RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Dave Sim's CEREBUS, one of the great innovative series

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I ran across this "Comics Trope" episode on Dave Sim and his CEREBUS run:

The Controversies of Cerebus' Dave Sim


I'd agree that it's very intelligent, wildly funny, and very much worth reading. As I've said many times, one of the high-water marks of comics storytelling, on a par with the best work of Alan Moore and Frank Miller. But as this no-holds-barred review points out, at some point Dave Sim went off the deep end, ideologically and perhaps psychologically, and the latter half of the series, while beautifully illustrated and somewhat interesting story-wise, just wasn't the same as the first half of the series.

I'd disagree with host Chris that the first 25 issues (collected in the first "phone book" volume) are not that interesting, and should be skipped. Quite the contrary, while the art is amateurish in the early issues, they are still well-written and better than most comics, and the art evolves at a rapid clip. The writing as well. They're single-issue stories up till the first multi-part story in 14-16, and then are 2 and 3-part stories from that point on, up through issue 25.

CEREBUS starts out as a parody of Barry Windsor-Smith's CONAN stories, but in less than 10 issues evolves into much more than that, becoming a parody of popular culture with iconic characters like Foghorn Leghorn, Groucho Marx, Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes, parody versionss of heads of state like Margaret Thatcher and several U.S. presidents, and parodies of comics creators and characters, such as Englehart/Rogers' obsessive Batman (issue 11), Bran Mak Morn ("Bran Mac Muffin" in issue 5 and later issues) , Neal Adams' Deadman and World War II Captain America (issues 21 and 22), with beautifully clever dialogue and comic pacing.

For me, the best issues (that host Chris tells you to skip, and start reading instead with CEREBUS:HIGH SOCIETY, that collects issues 26-50, while also very good), are the early issues up through issue 25, that flesh out the central characters Sim continued to expand on in HIGH SOCIETY.
By issues 17 and 18, I think the series had already reached its peak, that continued on through HIGH SOCIETY.
And these shorter one-issue, two-issue and three issues stories are shorter pieces that you can read in smaller bite-size chunks than HIGH SOCIETY (26-30).

Volumes 3 and 4 (CHURCH AND STATE volumes 1 and 2) are more freewheeling, and while still having many great moments, was more random stream-of-consciousness stuff by Dave Sim that I enjoyed slightly less.
Volume 5, ( JAKA'S STORY) I fully enjoyed, and is a further innovation in style and not just more of the same. Very funny in parts, very fluid and natural dialogue, but it alternates from very fast-paced segments with brief dialogue that moves very quickly, to other segments from Jaka's writings that are huge blocks of text with minimal pictures, that are admittedly not for everyone.
Many I've talked to bailed on the series at this point. But I enjoyed this volume as well, although it is admittedly not as easy to get through. But up to this point, still rewarding, worth the time to read.

It was with the next two volumes, (MELMOTH and FLIGHT ) that I largely lost interest. The story pacing and themes were less interesting to me, and Sim's weird misogynist ideas about women and his general jerkiness began to set in.

There's as much there as you care to delve into, and the best portion of the series alone far exceeds the length of many other series, longer even than say, Peter David's INCREDIBLE HULK run. Longer than Lee/Kirby's 103-issue FF and 72-issue THOR runs, substantial in length as these famous series are.
As the video details, Sim's personal philosophy, as well as his personal business practices that alienated an entire generation of comics distributors and comics retail store owners who formerly promoted him, have largely caused CEREBUS over the last 25 years or so to not be promoted, and to be forgotten, excluded from the list of great comics works it belongs among.

But if you want to check it out, it remains an enduring classic, a large part of it outstanding, if not the whole of it, and (God bless the internet!) you can view it in its entirety for free, to decide for yourself whether it's worth adding to your collection in print form.

CEREBUS, all 300 issues :
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Cerebus

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Sim seems in recent years to have come back doing convention sketches and random parody covers, some of which have been published.
Of which this is one example, that may have been a fun exercise, or might have actually been printed in one of his parody issues in recent years.

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https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=52515079

Wow, that last one actually was a published comic, and not just a cover parody.

There's an original art piece Sim did a few years back, a parody page of Steve Ditko's "MR A.", but Sim's version was an underachieving slacker version, "Mr. C-minus".
I have a copy I printed out from the auction if I didn't win, but it would still be nice to have in larger original art or collected print form.

Here's a link to another online comics library of all 300 issues of the CEREBUS series :

https://viewcomiconline.com/cerebus-001/


And here's a link that includes the other odds and ends available on the same site :

https://viewcomiconline.com/search/?key=cerebus


I've at least temporarily abandoned the ReadComicOnline.li website, as it is now inundated with ads, it didn't used to be.
And some of those ads have malicious malware, and I feel sorry for anyone who uses that site without good antivirus software to protect their computer.



Another site I've been using is ComicOnlineFree.net (it was down for a while, previously ComicOnlineFree.com , before the re-boot) .
It again lets you read all 300 issues online, with a minimum of ads :

https://comiconlinefree.net/cerebus/issue-1

In the right column of the linked page, it also lets you click on the other later CEREBUS series.

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I wanted to clarify what the business practices were by Dave Sim that alienated retailers who previously supported him. From the beginning in 1977 till 1986, CEREBUS was a small publisher venture that came out consistently every 2 months, and then (beginning in 1980) every month, and gradually built a following. And because it was good quality storytelling and deserved a following, many distributers and retailers, such as Bud Plant and many other local comic shops, gave it good word of mouth and promoted it, gave it more visibility and referral than they would other more mainstream titles.



Dave Sim first reprinted the earliest issues in 4-issue collected volumes, titled SWORDS OF CEREBUS 1 (issues 1-4), 2 (issues 5-8), 3 (issues 9-12), 4 (issues 13-16), 5 (issues 17-20), and 6 (issues 21-25). These were retail books dealers sold in their shops, where retailers bought them at distributer prices and shared in the retail profits with Sim.
After that, Sim also did a CEREBUS BI-WEEKLY title, that re-published issues 1-26 every 2 weeks for about a year, sold through normal retail distribution that retailers also got a percentage of.
Followed by a similar bi-weekly reprint of the HIGH SOCIETY issues (26-50).

But with the first "phone book" volume in June 1986, HIGH SOCIETY (collecting issues 26-50), Sim abused the retailers who helped build his brand. He didn't sell it retail like his other titles, it and subsequent "phone book" collected volumes were mail-order only, and from Dave Sim directly, by mail from Canada. The retailers and distributors were pissed, they were like "What the fuck are you doing?!? We helped build you up, and this is how you repay us?"

And that's combined with Dave Sim about that time (1986) divorcing his wife Deni Loubert (who took all the non-CEREBUS titles and formed Renegade Press), and Sim (if not already) started expressing some weird misogynist ideas about women (that they are basically parasites that suck the life and creative energy out of men) and these ideas began appearing in CEREBUS stories during "Church and State"(vols 3 and 4) and "Jaka's Story" (vol 5).

So many readers stopped buying, and circulation decreased, further declined by angry betrayed retailers who no longer wanted to promote or help Sim, because he'd become greedy and wanted keep all the book profits for himself, instead of sharing those profits with the distributors and retailers who helped Sim build his brand. I was one of those who stopped reading and supporting CEREBUS, because the story quality had dropped, and his ego at this point exceeded the quality of what he was producing.

I didn't know about the angry and alienated retailers until 1989-1990 when I purchased the HIGH SOCIETY and other volumes up to then. I'm a prime example of why they were pissed. I bought all 6 "phone book" collected volumes by mail order from ads in the CEREBUS comics, and spent about 200 dollars on these volumes that the retail shops didn't get a cent of.
And from that point I was no longer buying the monthly issues, just waiting for the collected volumes, And the future mail-order volumes I stopped buying as well, after my disappointment with MELMOTH and FLIGHT.
The art was, from what I sampled in later years, still top quality and consistent with the issues in the peak period. But the storyline, and Sim himself, were just not the same.

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From 1987, here's the documentary, THE MASTERS OF COMIC BOOK ART (released in 1987), that includes the only videotaped interview I've seen of Dave Sim, wiih a number of other noteworhy artists.

Hosted by Harlan Ellison, giving 1-minute introductions for 10 comic artists (each speaking for about 5 minutes),
1. Will Eisner
2. Harvey Kurtzman
3. Jack Kirby
4. Steve Ditko
5. Neal Adams
6. Berni Wrightson
7. Moebius
8. Frank Miller
9. Dave Sim
10. Art Spiegelman

The Masters of Comic Book Art


I could have just posted a clip of Sim alone, but wanted a version that includes Harlan Ellison's introduction of Sim.
Much as I like all these artists, I thought the first 4 (Eisner, Kurtzman, Kirby, Ditko) came across less than their best. But even so, it's still good to see them and hear them discuss their work in their own words. But all the other 6 artists after were very eloquent and give intelligent insight into their work.

Of the latter six artists, Sim to me comes across with an offputting swagger, despite still making intelligent points about his work. In sunglasses I can't tell if he's high, or just high on himself. Regardless, Sim's CEREBUS remains one of the great milestones in comics history, despite not all of it in the last half of the series being my cup of tea.

I first discovered CEREBUS when I began college in 1981, issue 29 was the current issue, but I easily bought back issues that were still on the display shelf with it (obviously not a big seller at the time) back to issue 20. It became increasingly popular in the first few months I discovered the series. I myself gave word-of-mouth to many others upon discovering CEREBUS.

So I kind of rode the wave almost from the beginning. I bought the initial series, then bought the SWORDS OF CEREBUS reprint volumes as they came out.
Then I bought thesame stories again in CEREBUS BI-WEEKLY, because they most closely resembled the earliest issues I'd missed, even reprinting the editorials, lettercolumns and all ads in the original issues.

And then I liked the idea of having them in collected volumes:

CEREBUS volume 1 (also titled CEREBUS THE BARBARIAN, reprinting issues 1-25)
HIGH SOCIETY (reprinting issues 26-50)
CHURCH AND STATE (volume 3, reprinting 52-80)
CHURCH AND STATE (volume 4, reprinting 81-111)
JAKA'S STORY (volume 5, reprinting 114-136)

At that point, you got increasingly less out of reading a single issue of a much larger story, so once I bought the collected volumes, at some point I lost interest in reading the monthly new issues, stopped buying, and just waited for the collected volumes.

And then, after disappointments with MELMOTH (issues 139-150) and FLIGHT (issues 151-162), I just stopped buying altogether. I have single issues up through 176, and scattered samplings after. The art is very consistent right up up through the end, but the storytelling became less focused, and more just random scenes. And surreal scenes such as in "Mindgames" (in issue 20) that initially was one issue and focused toward a specific purpose in the larger story narrative (and the same in "Mindgames 2" about a year later).

But in CHURCH AND STATE, and after in later issues, these visually interesting surreal/dream vignettes became more prolonged and seemed to have less and less of an actual point. beyond nice surreal visuals. More like an MTV video than an actual story. And especially reading one issue at a time at that point, rather than a collected volume, one couldn't make a whole lot of sense out of a single issue, outside of the larger whole.

But I love the first 5 volumes.

Here's the wraparound cover for the first collected volume :



The wraparound covers by themselves were some of the best art of the series. I would have bought poster versions of them, if they'd ever been offered.