davidmalki.com
🎩 hi there! it's malki from wondermark
🖋️cartoonist, designer, game maker
đź”— my various links: linkpop.com/malki
🦋 comics posted at: @wondermark.com
884 posts
4,028 followers
191 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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(Reveal that the old man is in a tiktok video)
Old man: Solution coming up in part 2. Subscribe for more!
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Additional links:
• "Cerebus syndrome"
• Neil Gaiman's blog post from Aug 2004 that started all this
• More on Sim's form letters slash loyalty pledges
• I'm not the first to do this collage thing.
• The Cerebus in Hell online archive, which you might call a webcomic, in that it can be read online.
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It’s possible the collage bit is over, now; last year, one of the Cerebus in Hell printed issues (an Akira parody) was solicited as “the first hand-drawn Sim comic in years.”
So what I take away from it all is this:
I can’t believe I outlasted Dave Sim at something involving comics. 33/END
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In case anyone wonders, I also have no “objection” to Cerebus In Hell; I’m certainly not the first person to do this weird collage-thing, nor have I been the last.
But neither do I think Cerebus in Hell is all that good. That should be okay to say, too. 32/
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He may see this, which I’m okay with. I’m glad that he likes Wondermark, or at least liked the books that he read, the same way that I’m glad anyone likes Wondermark. 31/
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But as I see it, our balance sheet is even: He did me a favor, by sending the quote; that was genuinely a nice thing for him to do for some rando, which I was (and remain).
He then got something in return, which was the inspiration Wondermark gave him for Cerebus in Hell.
I think we’re square. 30/
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I’ve no particular interest in crawling out on any limbs for him myself, so yes, even I, recipient of his glowing compliments, am one of the many who “refuse to” defend him (or simply don’t have much to say on the matter -- aside from this whole diatribe, of course). 29/
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The whole form letter premise (if you read the whole thing) is Sim asserting that he’s unwilling to expend energy interacting with people who don’t respect him, or more pointedly, who won’t defend him.
Which I suppose is his prerogative. 28/
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And that, I assume, is how it came to be on his shelf, and why the world has me to blame for “Cerebus in Hell”. 27/
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I had no intention of complying with this weird requirement, but I did want to honor my side of the bargain, so in early 2009, I mailed him a hardcover of BEARDS along with a short note.
No form letter was enclosed, and indeed, no response was received. But apparently, he read it. 26/
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Mail was still Sim's preferred mode of communication, but he had started replying with form letters:
25/
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Just one thing remained.
I had promised another free book to whoever wrote me an introduction.
By the time my next book came out – 2008’s Beards of our Forefathers, which got a proper release from Dark Horse – Sim had adopted a new policy for correspondence. 24/
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So I printed no more and instead solicited another new introduction, this time from my new pal @ryannorth.ca, and most copies out there in the world of this book are the 3rd edition.
(In 2009, I completely reformatted this book once again, but retained the Ryan intro.) 23/
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I printed just a handful of copies of this second edition. 2005 is when I started to make actual friends in comics, which brought me more perspective on what it would mean to have Sim’s name on my book. 22/
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The revised introduction, as it appeared in the book (you don't really need to read the whole thing):
21/
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I replied back to him, saying in essence, “Thanks, and this is so long of a quote it’s basically one paragraph away from being a full introduction. Would you be willing to add a bit more?”
This, he did. And so the second printing of The Annotated Wondermark contains Sim’s introduction:
20/
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Dave Sim read the book, including my challenge above, and he replied, sending me a quote for the book as I had requested.
Here is his letter to me:
19/
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So of course, I wrote Dave Sim a letter. And I enclosed my book.
Here’s where it gets weird.
The book, brazen young author that I was, contained a challenge of its own, in the introduction that I wrote:
18/
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On Gaiman’s own blog, which I occasionally read, Gaiman posted a challenge he’d received from Sim, in which the latter basically dared people to send him letters:
17/
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At the time (late 2004), Neil Gaiman was in regular contact with Dave Sim, who was developing a reputation as, among his other quirks, a sort of Luddite crank. (Sim still communicates with the blog I quoted above by sending them faxes each week.) 16/
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It was very early in the life of Wondermark. I was just starting out. I didn’t really know what to do with the book. I mailed copies to a bunch of famous people, as I wrote about in more detail here:
15/
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In late 2004, I printed up (“published” would be too strong a word) my first @wondermark.com book, the now-out-of-print THE ANNOTATED WONDERMARK:
14/
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Today, or back in 2016 for that matter, he’s not a creator I feel particularly comfortable being associated with.
But is his comment true?
Did I, in fact, write Dave Sim a nice letter?
I did, over 20 years ago. Here’s how it happened:
13/
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Sim's beliefs might be characterized as Most Divorced-Guy Energy Of All Time, Plus Possibly Schizophrenia.
Wikipedia charitably summarizes this as: “In the course of writing Cerebus, Sim expressed opposition to feminism and made controversial statements regarding men and women.” 12/
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There's a third account of this too, in an interview with CBR, which I led this thread with.
This is a bit awkward for me, the David Malki in question, because – if you aren’t aware – Dave Sim has a very particular reputation related to his personal beliefs. 11/
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In 2016, when he first started Cerebus in Hell, Sim described the same thought process in a blog comment:
10/
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By which I mean, he placed stock drawings of Cerebus over public-domain vintage line art, and added repartee.
It’s called “Cerebus in Hell” and when I call it “Wondermark-style,” I’m not being hyperbolic. From an essay of Sim’s about his original idea for the strip:
9/
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There is another, slightly weirder way in which Dave Sim and Cerebus connect to my own work.
Sim spent several years post-Cerebus, during a time in which he suffered a wrist injury and couldn’t draw traditionally, making Wondermark-style comics featuring the Cerebus character. 8/
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So I really enjoyed reading – in many sessions, over the course of weeks – Tom’s 19-part blog series that both summarizes the story, and provides a lot of interesting flavor and context.
Having read it, I feel, if not fully informed, that I’m “caught up” exactly to the degree that I want to be. 7/
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• It featured some of the greatest panel compositions, lettering, and other markers of craft of any comic of the time — or possibly ever.
• It went totally off the rails midway through, and the last third is basically unreadable.
6/
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• The creator, Dave Sim, was well-known to be a fierce champion of independent publishing and creator’s rights.
• Cerebus began as a parody of Conan, then came into its own as an original story. It even inspired the term “Cerebus syndrome,” when a lighthearted story turns serious and dramatic.
5/
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I may have read a few issues of it at some point; I definitely had a copy of some crossover comic Cerebus (the titular aardvark character) featured in. They were lousy on the ground, in the ’90s.
But about the content of the comic itself, I only really ever knew the following:
4/
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Like many people who read comics during the 1990s and 2000s, I have an awareness of Cerebus, the epic 300-issue saga widely acknowledged as one of the most monumental achievements in comics by a singular creator (which is not to minimize the contributions of his artistic collaborator, Gerhard). 3/
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You can read all this as a blog post on Wondermark, too.
If you, like me, haven’t read all of Cerebus, but are curious what actually happens in those last few books, good news: Tom has your back, in a book-length series of blog posts. (cc: @freakytrigger.co.uk)
2/
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the rare case where the drawing is scruffier-looking than the person it depicts! That beard is PRISTINE, friend
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Spiff is unabashed bravado in the face of overwhelming odds?
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I think that's just the iphone interface for all contacts. But maybe worth a try?????
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"State senators" I mean federal-level senators. From your state.
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Whoops, sorry, I mean 1931. THAT'S EVEN WORSE!!!
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Unlike the previous installment, this time we will be looking at comic strips published in ENGLISH for an AMERICAN audience. Specifically, a magazine from 1937. I am confident SOME of it will make sense... but how much???
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whoops, thank you, fixed
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PART 5 bsky.app/profile/davi...