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Cerebus Question : help me save/spend money

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11:08 / 27.03.03

Hi, wonder if any of you can help me out.

I used to read Cerebus on a monthly basis – however, back around the end of the ‘Church and State’ storyline I had to stop for money reasons. Or was it that I discovered dating ? The two may be connected. Whatever.

Anyway, as the series is close to its end (say whatcha like about Dave Sim – and I’ll get to that – he’s done what he said he wanted to do), I was wondering if people who’re still reading it, or have read it after issue 120 or whatever when I stopped, would recommend catching up with it.

Part of the reason why I’m reluctant is because of the stuff I’ve come across – interviews, the debate between Dave and Alan Moore, and so on – which suggests Dave’s sexual politics have veered towards outright misogyny.
I always enjoyed Cerebus – it’s one of the few comics that’s made me laugh out loud – but if Sim’s personal politics (which I’ve found pretty unpleasant from what little I’ve read) have swamped the story to an overwhelming extent, then maybe it’d be best if I stayed well away. But if not, maybe I should start buying the ‘phonebook’ collections and see what I think.

So, any current/past readers out there care to comment ? Thanks..

21:17 / 27.03.03

I've never read Cerberus and wanted to start. Then he started with that "Homosexualist" shite.

I will not give that man money. I don't care if I am missing out, he's a fucker and I won't contribute to his income.

Same reason I won't buy any Chuck Dixon stuff.

21:43 / 27.03.03

I think Dave often phrases his arguments in a way that prevents himself being understood, much less accepted. Personal, sexual and spiritual changes aside, I think they guy's biggest problem is that he's become more verbose over the years, to the point where I often find reading his tracts quite a chore.

Cerebus, the book, has suffered from this, though it's still got enough going for it that I soldier on. his ability to capture dialect is unsurpassed - I can only imagine the guy with a little tape deck, endlessly replaying a snippet of sound, trying to figure out who to represent it on the page. Of course, his dedication to that has hurt the book, as well.

I don't think Dave is a misogynist. I think he's dead set against many concepts that are tightly integrated into our current, basic set of social rules. To a great extent, he's reacting against an enforced, hadicapped feminism - handicapped in the sense that a social fixture like political correctness serves to artificially skew the balance of power towards women, when feminism was supposed to generate equality, not a partiarchy/matriarchy reversal.

This is my interpretation of his ideas, mind you. I'm staying out of this.

But taking possible hatred of women into account, what I find difficult to reconcile is that Jaka remains the most compelling, fully realized woman in comics and that in nearly every relation with her Cerebus is in a very non-sypathetic manner proven to be nothing more than an incapable facsimile of an emotional shell - exactly the sort of creature many would make Sim out to be.

I keep reading for precisely this reason. I can't wait to see how it turns out - assuming that Dave doesn't get hit by the long-feared bus - and at some point I'm hoping that I'll have the fortitude to sit down and read a decade worth of Dave's increasingly lengthy back page rants.

Oh, and yeah - sometimes it's still funny.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

23:09 / 27.03.03

Amen, Vid. I still read Cerebus monthly and think it's well worth it. Dave's personal beliefs are just that. Just as it's the right, naturally, of anyone to decide that for that reason they do not wish to support him. All that just might be a moot point as it looks like Dave's missed his deadline and 289, I think, has been resolicited. So now there's even more fuel for the anti-Sim fire. I expect to see all the TCJ boards smothered in good cheer. I don't wish to get involved in this any more than Viddie, but I have to say that if you shift focus from the Male and Female part of his argument (at least in the fated 182) and focus on the more significant (and focused on) Emotion versus Reason and then turn on the television you'll see he's pretty much dead on. ("How did you FEEL when your son left for his tour of duty?" "Mr. President, do you REGRET the loss of life that this war is going to cause?" etc, etc).

As for as the story goes, it is and always will be a fantastic piece of work. Check out the latest issue (and last for a while, probably) where he deftly links Spiegleman's iconography with Woody Allen's public persona. The man just hasn't stopped being good, and he hasn't stopped taking chances either, right or wrong.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

02:34 / 28.03.03

I would pick up the trades through "Rick's Story" which was the last thing of his I could read. I agree that Jaka is one of the best realized female characters in comics, and I also agree that Dave has kind of lost his grip on reality lately.

And I think it is because he spends every day in a world of his own creation, with very little interaction with people. As I re-read his stuff, it's becomes quite easy for me to see in his writing when he pretty much quit going to conventions, talking to people, and having friends around his house. The art got better, but the stories turned too far inward.

The Natural Way

08:28 / 28.03.03

Vid?

'I think Dave often phrases his arguments in a way that prevents himself being understood, much less accepted.'

Sheeeit, man, stop being such an apologist. The guy IS a misogynist. All that essentialist crap about how the woman IS the void and the void is animalistic...blah. The homosexualist/feminist axis... It's pure fuckin' Will Gull. God, Dave, follow the link I am 25 posted on the 'comics for intelligent 24 yr olds' thread, and you'll see.

Back to Vid: I really need you to explain to me what you think I'm not getting here.

14:14 / 28.03.03

That's just it. As soon as he spews out that Axis shite, every single reader automatically tunes their perception to 'misogynist'. Same with the whole 'void' thing. What?!? Void? Woman is NOTHING? That bastard!

I think Dave believes in a highly stylized, idealized (to him) vision of the differences between genders. To him, Woman is Emotion and Man is Reason - the old 'age of enlightenment' trick.

While this doesn't make him any less full of shit, it doesn't make him a misogynist.

As far as I'm concerned, his extreme viewpoints place Cerebus on the essential reading list, rather than on the List Of People I Will Ignore Because I Don't Agree With Them. While Sim's text compositions use an often impenetrable construction to create a sense of unshakable confidence, his real work - the comic - shows a something else. Taking Cerebus as avatar, Sim is a confused, self -doubting and -hating little animal who's had all his assumptions about the world and himself blown away, and is in a constant state of re-definition as a result.

Of course, someone's going to come back, psychology textbook in hand, and say that those are all the classic characteristics of a misogynist.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:49 / 28.03.03

Well, the classic characteristic of a misogynist tends to be hating women.

If Sim hates women, he is a misogynist. If Sim does not hate women, he is not a misogynist. Pretty simple stuff.

what Sim does appoear to be from my limited exposure to his editorial work is slightly dim, and in need of some psychosexual counselling. He reminds me a lot of Ruskin. I thought Elrod was funny, though.

15:11 / 28.03.03

On the simple level of is it worth reading- i enjoyed everything up to the end of "guys" Ofter that its less enjoyable but still interesting - Sim's idiosyncratic narratives are creating comics in a way that no one else is at the moment. How much you enjoy his narratives are entirely down to the individual reader.

By the by i've started a new thread over yonder to cover the personal politics of comics creators and how (if at all) it effects the reader and the work.

The Natural Way

16:24 / 28.03.03

Vid, I didn't stop reading after the homo/fem axis stuff..... I've read it all. And, well, if he doesn't hate women he certainly doesn't like them very much. He characterises women as the enemy all over the place, and he clearly believes the male "rational" energy to be superior to the female.

And what was that shit about his poor, fucking secretary?

Sim's *hatred* is impossible to measure, but the VITRIOL that's all over the place.

16:25 / 28.03.03

Yes, Haus, we've all got a handle on the definition, thanks very much.

Now, while you pore over back issues to determine whether or not Sim has ever, in Arial Block type, printed the phrase 'yes, I hate women' the rest of the class will go back to arguing over interpretations of his work which suggest he is or is not (as accused) a misogynist.

Which isn't even the topic at hand, really.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:33 / 28.03.03

Well, no. You aren't doing that. You are stating your opinion, and then adding that actually, it's his (Sim's) controversial beliefs that make Cerebus interesting. If Sim is a misogynist. Which he isn't. But even if he was. It's a big whoop thing.

Also, of course, I said that hating women was what a misogynist does, not what a misogynist says he is doing, and...oh, why am I bothering? I'm going to get more sense out of my refrigerator.

Hello, refrigerator. Would you like a hot drink? No, sorry. Stupid question.

The Natural Way

16:35 / 28.03.03

http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html

Whatever. I can't be fucked to debate this either. If this stuff doesn't convince you with all its "the female void...blah", then you CAN'T be convinced.

He actually refers to women as "the female void"...Jesus...

He describes the Wife and Kids as the no 1 waste of energy in "our degraded culture". He sees a fucking conspriracy everywhere...

FUCKED.

17:49 / 28.03.03

Haus: I'm thirsty. Can you get me something while you're up? Tea would be fine, thanks.

Runce: Thanks for the link. I'd forgotten some of the ways in which Sim contradicts himself - discussion of the fathers of the American Constitution followed by "Male Light does not Merge," for example.

But reading this again, it's funny to even be bothered by the question, when the origin of his thoughts is so obvious. Knowing that Sim was in one failed marriage (also a business partnership) followed by a lenghty, ultimately failed second romance pretty much fills in all the blanks, doesn't it?

I also remember, looking at this again, that when all the Light/Void Man/Woman nouns are removed, I agree with quite a lot of Sim's points, specifically in the discussion of the cultural importance of feeling versus thought. In this respect, is western society really any different now than it was 150 years ago? I don't know. Is it the fault of the Wife and Kids, Feminism and the Axis? Unlikely. But remove the question of matriarchy/patriarchy and his description of the Western Cultural Situation is quite accurrate.

He sees a fucking conspriracy everywhere...
In this way, how does Sim differ from Morrison?

Oh, wait, you're not listening, are you? Righto. So, Haus' fridge, what do you think about all this? What do you feel?

Back to Haus: I do think it is currently his beliefs which make Sim and Cerebus interesting, regardless of his hatred/non-hatred. He's the current manifestation of Crumb. There is little else in the book these days besides his beliefs - the story we used to call Cerebus is now The Dave Sim Puppet Show, for better or worse.

The Natural Way

13:23 / 29.03.03

What conspiracy does Morrison see everywhere? The one Jack tells us doesn't exist on the last page of the Invisibles?

Vid, quite aside from the fact that I don't agree with Sim's opinions post-noun (I mean, what is all this angry shit about the Wife and Kids and how western society privileges emotion over intellect? Etc...), I think you can't get away from the fact that describing a woman as "the female void" is a fucked up thing to do. The act itself is weird and worrying, and then add to that the fact that he seems to be on some strange, essentialist trip where women's default setting is not only emotion, but emotion of the weepiest, self-centred kind.

The Natural Way

13:32 / 29.03.03

This is all special stuff. I really agree with his opinions. If only you take away the nouns:

'Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn't stand a chance in an argument with Emotion... this was the fundamental reason, I believe, that women were denied the vote for so long'

'Behind this...lies the Greater Void, the Omnivorous Engine which drives every... institutionalised waste of human time and energy, which drives, in point of fact, our entire degraded society. The wife and kids.'

'In one of those Poor Us studies for which the Emotional Female Void is notorious, it was pointed out that after a divorce, the average male standard of living rises... the average female standard of living drops... I think the...explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six- foot leech from the surface of a human body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry.'

'The Male Light and the Female Void: Seminal Energy and Omnivorous Parasite.'

'If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point.'

How could anyone disagree with this man's core opinions? I mean, really...

13:38 / 29.03.03

Yeah, Runce, but you've got to consider the context.

When the cops raid Dave's home and starting pulling human remains out of the crawlspace, his fans are going to say that all those dead bodies need to be considered in thir proper context—cos it's ironic, see?

13:40 / 29.03.03

Oh, and Dave? The word to be avoided in your initial post would be "who're."

14:37 / 29.03.03

The first quote you presented there, Runce, is the core of Dave's opinion - that reason doesn't stand a chance in an argument with emotion. The associations linked to reason and emotion are just Sim's own psychosexual window dressing. Half of your question ("What is this angry shit about...how western society privileges emotion over intellect?) I'd have to reverse and throw back to you. How is that not apparent?

That statement, free of gender assignments, is accurate. While the fact that humans are emotional rather than rational beings at their core may well render that core argument moot, it's still a justifiable one.

Jack - naw, Dave's not gonna kill anybody, because he's religious now, y'see? Apparently he's turned to the Word as replacement for every other version of human contact. The guy even sold his stereo for chrissakes. That's a lot more fucked up than the whole 'female void' thing.

And no one who reads The Word every kills anyone, right?

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

14:50 / 29.03.03

Obviously, if you're subtracting the nouns and then agreeing with his points, you're agreeing with an entirely different set of points. But, seeing as how this is pretty much where I stand as far as consideration of his politics, I still think that's a valid position, considering the way he's laid out his arguments. Until he writes some kind of scientific treatise linting the female chromosome to emotion, his discussion of Male vs. Female is simply a question of labels. Beneath those labels are incontrovertible facts. You can never say all males think one way and all females think the other (and this is precisely what Dave says many times to his detriment), however it's clear what drives the reactions of Emotion-Based people and Reason-Based people in modern western society, and also who's winning. The US Government is using this to its incredible advantage by dismissing the FACTS of this war and releasing information and making links (9/11, terrorism), that get Americans MAD.

Although Dave's past has caused these arguments to get caught up in incorrect labels, the fundamental arguments, at least in Reads, are still wholly valid. Of course, in recent times, Dave has allowed those labels to take over. And it's almost parodically evident in Chasing Yhwh, as it is labels and labels only that are the driving logic behind ALL of Cerebus' biblical commentary. He's taken the two names of God and turned them into two (actually, um, four, but that's a much longer story. Just open up a recent issue of Cerebus and you'll see how long.) completely seperate entities. Based solely on their labels.

But as far as his Wife and Kids viewpoint goes, having your own child when there are THOUSANDS of homeless and orphaned kids world wide is pretty much the most self-centered thing, for whatever reason, anyone could possibly do. It strikes me, granted I'm someone who has little to no desire for kids of my own, as less an inclination to bring up a good life in a field of shitty people, but rather a need to see a cute miniature you that you can hopefully watch avoid making the mistakes you did.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

14:52 / 29.03.03

Wow, Vid. We wrote, like, the same thing at the same time. That's some papal chamber shit, huh?

(Hee hee! Cerebus insider joke!)

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

18:50 / 29.03.03

He describes the Wife and Kids as the no 1 waste of energy in "our degraded culture".

joining the party late here, but this seems to be kind of fight club rhetoric "maybe another woman isnt what we need" and suchlike.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:51 / 30.03.03

The idea that emotion is privileged over reason in society is such a fuinny thing to take as inarguable...Sim, who is apparently unable to express rationally his emotions of resentment, anger and disgust towards women in general and ex-wives in particular, is clearly being emotional rather than rational, and yet is getting less respect than he did before he started emoting like a lunatic all over the place..

12:12 / 01.04.03

Hmm, thanks for your various contributions there, though I'll freely admit I'm still undecided... maybe I should get 'Jaka's story' and see what I think of that, and go on from there.

And Jack : you are very much correct. Bravo.

14:37 / 01.04.03

How abut discussing the quality of the work? For example, I have (and love) all of the Cerebus paperbacks except for the last one that came out (with the Hemingway stuff). I've found that while I love the first 9 paperbacks, the quality started to get a little thin towards the more recent stuff (I mean the more recent paperback stuff).

I got tired of the 'Cerebus always jealous about whoever likes Jaka' storyline and likewise tired of the Cerebus/Jaka relationship stuff, which more and more started to echo Sim's "women are always a pain in the ass and are sent to drive you insane" stuff.

I found his "F. Stop Fitzgerald" story arc not all that interesting, since we'd already seen the 'some artsy guy chases Jaka while Cerebus looks on pissed off' story before, and all his literary references and footnotes seemed to me to be Sim's attempt to say "Look! I can be just like Alan Moore and have long footnotes with obscure literary references? See? See? I'm brilliant too!" His footnotes were not nearly as interesting as Moore's in FROM HELL.

I skimmed the latest paperback (with Hemingway) and I thought "Geez, what is this? Sim is just going through his favorite authors and doing a huge story with each about Cerebus, Jaka, and the author of choice? These triangles get old pretty fast." Between significant drop in quality of the story and Sim's real-life rantings, I decided to forego my collection of the paperbacks for the time being, at least until the story gets back on track. All the political and larger stuff is gone, now it's just Cerebus & Jaka traveling around as Sim goes off on authors and shows triangles with people wanting Jaka as Cerebus steams with anger. Yawn.

That's my two cents on this.

22:29 / 17.04.03

I was interested in Cerebus until I saw this thread.
Mission Accomplished?

22:33 / 17.04.03

It just occured to me that Warren Ellis is no differnet with his one track "all men of religion are con-men" shit he goes on about in every single thing he writes. It was funny the first time around but it gets on my nerves how all his priests are child molesters or greedy malicious bastards. I can respect his point of view but he doesn't respect anyone else's. From what I've read about how different is Ellis from Sim?

The Natural Way

09:38 / 18.04.03

Well...women are more, err...widespread than priests. And are harder to single out as representing a specific viewpoint that you disagree with. Not saying Ellis is cool or clever (he's neither), just sayin' is all.

21:08 / 09.11.03

Warren Ellis is cool. He writes comic books for a living, and that's super-cool.

18:48 / 10.11.03

OK, back to topic and not about Warren Ellis: how are the last 2 Cerebus trade paperbacks (the ones after GOING HOME)? Any good? Anyone?

18:59 / 10.11.03

I confess that I got lost somewhere during 'Going Home'. Kept buying the issues but all of the fuck'n "Hamfast Ernestway" stuff just washed over me. I couldn't bring myself to care. What's worse is that Sim stole this notion from Moore's 'From Hell' that it's all cool to have an enormous appendix where you discuss the text in a very technical way and go over all your references and research. But while I found the appendices not only a fascinating but also a central part of From Hell, I just found the appendices to Going Home to be a quagmire of invective, floundering desperately for a direction.

With "Latter Days", Sim seemed to get back on track, starting with 'This Aardvark, This Shepherd', a one-shot funny story where Cerebus takes work as a hired hand on a farm. For a while, Cerebus seems to be drifting through the years and Sim gets back to some of his older jokes and things look good. But pretty soon he gets kidnapped by the Three Stooges and locked in a Church for ages while they read the gospel over and over. Then Woody Allen shows up and he and Cerebus discuss Scripture at great length in tiny little 4 point font that makes your eyes bleed. The story is now on "The Last Day". Cerebus is a very old Aardvark and is either talking directly to God/Tarim or totally whack-a-doody. I skim the issues when I get them, looking for a gag panel, a letter from Michael Mooney, another Sim letter promising to throw down with Jeff Smith. But generally all there is is long editorials about Islam.

Alone, unmourned, and unloved.

My current working opinion is that Cerebus #'s 1-200 are worth collecting and 201-300 are not.

19:01 / 10.11.03

For more on Sim's bullshit, check out Andrew Rilstone's
Davewatch. It's mind-boggling stuff.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

20:26 / 10.11.03

If you check out the Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman it reprints the entire conversation Dave Sim had with Alan moore after From Hell came out. This is the relatively sane Dave Sim. But it has an introduction by Dave Sim circa 2003. It is amazing to compare and contrast to see how barking mad Sim now is.

10:00 / 11.11.03

Houdini, thanks for that 'dividing line' - handy.

And that Davewatch thing is ... well, interesting. Ahem.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:22 / 11.11.03

videodrome on Sim: I think Dave often phrases his arguments in a way that prevents himself being understood, much less accepted.... I don't think Dave is a misogynist.

Sim on why men shouldn't play golf against women (from the above link): "There isn’t enough m money in the world to overcome the resulting humiliation of knowingly competing against… inherently, self-evidently, inferior beings."

Uh-huh. The bit just below that about dating teenage girls because later they become "hard, adversarial and masculine" is even better.

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