Dave Sim Announces He’s Ending Glamourpuss And Leaving Comics
Well, this is troubling.
I stumbled on a report at The Comic Reporter this week that Cerebus creator Dave Sim — at one time my favorite comic writer and artist — has announced that he’s ending his latest ongoing title glamourpuss and giving up on the medium entirely.
Part of the reason I find it troubling is that I’ve never even heard of glamourpuss. How could Dave Sim publish 26 issues of a comic without me knowing about it? I’d heard about his successful Kickstarter campaign back in June, which raised nearly $64,000 to create a special audio/visual digital edition of the Cerebus graphic novel High Society. I also knew he had experimented with an anthology titled Cerebus Archive and a web program called Cerebus TV… but how did he slip glamourpuss past me?
According to what I can find online, glamourpuss was both a parody of 60s fashion magazines and a history of photorealism in comics, masquerading as a surreal super-heroine comic. One of its most talked-about features was an ongoing storyline about the day comic artist Alex Raymond died, The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond. The art samples published online looked stunning. You can view page samples and purchase of most of the back issues at the excellent comiXpress site.
But the real news was Sim’s bleak editorial in the latest issue:
Yes: this IS the last issue of glamourpuss… As soon as I saw the sales on the first issue – 16,000 – I knew that the title and my career were doomed. Because of the sheer volume of material published in the direct market, retailers need to order the highest numbers on the first issue and then start cutting drastically – on average: 50% per issue thereafter. 16,000 down to 8,000 down to 4,000 down to 2,000 and… oblivion…
In a final attempt to keep going, I re-jigged glamourpuss with [sister title] zootanapuss, using both the idea of a variant cover as zootanapuss No. 1 and double shipping each issue… It actually worked. Sales did go up on No. 25… but only by 34 copies over No. 24. I had arrived at my career end point…
You know the prologue. Contracting an illness (possibly scarlet fever or meningitis) at the age of nineteen months, Helen Adams Keller survived, but was left both deaf and blind. Keller’s parents would eventually contact Anne Sullivan, herself blind, to tutor their daughter (who, at the age of six, still had not grasped the concept of words representing things). By pressing her hand into the girl’s palm, Sullivan was able to teach the girl to read sign language through touch. After that breakthrough, Helen Keller went on to write twelve books, meet thirteen U.S. Presidents, help found the American Civil Liberties Union, and introduce the Akita breed of dog to the United States.
Matt Wagner began writing and illustrating the first Mage series in 1984 at the age of twenty-two. At the time, he was a relatively unknown creator struggling both to find his voice and make a place for himself in the comics industry. His subsequent work on Grendel and Sandman Mystery Theatre had garnered many awards and critical acclaim; but in interviews there was always the obligatory question of “When are you going back to Mage?”
Be honest. If you had magical powers when you were a teenager, what would you have done? How long would you have walked the path of righteousness before cursing the school bullies? Before casting a spell to make yourself popular? Before just flat-out killing bad people? Would you have made friends with elves … or goblins?