After an absence from the comic book business of nearly four years, the lord of the aardvarks, Dave Sim, has returned in 2008 with two new comic books, Glamourpuss and Judenhass. Similar to his magnus opus Cerebus, these two comics have to be read as a part of the Gesamtkunstwerk „Sim“. Two comic books which couldn’t be more different: While the first, the continuing series called Glamourpuss, acts as a „high fashion comic book“-parody, the second comic book Judenhass combines chosen quotations and photorealistic reproductions to reconstruct the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Only the combined observations of both comics offer a deeper insight into Sim’s approach.

It's the year 2008; something in the world of comics as we knew it has changed. While it was still a rumour called „Secret Project #1“ in 2007, Dave Sim’s new website Glamourpuss opened its doors this spring. The frontpage jumps right into the face of the viewer with its huge pallet of different shades of pink. It’s clear that we have left Estarcion, the home world of Sim’s long-time protagonist Cerebus the aardvark, and entered a world even more bizarre: the world of haute couture. Women dressed in Gucci and drawn in clear cut black and white lines inform the reader that Glamourpuss is three publications in one:

1. „It’s Haute Couture magazine parody that is so ‘six month ago’”

2. “It’s an homage to classical photorealism black & white ‘beyond noir’ comic strips of the 1940es and 50es“

3. “It’s the strangest Super-Heroine comic book of all time!”

The first two issues of the actual printed comic book Glamourpuss fulfil this reckless promise, yet they are not comics one will want to read happily. On the inside beautiful women pose in designer-clothes while dropping Sim’s own statements very casually. Similar to the protagonist in Cerebus they adopt their author’s rummages in the third person: „Glamourpuss can’t tell you how sorry Glamourpuss is."

After all the ups and downs as a reader of Cerebus, you can’t criticize Sim for the content of Glamourpuss because when you bought it, you already knew that this won’t be your average comic book. Sim himself never made any false promises when he talked about his intentions in “Secret Project #1”: „When people ask me if I have anything planned after Cerebus this is about all that comes to mind: cute teenaged girls in my best Al Williamson photo-realism style.” As shallow as this remark may sound, as perfect is Sim’s creative implementation in Glamourpuss.

On each new page there is a different model impersonating the „strangest super-heroine“ Glamourpuss talking in a senseless fashion with herself about the new Gucci-costume. The mode of “narration” is interrupted by Sim himself, who uses Glamourpuss as a private megaphone to introduce the reader to the drawing-style of famous comic strip artists like Al Williamson or Alex Raymond. While all images in Glamourpuss are highly stylized reproductions of fashion magazines, Sim/Glamourpuss muses in the word balloons over the impressive mode of reproduction two pages earlier. Every time Sim catches himself being too entertaining or too historically interested he interrupts the “narration” with an add for a new dog dish, a recipe for cream filled cupcakes, or a preview of the Zombie-variant issue in Glamourpuss #4.

Sim has succeeded with this comic in two ways: Firstly he created the perfect meta-comic whose photo-realistic essence seems just in reach but fades away instantly before informing the reader about the comic strips of the 1940s and 50s. Secondly he established the ideal canvas for his second new comic book, Judenhass.

On February the 26th 2008, another new web-presence was online: the homepage to Judenhass. Instead of a funny parody trademarked by Sim the reader had to encounter a site that made his laughter die in his throat. It is introduced by a small flash-animation which is accompanied by rifle-shots being fired and the sound of something burning. In the frame there are different pictures alternating: the cover of Judenhass, preview images of the comics, and quotations on the comic by famous comic artists like Neil Gaiman or Joe Kubert. The reader is dragged slowly but mercilessly into a world that is very hard to bear.

In the foreword of the printed comic book, Sim tells his readers what kind of work he implied with Judenhass: “an accessible, intelligent, easy-to-follow, affordable and (I hope) compelling comic-book story that would appeal to a wide spectrum of comic-book readers and ‘not-yet’ comic book readers.” A closer look at Judenhass sees all these promises fulfilled, yet not as the comic reader might have expected. Even before Sim, other comic artists have successfully tried to create such a comic book, but only a few have tackled the same topic with the exception of Art Spiegelman in his Maus. All the praise Spiegelman earned for his stereotypical account of the characters involved seems to be denied to Sim because his photo-realistic depiction turns Spiegelman’s whole concept upside down.

By meticulously tracing the images of Jew hatred in the Third Reich and before that time, Sim seems to break with the notion of good taste and with Adorno’s statement: „It would be barbaric to write a poem after Auschwitz.” It would be too barbaric to reconstruct this past in a realistic fashion, because even the idea of realistic depiction is lost in the context of such cruel events.

As can be seen in his wildest „discussions” with the Cerebus-readership, Dave Sim is not a person who accepts such commandments as a given. In Judenhass he encounters Adorno’s statement full frontal. With the use of the technique he already used for Glamourpuss, Sim browsed for three years through image-archives and uncovered images and quotes he used for his own narration. The result of his work is a stunning comic book that directs its readers with the use of repetitions and close-ups exactly to the point where they are forced to look, forced to encounter the past. The quotes of famous people such as Martin Luther, Winston Churchill, and even Hitler act as a mere addition to this montage.

Similar to Glamourpuss, the main importance of Judenhass is the artistic side of Sim’s „secret project #2“. The conscious selection of images, the mosaic montage-trick which highlights the images, and the meticulous reproduction of the photos free Sim of all charges abusing the Holocaust. Glamourpuss and Judenhass stand side by side not as a political statement of a man who doesn’t even own an email-account, but for a Gesamtkunstwerk of a comic creator whose artistic style is once too often mistaken for his personal view.

Judenhass
Aardvark Vanaheim, May 2008
Words and pictures by Dave Sim
56 pages; black & white; 4,00 US-$

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