This is the thread where I try and summarise Cerebus

I accept the need for some kind of preservation/protection for cheaply manufactured paper products that are 50+ years old, increasingly expensive and hard to find in high grade condition, and that if you really do fancy reading the first Superman story you're not going to be cracking open your original copy of Action Comics #1 to do so. But sealing them up forever turns them into expensive fetish objects only, which is always a shame.

I always wanted to keep my comics in good enough condition that my (theoretical, eventual) kid could read them, but I didn't want to be obsessive about it, so I just chucked them all in a longboxes, unprotected, and left them in a cupboard in my parents' house for several decades.

Now I actually do have a kid, I'm like, do I **actually** want my daughter to read Give Me Liberty, or Cerebus, Justice League Antartica, or my complete set of yellowed Dan Jurgens Triangle-era Superman issues, when she could just read Bone or Nimona instead?

(Am keeping my Doom Patrols and Sandmans though.)

slabbing reduces comics to the objet d'art that's necessary for them to be taken seriously as economically viable collectible art; otherwise they're mass produced publications and only generate meaningful worth in bulk.

https://www.sothebys.com/en/series/dc-complete-the-ian-levine-collection
^ i know COVID didn't help but has this just been hanging out for the past five months without a serious offer?

COVID could be a big part of it - there aren't likely to be many buyers wealthy and interested in London, and nobody else can go get the collection

Then again, the catalogue has been removed so maybe it did sell

hm, you may be right!

Even without covid, who would want to touch something Ian Levine had touched?

i know this guy by general reputation as a collector and a producer; what has he done that makes his touch poisonous?

You might have heard of a television show called Doctor Who.

i mean, if we're gonna pillory everyone who has done bad work on Doctor Who...

Levine used to introduce teenage boys whom he met in his capacity as a DJ at Heaven to the floor manager of Dr Who, so that the latter and his partner (the producer of Dr Who) could go "two up you" on them, in exchange for Levine getting tapes of the first assembly edits of Dr Who episodes.

He tells this story in the producer's biography as an example of the terrible moral character of the producer.

i am having a hard time parsing that but i also really don't want to think about what it means either

That sort of story is also how the badge for mathematical excellence got its wearer.

Love & Monsters from the modern Who era is a very, very thinly veiled attack on gatekeeping of fandom and the 'right' way to like something featuring a very, very thinly veiled unofficial continuity adviser.

I believe the young man in question has denied that he was cast via a couch, and as he already worked at the BBC as a tea-boy, Levine probably didn't make the introduction, but we've veered quite a distance from summarising Cerebus.

Well he's not going to admit it is he. Much like the stories about a certain someone pegging out while pegging a fan and dressed in their costume, it's been too many times round the world for far too long to go away.

But yes, we should get back to Cerebus.

One comes from known events, direct reportage, had witnesses in the immediate aftermath, and has never been denied by the surviving participant. The other is the sort of thing that both jealous and homophobic straight fans and jealous or catty gay fans would come up by themselves to explain the casting of a notably ungifted cutiepie, whether there were any degree of validity.

(For the passersby, a male star of Dr Who died underneath a female fan in a convention hotel room; as far as I know, no female star has ever expired from a heart attack while banging a male fan with a strap-on.)

jeeeez, i'm sorry i asked

(I know, I was too fond of the pegging usage for my own readability.)

Who was the one who died? I don't know this story.

god forbid sic ever communicate anything without implying special knowledge that only sic knows

Much like the stories about a certain someone pegging out while pegging a fan and dressed in their costume, it's been too many times round the world for far too long to go away.

But yes, we should get back to Cerebus.

― Mud... jam... failure (sic, not aldo), Tuesday, August 25, 2020 5:29 AM (yesterday)

Checks out.

SOMEBODY ANSWER THE QUESTION

The one who looks like Duke Leonardi

Great (and accurate) recovery to topic.

So I read Guys and Rick's Story probably about the last time I posted to the thread and am just about to start Going Home (having finally finished the 'to read' piles of other stuff) so figured I'd best write them up.

Inexplicably, and freed from the constraints of a narrative direction (if we stick to 'only really 200 issues' theory), layout and lettering kick into a whole new gear and this is where Dave is elevated to GOAT. We get parodies of real people from comics and literature, the fan-service return of some minor characters, but most importantly for maybe the first time we find out some stuff about Cerebus himself.

How the hermaphroditism manifests in the present is demonstrated, with Cerebus' desire to surround himself with manly men shown as part of his unresolved hormonal churn. His self-sabotaging comes to the fore, and it's questionable whether he is only involved with women because he feels society demands he be.

As we will see later, Rick's Story is actually him giving Cerebus a heartfelt belief system and succeeding where Cirin failed.

I'm almost sure you could read these - Guys at least - in isolation and, assuming you knew nothing of Dave Sim The Evil Misogynist, have a good time.

Now onto the two big literary character parodies.

Due to the as-inexplicable-as-any-other-Sim-strategy policy of preparing the monthly Cerebus issues a year in advance, his daily strips of a few months ago have now found their way into the print publishing schedule. Make sure to reserve the following five timely issues at your local store now, while the satire is still warm!

August 2021: CRISIS IN INFINITE QUARANTINE #1

September 2021: BATVARK: CORONAVIRUS

October 2021: SUPER-CEREBUS VS COVID-19

November 2021: THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY CORONA

December 2021: CORONAVIRUS BOOK

In other Cerebus news, there's a Kickstarter currently running for a new edition of Spawn #10, with Sim redrawing all the Cerebus figures throughout, and redrawing the entire pages for the scenes where Spawn and Cerebus wander around Sim's haunts in downtown Kitchener.

Elsewhere, there's a limit of 25 per customer on these commemorative Cerebus Trump vs Biden facemasks:

https://i.imgur.com/4gtYMZL.jpg

The Kickstarter offers the opportunity to add copies of the original Spawn #10 for only $15. That's the same Spawn #10 there are multiple copies of on eBay for $5.

Going Home is not necessarily the right book for reading in lockdown. I overheard a pub conversation a couple of months ago and one of the pair was asking the other how their relationship was going since their girlfriend had only moved in to bubble because of COVID. It then led to a quite interesting observation about how COVID was making or breaking relationships as couples were having to spend more time with each other than they ever might have expected to before retirement.

And that's what the first part of this is about. Cerebus and Jaka have to spend every waking second together , and it's not really what they thought it would be. Aided by booze and company the evenings are tolerable but the rest is about fighting your thoughts and second guessing feelings having nothing but time to think about them. What's not completely clear is whether this Jaka - before FStop and Ham - ever actually intended going to Sands Creek. It's a slow painful journey, but a well-observed one for all Sim's other faults.

The extended Fitzgerald section seems like an indulgence of sorts, but reading it in conjunction with Dave's notes (which he claims Alan Moore made him do, by obscure means) is accidentally illuminating. While explaining how women are too stupid to understand literary techniques and unable to think of things outside their own experience, it's not out of the question that Sim sees himself as the successor to Fitzgerald and reuses his 'Word, word or word ' motif to celebrate - in fact he draws direct parallels by attributing innovations in literature and comics to themselves.

(Actually Dave's notes are a car crash start to finish, with diatribes about homosexualists and how men are only attracted to 17/18 year old girls even if they don't like them, and how this hormonal/emotional reaction is better than women's reactions which are only based on hormones and emotions.)

More next time on my sudden revelation about the three lengthy author appropriation sections.

reading the alex raymond book now; it's doused in batshit but he's also making great points about brush styles

a well-observed one for all Sim's other faults.

Sim is (was?) often an extremely keen observer of the minutiae of human behaviour, for all his other faults.

Definitely was.

Fucking hell, Form & Void.

Ok, so let's do the easy bits. Sand Hills Creek, as developed through this book, is an ultra-orthodox religious community. The 'women should shut the fuck up and do what they're told' type. Unsurprisingly, given where he is by this stage, 'Cerebus as substitute for Dave' thinks all this is not only ok but admirable. That said, the build of every new rule is very well done and the rejection of Cerebus (and his - as foretold - rejection of Jaka is as affecting and wonderfully written as it felt the first time I read it.

But the Hemingway bit. Jesus.

Dave is quite clear in the text he only uses him because everyone thinks he's good but he's really shit. And in the text he expands on this, adding that fucking his cats might have been the final straw.

Mind you, at least he's only a sexually abnormal, drunken, talentless braggard. It could be worse - he could be a woman who wants to be a sexually abnormal, drunken, talentless braggard MAN but is as bad at pretending as a women would undoubtedly be...

The African scenery and animals are lovely to look atthough and I could maybe have gone a book of them.

The interesting part is Sim wondering why he had to use Hemingway and he wonders himself but the problem was he already had Bear. Bear was exactly the character he wanted - I've commented before on the weird sexual attraction Cerebus has for the manliest man he can think of - and unfortunately because of this Hemingway makes no real sense and has a limited place except for one thing - the transplanted author in Cerebus.

Each time we have an author, one of the main cast learns something fundamental about their relationship with Jaka. Oscar Wilde shows Rick(e) she doesn't love him. Fitzgerald shows Jaka she doesn't love Cerebus enough to be with him. Hemingway shows Cerebus he doesn't love Jaka the way she wants and Mary shows Jaka Cerebus doesn't love her.

I have no interest in reading the text section of this ever again.

Talking of which, next month it's Chasing YooWhoo. Oh fuck.

The African scenery and animals are lovely to look atthough and I could maybe have gone a book of them.

Gerhard lives off commissions, you could make this happen!

For mine, the only good issue after Guys is in the two parter you're about to hit (iirc), where Ger draws his only character of the entire run, a nice sheepdog

The interesting part is Sim wondering why he had to use Hemingway and he wonders himself but the problem was he already had Bear. Bear was exactly the character he wanted - I've commented before on the weird sexual attraction Cerebus has for the manliest man he can think of - and unfortunately because of this Hemingway makes no real sense and has a limited place except for one thing - the transplanted author in Cerebus.

Excellent observation. If Sim had ever read Hemingway, instead of just deciding 15 years earlier that he would make a book about him and then nor bother to read him until he got there, he could have folded his reactions into the Cer/Bear dynamic of Guys.

(Or even had Bear become a writer and work as a direct analogue, also sparing us Rick's Story, and thus Dave's last two decades of auto-religious obsession.)

Fuck, Bear as writer would make even more narrative sense - especially given the dismissive opinion Sim has of Hemingway. Bear could easily sit down for four hours every day and write and assume something would come out of the other end.

"Courage is waddyacall... grace under pressure."

And especially

"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee."

We did it, we fixed Cerebus.

I think it's Form & Void which has a very well done issue with minimal drawings where Cerebus and Jaka are trapped in a tent in a snowstorm? Stuck in my mind anyway.

also sparing us Rick's Story, and thus Dave's last two decades of auto-religious obsession.

I'm confident he would've got there by another path.

Yes, stuck in the tent is in F&V. One of the few images is the stitching straining and starting to tear, and that's one of the ones that's stayed with me.

Anyway, I can't take credit for Hemingway = Bear as Dave himself includes it in his notes, but does so for the wrong reasons. His version is because he'd created such a great character and he wasn't going to change what F&V was going to be (so, for obvious reasons, he could make offensive comments about Ernest and Mary, as well as Gore Vidal and Gertrude Stein vice 'homosexualists' period), so he had to relegate Ham to the vegetative lump he appears as even though it makes Cerebus' hero worship - which, remember, has never vaguely been touched on and we have never even seen him with a READS until after Ham is dead plus is contrary to the forthcoming RABBI plotline iirc - even more incongruous.

as-inexplicable-as-any-other-Sim-strategy policy

The guy who recently kickstarted a deluxe reprint of Cerebus #1 and is currently running the KS for the superdeluxe Spawn #10 had a special one-day Halloween-only promo for an exclusive variant cover, limited to 50 copies.

So Dave did a competing one-day Halloween-only promo for a different one-day Halloween-only exclusive variant edition that he will Print On Demand through ComiXPress. And marketed it by sending a dozen or more updates throughout the day to the guy that runs his blogspot, several of them complaining at length about how badly he had hurt his non-working arm by trying to draw the variant cover for the guy that is actively trying to support / publish him. He appears to have sold a couple of dozen copies, mainly to the blogspot guy and the four or five other fans that attempt to do all his promo and production work and co-write and paste up the monthly Cerebus fumetti comic.

Dave says that the future of collectible high-$ comics is going to be individally-numbered printings, so he'll be proved right after he's dead.

Scott Adams has come up with his own equivalent of Dave's Five Impossible Things To Believe Before Breakfast

To believe Biden will be sworn in as president in January, one must believe at least one unlikely thing:

1. Despite being brainwashed to believe Trump is Hitler, Democrats in key cities did NOT attempt a large-scale voter fraud to save the country.

or. . .

2. Democrats did commit major voting fraud to remove "Hitler" but for some strange reason all the geniuses looking for indications of it can't find any confirmed evidence and there are no whistleblowers.

or. . .

3. Democrats WANTED to commit major fraud to get rid of "Hitler" but there is no practical way to do such a thing and hope to get away with it.

or. . .

4. Democrats didn't REALLY think Trump was so bad that it was worth cheating to remove him.

Remember, it's still #2020.

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

He has insightful opinions about the electoral process that he can express coherently and humourously, though;

https://i.imgur.com/6uh4Q9k.jpg

btw

I was thinking more of the time Sim and Ger were away somewhere (Bahamas?) and the reality of how far behind they were kicked in and they worked all day in the sun. Wasn't that about the 220s?

My recollection is that they went and holed up in an American hotel somewhere, if not Hawaii, specifically in order to catch up when they were months behind at the end of Church & State btw. Getting away from distractions of regular life and belting out issues in 2-3 weeks until they were back on schedule.

They went to Hawaii for three months in late 1992 and did five issues.

Latter Days.

Ok, this is not going to be short.

The first part of the epilogue is the funniest Cerebus has been in well over a decade at time of publication. The second not so much - and a lot of the goodwill built up is destroyed by Dave's notes where he pretty much says he was deliberately being racist because he thought it was funny - but the central idea (that Cerebus is actually really good but unlucky enough to be competing at the same time of the GOAT) is solid and entertaining enough to carry the plot through.

And then we get to the Stooges. Dave the Genius has assumed that his parodies were what made him a genius and pushes on regardless with this one no matter how weak it is and it adds nothing. So for a year we get Dave pushing some photorealistic portraiture and complaining about how utterly boring biblical study is, or rather listening to someone reciting at length the results of their biblical study and expecting you to say OMIGOD YOU ARE SUCH A GENIUS YOU HAVE BLOWN MY MIND. If only he heeded his own words, eh readers? And if you liked these parodies, I have others! Let's explore why Todd McFarlane is a closeted homosexualist mind controlled by the feminists! And let's do it really subtly by rehashing plots and set pieces from the best part of 20 years before!

More than anything, this is Dave's Breakdown writ large.

He actually has Cerebus go through Dave's Breakdown without (because he doesn't acknowledge it in his notes) apparently realising what he's done but Cerebus skips from fairly normal (by his own standards) to WOMEN MUST DIE in relatively short order, via revelations about celibacy and the Jews not being clever enough to get things right. And the notes make it clear that Dave actually is completely on board with all the words on the page, that this is the divinely communicated Voice of Dave.

Does any of the Rabbi stuff really make any sense? I get the Stooges period stuff suggesting that Cerebus is still a child mentally in part and prone to magical thinking, but the Garth Ennis breakdown inducing stuff? I've re-read it several times and I still don't see how it works. Because he thinks of himself as Rabbi there have been lots of subliminal mental ticks added which instantly get triggered by pointing out they're there? For a payoff that lasts a total of SEVEN PANELS this seems like a whole load of overthinking just to indulge in abusing Gary Groth.

And now we come to Woody Allen and the Journal of the Smallest Type.

I think I zoned out during the notes, if I'm honest, but Dave appears to be being honest when he says this was an early idea he had for a straight biblical parody which then became something else as Dave's character and beliefs changed in the interim. Although he doesn't say the last part of that obviously and encourages us to believe it's still a parody even when making small text notes in his own notes about Christianity and biblical rectitude.

The main book Small Type arguably has a single debatable idea behind it in a stoner WOOOOOAAHH way, that the Pentateuch is a schizophrenic conversation between God and the Earth but it's drenched in such waffling drivel that it's as unreadable as you always thought it was. Relatively early, that idea gets seduced by "women are stupid and think they're smarter than men but that's just stupid thought because they're stupid." And there's a hundred pages of it. With Woody Allen as a stand-in for you, the reader, having his mind blown by how smart this all is.

There are some singularly strange ideas though. An obsession with the idea that "moved" is a euphemism for God having an actual literal wank and creating things with his Godspunk. Cows aren't animals, they're fruit. The earth is presumably hollow because it's full of the souls of humans and birds. Abel tries to fuck Cain which is why he gets killed (and deserves to die). Countries have souls. Everybody who doesn't see through the fake woman God like Dave does is gay, or loves incest, or is a paedophile or a woman. Tough to know which one he thinks is worse at times. And all of these ideas are correct, of course, because God has chosen to let Dave, and only Dave over the millennia, know the real truth.

It all just began to wash over after 40 pages. Women all secretly want FGM because they're fucked in the head? It's ridiculous to think "sure, why not" but by then "sure, why not, Dave probably believes that" is very nearly a rational response at this stage. And never, ever read Dave's take on the story of Abraham & Isaac where Dave confuses even himself as he's writing in his desperate need to make everything for his theory.

The funniest part is that Dave himself gets bored with publishing it BEFORE HE GETS DONE WITH GENESIS. Does the rest exist or just the bits that he prints? If the latter, how did he choose what bits to print? Dumb luck or God's hand? It is it just that nothing else supports his argument? Nobody, not even the most ardent fan, cares by this point.

The Woody Allen stuff is Dave's least successful parody by some margin. And following the Stooges, that's saying something.

Actually, the interesting thing that never properly gets explored is Cerebus' complete lack of attachment to material things. He ruins the sheep owner's Reads just by reading them himself. He destroys a complete set of Rabbi in the quest to understand. And he takes the priceless artefact of Konigsberg's Pentateuch and in the quest to explain, improve and bend to his understanding obliterates it. Each man kills the thing he loves indeed.

You know the thing that really annoys me about this the most? The issue breaks are in the wrong place throughout the Stooges section. Every one, a couple of pages misplaced. It could have been fixed by making one issue longer, but instead over a year of pauses mid-sentence.

I am a comics reader.

I think (from memory of the final book) you can read the first two issues (266/267 or pages 1-40) and the last one (288 or 441-460) and not really lose anything that can't be replaced by "Cerebus eventually overcomes the Cirinists again and lives for a long time afterwards ruling an empire" with a side for the final issue of "ignore what's going on with these film titles, Dave was doing a parody". You could read the Stooges stuff if you wanted but in all conscience I can't recommend putting yourself through it.

I tried to move on to The Last Day and had to give up 2 pages into the prologue. I might be a while, I think it's just proximity.

All I can say is better you than me.

Does (work-life balance) even exist any more(...) since the COVID Reality Shift hit? Which, personally I think is permanent. Finger of God stuff. In the same sense that we dialled 911 to report an emergency for decades and then 9/11 happened, the adjectival short form for visual acuity has been 20/20 since(...) the mid-19th century. God was telling us what the year 2020 was going to mean -- profound change based on multiple levels of visual acuity (Seeing, "seeing" and seeing) -- over a hundred years before it got here.

mindblown.gif

If you're tempted to try and parse any of the small-print theological stuff in the coming three years, just remind yourself that this ^ is the standard of it.

Also as best I can tell, the Spawn #10 reprint is now up to 23 or more variant covers in different degrees of limitedness, spread across four different crowdfunders. 16 of them are the same group of four drawings, but with different colour schemes.

One of the covers contains a "behind-the-scenes" book instead of the comic, at an additional $15 for 24pp of the new cover drawings and sketches plus Dave's rough notes from 1993. Except if the third and current crowdfunder gets another $111,057 in pledges (on top of its current $8,943), it will have 32pp and "extra rarities".

The minimum number of different variants you can currently buy in one order is 4, but you can buy one of each of the "main" 20 of 'em today for US$375, reduced from $475.

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!