Giving up Cerebus

[avram]

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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Have you read Andrew Rilstone's pieces about Cerberus? They're on his web page http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk in the Back Catalogue of Rants, there are two of them, one called "Is Dave Sim Mad?" and the other older one something else obviously related. I just thought they might be interesting in view of that decision.

Jo Walton bluejo@vif.com
about as anonymous as a whale in jelly

[redbird]

Hi! I didn't expect to find you here. (Yes, Avram, I'm using your journal to leave personal notes to a third party.)

Oh, my!

[(Anonymous)]

Wow. I mean, wow. You were reading _Cerebus_ when I met you in high school.

Truly an era is ending. I think I have to go lie down.

Fred