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Not to flog myself, but I did a piece on CEREBUS when it ended for the Village Voice. You can read it here:
http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0413,hendrix,52244,10.html
Funnily enough, I had a fax exchange with Dave Sim during the writing of this article and what I really wanted to publish was the article with blow-by-blow commentary by Sim inserted parenthetically. He thought it was a fun idea and agreed to participate. The Voice was not amused when I turned that in and so the more traditional article that you see on that link is what ran. Sim was not amused and let me know so, via fax.
In case anyone's interested, here's the original article with Sim's comments in brackets (they were supposed to be in bold but I don't know how to do that here:
CEREBUS 1977-2004
published by Aardvark Vanaheim Inc.
Dave Sim's Cerebus, is the longest-running, self-published comic book ever. Over its 25 years, Sim has found God, and has become a pariah in the field for his views. He also believes that the world is controlled by the Marxist-feminist axis. We asked him to respond to this article about Cerebus, which ended its run this March. He also took the time to correct our grammar. As Sim says, “Given that feminism continues its steady march to universal hegemony, I see it as a first priority of the free-minded to adhere to the rules of spelling and grammar which they first learned…” so that was nice of him. Sim's comments are in brackets.
One of the most ambitious literary projects of the last 25 years came to an end this March and you probably don't even know its name: Cerebus. It's a comic book about a talking aardvark, whose creator seems to have slowly gone insane somewhere over the course of its 6000 pages. [[Sim laughs] I'll agree that it's an either/or proposition - either feminists are clinically insane or anti-feminists are clinically insane.] But it is, ultimately, something of a masterpiece. [“Something of a masterpiece.” Reminds me of Ringo saying he'd like to end up “sort of unforgettable.” Hope it works out for me as well as it did for him.]
In 1977, creator Dave Sim made the improbable announcement that his comic book, Cerebus, would run for 300 issues and that he would write, draw, and publish it himself. [Off by two years. Cerebus started in 1977 but it was in 1979 that I set the 300-issue goal. And, at that time, my then wife - now ex-wife - Deni was the publisher.] All of the comic books which have previously reached 300 issues (Batman, Superman, Spider-man) have been corporate franchises produced over decades by literally dozens of writers, pencillers and inkers; no one has ever self-published more than a few dozen issues, especially not while writing and drawing every issue themselves. The book's dizzying whirl of high concepts, low humor, narrative gusto, and exquisite draftsmanship attracted critical praise and a devoted following almost from the start. [Actually I would categorize that as a feminist revisionism: the book has been pretty much ignored from day one except for the occasional piece in Rolling Stone, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Village Voice way back in the 1980's - I'll appeal directly to the reader: have you ever heard of Cerebus?]. Initially a parody of Conan the Barbarian-style fantasy kitsch, Cerebus soon mutated into one of the more complex works of modern fiction. Powered by Sim's fascination with how the world actually works - his election satire, “High Society” is the last word on political skullduggery - the book saw its one-dimensional stock characters rapidly mature into complicated examples of flawed humanity.
Cerebus the Aardvark became Prime Minister in a rigged election; wrote his memoirs; got married; became a hateful Pope in an attack on organized religion; sat catatonic for hundreds of pages; fought the law; and traveled through the solar system (all the way out to Pluto). Kept in print as 16 “phone book sized” graphic novels, the series juggled multiple plotlines, interwove real-life and fictional figures (Oscar Wilde and Keith Richards rubbed elbows with Cerebus and Co.), and became a high water mark for serialization as an art form. But the book's scope (300 issues, dead or alive) was both its greatest strength and its greatest liability.
At the conclusion of issue #200, Cerebus ended his traumatic encounter with a fascist matriarchy in a schizophrenic tour de force as he and Dave Sim fell out (“Why are you such an unappealing character?” “Why do you write me that way?”). [I'd maintain that “fascist matriarchy” is redundant.] In a perfect ending, the two took a postmodern parting of ways, leaving a broken Cerebus face down in the slowly settling dust. [Has anyone ever come up with an actual definition for the term “postmodern” yet? Or are we still just using it as a “kissing to be clever” placeholder in feminist sentences? Actually I “came back” and “got” Cerebus at the end of “Mothers & Daughters”, after leaving him to stew in his own juices on Pluto for a while. I'm not that sadistic. And he did explicitly ask me to “leave him alone”.]
In the course of “Mothers & Daughters” - both in the book itself and in the editorial pages - Sim made it clear that he believes that we live in a feminist totalitarian state and readers left in droves. The last two thousand pages have been driven by its creator's deeply personal preoccupations (“Latter Days”, the penultimate storyline, devoted one hundred and forty-four pages to commentaries on the first thirty-eight chapters of the Book of Genesis), and his religious faith (a homemade blend of fundamentalist Christianity, Islam, and Judaism). [In the sense that my faith is scripture-based, I would agree with that. “Homemade” is at least an improvement on “cobbled together” which is what I got in the last feminist publication.] Sim found his religion while writing Cerebus, and his uncompromising beliefs have become a whip driving his readers away, and his fictional creations down convoluted passages intended to make theological points. Vexingly, the last hundred issues have also seen Sim and his collaborator (the mysterious Gerhard, who does the backgrounds) hone their visual technique to unparalleled expressive heights. With its dense layers of lettering, literary allusion, and internal logic, one page of Cerebus requires -- and rewards -- migraine-inducing concentration. [That sounds pretty rewarding. Makes it worth putting those layers in.]
Cerebus is a comic book through and through, but its complexity, ambiguity and sophistication alienate it from the comic book market. In a novel, Sim's third act exploration of his religious faith would have been a strength, but in a comic book it was a buzz kill. And so the end of Cerebus came not with a cover story in the New York Review of Books, but with a gentle clack as Sim and Gerhard laid down their pencils, and with a quiet rustle as its dwindling, devoted readership closed the last pages of the last issue of this confounding epic masterpiece. [A cover story in the New York Review of Books? C'mon, feminism doesn't work like that. You don't ignore a creative work for twenty-six years and then put it on the cover of the New York Review of Books. That would cause serious FWT: Feminist Whiplash Trauma. Let's start with the Voice and, you know, work our way up, eh?] |
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