Cerebus #34 (1982)

This cover is a commentary on how money is imaginary.

Not only are Elrod and money imaginary, but society itself is a concept sprung forth from the imagination of mankind. And yet people treat every aspect of civilization as if it's some kind of natural physical law of the universe. People constantly argue about how something in society can't be accomplished simply because it's not the way we've always done things, as if the way we've always done things wasn't once somebody's imaginary thought of a way to make life better. So now we live in a civilization where everything is half-assed because nobody wants to start over from scratch on any civilized concept even when it's apparent things have changed so much that an old way of doing something doesn't make any sense anymore. We just keep building new additions to existing structures built on ancient foundations instead of scrapping the entire thing to build a new, modern foundation for our civilization's imaginary structures. I'm being general because what I'm talking about is fucking everything. Everybody is attached to tradition and old legal documents as if things don't change, usually for the better. So instead of changing things to make modern life better, we simply argue about what minor changes we can make to the existing, ramshackle structure so that it still sort of works like the old, incompetent way but makes a bit of room for modern thinking.

A good example of what I'm talking about is the constitution of the United States and maybe also The Bible. People worship that shit as if its immutable. Who wants to live their life following rules people made up two hundred or two thousand years ago?! Times have moved on, baby! Maybe you should too!

The problem with my philosophy is that I'm all for burning everything to the ground and starting over. Although I'd be happy simply with the burning everything to the ground part. Let the new generation rebuild things in their image while the older generations just take the rest of their life off. I don't get why older people have such a stake in reality when they aren't going to have to worry about the future. Let it go, old people! What are you trying to prove?!

Speaking of things that eventually burned to the ground, Dave Sim was married to Deni Loubert who writes "A Note from the Publisher" every issue. I wonder if the "Note" keeps up long enough to start being filled with marriage problem subtext? I hope so!

Deni's "Note" mentions a back-up story, "The Salamanders," written by Brent Alan Richardson which appeared in the back of Cerebus #32 and Cerebus #33.

The art was fun and the story passable.

I had been thinking that these Bi-weekly issues were a perfectly adequate stand-in for the regular issues. But now I have to question my entire experience! Not only did I miss this feature in Issue #32, I missed the entire ballot for David Craven's little comics award ceremony. His letter about the ceremony was reprinted in the Cerebus Bi-weekly reprint of Issue #32 but not the ballot! I guess that makes sense but it's still material I missed out on. Maybe I didn't need to buy all these Cerebus Bi-weeklies! I should have just been reading them online.

No, no! I'd rather hold the comics in my hand as I read them. Also, it feels too much like pirating if I read them for free online and I'm not a pirate. At least not anymore. The last thing I pirated was either a copy of Karateka for the Apple IIe or a Monkees song from Napster. Being that I have a pretty good concept of time and technology, I'm putting my money on the Napster thing. I don't mind reading the Cerebus issues online once I get to the place where I began collecting them myself at the beginning of Mothers & Daughters. Or maybe a little earlier since I did buy all the Phone Books and I doubt I'll cheaply find the second half of Church & State, Melmoth, and Jaka's Story. I offered to trade my Walking Dead #1 for a complete run of Cerebus on Twitter a while back but nobody took me up on the offer. Maybe expecting early Cerebus issues in that trade was too much to hope for. How about this? I'll trade my copy of Walking Dead #1 for Cerebus #81-300! Deal?

Dave Sim's "Notebook" feature has lots of practice drawings of Elrod because the last time Dave drew him, Dave's style was still coming along. High Society is where he really solidifies his style. He then begins to perfect it after partnering with Gerhard who takes away Dave's distraction of having to choose between drawing immersive backgrounds or inking all the panels black.

This issue (titled "Three Days Before" which might make a reader ask, "Before what?!" But since this totally imaginary reader is reading a comic book that means it's unlikely they have any friends to answer them. That's a stereotypical and mean thing to say because I remember when I was reading comic books, I had at least one friend with whom we discussed Guy Gardner #19 at length about how terrible it was. Also, the clerks at the comic book store would probably have been my friends if I could stand being around them longer than the time it took for them to ring me up (Dammit! There I go again! I actually liked all of my comic book clerks at all of my various comic book shops across the years! One guy, Jeff at Brian's Books in Santa Clara, even held a copy of the Death of Superman issue for me when I never even asked him to!) begins with Elrod greeting Cerebus by calling him his "old friend," just in case the reader couldn't remember just exactly how clueless Elrod was.

Cerebus knocks him out as quickly as possible. It's a smart attempt at making his life easier. I've suggested before (I know he can't hear me but that doesn't stop me talking to Cerebus while reading the comic) that he should kill everybody he meets if he wants a less complicated life. This move where he knocks Elrod out almost immediately is a step in the right direction.