Dave Sim: "Avoyd Fornication"

Cerebus #275 (February 2002)
Art by Dave Sim, photo by Ken Sim

DAVE SIM:
(by fax, 29 December 2013)
Hi Tim!

Here's a first! I've never written anything for A MOMENT OF CEREBUS as part of my Sabbath observance. I'm doing so now because I read Susan's commentary of being "dumped" by me in favour of God. (Google image-heavy issues of STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND photo reference are, by forcing me into the coffee shop, perhaps, going to prove a boon to my contributing here).

I don't think "dumped" is an accurate way of looking at it: it was more that, as I became more familiar with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I recognised that there's a reason that adultery is considered a comparable offence to murder or theft in the Ten Words (or the Ten Commandments as Christians refer to them).

Which, for me, casts a whole new light on my own choices: which choices had been, to that point, "fornication followed by adultery" (I was having an affair that Deni knew about and accepted and occasionally participated in at the time we were married and for about a year after) then followed by fornication (which -- depending on how you interpret Matthew 5:32, 19:3-12, Mark 10:2-12 and Luke 16:18 -- establishes a co-equivalence between divorce and remarriage AS adultery; and which I infer casts an unfavourable light upon post marriage fornication) (the Synoptic Jesus attributing the Bill of Divorcement in Judaism -- Deuteronomy 24:1 -- as "toward the hardheartedness of you he wrote to you the commandment this" seems to me to point quite sharply in that direction). You'll notice that I had Cerebus wrestling with this in the course of RICK'S STORY relative to what he was doing with Joanne. Is fornication just as bad as adultery?

I'm not God, so I don't have a specific "one size fits all" answer for that (I'm not sure that God Himself does: I think that's one of the manifold "Metaphysics of the Universe" spiritual questions that the universe itself was created to answer in excruciating detail over untold millenia and across a nearly infinite number of planets), but, examining myself, it came down to "innermost motivation" insofar as I was able to determine what that was.

I had realised while married to Deni -- pretty early on -- that marriage just wasn't for me: I was not, by nature, a husband. But my atheistic response to that (being a devout atheist at the time) was to get divorced and then "play the field" with what I saw as -- and what proved to be -- a kind of in-built immunity to marriage. Good for me (as I saw it at the time). Not Good for me in an Ethical sense as I became familiar with Scripture.

It seemed to me that there needed to be an "either-or" -- I either needed to be a husband and father or, having determined that that wasn't who I was (which I had definitely determined to be the case as early as 1979), I needed to be completely celibate. There was absolutely no Good that could come of saying "I'm going to adopt the protective coloration of a potential husband -- I'll be a good boyfriend -- but inwardly, I know that this relationship is only going to be temporary."

The General Good and General  Welfare of Society (it seemed to me, as I first examined the question in the late 1990s, and still seems to me) is better served if women are only being courted by potential husbands and potential fathers and fellows like me (or, rather fellows as I was prior to that) stay off the relationship "chessboard" completely. Particularly since women are deciding entirely on their own with whom they are getting involved and to what extent (as opposed to their beaux needing to ask permission of their fathers to become engaged as was the case until the latter half of the last century).

Having been a Bad Boy I can vouch for the fact that the Bad Boy has a disproportionate appeal for many, if not most, women. For some he gives them permission to engage in or endorse their own bad behaviour (not being "AS Bad" as him, she can see herself as being Good while sill being bad), for some he's a "challenge" (she wants to be the one who tames him), for some he's the female equivalent of professional sports (who among the women he's sleeping with is in "first place"? Who is on a winning streak? Who is on a losing streak? Where am I in the "standings"?), for some he's a status symbol equivalent to what the trophy wife is for men: "Look what I'VE got! Eat your heart out!"

But, in the context of the General Good and General Welfare of Society, he's basically a societal vandal: despoiling (or, if you prefer, "despoiling") other men's daughters, sisters, nieces, cousins, aunts, etc. and constituting a distraction and a detriment to the orderly course of the female life well and truly lived. And not just in the course of the relationship, but in the carry-over emotional damage he causes to the individual female psyche. By being emotionally untrustworthy, he damages her ability to trust (in a foundational sense, since most women are emotion-based beings).

This is particularly important, I think, when you consider that science is just now discovering that there are far more serious consequences to female health than have been hitherto been suspected which result from delaying pregnancy, motherhood and lactation much past the mid-twenties. WAY too many women are wasting WAY too many good years -- their own very narrow individual window of individual opportunity -- they can ill afford to waste "dallying" with a Bad Boy -- or Bad Boys -- and/or recovering from the emotional ill effects of such relationships. To the extent that it was once possible for a Bad Boy to say, "Hey, nobody put a gun to her head" and chalking it up to a learning experience for her, that becomes less possible by the day. Fully engaging a female romantically so that she is unable to contemplate an alternative when you are just "playing around" is at least co-equivalent to putting a gun to her head -- or, more aptly, and more gruesomely, to her breasts and to her internal organs -- in terms of the potential long-term damage to her physical health.

So I would suggest it would be more accurate to say that in February 1998 I chose to repent of my fornication and adultery, having recognised that that's ALL my romantic relationships had been or could be when it came to my innermost motivations. A repentance meant giving it up and thereby (hopefully) atoning for it (I'm of the "Don't Continually Apologise And Whinge To God About It: IMPROVE" school of theology).

Summing up my like to the best of my abilities, in my own eyes: I was a completely unrepentant fornicator and adulterer from December 1976 to December 1996 when I began reading The Bible and a hypocritically repentant fornicator and adulterer from December 1996 to February 1998 -- I knew it was wrong but I was still doing it -- when I "dumped" Susan. A total of 21 years and three months.

And I will have been celibate for 16 years in February. If the basis is "time served" (it's always, I think worth remembering that it's God's timetable, not ours, which matters) then, by August of 2013, I had atoned for all of my post marriage fornications and -- God willing -- by May of 2019 I will have atoned for my pre-marriage fornications with Deni and my adulterous liaison of 1978-1979.

"Was I Dumped For God?"

Susan Alston (2013)
Photo by John Suchocki

SUSAN ALSTON:
(from a comment posted to The One About Dave Sim by Heidi MacDonald, February 2008)

Well done Heidi! You have captured the essence of the external Dave Sim. I have to say though, as Dave Sim's last known girlfriend, that this was not the rhetoric/speak/persona he used in my presence in the almost five intimate years that I spent with him (1994-1999). He was a very contemporary thinking and emancipated guy. Yes, he had feminists issues, not unlike the anti-male rhetoric from us in the 80s, (and yes he had mother/sister/girlfriend/wife issues from his past) - but a true misogynist - not in my opinion. We discussed such things at great lengths - but I could never keep up with him on any subject - he is a brilliant well-read person, and would obsess about certain subjects for weeks at a time, reading everything he could find about whatever he wanted to know about. 

He supported my efforts as the Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, oftentimes coaching me for media interviews or writing my ‘stump speeches’ for convention appearances etc. He adored my little dog, Smutty Nose, and pampered her like a baby! He was a very romantic guy too; he would call me on the phone and sing me Frank Sinatra songs. Sometimes he 'cooked' for me! He was very fair about equally dividing time between his home and mine (500 miles apart). Sometime we would decide to connect at Cons. 

His oratory did change after he started reading the King James' version of the bible. But not at the beginning. At first he would read me passages in complete jest, his inflections and emphasis on certain words and phrases (taken out of the intended context) would have laughing so hard I had to wipe back my tears! Then, suddenly, he stopped reading to me from the bible, even though I asked him to. The bible traveled with him everywhere after that, never far from his eyes. We broke up within a year or so from the start of his relationship with the bible, when his love affair with god began. Was I dumped for god? 

I am not defending him; he did disappear into his own void for days at a time, and came out elated and refreshed. We agreed not to communicate when his hair started to grow and he began to snarl. I used to track them on my calendar, every 30-45 days, like a menstrual period! I am not sure what he did there, perhaps became his evil twin Viktor Davis. Is he bi-polar, a schizophrenic? Maybe. I'll reveal more when I publish my own book, Dave Sim’s Last Girlfriend - coming soon...

Susan Alston, the CBLDF's first Executive Director (1993-1997) and former board member (1997-1999), is a development, marketing, and communications professional based in western Massachusetts, USA. Alston began her career as Assistant Director of Marketing at Bank of Boston, then as Director of Administration at Tundra Publishing, owned by Kevin Eastman. In 1993, Tundra merged into Kitchen Sink Press, whereupon Denis Kitchen offered her a part-time position overseeing CBLDF administration. Shortly thereafter, with the onset of the Mike Diana case and a large donation from Dave Sim, the position was moved to fulltime. After leaving CBLDF in 1999, Alston took her interest in fundraising, marketing, and communications and honed them at positions with Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, VNA HealthCare, and Center for Human Development. In 2012, Alston earned her Master’s degree in Strategic Fundraising and Philanthropy from Bay Path College. Alston rejoined the CBLDF in 2013 serving on its newly formed Advisory Board together with Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Jim Lee, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Chip Kidd, Louise Nemchoff and Frenchy Lunning.

Happy 62nd Birthday, Deni Loubert!

Deni Loubert was Aardvark-Vanaheim's publisher for the first 70 issues of Cerebus. Deni and Dave Sim were married between 1978 and 1983. After their divorce, Deni moved to Los Angeles to start her own comics publishing company, Renegade Press, which closed its doors in 1989. She was inducted into the Joe Shuster Hall of Fame in 2010.

Toronto Con 1978

Promotional Print for Toronto Con 1978
Art by Dave Sim

DENI LOUBERT:
(from 'A Note From The Publisher', Cerebus #2, February/March 1978)

...Despite the fact I complain about it, I do enjoy meeting all these people, though. Comic book people, both the fans and the dealers selling the comics, are colourful in their own special way. For instance, on the way home from a convention in Toronto (where I was introducing Cerebus to as many dealers as would listen to me) we stopped off at a restaurant to eat.

Now this isn't just three or four fans. This is a whole vanload of fans and dealers who have just had a full day of looking at and comparing comic books. We descended on that restaurant, hungry, tired and energetic as hell about comics. There were only a few other people in the restaurant at the time and I fear they will never be the same. Gesturing wildly, and talking loudly about Road Runner cartoons and the various merits of different artists, we more than filled the place. At one point, I just had to sit back and take a good look at the scene. There was no way we could be ignored, and yet everyone there was too busy being caught up in his or her enthusiasm to notice that we were being a three ring circus for the benefit of those few patrons there.

Comics is a crazy business, but you know something? I wouldn't want to be anyplace else. That is if I had the choice. Which none of us do once the bug has bitten.

Deni Loubert was Aardvark-Vanaheim's publisher for the first 70 issues of Cerebus. Deni and Dave Sim were married from 1978 to 1983. Deni subsequently moved to Los Angeles to start her own comics publishing company, Renegade Press, which closed its doors in 1989. She was inducted into the Joe Shuster Hall of Fame in 2010.

Petunia Con

Petunia Con
Oakland, California, USA
20-22 April 1984

DENI LOUBERT:
(from A Note From The Publisher, Cerebus #62, May 1984)

This has been a busy month for Aardvark-Vanaheim. Obviously, the biggest thing was our going out to California to attend Petunia Con. I must admit to feeling a certain amount of trepidation at the thought of attending a convention that focused so intently on A-V, (and Cerebus in particular). But, as I should have known, the convention was one of the easiest ones I've attended.

One real nice surprise came when we sat down to do an 'Aardvark-Vanaheim Panel'  with Gary Groth as 'inquisitor'. I was braced for the worst, but it was probably the most enjoyable panel I have sat on. Everyone there (Dave, me, Arn Saba, Bill Messner-Loebs, Joshua Quagmire and Valentino) had a chance to say something about what they did, and defend their view of what comics are and should be. The only problem was that at the end of the 45 minutes, we were just getting started and the panel had to be discontinued. But I think that for the first time I felt the impact of publishing a line of comics. It was like I had been adopted by a second family. What a feeling to be surrounded by such supportive people! If I ever had any doubts about wanting to be a publisher, they were erased by the time the convention was over.

Deni Loubert was Aardvark-Vanaheim's publisher for the first 70 issues of Cerebus, and each issue featured her 'Note From The Publisher'. Deni and Dave Sim were married between 1978 and 1983, with Deni subsequently moving to Los Angeles to start her own comics publishing company, Renegade Press, which closed its doors in 1989. She was inducted into the Joe Shuster Hall of Fame in 2010.

Dave Sim's Last Girlfriend

Dave Sim's Last Girfriend:
The Collected Letters & Faxes Of Dave Sim & Susan Alston
(Simon & Schuster, July 2013)

DAVE SIM:
(from a letter to Susan Alston dated 19 March 2004, reprinted in 'Dave Sim's Collected Letters 2004')

You certainly don't need any permission to print your own views on what you remember of myself or Cerebus, nor am I any kind of stickler for keeping my correspondence or personal memorabilia private. I would caution you against such a course of action only because Cerebus isn't really that kind of thing. I'm reminded of the memoir of Adele Morales of her marriage to Norman Mailer (which cost me an exorbitant sum when I found it in Chapters). I knew going in that it was probably not going to contain anything interesting, merely the salacious and the mundane and in that I wasn't disappointed. A good example was dinner with Edmund Wilson. Having just excerpted his F. Scott Fitzgerald parody from Discordant Encounters in the annotations to Going Home, I was on the edge of my seat to see what he and Mailer would discuss. All Adele remembered was that Wilson had a piece of food lodged in one of his teeth throughout the dinner and that that had repelled her. And that was all she had to say about Edmund Wilson. "Serves me right," I thought, remembering the sixty dollars or so the hardcover volume had cost me. "Serves me bloody well right."

...if you have something to add to any discussion of the creative side of the book or if you remember any of the conversations that I had with [Steve] Bissette or with [Rick] Veitch about various aspects of the comic-book medium or with Larry [Marder] about the business, that would be useful in its own way... But, as I recall, the start of those discussions was usually when you decided it was time to go to bed.

As well as being Dave Sim's last girlfriend, Susan Alston served as executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund.

Dave & Deni: Parental Approval

Cerebus Archive #14 (June 2011)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archives #14, June 2011)

The thing about fornication is that it accelerates (and, I now believe, derails) the whole process of what would otherwise be called courtship. Obviously Deni was concerned that all it was was fornication and (good test) asked if I wanted to come over to her parents place and meet the family on Boxing Day and watch Yellow Submarine on their colour television (we were both Beatles fans, Deni lifelong and me mostly from working at Now & Then). Sure! I said, eager to solidify the boyfriend / girlfriend thing and having NO idea how big a step meeting the family is until I was over there and meeting the family. They were all at the dining room table eating lunch when we arrived, her younger brother Michael greeting me with, "So this is the new one." Her younger sister Karen, wearing a John Lennon t-shirt, was obviously physically more attractive than Deni so I was instantly in a pre-Hannah & Her Sisters enactment (it was certainly a relief when the movie can out. Oh, so it ISN'T just me going through this -- I seem to recall that Mia Farrow had a much prettier sister). Deni's parents seemed stand-offish but that had more to do with the family dynamic with which I was unfamiliar -- the kids at one end of the table and the adults at the other end of the table carried on separate and distinct conversations.

Most relevant to my present point, however, is that I'm pretty sure her father had me sized up as an unsuitable candidate for son-in-law pretty quickly -- which I'm sure was a 100% accurate assessment. Deni was a flighty and unfocused residual hippy who seldom lasted long in any job and here was this high school dropout making $75 a month working in a used bookstore and who wanted to be a professional cartoonist. It wasn't a good match. We had basically the same flaws and I brought nothing to the table.

But the thing was we were -- even way back then -- well past the point in our society where a father's opinion meant anything. Deni would get involved with whomever she wanted to get involved with and her father was in a "like it or lump it" situation, like all fathers post-feminism.

It's a major conundrum. If your ambition as a society is to have as many successful and lasting marriages as you can have -- and I can't think of a more accurate definition of what most women would see as the ideal society -- the evidence is clear that that happened far, far more often when a suitor needed to ask the father's permission to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage and that it was only when daughters started making their own choices the divorce rate skyrocketed. Fathers instinctively protect their daughters from long-term harm, but only if they're expected to and allowed to.

But, of course, that doesn't conform to the romantic ideal of love at first sight and so on. In that context -- as we see in fiction from the Bronte sisters forward -- any father who doesn't rubber stamp his approval is the villain, the enemy of true love. Which is absurd. No father wants to hurt his daughter emotionally but that -- more often than not -- conflicts with his deep desire not to see his daughter hurt more seriously. I assume Ned Loubert knew that Deni could only get hurt out of an involvement with me. It was just a matter of time. Of course, Deni and I would both have been outraged if he had expressed disapproval but that's just the difference that results from shifting society 90 degrees out of whack, removing fathers from their traditional role as the sole voice of reason and sober assessment in the maelstrom of emotion-based female decision-making.

As I say, it's a conundrum because women are understandably loathe to surrender any part or their perceived absolute control over their romantic lifestyle choices. They don't want to be chattel -- either their father's or their longed-for husband's. However, the evidence of the last four decades suggest that the more absolute control women insist on having over their romantic choices the less absolute control, on a percentage basis, they are going to end up having over their desired outcome (stable, long-term marriages).

I point this out as a repentant serial fornicator with no further stake in either the fornication game: every serial fornicator is well aware and takes full advantage of the fact -- though loathe to admit it -- that the odds of getting a lot of sequential no-obligation sex (that is, sex that leads away from rather than to marriage) from a variety of women over short periods of time (from one-night stands to a few years of on-again off-again dating and "dating") go up exponentially the more women have absolute control over their romantic decision-making. The last thing the love 'em and leave 'em bad boy want is for women's fathers to be reintroduced into the equation even as advisers, let alone final arbiters... because that leads directly to rather than away from marriage.

It's an either-or situation that, it seems to me: women don't want to face: that absolute control leads most often to heartbreak either immediately or in a few years time while the surrendering of SOME control leads to a stable and enduring marriage.

Had Deni allowed her father to vet her choices, I'd guess she'd be happily married today.

But certainly not to me.

Deni Loubert was Aardvark-Vanaheim's publisher for the first 70 issues of Cerebus. Deni and Dave Sim were married from October 1978 to August 1983. After their divorce, Deni moved to Los Angeles to start her own comics publishing company, Renegade Press, which closed its doors in 1989. She was inducted into the Joe Shuster Hall of Fame in 2010.

Dave & Deni: First Date

Cerebus Archive #14 (June 2011)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #13, April 2011)

In our last joint interview (published exactly seven years later in issue 31 of Toronto's Shade magazine) I said that I had "fallen madly in love" while Deni had said "I was looking for an artist and Dave was looking for a girlfriend." Both are partially true. Actually I was looking a) to get laid and b) to get married. I basically did everything Gene [Day] did. Gene was married so I wanted to be married. And I definitely didn't want to die a virgin so that was (with apologies to the Ford Motor company) "Job One". (It's the wrong way around. But this was just at the beginning of the steep plummet in successful marriages which is now below 40% and projected to hit 0% sometime around 2028). I had had my own place for two weeks. It was time to lose my virginity. Made perfect sense to me at the time...

Deni ended up making a preemptive strike, coming back to the store the next night after work and asking if I'd like to come over for dinner the next night, Saturday... (saying later, "I thought to myself, who am I? Mary Tyler Moore? I don't cook!"). I think the answer to that was that she needed something to trade, given that she didn't have an office to impress me with or a magazine in raw -- let alone prototype -- form. And she, like me, had just paid first and last month's rent so she was in no position to pay for anything... By rights, I should have just given Deni a flyer that I had done up with my price list: $10 for an illustration -- and left it at that. Instead? Why yes, I'd love to come over for dinner.

She said she would come and get me the next night when I was done work. 6pm. Which she did. Was she suddenly self-conscious about offering to make me dinner when we had just met and exchanged only a few words, all of which were -- at least ostensibly -- on a business level?... figuring the walk over to her place would 'give us time to get somewhat acquainted? Was she perhaps worried that I wouldn't show up? Was coming and getting me a way of making sure that if sh was going to make me dinner (already an 'over the top' thing to do especially in those early years of feminism) she was going to make darn sure I was there to eat it? Or was it as simple as the fact that there were four front entrances to her apartment building and she wanted to make sure I picked the right one? Whatever the reason, she was there promptly at 6pm and we walked three blocks north on Queen and two blocks west on Weber...

Deni Loubert was Aardvark-Vanaheim's publisher for the first 70 issues of Cerebus. Deni and Dave Sim were married from October 1978 to August 1983. After their divorce, Deni moved to Los Angeles to start her own comics publishing company, Renegade Press, which closed its doors in 1989. She was inducted into the Joe Shuster Hall of Fame in 2010.

Dave & Deni: "Hi, Are You Harry?"

Cerebus Archive #13 (April 2011)
Art by Dave Sim
(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #13, April 2011)

The [1976 Forest Heights High School] convention was a significant event for me: my first as a guest, actually sitting on a panel with Gene Day and T. Casey Brennan. It was also the place where Harry Kremer had announced that he was renting the downstairs at 103 Queen St S. for an expansion of Now & Then Books... and where he agreed to hire me as the sales clerk for $75 a month... It was also at that convention that I first saw Deni [Loubert], but not where I first met Deni. She was in the audience at the panel I was on with Gene and Casey, which was held in an unused classroom. The panel was very sparsely attended -- the audience members barely outnumbering the panelists (6-3, 5-3?). What I didn't know at the time -- and what I didn't find out until much later -- was that she was there doing research... research for a fiction magazine she was planning at the time called Cerebus... a misspelling of Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded Hades in Greek mythology. I would suspect this is what happened: she had glommed onto Dark Fantasy at the show... (Gene would have had copies of his zine to sell -- either himself or on the Now & Then table in the foyer 'Dealer's Room')... as the incarnation of what she wanted to do: 'How do you go about doing this?' she must have asked Gene...

Whatever issues of Dark Fantasy she had picked up at the convention, it's pretty clear that once she got them back to her parents' house and had a chance to look at them and read them she had definitely decided that this was what she had wanted Cerebus to be. Somewhere around here, both Harry Kremer and Now & Then Books entered the picture. Exactly how and when I don't know. There are several possibilities.

Possibly, she had asked Gene at the convention "If I had a magazine like this, where would I sell it?" Again, in a convention context, Gene would have avoided such a large subject by retreating into generality: "Here in Kitchener, the best place would be Now & Then Books..." Qualifying this with: "You'd have to show it to Harry to see if he was interested."

Possibly, While she was buying the issues of Dark Fantasy at the Now & Then Books table she picked up or was given one of Harry's store business cards (knowing the VIP treatment girls get in comic stores today, you can imagine what it was like in 1976).

Possibly the convention didn't enter in to it, she might have bought a Dark Fantasy issue or issues at Now & Then, read it or them and then gone back, asking someone working the till about how she could sell her magazine, Cerebus, there and had been told by Harry's mother or someone, "You would have to talk to Harry."

Actually, that last scenario fits the known facts in a way that doesn't otherwise accommodate an obvious question: Why would Deni have gone into the downstairs section looking for the owner of Now & Then Books... when the only Now & Then sign was over the upstairs window? Unless she had been to the upstairs earlier in the week when the Thursday-through-Saturday downstairs had been closed and now seeing the downstairs lit up, and a guy standing behind the counter -- visible through the window -- had thought, "Oh, this must be him." Anyway, she's just gotten off work at the Forsyth Shirt Factory at the corner of Duke and Young Streets. About four blocks away. She opens the door, steps inside, closes it behind her and says: "Hi, are you Harry?"

Cerebus Archive #13 (April 2011)
Art by Dave Sim

Deni Loubert was Aardvark-Vanaheim's publisher for the first 70 issues of Cerebus. Deni and Dave Sim were married from October 1978 to August 1983. After their divorce, Deni moved to Los Angeles to start her own comics publishing company, Renegade Press, which closed its doors in 1989. She was inducted into the Joe Shuster Hall of Fame in 2010.

Gerhard's Photos: Zolastraya

GERHARD:

Jeff Tundis had posted a bunch of my old photos on his Art of Gerhard website quite a while ago. I've just started going through my old photos again and here are a few that aren't on his website.

Dave and "Zolastraya" (I forget what her real name is). This was taken in the "jam room" in a friend's attic. The egg cartons were an attempt to soften the echoes created by all the sloped ceilings.

The relationship didn’t last very long, but they did look good together in limos, didn't they?

Dawn, I think her name is, had her own comic featuring herself which she co-wrote and co-drew, I think.

Zolastraya & The Bard #1-5 (1987-1988)
by Dawn 'Zolastraya' Nash & Terry Echterling

Gerhard provided background art to Dave Sim's cast of Cerebus characters between issue #65 (August 1984) and #300 (March 2004) - contributing to over 4,700 pages of comic art, as well as numerous Cerebus covers and illustrations. Keep up to date on all of Gerhard's current projects at his blog and website, including details of his new book, The Wish.