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

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