Best Cerebus phonebook

missed off 'none'

Guys, without hesitation.

Very tough choice. JS is the only one I've ever owned in phonebook form, and almost all my experiences of reading Cerebus have been 20 pages at a time, once a month. After the yearlong stillness of Melmoth, Flight was an amazing adrenaline rush every month. But High Society has a lot of sentimental value, because that's when I started reading it.

I voted for Jaka's story as it's closest to perfection.

After the yearlong stillness of Melmoth, Flight was an amazing adrenaline rush every month.

Yes! I even experienced this reading them in phonebook form. Mothers & Daughters is terrific, IMO, apart from the text sections in Reads.

My local comics shop was two hours away in Memphis, and I usually gave Cerebus a first read while driving home -- one eye on the book, the other on the highway, adding to the thrillride effect. Survived to tell the tale.

I wish "Church & State" could be considered as a single entity... but I went for C&S vol. 1, just for the unbelievable level of invention on display, and for the fireworks that go off when Gerhard shows up. (And because I did find the moon sequence pretty slow.)

Church & State v1. Never cared for Jaka's Story except on a technical level.

kinda leaning towards Church & State I, with Guys as a close second maybe (although that and Rick's Story seem of a single piece to me...)

unrelated question - is the Viktor that Rick refers to in Rick's Story meant to be the same mysognist-reads-author Viktor from Reads...?

My library only has the first one, High Society, Church and State I and Jaka's Story. I read v.1 and HS, should I read C&S 1 without being able to read the second, or should I just skip to Jaka? Or is it just not worth bothering w/either since I can't keep going?

inter library loan?

(although that and Rick's Story seem of a single piece to me...)

Except that Guys is 18 months of lolsomeness and then Rick’s Story is a year of painful tedium watching Sim write himself into being a religious nutbar page by page

don't skip straight to Jaka, at least read C&S 1 first

^^^what he said. Lots of key stuff in C&S 2 tho

bah. i was afraid it would be like that. oh well, thanks for the info

C&S I ends on quite the cliffhanger, so you'll definitely be wanting to get your hands on the second one way or another after finishing it.

I still haven't read anything past Flight, but the only one I ever end up re-reading is High Society.

C&S II, for sentimental reasons: my first issue of Cerebus was the 112/113 double and, intrigued by it, started going backward through the moon storyline and beyond trying to figure out what was going on. As one of the first independent comics I got into the art and concept were way beyond anything I'd ever read before.

Church and State I probably has the best ratio of cosmicness to comedy to Dave Sim batshittery (i.e. lots of the first two, not so much of the other thing); then Great as Jaka's and Guys are, I find boy's-own-adventure Cerebus more rewarding than the contemplative stuff.

went c&s 2, might go with melmoth on a different day.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

"the solid years"

Is this Melmoth? Lately I am thinking that this is Melmoth.

nah

I've never really enjoyed Melmoth, not until Cerebus wakes up again (although I do love the Italian remodelling).

even as a huge fan of Oscar Wilde this always struck me as a fairly pointless diversion (what turned out to be the first of many, unfortunately)

I loved it. I thought it made the action that opens "Flight" that much more exciting.

The diversion is rendered pointful by the fact that Oscar has been a pivotal character in the comic previously. I choose to ignore the stuff about it being a completely different Wilde analogue to the one in Jaka's Story, typical Sim obtuseness.

^^^yeah I never understood that. I was like wait, what this is a DIFFERENT character? or this is the same character years later? I'm still not sure I get how it's supposed to fit.

the only way melmoth isnt a drag is that cerebus stasis throughout makes the freakout at the beginning of mothers and daughters that much YAHHHHH. even though in typical sim fashion he undercuts the bloody one-man revolt theatrics within like, what, four issues?

i woulda voted for church and state vol. one which is probably the high point for me of the "looney tunes/doonesbury meets insane made-up political depth" of the series' first half.

I think that one may be the best written/most engaging story arc, but Gerhard doesn't really hit his stride until volume 2

You saw that recent 3-part interview with Gerhard, right?

i didn't. link?

Part One: http://classic.tcj.com/alternative/sean-michael-robinson-the-craft-behind-cerebus-an-interview-with-gerhard-part-one-of-three/

Part Two: http://classic.tcj.com/alternative/the-craft-behind-cerebus-an-interview-with-gerhard-part-two-of-three/

Part Three: http://classic.tcj.com/alternative/the-craft-behind-cerebus-an-interview-with-gerhard-part-three-of-three/

i am way down with C&S vol. 2

yeah it's good, pretty interesting

the Gerhard interview, I mean

Been thinking about getting into Cerebus, but I'm told the first book or two are kind of dull. Do I have to read those, or can I skip it and it'll still make sense?

standard advice is 'start with jaka's story and go back to the beginning if you feel like that aesthetic is one you want to see sim work his way towards', i think; it's pretty good advice, i think

what? that's not standard advice is it?

I've heard around here to start with High Society, the 2nd book, then go read the first book to fill in the gaps, and then read the High Society again and then go on to Church & State + Jaka's Story

high society is in no way dull.

i mean it drags in places but they all do.

Go ahead and start with the first book - it's a series of short stories, none more than a few issues, so if one doesn't grab you it's over quickly. Plus you get introduced to The Roach, Lord Julius, Jaka and more. They're more than just Conan parodies, and you do need some of that info to set up High Society.

yeah but my impression was that at least the first twelve or so issues of the first book were bad enough to dissuade any curious newbie from going further into the book and into the series...?

If I had started with Jaka I wouldn't have read anything else. The evolution of the character and artist up to Jaka I enjoyed, but the mature artist from that point on I find formally interesting but nothing more. So to each their own.

^totally. thomp is correct, in that one of the legitimate pleasures of the reading Cerebus' first half is seeing Dave Sim progress as an artist but if you're looking for good comix, the reason ppl started giving a crap in the first place was the stuff right at the end of the first book, and esp High Society, which is great satire with cartoon zaniness and intriguing characters in equal measure

But it gets good so quickly that that's exciting in and of itself. I'd go ahead and start with the first book.
xposts

This is the thread where I try and summarise Cerebus

'Cerebus valentines' are the best part of that thread (no offense aldo)

You're not wrong.

I probably need to do a re-read soon.

I thought the standard starting point was High Society. I haven't even read all of the first book myself, read a few reprints of random issues from it a long time ago and ehh, yeah they don't really give a sense of the mastery of the medium Sim would achieve. My starting point was about mid-way through the first volume of Church and State when the individual issues were coming out - it was confusing at first but definitely absorbing

starting with Jaka's Story seems insane to me

^ yep, unless you're planning to never read any other Cerebus, as it just about works as a standalone

Loads of the stories in the second half of the first book are really funny and clever. It gets an unfair rap, would mauch rather re-read it than Going Home, say.

Oh totally...2nd half of 1st book has a certain quality that isn't really found anywhere else in Cerebus; Sim is wow'd by his newfound drafting and layout abilities and it spurs him onto take a lot of risks with the art that payoff. Even moreso, this is pre-High Society. Throughout what is commonly known as Cerebus's peak perios, he comes across as somewhere between a spoilt child and a coldblooded sociopath, swept up in forces that he can only sometimes control or even comprehend. The stories in the last third of the first book hinge on Cerebus's remarkable cunning as a soldier, and not on Iestan political machinations which tend to obscure the character's very real ingenuity.

Worth noting that that sea-change in the book corresponded with a long LSD binge and a nervous breakdown. Drugs are useful! But those side effects...

Right...there's like a whole timeline to it; the LSD binge inspired the huge novelistic approach and the sociopolitical overtones, which of course fed right into the 300-issue goal as well as Lord Julius and the Palnu trilogy...most of Sim's incidental writings are left out of the phonebooks though

that screen name is A+++++++ btw

Thanks :D

Start with the first book but skim where necessary. TBH most of the books can be pretty patience-testing. I find myself skipping whenever Elrod, or Dirty Fleagle, or Mick'n'Keef turn up, and even some of the Julius routines are pretty tiresome. The horizontal section near the end of High Society just seems to drag on FOREVER.

I actually find myself coming back to what I thought about Cerebus initially as a teenager, i.e. that I really admire Sim's work, but I like the book best when it's a straight-up adventure comic (i.e. the first one-and-a-half books, Church and State, and, er, that's it.)

Actually, the first book is at least worth reading to set up the ** spoilers follow really soon** suicide of BMM, which was one of the series most WTF?! moments.

(That’s a WTF moment in a “surprising plot development” sense, rather than in a “fucking Dave Sim WTF” sense.)

See the reason I like Melmoth so much is that it doesn't have that much Cerebus in it! Like, it's weird to me that early Cerebus is kinda seen as the less authoritarian Sim, 'cos I find the underlying politics of "all idealism is suspect, look after you and yours" so horrible and suspect*. But Melmoth is, like, you see the comics he's featuring and that people are talking about in the letters pages and Cerebus is just so far ahead of them in every every way - peak Sims/Ger artwork is just the best art I've seen in any quantity - and you're reading this weird strange static story, and everything is so off, and characters from the past float in and out like unexplained ghosts. It's just unambiguous about being a work of genius in a way that even the best of the other parts aren't.

ha er who was BMM?

Br4n M4k Muff!n

I want to go on record as saying that I like Melmoth; the Oscar Wilde stuff is decently poignant, and I really liked the second waitress at Dino's (can't remember her name atm)...I would even go and say that Mothers and Daughters is allright, and prob worth torrenting, as long as under no circumstances do you read the prose bits in Reads (a lot of ppl hate Minds; I thought it was OK)

but those are not by any means starting points; first book or High Society are starting points. If you do decide to read the first book just remember to stick with it until you see Lord Julius (if you see a character called the Cockroach, then you're getting close...)

I think recent printings of the first book include the Silverspoon strips, so LJ (lol) should be v easy to spot by flipping ahead

doesn't Julius appear before the Cockroach...?

Cockroach is in #11, Lord Julius starts in #14 (although Silverspoon is between #13 and #14).

huh, yeah I thought the Roach appeared later, with Weisshaupt. what is his first appearance...?

I mean, like, what's the story/plot

As I recall he's a merchant by day and he goes around by night as The Roach basically mugging people. He has a huge pit of gold under his house which Cerebus is interested in. Think this takes place in Beduin.

Yeah, he gets set up as a narcoleptic but it turns out he's just tired because he spends all night awake iirc.

http://whenwillthehurtingstop.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-we-will-read-cerebus-part-i-as-i.html

If I wanted to read Cerebus, where/how would be a good place to start?

Haha, I asked this the other day and I got told the 2nd book is a good start. I bought a copy, but it's slow going so far. I'm not too sure I get all the jokes and the plot is a bit confusing.

If you really want to make a dedicated run at the series, start at the beginning, with the understanding that the first 12-13 issues are merely OK Conan/Barry Windsor-Smith pastiches. The next dozen issues start to lay out the larger worldview, and then you'll be set for four hysterically funny and very moving books, High Society through Melmoth. I don't want to try to describe what comes after that -- sometimes brilliant, usually infuriating.

my library doesn't have any of them so i guess i'm going to have to buy them or read them at comix store or idk

they're VERY expensive.

they're very thick though. you get about 200pp for $25 from DC, and here you get 500+ with some of the best and most re-readable cartooning ever in 'em.

four hysterically funny and very moving books, High Society through Melmoth.

through Jaka's Story

I never bought the phonebooks, so I sorta consider Church and State one book.

yeah I dare say Mordy's library almost certainly has the single issues, that'd explain why they don't bother with the phonebooks

ok, bought volume 1 phone book tnite. i assume i'll like it at least a little right? cause if i read 500 pages and don't enjoy it at all, i can't imagine getting more volumes, esp at that price and esp at that quantity of reading.

also -- very unlikely my library has the single issues

this thing http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51663FDXVEL._SS500_.jpg

Don't stop reading until you bump into Groucho Marx

maybe i'll live-ilx-post while i'm reading this thing

^^^
Would read.

I got the first three phonebooks used a month ago; I read them all as floppies but this is the first time I've owned the books. Looking forward to diving in after I move.

the first book gets better and better as it goes, then the second one is straight-up great

if it's a recent printing of the first, you get more Groucho and earlier, too

if it's a recent printing of the first, you get more Groucho and earlier, too

― challopian rubes (sic), Tuesday, September 6, 2011 2:12 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah? My copy's over ten years old, what are the extras?

he added all the Silverspoon strips at some point

(I'd photocopied them and stuck them and Magiking in mine in the mid-90s, lol nerd)

NB, If there's a long piece of text that looks boring, it's okay to skip it.

My head starts trying to explode if I skip so much as a couple of words of any book I'm reading, is the problem.

This is the problem with Cerebus: either way, your head explodes.

maybe i'll live-ilx-post while i'm reading this thing

― Mordy, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:32 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^
Would read.

^^^yes

Mordy I kinda can't imagine you NOT getting into this, frankly

i'm excited. first phone book is lying on my couch at home, just waiting for a few minutes to be read. (i did read the first couple pages already and was instantly smitten by the exchange between the bartender + cerebus.)

ur gonna enjoy.

Yeah, instantly smitten by the ameuterish first issue bodes well.

So I know I said something about live-posting but hopefully brief update will suffice. The whole Conan parody was pretty decent and I didn't get tired before Cerebus started excavating new territory. Knowing that the Tick came from the Cockroach I was actually a little disappointed by his first appearance. First issue that Cerebus really blew me away was the entire Groucho Marx / Freedonia parody which, instead of being a quick throwaway, actually goes on and on and on and doesn't stop being funny! The whole Nazi (or just German?) barbarians subplot is a let down esp after Groucho and luckily that gets dropped pretty quickly. I wonder if Cerebus (protagonist, not title) can continue being this hyper competent straight-man figure throughout the comix without it getting boring, or whether Sim is going to have to start to develop him in different directions. The letter to Groucho from his niece Jaka is a nice flashback, as is the quickly revolving cast of characters (Cockroach's return is more satisfying than his intro and E'Lass' whole internal drama is pretty lol - Elrod still too one-note for me).

I haven't actually finished the first phonebook yet (I still have a few issues left) but I intend on picking up the next volume this week. I'm totally onboard, especially if it continues to get better. Last issue I read was the one where Cerebus spent the entire time in the psychedelic coma world playing the two groups off against each other. One is obv an early indication of Sim's women problems (a female feminist hierarchy), as is the whole Red Sophia thing (and clone thing) which is totally creepsters... I don't know if I've seen a single female character yet that wasn't in some way beholden to either Cerebus or another guy, until the feminist cultists which is obv its own problem.

Awesome, the hook is set.

Yeah, you seem to have noticed all the stuff that will make the whole thing great for you.

One is obv an early indication of Sim's women problems (a female feminist hierarchy)

Hahaha, you have no idea. Though that whole thing plays out into one of the most mind-blowing reveals ever in comics in C&S II.

Yeah, youre in for a few whafuck? Moments

I've never read the entirety of volume 1, but I've read scattered issues here and there.

I don't know if I've seen a single female character yet that wasn't in some way beholden to either Cerebus or another guy,

yeah this doesn't happen for a little while. although it's funny, while Sim clearly has atrocious problems with women, its a small miracle that he actually writes a lot of pretty great female characters

So, I bought vol. 2 of the phonebooks yesterday and I plan this weekend to finish vol. 1 and start the next one. V excited!

that's where it starts to get really good. (those horizontal pages toward the end are kind of a pain in the ass to read in the big book format though.)

like the first issue of high society is one of my fave self-contained issues of anything ever

i am talking at you sewage sewage sewage

lol, yes -- "percent smell of fifty!"

100 percent guarantee away the smell!

"Every time mail arrive, Scorz break out in hives." Yeah, that scene is multiple levels of hilarious, particularly the fact that that character's role in the story is to be another Holland M. Hadden type, an incoherent buffoon who's trying to get rich off a terribly stupid idea--but it's actually a _great_ idea, he's just incapable of communicating it.

Finished High Society. I've got more to say about it, but since I'm in a rush I'll just say right now that it is amazing and I've already ordered the next three volumes.

the bit where Lord Julius, Chico and Cerebus carve up their territories always cracks me up.

upid-stay?
ery-vay

guys I am bidding for a full set of the phonebooks on ebay for a crazy low price. crossing my fingers on this!

the 79 buck one? Yeah, i'm gonna bid that one up

^_^ I am winning that right now you jerkface

jk

Complete set is getting shipped to me today! Looking forward to weeks of reading.

:D

(dont read the prose parts of Reads)

I actually read some of those issues years ago! It's not all crazy, but there's a lot of crazy in there.

i haven't, and won't

feel free to read it all imo

Reads prose stuff >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> prose stuff in the last thirty issues

I still have no clue wtf is going on in high society (the only one I've read) that cockroach guy has just shown up but really I'm incredibly confused.. And a bit bored(?) to be honest. If there's humour here i don't get it. Should I have read the first one first instead?

Yes. The first one is essential to understanding (and enjoying) the second volume.

Have I ever mentioned that the only Cerebus phonebook I've read (and a number of single issues sporadically toward the end) was Melmoth? I understood it was more of a transitional piece at the time, but actually enjoyed it outside of the context of the series.

yeah there's a few bits that can function as standalone volumes, Melmoth is one of them. (I think "Guys" does too)

Finished High Society. I've got more to say about it,

?

imo and i kinda already said this above but if yr not lol'in from the first chapter of high society onward then you might just not get jokes

also this and I've already ordered the next three volumes makes me happy but i'm also perversely looking forward to his reactions once mordy passes the issue 150 mark.

having done that in real time, i can't imagine what doing it in phone books would be like.

Flight and Women are balls-to-the-wall action after the torpor of Melmoth, can't imagine dropping out at that point

drifting away in Reads or Minds without all the fascinating stuff going on in the letters and Notes From The President and especially the Spirits tour info I can see

but if you make it through those, you get Guys, which is one of the funniest books top to bottom, and had less going on in the issues, as he used the cover and IFC to add two story pages to every floppy

I've never read Reads or Minds, just thumbed through them in stores and gotten the general idea. Guys is great tho.

Is Guys the one with them in the bar, and one guy keeps making bad jokes?

yes

which guy - Hempel's Gentle Ben?

wow had no idea that was a Hempel character parody. I have fond memories of Mars...

You have to track down Tug & Buster! Love Hempel's stuff, and that series might even be better than Gregory.

Tug & Buster is definitely better than Gregory, though sadly died an early death despite all the collateral promo from Cerebus (though Shakey shows how well that worked*). Ran 7 issues on Hempel's own imprint (Art & Soul iirc?), then moved to Image with some fanfare and a TPB collection of the first 6 (?!) - around or possibly even just before the Heroes World fiasco and distributor implosion - and then vanished forever after one single issue there.

Gently Bent is not even a parody - of all the poached characters in Guys** he's played absolutely closest to the original, though with Sim's straight men the tone comes off far more out of place.

* James Owen complained at the time that Sim's appropriation of Martin Humble for the bartender led new Starchild readers to complain that he'd stolen the character from Sim.

** btw, the spoonerism of Hilly Rose is, for mine, probably*** the grossest piece of sexism in all of Cerebus. And has set the tone for the entirety of the text pieces in Glamourpuss!

*** the appearance of HR Watson could be a satire on some of the audience, maybe. if you squint.

My first three or four Tug & Buster's are signed. Ran into him at Atomic Books one day he was shopping there and he was gracious enough to put pen to covers.

* James Owen complained at the time that Sim's appropriation of Martin Humble for the bartender led new Starchild readers to complain that he'd stolen the character from Sim.

** btw, the spoonerism of Hilly Rose is, for mine, probably*** the grossest piece of sexism in all of Cerebus. And has set the tone for the entirety of the text pieces in Glamourpuss!

*** the appearance of HR Watson could be a satire on some of the audience, maybe. if you squint.

I have never heard of any of these people

Guys must have been p bemusing to you generally! You've never heard of Paul Pope though?

http://thecomicgarage.freeservers.com/THB21.jpg

I have some Paul Pope stuff. I have no idea what he has to do with Cerebus tho

Some parts of Guys were certainly bemusing to me. Cerebus is often bemusing, I cope with it.

I felt like there were a bunch of references in Guys that I "got" - Don Simpson, Mick Jagger, Marty Feldman, Too Much Coffee Man, (or is that in Rick's Story? I forget), Popeye/Bluto, Bacchus - I guess I missed some stuff.

the bartenders I just took to be a Ringo parody, what with the "Harrison Starkey" business.

GIS for H.R. Watson = uh okay she appears for what, a page? and takes her clothes off to taunt the bar patrons iirc? eh whatever.

HR Watson is the star of THB

There's also 80s and 90s versions of Alec, Rick Veitch himself lettering Sim's Rare Bit Fiends parody, erm, maybe some others I don't remember. The Marty Feldman character is the one taken from Owen.

the "hmmmm"-ness of her use in Cerebus is Sim using an underage girl stripping to taunt the bar patrons, those poor defenseless males

ah yeah the Rare Bit Fiend bit is good. seems bizarre that anyone would make a proprietary claim on a character based on Marty Feldman.

the "hmmmm"-ness of her use in Cerebus is Sim using an underage girl stripping to taunt the bar patrons, those poor defenseless males

oh I get this, don't disagree. the particular underage girl being an homage to some other character seems completely irrelevant tho...? I mean unless her being HR adds some subtext that I don't get.

well, there's appropriating someone else's non-sexualised teenage girl character for purely sexualised purposes, to make a mildly demented point about your own sexual politics

it's not proprietary, but it was frustrating for him to be told he'd stolen Sim's major character for a more minor character of his own - Martin 'Umble is clearly based specifically on Starchild rather than Feldman directly. For no clear reason the only Martin Humble image I can find is a statue, not an Owen drawing:

http://www.kymeracomics.com/catalogue/starchild/martin.jpg

Sim doing a homage/parody and then botching the gender politics is pretty much Sim in a nutshell.

I read C&S 1 first, but in this thread, everyone says to read HS first and then go back to the first volume:

Sandman, Cerebus, Bone: where to start?

(also sic otm about Reads; I have it all on .cbr and while I won't read the dodgy Viktor Davis prose stuff, I'm kind of a huge fan of the Guide to Self-Publishing that Sim was printing in the Notes from the President in those issues)

My phonebooks should be here next Monday!

i am ready to sell all my phone books and single issues; new apartment isn't big enough anymore for anything that doesn't benefit from being on paper and/or that is story driven so i'm transferring to digital for like 50/60% of my collection.
Anybody wanna buy em cheap or should i hit ebay?

How early do you start in single issues?

well i've got the biweekly reprints up to issue 70 (with sporadic originals in there), then a complete run from 20 to 202, plus Cerebus zero, jam, companion 1 and 2, world tour and the bi-weekly 0. And a few random late issues of guys. So about 220 books.

Nothing I don't have, sorry matey.

Other people should get on this though.

and phone books 1-6, 9, 10 and 12

They got here early.

I accidentally the whole Cerebus.
http://pics.campl.us/f/6/634f717a4fa988b6b5392e4961922706.jpg

hmm forks I'd buy Jaka's Story and Melmoth off you maybe

the phone books? Sure, make me an offer and hit me up!

surely Mordy had time to dig into Church & State while ILX was down...?

I did! I'm almost done volume 2. If I've neglected to post about it it's bc I'm too busy reading to write.

It's so good tho. And once I compose my thoughts...

i just got cbzs of the entire series on my ipad and am starting from issue one. I never read past guys! very curious to see how the series ends.

Rick's Story is very good but that's as far as I've been willing to go

forks, I'm halfway tempted once the holidays are done to hit you up for all yr biweekly reprints...

go for it! I need to clear shelf space badly.
I'd go 50 cents an issue plus postage if you were gonna buy the whole shmear

ooooh.. forty-odd bucks??? that's tempting

errrr, well by whole shmear i meant 1 through 202!

so more like 145 or so for the series with extras and postage

forks did you get my email about Jaka's Story/Melmoth...? I'll happily buy those off you once I get paid at the end of the month...

yup, i wrote you back!

gotcha thx

so church + state ii is, for the bulk of it, the weakest of high society + the church + states, but holy shit does it end with a bang or what

seems like church & state II is the first one where the pace REALLY slows down for a major chunk of it. up to that point the action's all pretty briskly paced. (prepare for a completely different change in tone for Jaka's Story btw)

to say nothing of melmoth

i'll keep reading for now (i have jaka's story to read even tho c+s2 seems like a natural place to stop) but i'm skeptical that it'll ever hit the high points of hs + c+s1 again.

you are correct to be skeptical imo
but there are other qualities to be appreciated as the game goes on

Jaka´s Story is as good though completely different.

I looove the first Ascension...Sim mars, I think, the actual ascension sequence pretty badly with all the prose and wtf Flaming Carrot stuff, but the Secret Sacred Wars, the confrontation w/ Astoria in the prison cell, and then the stuff on the moon with the Judge was all really fascinating to me. I read both the C&S volumes before I read the first two phonebooks, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

is the Flaming Carrot appearance the only time Sim actively collaborated with another artist on Cerebus proper

within the actual book or in general?
Off the top of my head, he did cerebus in TMNT and a collabo with eisner in the spirit
and a bunch of other little things

Incl. an early issue of Spawn

Swords of Cerebus backup features -- Joe Rubenstein inked a Diamondback story, Barry Windsow-Smith drew a "Cerebus Dreams" 4-pager. Gene Day on "What Happened Between 20 & 21"

within the actual book or in general?

I mean within the actual book

(also excluding Gerhard obvy)

hmm, I guess the Carrot is the only time then

there were some collabos with outside artists in the backup pieces in the book but nothing else i can think of that was strict "canon"
the burden xover was definitely weird and even weirder now that the whole book is finished; total Sim fiat

Jaka's Story was the first I read, and loved it.
Promptly bought all previous phonebooks, liked them, but didn't feel they captured the same things I liked about JS.
So I stopped reading after finished C+S2 and rereading JS. Was I wrong? Should I dive back in?

there is definitely good stuff after JS (I am partial to Guys and Rick's Story), but it really depends on how fascinated you are with the world Sim's created and/or how interested you are in seeing what a trainwreck he became. as a stylist, I think his powers only increased over time... by the time you get to Guys it's clear you're reading someone who has a very unique and unusual mastery of the medium.

also I asked this upthread and it never got answered (I haven't even read Reads) unrelated question - is the Viktor that Rick refers to in Rick's Story meant to be the same mysognist-reads-author Viktor from Reads...?

I always assumed it was the same Viktor, yes.

I'm one of the people who thinks if you stick with it Sim just gets better and better. Guys is my absolute favourite, but Going Home runs it close. And Latter Days, if you're in the right frame of mind, is brilliant. The reveal had me in genuine tears when I read it in floppies and is maybe the most moved I've ever been by literature.

other collabos w/ Cerebus proper: Rick Veitch lettering himself in Guys

other collabos w/ Cerebus other: The Face On The Barroom Floor in Eddie Campbell's Bacchus #1, all of Cerebus Jam

(also excluding Gerhard obvy)

worth noting that Gerhard writes and draws one character in one issue of Latter Days

Victor Davis, Viktor Davis, and Rick's Viktor are all meant to be "different characters" the same way Oscar and Sebastien are iirc

one issue of Flaming Carrot has a single panel by Sim, a reaction shot of Cerebus smoking a bubble pipe* and saying "Mr Geepus, the cleaner?"**

*/** details may be inaccurately remembered

didn't he show up in normalman as well? i may be misremembering

i always wondered what would've happened if he coulda struck an usagi yojimbo style deal with eastman and laird so that cerebus would've shown up in the cartoons and had action figures and be in the cultural subconscious in that very odd plastic way and then kids would pick up reads and go oh yeah i remember this from saturday morning cartoons and then MISOGYNY

cartoons and had action figures and be in the cultural subconscious in that very odd plastic way

http://www.crazyabouttv.com/ImagesTwo/alf.jpg

lol

okay, i've been reading this straight through for about a week or two now and just got to form and void having never gotten past "guys" previously.
this shit somehow got MORE solipsistic, huh?
it's interesting. And I am definitely skipping all the text.

that reminds me I need to send you some $$$ for Jaka's Story/Melmoth

in Sim's favor, i sat down to read last night at around 10 and when i looked up it was 1am

Mordy have you started Jaka's Story yet...?

Only read the first ten pages or so... So far

just finished the whole run.
you know how when you have a dog and it's awesome at first and then it finally gets to be like a cool dog and then it gets older and it's like "hey remember when that dog was great but now it just smells a lot?" and then it becomes a cool old dog for awhile, like the dog that just has seen it all and wants to hang and then it gets REALLY bad and then dies?
yeah, like that.

A+

shaky, i've been chasing my own tail but will mail jaka and melmoth out on Monday to you.

thx!

excellent dog analogy

I just realized that Sim perfectly fits that rock star/comedian archetype that was "better" when they were on drugs

and before they found God/AA/etc

It's so good tho. And once I compose my thoughts...

still curious to hear read these btw

Guys, we need to chip in and make this happen:

High Society, the digital version

Commentary! Dave Sim reads the balloons to you! Church & State could be next!

I'm poor some I'm going for the no memorabilia $15 donation. But if you have a house he'll come for a weekend and paint a Cerebus mural on your wall! Only $10,000.

"CEREBUS, as if I need to say so, is still to comic books what Hydrogen is to the Periodic Table and is still one of the only comics that I still read and enjoy regularly every month."

Alan Moore "Dialogue: FROM HELL" (June 1997)

lol

this fucken guy

From what I've seen of Cerebus TV, nothing could make the books less fun than having him act them out.

Exactly. I can only imagine how tone deaf the commentary will be. I do feel it's a bit like enabling an old drunk but he makes me laugh. At him, usually, but sometimes I'll take my laughs however I can get 'em.

Is he raising for charity or is he running out of dough himself?

If I had to guess, it's the latter. I think Dave's buyback of Gerhard's 40% share of AV has been an ongoing financial strain, and I can't see Glamourpuss making the house payment.

From what I've seen of Cerebus TV, nothing could make the books less fun than having him act them out.

pre-stroke Dave doing it would be a bigger enticement, to be sure

(June 1997)

tbf the book did have another 90-odd months of coming out monthly after that

pre-stroke Dave

say what now?

I don't believe this is going to help with the house payment either.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51fn78db7QL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

this guy is such a disaster in so many ways

"the collected letters and faxes"

I don't believe this is going to help with the house payment either.

that's an Alston and Denis Kitchen joint, Sim's not involved at all (he's unopposed to it though)

say what now?

his speech seems slower and his humour, both spoken and written, way more ponderous these days.

as in Kitchen has been touting that for ten years or so, or possibly since they actually broke up.

his speech seems slower and his humour, both spoken and written, way more ponderous these days.

I agree, but I can't quite make the leap to "Dave's had a stroke."

oh right right - yeah I totally diagnosed him over the internet with my imaginary medical degree, but not from that: he wrote somewhere, maybe in his Blog & Mail, about having clouded thoughts and loss of vision on one side, and one arm being paralysed, and how increasing his prayers over several weeks had gradually lessened these symptoms to the point where he was able to perform regular functions again, and that the effectiveness of this treatment proved correct his initial assumption that he had been possessed by a demon. He says possession, you say po-tah-toe, I say transient ischaemic attack, let's call the whole thing off.

Oh, ok, I didn't know about that stuff.

That Last Girlfriend cover would make an incredible t-shirt.

Who the fuck would read that book?

I would! I am sadly susceptible to relationship-car-crash-gossipy-misery-drama.

Having said that I would definitely read a precis of the juiciest bits.

By the way, he met his kickstarter goal in 9-hours.

He says possession, you say po-tah-toe, I say transient ischaemic attack, let's call the whole thing off.

I lol'd

even tho that is really sad

My understanding is that he has suffered from some degree of schizophrenia since before even starting Cerebus*; that event cited a few posts up really does sound stroke-ish though.

*I cannot cite my source but it was a believable one. The extraordinary power with which Rick's Story is rendered seems to speak of experience as well.

I do think it's a tragedy how dude's brain became filled with garbage, primarily because it has led to widespread disregard of the entirety of his work... I mean, there's a good 150 or so issues of his book that ought to be bedrock canon shit.

i thought the journal's lengthy assessment of Sin was kinda dead on... i read the entire run this year and it's a roller coaster... it's canon, just immensely tricky canon.

None of the younger cartoonists I know (like even the generation right after mine, maybe born ~1975) have ever even read it or considered reading it.

Was that Tim Krieder's essay in TCJ?

I was born in 78 - guess that makes me quite young for a Sim fan?

I've read cerebus and was born in 81

*I cannot cite my source but it was a believable one

Sim himself, writing in the text pages of Cerebus, is my source on this.

is this different from the acid freakout/hospitalization episode...?

77 myself

i was born in '85 and i have read a good forty to sixty percent of erebus

is this different from the acid freakout/hospitalization episode...?

he wrote in the late 90s or early 00s that he'd been diagnosed borderline schizophrenic in the hospital on this occasion, and as he'd never sought any treatment since, assumed he would now be more than borderline.

He certainly captures what I imagine it would feel like to be schizophrenic on the comic page a fair few times.

I wonder if people like Ger and Deni and Bob Burden and such ever think "I am fucking lucky to be alive."

uh that's more than a bit extreme imo

Yeah, probably. I wonder it anyway.

So obviously my generational theory has big holes in it.

he wrote in the late 90s or early 00s that he'd been diagnosed borderline schizophrenic in the hospital on this occasion, and as he'd never sought any treatment since, assumed he would now be more than borderline.

That's interesting. Was he writing about an incident that took on the cusp of his monotheistic conversion or something from when we was younger?

eh I'd take any late 70s/early 80s off-the-cuff medical diagnoses of a guy on tons of acid with several very large grains of salt. but who knows really.

That's interesting. Was he writing about an incident that took on the cusp of his monotheistic conversion or something from when we was younger?

The acid / hospital incident was 1979, as Shakey notes. I'd be pretty sure the "so I guess doctors would probably think I'm properly schizo now" reflection was before the end of Rick's Story, as after he wrote himself messianic/monotheistic over the course of that year, he's eschewed even the potential validity of medical diagnoses, believing all physical illness to be a symptom of imperfect faith or demonic interference.

(I thiiink he pretty much avoided doctors as much as possible, if not 100%, between the sectioning and the conversion, though, due to profound resentment over the former. He specifically avoided any further consultation on mental health because however his brain worked, it was tied into his creativity, and he didn't want to do anything to disrupt the way he understood that.)

[^ all AFAIR]

The right author could pen a hugely fascinating biography of the guy. Though no way should he ever be allowed to write an autobiography.

Well, in a sense...

I'm born 75 and have read all of Cerebus, btw - though I'm at this point unwilling to undergo close questioning about the Torah sections of Latter Days.

I love the old books but must admit I need to skip every time Fleagle, Beagle, Elrod or Mick'n'Keef turn up. Which even in the good books, is a LOT.

C'mon, the first encounter with Mick n Keef halfway up the mountain made of demon eads n skuws is gold.

groucho is the best character for sure. there's something about the way that sims takes this satire of politics and then treats it deadly serious w/ a huge amount of details that is just unparalleled. like duck soup never takes the politics it is satirizing as seriously as Sims does, and the suggestion that the whole Marx aesthetic is not just a mockery but actually a legitimate political stance is sorta weirdly brilliant. as if Duck Soup is just another way to play the game, and a particularly effective one in a nihilistic world

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_67-TqYVlwYk/S_RWe5_nB5I/AAAAAAAAABA/DoAi8RATDjk/s1600/sims33.jpg

http://www.nndb.com/people/848/000110518/david-wm-sims.jpg

a couple of really good overviews of Sim/Cerebus here

have to admit I agree w/Mordy about Lord Julius. all that material is so great - it's absolutely true to the spirit and tenor of Groucho but then takes it to ludicrous "what if Groucho REALLY ran a country" extremes

groucho is the best character for sure. there's something about the way that sims takes this satire of politics and then treats it deadly serious w/ a huge amount of details that is just unparalleled. like duck soup never takes the politics it is satirizing as seriously as Sims does, and the suggestion that the whole Marx aesthetic is not just a mockery but actually a legitimate political stance is sorta weirdly brilliant. as if Duck Soup is just another way to play the game, and a particularly effective one in a nihilistic world

OTM. And yet, I feel like Sim's virtuoso use of parody runs second (a distant second of course) to his social/political self-immolation as a deterrent to readers feeling their way through the 80s alterna corpus in the present day. For better or worse, that stuff looks corny as fuck to ppl now. Like, I have had friends tell me 'yeah, I tried to read it, but groucho marx and the rolling stones and just no.'

To me personally, the only Sim parodies I hate from his prime years are the Secret Wars ones.

Stated another way, I think readers have more trouble navigating that 'but how can this be an intelligent and worthy serialized narrative with all these parodies in it' question today than they used to. It just didn't seem that odd at the time, and of course early literary novels were full of parody...

it's an idiosyncratic work, but i found it very approachable as a reader.

Did you make it through all the volumes, Mordy?

ok, that's legit. i made it through the first 5.

You can make it up to 11 before things go truly wacko, though 2-5 is the classic streak.

HS and C&S I + II were just so good that it was hard to believe he'd reach those heights again

Rick's Story is p remarkable of the ones you haven't read. I remember being disappointed with Melmoth. I think Reads is where I gave up my badge.

I'd plough on for a bit, lots of great stuff still to come. The first two volumes of Mothers & Daughters quite deliberately recall the excitement of Church & State, but with even more assured draughtsmanship.

It's been mentioned before, but even as Sim's storytelling gets increasingly, er, idosyncratic, his technical skills do nothing but improve. There's still a hell of a lot of joy to be derived from even the strangest of the later volumes on that front,

his art definitely improves. by the time he hits Guys he's operating at a virtually unmatched level of mastery

Yeah, he's up there with Eisner, Moebius and Kirby.

If not quite Herge.

Very true. His control over the material becomes a wonder in itself. Argh!!! Most frustrating auteur since Wagner?

looking at that cbr piece and i vaguely remember the AV Club interview (i loaded it up on my browser to take another look at it), but i can imagine why after writing Cerebus, Sims might've been frustrated by the kinds of vague questions he was getting. it's a work that does a lot, and tries a lot of things, and is packed full of ideas, so to get the kind of lazy questions that AV Club asked might've rankled him. i mean, if he were a savvier PR person he wouldn't have let that get in the way of talking about his work, and god knows artists talk to interviewers all the time who haven't done a significant amount of hw. idk, i think that what i'm suggesting is that sims is writing for such a small audience in terms of educational level, cultural references, political + religious ideology, etc, that maybe he is fated to be constantly disappointed by his readership

like:

"I don't 'feel.' If I 'felt,' I would never have gotten the book done. I'd be off 'feeling' somewhere. My best intellectual assessment of the completed work is that I said exactly what I wanted to say, exactly the way I wanted to say it

i am kinda sympathetic to this idea that sometimes in art you just want to say something specific and the work goes into fully realizing what you want to say through your chosen medium. every artist probably should think about how his/her work is received by an audience, but doesn't every artist have to decide to what extent they're willing to alienate a large group of ppl to get an ideal audience that can better understand the nuances of the work. idk, this is something i think about a lot, and i certainly understand the frustration surrounding it.

is it better to create something that you think is perfect but that only one person (or maybe even no one) can access, or to create something negotiated where maybe it doesn't take the ideal form, but that lots of people can enjoy. and where do you draw that line? (of course this is maybe a disputable view of how art works, but i think maybe one Sims would project)

Speaking for myself I am usually unable to adjust the size/density of that interface between the reader and my comic by myself. I have to have my trusted reader-friends and publishers editors etc. I always think I'm being accessibly idiosyncratic at the time, when too often I'm being extremely idiosyncratic. I mean I can see it when I look at the work after a couple of years but by then the thing is published. Thank god for friends, editors and publishers.

actually, that's a little unfair of me re av club interview. now that i reread it av club does get some interesting stuff out of sims, even if it lacks a specificity that would suggest a deep familiarity with the work xxp

Mordy, it's just "Sim"

The thing about dave is that dave is unhinged by any standard.

oh yeah, thanks. i don't know how that misspelling crept in

can u imagine tho finishing a work as long, involved and varied as cerebus and then getting interviewed by someone who gives no indication they've actually read any of it? like, they're good interview questions, but they're the kind of questions that if a student asked them in a literature class, i'd wonder if they had read the material.

that may be so, but that "felt/feelings" exchange, for example, really is just Sim venting his bizarre obsessions (feelings = feminine = BAD)

oh, for sure. and he's a lunatic. i just understand some of his lunacy.

well yeah, but i could say the same thing about the columbine kids

bad comparison. forget i said that.

LOL

xxxxp thanks for the link, Shakey. I'm starting a reread this evening

that piece references Sim's subsequent reversal of the cosmology presented at the end of Church and State (which I was unaware of). how does that work exactly...? men are actually the soul-sucking, uncreative voids? idgi

Yeah, he talks about (I think, from memory) in Letters To The President during the Latter Days era. But at the moment I can't remember how he changes his opinion - I am in a cider funk tbh.

The cosmology presented at the end of C&S is something along the lines of 'vulgar masculinity constantly rapes female purity' iirc.

Oh! Just leafing through C&S 2 now and originally the Light was female and the Void was male!

Anyone in this thread ever read John Myers Myers' Silverlock? Always wondered if Sim had ever run across it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverlock for the curious

Hmm, that's interesting. I can't think of an earlier example of historiographic metafiction + ensemble cast. Still, I doubt it was a direct influence on Sim; I feel like everybody and their dog read "Ragtime" and that's a more likely precedent

duh that's right! I was misremembering C&S2. I guess it's in "Reads" (which I haven't read?) that the "women = voids" idea is introduced?

I don't know if I've mentioned this elsewhere but the over-sized, crew-cut Cerebus of Latter Days was based on Ariel Sharon. I had been mulling over for years what the battle-scarred military veteran and largely inexplicable survivor and even more largely inexplicable over-achiever that Cerebus was going to be would look like and then there he was, Ariel Sharon in a news photo from the late 1990s. Sheer appetite run amok to virtual cartoon-like obesity but still not a guy you would even dream of taking a poke at if you saw him in a bar. Hey! Just like Cerebus! The sort of fellow who could pretty much single-handedly start an Intifada just by strolling up to the Temple Mount to have himself a little look-see. Hey! Just like Cerebus! I was and still am a big admirer of Sharon in spite of all his self-evident flaws (his personal and self-admitted culpability in the prison camp massacre in Lebanon – only Sharon could cause a prison camp massacre by just sitting still and doing nothing) (Hey! Just like Cerebus!) as I tend to be a big admirer of all the Jewish Warriors of the first "THIS Year in Jerusalem" generation who fought their way out of the corner ropes with every rabbit punch, eye gouge, right cross and left hook they could cobble together out of cast-off French military equipment, God-fearing bravado and genuine heroism. The history of the Jewish state from 1948 to 1967, to me, is living proof of what the Jews can accomplish when they align themselves with God and how irretrievably stupid it is for non-Jews to try to get in the way of that.

The history of the Jewish state from 1948 to 1967, to me, is living proof of what the Jews can accomplish when they align themselves with God the West.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44975000/jpg/_44975680_ben_elton_1990_466bbc.jpg

holy shit tho, he's otm w/ that comparison xxp

Just finished a re-read of 1-5 and I'm plunging onward, having never before read past Jaka's Story. Really, really impressed on second reading, and I feel that with Jaka's Story, Dave Sim hit his stride. Such a great stand-alone, I'd recommend to anybody

agreed but woo boy things get wonky beyond there

I am OK with this. OK, here we go.

You'll be absolutely fine for a few more, just don't bother with the text sections in Reads, unless you enjoy getting alternatively bored, confused and riled up.

Aww, Melmoth was nice last night. Terribly sad to read, after how luminous his portrayal of Oscar was in Jaka's Story.

has anybody seen that collection of essays about Cerebus...? I was flipping through it and have to admit I was tempted to buy it. At the very least I'm glad it exists, this is the kind of work that just dies for heavy textual analysis.

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1335038629l/13610614.jpg

I had no idea about that, I would totally read it.

Yeah I bought it a while ago and it's very good although I'd suggest the writer stretches slightly too far for his concepts and never completes them.

which writer