Has Cerebus Finished Yet?

(also see the realisation that most of the Grunge kids didn't have a second note, which was surprising for some reason)

I think Sim's problem is specific to him: he's just fucking insane. Annoyingly he "still has it", though he discards it in favour of terrible rubbish. There was a spell about two years ago starting with Cerebus trying to kill himself that was funny and readable and had great characters, but after a while you look around, and realise that 200 years have passed in the last 10 issues, and everyone else in the series is stone dead.

Cerebus was my favourite comic for quite some time in my early/mid-teens, in fact I still keep all my issues and a few of the trade paperbacks on my bookshelf. I'm not entirely sure why. I remember feeling this very earnest dedication to the series around 1993 or so (during the 'Reads' arc) and swore to myself that I'd be there until the end (despite the fact that I knew I would be in my early/mid-twenties when it finished). Sim really lost me sometime around 1996/1997 ... GAH!

I think the Cerebus letters page was a fascinating pre-cursor to things like ILx ...

So is the series actually over? I should walk by the comic shop on my way home.

I think the Cerebus letters page was a fascinating pre-cursor to things like ILx ...

I think it was more like a post-cursor to Usenet, without the quality control. (hahahaha oh dear jesus)

Is that some subliminal anti-Canadian shit going on?

To quote Douglas Wolk, someone of the last years issues have been "the first thing he's done that's not simply mindbendingly annoying but literally unreadable."

Leee: I think a lot of people (myself included) love Bone, but in a sort of "I remember I love this, but I don't understand what's happening in any current issue that I pick up". He really did pick the worst time to take a year out.

And it's true: Sim DOES still "have it," in terms of sheer cartooning genius. (And apparently Gerhard actually quit last year, briefly, and was induced to stick around for the ending.) But Sim also appears to be so far off the rails at this point that he's simply ignoring all the set-up he once put together for a satisfactory conclusion to the whole story--it's just sort of dribbling to a close. I mean, who knows, maybe we'll find out all about Sir Gerrik etc. by the end of 300, but I'm not counting on it.

As to Cerebus.....

I think he only dropped the ball with the recent biblical reinterpretations, when his prejudices finally unbalanced the storyline. I'm with Douglas on the tent issue of Going Home, but I don't agree the storyline fell apart after that point - the last, Lockout issue is phenomenal.

So most of the main characters are now dead. I doubt Sim had EVERYTHING planned (he seems to have a rough roadmap he improvises around a lot) but I bet he did plan that. It's what happens when you get older. Expecting a conventionally "satisfying" ending, with all the loose ends nicely knotted is foolish in a comic designed to reflect one individual's life. Most lives are a mess of unresolved plotlines and unanswered questions and I'm guessing that's what Sim is aiming to reflect. Sir Gerrik is a case in point: I'm sure I read somewhere that Sim intended him as a decoy - seemingly significant but ultimately inconsequential. Like a lot of people.

As to Sim's "misogyny," neither I nor anyone else on this board know enough about his *actual* relations with women to make an informed judgement. His views certainly qualify him as sexist, but there's a big difference, in my world anyway, between having questionable attitudes and actively demeaning, belittling and abusing women.Unless you're trying to tell me a few interminable rants in a relatively unknown comic book are a serious threat to women everywhere. Especially when they're just a more literate take on what you can hear in most pubs on a Saturday night, given greater weight because they're written down. As to Sim's mental state, the hallmark of insanity is an inability to recognise the absurdity of your views in relation to other people; Sim seems perfectly aware he's a lone voice in the wilderness, so dismissing him as crazy strikes me as lazy also.

Even unfinished, Cerebus is a staggering achievement. Perhaps the ending will disappoint, but sexist or no, the man can write (and draw). Not forgetting that he's done what he set out to do, without compromise.

And there aren't people who can say that.

the thing is, I avoid sexist pricks who rant about women down the pub, and I also avoid comics full of the same kind of shite.

he's still as charming as always.

watch him rail against marxist-feminists!

How did he sigh over a fax?

I just wanted to say, in regards to points made above about Sim always going on about comics having to come out on a regular schedule. I totally call bullshit on that. The few comics that really really are that good can come out whenever they damn well please and people will be waiting. Eightball, Acme Novelty Library, Love and Rockets, Black Hole etc. Now, it helps that the last issue of Eightball was a singular story, but the three David Boring issues came out VERY spaced apart and people waited. Then it was months(years?) before the most recent Eightball came out and in everything from hip comic stores to the Virgin Megastore it was treated more like "hey there's a new book" by Clowes out, on display, and I think it did well. I bought 2 copies. Not for bagging, but for sharing.l

has any artist ever squandered their gift more dramatically than Dave Sim

I thought of sic's description of Cerebus In Hell, "that's funny and ridiculous and almost like something Sim would do but a little too ridiculous to be believable". So......huh.

In any field, or just comics? Frank Miller comes to mind. Al Capp. People who just don't have their wigs screwed down tight enough and can't relate to the world as it actually exists.

How long a sustained career of good work can we expect of an artist before we can start laughing and pointing at their late failures? Not everybody can be Will Eisner or Duke Ellington.

xp

u rate Al Capp

but I was just speaking generally, no need to restrict it to comics. The vast gulf between Sim's skills, potential, and groundbreaking accomplishments and his subsequent decline, ostracism, etc. seems p extreme - oddly Oscar Wilde is maybe a good point of comparison, but even Wilde still retained a bit of his artistry post-prison, Sim's seems to have entirely evaporated.

sim actually continued improving as an artist (and especially as a letterer) right up through the end of cerebus. but yeah everything after (based on what i've seen) makes it look like his talent evaporated right after he sent issue 300 to the printer.

oh yeah his talent is definitely evident in the latter books even as it thematically spirals out of control. but post-Cerebus his work is positively abysmal.

makes it look like his talent evaporated right after he sent issue 300 to the printer.

It died alone, unmourned and unloved.

(I liked the what I saw of the Alex Raymond/photorealism stuff in glamourpuss.)

i rate al capp! dude was an important cartoonist! just lost the culture eventually.

idk Capp wouldn't even make my top 10 newspaper strip cartoonists

it's probably easier to think of the long-running cartoonists who *didnt* lose it. tezuka? frank king? moebius? (admittedly I'm less familiar with the ends of their careers than their peaks.) i'd have a hard time even making a case for 90s schulz, those last few eisner graphic novels, kirby's post fourth world stuff, etc. of course sim, capp, miller and others bring the dubious political ideas and/or general insanity into the mix.

it'll be interesting to see which of the post-underground crew never really fall off. beto and jaime seem like the only sure bets at this point.

Bagge's been p consistently good as noted upthread by sic. I find Clowes unbearable these days, although more for just his general outlook/interests than any actual drop-off in skillz.

it's probably easier to think of the long-running cartoonists who *didnt* lose it.

and it's not just losing the proverbial "it" I'm referring to here, it's the total career self-immolation, to the point where its so extreme his peaks aren't even acknowledged/recognized outside of a small cult

I mean it seems entirely likely he will end up as an obscure footnote rather than a pioneering giant

still doing better than wendy and richard pini

Yeah, the closest comparison that comes to mind is Wyndham Lewis: a brilliant technician and innovator whose career and sensibility were finally strangled by his reactionary paranoia and hateful fixations.

didn't lose it: trondheim. cc beck. curt swan?

Whether 'it' is your thing or not, Chris Ware arguably still has 'it'.

Oh, and goddamn Woodring, of course.

larson and watterson stepped back before the precipice. Patrick McDonnell has held steady i guess?

i wish woodring would do less fine art work and more stories.

John Porcellino never lost it, I'd say, although he's much more of a miniaturist than most of the artists people are citing here.

lewis is a good comparison.

there was this insane 50,000 word essay online circa 2009 where a guy who'd read up through church and state as it was coming out went back and read the whole series beginning to end. it was one of the saddest things I've ever read, like a guy discovering his favorite junior high teacher had gone on to join a white power group.

xxpost He put out three new books in recent years. He's easily more prolific than Clowes (which I know isn't saying a lot).

woodring! definitely. i think ware keeps getting better actually but of course he's incredibly divisive.

Nor did Carla Speed McNeill, whose formal ambitions seem closer to Sim's.

Xxxp

Ware's schtick is so well-defined I feel like it will never change, for better or for worse, the guy is set in stone

i can't really read ware's work anymore but i appreciate him as a craftsman and someone who indelibly changed the field.

this conversation overlooks people who were just (or primarily) comic writers of course and that's probably a whole other thread.

I feel like his Building Stories work is a little more emotionally varied than his earlier work, although it's certainly not much more hopeful, and I don't think his formal strategies have entirely hardened into mannerism (look at the treatment of narrative time and perspective in Lint, for example).
Xp

I love Rick Veitch but I never read that last thing he did, which seems (unless it was black satire, which is entirely possible with Veitch) to suggest that he may sadly be straying into Sim territory.

I'm with the Comics Journal - wouldn't put Sim anywhere near the top hundred all-time cartoonists. Think WmC's Al Capp comparison is v on point - solid cartooning craft in the service of increasingly impenetrable satire (who remembers who Bill Marks is, these days? etc) and increasingly unhinged depictionS of women/human beings in general. The female void stuff feels akin to hate speech to me, and makes supporting NEW Sim product now no different for me from buying the new Swans alb - ie something I find too distasteful to contemplate.

As Gil Kane said abt a nasty letter from Alex Toth - nice lettering, tho'.

(And yes, I think the Alex Raymond stuff looks well done - even if Sim can't really match Raymond as a draughtsman - and is a good subject to be explored by someone of Sim's clearly obsessive mind. But the thought of Sim's holocaust comic, or those disturbing, sexualised drawings of objectified women in Glamourpuss, gives me the creeps).

it's probably easier to think of the long-running cartoonists who *didnt* lose it.

Crumb leaps to mind - as an artist alone, he's only got better and better the older he's got (and the problematic sexual politics in his work at least feels like a byproduct of absolute honesty rather than paranoid delusion.)

The period from New Gods to Devil Dinosaur is absolutely my fave Kirby period, one that only improves with age.

veitch is a 9/11 truther isn't he? that was a bummer.

Yeah, if his last project is actually a reflection of his views.

Crumb is still incredible imo, that masterful technique and his acute self-awareness excuses a lot

but I was just speaking generally, no need to restrict it to comics.

That question always makes me think of Rod Stewart — the first time I ever read a criticism of someone that went "never has a __________ with so much talent squandered that talent so completely" it was about Stewart. Funny to think of 35 years later.

john byrne lost it pretty dramatically, although not on the greek tragedy scale of sim

the first time I ever read a criticism of someone that went "never has a __________ with so much talent squandered that talent so completely" it was about Stewart

this is Lester Bangs' line iirc and was what I had in mind w my original post so yes

^^Actually Greil Marcus, in his Stewart essay in the Rolling Stone History of Rock'n'Roll.

ah right maybe Bangs just quotes it? I can't remember

thx!

Yes - the first book of music writing I ever bought. xp

Not everybody can be Will Eisner or Duke Ellington.

Eisner's sixty years of solo work = two good books, dozens of mostly cringeworthy melodrama, and decades of squandering.

I'm happy that Beto is following the paths that make him artistically happy, but does anyone expect to re-read any of his books from the last decade or so?

Exemplar of heroin and loud rock music Chester Brown hasn't declined in any way yet. His personal politics becoming more niche has directed his interests as a writer, but he's very clearheaded about both the politics and how they blinker him, and that he redevelops an aesthetic for each work makes him an interesting and vibrant artist.

Love Beto but I haven't been able to keep up with his output in recent years. What I have kept up with has been good but some of the rest (like the Fritz film adaptations) seems kinda slight.

What is Veitch's latest thing?

I've made this case before: even acknowledging the possibility of a decline in health/drawing ability, Ditko's decline is a tough pill to swallow. The good stuff since the mid 70s is pretty scant and the majority is extremely repetitive and boring. Like he rejected most of the things that made him good and strangled his muse.

Rick Veitch's latest is a 9/11 truther story, at least on the face of it. I really should give it a chance, because he is genuinely one of my all-time favorite comics people, and nothing he's done before has suggested that he's a nut. He seems fairly self-aware regarding the controversy, and he has done a lot of satire previously, so there's a decent chance it isn't quite what it seems.

the first book of music writing I ever bought

me too! the source of many received-wisdom ideas I carried for so many years

imo Joe Sacco is only getting better over the years

I find Ditko's didactic material of recent decades far more interesting than (the little I've seen of) his '70s and '80s adventure work

It is for the most part, in a way but it still gets really tedious most of the time. Stuff like Static, Mocker and Safest Place In The World are a real chore. In "All Mine" from Strange Avenging Tales, he shows that he could still do beautiful stuff if he wanted to.