I'm catching up on Bruno, [1] one of the on-line comics I follow, when I come across a series of strips [2] about misogyny and the discussion [3] that followed from those strips.
Any mention of mysogyny and comics in the same breath will eventually, if anyone close-by is a conneseur of comics, will lead to the infamous Issue #186 [4] of Cerebus, [5] created, written and drawn by Dave Sim. [6]
I only bring this up because I've linked to Dave Sim before. Or rather, his 1993 Pro-Con Speech, [7] which details self-publishing. He may be a mysogynist bastard, but he's a self-published artistic mysogynist bastard and while I may not agree with his views on women, he does have very good advice about self-publishing and maintaining artistic control over your own work, which is why I link to him. I also bring it up because earlier this day I was browsing some of the Cerebus related sites in a mood of just surfing around and wasn't expecting this topic to come up at all.
I've known about Issue #186 for some time, but that still hasn't decreased my interest in Cerebus. I was introduced to Cerebus by an old friend and roommate, Sean Williams, way back in 1990, nearly four years before Issue #186 hit the stands, and because of Sean Williams, I own (except for Issue #104) the complete run of “Church [8] and State,” [9] as individual issues, as well as “Swords of Cerebus” (which covers the first 25 issues of Cerebus) and a few other of the phone books [10] that comprise the reprint history of the comic book. It's a phenomenal series and one that has influenced the comic book industry like none other.
You may be hearing of it for the first time, but trust me, Cerebus is to the comic book industry as Brian Eno is to recording—not many people outside the industry have heard of it (or him), but within the influences are tremendous.
It's just sad that Dave Sim comes across as such a jerk.
Then again, so does his creation, Cerebus …
[1] http://www.baldwinpage.com/bruno.html
[2] http://www.baldwinpage.com/20000703.html
[3] http://www.baldwinpage.com/misogyny.html
[4] http://www.home.aone.net.au/think/sim.html
[6] http://www.teleport.com/~ennead/ampersand/sim/
[7] http://www.teleport.com/~ennead/ampersand/sim/procon.html
[8] http://cerebus.org/content-book03.html
[9] http://cerebus.org/content-book04.html