left him.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 06:37 pm (UTC)On the other hand, we constantly hear of men who are so frightened by their own repressed desire for other men that they become homophobes and gay-bashers, lashing out at the hated thing in a desperate attempt to make it just go away and prove to themselves they're real men. How many anti-gay activists and preachers and politicians are caught with male prostitutes or trying to sexually harass their male employees? My suspicion is no one becomes a homophobe out of "disgust" -- you don't think obsessively about something that disgusts you, you try to put it out of your mind. (I'm disgusted by liver, but never once started an anti-liver website.) I suspect the root cause of homophobia is a cycle of fascination and fear: it terrifies you that you can't stop thinking about the bad thing, so you try to punish it.
What I'm saying is, I don't think Dave Sim is a proper misogynist but is trying to punish something he fears in himself. I think he's utterly terrified by his own feminine side and cannot stop thinking about it, and this has become obsessive fascination and a need to find some outlet in his art for his constant thinking about women's clothing. Please tell me I don't have to keep spelling it out?
no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 09:05 pm (UTC)Because what you wrote was vague and incredibly coy about what you really meant? Which is apparently that Sim is secretly a fetishistic transvestite or something, I still don't really know.
How many anti-gay activists and preachers and politicians are caught with male prostitutes or trying to sexually harass their male employees?
Probably a similar proportion to those men who aren't anti-gay activists I expect, only that's less newsworthy. I think the explanation that all 'true' homophobia is perpetrated by closeted gay men is just a little too pat, not to mention just a little too comforting to the casually homophobic straight guys who'd rather not be introspective about their own part in perpetrating bigotry.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 12:52 am (UTC)Because of:
and
'He's homophobic because he's repressing something about himself' -> 'He's homophobic because he's gay and in denial'.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 08:50 am (UTC)Otherwise, this just feels like some kind of well-drawn comic-book car wreck and I'm the one rubbernecking.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 05:29 am (UTC)Oh, you hadn't heard? Dave announced this at the end of the last GP. He barely has any money left, and GP basically bankrupted him. Worse, the Kickstarter-funded digitization of HIGH SOCIETY was harmed by the destruction of the negatives for HS in a massive fire at the home of the guy who was doing it(said guy himself barely getting out alive and losing everything he had)--which also may mean HS itself can never be reprinted in its proper form again, a massive loss for comics. Yes, there's all sorts of bad things that can be argued to have happened to Dave's head for a long time now. It doesn't mean his achievement was any less. Comics still owes him a great deal. So it's tragic.
Some links if you don't know about all this. On the negatives:
http://jlroberson.blogspot.com/2012/0
http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/201
On his quitting:
http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/201
no subject
Date: 2012-09-17 03:03 pm (UTC)I think Sim was still working like a self-publisher in the 1980s...and the market has changed far too dramatically in the intervening years. What was wildly successful in 1990 for an individual is not the same in 2012. It's worth noting that Cerberus was never a big seller as a comic, but did steady numbers in the 'phone books'. Some of the best issues only sold about 30,000 issues...in the 1980s. The final issue had double sales from 299, and still only sold about 16,000 copies. It's often been said that "the first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band." I like to think Cerberus is the same way. It was never a big seller, but it was MASSIVELY influential in the industry.
I'm not engaging in schadenfreude, here. While I'm not a fan of Sim as a person, I think his body of work is impressive and noteworthy. He stands alongside the Kirbys, Spiegelmans, Kurtmans, Eisners, Moores and others of the comics legendaries. He has put his money where his mouth was more than once and he has doggedly pursued his goal unlike anyone in the industry can ever claim, managing to see his creative vision to its fruition in a way that eluded some of the greatest creators of the form.
But I also think that many of his wounds are self-inflicted. I think it was noble to donate his fees from Spawn to a non-profit...but I think he should have invested that in a retirement account, instead. I think he could marketed himself much more successfully, particularly if he had not decide the internet was a thing for other people. I don't know if he's changed it, but as recently as last year, he still didn't have a personal internet connection. That would mark him as something of hermit under normal circumstances....given how the market is going now, it's a poor business move, especially for someone who had a podcast and kickstarter campaign going. I was under the impression that Sim has long rejected technology until he was absolutely forced to...and that's harmed him. I'm not saying he should have sold out; I just think his stubbornness to avoid certain things and some bad luck have led him here. Not having insurance is understandable if you don't have a lot of money, but if your livelihood depends on it, it's tragic not to have it (as we see here).
I hope it works out for him. I hope he can get a good profit off of the electronic scans and resale of his work. I'd buy HS if I could put it on my nook. Heck, if it wasn't unbelievably expensive, I'd buy ALL of Cerberus. I think Sim can turn this around: too many people like his work to allow him to die penniless and alone. But maybe he needs to rethink his approach to his work.
One Nitpick But Otherwise Agreement
Date: 2012-09-18 08:26 am (UTC)And I say this as someone who has no problem saying, repeatedly, that I owe Dave Sim the very fact I do comics. But that's why I take his fate fairly personally. It seems now a bit of a warning in some ways. And his refusal to grow beyond self-publishing--which he could easily do; Fanta or Dark Horse or Image, just to name three, I'm sure would do VERY well by him with just CEREBUS, and without any loss in rights on his part; I've been published by Fanta; they take NO rights at all and their contracts are possibly the loosest and most creator-favoring possible, the only requirement they ever had being first look at new work, something they do not even enforce--seems foolish now.
PS
Date: 2012-09-18 08:28 am (UTC)Re: One Nitpick But Otherwise Agreement
Date: 2012-09-18 12:02 pm (UTC)I agree with everything you've said. It's interesting that he thinks that his zenith was at that point, not prior...but then, I guess that's the nature of the artist, perhaps. I think most people would generally agree that High Society and Church and State was the true zenith of the comic from a story/art standpoint.
What _I_ would do, if I were Sim, would be to do what George Lucas should be legally prevented from doing: revisit his early Cerebus work and redo it. Not only with his mastery of the visual form, but to correct and clean-up the work in reference to how he changed the story later. I can't believe that there aren't people who wouldn't pay to read a 'remastered' early Cerebus. I don't think it would be compromising his vision: I think it would be like an author doing a second-draft or a rewrite. If JRR Tolkien, writer of what most living brits voted as the best story of the 20th century, felt comfortable going back and changing his masterworks so that the Hobbit and LotR fit together better, I don't see why Sim couldn't go back with his improved talent, better art tools and greater storytelling skills and update his earliest work.
It makes me very sad that so many great comic creators of the past simply were unable to make a long-term living doing comics (or solely doing comics). It makes me equally unhappy to see so many of them end up virtually penniless, especially when much of their influential work has gone on to fund massive multi-million dollar blockbusters. Sim, I think, should be Eastman and Laird, comfortable for the rest of their lives barring a disaster...not where he is now, scratching pennies together just to pay off his collaborator.
Re: One Nitpick But Otherwise Agreement
Date: 2012-09-24 04:17 am (UTC)Meanwhile comics fans are more than happy to support the exploitation and mock creators who actually try to make a stand. Sometimes I think comics doesn't deserve to live, and I speak as a creator--one on the fringes only occasionally published by companies other than my own, and the reason is not that I've been rejected(I haven't been since I began my actual "career" in the medium, I just rarely submit), but because I don't even want to bother with the shitheels.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-18 08:35 am (UTC)