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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:
-
„It’s
Haute Couture magazine parody that is so ‘six month ago’”
-
“It’s
an homage to classical photorealism black & white ‘beyond
noir’ comic strips of the 1940es and 50es“
-
“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.
Glamourpuss #1 and #2
Aardvark Vanaheim, April 2008
Words and pictures by Dave Sim
24 pages; black & white; 3,00 US-$
Judenhass
Aardvark Vanaheim, May 2008
Words and pictures by Dave Sim
56 pages; black & white; 4,00 US-$
Pictures taken from: judenhass.com, glamourpusscomic.com

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