Cerebus the Aardvark

[Buddy]

I think from very early on Simm decided that it would go for 300 issues and that Cerebus would die at the end (he actually died in 299, 300 is sort of a prolog (i think I havn't read it in years)), I'm not spoiling anything here it was common knowledge for years before the event, so with that target in mind Simm then had to actually fill 300 issues and perhaps some padding was involved to achieve this.

I also understand that at the height of it's popularity (during comics 'funny animal' phase: turtles, hampsters, samuri rabbits etc..) comic retailers, knowing that hard to come by issues would get a better price, would store issues for a few months and then put them on the shelves for a bigger mark up 'hard to find' book.

[chris_askham]

I recently completed reading Latter Days - the penultimate book - and I have to say, the section where Cerebus attempts to translate the book of genesis has got to be up there with the most mind-fuckingly dull, absolute complete drivelly bollocks ever written. A one page gag stretched out to about 200 pages and interspersed with incomprehensible bewildering scenes featuring Woody Allen. Never have I been in such traumatic pain while reading a 'funny book'. Complete toss.

And I'm speaking as a fan. I liked the bit with the Three Stooges.

[Tordelbach]

As a die-hard Cerebus fan, even I was tested by the concluding storyline "Latter Days" (reprinted as "Latter Days" and "the Last Day".  I concur with a lot of what has been said here (love the first 5 books to bits), but I think that the some of the later books don't get enough praise.

"Jaka's Story" and "Melmoth" (you really need to read both together) are fantastic pieces of work, especially the former which is actually quite beautiful.  The latter is amoving account of the death of Oscar Wilde, which haunts me to this day.

"Mothers and Daughters" (Flight, Women Reads Minds) is the epic climax of the story, and in its third quarter (Reads) is quite bizarrely thoughtful  (it's the one where Sim himself enters the story - a very profound experience for this reader at the time, I'm sure its has lost much of its power since) - despite finding Sim's "views" (while argued with sparkling rhetoric and relentless arrogance) deeply unpleasant, i find that this is the part of the saga I re-read most often.  According to Sim, this is the End of the Story (Issue 200), and what follows is Cerebus' rather pointless later life, and some meditations on Hemmingway, Fitzgerald and the Three Stooges, before settling into echoing Sim's newfound conversions to first Christianity, and finally Islam.

The start of these final 100 issues, "Guys" is a drunken blast, with great cameos (Alec, Popeye, Mick Jagger, the Beatles), before the strip unravels into religious meanderings, as the characters from Jaka's Story return in older guises to illustrate various Sim points.  The end charts Cerebus old age and eventual death, and is very odd but pretty unrelentingly sincere in its attempts to show the end of a life.

The most interesting aspect of these last years, apart from really beautiful art, occasionally great jokes and some interesting perpsectives on "great" writers (I'll never look at Hemmingway the same way again) is watching Sim's mind come apart completely, from a pretty clinically shaky start.  

In summary, it's a deeply variable piece of work, but nearly always interesting and often devastatingly witty, and Cerebus himself is always enaaging.  I only really lost heart during the interminable months that Cerebus dictated a bizarre full-text version of the Pentateuch to Woody Allen (I'm serious), but these whizz past in the collected editions.

There's never been anything like it, and there never will be again.  Read it!

[Buddy]

Tordelbach, you are Dave Sim and I claim my five pounds!!!!



But you're right about the art, it's really very good.


Didn't the X-Men make an appearance at some stage (or Cerebus was in X-Men)

[Floyd-the-k]

it's like Amstor said, starts off as a simple Conan parody, becomes brilliant and funny (especially, but not only, if you like comics) and ....well, I stopped reading it before it went off, but the Tangents column was very bonkers, especially the feminism one in which Sim sounds like the mad Colonel from Dr Strangelove

[Matt In The Hatt]

Well, everybody here thinks it sucks.

I don't see why.  It was no more padded than say Batman or X-Men.

And if you read three hundred straight issues of them, you won't get a completed story.

If you're interested in Cerebus, read Guys.  If that interests you further, go back and read the rest.  None of the books are that bad.  

Course, I like Cerebus.  Makes me wonder what everybody else that posted thinks is a good comic, Ultimate Gangbang or Countdown to Infinite Donkeyshow?

Matt
(And if you try Cerebus and like it, go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/
and tell us you liked it.)

[Dudley]

Makes me wonder what everybody else that posted thinks is a good comic, Ultimate Gangbang or Countdown to Infinite Donkeyshow?

Ummm... the URL of this website might give you a vague sense as to which comic everyone here likes?





(Clue: it's not superhero wank)

[Wils]

Oh, dear. This is going to be like the Striker debacle all over again, isn't it? :s

[The Amstor Computer]

"Countdown to Infinite Donkeyshow" sounds good. Do you know where I can buy a copy?

In the meantime, how about you bother to read what people here have said about the comic (broadly appreciative of early volumes, less so of the later books) and brush that chip off your shoulder? Avoiding spamming on your very first post would be a good idea, too.

[stealthmunchkin]

I was pointed here by someone's angry message on the Cerebus yahoo group, but I *am* a 2000AD reader, and I just wanted to chip in here:

Cerebus is a *deeply* variable work, and people who like one part of it will almost certainly not like other parts. For example, people here are slamming Jaka's Story and Melmoth, which to my mind are some of the very best comics ever produced, while praising High Society, which I think is just OK.

Sim's political and religious views are 100% opposite from mine, and I find many of them absolutely abhorrent, but they very rarely affect the main storyline. If you skip the text pages of Reads (which deal with his 'anti-feminism') and the Bible exegesis at the end of Latter Days (which goes into detail about his religious views), something like 1% of the total, his views do not intrude into the story.

The art is some of the best I've ever seen in comics and at his best as a writer Sim has been considered an equal by people like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. And Cerebus is *enormously* influential.

I think anyone interested should check out two volumes - High Society (volume 2, one of the 'earlier, funnier' ones) and Jaka's Story (a self-contained romance with little connection to the rest of the story, but to my mind just stunningly good work).

It *is* patchy - no-one except the most rabid fanboy would like all of it - but I can't imagine that anyone who likes well-written, well-drawn comics would *dislike* much of it either. And for sheer ambition, it's unsurpassed in comics.

[Tordelbach]

Oh Munchkin, I think you're letting your *emotional void* get the better of your *male light*.  At least if Dave himself was responding to this thread, he would actually have *read* it before criticising...

A few excerpts from my own post:

""Jaka's Story" and "Melmoth" (you really need to read both together) are fantastic pieces of work, especially the former which is actually quite beautiful. The latter is amoving account of the death of Oscar Wilde, which haunts me to this day. "

"In summary, it's a deeply variable piece of work, but nearly always interesting and often devastatingly witty, and Cerebus himself is always engaging. I only really lost heart during the interminable months that Cerebus dictated a bizarre full-text version of the Pentateuch to Woody Allen (I'm serious), but these whizz past in the collected editions."

"There's never been anything like it, and there never will be again. Read it!"

And that's just me!  Others complimented the art, the wit, the early books... by no means was it universely panned.  Being an anthology comic almost inevitably means that different people like different hings about 2000AD, and thus we as a subset of readers have different feelings about other comics too.  Who'd come here if we spent all day agreeing with each about how much we all liked 'Judgement Day'?

Of course, 2000AD even had its own "killer who looks like a bunny", MACH Aardvark!  
 

[Wils]

someone's angry message on the Cerebus yahoo group

Wtf?! I'm not heading on over there, but this smacks of someone Googling for Cerebus and then going ape shit after discovering that some people online don't share the same views about the comic. Matt in the Hatt's jumping in feet first to a messageboard he's never posted to before (and actually registering especially to do so), just to cast wild aspersions about our tastes in reading is a bit sad and a tad pathetic, methinks.

Personally, I think Dave Sim's got some psycological and emotional issues, which sadly seem to have taken over in Cereubus after a certain point. I'd never join your Yahoo group just to tell you, though.

[Demon Chicken]

Incidentally, I managed to get the first "phone book" off of Ebay and quite enjoyed it.

[Quirkafleeg]

>someone's angry message on the Cerebus yahoo group

Our comic is much better than your comic! Your's smells and has worms. And the lurgey.

[Art]

I think it get's going after the first book (or two) and stays at a high point for quite a while. I never really got to the bits where Dave Sim goes completely mad though.