Chris- I know what you mean, but those were more what I could find available, vs. hand-picked personal favorites (although I am rather fond of each image I posted). At some point when I have a little time I may try to do a couple scans of some other favorites from the books themselves (and some spreads from MINDS did come to mind as a possibility for that ...)

K

During Astoria's trial in C&S II, there's three issues in a row where the messenger bird is flying back to Cirin, and one time when I was going through the book I was struck by how awesome the nature scenes were. Seriously, there's one panel where the bird is flying over the docks (dadocks?) and even though most of the panel is blank space signifying sky or water, Ger's drawn whole rows of ships with their rigging all tied down for the night. We're looking straight down into a barrel on the dock, where we can see each plank of wood curving off into the distance, all the way up to faint lights on the horizon.

I don't know how many times I'd read that part of the book and never noticed the incredible wealth of detail, but once I did, I had to just stare at that panel for like half an hour.

Had a similar effect to the end of WOMEN where the whole city is bowing to Astoria. That entire whole book really, when Ger draws any part of Iest, upper or lower city, or when the mountain fell over on the city.

That reminds me, sometime I do wanna go back and look again to try to understand the geography of the upper and lower city a bit more clearly, and of that whole fantasy world in general. Since I started reading around issue #54 or so, I missed the early issues that had the map in them. So i just assumed that references to geography made sense to longer-term readers, and skipped over them. And then I never went back to clarify whether it all made sense or not.

That whole business about the mountain growing, that confused me at the time too, and again, I never bothered to try to figure it all out properly. Someday I'll give it a try.

There's a fanzine put out by Charles Brownstein a decade or so ago, and one issue features a long-ish interview with Ger, including unpublished scene designs. In the interview, Ger mentions that the Lower City is specifically designed to look, well, chaotic. You're not supposed to have any clue how the streets connect or where anything is, and buildings are all constructed with chunks of the tower falling from previous ascensions.

The scene designs are amazing, because he drew Jaka's apartment and Pud's store/tavern for 400 pages and suddenly you see those rooms from angles we never ever saw them before, and only then do you realize how well everything fit together in that space.

Even more incredible is that Ger didn't have any idea what he'd be drawing until Sim had finished his part, inking the characters and word balloons. Look at that two page spread of Cerebus yelling at Jaka while Ham sleeps nearby. I can't tell if Sim drew the fire, the chairs and the shadows on the ground, but even if he drew that much, look at how much else Gerhard added. The numerous trees all at different distances, the house behind them in amazing perspective, the treeline in the background...

And the scary part is that if madget had the capabilities, there are probably two dozen other two-page spreads he could have chosen from "Form and Void" alone that would have had the same effect, and that's less than two years out of a 20 year collaboration.

While I do like Gerhard's work, Cerebus was much better before his arrival. I think perhaps not having to do the backgrounds may have given Sim more time to consider his pseudo-philosophical nonsense.

Ger brought something very essential to CEREBUS (and Allen, your last comment is completely unfounded; Dave matured, his interests expanded/shifted, and that would have happened with or without Ger), and is too rarely appreciated.

Unfortunately, that gauntlet also took quite a toll on Gerhard, personally and professionally; but without CEREBUS, would we have ever seen what Ger could do?

Like many of my old cronies, Ger loathes talking about what he did, and now really has a strong reaction to even considering drawing. It's sad, but typical for many; I've seen it with many pros. This industry, even under what fans/readers would consider "best circumstances," really can take it out of you.

So he no longer draws?

Can you elaborate at all? I was always sort of curious about Gerhard generally, as well as what he's been up to post-Cerebus.

K

I disagree that he is rarely appreciated. I have encountered many people who don't like or read Sim, but marvel at the intricacy of Gerhard's backgrounds.



Without Gerhard, Sim would not have had as much free time. This is not my opinion, but rather a fact.



Where did Sim find Gerhard?

Allen: "Free time"?

Are we talking about the same man?

It may not be strictly your opinion, but it's too much of a conjecture to be an indisputable fact. And it may be irrelevant. Even if Sim had spent more time chained to his drawing board drafting and inking, and less time doing the various kinds of literary and sociological research that went into Cerebus, his mind would still have been free to travel down the various philosophical pathways that it eventually went down.

As former Comicon poster Stanley Lieber once pointed out, Dave chooses his evidence to suit his ideas; his ideas are not altered by evidence. So maybe some of the examples he chose would have been different, but his basic ideas would still have been the same.

So while I would tend to agree with the general statement that the earlier Cerebus was more enjoyable in some ways, I think it's false to say that Gerhard was the deciding element. Dave Sim changed. He was going to change no matter what. Gerhard's contribution to the comic book was a positive one, unrelated to the changes that Dave was going through in his thinking.