This is the thread where I try and summarise Cerebus

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2010/02/cerebus-58.jpg

Cerebus valentines

wonderful!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/18/comics-grow-up-graphic-novels-harvey-pekar

Is this the most mainstream press attention Cerebus has ever got?

pretty sure it's had a two-sentence mention 9 pars down on a blog before

Tom Spurgeon pretty nails it on the Comics Reporter:

These articles are dumb when comics bloggers who barely have two adjectives to rub together write them and they're dumb when writers for the Guardian with a full armory of verbiage at their disposal write them. Despite the fact that a number of examples in his own article repeatedly counter the notion that there's a narrowing of tone or theme in non-mainstream US comic books -- it made me smile to see Cerebus sneak in there -- there's all sorts of convenient examples out there of the range of alt-comics that get passed over that I think it's very fair for him to know about. While I wouldn't expect the writer to be familiar with publishing houses like PictureBox and AdHouse, it's worth noting that his primary examples come from cartoonists associated with Drawn and Quarterly and the big hit for D+Q before its big hit with Dan Clowes' Wilson was Lynda Barry's exuberant and entirely cheerful What It Is. Fantagraphics' big release of the moment is from Jim Woodring, whose work doesn't have much in common at all with Adrian Tomine. I personally think Seth's George Sprott exists in a land far, far away from what, say, Jordan Crane is doing in Uptight, but if you don't, that doesn't mean that in making your point you should get to drop the comics that provided a cleaner break with the "mopey" stereotype.

The article was actually in the print copy of The Guardian.

I know for sure it's had a two-line mention in a major metro "Comics are for grown-ups?!" filler with up-page art pull before ;)

I think that's a decent enough bit of blog filler, and the Todd Solondz line is pretty good.

The argument is pretty old hat though. Apparently SL is a huge comic nerd (according to a friend who knows him), I'm sure he must have heard of Joann Sfar or Tezuka or whatever. They're quite easy to buy in the UK, too.

Posting here to get rid of the phantom bookmark.

But i do have something to say about the article too: I kinda hate in when someone talks about "comics" in general, when he really means "American comics, maybe Canadian and British ones too". Even if the scope of "serious" American comics may see narrow, that isn't the case with comics worldwide, which should be obvious by just reading the non-Anglo stuff that's been translated to English.

which is kinda difficult in America tbh, depending on what yr talking about. sure we can get Tintin and Asterix or Milo Minara books, but try finding a copy of Arzach for example. tons of Manga never make it to English, etc.

The Guardian is not in America tbh

hey Tuomas brought up the America angle, not me

he was talking about a writer in England who discussed American comics

Maybe he's British, but the article falls into the long tradition of texts where the word "comics" is equated with "comics made in the English-speaking countries". If he'd bother to go beyond that (and lot of this stuff is available in English translations, though obviously a lot of it isn't), he'd notice that there's plenty of non-genre and art comics that have little to do with mopey navel-gazing. Just to take the example of French comics, the recent translations of works by various l'Association artists and the stuff released in English by Cinebooks should provide him with a wide array of "serious" comics that are not in the Harvey Pekar tradition.

Mega interview with Gerhard: part 1, part 2, part 3, and a follow-up from the interviewer.

Fantastic interview, thanks for the links. When they were talking (part 2, page 1) about the 2-page spread of the foundry for the golden sphere, I remembered that I had the chance to buy the original art for that for $150 and passed. I could just stab my brain out with a screwdriver when I think about it.

Like.

That Gerhart interview was fantastic!

Dave's right hand has stopped working properly. He says he's just "ill" but he can't hold a pen or use it effectively.

that sounds like a stroke or slow-developing brain hemmorage to me

Aldo, where did he post that?

Having just gone and read the relevant posts on his site i totally take that back, it sounds like arthritis or nerve damage.

there are a couple of posts on the moment of cerebus site

I have to admit the idea of this terrible asshole croaking is deeply upsetting to me. does not sound like it's come to that.

I assume it's just God striking him down

Ugh. He lost me at "I don't believe in medical science."

Eccch. I've had severe nerve damage in my left hand for a few years. He's being an idiot.

(Not that I should be surprised that Dave is taking an oddball, self-destructive angle on something)

Me too, damage in my right elbow affecting my drawing hand. It's mostly better now... except when I try to do things like draw.

Sorry, had been afk. Yeah, there are some posts on AMoC and he faxed a letter which he typed left-handed to the backers of the current Portfolio Kickstarter.

The anti-science bit is where he loses all the sympathy and, you know, sometimes you just need to not do the fucking thing that makes you Ill. I get that he feels a responsibility to the backers, and I'm part of that problem, but I honestly think skipping sigs on CAN3 would alleviate a huge problem for him.

I always forget how irritating Sim's editorial style is, and that he appears to be unaware what quotation marks are for.

Quotation marks a Cirinist plot.

that sounds like a stroke or slow-developing brain hemmorage to me

he had TIA-like symptoms affecting his arm eight years or so ago that lasted several months, which he "successfully" prayed away - his speech was slow and ponderous for several years afterwards.

Sim in hospital.

oh gosh

Bearing in mind his relationship with medicine, I think it must be fairly serious to make him go. He's still refusing pain relief there, apparently.

how old is he?

he didn't check in for the hand thing either, rather for abdominal pain...

xp 58

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hut7FmavBa8/VQfETGN3UsI/AAAAAAAAOGk/zmxtaQmAWlI/s1600/sim_hospital_march_2015.jpg

Goes into surgery in the next 10 minutes.

Moment of Cerebus site says surgical intervention to clear a blockage. Intestinal blockage is totally ungodly excruciating. I can see that driving even the most bloody-minded antimedicinist to the ER. IDK if they have to do a resection or what.

They updated again-- it's volvulus of the colon (essentially, a twist in the intestine creating an impassible point). That is some agony right there. They're doing a bowel resection surgery. I've had that. It sucks, and i'm guessing they will have to do it in two stages, with a temporary colostomy bag in between the two procedures.

I'm not real clear on how the hell these twists occur in someone's guts...

Well, if G-d is paying attention, Dave certainly showed Him how tough he is.

goddamn, that's terrible.

a little part of me hopes he has some kind of epiphany from this... but I'm not getting my hopes up. It bothers me that someone who did something great which was v important to young me is more than likely going to grow old and die a sad figure of folly with their work swept out of the canon as a result

he is a v curious figure, I think it's really hard to predict how his work will be viewed once he's gone

on its own merit, I hope

I admittedly own all of Cerebus but have been procrastinating reading it for way too long.

I've never finished it and don't intend to tbh (I stopped at Rick's Story, which is great and feels like enough of an ending for my purposes).

Sim's contributions to the medium are hard to gauge - dude was certainly groundbreaking, just from a business standpoint, but also in form and content. And I can't really fathom how any fan of comics could look at peak period Cerebus and not concede that it's the result of a master of the medium working in top form. But (as has been pointed out here before iirc) there's a lot of elements of his work that limit its appeal and impact - the constant industry in-jokes, his personality/politics bleeding into the material in such a literal way, the impenetrability of long stretches of text etc. You can point to other self-published b&w comics that came out in his wake, you can point to various (mostly parodic) comics that took Cerebus as some kind of inspiration, you can point to other people tackling similar long-form storytelling, but I dunno he just doesn't seem like one of those universally revered figures to me that everybody in the industry acknowledges as a giant. Maybe that's because he just burned so many bridges, maybe it's because his signature opus is such an outlier in so many ways, or some combination thereof.

Yeah, I can't really imagine people caring about all of Cerebus, but maybe eventually one or two of the phonebooks will settle into "classic" status. Like I can imagine "Jaka's Story" taught in some kind of graphic novels undergrad class. Especially if Cerebus somewhow ends up reprinted by another (bigger?) publisher...which of course would probably only happen after Dave dies...Right now is all of it even properly in print?