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I wanted to clarify what the business practices were by Dave Sim that alienated retailers who previously supported him. From the beginning in 1977 till 1986, CEREBUS was a small publisher venture that came out consistently every 2 months, and then (beginning in 1980) every month, and gradually built a following. And because it was good quality storytelling and deserved a following, many distributers and retailers, such as Bud Plant and many other local comic shops, gave it good word of mouth and promoted it, gave it more visibility and referral than they would other more mainstream titles.

[Linked Image from coverbrowser.com]

Dave Sim first reprinted the earliest issues in 4-issue collected volumes, titled SWORDS OF CEREBUS 1 (issues 1-4), 2 (issues 5-8), 3 (issues 9-12), 4 (issues 13-16), 5 (issues 17-20), and 6 (issues 21-25). These were retail books dealers sold in their shops, where retailers bought them at distributer prices and shared in the retail profits with Sim.
After that, Sim also did a CEREBUS BI-WEEKLY title, that re-published issues 1-26 every 2 weeks for about a year, sold through normal retail distribution that retailers also got a percentage of.
Followed by a similar bi-weekly reprint of the HIGH SOCIETY issues (26-50).

But with the first "phone book" volume in June 1986, HIGH SOCIETY (collecting issues 26-50), Sim abused the retailers who helped build his brand. He didn't sell it retail like his other titles, it and subsequent "phone book" collected volumes were mail-order only, and from Dave Sim directly, by mail from Canada. The retailers and distributors were pissed, they were like "What the fuck are you doing?!? We helped build you up, and this is how you repay us?"

And that's combined with Dave Sim about that time (1986) divorcing his wife Deni Loubert (who took all the non-CEREBUS titles and formed Renegade Press), and Sim (if not already) started expressing some weird misogynist ideas about women (that they are basically parasites that suck the life and creative energy out of men) and these ideas began appearing in CEREBUS stories during "Church and State"(vols 3 and 4) and "Jaka's Story" (vol 5).

So many readers stopped buying, and circulation decreased, further declined by angry betrayed retailers who no longer wanted to promote or help Sim, because he'd become greedy and wanted keep all the book profits for himself, instead of sharing those profits with the distributors and retailers who helped Sim build his brand. I was one of those who stopped reading and supporting CEREBUS, because the story quality had dropped, and his ego at this point exceeded the quality of what he was producing.

I didn't know about the angry and alienated retailers until 1989-1990 when I purchased the HIGH SOCIETY and other volumes up to then. I'm a prime example of why they were pissed. I bought all 6 "phone book" collected volumes by mail order from ads in the CEREBUS comics, and spent about 200 dollars on these volumes that the retail shops didn't get a cent of.
And from that point I was no longer buying the monthly issues, just waiting for the collected volumes, And the future mail-order volumes I stopped buying as well, after my disappointment with MELMOTH and FLIGHT.
The art was, from what I sampled in later years, still top quality and consistent with the issues in the peak period. But the storyline, and Sim himself, were just not the same.