Picking Up The Football

Cerebus: Church & State Vol 2 (1988)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from an interview wih Sandeep Atwal, Filler, 1996)

You either mature with age or you die. When I see the extent to which I've been able to alter my own reality in Cerebus, when I see the ability to change or awaken aspects of other people's reality through things like issue 186, it's like that's the point.

That's the purpose and then the actual point and the actual purpose is what does somebody do by picking up the football that I left on the field with 186 and run further down the field the same way I did with Elvis and the Beatles? It's like, okay, you guys, that was mind boggling what you did. Way, way, way beyond anything I can compare with what I did. But in other areas you didn't do shit, you didn't do anything for creative freedom. You didn't do anything to keep those parasites and vultures in the record business away from artists. So I don't get known quite as much as an artist as you guys did, at least I'm handing off a better business and the creativity to the next guy and go, "OK, here's the stuff you know what not to do. Here's the stuff where this is just fucking bullshit. It doesn't matter what flavour they give it this month, it's still fucking bullshit and now you've got the football. Now, run for the goal line."

Dave Sim continues to self-publishing the 16 collected volumes of Cerebus, and has been an out-spoken advocate for creative freedom throughout his career, notably via The Creators Bill Of Rights and The Cerebus Guide To Self-Publishing.