Can someone post that image of cerebus the aardvark by issue quality?
Also I heard that the first issues are completely different than the ones in the middle/later, like it's more of a straight adventure or something. Would it be ok to start in the middle? At what issue should I start? Which ones should I skip?
General Cerebus thread
It's one arc near the end that's bad.
It starts as like a Conan take off and evolves into it's own epic thing
>>78169337
is the conan adventure stuff worthwile? what interests me is the epic shit in the middle, but its not like i dont have time on my hands so if its still good i'll try and read straight through
also what's your thoughts on the one issue in question? is that the "feminism" one?
I think it's around #25 that it starts getting a bit more depth. One it gets to Church and State, that's considered its Golden Age. The last 120 issues or so is when it goes off the rails, and if you value your sanity, you won't read too many of the text pieces in each issue.
>>78169390
Start from the beginning. Many recurring characters are introduced in the first issues and it doesn't take very long at all before it goes from dry parody to being great on its own.
Start from the mediocre beginning or else you won't know who the characters are during the GOAT content.
>>78169390
It's 11 issues. And what happens is that it stops being a "comic" and instead becomes walls of text with the occasional illustration.
>>78169664
thanks
>>78169664
>And what happens is that it stops being a "comic" and instead becomes walls of text with the occasional illustration.
also why did he do that
>>78169815
Divorce + mid-life crisis + nervous breakdown + going through a big heaping dose of 'so what's religion all about I mean REALLY'. Basically all of the last third of the series or so are either 'women are leaches that steal male creativity' or 'oh wow, another 300 fucking pages of religious diatribe'.
>>78169815
Because Dave Sim has schizophrenia, and he started his own religion, and he decided to use 11 issues of Cerebus to explain his religion.
>>78169815
literally went crazy.
>>78169296
The beginning is good, only lorefags and narrativecomplexityfags would say different.
It's short episodic stories familiarizing you with the character and world.
It builds slowly as it's intended to
>>78169815
Neil Gaiman explains Dave Sim's philosophy of stuffing everything he can into Cerebus:
>I remember asking him what he'd do if there was something he wanted to write about, something he had to say that didn't fit into Cerebus. "I'd use a big hammer," he grinned. "I'd get it in somehow."
Source: 300 Good Reasons To Resent Dave Sim
>>78169887
and drugs
>>78169887
I really don't understand how one can read 'Guys' or the part where he's with Jaka and see "HURR WOMEN RUIN EVERYTHING", it's such a simplistic and stupid reading. I read it much more as "don't be so thirsty that you become instantly pussywhipped when you enter a relationship" and "why the fuck are monogamous romances considered automatically more important and deep friendships than two people who actually have known each other for a long time and actually have a bond?"
>>78170142
It's Dave's own personal interpretation of his comic. He sees Going Home/Form & Void as concluding with the following:
> For the first time [Cerebus] was able to see Jaka precisely as she was and as she is and as she always would be: a spoiled, myopic, insensitive, self-absorbed and self-important harlot princess (quite apart from her position in the hierarchy of the city-state of Palnu). It was entirely his choice, as there things always are, but while he was passing time with a spoiled, myopic, insensitive, self-absorbed and self-important harlot princess, his father died alone and in the company of mere friends and mere neighbours. A loss of personal honour on the part of Cerebus that is almost unimaginable in an environment where such things matter (to say the least) a great deal. Not only do such things not happen "to the best of us," it is (in my experience) precisely the choices one makes in these situations which established the irrefutable line of demarcation between "the best of us" and "the rest of us". Personal honour demands that a son is there for his father (so long as one's father wants the son to be there. In the case of an estrangement chosen by the father, personal honour demands that the son stay away or until he is summoned by his father). Depending on one's standards (or lack of the same), one participates in wanton harlotry with wanton harlots. Human weakness is human weakness, after all. But to allow one's taste for pussy to intercede in the far larger and more important realm of one's relationship with and obligation to one's father is (in my view) to erode one's standards to those of a rutting barnyard beast. The lockout that Cerebus experienced just reminded him of the world of high standards that he came from and the extent to which his own standards had eroded.
So I've been looking in to buying this series. Are there omnibi or collector editions, or is it just by trades?
>>78170444
16 "phonebook" trades.
>>78170444
They're called 'phone books' and they're all around 250-500 pages in length. Have fun.
>>78170142
>I really don't understand how one can read 'Guys' or the part where he's with Jaka and see "HURR WOMEN RUIN EVERYTHING", it's such a simplistic and stupid reading.
The short version is, regardless of what you think, the intended reading is 'Dave haet wimmin'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Sim#Feminism_controversy
>>78169815
Dave Sim began studying Abrahamic religions during that time while also finally settling a divorce, but since his wife owned half his company it was a big fucking deal.
"Going Home" is about how women are cunts where he uses the examples of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernst Hemingway, and later makes uses the example of Cerebus and Jaka to drive home the point.
"Chasing YHWH" is all about reinterpreting the Old Testament into a gendered context, which is ironically a feminist thing, a political philosophy he's openly against. Oh, and Cereburs brings the Abrahamic religions to his fictional world while arguably retconning large parts of his lore.
Sim also became a Muslim and this: >>78169887
Weird thing though it ends super creatively with Cerebus' dying days.
>>78170584
>Implying I don't know Sim hates women
>Implying his hatred of women takes a huge influence on his work before the fucking sermons on it
If the man let his personal views effect his story that much then characters like Astoria wouldn't exist
>>78170724
Cerebus was created over nearly three decades, farn.
The Dave Sim who wrote the early issues isn't the same Dave Sim who wrote the later issues.
>>78170321
Yes, but Jaka was never portrayed as a cunt until that point. The worst thing she did, until then, was, and serious spoilers for those that haven't read Jaka's Story,have a secret abortion without telling Rick while both of them hid from the totalitarian Cirinists.
She was also the only one who ever loved Cerebus, which Cerebus' parents seemingly never did, and even tried to help him several times through out Church & State, Jaka's Story, and High Society. If anything, until "Guys", Jaka was trying to make Cerebus a better man, but couldn't because Cerebus just wants power. Hell, remember when the Sim himself told Cerebus he would make a vicious and terrible husband? And yes, Jaka was princess, but she rejected that identity several major times. In fact, it was one of the major fucking points of Jaka's arc in Jaka's Story.
>>78170870
As a humble reader, it is your right to interpret the comic as you do.
But the official word of the author is that you're wrong.
>>78170773
Okay, but if you actually read the comic instead of looking up wikipedia shit there is little to no malice against women, neither from the narrative nor the characters.
The closest thing we see before issue 250 or so is Rick, but Rick is clearly shown to be a fucking moron.
Bear is shown as an idiot for going with his woman, not his woman as a horrible person for taking Bear.
Cerebus is shown to make a decision he knows will not work in the long run but will make him happy, not Jaka as a succubus. Please post something from in the story to prove your point rather than "MUH WORD OF GOD" (because authorial intent is useless when it's this unclear)
I'm in Book Three of Church & State right now, and I'm so happy I finally decided to jump into Cerebus. OP, in case you haven't been satisfied with the answers, you do need to read the Conan adventure stuff, which works good on it's own but is needed for context to the whole deal.
Charles X. Claremont would be my favorite side character if Groucho fucking Marx wasn't so damn good in this.
>>78170476
>>78170468
Are they actually still in print though, or do they need to be tracked down and bought second hand?
>>78171492
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359086/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359078/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359094/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359116/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359124/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359108/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359132/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359140/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359159/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359167/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359175/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359183/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359191/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359205/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359221/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919359213/
The most interesting aspect of Dave's views on women is that later on he went and created Glamorpuss, which is kind of a satire of women's magazines on surface, but the real catch is actually his weird, almost JFK conspiracy theory tier, narrative that looks at the death of Alex Raymond, the creator of Rip Kirby.
>>78171501
instocktrades.com has some of the volumes at better/comparable prices. They've got signed and numbered versions of High Society, too.
>>78171614
Did you not read the "before issue 250" part of my post?
Sim literally had a scizophrenic break...
>>78171649
So you want us to discuss Form & Void while excluding Form & Void from the discussion?
I don't know about you, but I personally include Form & Void in "the part where he's with Jaka".
>>78171693
Dude, scroll back through the thread, I am talking about Guys and the first half of going home, which is when most people think the series goes to shit. I am making the claim that it is still very good through those issues and doesn't devolve into misogynist retardation until after that.
>>78171750
Form & Void is part of Going Home. It seems like you have no argument if you have to divide Going Home in half and ignore all the parts of Going Home that disagree with you.
Well, as much as I'd love to stay in this discussion, having only gotten like a sixth of the way into the book I'm clearly only going to be exposing myself to spoilers and contributing little. I'm working on it, guys. I will get there.
