Zootanapuss #5

[superboyprime]

Comments

[wizardru]

I'd heard. And I feel sorry for him, since once upon a time he was doing the indie publisher thing and thriving. I'm not trying to rain on him, but I think he's at a point where he spent a few decades doggedly pursuing his goal, even to the point past when it was a good idea or made financial sense. When you're getting $700 in profits/royalties from a self-published work? Maybe you needed to analyze whether or not this was the best used of your funds.

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

[jlroberson]

Apart from that it's spelled Cerebus,;) I can't say I disagree with a single word of that. Add to this though that a lot of what his output since the seroes ended has been going to is paying Gerhard for his share in A-V, so a lot of whatever he could have been making from all this got swallowed up in that. His response to Kim Thompson's offer to repackage the phone books is partly nuanced, and partly silly: against all sense he thinks the most viable would be FORM & VOID and another around that time, and not even JAKA'S STORY, CHURCH & STATE, or MELMOTH(the last of which is almost Fantagraphics-ready, frankly)--in fact he seems to disdain those and feel that his real zenith began in the WOMEN READS MINDS GUYS period, a period that to me saw his work becoming meaner, colder, less approachable and creepier. Actually it was in the very style itself of FLIGHT where I began to get an inkling of something not quite right anymore, the kind of feeling only having been immersed in the book as long as I as a serious fan was would get; there seemed something hard and mean emerging in it, not helped by the fact that the book was full of a lot of overt violence for the first time, and mostly against women; it seemed a blast of rage and it surprised me that it was only with READS thius started being noticed.

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

[jlroberson]

Excuse all the typos and grammar errors; it's late and I be tired.

Re: One Nitpick But Otherwise Agreement

[wizardru]

Heh. You're not the only one who can make typos. LOL.

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

[jlroberson]

It's a medium that has a tendency to eat its creators. When the rewards are high, that's usually in the short term, and in the long term in those cases you're left with nothing of your own to sustain you when old. And when you GET the rights, the rewards are so low that it doesn't matter anyway.

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.

[jlroberson]

And an additional thought: a special weirdness and a sense of lost opportunity arises when you realize that Cerebus has--without Dave's participation--always has had, pro and con, from early on, a massive cult on the web. I know because when I first even started using the web one of the first things I searched for was Cerebus, and there have always been a LOT of Cerebus-focused forums and sites, both loving him and hating him. He could have been huge there had he only dipped in himself, but till very recently he avoided it. Yet there was the audience, waiting for him.