1. Early life

2. Career
    Cerebus  Post-Cerebus work 

3. Other work

4. Legacy

5. Controversies
    Creators' rights  Allegations  Relationship with The Comics Journal 

6. Theology and philosophy

7. Health

8. Awards
    Day Prize 

9. Collections of Sim's writing

10. See also

11. References
     Works cited 

12. External links

Dave Sim (born 17 May 1956) is a Canadian cartoonist and publisher, best known for his comic book Cerebus, his artistic experimentation, his advocacy of self-publishing and creator's rights, and his controversial political, philosophical and religious beliefs.

Sim rose to prominence with Cerebus, which began in December 1977. Sim initially conceived it as a parody of Conan the Barbarian and other sword and sorcery comics, but after two years began to consider the series a self-contained work that would run for 300 issues and be subdivided into "novels". By the time the 6000-page work was completed in March 2004, Sim had delved into politics, theology, metaphysics, and a controversial examination of feminism and gender, while becoming progressively more sophisticated and experimental in his storytelling and artwork. Sim worked on Cerebus Archives afterward, and produced the comic books Glamourpuss, which examines the history of photorealistic comics, and Judenhass, about the Holocaust.

Sim co-founded the small press publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim with his wife-to-be, Deni Loubert, in 1977. Most of the titles it published moved to Loubert's Renegade Press after the couple's divorce in the mid-1980s. The publishing company later was co-owned by Sim's creative partner, Gerhard, who dissolved their partnership and sold his stake in the company to Sim in 2007.

Sim helped create the Creator's Bill of Rights in 1988. He has criticized the use of copyright to restrict creators, and has arranged for his body of work to fall into the public domain following his death.

Early life

Sim was born 17 May 1956.^[1] His father was a factory supervisor at Budd Automotive, and did work as a labour negotiator.{{sfn|Hoffman|2012|p=7}}

He became interested in comic books when he was eight. Berni Wrightson Badtime Stories (1971) inspired him to devote himself to drawing.{{sfn|Hoffman|2012|p=8}} Sim also found inspiration in Mad magazine, particularly Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood's "Superduperman" parody, as well as underground cartoonist Jack Jackson's Conan parody.{{sfn|Hoffman|2012|pp=9–10}}

He wrote and drew comics throughout his adolescence, and began submitting work to fanzines. His first published work was some articles in the comics fanzine Rocket's Blast Comicollector. He had submitted artwork as well, and although it was rejected, Sim struck up a relationship with editor Gabe Quintanilla, who encouraged him to continue submitting material. Now & Then Books owner Harry Kremer allowed him to produce a newsletter called Now & Then Times. The first issue arrived in summer 1972. Sim produced another issue in 1973, but had begun devoting his time to John Balge's Comic Art News and Reviews, another Canadian comics fanzine. For CANAR he did interviews with subjects such as Barry Windsor-Smith.{{sfn|Hoffman|2012|pp=8–9}} Sim also worked on Oktoberfest Comics, a one-shot published by Kramer.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}} He became friends with artist Gene Day in 1974. The two worked together on a proposed character called the Partisan, which they hoped would run in Jim Waley's Orb Magazine.

Inspired by Charles Schulz's Peanuts and Outhouses of the North, a small book of cartoons published by the Highway Bookshop in northern Ontario, Sim spent 1975 and 1976 developing a comic strip called The Beavers. Highway Bookshop published the strip as a book in 1976. A second book failed to materialize when the publisher shut down. Sim then pursued syndication, pitching The Beavers to the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. With Day inking the strips, a year's worth was produced in three days.{{sfn|Hoffman|2012|pp=12–13}} Sim also wrote or drew stories published in anthologies such as Phantacea^[2] and Star*Reach. The Beavers also saw print in Star*Reach's sister funny animals comic Quack!.

Around this time, Sim had work published by Charlton Comics and Warren Publishing.{{sfn|Hoffman|2012|p=10}} In 1976, Sim took the only job he ever held outside of comics, as an employee at Now & Then Books.{{sfn|Walcoff|2007}} He also wrote and drew parts of "Ali Baba" #1 for Gauntlet Comics.

Career

Cerebus

In December 1977, Sim began publishing Cerebus, an initially bi-monthly, black-and-white comic book series. It began as a parodic cross between Conan the Barbarian and Howard the Duck. Progressively, Sim shifted his narrative style to story arcs of a few issues' length. Soon he moved to longer, far more complex "novels", beginning with the 25-issue storyline High Society which began in issue #26. The sword and sorcery elements in the series, prominent up to that point, were minimized as Sim concentrated more on politics and religion.

In 1979, during a time when he was taking large doses of LSD, Sim was hospitalized for treatment of schizophrenia-like symptoms.^[4] It was about this time that Sim began to envision Cerebus as a single, lengthy story that would run exactly 300 issues, ending with the lead character's death. 25 years later, in 2004, Sim's plan was fulfilled with the 300th and last issue.

In the 1980s, Sim traveled widely to promote Cerebus, which became a very successful independently-produced comic book, with a circulation peaking at 36,000 copies. In 1984 he began a collaboration with Gerhard, who handled the background artwork in the series. Aardvark-Vanaheim, managed by Loubert, began publishing other comics besides Cerebus, such as William Messner-Loebs' Journey and Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot. After Sim and Loubert's separation, Loubert started Renegade Press, which assumed publishing duties for all non-Cerebus Aardvark-Vanaheim titles in 1985.

Although Sim did not maintain a consistent monthly schedule for the entire run, which at times required an accelerated production schedule to catch up, he completed the Cerebus series on schedule in March 2004. As the series progressed, it was noted for its tendency towards artistic experimentation.^[5] Sim has called the complete run of Cerebus a 6,000-page novel,^[6] a view shared by several academic writers^[7][8] and comics historians.^[9]

He purchased Gerhard's stake in Aardvark-Vanaheim,^[10] and has made arrangements for the copyright of Cerebus to fall into the public domain following his death.^[11][12]

Post-Cerebus work

Following the completion of Cerebus in 2004, Sim produces occasional guest work, goes to conventions and regularly attends city council meetings, provides interviews and art for a Texas-based magazine called Following Cerebus, and provided commentary and reports on Kitchener politics for two local magazines (called Xen and Versus).

As of 2006, Sim was working on the Cerebus Archive Project, an online searchable database of Cerebus materials. Sim is also in the process of reading the Gospels and The Book of Revelation out of Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort's 1881 interlinear Greek to English translation of The New Testament semi-weekly and taking notes. He wrote that he plans to publish a commentary on it, using Chester Brown's artwork for the Gospel of Mark from Brown's unfinished gospel project as illustrations. Sim wrote he may make his notes available as a free digital book. This project was discussed in Collected Letters: 2004, and in recent letters between Sim and his readers.{{citation needed|date=February 2016}}

Beginning in 2006, Sim began publishing an online comic-book biography of Canadian actress Siu Ta titled Siu Ta, So Far.^[13]

In late 2006 and early 2007, Sim conducted public readings of the 1611 King James Bible at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener in order to raise money for the Food Bank of Waterloo Region.^[14]

In late 2007, Sim announced two projects. One, which he initially referred to only as "Secret Project One", is Judenhass (German for "Jew hatred"), a 56-page "personal reflection on The Holocaust" which was released on May 28, 2008.^[15] The other is glamourpuss, a comic-book series which is a combined parody of fashion magazines (wherein Sim traces photos from real fashion magazines) and a historical study of the photorealist style of comic-strip art, for which he did a promotional "tour" of online forums related to comics in February 2008.^[16]

In spring 2009, Sim began publishing Cerebus Archive, a bimonthly presentation of his work before and surrounding Cerebus.^[17]

On October 23, 2009 the first episode of the web series Cerebus TV premiered. The show airs new episodes Fridays at 10 pm Eastern time, which then stream continuously throughout the week. Credits list Dave Sim as the executive producer. He is often the central hub of the shows, either interviewing comics legends or showing behind the scenes at Aardvark-Vanaheim. As of early 2013, there have been approximately 115 episodes of Cerebus TV.{{citation needed|date=March 2013}}

In 2011, BOOM! Town announced that in 2012 it would publish Dave Sim's Last Girlfriend, a collection of letters between Dave Sim and Susan Alston originally intended for Denis Kitchen's Kitchen Sink Press.^[18] A collection of academic essays about Cerebus was published in 2012 by McFarland.^[19]

It appeared the 2012 end of Glamourpuss would mean the end of The Strange Death of Alex Raymond which was running in it; in 2013 it was announced IDW would publish the series in a reworked edition, as well as handle a number of other projects, including a Cerebus cover collection.^[20][21]

Other work

"Arnold the Isshurian", a parody of Conan and Little Nemo, 2 pages, Epic Illustrated, February 1982

Legacy

Sim's use of an extended, multi-layered storytelling canvas, divided in large arcs divided in mostly self-contained issues, was acknowledged by J. Michael Straczynski as his inspiration for the structure of Babylon 5.^[22]

Controversies

Creators' rights

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Sim used his sales leverage from Cerebus to act as a major proponent and advocate of creator's rights and self-publishing. After the Puma Blues distribution incident, he helped write the Creators' Bill of Rights^[23] along with Scott McCloud, and Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In addition to speaking on these topics at comic book conventions (as in his 1993 PRO/con speech^[24]), Sim also published the seminal The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing in 1997, which instructed readers on the practical matters of how to successfully self-publish their own comics. Sim often promoted other creators' fledgling work in the back pages of Cerebus.

Sim has criticized the use of copyrights to restrict the use of creations which would have more quickly become public domain under earlier copyright law.^[11] He has stated that other creators are free to use his characters in their own works, which he characterizes as an attempt to be consistent with his own appropriation of others' works.^[25][26]

Allegations

In the course of writing Cerebus, Sim expressed opposition to feminism and made controversial statements regarding men and women. Sim expressed his views on gender in issue #186 of Cerebus, in a text piece as part of the story arc "Reads" (one of four books in the larger "Mothers & Daughters" arc), using the pseudonym Viktor Davis. Among the various theories expounded upon in the piece, Sim's alter-ego Viktor Davis categorizes humanity into metaphorical lights, which tended to reside in biological men, and voids, which tended to be in biological women. He characterized Voids as "without a glimmer of understanding of intellectual processes" and declared that "Light does not Breed".

In 1995, The Comics Journal #174 featured a Bill Willingham caricature of Sim on one of the covers, bearing the title "Dave Sim: Misogynist Guru of Self-Publishers". Inside was a lengthy article written by Jonathan Hagey and Kim Thompson that published responses from comics creators such as Alan Moore, Seth, Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, and Sim's friend and fellow Canadian Chester Brown. The responses ranged from anger to a belief that Sim was joking. Others would later speculate that Sim was suffering from a mental illness related to his heavy drug use in the late 1970s.^[4] The article also included a short interview with Sim's ex-wife, wherein she described the essay as evidence of Sim being "very scared". Accompanying the article was an illustration of Sim as a Nazi German concentration camp warden, standing before a gate with the name of his publishing company, with emaciated camp prisoners behind the fence. In the essay in Cerebus #186, Sim characterized fellow self-publishing cartoonist Jeff Smith as an example of a man dominated by his wife. When Smith contested this,^[27] Sim accused Smith of lying and challenged Smith to a boxing match, which Smith declined.^[28]

In 2001, Sim published another essay, "Tangent", in Cerebus #265 (April 2001).^[29] In it, Sim furthered the themes from "Reads", describing the tangent he contends western society has taken due to the widespread acceptance and proliferation of feminism, beginning in 1970. The Comics Journal posted the full essay on its website, although a short introduction by staff distanced the Journal from the ideas therein, calling them "nutty and loathsome". The following issue included a rebuttal to the first "Tangent" by "Ruthie Penmark". Several years later, in issue #263, the Journal devoted a section to discussion of Cerebus. It reprinted a 2001 essay by Renee Stephen, "Masculinity's Last Hope, or Creepily Paranoid Misogynist?: An Open Letter to Dave Sim",^[30] addressing the "Tangent" controversy. Sim's reply to Stephen, and Stephen's reply to Sim's reply, were published in The Comics Journal # 266.

Despite the description of his views and his reputation as a misogynist,^[28][31][32] Sim maintains that he is not one.^[33] In 2008, Sim sent out a self-written form letter to individuals who had sent him mail, detailing his disagreement with being called a misogynist and disenchantment with what he perceived as a dearth of support in refuting those claims to his character. Contending that society perceived misogynists as the "lowest, subhuman form of life in our society", he mentioned that few, if any, people had defended him, allowing him to be called "the lowest, subhuman form of life in our society with impunity." Sim's letter ended with an ultimatum, requesting that those who wished to receive his return correspondence reply with a letter or online posting and the statement, "I do not believe Dave Sim is a misogynist." All others were asked not to attempt to contact him again.^[33]

Relationship with The Comics Journal

The coverage of his writings about feminism was not the only subject of Sim's conflict with The Comics Journal. He and Gary Groth, editor-in-chief of The Comics Journal, developed a combative relationship. In December 1979, the magazine was the first{{citation needed|date=February 2012}} to publish a review of the first dozen or so issues of Cerebus by Kim Thompson, who called Cerebus "a true heir to Carl Barks' duck stories".{{sfn|Thompson|1979|p=25}}

Early in the 1990s, Groth took issue with Sim's stance of self-publishing as the best option for creators, and began to disseminate the view that it was best to work for a publisher, mentioning Ivan Boesky's address to the University of California's commencement ceremony in May 1986, where Boesky informed his audience that "greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself."{{citation needed|date=August 2012}}

Later, on a panel at the San Diego Comic-Con Groth indicted Sim in what Sim characterized as a "Nuremberg-style tribunal designed to bring to light the most deserving criminals who had over the past decade and longer besmirched the good name of the comics art and industry".^[34]

Despite this adversarial relationship, Groth later published an issue of the Journal featuring a critical roundtable on the series.{{issue|date=November 2011}}

Theology and philosophy

Following his reading of the Bible and the Qur'an beginning in December 1996, Sim underwent a religious conversion from atheist secular humanism to his own mixture of the Abrahamic religions. Sim's beliefs are based on the premise that conflicts in scripture are the result of an ongoing argument between the true male God and Yoowhoo, a false female God.^[35] He lives a lifestyle of fasting, celibacy, prayer, and alms-giving, and considers scriptures from the Jewish (the Torah, and Nevi'im), Christian (the Gospels, Acts and the Book of Revelation), and Islamic (the Qur'an) religions to be equally valid as the Word of God.^[36] He explored theological themes heavily in the later issues of Cerebus.

Health

Due to a wrist condition, Dave Sim has been physically unable to draw since February 2015.^[37] He began making signs of recovery in 2017, and did his first new drawing of Cerebus on September 29, 2017.^[38]

Awards

Sim has been nominated for many awards, and has won several:

• Comic Book Legal Defense Fund: Defender of Liberty Award 1996
• Diamond Gemmie as Small Press Pioneer
• Eisner Award: Best Graphic Album: Reprint, 1994, for Cerebus: Flight by Dave Sim and Gerhard
• Harvey Award: Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist), 1992, Dave Sim, for Cerebus; Best Letterer, 2004, Dave Sim, for Cerebus
• Ignatz Awards: Outstanding Artist, 1998, Dave Sim, Cerebus
• Inkpot Award 1981
• Joe Shuster Awards: Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Achievement, 2005, Dave Sim and Gerhard for completing 300 issues of Cerebus in 2004; Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame, 2006; Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonst, 2009, for Glamourpuss and Judenhass
• Kirby Award: Best Black & White Series, 1987 and 1985, Cerebus by Dave Sim
• SPACE Lifetime Achievement Award 2004

Day Prize

In 2001, Sim and his collaborator Gerhard founded the Howard E. Day Prize for outstanding achievement in self-publishing, in tribute to Sim's mentor, Gene Day. Bestowed annually at SPACE (Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo) in Columbus, Ohio from 2002 to 2008^[39] the prize consisted of a $500 cash award and a commemorative plaque. The recipient was chosen by Sim and Gerhard from a pool of submitted works. Beginning 2009, the Day Prize has been replaced by the SPACE Prize.

Collections of Sim's writing

• Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (ISSN 0712-7774) (1997; rev. 2010) collects selections from Sim's 'Notes from the President' column that dealt with self-publishing, the Pro/Con speech from 1993, and more.
• Collected Letters: 2004 ({{ISBN|0-919359-23-X}}) (2005) collects Sim's responses to readers' letters (the original letters are not included) after the publication of Cerebus #300.
• Dave Sim's Collected Letters 2 (2008) collects Sim's responses to readers' letters (the original letters are not included) from June and July 2004.
• Dave Sim: Conversations (2013) edited by Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace, University Press of Mississippi, 2013; collects interviews with Sim spanning 1982–2006.

See also

• Canadian comics
• Cerebus phonebooks
• Diamondback (game)

References

Works cited

• {{cite book

• {{cite journal

• {{cite web

External links

• Dave Sim at the Grand Comics Database
• {{IMDb name|id=1009282|name=Dave Sim}}
• Dave Sim's DeviantArt page

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