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While poking around on the A Moment of Cerebus site following my previous post on Glamourpuss, I noticed that the remastered editions of Church & State, perhaps the masterpiece of Cerebus’s 300 issue run, seems to be back in print in a superior remastered edition. I guess that was kickstartered, but it’s not always easy to find out stuff like that on the AMOC site. Even Dave Sim’s greatest detractors would agree that Chuch & State is one of the great comics of its era, a feat unduplicated in terms of cartooning chops, humor and world building. It’s only $35 for 600 pages so it’s also a bargain. You can order it here, along with other Cerebus books and products.

Ordering copies would probably be of some use to Sim, because as a recent post during a Kickstarter explained, he’s injured his hand, can’t draw or type or even sign his name, and working is impossible, so he’s relying on these kinds of efforts.

Hi. Dave Sim here. I’m going to try to post every day through the CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER FOUR Kickstarter campaign. We’re really in a cash crunch of major proportions. I’m literally on the way to the bank to transfer THE LAST CASH ON HAND to cover the US$ cheque for $13,000 I’ve just written for the printer in Singapore. I had paid a $7,300 downpayment on 50% of the printing and made sure to keep $7,300 US in the US$ account for the final payment — only to discover that the 50% didn’t include shipping ($5,000) and a $990 bill for “paper wastage” among other things.

Net result: including the payments to Sean and Mara for the remastering and the discount to Diamond for buying the whole print run, it’s looking as if there will BARELY be $6,000 profit on $42,000 revenue.

It’s a very tough situation because I’ve had to pay for scanning of negatives and original artwork for CHURCH & STATE II with, so far, ZERO REVENUE from CHURCH & STATE I — and none in sight for however many weeks it takes the books to get over here after I’ve paid for them.

Also got the bill for $1,200 for the porch post and SDS (Squirrel Defense System).

We are rapidly approaching the Doomsday Scenario from 2012.

Does anyone read these comments? Please help at Kickstarter if you can!

See you tomorrow!


You may recall that Sim had a life-threatening health crisis earlier in the year that was also a setback. However, for some reason I can’t find in all the Sim videos and comments, he didn’t want to go see a doctor about his hand injury, so he had to raise the money to come to Illinois so he could get an MRI without a doctor’s referral. I don’t know who would then read the MRI, because I believe you must have sort have some kind of medical training to do that? However in a later sort of AMA on Kickstarter Sim wrote:

…I’m waiting for Dr. Troy to set something up in Texas with two specialists and/or for those specialists to offer a diagnosis on the current MRI. Dr. Troy is theoretically going to find me a neurologist to check on the possible Parkinson’s Disease. I’m not sure what I’ll decide but a lot is going to depend on whether the diagnoses and proposed treatments agree with each other. In the meantime, just resting it and — occasionally — two-handed typing to see how that part is coming along…


I don’t know what Sim has against the Canadian health system, which is excellent by all accounts, but…well this is Dave Sim we’re talking about,

There’s an index of his recent comments here including Dave opinions on ISIS, feminism and oh, so much more, like his response to Dilbert’s Scott Adams recent letter about ISIS, sex and whether women talk more than men. (They don’t.)

[Adams] Women have made an issue of the fact that men talk over women in meetings. In my experience, that’s true. But for full context, I interrupt anyone who talks too long without adding enough value. If most of my victims turn out to be women, I am still assumed to be the problem in this situation, not the talkers. The alternative interpretation of the situation – that women are more verbal than men – is never discussed as a contributing factor to interruptions. Can you imagine a situation where – on average – the people who talk the most do NOT get interrupted the most? I don’t know if the amount of talking each person does is related to the amount of interrupting they experience, or if there is a gender difference to it, but it seems like a reasonable hypothesis. My point is that men are assumed guilty in this country. We don’t even explore their alibis. (And watch the reaction to even bringing up the topic.)

[Sim] Freudian slip there, calling them “alibis” instead of reasons.  :)

Two situations I see here:  1) women explain things differently and usually at greater length because they want to explain their subject exhaustively while also avoiding bruising anyone’s feelings through inconsiderate phraseology 2)  Men tend to distill what they have to say to, as you say, “adding value”.  Figure out what you’re going to do so you can start doing it.    

If they aren’t “adding value” to the discussion, men tend to just listen until they have something to add.  If you’re right in your assessment, I think women in the workforce need to develop these sorts of distillation abilities:  Here’s An Idea. Period.  And I would agree that NOT interrupting people who just like to talk isn’t a valid option or you’re just going to have interminable meetings that never lead to anything but “further study”.  Which would certainly explain the nature of politics and industry since women got the right to vote 100 years ago.    :)


Had to stop that right there since it wasn’t adding value. 

Anyway, whatever his quirks, Church and State is a masterpiece, so consider checking it out. And here’s Dave’s contemporary Dark Knight tribute via his Dark Knight parody cover from when it came out in 86.

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