Originally published April 26, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1171
People love to become outraged about Dave Sim… and it is my opinion that Dave loves to outrage them.
He challenged the Friends of Lulu to publicly support the comics seized in the Planet Comics raid, despite the violent images of women portrayed therein. Defying Friends of Lulu to endorse Verotik Comics is kind of like daring Andrea Dworkin to French kiss Andrew Dice Clay.
He adopted a thinly veiled fake-author guise and put together a mysoginist rant blurring the line between personal and fictional opinion.
The thing with Dave is, I learned long ago that what Dave presents to the public is sometimes just for show. He’s built up a reputation and will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to support it.
What puts me in mind of this is something to which I referred several years ago, and have since gotten a number of queries on. And that is the Dave Sim Anecdote That Even Dave Doesn’t Know.
But I know it, and with Dave in the news as he shocks, surprises, and divides opinion both for and against him, I figured I might as well share it with you.
This happened easily ten years ago, perhaps more. It was at a comic book convention, although unfortunately I do not recall which one. I’m reasonably sure it was one of the larger ones: Chicago, perhaps, although I couldn’t swear to it.
It was during my days as Marvel’s direct sales manager, you see, so the conventions tend to blur together, one into the other.
At that particular convention–whichever one it was–I was given the job of organizing a cocktail reception on behalf of Marvel Comics. Marvel high muck-a-mucks such as Mike Hobson (a true gentlemen of Marvel upper management) were going to be in attendance. Invitations were to be extended to all convention guests. It was a way for Marvel to put forward a positive face to the comic book community, back when such an effort didn’t merely elicit sneers and contemptuous glares.
Organizing such receptions was not an extraordinary task for me at the time. On Marvel’s behalf, I had organized breakfasts, lunches, dinner receptions, outings, all manner of social functions for creative professionals, distributors, retailers… anyone and everyone who did any kind of business with Marvel.
Organizing cocktail parties made me a bit skittish, though. I was apprehensive over the notion of someone having a bit too much to drink, going out and getting behind the wheel of a car, and wrapping themselves around a pole (or a Czech or a Slav or any other nationality you could name.) I was concerned both from a humanitarian basis, and from the corporate mentality atmosphere that Marvel would be exposed to harsh criticism for liquoring up comic professionals and sending them out to hideous deaths.
So at this particular convention, I organized a cocktail party as instructed. As the hour for the start of the party neared, the bartender arrived to set up the bar. I introduced myself to him as the point man for the gathering; I would be the one he’d come to with any questions about opening additional bottles of whatever (we were being charged by the bottle, and I did have a budget to maintain.)
Just before the guests started to arrive, I said to the bartender, “Look, I want you to do something for me. I want people to have a good time, but on the other hand, I don’t need anyone getting bombed out of his skull. We’re only having a couple dozen people at this, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to monitor liquor intake.”
“Not a problem at all,” said the bartender.
“Good. So… keep an eye out. If anyone is drinking a bit faster than you think is wise, let me know and we’ll see how we can handle it. Don’t do anything without consulting me, but let’s work together.”
“You got it,” said the bartender.
So the party began, and people started showing up. Everyone was having a good time, everything was going smoothly. I was making the rounds, welcoming folks on behalf of Marvel. Freelancers were there, not awesomely trusting of Marvel the mighty corporate entity, but more than happy to enjoy Marvel’s hospitality. That’s the purpose of good-will demonstrations, after all. A couple of distributors were there, voicing the usual concerns about Marvel taking over their own distribution. And naturally I was telling them what a crazy notion that was, that Marvel would never do something that foolhardy.
And then I caught the bartender’s eye, and he was gesturing me over. The party had only been going for about fifteen minutes, people were still just getting there. And I thought, That was fast.
The bartender gestured towards a noted comic book creator who was standing some feet away. “He’s been here maybe five minutes and he’s about to polish off his second drink.”
I looked where he was indicating. It was Dave, smiling and nodding and chatting with Mike Hobson.
“What’s he drinking?” I asked.
“Rum and Coke,” said the bartender (I think that’s what it was. For the purpose of the story, that’s what it’ll be.)
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “Can you reduce the amount of rum?”
“Sure.”
“Fine. The next drink he has, cut the rum by half and jack up the Coca Cola. The drink after that, eliminate the rum entirely, give him straight Coca Cola. If he complains, I’ll deal with it at that point.” The bartender nodded and I went off to mingle with other guests.
An hour and a half later, Dave Sim was staggering around, laughing loudly, leaning against walls, leaning against people. Guests were grinning or shaking their heads, amused or shocked depending on their personal tolerance levels. Clearly Dave was drunk out of his mind, waving around a drink and being the life of the party.
I went to the bartender, stunned, and said in a low voice, “What are you serving him?”
“Coca Cola!” the bartender swore, no less amazed than I at Dave’s performance. “I swear to God, I did exactly what you said. He’s been tossing back nothing but Coke for over an hour now!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
But boy, you sure couldn’t tell it by ol’ Dave. Mike Hobson was staring at him like he’d just landed from Mars. I walked in their general direction. Dave saw me and, came towards me on somewhat wobbly legs, and draped an arm around my shoulder, supporting himself.
“Peter, this is a great party! You’re a wonderful host!” he said, slightly slurring his words.
The bartender hadn’t been lying. Dave’s breath was as clear as Mother Teresa’s conscience. There was no trace of alcohol on him at all. He was stone cold sober.
“Glad you’re having a good time, Dave,” I said amiably. And he staggered/sauntered off to chat with someone else.
The thing I never knew was: Had Dave convinced himself that he was, in fact, drunk, and acted accordingly? Or was Dave playing to the crowd, catering to the legend, adding to his reputation as a party guy and bon vivant? “Yeah, I was at a party with Dave Sim last night, and boy, did he get blitzed out of his gourd. After all, aren’t some of the most legendary writers in our history pictured as hard-drinking men’s men?
For all we know, Ernest Hemingway never drank anything rougher than ginger ale, and the rest was all smoke and mirrors.
I don’t wish to diminish the legend of Dave Sim here, because I think he’s a great guy. I think he’s got a lot to say, I think he detests complacency. At the first Pro/Con, I was the one who pressed the most strongly for having him attend to deliver a speech about independent publishing… which he did, and it was, I think, one of the highlights of the gathering.
I’ve also learned that it’s not always easy to tell where the legend lets off and the real Dave begins. I don’t think he’s out and out lying, or being insincere. I think that sometimes he simply takes a particular train of thought and follows it to an extreme (albeit not always logical) conclusion. Nonetheless, what’s interesting is not so much the conclusion, but saying, “Wait a minute, I don’t buy that, and here’s why.” It makes you think, something that’s a rare enough activity these days.
But if Dave’s coming over to your house, lock up the Coca Cola. Drinking and driving, after all, don’t mix…
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Speaking of Coca Cola, Disney’s re-release of Oliver and Company rates a .28 on the Cokemeter, which as we all know is the measure of how long it takes for an image of Coke to appear in a motion picture. Oliver and Company is literally measured in seconds: twenty-eight seconds into the film, we have an establishing shot of Times Square with a giant Coca Cola sign prominent. Oliver and Company may have set a record, not only for speed, but frequency, getting not only a .28, but a 5, a 12, and a 29. Five minutes in we see a “Drink Coca Cola” sign on a hotdog wagon; twelve minutes in we see a Diet Coke can under a chair (which mysteriously morphs into regular Coke and then back again, one of countless continuity blunders in the film) and twenty nine minutes in, we see a Coke sign atop a cab. Cripes, they should change the name to Oliver and the Coca Cola Company.)
• 
As people may have noticed, I frequently look at things and am reminded of something else. In this case, it is the Prohibition-era, Laurel & Hardy short “Blotto.” It only exists, sadly, in a post-Hayes-Office censored version. In the short, Stan and Ollie plan a meeting at a club with a bottle of something that belongs to Stan’s wife. But she overhears them and replaces the bottle’s contents with non-alcohol. But they still get themselves into the title condition.
Sadly, I don’t think Sim’s misogynistic side, presented in CEREBUS (and my heart sank when I, reading this truly amazing comic book series, suddenly had the author blaming the world’s ills on the evil women holding men back and destroying them), is for show. In virtually every comment or discussion I’ve read since that first one, he’s been consistently blaming women and marriage for ruining the world. And comments like “I’m not a misogynist, I’m anti-feminist” don’t help him any.
.
I know a few people like that. They drink something they think has alcohol in it and you get to witness the placebo effect in real time.
I spoke with Dave about this incident years ago. He claimed he knew and just played along, hamming it up to have fun and cause confusion to bust Peter’s balls a little bit.
PAD saw Dave at a con a few weeks later, and wrote about it in a column that will be on this site in a few weeks. But here’s what Dave told him then from the column:
.
“Dave stated that if it was in the early 1980s, then he likely really did think he was getting drunk. But if it was in the mid-1980s… which I believe it was, around 1984… then he would have known that the Rum and Coke had been reduced to 99% Coke and decided to act drunk. His mildly paranoid thought process would have been that Marvel was stiffing him on the drinks because he wasn’t a Marvel employee, and we wouldn’t have seen fit to waste good rum on him. So to “get back” at Marvel, he would have loudly acted three sheets to the wind, knowing that Marvel couldn’t cop to the knowledge that his alcohol consumption didn’t warrant the behavior. Of course, poor Mike Hobson—-who probably couldn’t figure out why Dave was apparently completely blasted and yet had no trace of alcohol on his breath—didn’t know what the hëll was going on.”
The regrettable thing about “controversial” figures is that they may actually have something interesting to say and make some great conversation points, but they get lost under the need to BE controversial. I used to love reading his work, and occasionally would also enjoy some of the discussions he’d have in the letters pages, some points of which I have actually discussed (rationally) with some feminist friends. Sadly though, my interest in Cerebus waned near the end as I felt the epic story he had set up was starting to take a back seat to his soap-boxing. I still haven’t done more than skim anything past “Going Home”.
Probably the worst example of overdone product placement … well, ‘in-your-face’ advertising in real life settings had to be in Brazil where Sao Paulo has banned outdoor billboards and similar advertising, but it seemed hard to go anywhere that one didn’t see the ‘Visa’ logo, either stitched onto uniforms or posted elsewhere. One had the impression the company owned the country.
I remember one time watching a guy get progressively more blitzed on straight Coke one time. He’d already gotten a pretty good start so the bartender cut the alcohol out and by the end of the night, the dude could barely lift his head off the bar. (This was at a small military base my dad was stationed at in Germany, so the guy just needed help walking back to his dorm – no driving required.)
I hope I don’t spark a lengthy debate over it but I think this applies quite nicely to Frank Miller and his recent comments. Because his books have in the past have had a strong anti-corprate message and his recent comments have been very inflammatory. Maybe he’s just projecting a public persona to shock? If so, is he doing it deliberately or not?
Well, if you’re asking “Is Frank Miller genuinely drunk or is it all an act?”, I’d have to guess he’s genuinely drunk. Maybe someone should be serving him a little less rum and a little more coke? 🙂
nice story always figured some of daves behavior is him trying to live up to his legend. though his misogistic views on woman is proably his real opinion sadly. plus find it interesting that dave manage to have people think he was totaly three sheets to the wind on nothing but coke. cool story.
If the misogyny is for real, the question then becomes did it pre-date and thus helped bring about his divorce, or was it caused in part by it? If the latter, it wouldn’t excuse it, but it might help explain it.