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Onion: Once you made that decision, how far in advance did you plan out the story?
Dave Sim: I moved from the three- and four-issue story arcs to, first of all, High Society—the barbarian at the five-star hotel—and the unheard-of-at-the-time ambition of doing a 500-page graphic novel which swept Cerebus up into the world of politics, because I’ve always been a political junkie. I had no real interest in Conan, even to make fun of him, but by making him the exception in the environment, I could write and draw what I was actually interested in: an involved election parody, with electoral districts, voting patterns, campaigning. Of course, now Conan is the governor of California, so I guess I was just 20 years ahead of my time.
