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A few of you have just realized what it is I’m planning on reviewing. Since this one is going to be long as hell, anyone who actually finishes reading it, or whichever part of it you were interested in, I’d really appreciate it if you put a marker “I was here” comment at the furthest post you got to.

So, here I go.

When I started out doing little reviews like this, it was with a single objective in mind, one that applies particularly well here. See, way back when, I’d encountered the first or second real division in anime fandom. The “old schoolers” and the “new schoolers.” The division cropped up because of the first real influx of popularly available anime and manga merchandise in the early 90’s. Suddenly, having an anime collection meant going to Suncoast regularly hoping against hope that another volume of Ranma ½ had come out, not proudly displaying a rack of badly grained color-photocopy-covered bootleg tapes or an ancient laser-disc collections of Maison Ikoku shipped in at great expense. I, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, managed to fall right in between these two groups, and was more than a little surprised to discover the infighting that began between them. The situation made no sense to me, so I sat back and observed it carefully for a year or so before coming up with what I thought was the real issue.

The lack of respect was central to the divide, and there were any number of superficial reasons given for it. The old schoolers were said to dislike the newbies because they hadn’t had to suffer through the trials and travails of the oldsters....hadn’t had to hunt down copies of copies of copies of that one missing episode to their favorite series by swapping tapes across country.... but if you ever bothered to ask them, the old schoolers happily told you that being able to spend a few bucks at the corner store was VASTLY superior to daisy-chaining and wheedling-by-phone with the scariest fan boys you’ve ever met.

The newbies, on the other hand, were supposedly constantly pissed off by the condescension of the old schoolers, putting down their favorite series as “clones” of some antique piece of crap they’d never seen, or dissing their lack of breadth in their collection or their knowledge of the genre..... but if you asked the newbies and offered them some old tapes, they would snatch them outta your hand fast enough to make you count your fingers. They were STARVING for more material, (I should know, I’d been like them two years earlier) the ADD attitude of US fandom driving them nearly insane with the prospect of an entire new medium of fannish obsession, but they didn’t have access to all these series that had populated the fan groups ten or twenty years earlier. (Things have changed now....but I’m not getting into those implications.)

And that’s really all it boiled down to. They hadn’t really seen the things that the other group cherished. And they resented the fact that couldn’t talk to one another about what was supposedly a common hobby.

Having spotted it in anime fandom, I looked elsewhere and found similar problems, greatly amplified, usually in any fandom with a long-established fanbase. In some cases such a position was essentially unassailable. To be part of a particular fandom, you were going to have to go through the whole trial of plumbing the full depths of the “canon” literature to earn your way into the inner circle. You couldn’t be a real, serious “Star Trek: TOS” fan if you’d only seen a half dozen episodes, that’s a given. But in other cases, it struck me as remarkably idiotic the amount of rigmarole that aspiring fans would have to go through just to reach the point where you’d have enough knowledge to understand the setup of the series you’re about to see that represents the very best this corner of fandom has to offer you...... only to discover that you don’t LIKE this crap. Dr. Who is a good example. (Calm down, I love Dr. Who, just gimmie a moment.) No one I know personally ever became a fan of Dr. Who by watching the series from the very beginning. (It helps that I don’t think any but one episode of the first two Doctors has been shown on TV in my region of the US.) Everyone I know that likes Dr. Who was either given a brief outline by a friend, or just caught an episode and puzzled blindly through it.

But, technically, to really, REALLY appreciate.... say..... the perennial favorite fourth Doctor (the one with the scarf) you would have to start all the way back with the very first episode of the very first Doctor so you could discover for yourself how incredibly flamingly BORING “An Unearthly Child” is. My GOD that episode just wouldn’t end. Two solid hours of meagerly defined English characters stumbling around a black-and-white backlot set of plastic trees and Styrofoam rocks discovering that *gasp* they’re in caveman days, and *gasp* that guy in the police-box might not be human after all. It would kill any but the most determined fan’s interest to have to struggle through the mire on those first few episodes. (Hell, chunks of the Dr. Who broadcast master library have been permanently lost, so it’s not even possible to watch everything front-to-back.) What’s really needed to make fans out of interested friends is a bit of hand-holding. Someone who sits there and warns the friend about episodes that are boring crap. “Here, ‘The Ark in Space’ that’s a good one. What you need to know is......”

So I set out to be that friend. People who aren’t normally horror fans, but have heard about “Army of Darkness” and want to know if it’s worth their time. Friends who’ve heard about “Heavy Metal” for years as a head-flick, but aren’t sure if there’s any appeal if you ain’t stoned. And what’s with this “Heavy Metal 2000”?

Besides, I really hate elitist fandom. Someone who judges whether or not you’re a real fan by whether you’ve seen the sixth direct-to-video release of an old sci-fi remake, the height of your Trek slash-fanfic stack, or whether you can fumble through all the political connections implied in Babylon 5 without screwing something up. Well, someone’s got to be here to declare when the Emperor has no clothes, and, more importantly, detail WHY. Most of my reviews are done for people who never intend to see the movie, but are mildly curious enough to read about the film’s best moments. That’s why my first reviews were of Peter Jackson’s _other_ films.... “Meet the Feebles” and “Dead Alive” (“Braindead” in Australia) when The Lord of the Rings first came out. At least knowing what the film’s fans are talking about levels the playing field.

Which brings us to this mammoth review. Because I’m gonna try and attack one of the biggest, most clothes-present-or-not-Emperors in all of fandom. Not in anime. Not even in horror films. But in comics.

A towering figure even if only by the enormity of the work. A great supporting Corinthian column of work. Carved in the shape of an aardvark.

Cerebus the aardvark.

(Goddamn it, I’ve been misspelling that for years.)

Cerebus the aardvark represents one of the most stunning accomplishments in US comics. Possibly in the history of comics worldwide, although my knowledge of manga is limited enough I can’t quite say that.

Cerebus the aardvark is the creation of Dave Sim, possibly the most controversial writer in comics today. I should specify “controversial” here to mean “most thoroughly disliked” since his ideas, when partially understood by his audience, encourage most people to withdraw in repugnance and ignore him and his ideas forever after. When fully understood, they often result in complete strangers throwing heavy objects at him. Thus “controversy” in the traditional sense of “encouraging debate and heated discussion” isn’t really accurate. His politics are....well.....difficult to deal with rationally, as he became more and more confrontational as people recoiled from him or hurled things at him. I often have to snicker when I hear how people are complaining about that “right wing nut” GWB or Rush Limbaugh..... hell, even Pat Buchanan. People have been exposed to fairly mild right-wingers and extreme loony-nutcase left-wingers for so long that their perceptive center has shifted and they don’t even recognize what a right-wing nut is.

Dave Sim is a right-wing nut. Possibly the furthest right-winger I’ve ever encountered who wasn’t honest-to-God insane. And I’m not so sure about that last part. I know two people who’ve met him in person, and they both agreed that he was a complete overbearing asshole.

So what does this have to do with a little Conan funny-animal parody comic named Cerebus? Everything. Sort of.

See, and you’ll have to try very hard to grasp this after what I’ve just said, as I know where most of you who have a bias already lean, Cerebus is absolute genius. Ask anyone. It’s masterful storytelling. It’s hilarious, tragic, human, epic, surreal, complex, vast, snide, clever, metatextual, experimental, unrestricted, and one of the great comic creations of all time. Until you get to the point where Dave Sim goes crazy.

Where that point is depends on who you ask. There will be some mumbling about “anti-feminism,” “zealot,” “misogynistic,” “fundamentalist loon” or possibly “homophobia,” and then it will be said that immediately after some specific point was crossed that there wasn’t anything worthwhile afterwards.

Well, I have one thing to say to that.

Quitters!

Heh. No, really, how could it be that such a beloved series that’d been around for so long could suddenly become worthless? Obviously, because something had been said. Some idea had been declared, some sacred bull had been gored, and an entire segment of fandom had turned away.

I dunno about you, but that made me curious.

As it turned out, not just one sacred bull had been gored. ALL of them had. Left, right, and middle. A book or so from the very end I became convinced that Dave Sim was TRYING to drive fans away, with only the dogged traffic-accident rubberneckers like myself sticking around for the finish.

The finish?

Oh, sorry, that’s rather essential, isn’t it?

Cerebus was conceived as a series that would follow a character through his first inception (not birth, but first real rise to prominence) throughout his life, and end with his death. An ambitious project, but what made it absurd was the scale. Dave wasn’t just aiming for notoriety. He was aiming for the bloody Guinness book. Cerebus was to be a monthly comic that ran for 300 issues. He began in December of 1977.

He just finished this year.

Twenty-seven years. Straight.

Written by Dave Sim.

Drawn by Dave Sim and Gerhard.

That’s all.

Not enough? The fucker SELF-PUBLISHED the vast majority of it.

The word “dedication” doesn’t even come close.

Taking all that into account, nothing else I’m aware of even comes close to the 6,000 + page length, except Lone Wolf and Cub’s near 8,500 pages, and I would argue that, though LWaC is stylistically superior, Cerebus’s actual text (story and execution) is superior. (Although it’s naturally debatable.)

Are you curious yet?

Well, I have the entire run sitting here. (Or I will when I replace the “fuckall knows where it went” book 10 and two issues in the final book) ¾ of it is bound in the trade-paperback phone-books, the rest in loose issues. It completely fills a “short box,” meaning that it’s a large enough chunk-o-tree that it takes a little effort to lift all at once. Practically no one out there has actually read all of Cerebus, and most modern fans won’t be bothered to read something so universally denounced because they weren’t there back when it was being so highly praised. So, as with my “reviews for people who don’t intend to see the movie” this is me, leveling the field. (If you do decide to tackle the whole thing, take this one piece of advice: don’t pace yourself. Cerebus is soo flippin’ big that it’s one of the few creations that you can read and read and read and read for hours at a time and barely make a dent.)

I’ll be going through the story of Cerebus, outlining the events, trying to delve into the deeper meaning, trying to figure out what it was that he was saying, and repeating it, without all of the snide dismissive-ness of those who’ve learned to hate him, and without the knee-jerk confrontational anger and contemptuous venom he, himself presents his arguments with. That said, I have a caveat in the interest of full disclosure, and a warning based on what I know is coming.

I do not share Dave Sim’s opinions. I’m gonna try to be fair in their presentation, but I do think they’re rather hateful and based on some shaky ground. So A) I have a bias against his ideas and will probably reflect that.......but B) do me the courtesy of not mistaking my presentation as agreement. If I reviewed “Birth of a Nation” I hope you wouldn’t think I was a Klan sympathizer. The same principle applies here. I especially wish the ladies in the audience to be clear on this point, as I’ve no desire to dodge heavy books hurled by former friends of mine. If I’ve the energy at the end of this, I may detail the issues more clearly.

I’ll be dividing up this review the same way the work is divided, by book.

So here we go.

Book 1. Issues 1-25, 546 pages.

Book 1 of Cerebus is titled simply “Cerebus” but is usually referred to as “The Barbarian Book.” This is because Cerebus began as a rather thinly disguised parody of the old Conan comics (or possibly the books, I wouldn’t know the difference). Sword and sorcery, honor and valor, sniveling illusionists, fur-bedecked barbarians, chain mail-bikini-wearing swordswomen.... and an aardvark.

The difficulty in summarizing the first book of Cerebus for y’all is that a great deal of characters are introduced here that end up being of various importance as the series progresses, but have little apparent importance at the start. The principle character, naturally, is Cerebus himself, our stand-in for Conan. We’re introduced to him before the model really hardened thoroughly, and the result is a rather crude looking specimen compared to the artistry of later efforts. Nonetheless, the essentials are still there. He carries with him only a little three-horned helmet (two forward-centered, one extending
from the top like a WWI German helmet) three medallions hooked into a necklace, and a sword, usually without a sheath. He’s only about three or four feet (five “hands”) tall, has a long extruded snout like an anteater’s, pig-like ears, a thick, muscular tail, elephantine feet, and is covered with grey fur. What’s more noticeable, though, is that Cerebus is rendered almost flat in these first episodes...without much shading or weight to his figure, while those around him are heavily shaded and inked in the manner of Prince Valliant. The effect emphasizes the cartoony “funny animal” two-dimensional aspects of the character, focusing your attention on him. (Think of the original “Howard the Duck” comics... before the movie.) In fact, it looks almost as though there were two different artists at work here (there aren’t.... Gerhard didn’t arrive until much later. I’ll talk about him later when he joins us in the work. Also, it should be noted that the work is rather rough. Sim does get quite a bit better as the series goes on, and his style really rounds out into excellent artistry about two books from now. Gerhard, when he shows up, is probably the best background drawer in the business alive today, and would stand his ground against most of the dead greats.) Further, Cerebus, like Conan, Tarzan, and all Marvel characters infected with pontific-itius, he has real trouble with personal pronouns.

We start with a depressingly un-ambitious parody piece about Cerebus being hired by some thieves to steal a valuable gem from a local wizard. The parody here is largely tongue-in-cheek, all the characters and the narrator playing it mostly safe, but there are hints of what’s to come, little jokes like the wizard crying out “aw nuts” when Cerebus runs him through, or, when the wizard tries to drug them with poppies, Cerebus thinks to himself “If Cerebus is to be defeated, let it be by sword or sorcery...not by damned petunias!” Essentially, it should be noted that although this is plainly a Conan parody, it’s not a harsh or sarcastic one, just one that pokes fun subtly.

At this point the show could go just about anywhere. There’s some well-rendered action in there, just a touch of comedy, lots of magic.... could be anything from Thor to Conan to Dr. Strange in a medieval era. Things are still a bit up in the air by the next issue, involving a tempting treasure that turns out to be the booby-trap of a demonic succubus. Again, there’s a liberal dose of self-deriding humor tossed in.

Getting bored? I was, a bit. Don’t worry, it picks right up in a sec.

Only a few interesting things are established in that second issue. One is Cerebus’s ruthlessness when, after knocking someone out in a ceremonial duel, he wanders off to find his sword, tromps back, and kills the unconscious guy. Played for laughs, its actually pretty funny. The other is the first mention of “Terim” or “Tarim”. I’m convinced that at this point it was just a random exclamation, but later in the books “Tarim” is established as the monotheistic deity that Cerebus was raised to worship. A bit like the old-testament God, but here it’s got some unexpected parallels to Odin (he’s referred to as “a Northern God” and Cerebus is trying to retrieve the treasure that is “Terim’s Eye”), and the reference to “Clovis” in another declaration makes me think he’s one of many Gods in the religion.

By the time we hit the third issue, the series has completely settled. It transitions from a parody of subtlety to one of out-and-out hilarity with the entrance of “Red Sophia”. Red _Sonia_ was Conan’s red-haired female counterpart in the Conan comics, and, with typical D&D aplomb, had sworn to marry any man who could best her in combat. Red Sophia is essentially the same, right down to the chain-mail-bikini, only ridiculously buxom, and an absolute airhead. It’d be easy for me to say that this negative stereotype is the first sign of Sim’s literary problems with women to come, but it’s not really true. The character is played skillfully for jokes, but nothing more, and Sim really does have a gift for comedic dialogue. He’s got the “annoying girlfriend who just won’t shut up” down perfectly. She accompanies Cerebus on an assassination mission dictated by her father (Henrot... minor character that shows up again later), but is so thoroughly annoying that she ends up attacking him. Cerebus manages to toss her into the bushes by swatting her behind with the flat of his blade..... and she emerges moments later declaring her undying loyalty and affection for him, with Cerebus so astonished he resembled Bone for a few moments.

The comedy really breaks out at this point, and doesn’t go back into hiding for several books, meaning we’re set in a humor-parody-action mold for a while, albeit a very well crafted one. It also means I can start skipping around the issues with more general summaries, since the mood and intent are locked in.

Cerebus eventually gets rid of Sofia by marrying her to his target, gets paid, and heads off to the next adventure. (Note of interest: Cerebus tells Sofia that “...Cerebus always eats meat...”, a statement that doesn’t jive with his taste for raw potatoes everywhere else in the series... Also, somewhere between this issue and the last he looses his helmet and gains a black vest, completing his outfit for a long time to come. Believe it or not, this is very VERY important.)

The very next issue we run into yet another long-term character. Death himself is after Cerebus when Cerebus happens upon a magical gem by chance. To retrieve the gem, Death diverts into his path.....a complete idiot.

Elrod the albino is plainly a parody of the elf Elric of Melnibone, and he shows up repeatedly through the first 2/3 or so of Cerebus. Imagine a character visually based loosely on Elric, but with an utter blowhard of a personality. Essentially you get a tall skinny David-Bowie-lookin’ Foghorn Leghorn. Really. The borrowed speech mannerisms clinch it. (Little known fact: Foghorn Leghorn was based off of a Senator named Klaghorn who actually talked like that.) He too is wandering nobility, carrying a sacred blackened sword..... only his is black with rust, named “Seersucker” not “Stormbringer,” and he manages to shatter it against Cerebus’s sword five panels after its introduction. Elrod promptly gets them both arrested and thrown in the dungeon, from which Cerberus escapes and leaves him behind.

What happens next is extremely important. Cerberus travels west into the Red Marches and becomes a mercenary. During patrol he encounters the native peoples of the Red Marches, the “Pigts” (Picts, professional Empire-topplers by trade), and when they express astonishment at his appearance he is persuaded to visit their leader, Bran MacMuffin, in the complex underground tunnels where they live. (Note: Cerebus’s fur has a legendary stink when wet, so much so that when he climbs into the underground caverns, the occupants think that their cesspool is draining into the air vents.) There, after a bit of intrigue, Cerebus discovers that his coming has fulfilled a prophecy of the Pigts, for they worship at an enormous idol they call “the Redeemer” with an uncanny resemblance to Cerebus. For a time, Cerebus stands and considers the implications, contemplating the possibilities were he to claim kinship to their god. But in the end he determines that he could not be such a figure, and destroys the clay idol with his own hands. He sneaks out of the Pigts’ lair and travels east to Iest. This is the first time we get a glimpse of the scale we’ll be working with, for Cerebus’s status as a god is not wholly misplaced.

But we’ll come to that.

If we ever get through this first book. (Dammit, there’s someone important introduced in every issue!)

In Iest, Cerebus once again stumbles across a piece of interesting information. However, two thugs looking to extract it from him invite him to a local bar with a dancing-girl. The girl’s name is Jaka and will, in time, become the second most important character in the series. The romance that springs up between Cerebus and Jaka is one simultaneously sweet, cartoony, and heart-breakingly tragic, even in the very belly of Dave Sim’s virulent misogyny that is practically personified through her in the latter third of the series.

But that’s later. Right now she’s a rather ill-spoken bit character. Cerebus has no interest in the dancing girl at all until the two thugs slip him some pills to make him more “suggestible” and test them out by directing his attention repeatedly to the dancing girl. As the pills take effect, Cerebus goes directly from disinterested to hopelessly besotted, and the mighty warrior tremblingly approaches her with the only come-on line he can manage “If you wished, Cerebus would kill you a yak for your supper.” She thinks he’s cute, and invites him up to her room. Intrigue and comedy follow, and we discover that the secret Cerebus stumbled upon will lead him to a great stash of gold at a nearby temple. Thoroughly besotted, Cerebus plans to use the gold for their future together.

Until the pills wear off. Remembering nothing, he snubs Jaka and tromps out of the inn. Jaka, tears running down her face, vows to wait for him. Yeah, it’s corny and absurd, but it’s relevant.

Whew....we can finally start moving a little quicker. Cerebus sneaks into the Temple of the Black Sun only to get into an elaborate mix-up with Elrod and someone in a costume attempting to impersonate “The Nameless God of the Black Sun” (another aardvark-looking idol). When he falls victim to an enormous spider in their sacrificial chamber, Cerebus becomes delirious from the spider’s poison, and a strange force apparently emanating from Cerebus destroys the entire tower. In the following delirium, he’s manipulated by a group of revolutionaries called the Connipins (“Might Makes Right! Might for Right! Right for Might! Fight Fight Fight!”) who wish to make Cerebus their war chieftain, replacing the idiot, degenerate coke fiend they’ve got now. Backed into something of a corner, he agrees and gives the troops a rousing speech “Don’t screw it up or Cerebus will have you all flayed alive!” and leads them off to the first of their conquests, the town of Imesh!

Only to discover that someone walled-in the entire city. No doors.

The whole city’s been turned into a locked-economy drug slum by its king K’cor, who is having them all work on building a two-hundred foot statue to scare away the incoming race of Venusians.

Yeah, mad as a hatter.

Cerebus climbs the walls, defeats the king’s champion, gaining the right to rule the city, and contemplates: “So now Cerebus has a city full of drug addicts and an army full of cheerleaders to lead on Iest. If our enemies don’t laugh themselves sick, we might have a chance.” However, K’cor cheated, having poisoned all the wells in the area years ago, meaning that Cerebus’s entire army was killed while he dallied with the king.

Red Sophia shows up for another go-around, only cleverer and conniving this time, Cerebus manages to single-handedly rob a Tcapmain caravan of the purest magic item in the world....a black lotus (Hmmm.....inspiration for the Magic card? I wonder....), and then sells it in Beduin (of lower Feldia) for 100 gp to a merchant who immediately dumps it out a window. The merchant is doing this in a complex, misguided attempt to sway the magic economy. The merchant, however, turns out to be..... dun dun DUNNNN..... The Cockroach!

Hoo boy.

The Cockroach is Dave Sim’s method for ridiculing all of the superhero comics, one hero at a time. He’s an immense, insane, amnesiac, split-personality psycho who reinvents himself with a different origin story every time we meet him. This first time, he’s obviously Batman, charging around the streets with an incredibly puzzled Cerebus shadowing him (“If the merchant is trying to trick Cerebus into leaving his 100 gold unattended, he is an uncanny judge of aardvarks”) Long story short, “Batman” instead of defending the streets from petty crime, runs around mugging complete strangers, accusing them of killing his parents while rifling through their pockets. Since he’s been doing this, he’s accumulated about EIGHT SOLID FEET OF GOLD in a hidden compartment. There’s a few issues as Cerebus tries to puzzle all of the gold out of town, but he eventually settles on coming to “The Cockroach” with his own sob story of being orphaned by criminals.

‘Roach: “I know it’s a painful subject, but can you tell me how your parents died?”
Cerebus: “Mom and dad were circus performers.....acrobats. The red claw cut through their trapeze ropes. The ropes snapped in mid-air and they fell. Then one of the red claw climbed up to the safety net and beat them to death with a club.”

As with so many other things, everything goes to hell in a hand basket when Elrod shows up. The boat Cerebus is using to smuggle the gold out sinks, all the gold falls to the bottom of the river, and Cerebus is swept downstream.(Point of irony: at one point Cerebus says “If Cerebus isn’t careful he’s going to start a whole new religion.” Apt. For reasons that will be evident much later.) Cerebus also looses his sword with the load.

When our aardvark washes up, he is, for the first of many occasions, caught unawares and trussed up. Hoping to throw one problem at another the villagers take him to confront a local crazy wizard: Necross the Mad and his enormous Thing (from the fantastic 4)-like statue “Thrunk”. Necross isn’t actually the villager’s problem, except in the long run, as he’s trying to destroy the universe. (“I think of it as suicide on a rather grander scale.”) When the villagers decide to take a rather more direct route to dealing with Necross, and, instead of praying, wailing, or shining holy symbols at him, just shoot him, he gets transferred into Thrunk. And is immediately trapped. Cerebus wanders off. I wouldn’t have even mentioned this issue, if it wasn’t for the fact that Necross shows up later.

Utterly fed up with Lower Feldia, Cerebus sets out on a ship for the city of Palnu. Along the way he becomes shipwrecked with the whining prince of Palnu, in a parody of “Prince Valliant.” Fortunately, they’re rescued when “daddy” shows up with the troops. Who’s daddy?

Groucho Marx.

Now, I LOVE Groucho Marx. I think he’s the original clever fast-pace charlatan. Next to him, even Bugs Bunny falls flat. And Dave Sim writes him almost perfectly. The only drawback is that “Lord Julius” (Julius was Groucho’s actual name) isn’t in the entire series, though he does tend to pop in at just the right moment. Lord Julius, you see, is in the business of running a Bureaucracy. He wants to give Cerebus a reward for saving his son’s life, so he puts him in charge of Palnu’s security forces. Naturally, since this is a Bureaucracy, he’s given the title “Kitchen Staff Supervisor.” Besides, the secretary of the navy already had the title of “Director of Security Forces.” (You begin to see how this goes.) Cerebus’s job (and new sword’s use) is to make sure no one kills Julius. If someone does, Cerebus is fired. Of course, he’s got no men to command.... you get the idea. Palnu is run very much like Rufus T. Firefly ran Fredonia. (“One of my importers an assassin? Send for the army!” “Wait! Lord Julius, these matters are better handled quietly!” “Send for the army and have their feet wrapped in cotton!”) Cerebus successfully deflects an assassination attempt or two (“Attaboy, he may be taller and stronger than you but remember, you’re shorter and grayer!”) before uncovering their base in a collapsed section of the city that used to be filled with rubble. (“This is an outrage! You mean someone has stolen ten feet of my rubble?”) Fed up with trying to work within Julius’s system, Cerebus extorts eight bags of gold from Julius before dispatching the assassin and gets the hell outta Palnu. As he walks out the door, Julius receives a letter from Julius’s niece.

Jaka. Who’s very interested in meeting this “Kitchen supervisor” that Julius has written her about. But it’s too late, Cerebus has left Palnu.

Only to charge right back in, at the head of an invading army of T’gitan savages led by Colonel Klink.

Skipping over a lot, Cerebus manages the taking of the first Palnu city, tricks an entire merchant caravan out of their cash, and has a run-in with a Red Sophia doppelganger and a very real Henrot while cashing in the treasures to hire more skillful mercenaries, only to fall victim to drugged wine fed to him by a Janice-Joplin look-alike.

“Mind Game,” issue 21, is both one of the funniest issues yet and the first real sign of the genius experimentalism we encounter later. It’s also a little difficult to explain. The issue takes place entirely within Cerebus’s head. Naturally the visuals are extremely abstract, essentially Cerebus standing in a field of black with odd grey shapes splayed across some pages. If you were actually to cut the pages out of the book and sort them out into one big panel, you’d discover the grey stripes are actually an enormous portrait of Cerebus.....standing in a field of black. Why this is appropriate isn’t immediately apparent, and requires more explanation.

The woman who drugged Cerebus was a high-level priestess of a group we’re introduced to called “The Cirinists”. The Cirinists are where we start running into the problems Dave Sim is famous for. The Cirinists are an intensely matriarchal group, worshiping a goddess-figure. They’re essentially a counterpoint to Tarim and the Tarim priests, except much of what they idealize starts out resembling the 60’s flower-children if they’d ever taken up arms, and an unhealthy dose of asceticism, but slowly shifts towards the idealized extreme of a feminist utopia. Later in the books, due to a HELL of a lot of stuff happening, the Cirinists come into power, and much of the comic at that point becomes an intense examination of a matriarchal society with a surprising number of interesting insights, even if you don’t agree with his conclusions.

At this point, however, they’re just another underground Palnu revolutionary group from outside the borders with some governmental control of upper Felda, albeit intensely female-focused. They’ve captured and drugged Cerebus because his obvious centrality in all the recent events have made them suspect he’s a “central mover” in the series of astrological and mystical events that control the universe, but they’re not sure if he’s helping or hindering the eventual primacy of Cirin. So, they’ve drugged him and forced him on a kind of astral journey to the “seventh sphere”. If he’s able to receive a revelation from the divine mother, then he’s a suitable prophet, and will be impressed into service for the priestesses. If not, then he’s unworthy and will be killed. Seeing as how Cerebus is unconscious and communicating telepathically with his captors, he’s really up the crick, floating around in the seventh sphere. Meanwhile, the Cirinists do a reading on him that is really the best mystical summary and predictor of _everything_ that happened or happens in the future. The cards say: “It would seem to indicate that Cerebus is a random factor with immense and disruptive capabilities.” This is the role that he plays throughout the entire series. Perhaps a little over simplistic at this point, but the chaotic disruptive power of Cerebus is the driving force in all of the events that follow. Remember the temple of the Black Sun?

But for the moment, Cerebus is up shit crick. Except he’s not the only one in the seventh sphere. Just by chance, there’s another guy in there, represented by all the grey lines. Cerebus can communicate to the new guy in private just by forcing his way into the grey regions of the panel. This new fellow is Suenteus Po, the founder of another religion, Illusionism. Where the Cirinists are ascetics, the Illusionists are hedonists, stoners, and advocates of Timothy Leary. Happening upon Cerebus in the seventh sphere is a real lark to Suentues Po, and, as he has a good deal of Cirinist tracts in his library, helpfully looks up a revelation for Cerebus to give the girls to save Cerebus’s neck.

The revelation chosen is “The rebirth is at hand”.

Hokay.

Brilliant. That’s the worst possible revelation he could have given. Because now it’s true. Cerebus is playing on a scale more enormous than anyone involved realizes. The revelation touches off a revolution in that it convinces the Cirinists to begin gathering for their eventual takeover of the land. Moreover, it triggers both the mystical triangle of conflict between Cerebus, Cirin, and Suentues Po, and the beginning of the more metaphysical aspects of the story that are gonna get even harder to understand.

But for the moment we can dwell on the fun. Demonstrating an incredible skill at manipulation, the unconscious Cerebus convinces both the Cirinists and Suentues Po that the other is planning a vast, absurd conspiracy, and actually forces a battle between the two while waiting to wake up. Unfortunately for him, the Cirinists knock him completely out, and, through no reasonable explanation, he ends up on a park bench in the snow back in Beduin. And who’s waiting in Beduin?

Why Captain Cockroach, that’s who! And he’s got a sidekick! Bunky the albino!

Yes, you read that right, Sim actually parodied Bucky, Captain America’s long-forgotten sidekick and one of the few permanently dead Marvel characters. Whoa. What are they doing? Why, selling war bonds of course! Against those dratted northern Hsiffies (Hsifan Khanate).

But where’s the money going? Why, to the new president of Beduin, Albrecht Weishaupt.

Ah jeez.

ADAM Weishaupt was the actual founder of the Illuminati. No, I’m not shitting you. There actually was an Illuminati way back during the late 1700’s. I spoke on the matter in my “From Hell” review, but, in brief, as the organization of the freemasons slowly gathered power and political influence to itself through selective membership and secretive ceremony, they began to garner enough attention and jealousy that Adam Weishaupt founded the Bavarian Illuminati in 1777 with the express purpose of infiltrating the masons. The masons supposedly controlled the world, so if the Illuminati controlled the masons.... Officially, the Illuminati were disbanded some years later. Whether they accomplished anything towards their goal is the subject mostly of conspiracy theory, one piece of which was specific to Albrecht. Supposedly Adam Weisshaupt actually replaced George Washington (as a look-alike) in the middle of his term as president when George kicked off or was bumped off. (I regard this as utter paranoid bunk on the face of it, if an entertainingly ludicrous one. For one, if Adam was just after power, then why did George Washington retire from the Presidency after only two terms? His was the precedent that influenced later Presidents on term limits, and was by no means required to observe them himself.)

Well, his fictional version is just as ruthless and clever as the real one was. Having happened upon the scene right after Cerebus’s boat sank and the loss of all that gold straight into the river, he put good use to happenstance and drafted the Cockroach, supplied him with a new back-story, enough of a workout to make him into a supermensch, and managed a clever little economic disaster that just happened to empty most of the city’s coffers right into his pockets. AW and CC, in case you hadn’t guessed, is used by Sim at least partially as a vehicle for any and all shots he wants to fire at the US (Sim’s Canadian). AW produces an enormous amount of propaganda via his invention of movable type, and uses it to stir up people against the “Hissies,” slant-eyed yellow-skinned northerners (Huns, maybe?) ‘cause they make a good target to focus people’s fears on, all the while using the fear to drain the economy right into his pockets. Very shortly, he’s intending to force a war with the northern Khanate. (OK, shut up. This was written around 1981.) Cerebus, trapped in the city discovers that his army, left to its own devices when he went and got drugged, was soundly defeated in its attempt at invasion. Unfortunately, all of AW’s plans have attracted the attention of a hired assassin (jeez there’s a lot of those in this book) who takes a crack at Bunky, Captain, and Cerebus when they’re out for a stroll. I’d have skipped over this part, except the “Hissy” actually manages to kill Elrod. At which point we start parodying...

Lord help me....

“Deadman.” One of the weirdest and most awkwardly-conceived heroes in the DC universe. His super power was “being dead.” Which lets him possess people. A marvelous power when you, say, want to accumulate power and take over a country. On the other hand, this is Elrod, so it all comes to naught. Cerebus flees, leaving Weishaupt to the tender mercies of the city guard, and providing an apt revenge for the several times Weishaupt put him down during their brief acquaintance.

Finally, in the last arc of the book, Cerebus, injured in his escape from Beduin, puts in at a private girl’s school for exceptional students. How exceptional?

Their teacher is Charles X. Claremont. Yeah, X-....uh.... Women. (Claremont is a Marvel writer.) ‘Cept this version of the good professor isn’t really that benign. Turns out he’s a sorcerer who’s deciphered the spells hidden in a series of children’s books written by Suentus Po, and discovered how to make an “apocalypse beast” he calls “Woman Thing”.

Which is a parody of Marvel’s “Man Thing.”

Which was an idea snitched from DC’s “Swamp Thing.”

Which was from the “House of Secrets” comic, a comic idea snitched from EC’s “Tales From the Crypt” series.

Ohhhh the comic lineage.

To be honest, I don’t really know much about “Man Thing,” except an impression that he had a lineage similar to DC’s “Floronic Man,” his power that “all men who know fear shall burn at the touch of Man-Thing,” and the fact that Man Thing somehow graduated to an absurdly potent position in the Marvel Universe, having something to do with maintaining the nexus so that the universe never became unraveled. Still, Sim pulls off a marvelously funny parody, with Claremont stating that, during the creation of the apocalypse beast, the spellcaster had to fill in the gap in the incantation “all men who know _____ shall burn at the touch of the Man Thing.” The creature had been created several times, with the funniest previous choice for the blank being “me”. (Hmm....little stilted in summary. Trust me, it’s hilarious.) Anyway, after loosing the beast (and choosing the word “fear”) and starting off on the world-conquering voyage, everything unravels again when they accidentally run across ANOTHER apocalypse beast (“Sump Thing” a parody of Swamp Thing), and Claremont is killed when he happens to be standing between the two when they.... uh.... consummate their meeting. The owner of the second apocalypse beast (an artist and collector by trade) is so distraught at the idea of having accidentally killed Cerebus’ friend, that he foists a bag of random art junk (some made from valuable metals) on him as Cerebus is leaving.

End book 1. Whew. This is gonna kill me before I finish, I just know it.

So, what’s the impression of book 1 overall? Although much of what follows has seeds and ideas presented here, the vast majority of the relevance is totally obscured by the marvelous humor and the apparent parade of parodies. Cerebus jumping around from comic series to comic series is more accurately a reflection of what Sim thought was interesting or worth paying attention to, and not really a snapshot of the comics in that time. These parodies continue throughout the series, but not as frequently, not nearly as rapid-fire, and often last for long strings of comics, working themselves into the main storyline, or as snapshot vignettes. Not like here, wherein they become the entire purpose of an issue or two, an episodic framework for Cerebus to work within.

Most interesting in light of later books is the point that Cerebus forgoes any interest in women, excepting Jaka. Several of the women in the book (Jaka, Red Sophia, Claremont’s three students) attempt to seduce Cerebus in one way or another (RS: “What do you think of THESE?” C:”Cerebus thinks they’d probably heal up if you stop wearing a chain-mail bikini.”) and all except Jaka fall amusingly flat on their faces.

Finally, in retrospect, it’s interesting to see how accurate the Cirinist’s predictions are with regard to Cerebus’s fortunes. Throughout all the books that follow, Cerebus’s presence becomes a more and more powerfully disruptive force on the world around him. His mere presence seems to cause well-laid plans to go awry, and bring random misfortune down upon everyone around him. The effect is evident even in the first book, but only once you’re looking for it.