But...I do use my mind reading powers to cause crimes and stuff.

I need to back-pedal a bit and say that I was referring to Peter Parker's biography AT THE TIME WHEN SIM FIRST MADE HIS STATEMENT, that is, back in the 80's or 90's. Since then, with the Clone Saga and Sins Past and mystery baby and Deal With Mephisto and all that, forget it, nobody can figure that mess out.

But up to that point, we had a complicated but more-or-less understandable arc, or progression, of a life. Just with way too many episodic adventures shoved into that life span for it to make sense when looked at day by day. So, given that we know the Spider-Man story is told as an ongoing serial, we are usually willing to skim over the details and ignore the inconsistencies.

Looking at Peter Parker's life, we can see broad periods to it:
1)High school, with various girlfriends
2)College, with more girlfriends, including the love of his life, who gets killed
3)Post college bachelordom and early career as a photographer
4)Fitful attempts at a more secure career as a scientist and teacher
5)Finally settling down with one woman and getting married.
6)his later life never gets told, which is admittedly a big weakness in the standard comic-book serial narrative (and maybe that's where Dave Sim's Cerebus has its greatest advantage).

With Cerebus, given that Sim made an explicit claim that he was trying for something more naturalistic, there's a bit of a higher standard to reach. I can agree that Sim does well at portraying the various stages of a life, albeit fancifully. But then he portrays those stages out of order. I guess I'm really getting hung up on the Five Bar Gate interlude, which seems to me really the kind of thing that only happens at the beginning of a person's life. It's also sort of a weird repeat of Cerebus' barbarian years, as a kind of early athletic success story.

It's like if Michael Jordan had his basketball career, then his businessman career, and then he became Barack Obama, and then became Martin Luther King, and then went back and had another sports career that was even more successful than the first one, and then became pope. And he also was a washed up drunk for a few extended periods in the middle of all those other careers.

The story of Cerebus is more like the history of a culture over the course of several generations than like the story of a single life. I guess it's fair enough in a fantasy setting to take one long-lived character and make him the symbol of his whole culture.

Ah, what the hell, we can probably go back and forth on this all day and not reach any agreement, Chris. I'm not really trying to make any definitive statement about Which One Is Better. I like both Spider-Man and Cerebus, and it's interesting to compare them. It would also be interesting to compare them to other narratives that encompass the entire lives of their characters, like REH's Conan. Or John Updike's Rabbit novels.

That's not only funny, it's a better criticism of the series. Both Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four worked fairly well as characters aging naturally, at least while Stan was in charge. The Torch went on to college too, met Wyatt Wingfoot, grew out of chasing girls like Dorrie Evans. Reed and Sue were engaged at the start, got married, had a kid, went bankrupt several times, etc. The Thing eventually got over Reed turning him into a monster (during the Lee/Kirby run anyway) and found Alicia.

I don't know if Sim ever claimed naturalism. He probably did, or something like it, and he has defended the talking barbarian aardvark as a vehicle for more realistic themes and concepts. "Any story can contain any other kind of story" (Tom Spurgeon's TCJ interview).

"The series being more about the history of a culture over several generations with Cerebus as the focal point" is a good way to put it, although I'm not as hung up on the Five Bar Gate issue as you are. Five Bar Gate, as seen by the description in "Guys", is basically swordplay with a ball, a net and scorekeeping. It shouldn't be surprising that Cerebus is much much much better at it than anybody else in a Cirnist-run world (except Paul "Coffee" Annan) washed-up drunk or not. ["But then, when *isn't* Cerebus drunk?"]

It's less Michael Jordan than [Omaha, Nebraska native] Malcom X, going from bright student to middle-class Bostonian to criminal to raging prisoner to black supremacist to Sunni Muslim. He spent his last year fighting the Nation of Islam and *not* implementing his learnings from the haaj, and isn't all that different from how Cerebus ended his life. Malcom spent a few days in Mecca and it changed his life, not altogether different from what competing against Isshuria did for Cerebus [although Malcom probably wouldn't have hired Cookie (Candy?)]

Whatever else one might say about the overall series as a single story, would you not agree that the revelation in #288 of just *why* New Joanne didn't remotely remind Cerebus of Joanne is [O']really a scene that you *HAVE* to read the entire series to truly appreciate? A close second is in #299 when Shep-Shep tells us Cirin is still alive. Cerebus, of all people, felt sorry for Cirin/Serna, of all people.

Sim did use Conan as one of his big examples, not just from BWS' comics, but as the story of a life since REH (and his fans) made such a big deal about when each story happened in relation to the others. He also had Marvel comics and the like for similar inspiration. Sim's conclusion ultimately was that life *doesn't* cohere in any way we can readily perceive. Cerebus' 'origin' being explained in "Minds" is as close as he got, in my opinion. I don't remember where Sim said it [Yahoo: Cerebus Q&A?] but even he knew the origin wasn't *that* interesting, so it wouldn't work for a revelation at death, and came up with the #200 explanation as the way most lives really do work.

I do think a better description than "the story of a life" would be "a 300-issue comic book story intended to end with the title character's death." It's where the serial format for comics worked against Sim's intended 'story of a life.' Cerebus and Bear were huge fans of Five Bar Gate, but we never even heard of the game until after #200? Bear was a huge fan of Ham Ernestway and his admiration built Ham up in Cerebus's mind to the point where he was a drooling fanboy when they met, yet Ham was first mentioned in "Fall and the River" and not again until his appearance in #251? And don't get me started on the death of his parents and the 'lockout' at the end of "Form and Void".



says the journalist who has in his possession conclusive evidence of murder but is too stupid (corrupt? afraid? incompetent?) to show it to police. How many other crimes do you cover up while pretending to be objective? I'll wait for someone to inform you of how to answer.

I guess we should have said SPOILERS! a few posts back. Sorry, Lawson!

I would agree that Jaka's Story is a good place to stop.

There are a fair number of fun payoffs to long-running storylines later on, as Chris and I alluded to, but you have to wallow through a LOT of Sim-ology to get there.

I would advise skipping all of the four "Mothers and Daughters" volumes, since they include a lot of the text-heavy misogynist screeds, including the infamous issue #186 that concludes "Reads."

If you are tempted to go farther, the volume titled "GUYS" has a lot of fun character bits and cameos from the worlds of comics and rock'n'roll. It's also fairly self-contained (as much as any Cerebus volume can be called that), although it could also be paired with the following volume, "Rick's Story." That one has a lot more Sim-ology and doubletalk, but it ends on a nice high point. If you want to finish Cerebus with a happy ending, that's a decent place to stop, too.

"Guys" also has Bear mononologue for two and a half issues ["Now I'm whaddyacall half done."] so Lawson wouldn't read that. There's also a lot of text, from Jaka's Story onwards, so he wouldn't read that. Didn't you see his complaints above? There's no reason whatsoever to worry about spoiling the story for him. He's never ever going to go any further, and already knows in advance he'll hate it.

He doesn't need to. I'll go ahead and warn him off it. It's crap past Melmoth. Yes, there's the occasional funny moment, but anything that can reasonably be seen as a coherent narrative for Cerebus himself is done by the end of Church and State. Astoria's arc is done by the end of High Society. Jaka's story is done by the end of, appropriately enough, Jaka's Story. You could say that Bear's story isn't resolved until the end of Guys, but Bear as a character beyond comic relief doesn't really start until Guys anyway.

Which is not to say these characters don't keep showing up after their arc is done.

And beyond Melmoth... hoo boy, it ain't good. Mother's and Daughters is half Sim's descent into paranoia and insanity about his Precious Bodily Fluids, and half a bizarre mish-mash of bringing back comic relief characters like the Roach and the Regency Elf for no discernible reason, only to completely forget about them pages later. Guys is occasionally funny, but certainly not worth the investment of time, money, and sanity it takes to slog through Mothers and Daughters.

Rick's Story is completely fucking unreadable.

Going Home is all right. I'd still love to see Sim and Gerhard do a self-contained biography comic that doesn't have a talking aardvark shoehorned in.* The Fitzgerald half is better than the Hemingway half. But then Latter Days somehow accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of being less readable than Rick's Story.

Stop after Jaka's Story, you have a solid and coherent comic on your hands. Keep going, you have an unworkable mess.

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*Although I definitely don't want to see a biography comic where Sim tries to compensate for Gerhard's absence by tracing photographs.

Good heavens, I think poor Chris Weemie is going to have a stroke. And this is after I started the thread thusly:



Imagine how indignant he would be if I wasn't enjoying it?

Anyway, as to the useful instruction of Ceci and others, I expect I'll read and then stop after Jaka's Story. CEREBUS works best as a combination of art and story. If I just want text, I'll pick up one of my -- here's a new word for you, Chrissy -- books.

Again you use your amazing mind-reading abilities on something completely false and useless. So in addition to covering up crimes for which you have incontrovertible evidence, you utterly waste your mutant powers on lies. Pathetic.



Now you claim I'm indignant? Have you *ever* tried to prevent yourself from publishing lies about people? Just, y'know, to find out what it's like? [Notice I'm *asking* if you have ever done so, not simply making shit up and pretending it's true. Of course I'm not a journalist.]

Was I supposed to drop to my knees in supplication because you actually enjoy a great comic book? Why didn't you set out this rule in advance? We don't read minds.

The word "books" has been in existence for many centuries. It's hardly a new word. Heck, I write and publish books. Why would you assume it's a new word to me or anyone? Oh, right, you're a mind-reader. So are you going to have the murderer arrested, or are dead hookers too unimportant to bother with? Aren't you worried about being charged with aiding and abetting a murderer?

There are big blocks of text throughout Jaka's Story, although they're far better executed than in previous and subsequent stories. Without any spoilers, Jaka's neighbor is a poet named Oscar,* who's writing a book. And pages at a time will be excerpts from his book. The excerpts both fill in backstory, and serve as a parallel to what's going on in the main narrative.

Which, of course, is a far cry from the "Cerebus and Astoria need to do an exposition dump, let's just drop a block of text on the page and call it a day" that you've seen so far.

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*Another real-person-stand-in, like Mick and Keef, or Lord Julius.

Gosh Lawson, I don't know where you got the idea that he's indignant.