If you’ve been dying to ask Dave Sim a question about Gender Issues, today’s your last chance, as for one day only, he takes on questions at Sequential Tart. Enjoy!

There is an intrinsic nobility for a man in working hard to provide for himself and for his family, to improve their lot and give them every advantage in life. But I think I’m safe in saying that for most husbands and fathers, The Job was the means to the end, The Job was not an end in itself. The end was the home and the family. “This is why I work this hard.” And on the part of the wife and mother there was an ancillary motivation. He is working terribly hard to provide for us, so I, too, will work terribly
hard to make A Good Home with all that that entails, a place of rest for him from the dog-eat-dog world. This is what he is doing it for, so I have to do my part to live up to that.

Your grandmother and your great-grandmother didn’t see it as being “stuck at home all the time.” The idea of “stuck” and “home” being used in the same sentence would have struck any good Christian woman as ludicrous. How dare you say about My Home -the home I have made for my family, with all that that entails with regards to aesthetics, decor, cleanliness, craft, cookery,etc. etc. etc. that it is a place to be “stuck” in? It is a never ending challenge to maintain and improve, certainly, but “stuck” in? Never.

Of course our grandmothers and great grandmothers had centuries of tradition that were handed down carefully: how to do this more effectively, cooking and baking secrets and so on. They couldn’t have conceived of being “stuck” at home: every season had its own attendant problems and disciplines to enact as they had been enacted for untold generations.

It seems to me that the huge success of Martha Stewart illustrates that those instincts are dormant, not dead. She certainly never seemed to run out of things that could enhance, maintain or improve the home. Of course she was preaching to a generation who just wanted to know where they had to go to hire a Martha Stewart to do all that stuff for them.

1 COMMENT

  1. Cookery!

    I swear to God this has to be a hoax. Or he’s trying to sell “Dave Sims Collected Blog Posts v.2” or something.

    Like Jennifer brings up, my grandmother (a Nana, too!) raised 4 kids but also owned and operated her own flower shop, then after all the kids were finally out of the house went to nursing school in her fifties. She was a RN until she retired. This didn’t make her any less of a woman; to me, it made her a fulfilled woman. But I think Sims would see her as diminished, somehow.

  2. He reminds me of a Victorian gentleman explorer who has traveled to a dark continent and returned with strange specimens, telling a hushed audience at the Royal Geographical Society about the savage yet noble tribes he has observed.

  3. How do I get the spooky Dave Sim Power of being able to speak for generations of people who died before I was born and whose lives I know nothing about?

    It must be liberating to have opinions so completely unfettered from the actual world.

  4. What I don’t understand is, why anybody pays the least bit of attention to this guy? Other than to point out that he is perpetuating the kind of bullshit that has kept people repressed for,…how long? Too long. I don’t know a SOUL who has ever read one issue of the aardvark comic. Why is this guy important? Because he’s a role model for how to publish indie comics? Aren’t Eastman & Laird or Jeff Smith better examples. What’s the deal?

  5. Steve –

    Speaking for myself, I still pay attention to Dave Sim because I think that he has pushed comics as a medium forward than just about anyone else in my lifetime. He’s an absolutely top shelf creator of comics who should be talked about whenever anyone talks about the great innovators in the artform. Unfortunately his worldview is so comepletely insupportable and he has been so very, very vocal about it that it completely overshadows all of the great work that he’s produced. If you’re at all curious for a lengthier explanation of my perspective on this go here:

    http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?p=6297383#post6297383

    For the perspective of someone who is actually a respected and noted commentator on comics, I recommend to you this essay by Douglas Wolk regarding the importance of Dave Sim’s work:

    http://www.believermag.com/issues/200509/?read=article_wolk

  6. @Steve: it could also be that Sim drew 300 consecutive issues of a saga? the last 15 years on a monthly basis? And where you can witness and read his descent into madness and delusion while still producing his saga?
    And that he for all means invented tradepaperbacks?
    that he’s one of the most acclaimed and inventive letterers in recent comics history?
    Because he’s arguably the founding father of self-publishing and organiser of the indie boom?

    I loathe the guy for his bigotry and self-delusionism but I appreciate his legacy

  7. I disagree, Steve, obviously. I think Cerebus was a massive achievement and contains some brilliant stuff. I think it was marginalized before Dave went zoomzoomtothemoon and I think his odd theories sort of peed on what remaining legacy he had, and I think that’s very unfortunate.

    Gail

  8. “Like Jennifer brings up, my grandmother (a Nana, too!) raised 4 kids but also owned and operated her own flower shop, then after all the kids were finally out of the house went to nursing school in her fifties. She was a RN until she retired. This didn’t make her any less of a woman; to me, it made her a fulfilled woman. But I think Sims would see her as diminished, somehow. ”

    Where from Dave Sim’s quoted section do you draw this conclusion? The way I understand it is he doesn’t insist upon women remaining shackled to their houses and forced to keep the place ship-shape. He does, however, believe that it is in a woman’s nature to do so, and I agree. It is their “natural role”. He seems impressed with women who are able to provide a good home for their family AND have an occupation, as we all should be. If anyone would have viewed the woman in the quote above as diminished, Dave Sim believes it would have been the Feminists because it looks like she put her family first and career second. Would he be wrong to believe this? I don’t know. Would Dave Sim be wrong to view this woman as diminished? Most likely.

    I don’t speak for Dave Sim, even though it looks like I am. I’m commenting based on what I’ve read from him so far (and I’ve never read a single issue of Cerebus). Those who find woman-hating in everything he says are just unfairly dismissing him out of hand. In fact, I’ve lost a little bit of respect for Gail Simone as a result of the Sequential Tart thread which surprised me.

    Feminist has picked up a negative connotation which is not at all the fault of Dave Sim. Dave Sim has picked up a negative connotation which is only partially the fault of Dave Sim. Then, there are people who greatly enjoy playing one side against the other for entertainment purposes, and they’re not helping anyone with their behavior. Neither Feminism nor Dave Sim can be discussed without someone setting off a bomb in the middle just to see the fireworks fly.

    Since I began hearing about all this Dave Sim nonsense, I have yet to see the man get a fair shake.

  9. I tried to re-register over at Sequential Tart, because it’s been so long since I’ve posted over there, but was also unable to make a new registration happen, so alas, no posting by me !

    Anyway, today’s dialogue over at the Tart messageboards was especially lively thanks to Gail, Heidi, Pam, Layla, and Dave’s attempts to address Wolfen Moondaughter’s great post from round one (so any counter-arguments I wanted to make were much better expressed by the above people and others). I don’t think that Dave answered the counter-arguements that were presented to him, but he sure did seem to be giving it the old college try and today’s messageboard visit was the most heated (and the one with the most substance) that I’ve read since this began earlier this month.

    I want to echo what Gail said (and Mario) about Dave Sim’s Cerebus, when it was great it was brilliant (for me a good ending was Cerebus #200) and that’s why Dave’s essays are still being argued today. I’d love to read Cerebus post #186 from a parallel universe in which Sim didn’t take the 180 degree views he later embraced (especially upon reading the bible) to see how those last 100 issues would have read (but I totally realize that Cerebus was Sim’s baby and he could have done anything with the book whether I liked it or not).

    I’ve read glamourpuss #1 and enjoyed it (and the art is as ever by Dave Sim, very sharp), but I think that his audience is going to be much more niche than he thinks it’ll be. I’m definitely interested in the photorealistic comic artists Sim is discussing within and the minor fashion parody, but I don’t think that most of today’s comic buying audience is big enough in respect to those having these shared interests to make glamourpuss much of a sales force. I also don’t think that glamourpuss will have a female audience because anyone who likes fashion magazines or wants to see that industry really satarized will not find much of that represented in the first issue (maybe the following issues will be more balanced between the artists musings and the fashion aspects of the book). I hope to be proven wrong and will attempt to promote this to my customers by giving glamourpuss premium shelf display space because as Mario said Dave has provided this medium with an epic, he’s pretty much responsible for the tradepaperback model comics stores have, and he’s a great cartoonist and very committed to his craft. And I am interested in his musings on photorealistic comic artists of yesteryear and hope that he actually exposes the seedier side of the fashion industry (although I don’t think that’s his agenda with this book).

    I also know what Dave Sim’s Secret Project One is that he’ll be announcing February 28th and at the Space show and I think that that book will not be a polarizing book and that it’ll actually get positive other media attention (and Neil Gaiman has said in his blog, I believe, that it was the book that made him cry). If anyone who reads this post is going to be following Sim’s other messageboard stops over the next few days could mention to him that he may want to make his big announcement of what Secret Project One is next Tuesday, February 26th instead of on the 28th because the Diamond Previews catalog comes out on Wednesday the 27th and that’ll spoil his unveiling (I’m suggesting that someone else post this on some other board on which Dave pops up in case I’m not able to register correctly to log in myself).

  10. Dave throws out bigoted statements against gays and women, and supports them with figures he made up out of thin air.

    He’s been saying for over a decade that no one will look at his ‘documented percentages’ or challenge him on his ideas.

    But you do that, with his own words and numbers, and you’re a bully.

    Lose respect for me if you like, but I have no patience for this hogwash.

    Gail

  11. Nice to hear from you, Ralph.

    Most of you folks probably know this already, but Ralph runs a fantastic comic store in Las Vegas and also happens to be a sharp cookie.

    Anyway, well-said, Ralph.

    Gail

  12. Dave Sim called my store a few weeks ago and we had a great discussion about his work and the business of comic retailing. While we were having that he asked how my wife Katie was doing and if she was still president of Friends of Lulu. He asked if it would be ok to send along a few extra copies of GLAMOURPUSS that we could pass along to FOL to be used to benefit the cause.

    Mr Sim, having met my wife at SPACE a few years ago had many nice things to say about her positive spirit and her hard work for an organization promoting the work of female creators.

    On that meeting at SPACE many Cerebus fans watched on in amazement as Mr Sim shook my wife’s hand and was seen to smile and talk cordially about matters of comic retailing and publishing.

    Katie and I are both huge fans and wish all the best to Mr Sim and his new project GLAMOURPUSS. We plan to help get the word out about this very beautiful and unique book.

  13. Heh. That’s funny, someone just today (really!) was telling me how Dave was slagging off on FoL quite mercilessly. Maybe they’ll come forward with their own experience as I know they read this blog.

    I’m glad you had a good experience with him, and as long as she doesn’t try to vote, I’m sure everything will be all right. :)

    That said, I’m glad you like the book and I think a lot of people will try it due to the phone calls and previews.

    Gail

  14. Well, Mario,…he may have drawn 300 consecutive issues of something. But I don’t get the impression that he did it alone. Personally,…I’m not interested in reading about his descent into madness and delusion. Take enough acid and anyone would descend into madness, I suppose. How interesting is that really? Those sort of descents are a dime a dozen in my neck of the woods. If he had been Baudelaire or even Ezra Pound perhaps I’d be more interested. As to whether he is responsible for the invention of the trade paperback,…or the “father” of self-publishing or organizer of the, so called, “indie boom”,…well,…that seems arguable. It’s my impression that some of the credit for his publishing success should probably go to his ex-wife. (Good thing she fought her “nature” and didn’t stay home,…I guess.)
    The guy just seems like the Ann Coulter of the comics world.
    Everybody has the right to their opinions. It just seems to me that some people’s opinions deserve less attention than others.

    “Your grandmother and your great-grandmother didn’t see it as being “stuck at home all the time.” The idea of “stuck” and “home” being used in the same sentence would have struck any good Christian woman as ludicrous.”

    What crap. What utter total crap.

  15. Mario: Length does not equal artistic worth. See Henry Darger, or any number of other examples online.

    And I seem to recall trade paperbacks were around long, long before any “Cerebus” phonebook ever hit the shelf.

    Chris

  16. @Steve and chris: I recommend reading the articles over on Jeff SMiths blog about the birth of the self-publishing boom and you can get the words from the actual participants and you’ll see that Sim was -f not the- a driving force of it. Wether or not he was assisted by his wife or Gerhard is rather a moot point.

    Also, the length is an artistic merit, at least, and everybody (even his staunched opposers) agrees its importance and relevance for the recent comicbook history. That’s kinda non-debatable. I never got into Cerebus, but that’s my personal preference.

    What I know is that his “descent” didn’t manifest itself in the comic so much as in his essays. But the comis and it’s plot suffered through it because Cerebus was a personal outlet for Sim.

  17. the inventors of the tradepaperback are the usual suspects:

    “Sidestepping the argument about whether it was the “first graphic novel”–and if it wasn’t, what was–Eisner’s A Contract with God came out in 1978. Marvel’s first, The Death of Captain Marvel, came out in 1982 and was followed the next year by DC’s inaugural GN, Star Raiders. But how did reprint collections fit into all this? Dave Sim put out Swords of Cerebus, his first attempt to collect Cerebus, in the early ’80s, but at some point he abandoned that and went to the phone-book collections in, what 1985, 1986, later? Somewhere around the same time, Love and Rockets collections started to come out from Fantagraphics. My sense is those were before the Cerebus phone books, but I’m not sure. And weren’t there Elfquest collections?”

    http://www.whiterose.org/howlingcurmudgeons/archives/009086.html

    at least, dave sim was one of the first publishers to do TPBs. and he is is of course not just a guy, who did a 6.000 page long epic. art doesnt count in pound and kilos. but at least the first two thirds of “cerebus” stand as one of the greatest american comics.

  18. Mario,…I think the fact that Sim was assisted by Gerhard and his wife, Deni Loubert, is EXACTLY the point. The guy maintains that HE published the longest running independent comic book series in HISTORY! That’s a debatable claim. He asserts opinions as if they were facts. He presumes that most husbands and wives, at least in the above quote, are a certain way based on a belief,…not on reality. How can anyone know how most of any part of a group might feel. I’m a huge fan of Jeff Smith, but you can’t use one man as a source for info on a given subject. Edison wasn’t the only guy working on the electric light bulb. Marconi wasn’t the only guy working on the radio,…and Dave Sim certainly wasn’t responsible for creating the trade paperback or the graphic novel,…a tradition that goes back hundreds of years and spans continents. I’ll give you that the guy is an adequate cartoonist. But that’s about it.

  19. What’s ironic (at least I think it’s ironic…maybe it’s Alanis Morrisette ironic) is that I’m a writer and my wife’s an attorney – if she wasn’t an attorney, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford all of the wonderful comics Gail (and many others) create.

  20. I’ve interviewed Dave Sim before about CEREBUS and he didn’t diminish Gerhard’s contribution in any respect, nor did he try to diminish the role of Deni Loubert and did, in fact, go out of his way to make sure I understood that they were valuable parts of the book’s history and its present publication. Also, beyond anything in an interview, as I understand it, Gerhard owns 50% of CEREBUS which shows a lot of respect, more than Marvel or DC show most of their artists and creators.

  21. ““Sidestepping the argument about whether it was the “first graphic novel”–and if it wasn’t, what was–Eisner’s A Contract with God came out in 1978.”

    And SABRE by Don McGregor and Paul Gullacy was published by Eclipse in 1978.

  22. Without getting into a “which was first” debate, there was a whole bunch of graphic novels published before Contract With God. They may not have all advertised themselves as such, but there were a variety of books that fit the bill.

  23. Mario: I simply don’t believe that length, taken on its own, is rarely if ever a sign of artistic merit. There were 26 novels in the Gor series, after all.

    And no, with the exception of his being a big part of the self-publishing boom, I don’t agree with the presumption of his importance or relevance to comics, unless you consider generating several volumes worth of concentrated hatred towards the female gender to be something either important or relevant to the medium.

    (Hmmm. I wonder if that’s a straight line for someone.)

    As far as the trades: Back then there was no blogosphere, so maybe I missed something, but I’m pretty sure that I bought the first edition trades for “Sandman: Doll House,” “Watchmen,” “Camelot 3000,” and “Appleseed” before the “Cerebus” phonebooks were released to the public (and I bought the “High Society” collection the first chance that I had).

    Anyways, I’ll defend Sim’s right to create whatever art he wants etc., but that doesn’t require me to laud what is, at its very best, a seriously flawed and scattershot piece of work.

    Chris

  24. “And no, with the exception of his being a big part of the self-publishing boom, I don’t agree with the presumption of his importance or relevance to comics, unless you consider generating several volumes worth of concentrated hatred towards the female gender to be something either important or relevant to the medium.”

    you haven’t read “cerebus”, right? “cerebus” as a comic, especially the first 4.000 pages, is by no mean “concentrated hatred”. with jaka, it even has one of the strongest female characters in comics. i mean, where in “high society” do you find “hatred”?

    and when the first “cerebus”-trade came around, “sandman” didnt even got started:

    Cerebus TPB:
    #1 first printing August 1987 (between #3 and #4). #2 first printing June 1986. #3 first printing June 1987. #4 first printing July 1988.

    http://www.comics.org/series.lasso?SeriesID=3216

    Sandman Monthly:
    Color; Standard Modern US; Saddle-stitched; monthly series. Published by Vertigo from #47 on (Imprint of DC), January 1989 – March 1996

    http://www.comics.org/series.lasso?SeriesID=3817

    “sandman: preludes & nocturnes” came out 1991.

  25. Nobody’s claiming Sim “invented” the graphic novel. Eisner’s “Contract With God” pre-dates “high Society” by almost a decade. The concept of collecting huge chunks of storyline under one cover, though, originated with CEREBUS and ELFQUEST in the mid-80’s. That doesn’t just pre-date “Sandman-A Doll’s House,” that pre-dates SANDMAN, the series.

    It is unfortunate that Dave’s views are partially obfuscating his enormous achievements and contributions to this medium. But only so much of that is Dave’s fault. Just reading over some of the uninformed, knee-jerk screeds on this page is depressing to say the least. You’d think Sim had called for women to lose their vote, be housebound and required to walk ten paces behind their husbands. His views may make some uncomfortable (myself included at times) but I see nothing in Sim’s above statements worth getting so indignant and outraged over. Do you really think Dave’s claiming to speak for EVERYONE’s grandmother? Ridiculous. But he certainly could be speaking for one of my grandmothers, my mom and ALL my great grandmothers, from everything I know of them.
    From where I sit, most of those attacking Sim come off every bit as unenlightened as he frequently does.
    Yeah, screw centuries of tradition; home-making as a profession isn’t as respectable or valuable as working a “real” job, and small children are just as loved and nurtured in freaking daycare centers….Does everyone really BELIEVE that?

    At least Gail Simone has the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the man’s great body of work while still taking him to task over his views. That’s class.

  26. Marcus:

    I’m at LEAST as big a fan of Dave/Cerebus as Gail, and no one would or should put down his talents because of his odd personal beliefs, just as the work of Ezra Pound, Cat Stevens and RIchard Wagner stands apart from their own personal foibles and biases.

    I *believe* it IS A bit germane to GLAMOURPUSS to ask Dave about his views on women, however, since it is obviously a parody of women’s magazines!!!

    Just as Brian K. Vaughan is constantly asked how he writes women characters, I think Dave’s ideas of women’s magazines are fair game at the very least.

    Dave Sim is a complicated individual who defies ANY easy analysis. I think I agree the most with Ralph Matthieu, above, and I do agree that GLAMOURPUSS is going to be a harder sell than Dave thinks.

  27. “Dave throws out bigoted statements against gays and women, and supports them with figures he made up out of thin air.”

    The guy is just trying to promote his book in a pretty unique way. Why does everyone have to bother him about his beliefs. If it were an atheist creator (most of comics creators seemingly) then no one would take them to task for their Godless lifestyle or other views.

  28. Well, but that’s not true, Matt. I’m an atheist and a feminist, and I’ve been attacked many times for both. I’ve been called a c*** several times, a man-hater (a more ridiculous charge I can’t imagine, as I dig guys the MOSTEST), a misandrist, and many many more. It happens all the time.

    And I have great sympathy for Dave trying to promote his book. But he DID say he would discuss gender issues at ST, and he HAS been saying for many years now that no one ever had the nerve to challenge him on his ideas.

    Well, I do and I did, and maybe he shouldn’t make that challenge if he doesn’t mean it.

    I absolutely don’t agree with those who seem to want to dismiss Sim’s achievements. I think that’s dead wrong. But those who want to deny that he didn’t say or didn’t mean a decade-ful of really hateful comments are doing no one any favors, either.

    And I say again, as someone who believes deeply in the scientific method, I find the “Here’s what I believe, and I’ll make up the supporting facts later” school of thought to be a plague on thinking society. Unfortunately, that’s Dave’s gender philosophy in a nutshell.

    Gail

  29. Grady, didn’t Dave by Cerebus back from Ger?

    Or is in the process of doing so? I believe he mentioned that.

    Is my memory failing me?

    Gail

  30. I’m not sure what’s the current arrangement is between Dave Sim and Gerhard. When I interviewed him he had just finished the run of the book (#300 had hit the shelves about two weeks before we talked) and at the time they both owned the book.

  31. “And I say again, as someone who believes deeply in the scientific method, I find the “Here’s what I believe, and I’ll make up the supporting facts later” school of thought to be a plague on thinking society. Unfortunately, that’s Dave’s gender philosophy in a nutshell.”

    Theres a lot more to life then what can be explained by the scientific method. Humans dont know eveything nor can they explain everything.

  32. A quick addendum to Stefan P’s post– Eclipse’s SABRE beat CONTRACT WITH GOD to the GN starting-gates by roughly two months.

    I agree with Matt in principle. I think science can serve as a decent bullshit-detector, but it has its limitations, and a propensity to create its own form of bullshit. I don’t think Dave Sim’s ever managed to refute science’s manifestations of b.s. on its own terms, but I think that it can be done, amigo.

  33. But is making up fake statistics the answer, Matt?

    For years, Dave has said that all of this was fact-based. In truth, NONE of his statistics are even CLOSE to correct, and they actually refute his conclusions.

    People shouldn’t use statistics if they don’t understand them.

    If Dave has said his beliefs were all faith-based, then I’d just have to say fine, the man believes what he believes. He doesn’t need evidence. But that’s not what he said at all.

    Grady, I’m pretty sure he’s either buying Ger out or has already done it.

    Can anyone verify this?

    Gail

  34. Science is what it is. It is self-correcting. It scrutinizes, and allows for independent verification. Faith is the opposite. I have nothing against it, but the two are not compatible disciplines.

    Gail

  35. “But is making up fake statistics the answer, Matt?

    For years, Dave has said that all of this was fact-based. In truth, NONE of his statistics are even CLOSE to correct, and they actually refute his conclusions.”

    I dont really know his history with fake statistics? How do you know they are fake? Did he use anecdotal evidence? In all honesty, some of his opinions are not necessarily in the minority especially in the US.

    “Science is what it is. It is self-correcting. It scrutinizes, and allows for independent verification. Faith is the opposite. I have nothing against it, but the two are not compatible disciplines.

    Gail ”

    Faith does not allow for independent verification? I did not come to believe in my faith because someone told me to. That situation almost always results in apathy. I studied and researched it and came to it on my own. Science is not without flaw, theory and reality are two different things.

  36. This time i haven’t read through all the comments, sorry. but i wonder why the beat is continuing to publish all this BS from this guy? i mean we get that he is sexist, conservative and full of bs, ranting all these crap as if he is talking about some sort of fact, but do we really have to read it on this blog on and on and on again?

    well, it seems to generate a lot of debate, so it seems that interest is there..

  37. “Science is what it is. It is self-correcting. It scrutinizes, and allows for independent verification. Faith is the opposite. I have nothing against it, but the two are not compatible disciplines.”

    My admiration of Gail has rocketed off the charts :)

    The scientific method doesn’t have all the answers, but it has proven to be the most reliable way to find them. Scientists may create bullshit, but science never does.

    “Science is not without flaw, theory and reality are two different things.”

    Science is not a list of “facts.” It’s a method. As Gail wrote, it’s self-correcting, because new theories with better results replace old theories. There is no dogma in science. If someone insists that a scientifically obtained theory cannot possibly be wrong, then they don’t understand what science is. BTW, coming to your own conclusions based on study and research is admirable, but it is not independent verification. You must perform experiments that duplicate others’ results (e.g., drop a rock to verify the theory of gravity).

    Faith is not incorrect just because it is not science. The fact no god’s existence has been scientifically proven does not prove that none exist. (“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”) Faith and science are not enemies, they are, as Gail again wrote, just not compatible.

    Chris Lite

  38. Why is no one calling out Dave Sim for presenting himself as harmless kind kind of anachronistic, religious-minded fellow with ultra-traditional views about gender roles when his past writings have shown him to be, in my view, and out-and-out misogynist? Has he disavowed those views or he is merely trying to distance himself in them in a disingenuous way? Are the guys who are thinking Sim’s being ganged up on and unfairly criticized unaware of his past writings about women?

    Though I repeatedly tell myself, “Dave Sim has absolutely no relevance to your life,” I find it interesting to see how many people — almost all male — come out in support of his views of traditional gender roles and essentialism.

    Dave Sim should consider Proverbs 31:10-31 for a portrait of a good Christian (or Jewish, in its context, actually) woman. I see a woman who commands the money of her household and works outside the home while her husband yammers away at the gates of the city. Hmm.

  39. Jennifer, I tried my best. I tried to be fair to Dave, while at the same time engaging him on his own words and statistics.

    But yes, at the end of the day, Dave’s claim that he’s not a misogynist is at odds with his ridiculous and completely fake-sourced bile. I would not lay this in any way at the feet of male-dom, however, as a genuinely astounding amount of guys have no use for Dave’s hogwash at all.

    In any case, I’ve taken plenty of crap from Dave’s toadies and even people who simply don’t want to see the great man questioned by anyone, let alone a woman. I’ve been called the worst names imaginable, and support seemed to be a bit scarce at times.

    But I’m still fine with it. I think Dave’s evasion and unimpressive reasoning process is pretty well exposed to all but the most blindered of individuals.

    And Chris, dead on.

    Matt, I wasn’t saying you came to your faith blindly. But faith is faith. It doesn’t need or even desire independent verification. One only has to believe. A scientist, however, needs to be able to show that an independent scientist in Oslo can achieve the same results as one in Seattle.

    And science actively discards disproven theories. Saying science can’t answer everything is fine. It can’t. It doesn’t pretend it can.

    I don’t know that anyone actually ever questioned Dave’s religion, now that I think about it. It’s his made-up, craptacular grasp of science and statistics that I found most irksome.

    Gail

  40. I don’t want to wade into the middle of this thing, but I do want to give you some kudos Gail. It was painful to read Dave’s ranting, but you tried your best to have an actual conversation with an obviously damaged man not interested in relating to anyone else. It really sucks it and disappoints me that people would give you a hard time for this.

  41. Faith is believing something for no reason, that is to say, believing it because you believe it. It sounds to me like Matt came to his beliefs through reason. His starting facts may have been true or false, and his reasoning process solid or flawed; I can’t really say and that’s not the point. Faith is unshakeable and immune to logic. Faith and reason are therefore incompatible.

  42. i love watching any of the various YOUTUBEs featuring Sim and seeing how charismatic he is (even if he did look like a too old New Kid in some of the ones from the early 90s)

    i’m pretty sure that if he was sitting across a table and getting into his personal beliefs about whatever feminist conspiracies he was preaching about in the mid and late 90s, i’d be sold for the whole conversation, and probably for a few days after.

    i also believe that his belief system is one that is in a flux, ever changing according to what he observes and contemplates as the years pass.
    which is a million times more enlightened then me and my silly two thousand year old religion in which i had no hand in creating or adapting

  43. “Faith is not incorrect just because it is not science. The fact no god’s existence has been scientifically proven does not prove that none exist. (“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”) Faith and science are not enemies, they are, as Gail again wrote, just not compatible.”

    Ok this is way off topic at this point but im the one that probably made it get there. There are probably many books written hinting at biology, physcics, chemistry to scriptural references. I do not think faith and science are incompatible. You only have one side of the story, there are probably many references on the net about science and the bible. You can probably google “science and the bible” and find some answers there.

    Alright enoiugh about that, i will have to see more of daves previous articles to judge whether or not he is a misogynist. So far from what ive seen, his views are honestly not that different from a lot of people in the US. But again i am a new fan of his and just barely read his early cerebus stuff so what do i know.

  44. As Carol Channing recited in Free To Be You and Me, “Your mother hates housework, your father hates housework, and I hate housework.”

  45. I feel like this ended up being a very pointless “discussion” personally, but here’s my two cents:

    1) Dave Sim and Cerberus both deserve to be in the Valhalla of comic books. There could be no real room for rational debate about that.

    2) If Dave’s true thought/point in his views is simply “I like the old-fashioned household sort of gender roles, and I think more people feel comfortable in those than not” then that would be one thing, and I could maybe even believe that (in part because phrases that start with “I think most people feel” are overly vague).

    3) However, if you read some of his essays and longer explanations on men and women, they are so ridiculously absurd that they are truly funny to me. Some may say if I laugh at them its not valuing how dangerous they are, but I’m sorry, the shit he said is so outlandish that I laugh every time I read it (in particular, http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html has some very funny stuff that he’s said over the years).

    4) To whoever asked how someone could know what a group of people think: there are very reliable ways of determining such things. Gallup polls are very accurate. With only a few hundred to maybe a thousand observations from a random sample of a population, you can have a very good indication of how many people share an opinion. The only difficult bit is the “random sample” part.

    — Jonathan

  46. Gail said:

    “Science is what it is. It is self-correcting. It scrutinizes, and allows for independent verification. Faith is the opposite. I have nothing against it, but the two are not compatible disciplines.”

    I’m not sure if this was in any way a response to my post. I didn’t speak of “faith,” but maybe that’s simply a continuation of her contention that she wouldn’t have a problem with Dave’s beliefs if they didn’t make a pretense to scientific reality.

    Anyway, I don’t believe that science is self-correcting for anything but scientific experiments. Because of science’s dependence on experimental validation its partial to the paradigm of the closed system. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but it’s questionable whether reality itself constitutes a closed system comparable to that of the scientific experiment. I understand why science has to think that reality is a closed system, in heuristic terms. But that assumption is not necessarily the truth.

    Example: Richard Dawkins garnered a measure of fame from writing a book called “The Selfish Gene.” This POV is congruent with scientific views of the gene as a closed system. Of course the gene isn’t a closed system in the real world, but science is partial to anything that affirms that paradigm. Can you imagine the reception a counter-claim titled “The Unselfish Gene” would gather from mainstream scientists? (And no, this has nothing to do with my first name.)

    In my view the opposite of science is not faith but philosophy, and faith-based concepts are a subset of philosophical endeavor. Philosophy is in every way as substantive a discipline as science, even if there are bad philosophers even as there are bad scientists. Dave Sim (to answer Steve Taylor’s question about Sim’s relevance) is not the worst philosopher ever born– though he’s not very good overall– but one of his significant acts for comics was to open the medium to this kind of discourse. As bad as his reasoning sometimes is, I put it leagues ahead of almost every indie comics-creator out there, simply because he understands the form that philosophical discourse must take.

    End lecture.

  47. No no no. The very definition of Faith MEANS trusting in something unproven. Can you go through the Bible and find science to back it up? Sure. But just as many things in the Bible cannot be backed up by science and that’s where faith has to step in.

    Otherwise, how can you possibly rectify two Judas dying scenes? What do you do with the mention of the seraphim who brought on the flood? There’s plenty there that is completely unprovable.

    The Bible uses science because science exists. It talks about rivers flowing because, well, they flow. But the whole point of the Bible is faith.

    If you ever try to defend your faith with science, you’re going to fail.

    And (bringing it around), that’s what the issue is here. You can believe whatever you want, but when you make “science” fit in with your beliefs, your setting yourself up to be shot down. And Dave certainly deserves some shooting down.

  48. Matt, I think I get that. I just didn’t find your post making a lot of sense. Sorry. Yes, there are books that have science in them that are faith based.

    That really has no relevance to what I was saying.

    Enjoy your faith, I’m happy for you. I don’t care that others disagree with me. I’m only stating MY beliefs.

    Dave made up a bunch of crazy nonsense and supported it with false statistics. That’s bad thinking no matter what justification you have.

    Gail

  49. That’s interesting, Gene, but I sorta am lost at the idea that Dave is responsible for some kind of new discourse. I would say the internet is vastly more responsible, and in fact, Dave has gone out of his way to NOT debate this stuff in any real way in public. A bunch of rants aren’t really discourse, are they?

    As for putting him head and shoulders above other indy creators, I would say many of them do their philosophizing through their work more than through rants and promotional chats. I’m not sure Dave has granted us anything we didn’t already have…rather, he seems to be trying to join in the waterskiing fun but he’s got the skis on backwards and forgot to untie the boat from the dock.

    Or dadocks. ;)

    Gail

  50. I say again though, I just finished High Society again after not reading it for a while, and I really think it’s a masterwork. The leap from the first volume to the second is just astounding and inspiring.

    Sometimes I get frustrated by some of the ridiculous things Dave says, but this experience really has clarified my thinking regarding separating the art from the artist, and my dislike of Dave’s (I feel) bigoted and empty theories really didn’t affect my enjoyment of his talent at all.

    Gail

  51. Anyway, at long last… ;)

    I’m retiring from talking about Dave’s theories for a (hopefully long, long) while. I think it’s an interesting discussion here and I’ve enjoyed participating. But I agree with the folks who are saying I keep making the same points over and over. So enough from me!

    Best wishes to everyone!

    Gail

  52. Gail,
    I’m not thinking of the rants and other prose as a “new discourse” but of the way that his philosophical views are integrated into the structure of the comics-pages. Sometimes Dave did compensate for the limitations of the comics-page by shoving in huge sections of text, so it wasn’t always a perfect marriage. But when it worked, it really worked.

    An example would be his attack on Hemingway. I’ve read little of the critical literature on Hemingway, so I’m no authority on whether or not Dave’s take on EH– which is made not personally, but in terms of his relevance as a cultural figure– is feasible. Evidently Dave did read extensively in the EH literature, but it’s possible that his take on the marriage of Ernest and Mary has no relevance to any reality but the one in Dave’s head. But Dave’s argument as to EH’s deleterious effects on manhood is still fine comics, if only because it’s so unorthodox (“what, Papa H. was really P-whipped? Say what?”)

    Few of the other indie guys– Campbell being a possible exception– don’t seem to have the slightest interest in ideas as such. More or less following the lead of Crumb, they deal more in allusion than analysis. That’s a weakness I pointed out in an earlier post here to Jennifer de Guzman, and which I addressed in a blog-essay (see my blog, which was overdue for its weekly flogging).

    (Hmm, sounds doity…)

  53. “You only have one side of the story, there are probably many references on the net about science and the bible.”

    As a Catholic for over 30 years of my life, I have read both sides of the story. (I’ll not bore you with details of my personal road to atheism, but it involved much of the research you suggest.) I’m not against you or your faith.

    ~chris

    I enjoy comic books and swimming, but the two are just not compatible.

  54. Aquaman and Namor disagree but neither has a monthly book at the present time, so I guess you’re right, ~Chris.