“Believing in G_d doesn’t change the world, it only changes the individual…”

The individual is part of the world.

“… in my experience, born-again types tend to be A & not-A simultaneously). ”

This is impossible.

“…Sim’s not only a misogynist…”

There is no evidence that Sim is a misogynist.

Oh dear, it’s probably all that slithery food I’ve been eating. I’ll try to cut back.

It’s not just Sim’s precious ego I’m tired of– almost every major comics blog for the past three weeks has either been running articles on Sim or linking to those who do, and the majority of the discussions hinge on the problem that concerns us here: Sim’s insistence that he and the work are part and parcel. “Accept Cerebus, accept me.” Out of the seven articles I’ve read in the past three weeks only one has taken the time to actually discuss the merits of Cerebus as a narrative. That speaks volumes about the problem Sim has created for both himself and anyone who would understand him. “Accept Cerebus, accept me.” I don’t dig that. I don’t think it should have been necessary to understand or accept Dave Sim as my personal savior in order to enjoy Cerebus, but that’s what he insisted on, and that insistence poisoned the work for me. I consider that a loss, because I enjoyed the work, in parts, and admired the various techniques he employed to tell his stories, but I don’t like Cerebus because I don’t like Dave Sim’s worldview.

That fault may be a matter of my poor taste, lack of comprehension and generally doomed status of Damned If Do, Double-Damned If I Don’t, but bear with me:

Cerebus, while an at-times compelling & humorous tale, doesn’t propose solutions. It’s bleak to the point of being painful. It points out societal ills (real & imaginary) and argues semantics (at length & pedantically, in a fashion that would bore the tits off Norman Mailer); it doomsays, but it doesn’t suggest anything remotely resembling a better world. I know the world’s in shaky shape. It has been, most of my life. I don’t need Sim to point that out, particularly not if he’s going to do it in an unimaginative and uninformative fashion.

Regarding Sim’s late-in-the-day conversion, which figures largely in the latter third of the work and seems to be the closest he can come to an out: Religious faith CAN be a solution– but only on a personal level. Believing in G_d doesn’t change the world, it only changes the individual (and then only to an infinitesimal extent– in my experience, born-again types tend to be A & not-A simultaneously). Religious conversion doesn’t equate doing something to make the world a better place.

Sim was a writer before he was a die-hard mystic with delusions of grandeur, and fiction should, at its best, project a better world. An artist should be able to produce a work of art that conveys information & ideas vital to our betterment as a species. If you can’t, that’s okay, too– there’s nothing wrong with simply being entertaining –but Sim likes to come on like he’s the proverbial prophet with the key to the rose garden of immortality, and it just. ain’t. so. If he does, that rose garden’s only big enough for one.

So, to bring it home:
Sim’s insistence that he and the work are on the same level is belligerent and unnecessary. The twain may be the same but it’s hardly what you’d call informative or uplifting. If I need a cynical comic artist to remind me that life can be utter sh*t, I can pick up Harvey Pekar or Robert Crumb or Eddie Campbell– all of whom go on to point to ways in which our sense of failure, frailty & fumbling hopelessness is essentially untrue, that life IS worth living, if only we’ll pull our collective head out of our ass. They move on to provide solutions. That’s what makes them worthy artists & worth reading. Sim, however, is down on everyone and everything, positive & negative, including himself. He thinks we’re all damned. I don’t need that, and I believe I can speak for a fair number of others who don’t, either.

When he produces something that bespeaks beauty, I’ll read it. But I don’t much see the point in running him down any more. He does a good enough job of that on his own.

Hm, I don’t see much point in trying to win this “argument” since anything that disagrees with Dave will automatically be branded “emotional nonsense.”

So much for Sim’s brand of “reason.” What a train-wreck. To think I once admired that guy.

Second. It isn’t that *arguing* with Dave proves him right — it’s the fact that emotional nonsense like this proves him right. “Oh look! An opportunity to bash Dave Sim. Everybody pile on! Wheee!!!” Idiotic children. Please, continue to misquote and malign him for no good reason. It makes it that much easier to defend him.

Third. Yes, it is hard to separate Dave from Cerebus. He made it a very personal work, and that *adds* to the artistic achievement, it does not detract from it. However, as difficult as it may be, it is not impossible. Yet so many fail at it over and over and over again — so called experts that really should know better. *That*, Alice, is truly repellent.

Good day.

“That sounds far-fetched, but remember this all started with giving women the vote. I’m sure the vast majority of men thought at the time, “It’s a bit of a stretch, but once they have the vote, they’ll be satisfied.” In my view, all of these things follow one on the other and women and homosexuals are never going to be satisfied, no matter what you capitulate to. Same-sex marriage is the latest one. Most men delude themselves that if we capitulate on same-sex marriage, that will be the end of it. I have no idea what comes next, but the surest way to find out is to legalize same- sex marriage. ”

Which is from the “Louis Reil: Conversation with Chester Brown” segment that ran in the back of Cerebus. Many of Dave’s views run contrary to public opinion, but at least do him the courtesy of quoting him correctly.

I have no doubt that Sim knows a few women who don’t trigger his arachnid reflex, but his opinion of the majority of women tends to hinge on what they think of him as a Brilliant Interpreter of Reality– cf. his heel-turn on Carla Speed McNeil as an artist after her interview in The Comics Journal #280. That sort of behavior tends to color one’s impressions, so it’s hard not to think of Sim as a misogynist (or at least a very sexually frustrated individual). While I don’t believe he actually hates women, homosexuals, or left-wingers, he has a deeply dour and unfavorable view of a fair portion of the population, and that view is based on his personal biases as opposed to verifiable fact, which makes him a rather tedious and insufficient artist.

To make the matter more of a morass, Sim tends to take every challenge as either an affirmation of his absolute infallibility (“You’re arguing with me, so I must be Right”) or as a personal affront (see his rather lengthy list of former friends & associates, most recently including Gerhard). Whether this behavior is a symptom of his martyr complex or whether it helped him develop one, he has retreated into using his deeply personal & idiosyncratic religious preferences as a defense– a frankly untenable position, and one that doesn’t help his public perception. He’s perfectly right to be concerned / bothered / hurt by how we view him, but he doesn’t attempt to actually engage in a conversation with us* so that we may all redress our differences, he just grumps & grumbles about how he’s been shut out & shut off because we can’t cope with his profound insights. Again, not the worldview of a genius or competent artist, but that of a crank & conspiracy theorist who has painted himself into an illogical corner: God is an embattled point of light in the darkness because that’s how Sim perceives himself.

In a word, sophistry. It’s a self-perpetuating pity party & a mode of self-destructive behavior, and I believe he finds it personally validating in some hermetic way. (The pun is intended.) It’s his own fault if we’ve had enough. For god’s sake, we spend more time talking about Sim-the-man than we do Sim-the-creator because he made damn well certain that we wouldn’t be able to distinguish the two: he made himself synonymous with the work and demanded we accept both on parity, which is self-sabotage for which I’ve no sympathy. The work should exist independent of the artist, it should not be reliant on him unless he lives his life as a work of art. Sim does not.

If he gets off the pot and produces something new worth reading, I’ll re-evaluate my stance– I’m sure many of us would. But until such time comes to pass, I’m sick of hearing about how awful we’ve all been toward his precious, precious ego.

* ‘Us’ in this case referring to former fans who gave up in the face of unnecessary & abusive politicking.