Cerebus #26 (1981)

Only forty more issues of furniture and curtains straight from Dave Sim's hand!

Dave Sim is my kind of artist. Imagine being hired to draw a comic book and being forced to draw everything in every scene. Now imagine owning the comic book and realizing about sixty issues in, "Hey! I can hire somebody to draw the stuff I don't like drawing!" I bet that was the main reason for the founding of Image Comics. I bet Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld were sitting around drawing capes and pouches and Liefeld was all, "Do you ever wish you could just stop drawing feet once and for all?" And McFarlane was all, "Just hide the feet behind the calf muscles." And Liefeld was all, "How the hell do you do that?" And then McFarlane showed him the picture of Spider-man he was working on where Spider-man looked like an M.C. Escher staircase. And then Liefeld was all, "How much time did you spend practicing drawing pretzels?" And then Erik Larsen, sitting nearby, was all, "Can you guys keep it down? I've got like 500 issues of Savage Dragon to plot out here!" Liefeld snorted and was all, "Is Jim Lee still out running chanting, 'Kirby. Kirby. Kirby'?" And Whilce Portacio was all, "Who am I? Why can't I remember who I am?!"

Ha ha! Man, Image Comics! What an adventure!

I don't know why I decided to bring up Gerhard when I'm only on Issue #26 and Gerhard doesn't appear until Issue #65. I think I was just surprised at how well Dave drew chairs and curtains. You sort of forget that he was pretty good at drawing scenery when he could be bothered. Another reason I probably brought up Gerhard is because one thing I remember about "High Society" was how much time Cerebus spends in a black void of a room with only the Regency Elf's boobs to light up the place.

I'm tired of telling you how bored these notes make me so here. Read it yourself.

Having run out of Swords of Cerebus essays, this Bi-weekly begins with a three page sketched out Howard the Duck story Dave wrote as a sample to possibly write Howard the Duck. He probably sketched three pictures too many because they just wanted him to write it. Here's Dave's story and a finished page of Howard the Duck art at A Moment of Cerebus.

Cerebus has come to Iest to sell the last of his treasures given to him by an artist as reparations for his Sump Thing putting his penis through Professor X's chest on its way to Woman-thing's vagina. Apparently the last hotel left with any vacancies is the high-end Regency, known for its snooty customer service and sneering contempt for barbarians. And probably racist attitudes toward aardvarks. Unless that's speciesest. It's hard to tell how to categorize an anthropomorphic aardvark.

The clerk never even looks at him. He must be judging Cerebus on the smell of his wet fur.

Luckily Cerebus constantly refers to himself in the third person so that the desk clerk can learn that this mud-covered angry barbarian is a person called Cerebus who apparently has a room already reserved for him. The desk clerk becomes extremely accommodating when he hears the name which should make Cerebus wary that he's about to become, once again, pulled into somebody else's harebrained scheme.

You know the clerk is thinking, "Why would anybody want to steal your sack full of dead squirrels and dirty loincloths?"

The clerk, not knowing that a wet Cerebus smells like a rotting whale stuffed with a rotting dolphin stuffed with a rotting tuna surrounded by Durian fruit, has drawn Cerebus a bath in his Regency suite. I imagine as soon as he slips in, the Regency will have to be evacuated, believing there to be some kind of chemical attack on the place.

Cerebus discovers that The Regency would like him to stay as their guest, meals included. He's grown suspicious but if it's free, he's willing to chance whatever shenanigans this all leads to.

I scanned this picture because it's the beginning of the other shoe dropping. But also because I really love the line "Cerebus is going to strip mine your face."

Lobbyist after lobbyist arrives at Cerebus's table giving him cheques to simply remember them and their product. Eventually, Cerebus tries to get to the bottom of it. Why is he so popular and what position is he in to help these people? A man named Scorz explains the entire thing to him: he (and all the others) are trying to get government contracts for their product with Lord Julius of Palnu. And since Palnu is a convoluted bureaucracy built so as to get nothing done at great expense, nobody has been able to get their ideas to Lord Julius. But now everybody suddenly has access to the famous Cerebus the Aardvark, Lord Julius's Kitchen Staff Supervisor! They've all spent so much money trying to get to Lord Julius, what's a few hundred more gold crowns to be able to speak to what basically amounts to his right hand man?

Cerebus learns, while trying to get into a brawl, that he's completely under the city's protection, being a ranking diplomat from a southern state. Not being able to get into some violent fisticuffs puts Cerebus into a bad mood, even though he's now flush with cash and has access to all the free alcohol he wants. He's suddenly found himself in a new world where violence isn't the first resort. Up until now, Cerebus probably hated dealing with magic the most. Now he's about to learn politics is worse.

Aardark Comment includes one long letter with one long response from Dave. It might be essential reading for people used to "comic book continuity." Dave tries to explain his continuity and how it works. He's got a whole world developing here and it doesn't all revolve around Cerebus. Things happen when Cerebus is around and they continue to happen when Cerebus wanders off to find more gold and alcohol. But we see the majority of the world through Cerebus's eyes (and in those cases where we glimpse things happening of which Cerebus is not aware, they have direct impacts on Cerebus's life). So if Cerebus falls unconscious because he's drugged and then wakes up in a foreign city weeks later, how is the reader supposed to know what happened? We're in the same boat as Cerebus! If he doesn't know, why should we? It's almost as if Dave Sim is telling this reader, Fred Patten, that he's simply going to have to get used to not knowing all of the answers immediately. He's going to have to change his perspective from the Marvel/DC style of a "six issue story" that basically encapsulates everything you need to know within those six issues and open his mind to the idea of a "three hundred issue story" that encapsulates everything you need to know within those three hundred pages. You still won't know everything you want to know though! That's kind of how life works! We don't get all the answers so why would Cerebus? Or why would people observing Cerebus?! Get over it, Fred!

Cerebus #26 Rating: A. A nice story about Cerebus's transition from the barbarian world to the "civilized" world. Try as he might, Cerebus cannot satisfy his need for violence. It's a new world where conflicts play out differently. Oh, sure, there will be violence but it's called assassination now! And it's done by bodyguards and mercenaries! Even with all the money and alcohol coming his way, he's probably not going to stay satisfied for long. Time for Cerebus to start learning about true power.