In Defense of Dave Sim’s ‘glamourpuss’
Go ahead, laugh it out. What I'm referring to is the classic loop/ambient collaboration between King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and electronic music pioneer Brian Eno. In 1973, the two convened with a Gibson Les Paul and a couple of modified A77 Tape Recorders. Across two songs, the pair recorded forty minutes of improvised guitar loops -- waves of sound that swell up and fade, roll over and fold back into sequence. Simultaneously groundbreaking and gimmicky, it remains a must-have for any recreational drug user.
Creator Dave Sim has been cast in many roles over his years in the comics industry. Self-publishing guru and troop marshal. Willful iconoclast. Mentally-deranged pariah. But after finishing his six-thousand-page opus "Cerebus" (with collaborator Gerhard) in March 2004, the Canadian cartoonist seemed likely to fade into -- if not obscurity -- then irrelevance. By the series' conclusion with issue #300 he had lost much of the readership to his opinions, and more to disappointment in the story's direction. After twenty-seven years, the comics "community" overall seemed both genuinely congratulatory and genuinely content to let him go away quietly.
But enough about art. Let's talk about chicks.
Yes, fashion magazines are an easy target. They're also a big one, and a perfect springboard to comment on commercialism, materialism, vanity, the pharmaceutical industry, mob culture, advertising, sex, and of course, feminism, the comics industry, and himself.
The list doesn't end there. Sim is a gifted satirist, darting from topic to topic over the span of a few sentences. Woven into the design, it comes at the reader from many angles: a column for a Dr. Phil-like character in "Ask Dr. Norm," letters to Glamourpuss (the editor of the fashion mag, not the scrubby little comic book), ad spreads, and short comics.
The Cliffs Notes version of his beliefs: Men reason, women feel, women cannot create on their own so they steal creativity from men, though there are "Exceptions" (one of whom is Coco Chanel, parodied in "glamourpuss" 4), and though society is portrayed as male-dominated, it is, in fact, a matriarchy. That's just the foundation. It goes very deep, and very wide, and is very thorough, beginning with the essays in the "Reads" storyline, climaxing in issue 186, spilling over onto the letters page and returning in essay form in "Tangent" once again.
Sim lost nearly half his readers, most of whom believed he'd suffered some psychotic break and wedged it into "Cerebus," derailing the story beyond repair. Sim claims that he had had that exact moment in mind for nearly sixteen years, and that everything from "High Society" on was building towards it.
The evidence is in his favor. Gender issues and commentary on feminism (in infant form, long before Sim had carved out his ethos) occur as early as the introduction of the character Red Sophia, a parody of Red Sonja from "Conan," all the way back in issue 3. For those hoping to blame everything on a mental breakdown, they need look no further than his hospitalization in 1979 after an extended period of heavy LSD use. According to Sim, the entirety of Cerebus's story spawned from this incident, including all the allegories on feminism and womanhood. This event (I believe) is also re-enacted in "Church & State," when Cerebus ascends to the moon and returns to the country of Iest to find it taken over by Cirin and her army of telepathic feminists.
I will, however, continue to defend his work. But I'm weird.