This is the thread where I try and summarise Cerebus

Nah the small print stuff is worse than that, that's 289/290 standard.

The reprint stuff is just a giant clusterfuck. I could maybe have been persuaded to trade up to a really nice version of High Society but not for what they were charging.

Thing is, the Archive prints with background notes were lovely and - although they weren't bringing in the cash - were actually something you could pay attention to and get something new from. But then the wrist injury reduced the profitability (because the extra for headshots etc bumped up the margins) and falling out with three lots of guys in the course of producing them basically killed them as a concept which is a massive shame.

Apropos of that, Aldo seems to have glossed over the interminable section I vaguely recall in Latter Days in which Cerebus defeats the Cirinist Empire by cosplaying as Spawn. Or I might have dreamt it.

he touched on it:

Let's explore why Todd McFarlane is a closeted homosexualist mind controlled by the feminists!

It was glazed over, like my eyes.

Given that Dave (or whoever*) is pushing Spawn #10 hard at the moment, it's ironic he attacks it hard here as something on the blindest, dumbest, mind-controlled homosexualists would fall for and uses it as a prop to rehash old routines i.e. selling the same old story with slightly different art to gullible fools.

* I mean, wouldn't it make more sense for a Britney style intervention to take place? Dave can keep sending faxes to AMOC while somebody else works out how to keep him in rice and water.

This has reminded me that the latter half of the small text stuff has Cerebus do lisping limp wrist camp stereotype gay mannerisms every time he comes across an idea that doesn't fall into Dave's worldview.

Which is basically all of it, given Dave's interpretation is only really about the first parts of Genesis.

Nah the small print stuff is worse than that, that's 289/290 standard.

I meant the standard of intellectual analysis: even from before the religion stuff, Dave was keen on reading numerological-style significance into homonyms or spelling oddities, and doing his Thing, "thing" or thing riff*. Since the conversion, he's just added a belief that these are signs from God that Dave's the only person perspicacious enough to read.


* this was fun when his big thesis was that human nature was silly and art was a good way of coping with it. it was creepier in glamourpuss when he would take three lines of third-hand reported conversation between two long-dead people, and extrapolate that the evil spirit of femaleness was corrupting weak artists by giving them attractive underage secretaries so that they manslaughter their rivals, or whatever was going on in there.

I mean, wouldn't it make more sense for a Britney style intervention to take place? Dave can keep sending faxes to AMOC while somebody else works out how to keep him in rice and water.

He does consistently manage to drive the most competent enablers away, or end up in active fights with them: Gerhard quietly and efficiently ran half the office for years even after he'd made the comic come out at all, AND looking great, for decades. Dave recruited a great cartoonist to draw for him once his wrist went, but communicated so weirdly the guy ghosted rather than ghost for him. He recruited an underemployed nobody to draw for him for years afterward, then when the guy got a day job teaching art at a university, suddenly decided that the book they'd worked on would never come out and therefore he didn't have to pay the guy fpr his years of work. All those kickstarter-running and shipping-fulfilment blokes evaporated. The fellow that started and ran his daily blog for five years couldn't hack dealing with him anymore and turned over the login to the first rando that volunteered. One art collector was the or a prime source of Dave's income for many years, until he chose not to loan his decades of personal purchases to the bloke that was doing the digital restorations, after which Dave seemed to stop selling original art...

As it was foretold, 289/290 is a complete nightmare so I'm going to deal with it outside the Last Day so it doesn't pollute it.

Dave starts with an introduction where he bluntly states his is the only ever correct interpretation of the Bible and the only correct ever Unified Theory - which of course Einstein couldn't solve because he was only a scientist - which God has chosen to reveal to Dave because he's pretty much the only person to have got religion right, ever. And these facts are kept from the world because of some proto-QAnon conspiracy.

(Actually an interesting sideline - is QAnon a Dave Sim parody act? Same obsessions.)

Then the comic itself has serious acid casualty/italianspiderman.gif FACTS such as:

• Two events which happened separately INVENTED TIME by happening one after the other.
• Gravity always existed, it's just that you can't see it when the things it affects are too small for you to think it's happening. TAKE THAT, "SCIENCE". This is also why women have periods.
• Planets don't have a circular orbit because God sometimes gets things wrong and he meant to make a circle.
• It's easy to confuse heat with light.

• The Earth is the result of a lesbian wedding between the anthropomorphic entity that is Light and YooWhoo (see Latter Days, I haven't the strength) and is a lesson by God to show that homosexualists are inherently wrong.
• Human souls try to escape back at the zygote stage but are forced to go through the misery of life because YooWhoo is a woman.
• Helium makes your voice squeaky, proving it is a female element. It is also the Devil.

Just skip it, you'll feel better. Although I will say this - of the 40 pages of his Unified Theory so clever Einstein could never have come up with it, a whole page is devoted to descriptions of boobs. And the whole page of footnotes explain how a woman is essentially an enlarged penis, only not as good. And you'll thank me for not enlarging on "collapsed sacs".

And of course Dave has 10 pages of annotations to 40 pages of comics that already have annotations/footnotes on every page, that on some pages are longer than the text content of the page. This is mainly about his voluntary estrangement from any kind of personal relationship and, in effect, society; also included is how all medicine is hokum and illness is a combination of demonic possession and, possibly worse, Marxism; how his mother died of being offended by anti-feminism; and how he always assumed Gerhard was going to die after completing #236 just for the purpose of cosmic symmetry .

Sheesh. Getta loada this guy. Whatta maroon.

What in the holy motherloving fuck.

Like I knew the dude slowly became looney tunes but...wow.

how he always assumed Gerhard was going to die after completing #236 just for the purpose of cosmic symmetry

...because it would mean Dave would have to do the first 64 and last 64 issues alone?

This thing sounds like time cube the comic

...because it would mean Dave would have to do the first 64 and last 64 issues alone?

Exactly this.

Does he ever suggest that religious conversion made him realise that thinking of himself as the centre of the universe, to such a degree that The Universe would kill his closest companion for the sake of the issue numbers on a barbarian aardvark comic book, was kinda bonkers?

No, because it's the feminist conspiracy making you think that.

fuck! they got me again

The reason I wanted to separate out The Last Day is that it's actually if not good, then at least worth your while.

Over 50 years from when we last checked in, Cerebus is now at the end of times. The Sanctuary is a prison as those who oppose him have taken over again, by taking his (and Rick's and Moshe's) own words and reinterpreting them to their own ends. Everything is painful, and he can't do anything that gives him any pleasure without suffering afterwards. His memory is shot and death is the only release.

Cerebus' son arrives and is a betrayal of all Cerebus holds true. He has aligned with his mother and formed an incestuous union alongside a revived Cirin to perform genetic experiments - they've created a human/lion hybrid which they intend to make giant - and conquer the world.

Cerebus farts and dies, and seeing all his friends is dragged off into the light. Alone, unmourned and unloved.

Dave's final physical model of Cerebus is a little too cartoony rather than authentically aged, and the staging and backgrounds are very static, but through a combination of visual effects, lettering and text the pain, repetition and excruciatingly slow passage of time at that age are convincingly and realistically portrayed. He also gets to redraw a number of old characters and ages of Cerebus which you'd think brought him pleasure (but doesn't seem to have).

Dave also manages one last great insight/truism - Sheshep, drunk on power, pictures himself taking over only for Cerebus to point out the folly of his argument: "you're not inside it, are you? Can you feel your hands holding you up?" (Yes, this is him referring to his own Torah commentaries here but it's a really good sequence nonetheless.)

Cerebus As Dave is in full effect. Isolated from the real world, which is as disgusted with him as he is in it, and with only a go-between to pass on second hand conversations. His closest allies have betrayed him and he is left alone with just God to talk to. His temple of his past achievements is meaningless to any but him and, having shown his enemies exactly how he does it he has been rendered completely impotent. All that remains is to surrender to God and await the sweet release of death that he might become closer to Him.

In lots of ways this might even be the best book of the final third in that it has a purpose and plot, and some actual (not that funny but take what you can get) jokes.

The(e) End(e)

oh man iirc the human / lion hybrid stuff came with sleevenotes by Dave explaining that this was literally what scientists were up to now IRL and this is why we can't trust doctors, or something

Except it's not because of Dave's annotations which, again, I wanted to keep separate from the main book.

They're mainly just Dave explaining why he thought numerous jokes were much funnier than anyone else did, and why, but it's genuinely fascinating to hear how much of the final artwork is down to choices made because of the disintegration of his relationship with Ger and the deal he made to get him to finish. And of course there are some final Dave Doozies.

• The story of the old woman with gangrene is the real life version of events that happened to his mother as he told in the annotations to 289/290 but it wasn't humiliating enough there so he put it in the main body instead.
• His mother tried to curse him with a magic birthday card which was disrupted/destroyed by Dave's personal altar
• The United Nations was doomed to failure because it let people who weren't America join
• Dave admits statuary rape and says that was why he became celibate. He did it because all the Marxist-feminists are paedophiles.
• Believing abortion is ok inevitably leads to believing incest is admirable.
• France is a woman and the UK is a man. The EU is a Marxist-feminist scam to ensnare the UK which it must get out of. SIM INVENTS BREXIT

Dave shuts up, finally. Goodbye goodwill.

the human / lion hybrid stuff came with sleevenotes by Dave explaining that this was literally what scientists were up to now IRL

Yeah this is one of the other things which is an obvious consequence of agreeing with abortion and this is what Marxist-feminists and scientists are conspiring to do irl.

Also all the hybrids we see in Egyptian art were actually real because they were a degenerate society and something something Alan Moore.

I don't know if it's worse that I remembered part of it at all, or forgot that Ancient Egypt fell because their DNA scientists got too good at making giant living sphinxes and Anubisesses.

We do see him in the bastardisation of a Holy Trinity

Haha the Marxist-feminists got to me fourteen years ago near the top of this thread.

I want to end on a positive note.

Cerebus 1-300 is a masterpiece of single-minded exploration of a character's life. It is at times hilarious, moving and frightening and contains some excellent cartooning and arguably the greatest lettering in the history of comics. I genuinely commend it to everyone to borrow and read.

Just don't touch any of the bits that are text.

I remember some of the text parts in Jaka's Story being good?

Anyway, thanks for doing that Aldo, I enjoyed your analysis. Overall it's probably made me less keen for a re-read of Cerebus - but enforced my feeling that there's a great book waiting to be written one day with Sim/Cerebus as its subject.

Sounds like this is a whole hell of a something or other

i think a comics-only re-read of Cerebus would be reasonably painless but there is zero (0) chance i will ever read Sim's long-form copy ever again.

I will never read this terrible comic, if only to deprive Sim of money.

Seeing the recent Dave Sim "humorous" covers make me think he needs to be beaten with a metal bar.

you can't argue with this level of comedy

I can't really begin to parse that.

I think it got discussed further up but once you relate it back to the source image it just gets (unbelievably) worse.

try parsing this one: per Dave's weekly Bible commentary, the droughts and fires in California are the God's punishment for the malignant and rebellious free will choices made by the citizens there (Dave does not explain why God is madder at the conservative inhabitants of Northern California than the fornicators and homosexualists of West Hollywood), but God's wrath cannot impact upon his female rival YHWH because dirt and stone and rocks and sand are the embodiment of the vagina. In conclusion, this is why John The Baptist had a thin neck.

He explains (or "explains" or Explains) the lack of vegetation associated with YHWH somewhere in the Torah commentary. Something to do with YHWH not actually being able to create (because of her inferior female brane) but just make limited copies of God's ideas and since her useless female brane is filled with making cows (which are fruit, remember) she can't remember to make plants in many places except the Garden.

You can cure this by shouting at the ground, telling it to listen to you and grow plants, alongside the occasional beating with a belt to let it know who's boss.

I can't remember if that last is an actual thing or just a joke about dirt and sand being female, but I do remember that his rule about beating women was that it = wrong if you used a rod thicker than your thumb. So a belt would be right out, probably.

also I assume Sim has never been to a desert nor to a working farm nor to a local economy impacted by drought, and his cartoonist instinct is sketching the most basic Ernie Bushmiller version of dry weather for him: three rocks of different sizes, and... dirt? that's something that's outside, right?

It's all about scale and the earth is much bigger than a woman so a belt is fine.

If you read the pages it seems like it's just a joke but Dave says in the annotations the only joke is shouting "O YOOWHOO BELIEVE!" is a pun on "oh, you who believe" which is a frequent salutation in the Koran. What a ribtickler. Apparently it says in the Torah men are supposed to "subdue the Earth".

Since I went and got Latter Days out for that I should really check why YHWH just has dirt.

Had an initial look, couldn't find it but realised there was no way I was doing any in-depth searching in that mess.

I like dunking on Dave but think it’s worth distinguishing between Dave Sim (a very unfamous comic book artist with mental health issues, who struggles to even influence even his minuscule devout fan base) and, say, Scott Adams (a genuine asshole with hundreds and thousands of followers who’s been to the White House)

Not to whattabout

Dave's greatest achievements may have been hiding his Kaczynski-level issues* from the general public for so long, and maintaining his focus and getting the book to the finish line ~on schedule after his issues* became apparent.

*really would like to use the word "madness" here but not sure it's appropriate

I would happily consign both sim and adams to the flames

https://i.imgflip.com/1xvnfi.jpg

This was on the outbreak! thread but it's actually a clearer summary than I can give on Dave's theory regarding God, YHWH and The Earth. (Or men, women and every idea ever, if you like)

Dave elaborates on the thinking behind his COVID skepticism:

Everyone else has now been forced to live the ascetic, hermitic life that Dave has lived since 2003. Dave has spent twenty years trying to live in a way that shows he does not deserve to die, or at least to die in excruciating, extended pain. However, every single person who dies in excruciating extended pain from it is suffering by God's choice, therefore it would be defying God for Dave to wear a mask or wash his hands to avoid transmitting the virus. Nowhere in the entire world has had professional sports, concerts, cinemas, restaurants, vacations or airline travel since March - meanwhile Dave has eschewed all of these things for seventeen years because "they're all feminists," not even providing his usual account that when he does fly on airlines or go on vacations, he talks to people about God. In the 12 months of studying the virus and multiple vaccines being developed, nobody has been able to identify the type of virus or observe how it behaves. When a vaccine is found (nb: no explanation of how this will happen when we are yet to even identify it as a novel coronavirus, or why the three vaccines that already exist are imaginary but only Dave can tell), society will tear itself apart because weed will be made legal and people will fornicate.

Also, anyone who stopped reading Cerebus at any point after its sales peak did so because they could tell Dave knew the immutable secrets of the universe, but wouldn't allow themselves to acknowledge it.

Since it's about to come off pre-sale and go on to actual sale, the new slipcase edition of High Society appears not to have sold that well. An edition of 200, and only the most expensive tier (edition of 20) has sold out.

Colour me sceptical, but I'm not that sure there's going to be a sudden influx of customers when it starts getting advertised to... the people who have been getting adverts up to now. And people like, say, me would need convincing that a $60-70 book is worth $200.

It's entirely possible we're down to double digits for people willing to give Dave money.

I guess it’s too late for him to get on Parler

can you post to Parler via fax

I bet you could rig that up.

start up the fash machine I have thoughts to share

I can’t see reading 300 issues of cerebus being a very enticing project for a new reader, not just because of the ending but because so much of it depends on 70s/80s superhero comic parodies, which were often oblique even for me, a child who grew up in the eighties reading superhero comics. I dunno, maybe chan board types could dig it

I flipped through some recently and really enjoyed the dumb stories in the first volume, and found high society realllly hard work

reminder that Sim currently posts to his blogspot by faxing a page or two of bible commentary to a dude who then uploads it as a 600x900px jpg per page

and that he replies to comments on his 31-posts-a-month blog by having the dude fax him some of the comments once a month, then phoning dude on a landline, and reading out the comments and replying to them, as duder puts him on speaker and films the desk with his mobile phone while holding up comics and postcards Dave has sent him, then uploads (eg) a 41 minute 34 second youtube video of Dave plugging upcoming publications, followed by a 12:42 video, a 20:15 video, a 35:48 video, a 41:52 video, a 22:10 video and a 15:28 video of Dave's individual replies to comments

while I'm all for the fa slowing their own communications down to this pace, I dunno that Dave will make much impact on Parl2r even if the blog guy figures out how to cross-post Dave's thought

I listened to a few minutes of the 41:52 answer while typing, which was about an anonymous female donor who sent Dave $10,000 for his work on Strange Death Of Alex Raymond

- (the book Dave abandoned five years ago when he fucked his wrist and refused to get medical advice because he lives in Canada and therefore medicine is communist) (instead he went to the US months later to pay full price for an x-ray, then posted it to the blogspot to ask his fans to diagnose him) (then had a fan draw it in Sim's style for 4.5 years before deciding a few months ago that he wasn't going to finish it or pay the guy) -

to which Dave asked what she wanted him to do to earn the $. She said "no, this is in appreciation of the work you already did." Dave's lawyer

- (who recently retired, and has signed and is selling his complete collection of Aardvark-Vanaheim comics, 1982-2014, at $10 ((+$5 shipping)) each to fund his retirement) -

advised him that this would leave him liable for something or other, so Dave has decided that he has to do 2 or 3 half-days a week or reading through his own extensive typed commentaries on old Rip Kirby strips and rating them out of three, in case his wrist ever heals and he starts cartooning again, so he'll know which ones to re-read again, to point him to Alex Raymond drawings that he should carefully copy with his God-healed hand. Perhaps he explains in the remaining 35 minutes why the taxman will care about this.

At least he’s his own boss