The Sim/Fetch Dialogue

Part One: "Further In and Further Up"

1/29/04. Letter #1

Dear Toc;

First of all, many apologies for this belated reply to your letter, enclosures and invitation from August of 2001. With the resignation of our secretary, the choice was an unhappy one between having to winnow the local pool of feminists in search of someone capable of leaving their politics at home (a distinct long shot) and Ger and I divvying up the office chores and just pushing on to March 2004. I picked the latter and the biggest sacrifice was my personal correspondence. With issue 300 now done, for the most part, I'm able to answer all of the mail that has been piling up over the last four years.

I'm pretty sure I wrote you an oblique note upon the receipt of your earliest batch of material (in those pre-publication days when I was-from what I gather--one of a few people on your mailing list) and I suspect that was where you pulled the quote for your advertising "Beautifully realized illustrations and design and... well…everything." I have long been a victim of what they call in psychiatry "referential thinking"-believing that events unrelated to me in any overt way are related to me in an occult (in the original meaning of the term: "hidden") way. The best way that I can sum up my reaction to first seeing your work was utter amazement at what you were accomplishing. In terms of "referential thinking" I think you got drawn into my story (and I got drawn into yours) because of my relationship with Barry Windsor-Smith (who, "coincidentally" was a longtime resident of your city). I came to this conclusion after a great deal of reflection on it. Let me give you an analogous example; back in the 1980s, Neil Gaiman (then just a freelance journalist in London) did an interview with me as part of the UK Tour that Ger and I did. Of course, since then he has gone onto worldwide fame in multiple media at each of which he is just plain astonishingly successful. As it pertains to me, I think this was God's way of showing me what it was like for all of the major cartoonists that I interviewed for various fanzines when I suddenly started achieving this strange, multileveled success with Cerebus. It was disproportionate, I think, intentionally so: Neil is. exponentially more successful than I could ever hope to be. And that was the lesson. So, how does it feel to have someone who played a bit role in your own small fame take off like a skyrocket? It was very uncomfortable at the beginning. Alan Moore was always Alan Moore. He was already Alan Moore and quantum levels of stature above me in the hierarchy before I read his work and certainly before I met him. But Neil Gaiman was this snot-nosed kid in a skinny necktie and running shoes writing journalism pieces for alternative magazines. I was this big-shot alternative cartoonist with a suite at the Savoy and champagne and caviar from room service. Neil's success took me down a number of pegs in my own estimation. Which was good. It sure didn't seem good at the time, but almost twenty years later on, it was a valuable lesson to me in "how I seem to others". And, of course, Neil is a loyal friend and a truly humble and nice person. Which only made it worse in a lot of ways. If he had been a full-time asshole, it would have been salve to my wounded vanity. But he was pretty much faultless (except for things like getting all of his friends to do strips about him when he was the guest of honor at the Chicago Comicon for the program book: I thought I took the piss out of him. Mine was nothing compared to what others did. I don't think Neil would make that mistake again).

But, to move from the analogy to the heart of the issue: I never quite knew what Barry Windsor-Smith thought when he looked at my work and I don't think he ever knew what I thought when I looked at his work. The reaction, I decided, could be summed up on both sides by how I reacted to your work:

This is so much like what I want to do and I couldn't do this if I had five hundred years to practice. Look at this. I mean, LOOK at this. KEEP looking at this. You could vanish into this up to your eyeballs. How does he DO this? How does he do this PAGE after PAGE after PAGE? I mean LOOK at this. READ this. It's not just LOOKING. READ it. There's more in one page than I've been able to say in my whole ----- career!

And so on. And what's more you had the same effect on Gerhard. I mean, here's a guy who has penetrated so far into the comic page in terms of line density and fineness of line (we accidentally got into an unspoken competition in this: I'd go finer with my line to try and match what he was doing, so he'd go finer to try to match what I was doing) that, towards the end, it was enough to make your frontal lobes melt and he had the same reaction to your work (see above).

And now, in this month's Comics Journal, here's your ad. And you've gotten better. It's completely inconceivable. But there it is. You've gotten better. You could look at that ad from five feet away or you could examine it under a microscope and you would see the same thing: perfect densities, perfectly rendered. The photorealistic interplay of white black and gray, all rendered in pen.

As I say, it was in the aftermath of Carol West's resignation that your invitation arrived to your opening at the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York. Boy, I was tempted. There was way too much work to be done (Ger and I both getting used to having to handle all of the creative side and all of the business side and trying to get the balance right), but I was about five or six weeks ahead on the book. If there was anything that I would've sacrificed a week for it would've been to see your work up close and in person in my favourite city in the world. I finally decided I couldn't do it. Good thing, because I sure didn't end up with five or six weeks to spare on the March, 2004 deadline.

And, of course, your opening turned out to be September 13,2001. Who knew? It's very strange sitting here looking at your press release. September 13,2001. As if that would turn out to be just another September day in the Big Apple. I'm sure I don't have to tell you the range of thoughts that go through my head when I think what might've been if I had had confidence in being far enough ahead to take a flyer and book a flight.

Well, I'm not sure I have very much more to add. I'm enclosing the Aardvark -Vanaheim VISA card number. Ordinarily I'm scrupulously careful about using it only for business, but please, sign Ger and I up for two of everything you publish. You'll either shame us into getting back to work OR reinforce for us that there's no need. Who needs our stuff when Toc Fetch is writing and drawing?

Thanks for all the material that you've already sent and apologies again for this belated response.

Sincerely
Dave Sim