Fables

[dave_littler]

There's a comic book series currently being published by Vertigo entitled "Fables" which my friend Colin introduced me to last year. Pretty good. Pretty good. The premise, in the broadest terms, is that all the old fables and fairy-tales and legends and such of all the cultures of earth are in some sense true; the characters are all real people who

Comments

[anadart]

That and Bill Willingham is a strong Rush Limbaugh supporter. From my understanding Willingham is starting to make his politics more publicly know as he and others (Mike Baron, Jim Hudnall, Bill Tucci) fight against the "liberal ideas" in the comic and Hollywood industries.

[dave_littler]

I didn't know that, but it doesn't particularly surprise me, given what else I've heard and read about him.

Mind you, this makes my analogy that much more hillarious in-context. I've got to see if he has some official forum or something where I can post this without the PPS at the end. See how he and/or his supporters react.

It's a shame that he can't go as completely and as awesomely batshit loco as Dave Sim did, towards the end of Cerebus. Did you hear about that one?

[anadart]

Yeah Dave Sim is a really sad case. He was a great guy through out the 1980's, but by 1995 he lost it. I was at a Convention with him here in Pittsburgh where he started going apeshit after the Con. Some of what happened turned into the "Guys" story line as Don Simpson was in it and at the after Con diner.

[dave_littler]

And now I've heard about this new thing of his; Glamourpuss, I think? A comic about women's fashions and using some sort of incredibly crude traced artwork? I haven't had the heart to check it out for myself. There's a point, for me, where even a trainwreck eventually becomes too sad and terrible to look at.

[anadart]

Looks like he frequents these forums: http://www.clockworkstorybook.net/forum/

You should repost there. :)

[dave_littler]

I think I just might! Time to get to trollin'!

Actually, I think I'll do it tomorrow, since I'm gonna want to watch the thread in real time. You can be sure I'll post the link to it here when I do, though, so you can watch the craziness unfold.

[anadart]

Please post the link. It should be entertaining.

On Sim's Glamourpuss, I saw the first issue preview he sent out and couldn't believe how bad it was. Just a really bad, nearly unreadable book. Looks like he has made it to issue #5 though and called in favors for "Zombie covers" for issue #4. This from a guy doing public readings of the King James Bible at night. There are videos on YouTube of him after Conventions holding prayer and bible studies. I say holding, because Dave is the center of attention despite it all being for the glory of the "lord".

[dave_littler]

I hadn't even HEARD that part; I was mostly familliar with and referencing his crazy-go-nuts misogynist rantings towards the end of Cerebus (which, at the time, Gail Simone AWESOMELY parodied here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=13720 ).

Somehow, this actually surprises me, though I'm not exactly sure why. There was something about the tone of his ranting which reeked of self-involvement which I guess seems out of place in terms of the sort of absolute submission which christianity demands. He seems like he should be one of those creepy Ayn Rand types, you know?

[dave_littler]

HAH! A little googling around led me to this quote from Dave Sim, completely by accident:

"Personally, I try not to listen to what other people have to say about a book to the extent of allowing them to make my choices for me. I put off reading "Ayn Rand the Nazi" for years because that was the way she was presented to me. When I finally read THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED it was an object lesson in not letting people make my decisions for me. I disagree with Ayn Rand in many ways and on many subjects but she has too many valid thought-provoking points to dump her in a box with Hitler and Goebbels and say "Case closed.""

So, I guess I was at least part right.

[anadart]

I agree. Do you know the date the quote is from? Dave Sim as you may already know was a outspoken Atheist most of his life until his Schizophrenia took over and he became his own sect of Christianity. So depending on when the quote was made his disagreements with may have been her Atheism.

Mike Baron recently wrote a article on how much he adores Ayn Rand now.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mbaron/2009/03/26/why-atlas-shrugged-matters/
It was linked to by several comic professionals with agreements on their Facebook pages.

[dave_littler]

It was from around a year ago, around the time of Glamourpuss #1.

I'm actually surprised at all this stuff I've never heard about the guy. He's schizophrenic now? That's bizarre; it seldom emerges that late in life. I mean, I knew about all the crazy misogyny, but the crazy religious stuff and mental disorder stuff is something I was unaware of, and I would have thought I would hear before now. So odd.

[anadart]

I'll have to locate the links again, but the Comics Journal (I believe) wrote about it several years ago with an interview with his ex-wife. He has dealt with Schizophrenia most of his life and after a bad LSD trip in the early 80's was institutionalized for a short time by with then wife and Mother. They wrote it off as exhaustion in the pages of Cerebus. Colleen Doran knew about it as she had been friends with his since early in her career. He just got worse over the years starting with the Jeff Smith fiasco.

[dave_littler]

I KNOW I've heard about the Jeff Smith thing before; it's ringing bells in my head, but the details utterly elude me. Can you give me some kind of a reminder (or even just a link to a story about the incident)?

[anadart]

Surprisingly there is a lot of accurate info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Sim with links at the bottom to many of the supporting lengthy articles.

From Jeff Smith:
http://www.boneville.com/bone/bone-history/#feud

I'm looking for some of the other interviews with his ex-wife and such.

[dave_littler]

Oh, wow, that's wild. It's positively surreal to me to imagine challenging Jeff Smith - the writer of what honestly is a kids' book - to a fist fight and stating that if he's a man, he'll need to agree... over the question of a disagreement over what was said in a conversation some five years ago.

It really does become increasingly clear why so many people who work in the industry just treat him as a source of horror and sorrow and simply refuse to have anything to do with him. This guy is fucking tragic.

[anadart]

Jeff and Vijaya Smith are extremely nice people and really didn't deserve the juvenile name calling of Dave.

Totally agree with you. Dave has become a sad waste of talent.