Unlike previous “I Am Reading” threads (JMS’ Spider-Man run, Ultimate X-Men, Bruce Jones’ Hulk run, Annihilation, Silver Age Marvel), reading Cerebus will not be a first time experience for me. I’ve read it before (though I confess that I finally bailed out during Latter Days, somewhere around issue 260-275 or so). There will be no real surprises for me, just. Still, as one of the single greatest comic reading experiences I’ve ever had, and one of the medium’s most monumental, amazing and impressive efforts, it has been on my “re-read that!” list from the moment I stopped reading in the first place.

And so with that, I recently pulled down the self-titled first volume off the shelf and began to re-read the Cerebus saga.

Because these volumes are so thick (often 500-600 pages and made up of 25 or more issues), I’ll probably post my impressions half-a-volume at a time.

For those of you who have read Cerebus and still have your issues/phonebooks, I urge you to read along with me. For those of you who have never read Cerebus, what are you waiting for?

Exactly. If you haven't read some Cerebus then get started! THe earlier volumes are a good place to start, Highly recommend High Society, Church and State (both parts) and Jaka's Story off the top of my head. I will think of more soon.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359086/?tag=imwan-20

Vol. 1 – Cerebus - part one

Okay, so it’s no surprise that over the course of 6,000 pages Cerebus undergoes a lot of changes. What may surprise people who have never seen the earliest issues are just how sweeping those changes are. Cerebus began as something of a parody of those great Barry Windsor-Smith Conan books, Cerebus the hard-nosed aardvark swashbuckler who could take down anyone.

Serious stuff the early days of Cerebus are not.

These early issues are fun and clever, several of them pretty good done-in-one sword n’ sorcery stories. Sim’s writing evokes the wordy work of Roy Thomas, and his art is very primitive when compared to how masterful it would later become. Still, he manages some fine enough page layouts and shows early hints of good page usage. He’s feeling his way around the medium. Nothing compared to what he would do later, but the roots are here.

So, too, are the roots of the entire saga (or at least some of them … the rest come in the second half of this volume). In stories that seem throwaways but which later have significance, we meet Jaka, Red Sophia, Elrod, the Cockroach, and others, hear the name Tarim uttered more than once, and start to see the world built up block by block. The first 12 or so issues of this 25-issue phonebook (I read up through the initial two-part Cockroach story) are not quite as well-realized as later work, but you can very much feel Sim putting the pieces in place. Amazing how he later brought all this stuff together.

You can also see Sim’s art develop by leaps and bounds. In just the first year of the book Cerebus’ look changes dramatically, and so does Sim’s confidence and skill. The maturation continues throughout the rest of this volume, but nowhere is it more evident than in the first 12 issues. HUGE leaps up in quality from issue to issue.

This is great stuff. The first year of Cerebus barely touches on the issues of politics, religion and relationships that would later make Cerebus a highly acclaimed work, instead focusing on swordplay and adventure, but that makes it no less fun. I loved revisiting these issues. I ESPECIALLY loved revisiting them knowing I am seeing, say, Bran Mak Muffin for the first time.

It was been very rewarding to step back into this world.

Good series. The first half is awesome. The other half is on a sliding scale of awesomeness. Down. Way down.

Bill's suggestions are all excellent, but for me, it really went downhill from there, when Sim decided that expressing his misogyny through Cerebus's actions wasn't enough, and he started replacing art pages with prose pages to express his misogyny.

The beginning of "Latter Days" was quite a return to form, with Cerebus back to his baby-throwing-cult-leader roots. The Three Stooges stuff was OK, but the whole Woody Allen thing was absolutely incomprehensible.

The second-last issue ended on a fantastic cliffhanger, then absolutely fizzled out on the first page of the last issue. Which, I suppose, was appropriate.

Prior to reading Reads and the other arcs of Mothers & Daughters, I had asked a few people if the length text entries were an essential part of the story, of if they could be safely skipped. Most agreed that I could skip them, so that's exactly what I did. Later I went back and read the text of issues 182, the atom bomb of Cerebus controversey. Never did read it in the context of the story, though.

Despite the misgivings some have of Mothers & Daughters, I do think a reading up until issue 200 is a worthwhile endeavors. M&D closes the door on lots of stuff from Church & State, and Guys & Rick's Story closes the door on the whole series (in my opinion). Guys & Rick's Story sort of meander and don't go anywhere (literally!), but the end makes the reading worthwhile.

Like I said, though I did not read The Last Day. I finished most of Latter Days (and though Going Home was pretty damn good as an exercise in using the medium, but not as a story), but quite partway through, so my viewpoint is not complete.

And I agree, I was not a fan of placing reams of text in the middle of his stories, especially not when they were just thinly veiled diatribes.

Maybe I will give this series anothe shot.

Do it! I very much encourage you to do so. It's very dense with names and relationships, especially during High Society and Church & State, but when it clicks, the characters really sing, the humor is great, and few people use the medium of comics better than Sim.

Did you try the first volume on your first attempt? It begins in a more traditional fashion. Might be worth starting there.

I was really into Cerebus seven years ago. I had acquired all the phone books up to that point and voraciously read through them. Then I got to issue where
That's when the grossness and the misogyny got too much for me. I immediately had a friend sell my phone books on ebay. I haven't had any desire to look back.

It's a shame because up to that point I really did enjoy the series.

Cerebus remains one of my absolute favorite comic series ever, despite the (justified) criticisms against the later storylines. I did enjoy The Last Day, though.

The first part is pretty good -- I have the stories as the Swords of Cerebus stuff. Lotsa funny stuff. Sim learning to draw. I regret collecting the series as it came out and not just waiting for the collections. I don't want to buy duplicates of this one but I'd rather have it collected - it'd probably be on the handy shelf instead of in the inconvenient boxes if I did. Some nice covers, though.

Yep.

One prose piece rant was bad enough, but I could have shrugged and gone on. He just wouldn't let it go, though.

His opinions weren't just offensive. They were downright nutty.

It's been awhile since I read any of the latter issues. It seems to me, though, that he used to harp on the bit about men being more left-brain oriented (and therefore, more logical) and women being more right-brain oriented (and therefore, more emotional). I think he used to argue that women shouldn't be involved in politics, because it requires left-brain thinking. Of course, by that "logic," men shouldn't create comic books, because that's a right brain activity! (He also good at advancing arguents with loaded words that were obviously designed to provoke an emotional reaction.)

Sometimes, Sim would argue things that were just fault-out proven to be wrong. I think he argued at one point that women were behind atheism (He didn't like atheists.). That, of course, flies in the face of statistical evidence proving that far more men are atheists than women!

If we were scan that most infamous issue, we could all go through it and easily mock Sim's "debating skills." I don't think it's really worth the effort, though.



That drove me nuts, too. I hung on for awhile after #200 and finally couldn't take reading issue after issue of Cerebus just getting drunk in a bar. Enough already! For awhile, the whole point seemed to be "This comic will go to issue #300!" There wasn't really 300 issues worth of story, but I guess that was beside the point.

Ahhh, but I liked many of those stories! For the first time in many, many, many issues, Cerebus again had the humor that had so drawn me in. It got really grim during Melmoth and Mothers & Daughters, so the turn back towards a light-hearted approach, even if not very dynamic, was welcome.

Though I can't deny that things did probably stretch on for too long, and the turn towards religion in Rick's Story could have been less ... I dunno, nutty and full of gospel.

Literally nutty. He admits to being diagnosed as borderline schizophrenic as a kid and not getting any kind of treatment.

I had heard that, and it might explain some things.

At one point, he sent a twenty-page "manifesto" (and I think the word fits) to The Comics Journal. They put it on their web site, along with a disclaimer that it didn't represent the opinions of CJ, etc.

I couldn't read too much of it, but some parts were a little crazy. One of the sections that attracted the most attention was Sim's discussion of how he had given up masturbation.

Vol. 1 – Cerebus - part two

Cerebus hits its stride in a big way in the second half of this volume.

Gone are the done-in-one stories with little to no ties to what came before. The primitive artwork and the action-based adventures are also largely left behind. Now the stories are rooted deeply in character (though for the remainder of this volume the wanderings of Cerebus remain the main narrative push). After Cerebus’ first adventures with the Cockroach, you can see something click with Sim. The first major hints of the politics and religion to come are laid down here, as are our first glimpses of the kind of sprawling narratives he will soon engage in.

With the start of the three-part Palnu storyline, which introduces us to Groucho lookalike Lord Julius, the saga turns into an extended narrative rather than a series of loosely-connected stories. Though still operating only in smaller story arcs – there are two three-issue arcs and several other two-issue arcs here – the stories now lead one right into the other. That makes for a much more satisfying read.

Here, Cerebus gets himself involved in some political intrigue, fails to get rich (again), attempts to go to war, and if eventually left wandering alone in the wilderness, where he comes across a very strange school for girls. The last three issues (the school for girls) are probably the highlight of the volume, though the Palnu arc with Julius is great, too.

(The “Cerebus is drugged” issue? What the hell? Totally out of the blue, and kind of leaves the reader in the dark about what the hell happened and why. I don’t recall if it is later explained. Interesting introduction to Pu, though, who plays a major role later.)

The second half of this volume also introduces an element that will be very relevant for the next 2,000 pages or so – superhero parodies. We’ve got Captain America, Charles Xavier, Swamp Thing and Man Thing parodied in this stretch of stories, with many more to come.

Overall, the first volume of Cerebus does not reach the heights of brilliance High Society, Church & State and Jaka’s Story do, but even this mediocre Cerebus is littered with brilliant moments, great humor, increasingly excellent artwork and wild ideas.

Go get this.

Next up, High Society. I'll do that one in two parts, too.

High Society is where it starts to become truly Cerebus for me.

Yeah, reading the first volume is very much watching the pieces come together. It finally happens in full with High Society. Prior to that, it's still a work coming together. Sim is working things out right before your eyes. He's building up the pieces of his world and creating his cast of characters, but it's not quite fully formed yet.

I do think, however, that any reading of the Cerebus saga should start here rather than with High Society. I feel like the background on who and what the character is is borderline essential to appreciating that first major arc.

But I could be wrong about that. Anyone dive into High Society before reading these earlier stories, and if so, how did it go for you?

While I'm at it, I'll plug one of the longest running and best Cerebus sites out there:

http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/

GAH!! I've just discovered that the volume I just finished reading was reprinted not too long ago with an additional story inserted, 'Silverspoon,' the first appearance of Lord Julius as printed in the Sword of Cerebus #4 reprint volume. In an interview, Sim said he they didn't publicize the insertion because he didn't want people to feel as if they had to go out and buy the phone book all over again.

Sim has been talking about a 17th phone book reprinting the five issues from Cerebus Zero (three stories that take place in between phone books and have otherwise not been reprinted), along with all the back up stories, strips and other Cerebus stuff that didn't make the phone books.

I'd like that.

That would be very nice. I wonder how well those phone book editions sell these days.

Good question. The only number I've ever seen is for Form & Void, which sold about 2,900 copies the month it was released. I'm curious how well these things continue to move, too.

Here is one of those brief backups that have not yet seen reprint. This is cute stuff: