Uh oh. This issue looks serious.
Just a few issues left before Dave Sim really starts getting serious with his 25 issue story arc, "High Society." He's already hinted a few times that a lot more is happening than just Cerebus bouncing around Estarcion trying to get drunk and rich. Yes, just drunk and rich. He doesn't seem too concerned with getting laid. I think he's probably a virgin and a romantic so he's going to need to be in love before he has sexual relations with some poor sod. Although that theory will be stabbed in the face later when Cerebus becomes Pope and marries himself to Astoria simply so he can rape her while also convincing himself it isn't rape because he married himself to her first. But maybe he loved her and thought he was being romantic? He's an aardvark! How can I judge an aardvark's mental acrobatics! I can't even judge my own.
If I remember correctly, one of these last three issues before "High Society" will be the one with the Man-Thing parody. But this one, I believe, is the one where he's laid up in a house with a bunch of women who want to fuck him but, being Cerebus, he's all, "No, no! I am not interested in that kind of thing! Unless you get me drunk on peach brandy!" I forget what the other plot will be. Maybe the return of Thrunk?
I haven't spoken about Deni's "A Note from the Publisher" lately because there's really nothing to talk about. It's always just "We've been really busy and I don't have anything else to say so just read the book!" I suppose this one was informative because Deni apologized for the price of the comic book going up and I wouldn't have noticed that that. The original Issue #23 has a cover price of $1.50 while the Bi-weekly, which I'm reading because it was cheaper to buy than the real issue, has a cover price of $1.25. See? Cheaper!
If I remember correctly, one of these last three issues before "High Society" will be the one with the Man-Thing parody. But this one, I believe, is the one where he's laid up in a house with a bunch of women who want to fuck him but, being Cerebus, he's all, "No, no! I am not interested in that kind of thing! Unless you get me drunk on peach brandy!" I forget what the other plot will be. Maybe the return of Thrunk?
I haven't spoken about Deni's "A Note from the Publisher" lately because there's really nothing to talk about. It's always just "We've been really busy and I don't have anything else to say so just read the book!" I suppose this one was informative because Deni apologized for the price of the comic book going up and I wouldn't have noticed that that. The original Issue #23 has a cover price of $1.50 while the Bi-weekly, which I'm reading because it was cheaper to buy than the real issue, has a cover price of $1.25. See? Cheaper!
I hate agreeing with people when they say something like "I'm not the typical whatever!" But Dave Sim basically invented (and if not actually invented since I know a lot of Internet literalists are going to want to end me for saying it, perfected) self-publishing comics. Ultimately I like Elfquest better for aesthetic and middle school boy reasons (the time I read it. Not because I'm into middle school boys. Anymore, at least) but it just can't compete with what Sim accomplished.
The thing Dave Sim decided made him different was that he wasn't interested in collecting comics or comic related materials. I guess he was too cool for comics. But he still went and made a comic book? Maybe that's why he was so successful. Sure, he was a fan of comic book artists and their works. And he read comic books. So it makes sense he was interested in drawing and writing one. But he wasn't a big dumb nerdy fangender. I probably would have been more like Dave Sim but then Giffen created Lobo and I was like, "I need all the Lobo stuff! He's the perfect representation of the music I'm into! All superficial glam without any finesse or subtlety! Violence unending! Clothing that is more costume than cool but at least signifies to the correct people that maybe I'm into the same rock ballads about love that they're into and thus maybe they might let me put my penis into their vagina! Fucking Lobo! So cool! I need all the merch!"
Yes, I was a Lobo fan but please realize that I also love hyperbole before you completely judge me. Although for my twenty-first birthday, the woman I was sort of seeing at the time bought me a Lobo poster and a Lobo shirt for my birthday which was weird because we hadn't been dating for that long. I opened the presents in the middle of a country bar. I was celebrating my 21st birthday at a country bar because my friend Bob and I had made a pact at twelve years old that we'd ride the mechanical bull at The Saddle Rack as soon as we turned 21. He had turned 21 twenty-three days previously.
If the woman I was dating at the time stumbles upon this and recognizes me by this description of my 21st birthday, please do not contact me. You had sex with me while I was sleeping when I had previously made it known that I wasn't ready to have sex with you. Yes, after I woke up, I was all, "Okay, well, I guess we're doing this," and I was fine with it. But it probably didn't surprise you that I didn't want to see you after that. Not because "I got what I wanted." But because you took what you wanted.
Probably fitting that the woman who gave me Lobo merchandise was also the woman who sexually assaulted me! Lobo is bad news! But then so is Cerebus. I think maybe some of my favorite comic book characters were seriously problematic!
This issue of Cerebus is a parody of the Clint Eastwood movie, The Beguiled (which I've never seen but now really want to watch it. If I can find it, I'll try to watch it before finishing this review to compare it to the comic).
Cerebus, wounded after fleeing Beduin (or was it Iest? I can't remember!), stumbles, nearly unconscious from pain and infection, in sight of a large boarding house. He collapses and is rescued by three young women who are desperate for some dick.
And then I get to "Aardvark Comment" with all the letters. What's that, you say? What about the story? Isn't this a "review" of the comic book's story and not the stupid bullshit writing without pictures which bookend the story? I mean, sure, I guess. But apparently people are finally acting on that trite parental advice that if you have nothing nice to say maybe don't say anything at all. Now every conversation about a terrible piece of art goes like this:
Person A: "That was some truly horrible shit. Ugh. I can't believe I paid for that. I wish the director's mother had died during the sex which impregnated her. So vile. The worst. It actually ruined all of the things I once loved that shared any words in the title of this awful piece of filth."
Person B: "You know a lot of people worked hard on that piece of art. They didn't set out to make a bad piece of art. They put a lot of time and effort into it and we should applaud their strength to go out there and accomplish something that few people ever accomplish."
Person A: "I fucking hate you."
"Person A" actually only thinks that last piece of the conversation.
I know my brand has been to be unspeakably cruel to creators who produce bad comic books, to be overly insulting to the editors that allowed the creator to submit sub par work, to be outright antagonistic to the publishers of comic books edited by lazy assholes and written by people who just don't give a shit about the final product. But I've learned I was wrong to be that way! I should have been applauding Scott Lobdell for not caring about the quality of his work because at least he got the pages done in time! It's okay that Howard Mackie uses fifteen thousand extraneous punctuation marks in his dialogue (half of them used incorrectly) and his editors just waved the script on while they jerked off on piles of money because how many comic books have I written?! I should be sucking the dick of the presidents of DC and Marvel for not charging me ten dollars for poorly written drivel and badly edited crap because at least they were offering me some art that people sort of worked on. And when Dave Sim writes a story that's based on a movie he really enjoys but doesn't really tell much of a story and the only jokes are "people speaking with bad Italian accents," I just have to smile and point out, "This is art! People worked on it!"
So I'm not going to bash Sim for having a boring issue of Cerebus after having quite a few good ones. That would be like me pointing out that, sure, maybe Cullen Bunn writes some decent comic books when he's working with material he loves, like stuff with characters he created, but he obviously doesn't give a shit about DC's intellectual properties or why else would he write a run of Aquaman that is just a discount version of John Carter? How dare I complain that Bunn's Aquaman couldn't be further from what makes Aquaman Aquaman and it's fucking ridiculous that DC wouldn't expect me to demand a refund on that bullshit. "Oh, yes, I get to write Aquaman!" is something Cullen Bunn definitely did not say. I'm sure it was more like, "Oh, fuck. DC is going to pay me a pretty good sum to do an Aquaman run. Let's see what half-assed sci-fi scripts I have lying around that I could do a quick 'find' on the main character's name and 'replace' it with Aquaman!" That's just the kind of thing I refuse to do now.
"The Single Page" has now become "The Double Page." One page was a comic about how Dave Sim picks the comic for The Single Page. The other one was a dystopian look at agriculture and crime in the year 2052 that ends on a pun. It was pretty good. The first one was kind of stupid but I liked the way the artist drew Sim's pug nose.
Cerebus #23 Rating: C-. In the early days, one of Dave Sim's main jokes and/or plot points was that Cerebus was an aardvark and it wasn't weird to others except in two ways: the way he smelled when he was wet and the way he looked. Sure, they all called knew his last name was "the Aardvark" but everybody still commented on how ugly he was for a human. I think that was supposed to be part of the humor of this issue. At least one of the young women of the boarding house wasn't sure if she wanted to bring in the hurt little animal and nurse it back to health or fuck it. Eventually this aspect of the comic book gets more complicated as we learn more about aardvarks in Estarcion and how they're always some kind of nexus for great change and historic upheaval. Also they're magic in some way. I gave this issue a "C-" because I was mostly bored with it right up until it ended abruptly. Maybe it was funnier the first time I read it when I wasn't 300 issues used to Cerebus as an aardvark. I probably chuckled every other page thinking, "Hee hee. Those women want to fuck an aardvark. That's hot."
Yes, I was a Lobo fan but please realize that I also love hyperbole before you completely judge me. Although for my twenty-first birthday, the woman I was sort of seeing at the time bought me a Lobo poster and a Lobo shirt for my birthday which was weird because we hadn't been dating for that long. I opened the presents in the middle of a country bar. I was celebrating my 21st birthday at a country bar because my friend Bob and I had made a pact at twelve years old that we'd ride the mechanical bull at The Saddle Rack as soon as we turned 21. He had turned 21 twenty-three days previously.
If the woman I was dating at the time stumbles upon this and recognizes me by this description of my 21st birthday, please do not contact me. You had sex with me while I was sleeping when I had previously made it known that I wasn't ready to have sex with you. Yes, after I woke up, I was all, "Okay, well, I guess we're doing this," and I was fine with it. But it probably didn't surprise you that I didn't want to see you after that. Not because "I got what I wanted." But because you took what you wanted.
Probably fitting that the woman who gave me Lobo merchandise was also the woman who sexually assaulted me! Lobo is bad news! But then so is Cerebus. I think maybe some of my favorite comic book characters were seriously problematic!
This issue of Cerebus is a parody of the Clint Eastwood movie, The Beguiled (which I've never seen but now really want to watch it. If I can find it, I'll try to watch it before finishing this review to compare it to the comic).
Cerebus, wounded after fleeing Beduin (or was it Iest? I can't remember!), stumbles, nearly unconscious from pain and infection, in sight of a large boarding house. He collapses and is rescued by three young women who are desperate for some dick.
And then I get to "Aardvark Comment" with all the letters. What's that, you say? What about the story? Isn't this a "review" of the comic book's story and not the stupid bullshit writing without pictures which bookend the story? I mean, sure, I guess. But apparently people are finally acting on that trite parental advice that if you have nothing nice to say maybe don't say anything at all. Now every conversation about a terrible piece of art goes like this:
Person A: "That was some truly horrible shit. Ugh. I can't believe I paid for that. I wish the director's mother had died during the sex which impregnated her. So vile. The worst. It actually ruined all of the things I once loved that shared any words in the title of this awful piece of filth."
Person B: "You know a lot of people worked hard on that piece of art. They didn't set out to make a bad piece of art. They put a lot of time and effort into it and we should applaud their strength to go out there and accomplish something that few people ever accomplish."
Person A: "I fucking hate you."
"Person A" actually only thinks that last piece of the conversation.
I know my brand has been to be unspeakably cruel to creators who produce bad comic books, to be overly insulting to the editors that allowed the creator to submit sub par work, to be outright antagonistic to the publishers of comic books edited by lazy assholes and written by people who just don't give a shit about the final product. But I've learned I was wrong to be that way! I should have been applauding Scott Lobdell for not caring about the quality of his work because at least he got the pages done in time! It's okay that Howard Mackie uses fifteen thousand extraneous punctuation marks in his dialogue (half of them used incorrectly) and his editors just waved the script on while they jerked off on piles of money because how many comic books have I written?! I should be sucking the dick of the presidents of DC and Marvel for not charging me ten dollars for poorly written drivel and badly edited crap because at least they were offering me some art that people sort of worked on. And when Dave Sim writes a story that's based on a movie he really enjoys but doesn't really tell much of a story and the only jokes are "people speaking with bad Italian accents," I just have to smile and point out, "This is art! People worked on it!"
So I'm not going to bash Sim for having a boring issue of Cerebus after having quite a few good ones. That would be like me pointing out that, sure, maybe Cullen Bunn writes some decent comic books when he's working with material he loves, like stuff with characters he created, but he obviously doesn't give a shit about DC's intellectual properties or why else would he write a run of Aquaman that is just a discount version of John Carter? How dare I complain that Bunn's Aquaman couldn't be further from what makes Aquaman Aquaman and it's fucking ridiculous that DC wouldn't expect me to demand a refund on that bullshit. "Oh, yes, I get to write Aquaman!" is something Cullen Bunn definitely did not say. I'm sure it was more like, "Oh, fuck. DC is going to pay me a pretty good sum to do an Aquaman run. Let's see what half-assed sci-fi scripts I have lying around that I could do a quick 'find' on the main character's name and 'replace' it with Aquaman!" That's just the kind of thing I refuse to do now.
"The Single Page" has now become "The Double Page." One page was a comic about how Dave Sim picks the comic for The Single Page. The other one was a dystopian look at agriculture and crime in the year 2052 that ends on a pun. It was pretty good. The first one was kind of stupid but I liked the way the artist drew Sim's pug nose.
Cerebus #23 Rating: C-. In the early days, one of Dave Sim's main jokes and/or plot points was that Cerebus was an aardvark and it wasn't weird to others except in two ways: the way he smelled when he was wet and the way he looked. Sure, they all called knew his last name was "the Aardvark" but everybody still commented on how ugly he was for a human. I think that was supposed to be part of the humor of this issue. At least one of the young women of the boarding house wasn't sure if she wanted to bring in the hurt little animal and nurse it back to health or fuck it. Eventually this aspect of the comic book gets more complicated as we learn more about aardvarks in Estarcion and how they're always some kind of nexus for great change and historic upheaval. Also they're magic in some way. I gave this issue a "C-" because I was mostly bored with it right up until it ended abruptly. Maybe it was funnier the first time I read it when I wasn't 300 issues used to Cerebus as an aardvark. I probably chuckled every other page thinking, "Hee hee. Those women want to fuck an aardvark. That's hot."
It's really, really not too much to ask of DC that they hire writers who actually want to do a good job on those characters. I still hold that any writer on a title should be able to come up with three things that we should see in that comic just about every month. In the case of, say, Aquaman, we should see:
ReplyDelete- Adventures that take place in the water and/or the land near the water.
- Aquaman's job is to keep the peace, not enforce the law. The two will often overlap but can be at odds.
- Aquaman commands the sea; reflect that somehow in the story.
Those particular three points are way open for debate; I don't have a feel for Aquaman the way I would for other characters. But the point is, if you don't have a sense of what makes a character tick, you can't write good stories about them; while if you do have a sense, you can use that as a guide. Of course, it's always possible to subvert some of those points; just for fun, you could have an issue where Aquaman is out in the desert, and then it becomes an exercise in his resourcefulness. But still, the fact that it's an explicit contrast against his usual setting makes the point of what is normal for him.