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From: ciaraldi@rochester.UUCP (Mike Ciaraldi)
Newsgroups: net.comics
Subject: Re: Recent Reviews
Message-ID: <11122@rochester.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Aug-85 11:43:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocheste.11122
Posted: Tue Aug 20 11:43:25 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 04:58:40 EDT
References: <3154@pur-ee.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Rochester, CS Dept.
Lines: 48

> Has anyone on the net met Dave Sim? Is he really a
> jerk or is he just pretending to be one? How can a jerk write and draw
> such a beautiful, sensitive book?
> 
> 
> 					Bill Hsu
> 					pur-ee!hsut

Well, I met Dave Sim back in 1980 (long-time net readers
have heard this story before).
He was a guest at the first Creation Con in Rochester, November 1980,
along with Mark Gruenwald and Keith Pollard.

At that point Cerebus #21 had just come out, and the print run
had recently been doubled from 6000 to 12,000. So, Cerebus
was still something of a cult comic (which it still is, come to
think of it, it's just that the cult is a little bigger).

Since no one knew who Sim was, I got to talk to him for much of
an afternoon.  He seemed just a fairly nice person, somewhat weird
(like most of the intelligent people I meet), but very committed to
his work.  He also had a keen sense of humor.

On the other hand, he was interviewed one afternoon on stage in front of about
25 people who happened to show up (compared to capacity crowds for
Gruenwald and Pollard), and seemed in a much worse mood.
He was rather surly and didn't follow up on the interviewer's
questions, so he had to be drawn out.

Years later, he wrote about that weekend in one of the 
"Swords of Cerebus" volumes (#3, I think), and basically said he
had been in a bad mood all weekend, compounded by being alone 
in a strange city with no downtown nightlife.

So, (putting on amateur psychologist cap), I think the reasons
Dave Sim comes off so nasty sometimes (especially in the letter columns)
are  that he does have a streak of it which comes out when he
is tired or overworked or bored (which probably happens quite often,
considering he has to run a publishing company and write and draw
20 pages of comics every month), plus his own sense of mischief and irony
which makes him want to play up his reputation.  I think you can see both 
sides of his personality alternating in the letter columns.

So, Dave, if you're reading this, we still love you even if
Jaka did get married to someone else.

Mike Ciaraldi
seismo!rochester!ciaraldi