Giving up Cerebus

New comics day, and I got Cerebus #282, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2 #3, and an engaging little paperback called Pulpatoon Pilgrimage, an excerpt from which I’d previously seen in some anthology venue or other and made mental note of.

On the subway ride home, I reached into my bag, pulled out the Cerebus, opened to the first page, and thought to myself Fuck, I don’t want to read this. And I still don’t. It’s page after page of tiny type, and while there are funny bits, the bits aren’t funny enough or plentiful enough to make up for having to wade through pages and pages of Dave Sim’s tedious writing. I’ve been following this book for twenty years, and it’s a year and a half to the end, and really wanted to hang in there, but it’s just not fun anymore.

Terry Zwigoff’s documentary Crumb, about cartoonist Robert Crumb, also features his two brothers Charles and Maxon. All three of them have/had emotional problems, and all three of them produced comics. Charles, the oldest, suffered from manic depression and killed himself a year after the movie was made. The film shows his comics, and how as he got older his word balloons filled with more and more dialog and got larger and larger, until eventually they overwhelmed the pages and they became just rambling text pieces instead of comics. It’s hard not to think of that watching Dave Sim’s recent work.

I’ll keep looking at each issue to see if it gets any better. “Book One” of the current arc ends with issue #288; maybe “Book Two” (289-300) will be an improvement.

Pulpatoon Pilgrimage

I was right about Cerebus — I skimmed it, and the broth was pretty thin. I’m waving goodbye

Pulpatoon Pilgrimage, on the other hand, was excellent. A self-contained story in a small, attractive package (digest-sized, $12.95, perfect bound, black and white), with clever writing, clear and compelling artwork, and interesting characters. If I saw something like this coming out every couple of weeks, I’d be walking around with a grin on my face all the time. If I could produce something like this, I’d crow and strut like a peacock. (Do peacocks crow?) Go read it.