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.
