200701240222Jeff Tundis posted the following at the Cerebus Yahoo message board:

Effective as of December 31st, 2006 Gerhard has parted ways with Aardvark-Vanaheim and long time partner Dave Sim.

Dave is still in the process of gathering the funds necessary to buy out Gerhard’s 40% share of the company, but this will not affect the publication of future Cerebus volumes or, presumably, Following Cerebus (which is experiencing its own in-house delays at Win-Mill Productions). In fact, the proofs are in for the fourth printing of Form & Void and soon we will see the first Cerebus book not printed by Preney Press.

As a result of the split, Gerhard will not be attending the SPACE convention in Columbus, OH this year. Bob Corby has been notified and will be adjusting the website accordingly in due time.

Sorry I couldn’t say anything earlier, but with SPACE approaching and people trying to finalize plans I asked Dave, and he said it was OK to announce it.


You’ll recall that Gerhard was the background artist through many long years of CEREBUS, responsible for the intricate rendering and architectural details. It’s the end of an era.

14 COMMENTS

  1. IMO, Gerhard is the best inker in the history of comics, he did more on a page than so many of his contemporaries over the past 25+ years.

    I hope somebody in the mainstream industry will hire him to do some work.

  2. @Gary: As I’m sure others will point out, Gerhard isn’t an inker any more than Dave is. Gerhard drew all the backgrounds in full, Dave drew all the characters in full. By the time he came on board (around #61ish?) Dave had long since given up drawing backgrounds, so the transition is quite marked. As for the reasons– maybe just doing the odd poster post-#300 wasn’t really doing it for him…

  3. Well, at least he left after issue #300. I really hope he does something on his own. Was part of his contract that he ONLY could work for A-V? Why not still be a part of A-V and do other comics work at the same time? And is Gerhard leaving or did Dave kick him out?

  4. I can’t speak for his reasons for leaving, but I can tell you this: Dave Sim always put his creator freedom views where his pocketbook was, and in that spirit, Gerhard always owned half of AV, and was free, at any time, without explanation, to leave and take half the bank account with him, as well as continuing to reccieve half of all profits. Furthermore, he was free to go and create another cerebus comic, with his own artist and writer, should he have desired it. Whatever weird beliefs Dave may have, his beliefs in creator compensation are so unassailable and proven that whatever it was, I’d assume it was personal (and not nessecaryly against Dave, perhaps just for Gerhard’s own reasons), rather than professional.

  5. Dave mentioned in the last issue of Cerebus that he and Gerhard were having some personality conflicts and that he had to twist Gerhard’s arm to get him to finish the series. But, from what I understand, Dave has been alienating a lot of his close friends and relatives over the last however many years. It looks like Gerhard finally had enough.

  6. So much negative conjecture as why Gerhard left A-V! Why not imagine something more positive, say, Gerhard decided to build his own publishing empire and needed some significant seed money? Or Gerhard decided to buy 200 acres of seaside property to begin a solar/wind power plant and needed that last bit of extra cash to guarantee the bank loans? Instead we honor Gerhard by suggesting he had problems with Dave or needed a sex change? Is this the Cerebus-Team-Hating-Club? I hope Gerhard is pursuing his dreams and that those same dreams bring us more inspiring works that stretch and bend the possibilities of what a comic book page can hold. How about we raise a glass to the champ and declare “Good luck, Gerhard. You’re one in a class of one. Nobody can make the sun shine through a window like you can. Come back now, y’hear?”

  7. If all Gerhard’s intricate work could somehow, magically, be subtracted from ‘Cerebus’, we’d be left with an aardvark in empty space looking silly — a fitting fate, given Sim’s egregious excuse for a personal philosophy.

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