Cerebus Vol 9: Reads

 Title: Cerebus Vol 9: Reads

ISBN: 0919359159

Price: $

Publisher/Year: Aardvark-Vanheim, 1995

Artist: Gerhard

Writer: Dave Sim

Collects: Cerebus # 175-186

Rating: 2/5

Reads is a book of two parts. In one part, the story of Cerebus inches forward, as three aardvarks and a human meet, one of them warns the others that they're all stupid and greedy, and two of them get into a fight. The fight is epic - a slow-motion mix of pummeling and blood letting that wouldn't look out of place in a Quentin Tarantino movie. Unfortunately, we've performed a scientific experiment and discovered that only 35 per cent of Reads is taken up by the further adventures of Cerebus that most people will purchase the volume for.

The other part is prose. It starts off as a diatribe against the comic industry, with Sim using thinly disguised names to take digs at the industry he, by self-publishing Cerebus, has managed to stay on the outskirts of. Shortly after that, Sim drops the pretense of everyone except his own alter-ego and describes meetings, discussions and stories with other comics professionals like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Then, eventually, he starts preaching his world view.

Sim's outlook, as is widely discussed on the web and elsewhere, is misogynist, rather sad and deeply misguided. Sim looks back to a simpler age where women weren't involved in decision making, in creative processes or in politics, and considers these better times. More was done, he argues. Men weren't held back. Frankly, it's a preposterous and offensive outburst.

It's a shame because the Cerebus story remains so interesting and promising. But Sim argues that he is the story, that auteur and creation are so tightly knitted together that, one supposes, we must know the man to know his characters. Of course, this is artistic pretension to the extreme. Some artists may successfully use their fame to talk about the bigger picture - Bob Geldolf springs to mind - but this is rare and is generally preferable if the cause is widely considered to be 'good'. Sim's arguments about the tyranny of the 'Female Void' ring eerily hollow in this regard.

Cerebus Vol 8: Women

 Title: Cerebus Vol 8: Women

ISBN: 0919359140

Price: $

Publisher/Year: Aardvark-Vanheim, 1994

Artist: Gerhard

Writer: Dave Sim

Collects: Cerebus # 163-174 

Rating: 2.5/5

Women, the eighth Cerebus book, is the second of four volumes that make up Mothers & Daughters (the other three are Flight, Reads and Minds). Sim’s intention was that Mothers & Daughters would conclude the main story.

Flight ended with a miniature, flying version of Cerebus appearing to both Cirin and Astoria, before he winked out of existence. This volume begins with two text pages, one by Astoria and one by Cirin, before picking up where that book left off. Artemis Strong, AKA PunisherRoach, has fallen in love with a prostitute, Astoria is preparing for her meeting with Cirin, and Cerebus pops back into normal existence having wandered through the Seventh and Eighth Spheres for the last couple of hundred pages.

If this isn’t making much sense, you’ve clearly not read all the earlier books, and we don’t have space (or inclination) to summarize everything that’s gone before. Short version: Cerebus started out as a parody of Conan before morphing into a political and then religious satire that got increasingly mystical, convoluted and controversial as time went by.

Anyway, Cerebus has reappeared, though unfortunately it’s hundreds of feet in the air. He falls, crashes through a window, and finds himself with an old woman whom the Cirinists have under house arrest. She tells Cerebus to hide in a tavern, as the Cirinists won’t enter. There then follows lots of typical Cerebus fare: visions, mystical happenings and philosophical conversations. Light relief is provided by a heartbroken PunisherRoach, who transforms into Swoon, a piss-take of Neil Gaiman’s Dream from Sandman, with Elrod (himself a parody of Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Meliboné) assuming the guise of Snuff, Swoon’s sister.

Lord Julius also puts in a welcome reappearance, with his pages amongst the many that abandon the convention of speech bubbles and instead print conversations as blocks of text, normally with an accompanying illustration. The book is also peppered with tracts from both Cirin (another aardvark, and leader of the Cirinists) and Astoria (the leader of the Kevillists, though they refuse to accept anyone as leader, of course) who get to put forward their contradictory arguments on a variety of subjects. Cirin and Astoria represent the mother and daughter of the title, and the text pieces are intended to show flaws in feminist thinking, or flaws in women in general. This is certainly a book that gives you a great deal of reading for your money. And a lot of food for thought, with Sim having mulled much of this over for years. You can accuse Dave Sim of many things, and people have, but lacking focus isn’t one of them.

At this point Cerebus was losing readers, and the situation would only worsen with later books, as Sim apparently pursued a path of career suicide which continues to this day. This is a great shame, as this book ably demonstrates, he is an accomplished writer and artist with a great deal to say.

Any readers that have persisted this far will find much to admire and appreciate here, not least of all the superb artwork, imaginative page layouts and beautiful background work by Gerhard, and repeated readings reveal how smart and well-constructed the entire series is, but it definitely isn’t for everyone.

Cerebus Vol 7: Flight

 Title: Cerebus Vol 7: Flight

ISBN: 0919359132

Price: $

Publisher/Year: Aardvark-Vanheim, 1993

Artist: Gerhard

Writer: Dave Sim

Collects: Cerebus # 151-162

Rating: 3.5/5

Flight is the first of four volumes that make up Mothers & Daughters (the other three are Women, Reads and Minds), and, after Jaka’s Story and Melmoth, in which Cerebus barely featured, we’re back with the aardvark, picking up once more on the storyline from Church and State.

At the end of Melmoth, Cerebus, having being almost comatose throughout the entire book, went postal, attacking and brutally killing a bunch of Cirinists. The Cirinists are the villains of the piece: ultra-traditional, matriarchal, Pro-Life feminists who believe that motherhood is all. The Pro-Choice Kevillists, on the other hand, while also feminists, believe in the empowered individual. Both represent two pernicious aspects of woman. Oh, and the Cirinists have a hive-mind and are controlled by Cirin, who is the second of three aardvarks in the world (Cerebus being the first).

Cerebus leads a brief uprising, which the Cirinists put down brutally, at least until PunisherRoach appears. Artemis Strong and his Roach-like superhero parodies have long been a staple of the title, providing much-needed light relief. His pearl-handled semi-automatic hand-held crossbow-bolts go through the Cirinists like fat through a goose, and the situation is only defused when the fickle Roach falls for a prostitute.

The Cirinists can’t find Cerebus. Why? He’s vanished into thin air and is soon zooming through the atmosphere on his way to the Seventh and Eighth Spheres, where he discovers the identity of the third aardvark. Their significance is that they all act as ‘magnifiers’, with historical events revolving around their actions. Which they’ve all played out over and over again, with different characters assuming different roles each time around. Cerebus has always dealt in this type of thing, and is forever ascending to the moon (see Church and State) or having astral conversations with Suenteus Po, a philosopher whose teachings were partly responsible for the mess in which they now find themselves. These happen while Cerebus is unconscious, asleep, drunk or bewitched, and Sim clearly enjoys them, as it lets him hold forth at length while drawing bizarre scenarios with Cerebus flying along like the Silver Surfer.

Sim can do pithy well, especially with Cerebus, but the subject matter lends itself to prose that often strays towards purple. The story is well constructed, and it’s clear that Sim has given all of this a great deal of thought, with the world-building convincingly authentic. The artwork is also very polished, with both Sim and Gerhard old hands by this stage. Page layouts are rarely dull, the lettering is excellent (think Will Eisner on steroids), and the craftsmanship is both apparent and impressive, with Gerhard’s backgrounds often painstakingly detailed and outstanding.

It’s no surprise this book caused a shit-storm when it came out, and it would only get worse with later volumes. Many feminists accused Sim of misogyny, and both sides entered into heated and pointless debates. So, if you’re a feminist, you’re really probably not going to enjoy it, and readers who can see past that still have to struggle with a book that explores metaphysical and spiritual matters with a depth that’s unusual for a comic. Too mature for its intended ‘mature’ audience, too esoteric, or just too misogynistic?

Cerebus Vol 6: Melmoth

 Title: Cerebus Vol 6: Melmoth

ISBN: 0919359108

Price: $

Publisher/Year: Aardvark-Vanheim, 1991

Artist: Gerhard

Writer: Dave Sim

Collects: Cerebus # 139-150

Rating: 3.5/5

Sim, and the ‘Cerebus effect’ (buying books rather than each issue of a comic) contributed immensely in popularizing the graphic novel format, and up to this point Cerebus ‘phonebooks’ (with the exception of the first, a collection of short stories) had been large novels: High Society and Jaka’s Story are around 500 pages each, and Church and State ran to 1,200 pages. This explains why Sim, in his introduction, calls the 248 page Melmoth a short story.

The book opens, after some beautiful establishing shots by Gerhard, with Artemis Strong (AKA the Roach) sitting outside a bar. The first words he speaks are, “Fucking cunts!” Artemis disappears after the prologue, and his brief appearance, little more than a cameo, would be repeated by other characters from earlier books. These don’t intrude upon the main story, which depicts the decline and eventual death of Oscar Wilde, through the eyes, and letters, of his close friends. Although it may not even be the same Oscar that we met in Jaka’s Story, the previous book. In that novel there were strong hints that there were two Oscars, and the deliberate ambiguity is continued here.

Cerebus, who doesn’t even appear until page 52, spends most of the book in a near-catatonic state, sitting outside the same tavern where we first saw the Roach. When he does finally explode into violent action, in the epilogue, it almost takes one’s breath away, and it’s as if the last 230 pages have existed merely to lull the reader into a false sense of security.

This is a quick read compared to all other Cerebus books, and one can see why Sim referred to it as a short story. However, reading the same story in comic form over two years made for a very different experience. Two years of waiting for Cerebus to just do something – other than eat the occasional raw potato – really made the blood-spattered epilogue all the more dramatic, and, frankly, a bit of a surprise after what had gone before.

Sim wrote, drew and lettered the entire book, and has deservedly won awards for his lettering. He was more than ably assisted by Gerhard. Much more than just a background artist, Gerhard’s buildings are truly works of art, and he made certain everything physical in Estarcion fitted together beautifully. His invaluable contribution helped make Cerebus one of the most attractive and professional independent titles on the market.

The writing is very good, though Sim has a tendency to wordiness and you wouldn’t necessarily want to start reading Cerebus with this book (High Society is a much better place to start). The tale of the death of a gay Irish writer may not be presumed to everyone’s taste, and it wasn’t, with the title shedding readers at this point. Though that was nothing compared to the shit-storm that Sim would cause with his next book, Mothers and Daughters, (split over four volumes: Flight; Women; Reads and Minds), comparable in size to Church and State, and concerning itself once more with Cerebus, after two books in which he’s little more than a supporting character. This makes Melmoth an interesting, if slightly odd, diversion from the main story. But it’s mature and polished, while pushing hard at the boundaries of what’s normal for a comic, and that’s something that should always be applauded.