Dave Sim: Having just finished a biography of William Blake, I understand he suffered terribly from this. In many ways, he was the original self-publisher.
I mean, I really want to do a good multilayered story with Cerebus, and I have a compulsion to say a lot of -probably too many- things in the six thousand pages.
But, man, at least I don 't have a sense of being put here on Earth to put everything right. To me, Blake clearly thought he was Moses or Jacob or the heir to their legacy, anyway.
Chosen by God to tell the world what really happened, get everyone to agree that every Renaissance painter he didn't like was a fraud and everyone he did like was a prophet or a beacon on the hill. everyone he liked was an angel from his personal God until he didn't like those people anymore, at which time they were one of the Legions of Hell sent to torment him.
People like that I find very worrisome....
Alan Moore: ...If (Blake) occasionally seems to have an inflated opinion of himself, it would seem to me only a natural counter-reaction to his seeming wretchedness and failure in all save the eyes of a few close friends (and, of course, posterity).
You're right in naming him the first self-publisher, near as damn it, and I think that you might find more in common with him than there seems to be at first glance: a man who had a vision and decided that the best way to convey it was by devoting his life's work to an extended fantasy narrative, a symbolic world where invented characters would play out the drama of the creator's divine insight
....This is not to discount your own view of Blake of course, simply to suggest that my own is maybe a bit more forgiving and more prepared to overlook the occasional bout of hubris.
Lord knows, Dave, we're not above the occasional bout of hubris ourselves, are we? And we haven't even written London or painted Glad Day yet.
(William Blake: Nov 28 1757 - Aug 12 1827)
I mean, I really want to do a good multilayered story with Cerebus, and I have a compulsion to say a lot of -probably too many- things in the six thousand pages.
But, man, at least I don 't have a sense of being put here on Earth to put everything right. To me, Blake clearly thought he was Moses or Jacob or the heir to their legacy, anyway.
Chosen by God to tell the world what really happened, get everyone to agree that every Renaissance painter he didn't like was a fraud and everyone he did like was a prophet or a beacon on the hill. everyone he liked was an angel from his personal God until he didn't like those people anymore, at which time they were one of the Legions of Hell sent to torment him.
People like that I find very worrisome....
Alan Moore: ...If (Blake) occasionally seems to have an inflated opinion of himself, it would seem to me only a natural counter-reaction to his seeming wretchedness and failure in all save the eyes of a few close friends (and, of course, posterity).
You're right in naming him the first self-publisher, near as damn it, and I think that you might find more in common with him than there seems to be at first glance: a man who had a vision and decided that the best way to convey it was by devoting his life's work to an extended fantasy narrative, a symbolic world where invented characters would play out the drama of the creator's divine insight
....This is not to discount your own view of Blake of course, simply to suggest that my own is maybe a bit more forgiving and more prepared to overlook the occasional bout of hubris.
Lord knows, Dave, we're not above the occasional bout of hubris ourselves, are we? And we haven't even written London or painted Glad Day yet.
(William Blake: Nov 28 1757 - Aug 12 1827)