![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllBlack Plastic tonight, which is for the best as this week I have verged on the reclusive. Well, OK, there was pub quiz, and Bright Club (complete with Cockney singalong, a giant bedbug and Robin Ince being ace), and some time spent in the 41st millennium (albeit less than planned). But mainly I have been doing two things: applying for jobs, and finishing Cerebus. Now, if you don't know Cerebus, it was a comic which started back in the seventies as a parody of Barry Windsor-Smith's Conan adaptations (as loved by President Obama), the joke being that the warrior hero Cerebus was a three-foot tall talking aardvark. Except at some stage, creator Dave Sim decided that he could take this further, so he announced that there would be 300 monthly issues of this, following Cerebus' entire life (which turned out to be something like 300 years long, but we'll come to that). So first Cerebus became Prime Minister, then Pope, in two stories which at the time were probably as sophisticated as comics had ever got. Sim had his hobby horses (who doesn't?), but he was a very good writer, an even better artist, and probably the best letterer comics has ever seen. Nobody else can make dialogue ring true like Sim lettering can, which is why I'll try to keep direct quotes to a minimum here because without the lettering, they just look wrong.
And then he stripped it all back for the small-scale, domestic Jaka's Story, still reckoned by some to be the series' high-point, and certainly a beautiful, haunting story which - even in isolation - can stand comparison with the best comics has to offer on the theme of lost love, and which far outclasses the sort of middlebrow dreck on the subject that wins Bookers, Oscars &c.
And then...well, it's not entirely fair, but the quickest way to say it is that then Dave Sim got religion. Which in this case even more than most, pretty much equates to going mad. He started talking about the male light and the female void. A gay friend of mine - who's also a bigger Dave Sim fan than I am - reckons that the basic problem was Sim universalising. He was engaged on this massive creative project and he found relationships getting in the way. Being a straight male, he thought the problem was women, rather than relationships (and even then, it's not all relationships, just those with unsympathetic types who are neither muses nor creatives themselves). Which seems fair to me, but Sim, while he'd made this initial mistake, then built towering edifices upon it, in the manner of an old christian philosopher. It was wrong, but still hugley impressive.
Thenceforth, Cerebus meandered back and forth, ever more idiosyncratic, always with moments of brilliance (the examination of male pub culture in Guys is the only Cerebus I've ever seen in a library, and it deserves that; the fictionalised biography of Hemingway I could have lived without, but it at least gave me more reasons for my gut hatred of him) until its final volume where...I gave up.
Imagine that. I'm sure many of you have had something similar with TV shows - Battlestar Galactica is a good example, because that did go off towards the end. You've caught up with the old episodes in collections, then started watching them one by one as they arrive because you can't wait. And then it becomes hard work. And then, for me and Cerebus, it became such hard work that I waited seven years to read the final episodes.
It started out well enough - Cerebus, at one of his low ebbs, becomes a shepherd for a few years. And I have never seen sheep drawn so well as Sim draws them. Then he becomes a sporting hero for 20-odd years, and this is all in one issue, and done well enough that even my issue with sports isn't a problem. And then the Three Stooges arrive for a few episodes of satire on organised religion. Which is not quite as leftfield as it sounds - the Marx Brothers, Mrs Thatcher, Mick Jagger and Oscar Wilde have all been involved in the story before now. The problem here is, the Three Stooges are rubbish. And that leads in to a Spawn parody which also involves a really quite nasty fantasy sequence about a new order wherein all women generally agreed to be nags are summarily executed. Yes, obviously I know that having something happen in a story does not mean the author approves of it - but when you also compare the Sim-as-Sim essays in the back of the book, where he's talking about the 'feminist-homosexualist axis', calling the BBC and NHS Marxist and saying that SARS was Canada's punishment for not joining in the War on Terror...well, conclusions can be inferred (Sim is Canadian, by the way, not a US Republican - though he does like them, as you can guess). But still, in all this there are moments of genius. One issue consists largely of Cerebus trying to climb up a staircase from a cellar with a broken leg, in the dark. So that's pitch black pages, enlivened only by panel borders and speech/thought bubbles. And it's hilarious and gripping and an absolute masterclass in doing something which ought to be impossible in comics.
After all this, we come to Chasing YHWH. Initially Cerebus' halting commentaries on the Old Testament, trace elements of characterisation are soon falling away, and it's basically Dave Sim explaining to everyone how we're Getting The Bible Wrong. You see, God and YHWH are not the same, nonono. YHWH is the female creation of God who *thinks* she is equal, but is not. And the two of them are having a really messed-up relationship and humanity is the children caught up in the middle (this is not Sim's analysis of the story - to him God is right and all the problems are YHWH's fault - but it's how his analysis reads to me). Oh, and to emphasise the gender, he fills in those missing vowels of YHWH as Yoohwhoo. Yeah.
At this stage, first time around, I gave up. Second time around I thought, sod this, I don't do it often, but it's time to skim. A possibility of which Sim, Cerebus and the the text are aware:
"You're just flipping through the transcripts...People are always asking, what's the MEEANING of life? What does it all MEEEAN? Why are we HEEERE?...Okay. So Cerebus give it to 'em, see? "Here!"...and what's their reaction? "You mean I have to read all this?"
(This delivered to the Woody Allen analogue who is there for Cerebus to monologue at, the artwork being pastiches of his films. Later he has a breakdown and becomes an Art Spiegelman analogue instead. And did I mention that running through this whole book has been a parody of Garth Ennis' Preacher as the superpowered Rabbi? No? Probably for the best, though the final page of the 300 issues still thinks it matters)
Some choice excerpts catch the eye, though: Cain killed Abel because, at Yoohwhoo's instigation, Abel came on to him. A woman is like a penis (breasts = testicles) and the best thing men can do is keep out of the ongoing struggle between the two. Oh, and the Holocaust was revenge for the unwanted sacrifice of taboo animals at the Temple. This last one is particularly shocking given Sim's post-Cerebus work has included the Holocaust educational tract Judenhass which should be in every school in the land, especially religious ones. Again, there remains a chance that what Cerebus is saying is not in fact what Sim thinks - but if so, having all this commentary in the text as an attempt to reveal Cerebus' character merely becomes a flawed artistic choice as opposed to a flawed theological/ethical exercise.
Then, a double issue which is essentially a poem in Biblical form, Sim and Cerebus' adding to the Bible with somethin that ties astrophysics and the development of the foetus and life on the normal scale in with the ultimate fate of the soul. Like the King James Bible, it's hard work to sit down and read the whole thing but there are moments of incredible poetry in there, and some of the artwork is among the best Sim's ever done - which is to say, as good as anyone in comics has ever done.
...all of which was a dream from which Cerebus awakes, and which he must write down. Many years having passed even since those commentaries on the Old Testament, Cerebus is now ancient, and feeling it. The first issue is heartbreaking, Cerebus' body failing him, every mundane task as hard work as his grand barbarian ventures once were. I felt like this when I did my back in and I profoundly hope we sort the technology so that I don't have to feel like this all the time in old age. Worse - he is estranged from his son. He seeks comfort in his faith, even though the religion he founded has become something he no longer recognises. It's terribly, terribly sad.
...so of course it all has to get increasingly sidelined by a bureaucracy satire which has been done better a couple of hundred issues before, and a 'what will those crazy feminist geneticists think of next?' horrorshow.
Was it the ending Cerebus deserved? Not by a long shot. But as an example of occasionally-inspired lunacy in the creative arts, the whole 300-issue run takes some beating. Thank you, Mr Sim.
And, if nothing else, it was so gruelling that I ended up making plenty of job apps because comparatively, they'd become the displacement activity.
And then he stripped it all back for the small-scale, domestic Jaka's Story, still reckoned by some to be the series' high-point, and certainly a beautiful, haunting story which - even in isolation - can stand comparison with the best comics has to offer on the theme of lost love, and which far outclasses the sort of middlebrow dreck on the subject that wins Bookers, Oscars &c.
And then...well, it's not entirely fair, but the quickest way to say it is that then Dave Sim got religion. Which in this case even more than most, pretty much equates to going mad. He started talking about the male light and the female void. A gay friend of mine - who's also a bigger Dave Sim fan than I am - reckons that the basic problem was Sim universalising. He was engaged on this massive creative project and he found relationships getting in the way. Being a straight male, he thought the problem was women, rather than relationships (and even then, it's not all relationships, just those with unsympathetic types who are neither muses nor creatives themselves). Which seems fair to me, but Sim, while he'd made this initial mistake, then built towering edifices upon it, in the manner of an old christian philosopher. It was wrong, but still hugley impressive.
Thenceforth, Cerebus meandered back and forth, ever more idiosyncratic, always with moments of brilliance (the examination of male pub culture in Guys is the only Cerebus I've ever seen in a library, and it deserves that; the fictionalised biography of Hemingway I could have lived without, but it at least gave me more reasons for my gut hatred of him) until its final volume where...I gave up.
Imagine that. I'm sure many of you have had something similar with TV shows - Battlestar Galactica is a good example, because that did go off towards the end. You've caught up with the old episodes in collections, then started watching them one by one as they arrive because you can't wait. And then it becomes hard work. And then, for me and Cerebus, it became such hard work that I waited seven years to read the final episodes.
It started out well enough - Cerebus, at one of his low ebbs, becomes a shepherd for a few years. And I have never seen sheep drawn so well as Sim draws them. Then he becomes a sporting hero for 20-odd years, and this is all in one issue, and done well enough that even my issue with sports isn't a problem. And then the Three Stooges arrive for a few episodes of satire on organised religion. Which is not quite as leftfield as it sounds - the Marx Brothers, Mrs Thatcher, Mick Jagger and Oscar Wilde have all been involved in the story before now. The problem here is, the Three Stooges are rubbish. And that leads in to a Spawn parody which also involves a really quite nasty fantasy sequence about a new order wherein all women generally agreed to be nags are summarily executed. Yes, obviously I know that having something happen in a story does not mean the author approves of it - but when you also compare the Sim-as-Sim essays in the back of the book, where he's talking about the 'feminist-homosexualist axis', calling the BBC and NHS Marxist and saying that SARS was Canada's punishment for not joining in the War on Terror...well, conclusions can be inferred (Sim is Canadian, by the way, not a US Republican - though he does like them, as you can guess). But still, in all this there are moments of genius. One issue consists largely of Cerebus trying to climb up a staircase from a cellar with a broken leg, in the dark. So that's pitch black pages, enlivened only by panel borders and speech/thought bubbles. And it's hilarious and gripping and an absolute masterclass in doing something which ought to be impossible in comics.
After all this, we come to Chasing YHWH. Initially Cerebus' halting commentaries on the Old Testament, trace elements of characterisation are soon falling away, and it's basically Dave Sim explaining to everyone how we're Getting The Bible Wrong. You see, God and YHWH are not the same, nonono. YHWH is the female creation of God who *thinks* she is equal, but is not. And the two of them are having a really messed-up relationship and humanity is the children caught up in the middle (this is not Sim's analysis of the story - to him God is right and all the problems are YHWH's fault - but it's how his analysis reads to me). Oh, and to emphasise the gender, he fills in those missing vowels of YHWH as Yoohwhoo. Yeah.
At this stage, first time around, I gave up. Second time around I thought, sod this, I don't do it often, but it's time to skim. A possibility of which Sim, Cerebus and the the text are aware:
"You're just flipping through the transcripts...People are always asking, what's the MEEANING of life? What does it all MEEEAN? Why are we HEEERE?...Okay. So Cerebus give it to 'em, see? "Here!"...and what's their reaction? "You mean I have to read all this?"
(This delivered to the Woody Allen analogue who is there for Cerebus to monologue at, the artwork being pastiches of his films. Later he has a breakdown and becomes an Art Spiegelman analogue instead. And did I mention that running through this whole book has been a parody of Garth Ennis' Preacher as the superpowered Rabbi? No? Probably for the best, though the final page of the 300 issues still thinks it matters)
Some choice excerpts catch the eye, though: Cain killed Abel because, at Yoohwhoo's instigation, Abel came on to him. A woman is like a penis (breasts = testicles) and the best thing men can do is keep out of the ongoing struggle between the two. Oh, and the Holocaust was revenge for the unwanted sacrifice of taboo animals at the Temple. This last one is particularly shocking given Sim's post-Cerebus work has included the Holocaust educational tract Judenhass which should be in every school in the land, especially religious ones. Again, there remains a chance that what Cerebus is saying is not in fact what Sim thinks - but if so, having all this commentary in the text as an attempt to reveal Cerebus' character merely becomes a flawed artistic choice as opposed to a flawed theological/ethical exercise.
Then, a double issue which is essentially a poem in Biblical form, Sim and Cerebus' adding to the Bible with somethin that ties astrophysics and the development of the foetus and life on the normal scale in with the ultimate fate of the soul. Like the King James Bible, it's hard work to sit down and read the whole thing but there are moments of incredible poetry in there, and some of the artwork is among the best Sim's ever done - which is to say, as good as anyone in comics has ever done.
...all of which was a dream from which Cerebus awakes, and which he must write down. Many years having passed even since those commentaries on the Old Testament, Cerebus is now ancient, and feeling it. The first issue is heartbreaking, Cerebus' body failing him, every mundane task as hard work as his grand barbarian ventures once were. I felt like this when I did my back in and I profoundly hope we sort the technology so that I don't have to feel like this all the time in old age. Worse - he is estranged from his son. He seeks comfort in his faith, even though the religion he founded has become something he no longer recognises. It's terribly, terribly sad.
...so of course it all has to get increasingly sidelined by a bureaucracy satire which has been done better a couple of hundred issues before, and a 'what will those crazy feminist geneticists think of next?' horrorshow.
Was it the ending Cerebus deserved? Not by a long shot. But as an example of occasionally-inspired lunacy in the creative arts, the whole 300-issue run takes some beating. Thank you, Mr Sim.
And, if nothing else, it was so gruelling that I ended up making plenty of job apps because comparatively, they'd become the displacement activity.
