Dave Sim and Cerebus

Cerebus is the greatest comic ever.

For those that are unfamiliar

>In the early, sword-and-sorcery issues of Cerebus, Dave Sim drew about as well as the second- or third-best artist in your high school, the guy you’d ask to do the cover for your heavy metal band’s album or airbrush the side of your van. After drawing about a hundred issues, by the time he’d finished Volume II of Church & State — around the same time he hired a brilliant and apparently indefatigable draftsman named Gerhard as his background artist, freeing himself to concentrate exclusively on his characters — Dave Sim had become one of the best cartoonists in North America. And not just in the excellence of his technical skill — he was relentlessly inventive and virtuosic. His exuberant formal experimentation extended from his lettering and paneling to the design of whole issues: Readers puzzled and wowed over the issues in which each page’s background was a fragment of one large picture of Cerebus, or the spinning of an ascending tower was reflected by the page layout rotating several degrees on each page, so that you had to slowly turn the whole book 360º in your hands in the course of reading it. “Thou shalt break every law in the book,” was his injunction to himself.

>Sim was also a smart and voracious autodidact (he dropped out of high school after grade 11), and, as he matured, his intellectual passions grew beyond comics, and his artistic ambitions far beyond parody. The single-issue stories expanded into longer and longer story arcs, gradually growing into full-length, 500-page novels. As he continued drawing Cerebus, Sim incorporated everything that captured his interest into the book: He became interested in the mechanics of electoral politics, and Cerebus ran for Prime Minister; he got interested in the history of religion, and Cerebus became the Pope; as Sim’s literary tastes became more sophisticated, Cerebus encountered incarnations of Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. He insatiably appropriated not only literary, historic and political figures, but fictional characters and screen personae, the likenesses of friends and colleagues, other authors’ prose styles, even another cartoonist’s dialogue in a manner that would’ve been called postmodern if he’d had an MFA. He wrote books within books, invented intricate political ideologies, created whole cosmologies. Throughout all of which the book’s central character remained the same anthropomorphized aardvark.

>It also, against what might seem like any reasonable expectations, became a success. Dave Sim was one of the first cartoonists to publish his own work, and he was a vocal proponent of self-publication as the only means of securing artistic autonomy and control. Not only did he actually make a living being a cartoonist, he made it look glamorous. The monthly “Note from the President” and the photo that accompanied each issue of Cerebus hinted at a life spent doing nothing but drawing his comic book, smoking pot and going out (and breaking up) with good-looking girls. At comics conventions, he showed up in limos, rented out whole suites, threw parties. He’d become an alternative-comics rock star. He appealed to the young and unformed in much the same way as Jim Morrison or Hunter S. Thompson, artists whose personæ are at least as compelling as their work.

But then somewhere in there, roughly two-thirds of the way through the series, Dave Sim began to develop some let’s call them idiosyncratic and controversial views on the sexes, politics and religion — about which more later — all of which found explicit expression in his work. These “rants” and “tangents,” as he called them, alienated a lot of his audience. Quite a few of his readers would tell you that he went insane before their eyes. By the end, Cerebus’s circulation had dropped almost in half from its high point, circa Church & State — although that might also be attributed to the more static and internal action of the later books, or to changes in the business and culture of comics. The final issue, which showed the title character dying “alone, unloved, and unmourned” in fulfillment of a prophecy made back in 1988 (so this isn’t exactly a “spoiler”), completed an undertaking that began as an in-joke and ended as what its author, a man not given to modest understatement, claims is “the longest sustained narrative in human history.”*

>Dave Sim noted ruefully that the completion of his vast project was met with “the sound of one cricket leg chirping.” Gary Groth, editor of the Comics Journal, which had had a combative history with Sim, sent him a note of gentlemanly congratulations of the sort you might imagine Holmes sending to Moriarty after the unexplained disappearance of the crown jewels. There were mentions in The Village Voice and The Onion’s A.V. Club — mentions that tended to take the same tone of straightfaced, whatever-else-you-wanna-say-respect the media pays to achievements like a record-setting win at the national hot-dog-eating contest.

To get a feel for his work for those of you to young to remember, I'll post some of his comics.

These are ones that appeared in Epic Illustrated by Marvel in the 80's (these where my introduction to the series).

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Cerebus is just a mess.
>'Cerebus’ [regarded by many as Sim’s masterpiece] is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can’t think, he can’t write. There’s no discernible talent.”

>It’s all a clear indication, Groth notes, of the decline of comic standards. We have no standards left. [Sim] seems to have been a very sincere and troubled person, but that doesn’t mean I have to endure reading him. I even resented the use of the term from Homer, when Heracles was sent by Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns, to bring back 'Cerberus' from Hades the king of the underworld.

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Surely you jest.

Based sims calling out the evil feminsts.

I'm not sure which is more embarrassing: how poorly done this is or the way some Sup Forumsdependent faggots will defend it because they think it will help them fit in. Sad.

k

Everyone knows Cerebus, what's the point of this text dump?

I don't.

>An idiosyncratic view of the sexes
Here's the thing; It's not. Dave sees men and women as complimentary natures, which is a pretty fucking traditional view. The reason he seems to "hate women" is because he rightfully calls out feminism for preaching equality but practicing chauvinism.

All of the "women are voids" stuff is just a flip of the "void is male" stuff that he did in the early part of the series that NO ONE FUCKING COMPLAINED ABOUT. Look in to any feminist literature from the time that Cerebus was in fullswing and you'll realize that Dave is only responding *in kind* to the venomous anti-male sentiment of late 2nd/early 3rd wave feminism.

You've got women gleefully portraying men as the equivalent of the Christian devil, the root of all evil in world, and people freak out on Dave for suggesting that women are more emotionally volatile than men.
>You're a violent, malicious rapist, responsible for all the evil in the world
>You're a vapid, histrionic sycophant and you're responsible for all the evil in world
The only difference between Dave and radical feminists (at least, late Cerebus era Dave) is that society tolerates radical feminism because "women are wonderful."

Infinitely

wut?

I will make deliberate use of effete and lapidary in my response.

The entire thing just seems like a tone deaf, incoherent mess to me.

>Cerebus is the greatest comic ever.

Not even close. And Sim can go fuck himself.

Sim basically predicted what would feminists become. He was ahead of the time. Sim's bio also shows how easily people turn away from you, once you start to think differently from politically correct safespace. You can disagree with Sim, but that's beside the point. It's one thing to start a polemic with Sim, it's another to meme "misogynist" over and over.

I agree with the general gist of what you say, but I think that once Sim started saying that women shouldn't have suffrage, he was going further towards extremism than what the other side was doing.

The other side that says all men are bad and let women say "kill all men"?

Yeah, nice logic there pal.

Nothing good has come from women's suffrage.

Women, kids, and dogs are the three things (keyword: THINGS) that can't be harmed in our perception, because we see them as "innocent" and not deserving any harm.

It's really funny when you think about it, because for all this talk about equality, the feminists don't want to be seen as human beings, as flawed, egoistic people with mood swings. Nope, they want to be seen as superior to the Man (as in Homo Sapiens), and therefore, flawless

>Sim's bio also shows how easily people turn away from you, once you start to think differently from politically correct safespace.
Or once you refuse to speak to people who don't sign your petition.

Or when you challenge your friends to settle your differences with fistfights, because you refuse to apologize after insulting their wives.

Dave Sim's bio shows how easily people turn away from you, once you push them to turn away from you.

I don't think you learned anything from Sims. Just like so much of his readership, when he strayed too far towards the terrifying conclusions of his own truth, he left you behind with the rest the muddle around in the well-worn comfortable dugout of the herd.

>Or once you refuse to speak to people who don't sign your petition.

Or when you depict Sim as a obersturmbahnfuhrer of a nazi camp, like Groth did

And yes, Sim was self-destructive, but people never criticized him for that, they criticized his views, not his person.

People did both. Groth isn't everyone.

Entertaining the notion that women shouldn't be allowed to vote is not even close to as bad as entertaining the notion that men should be wiped out. Once again, women can accuse men of being violent monsters but if men suggest that women have a poor judgement, a MUCH lesser transgression, then apparently men are the bigots.

For Sim, he was everyone. And then Groth stabbed him in the heart, like Brutus. How poetic

>Groth isn't everyone.

Just the guy everyone else listened to, at the time.

Even at the time, people were criticizing Groth for his treatment of Sim. Remember all the criticism for Cerebus being omitted from the TCJ 100? That happened. Groth and Sim don't exist in a vacuum.

God bless them. God bless all the kind hearts

"Kill all men" is just a notion that's entertained. "End women's suffrage" is a concrete goal that some groups are actively working towards. The latter is a more pressing threat than the former.

No it isn't retard. And fuck you for that.

>Sims
Are there false-flagging Sup Forumssters in Cerebus threads who haven't actually read Cerebus, but rather just like the political mystique around it?

>bending over backwards to keep two essentially ridiculous thoughtcrime concepts, equally outrageous and yet unequally indicative of INTENTION, from being considered in tandem properly by waving your arms and going "b-but the end women's sufferage movement is REAL!"

I guess you smelled the smoke of your personal agenda catching and ran to try to stamp out the fire before it starts.

Autocorrect is a thing you dip.

I don't believe you. Why would autocorrect reject "Sim"?

Also
>mobileposting

VERY nice deflection there mate.

You're right. Ending women's suffrage might actually happen whereas men are never going to be wiped out.

But I wonder....how many politcal campaigns did Dave run? Did he take out flyers in the CBJ calling for a rebirth of the classical patriarchy? He clearly runs women off, but how many ever filed charges? Where are the abuse accusations?

So far....to me...it looks like Dave was just participating in a conversation that HAD ALREADY veered in to the absurd and inhumane before he even got there. Now, should he have maybe *refrained* from taking the bait? That's another discussion entirely. (yes)

>Ending women's suffrage might actually happen
it's not going to happen, because that would require to admit that they fucked up in the first place. Have you ever seen a woman admitting that she fucked up? Ever?

You're right too, but I think Dave would have gone further than that if he could have. Dave isn't an activist, but part of this is that he can't afford to be one. He can barely afford to pay his bills, much less take out advertisements or go on a campaign.

This. You know, I naively thought that as I got older it would be possible to have more reasonable discussions and debates with people about controversial subjects, but in this generation if you think differently from the liberal hivemind, even if you DON'T and simply want to play devil's advocate and try and get people to comprehend and understand other points of view and why people might hold them, you're just shut down and shut out. And probably called a Nazi. This is why the "liberal" left is no longer attractive to people who value free thought. Things have completely turned around.

You're being way too stubborn.

1. Relatively speaking, ending women's suffrage is MUCH more likely to occur than a genocide of men.
2. Globally, women do not have the same political franchise as men
3. Women's suffrage in the west has not been around long enough for it to be a foundation of our society. It is *currently* just a phase.

Look, I'm an antifeminist too, but I also read more than just Sup Forums so I'm capable of processing arguments that acknowledge some of their points. Whether or not you think western women, right now, would VOTE to give up their right to vote is irrelevant. "Rolling back" the right of western women to vote MIGHT actually happen, ESPECIALLY in comparison to Y The Last Man occurring.

Eh, I disagree. I think Dave was content to have his opinions confined to his work for the most part, and if he did have more money he'd either go (back) full hedonist or go (full) ascetic.

YEP

When I was young, I was very "open-minded" and tolerant. As I grew up older, I started to realize that people are mostly assholes. And that's it.

>"Rolling back" the right of western women to vote MIGHT actually happen, ESPECIALLY in comparison to Y The Last Man occurring.
Okay. How would that happen?

Womens suffrage will never end.

Women want to genocide men but are to lazy and weak to do it.

You're both thinking like women. You're refusing to acknowledge that the future is not a function of your intentions or biases or of what you think/expect others to do.

Every US president of the 21st century has signed more executive orders than the previous one. Western women losing the right to vote IS A POSSIBILITY. I'm not saying that everyone will accept it. I'm not saying it will be tomorrow and I'm not saying IT WILL happen. I'm saying that, given the variety of cultures and values that have existed throughout our history, it is absolutely possible that this is a "golden age" for women and in a century things will be MUCH different. "Western women losing some of their rights" is absolutely a possible outcome in the potential-space of that next century.

"All the men dying at once" is pretty much as close to impossible as you can get while still operating within the laws of physics.

I was asking about a hypothetical future. Tell me how such possibility would look.

While the Left rules the safe spaces of the "real" world, the Right is still better online at refusing to hear out arguments and shutting down opponents with personal attacks. Sup Forums is a good example of that. Even in this very thread, I see more personal attacks coming from the Right than the Left. Although has some pretty good posts and I don't mean to lump them in with the rest.

But back to the subject of comic books: I don't think [thread about a guy who was diagnosed with schizophrenia] is a good place to make a stand about which side is more open-minded than the other. For all this talk about being open-minded, Dave was pretty good at having a closed mind too. Remember when he said that he would settle a dispute with his fists instead of his words?

>put boundaries around this thing that doesn't even exist yet
And that's exactly what I'm telling you to cut out. My entire point is that YOU CAN'T see the future that way.

Don't underestimate the effects of unforeseen paradigm shifts and catastrophes. Order is balanced above chaos and it doesn't take that much to tip over and plummet.

Lacking the vision to predict something does not mean that the thing you fail to consider is any more or less likely to occur. Outside of physical and statistical impossibilities (all sand is now gary busey, you win every lottery you ever play) you have to at least consider that "everything is possible."

There is no law of the natural universe preventing or endowing female suffrage. Furthermore, it is a relatively new phenomenon and has yet to catch on worldwide. Finally, given both the fact that social mores and gender roles fluctuate over time, and that the 20th and 21st centuries have seen the rise of centralized governments actually capable of controlling citizens lives on a day-to-day basis, "women loosing their right to vote" is not absent from "potential outcomes." My point ends there.

>Remember when he said that he would settle a dispute with his fists instead of his words?
I don't. Also, I'm closed-minded nowadays.

You know. You could say that you have no clue what you are talking about instead of writing a wall of text. The capability to see various scenarios, on the other hand, is a skill of a Man. But in a culture where everything is relative, I'm not surprised that people are too confused about their reality

I remember learning to term 'shaggy dog tale' from a Cerebus thread. It does fit the series.

>women's suffrage

Histrionic bitches who vote for more abusive big daddies (government).

End women's suffrage. Raise the voting age to 32.

People have far more incentive to waste money over the issue which generates the most "feels" at the moment, as opposed to thinking about consequences and who has to pay.

When I think women, I think "The View". And when I think "The View", I think of people who should never be near a ballot, who should never have the power to influence a PTA meeting let alone local, state, and national elections.

You're a Virgin aren't you user

Except that is absolutely right.

You refuse to acknowledge the differing likelihoods of the differing possibilities without scenarios? Okay.
>Scenario A: Congress has high approval ratings from men but low approval ratings from women, so it amends the Constitution to forbid women from voting. The President approves. Other nations follow suit.
>Scenario B: Congress has high approval ratings from women but low approval ratings from men. So Congress signs into law a bill which rounds up all men, places them in camps, harvests and freezes their sperm, and then executes all the men. Other nations follow suit.
Both possibilities are unlikely, but B is much more unlikely than A.

I never claimed to have a working model for this potential future. I conceded a point to someone who took issue with one of my original posts. They claimed that my comparison between "male genocide" and "female disenfranchisement" was at the least an intellectually dishonest comparison given the relative likelyhood of each of them occurring. THIS IS IS A FAIR POINT, SO I ACKNOWLEDGED IT.

Then two of you got bent out of shape that I would even CONSIDER that the "crazy feminists" might actually have a smidgen of a point when they talk about the precarious nature of their own (assumed) rights.

cheers.

I don't refuse to acknowlesge the different likelihoods. I just am not afraid of playing different scenarios in my mind.

Thank you for your ideas. Much appreciated. I have to think how to make scenario B a reality, though

Some more Cerebus comics.

Thank you.

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You'd think people who care about women's rights and see the potential end of women's sufferage as a very real issue would be more interested in taking to task the government of Saudi Arabia than a lone Canadian comic creator.

But obviously not. Because that would be hard and besides, Dave is white so it isn't problematic to attack him.

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What are your suggestions for ways in which I personally can take the government of Saudi Arabia to task?

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Yeah yeah, you can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

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Butthurt roastie.

Starting petitions / organising protests / trending hashtags to try and get your government to stop buying oil from and selling weapons to a state that treats women as literal second class citizens might be a good start.

But like I say, if that's too hard don't worry about it. I'm sure all the millions of women Dave Sim is oppressing with his opinions are just as important.

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>Starting petitions / organising protests / trending hashtags to try and get your government to stop buying oil from and selling weapons to a state that treats women as literal second class citizens might be a good start.
Okay, done. It didn't work. What now?

Okay, just kidding, I don't use Twitter.

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When thinking about it, it's not the opinions that oppress women, but the fact that he has opinions other than "women are saint" is what insults women

Storytiming Cerebus world Tour book.

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Nice ad hominem Retard, no wonder clinton jobbed.

Typical of sjws not being able to defend their delusions.

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The far left rules nothing but media and is known to not to want to listen to others.

Certainly the far leftists wackjobs losers known as sjws.

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