Dave Sim

Sim was born on 17 May 1956. His father was a factory supervisor at Budd Automotive and worked as a labour negotiator.

Sim became interested in comic books when he was eight. He had a letter published in Iron Man #37 (May 1971). Bernie Wrightson's Badtime Stories (1971) inspired him to devote himself to drawing. Sim also found inspiration in Mad magazine, particularly Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood's "Superduperman" parody, as well as underground cartoonist Jack Jackson's Conan parody. He wrote and drew comics throughout his adolescence, and he began submitting work to fanzines. His first published work was some articles in the comics fanzine Rocket's Blast Comicollector. He had submitted artwork as well and, although it was rejected, Sim struck up a relationship with editor Gabe Quintanilla, who encouraged him to continue submitting material. Now & Then Books owner Harry Kremer allowed him to produce a newsletter called Now & Then Times. The first issue arrived in summer 1972. Sim produced another issue in 1973, but he had begun devoting his time to John Balge's Comic Art News and Reviews, another Canadian comics fanzine. For CANAR he interviewed subjects such as Barry Windsor-Smith.

Inspired by Charles Schulz's Peanuts and Outhouses of the North (a small book of cartoons published by the Highway Bookshop in northern Ontario), Sim spent 1975 and 1976 developing a comic strip called The Beavers. Highway Bookshop published the strip as a book in 1976. A second book failed to materialize when the publisher shut down. Sim then pursued syndication, pitching The Beavers to the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. With Day inking the strips, a year's worth was produced in three days. Sim also wrote or drew stories published in anthologies such as Phantacea and Star*Reach. The Beavers also saw print in Star*Reach's sister talking animals comic Quack!.

Around this time, Sim's work was published by Charlton Comics and Warren Publishing. In 1976, Sim took the only job he ever held outside of comics: an employee at Now & Then Books. He also wrote and drew parts of "Ali Baba" #1 for Gauntlet Comics.

Cerebus

In December 1977, Sim began publishing Cerebus, an initially bi-monthly, black-and-white comic book series. It began as a parodic cross between Conan the Barbarian and Howard the Duck. Progressively, Sim shifted his narrative style to story arcs of a few issues' length. Soon he moved to longer, far more complex "novels", beginning with the 25-issue storyline High Society which began in issue #26. The sword and sorcery elements in the series, prominent up to that point, were minimized as Sim concentrated more on politics.

Cerebus was published through Sim's company, Aardvark-Vanaheim, which was run by his wife, Deni Loubert. The two met in 1976, married in 1979, and divorced after nearly five years of marriage.

In 1979, during a time when he was taking large doses of LSD, Sim was hospitalized for treatment of schizophrenia-like symptoms.

"Arnold the Isshurian", a two-page parody of Conan and Little Nemo, ran in Epic Illustrated in February 1982.

Beginning with issue #65 (August 1984), Sim began collaborating with the artist Gerhard, who drew all the backgrounds while Sim, who continued to write the series himself, drew the foreground figures. Gerhard and Sim continued to work together on Cerebus until the series concluded with issue #300, in March 2004.

Although Sim did not maintain a consistent monthly schedule for the entire run, which at times required an accelerated production schedule to catch up, he completed the Cerebus series on schedule in March 2004. As the series progressed, it was noted for its tendency towards artistic experimentation. Sim has called the complete run of Cerebus a 6,000-page novel, a view shared by several academic writers and comics historians.

He purchased Gerhard's stake in Aardvark-Vanaheim and has made arrangements for the copyright of Cerebus to fall into the public domain following his death.

Relationship with The Comics Journal

The coverage of Sim's writings about feminism was not the only subject of Sim's conflict with The Comics Journal. He and Gary Groth, the Journal's editor-in-chief, developed a combative relationship. In December 1979, the magazine published a review of the first dozen or so issues of Cerebus by Kim Thompson, who called Cerebus "a true heir to Carl Barks' duck stories".

During a panel discussion at the 1999 San Diego Comic-Con the editorial staff of The Comics Journal indicted Sim in what Groth characterized as a "Nuremberg-style tribunal designed to bring to light the most deserving criminals who had over the past decade and longer besmirched the good name of the comics art and industry". Groth took issue with a 1992 speech Sim had given to Diamond Comic Distributors, which, at the time, was the exclusive distributor of most major U.S. comic book publishers. In his speech, Sim advocated for the speculator boom occurring at the time, a position that Groth felt personified the worst aspects of capitalism and greed.

On February 27, 2015, Sim suffered a wrist injury, and was physically unable to draw. In a September 28, 2017 video on his Cerebus Online YouTube channel, he revealed that he had been showing some signs of recovery and was able to create his first new drawing of Cerebus.

Creators' rights

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Sim used his sales leverage from Cerebus to act as a major proponent and advocate of creators' rights and self-publishing. After the Puma Blues distribution incident, he helped write the Creators' Bill of Rights along with Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Scott McCloud. In addition to speaking on these topics at comic book conventions (as in his 1993 PRO/con speech), Sim also published the seminal The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing in 1997, which instructed readers on the practical matters of how to successfully self-publish their own comics, and which promoted other creators' fledgling work.

Sim has criticized the use of copyrights to restrict the use of creations which would have more quickly become public domain under earlier copyright law. He has stated that other creators are free to use his characters in their own works, which he characterizes as an attempt to be consistent with his own appropriation of others' works.

Views on women

In the course of writing Cerebus, Sim expressed opposition to feminism and made controversial statements regarding men and women. Sim expressed his views on gender in issue #186 of Cerebus, in a text piece as part of the story arc "Reads" (one of four books in the larger "Mothers & Daughters" arc), using the pseudonym Viktor Davis. Among the various theories expounded upon in the piece, Sim's alter-ego Viktor Davis categorizes humanity into metaphorical lights, which tended to reside in men, and voids, which tended to be in women. He characterized Voids as "without a glimmer of understanding of intellectual processes" and declared that "Light does not Breed".

In 1995, The Comics Journal #174 featured a Bill Willingham caricature of Sim on one of the covers, bearing the title "Dave Sim: Misogynist Guru of Self-Publishers". Inside was a lengthy article written by Jonathan Hagey and Kim Thompson that published responses from comics creators such as Alan Moore, Seth, Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, and Sim's friend and fellow Canadian Chester Brown. The responses ranged from anger to a belief that Sim was joking. Others would later speculate that Sim had a mental illness related to his heavy drug use in the late 1970s. The article also included a short interview with Sim's ex-wife, wherein she described the essay as evidence of Sim being "very scared". In the essay in Cerebus #186, Sim characterized fellow self-publishing cartoonist Jeff Smith as an example of a man dominated by his wife. When Smith contested this, Sim accused Smith of lying and challenged Smith to a boxing match, which Smith declined.

In 2001, Sim published another essay, "Tangent", in Cerebus #265 (April 2001). In it, Sim furthered the themes from "Reads", describing the tangent he contends western society has taken due to the widespread acceptance and proliferation of feminism, beginning in 1970. The Comics Journal posted the full essay on its website, although a short introduction by staff distanced the Journal from the ideas therein, calling them "nutty and loathsome". The following issue included a rebuttal to the first "Tangent" by "Ruthie Penmark". Several years later, in issue #263, the Journal devoted a section to discussion of Cerebus. It reprinted a 2001 essay by R. S. Stephen—"Masculinity's Last Hope, or Creepily Paranoid Misogynist?: An Open Letter to Dave Sim"—addressing the "Tangent" controversy. Sim's reply to Stephen, and Stephen's subsequent rebuttal, were published in The Comics Journal #266.

Despite his reputation as a misogynist, Sim maintains that he is not one. In 2008, Sim sent out a self-written form letter to individuals who had sent him mail, detailing his disagreement with being called a misogynist and disenchantment with what he perceived as a dearth of support in refuting those claims to his character. Contending that society perceived misogynists as the "lowest, subhuman form of life in our society", he mentioned that few, if any, people had defended him, allowing him to be called "the lowest, subhuman form of life in our society with impunity." Sim's letter ended with an ultimatum, requesting that those who wished to receive his return correspondence reply with a letter or online posting and the statement, "I do not believe Dave Sim is a misogynist." All others were asked not to attempt to contact him again.