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James Sime

@jamessime

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Comic store owner, space synth player, vintage Mustang driver, old game collector, tiki bar visitor, cat napper, tropical island beach lover.

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“Brothers? Well you see - me and James are true brothers, related through that good, old fashioned, hillbilly blood!” - Sean Wheeler.

Loved seeing a live show of the A-100s @a100sband a ska / reggae / rocksteady supergroup of Cap’n Sean from THROW RAG @throwrag + Matt Hensley from FLOGGING MOLLY @floggingmolly plus an incredible band of JIMMY CLIFF BAND, MARIACHI EL BRONX, and MAD CADDIES members. Their new album is so fucking hot! Definitely check out the single that has been on heavy rotation at the Isotope this Summer, “Too Rad To Be Sad.”

Sean Wheeler is one of my favorite human beings on this planet, the third-greatest frontman to ever grace the live stage (!), plus the totally epitome of cool. It is always a near-religious experience to see him do his thing, no matter what kind of music he’s signing.

The next A-100s show in San Francisco is at Bottom of the Hill @bottomofthehillsf on November 28th. Grab your tickets now to celebrate this legendary SF venue and get some serious shanking on with us! taken in El Rio by @jamessime

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2 months ago

27 years in California today.

Kirsten and I drove across the country with the meagerest amount of money in our pockets chasing nothing but a dream. Years later we would come to know the Flying Trapeze idiom that our lives and our relationship was fueled by, “throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow.”

We stopped at every roadside museum and kook attraction, followed gas station strangers “right purdy” suggestions that took us way off the beaten paths to ghost towns down lonely dirt roads, and laughed at all the cosmic jokes life threw at us in classic road trip chaos fashion.

Our first night in California we slept on a mattress in the back of our perpetually-dying moving truck, in a campground at Donner Pass, 6,000 feet above sea level, freezing our way through the night wondering how California could possibly be that cold.

It seemed insane but we knew we could make all our crazy dreams come true. After all, Ivan Stang had told us our spacerock band had been paid in “unlimited Slack” for playing at that year’s X-Day gathering.

San Francisco was where Flipper, The Avengers, and MDC played at Mabuhay Gardens that teenage me reveled in watching on videocassette on my Midwest VCR. It was where Raymond Chandler and Chrome were from.

We did not know where California was going to take us to the most unlikeliest of futures for us.

Who could have predicted the people we’d meet, things we’d create together, or Flying Trapeze in Kirsten’s future?

I’m loving California more than ever.

You can catch me next week Wednesday at a punk show at the reopened-after-30-years Mabuhay Gardens, just like I watched on VHS tape in the 1980s, living moments that 16-year old me only dreamt about.

Or even better…

Early August is always Wizard Week for Kirsten and I, where reality shifts and the improbable and the impossible become reality.

Come feel a little bit of that residual “anything is possible” magic and celebrate our comic store’s 25th Anniversary with us on Saturday. by @jamessime

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2 months ago

RICK REMENDER + ISOTOPE COMICS
25TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 2026
All-Ages Signing: 3–6 PM
21+ Afterparty: 7 PM
Isotope Comics, San Francisco

Coming back home to sign books and launch a permanent Giant Generator pop-up shop inside Isotope, featuring our full library of compendiums, oversized hardcovers, limited-edition giclée prints, old and rare single issues, signed posters, and tons of cool stuff out of my file copy closest you won’t find anywhere else.
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Twenty-five years ago, I was a dirt-poor writer/artist struggling to pay rent for the rotting garage I called home in the Sunset District of San Francisco.

When James Sime opened the Isotope comic book store down the street from me, it seemed fated by the rat god of punker nerds.

Isotope quickly became my home away from the black-mold dungeon I was living in. James and I would spend hours talking about old hardcore, new wave, post-punk, skating, and this strange business.

At a very uncertain time in my life, when there appeared to be little hope I’d feed myself, much less accomplish my dreams, Isotope gave me a home base and a safe harbor. James was always generous with encouragement and advice, not only supporting the books but throwing parties around them.

When you’re dead broke, working yourself to death while receiving very little positive feedback, something like this can encourage you to continue. In my case, it did.

As James and I were reminiscing a few months ago, it turned out that I was one of the creators featured at Isotope’s first-ever signing 25 years back, so we decided it would be nice to celebrate it.

If you’re in the region or feel like traveling to my favorite city, come hang out, we’d love to see you.

@isotopecomics @imagecomics @giantgenerator @jamessime by @jamessime

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3 months ago

Celebrating my shop’s 25th anniversary with the awesome comic creator we first featured a quarter of a century ago, @rickremender!

Debuting the GIANT GENERATOR ZIGGURAT permanent installation dedicated to Rick Remender comics! DJ Bearsbub returns! HOME OF WUVABLE OAF window display by Ed Luce! Once-in-a-lifetime Remender-themed liquid arts by Kirsten Baldock!

And another crazy 2026 “color-blind” flyer made on my busted computer monitor. These art experiments are in tribute to a two of my color-blind friends who passed. Thanks for the inspiration Dar & Tim (w/ apologies to Roberta Bayley, of course)!

Details at:
facebook.com/isotopecomics by @jamessime

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3 months ago

I’m looking forward to this event (and two others coming up to celebrate my shop’s anniversary). And the circumstances of making this flyer makes me particularly happy too...

(thumbs down forever to gross AI-generated flyers, by the way!)

My computer monitor at work got knocked over and damaged, making the colors that it displays really messed up. It shows *colors* but not the actual color, and often what it shows is not even really very close to what it should be displaying.

Two of my good friends were color blind artists, Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale. A dichromatic kind of “blindness” that made differentiating between colors hard, and sometimes impossible. I talked to Dar and Tim about art a lot, and was lucky to have a number of fascinating conversations with them about their approach to color, and how they worked around the challenges they had distinguishing different shades.

When my monitor got screwed up it made me kind of color blind too. And instead of just replacing the faulty monitor, I decided to do like those guys had, honor those conversations I’d had with friends who passed, and see where it took my art...

It’s been wild. All my flyers this year have been made like this, I’m seeing some really crazy results, and it’s made flyer design a really fun art project in 2026.

I had kind of *no idea* what this particular one was going to look like. And it was a real shock when I finally saw! My first reaction was that those colors were kind of hideous - like an acid tripping clown puked on my flyer!

But there was also something strangely pleasing about that too... especially for a David Bowie flyer... and I saw a kind of consistent accidental style emerging from all these recent color-blind works, I’ll call it the “James Sime Sicksthetic.”

Thanks for the inspiration, Timmy and Dar. Someday I’ll tell you about these flyers I made thinking about you guys when we’re all talking about art again up at the bar up in Heaven. This clown-puke’s for you. by @jamessime

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3 months ago

An awesome unexpected cross-country visit from my friend Tio @curiosityordeath today! What a delight, haven’t seen her in years, but definitely one of my favorite people on the entire planet. And pretty amazing to realize that I just have *so* many “Here’s an uplifting feel-good story from this Summer you’ll want to hear!” things going on in my life right now. by @jamessime

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4 months ago

Another mind-blowing British comics moment this week! A story they’ve been quietly and subtly setting up under the noses of readers for SIX YEARS comes together from different not-so-unrelated pieces into the next unforgettable comics epic.

This only happens in British comics, and 2000ad specifically... despite being an anthology with rotating casts of characters and creative teams... the commitment of these teams working together to deliver so many unexpected left-field surprises like this, powerful long term character growth, and amazing slowburn storytelling is genuinely stunning.

Yes, yes, I am aware that these comics are pretty much entirely ignored here in the United States. American readers are missing out.

Summer 1984, age 13, I discovered my first 2000ad — a grungy, subversive, punk rock comic anthology out of the UK printed on the cheapest newsprint possible — on the shelf at Hank Luttrell & Debra Daemmrich’s 20th Century Books. And I was soon selling off my X-MEN and other American comics to get more. Years later I opened my own comic shop in San Francisco to celebrate the comics and creators I love, @isotopecomics . And 2000ad has been a featured staple at my shop since we opened 25 years ago.

I am loving seeing these comics printed and distributed weekly in the United States now in 2026 for the first time ever. Never thought I’d live to see the day. Weekly! Wish they’d launched the American-printed copies with a traditional “all new thrills” issue so I could have turned on a bunch more of my customers, but anyway... Weekly 2000ad! What a dream!

Thanks to everyone at the Nerve Centre for a lifetime of fantastic reading, consistently rewarding long-term reading through the decades, and for incredible moments like this one, just this week. Truly “the galaxy’s greatest comic.”

Pictured:

@2000adcomic PROG 2483
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 492

Ken Niemand & Tom Foster drop the first Oubliette reference in Prog 2362 (December 13, 2023)

Ken Niemand & Dan Cornwell “Oubliette” chapter 1 in Prog 2483 (June 3, 2026)

Ken Niemand & Nick Percival “The Black Tower” chapter 1 (June 17, 2026) by @jamessime

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4 months ago

I am loving seeing the entire punk rock community online coming out in support of #bananaman and to flip the bird to conformists in the scene. This year is my 40-year anniversary of wearing whatever the hell I want at punk shows and thumbs downing to cookie-cutter fashion police. To my fellow freaks, weirdos, nerds, misfits, and fruits at shows - I will always pick you up in the pit! by @jamessime

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4 months ago

Happy birthday, Marsha! We love you! You will forever be one of our favorite people on this whole whole planet. Let’s go hang out at the beach again sometime soon! ❤️❤️❤️ @marshifax taken in Don Cesar Beach Resort by @jamessime

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5 months ago

I’m really excited about this year’s superstar creator for Free Comic Book Day 2026 at my shop @isotopecomics.

Amelie Anderson’s work has been a real inspiration to a bunch of local creators (of all ages!) and honestly, for me too. I had one of those moments designing her event flyer where I just went into the flow state, but as soon as I’d finished making it, I realized where my right-side art-brain was *actually* trying to guide me to all that time. So I knew I had to remake it to let the subconsciousness express its post-Swiss-absinthe-tour inner voice. So here’s the finalized version. I can’t really put my finger on it but something about it all just speaks to me.

And given how dream-like Amelie’s comics are, it’s perfect that I got to just let my subconscious guide me on this one.

Anyway, I can’t wait to get to introduce people to her new book! Amelie won’t know these creators but I saw a lot of Brendan McCarthy and Steve Ditko in her art on her first book, SPEYEDER, and with her new apocalyptic romance book, I WOULD SPEND MY LAST DAYS WITH YOU, there’s this additional new vibe of Paul Pope and Jamaica Dyer that really blows me away.

Come meet Amelie, buy her latest book, grab a free FCBD comic or two, drop a few dollars in my awesome independent local book store that has been supporting the next generations of comic creators like this one for over two decades, and join me in celebrating this really gifted young comic artist, won’t you?

Free Comic Book Day, May 2nd 2026. 11am-4pm.

#FCBD #kidsmakecomics #sfcomiccreators
#sanfranciscoartists taken in Isotope - The Comic Book Lounge by @jamessime

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6 months ago

Upcycling another batch of 3.5” floppy disks for new printings on my cyberpunk disk zines NEUROBLAST HyperCard Disk Zine and HYPERCULTURE_OVERLOAD Dither Art Portfolio on the Grape iMac G3.

And to keep on theme, I’m listening to GARBAGE @garbage and drinking @thadvogler upcycled vodka soda WASTE.

Get your copies of my zines at Isotope Comics in San Francisco. @isotopecomics

#iMacG3 #hypercard #sanfrancisco #cyberpunk #waste by @jamessime

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6 months ago

Made myself another new t-shirt to go with my Cthulhu Suit. 16 year old me would’ve worn this one until it disintegrated. by @jamessime

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8 months ago