More Cerebus

[andrewducker]

Saddening but accurate 5 page story on Dave Sim/Cerebus. Well worth reading if you're interested in what is, to me, one of the most amazing things to happen in comics.

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It's terribly sad to see someone who had so much talent (and in many ways still does) push themselves over the edge into a breakdown. I'm intrigued to see what he does when he has breathing space after Cerebus finishes. After 26 years of page-a-day writing, the change of pace is bound to be a shock to the system.

Comments

Note to self:

[nosrialleon.livejournal.com]

Step away from my art and interact with people from time to time.

Yikes.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I'm hoping to interview Dave Sim before the last issue comes out, and this is an interesting perspective I hadn't heard.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that the article didn't mention the large number of women who used to read Cerebus. When he started he really was the only comic writer who had a regular female audience - later came Sandman, Strangers in Paradise and Bone, but for a while he was it. This makes his retreat into madness especially sad. I have a little internal conversation with myself before buying any of the books now - I'm torn between wanting to know what happened/being completist and not wanting to encourage him.

[andrewducker]

I don't think anything now will encourage/discourage him. For a start he should actually have finished by now....

[steer.livejournal.com]

It's tragic really... I couldn't bring myself to read it much beyond the end of Church and State up until then it had been a favourite --- I don't mind views which challenge my own, but I couldn't take so much bitterness and, in the end, I simply don't want someone like Dave Sim to have any of my money.

[andrewducker]

I loved it all the way up to Melmoth. And I woul have loved it up to issue 200 if it hadn't been for the text sections of Women.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm a bit PC perhaps. Still, those earlier issues were brilliant. High Society was superb and the Church and State stuff was great... although there was that episode where Cerebus takes a pee for about twenty frames. That's one way to meet your deadlines.

[markpasc.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I had heard about his essays but was unaware of his larger accomplishment.

[shannon_a]

Thanks for the pointers. I've largely given up on Cerebus too, and was absolutely amazed to see the drops in reader numbers (37,000->7,500).

I gave up on the regular issues somewhere in Guys and have been quite disappointed by the 2 phonebooks I've picked up since. Still, I keep looking at the newest ones, which I haven't purchased, thinking I should since it's so near the end. Hearing that the misogyny has increased and been supplemented by religious fundamentalism, though, pretty much turns me off.

Like one of the other commenters, I enjoyed Cerebus up to the misogynist screeds in Women, though I'd felt like that extended storyline (issue 151+) was becoming overlong and incoherent. With that story ultimately ruined, I'd have to say that the last good story was Jaka's Story and the last great one was Church & State.

It's a shame that Sim's wasted another fifteen years since, writing increasingly out-of-touch stories for an increasingly small audience.