This is it! The second annual One Topic/No Tangent episode of Sneaky Dragon! First of all, thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions for our contest. Without your contributions, everyone, our show is poop. We had some great suggestions that we knew could easily fill a show and we had some scary suggestions that we couldn’t imagine talking about for ten minutes – let alone sixty (and that made those great suggestions too!). We really do appreciate everything you all bring to the show week in and week out.
And now…without further ado…the winner is…
Well, you’re just going to have to listen to the show, aren’t you?
Thanks for listening.
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Every time Dave Sim comes up in SD it eases my pain, a little. Because it’s both things: disappointment and admiration. He’s done so much good for self-publishers, for artists & writers, for comics in general. But his acerbic polemics and stubborn, solipsistic worldviews have alienated readers and creators. And friends.
In “Reads,” Sim explores his misgivings about generalizing women with a section discussing “exception.” Women creators who Dave thought did good, consistent work (Colleen Doran, Teri Wood, etc.) were exceptions to the Void rule. They gave him pause, but weren’t enough to change his mind, overall.
I don’t want to psychoanalyze him, either. But I’ve wondered about his LSD experience and subsequent crisis as a schizophrenic episode. Evidence linking the two directly is scant. Schizophrenic symptoms include difficulty with emotions and reality. But Dave is also a functional, stable, productive person, so I don’t hold with the “insane” crowd. Maybe he had a psychotic episode. Maybe he has a minor mental disorder. I can’t possibly know. His isolation and obsessive drive might have led him to the same place just as easily, in my opinion, as wild speculation about psychosis has suggested. Or rashly asserted. Regardless, he is still nice and approachable. That doesn’t excuse the misogyny, it just complicates a simplistic boxing-in of Dave Sim.
*Cerebus* is often brilliant and very funny. It’s sometimes boring (I found much of “Going Home” and “Form and Void” a slog), disturbing (Astoria’s trial in “Church & State II”), or deeply affecting (the end of “Jaka’s Story”). It’s worth reading through. But I think experiencing the monthly comics as they were published is an experience that can’t be recreated through the reprints. Perhaps that’s a component that allows those of us who were “there” a greater sense of identification and sympathy. I suppose the fact that he was nice, generous, and helpful to (many of) us attempting to make a go of it in comics is another mitigating factor. I’m not saying one can’t appreciate the work properly unless one was “there,” like some wistful hippie scoffing at a young person’s love of 60s culture, but there’s a lot to be said for zeitgeist in real-time.
There are two ways to ensure a Marcus Harwell comment:
1) Bring up Dave Sim.
2) Insult the Eagles!
Thanks, Marcus!
Probably true for the first; the second? Meh. They could use a bit of insultin’, here and there. I don’t really like Glen Frey and they have spent a lot of time being pricks to each other and making some bland, inconsistent albums.