― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 19 January 2006 16:21 (eighteen years ago) link
― chap who would dare to no longer work for the man (chap), Thursday, 19 January 2006 16:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Thursday, 19 January 2006 21:16 (eighteen years ago) link
http://briancotts.tripod.com/cottsweb/thirty/thirtyep73w.html
It's rather solipsistic and repetetive, but I don't know how one could write about Cerebus in any depth without this being the case. Anyway, I found it interesting.
― chap who would dare to start Raaatpackin (chap), Saturday, 26 August 2006 01:28 (seventeen years ago) link
Can someone do me a favour and point me to a good - ideally fairly small (like 200-250 pixels max either way) pic of Prince Mick and Prince Keef from Cerebus - my copies of Church and State are in France so I can't scan it. I need it to illustrate a blog post tomorrow (attentive FT readers will be able to work out which).
― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 19:02 (seventeen years ago) link
How chi-chi!
― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 19:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― Richard Jones (scarne), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 08:00 (seventeen years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 08:13 (seventeen years ago) link
I have read huge chunks of this but have some gaps (haven't read anything after Rick's Story, for ex.) I have two random questions:
1) does Astoria ever appear again post-Minds? At the end of the four-way dialogue between Suenteus Po, Cerebus, Cirin, and herself, does she just leave and exit the narrative altogether?2) when Cerebus returns to Estarcion after Minds, how come the Cirinists don't just kill him. Given how much trouble Cerebus caused her, I don't get why Cirin would just let him live out his days.
maybe I should just read Minds...
― hoth as fuck (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 12 November 2009 18:30 (fourteen years ago) link
i think the answer to 2) is that she's terrified of him.
― because she looks awesome, like in the face (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 12 November 2009 18:36 (fourteen years ago) link
1) Astoria's last appearance is in Reads, except for in hallucinations and possibly flashbacks.
You should check out Latter Days, the first two thirds are surprisingly good fun for late period Cerebus, and you don't really have to have read the generally interminable stuff between it and guys to understand it. The last third of the book is fucking batshit and really boring, natch.
― I am flesh and blood. You are software and circuitry. (chap), Thursday, 12 November 2009 22:46 (fourteen years ago) link
good to know... so far I've avoided Reads and I'm conflicted about powering through the entire series, even though I seem to return to the ones I like the most (High Society/Church & State/Guys/Rick's Story) on a regular basis (like, once every couple years). this series is really kinda a tragedy, could've been so much bigger/better...
― the only guy in a feminism lit class called The Women Quest (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 13 November 2009 20:36 (fourteen years ago) link
btw, I watched about 45 minutes of Cerebus TV yesterday (I don't know how much content he has up...it runs in a continuous loop), and my only reaction is o_O
― WmC, Friday, 13 November 2009 20:40 (fourteen years ago) link
Cerebus TV?
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 17 November 2009 13:12 (fourteen years ago) link
^ The Real Dirty Tuomas
― zing touch me I'm (sic), Tuesday, 17 November 2009 13:20 (fourteen years ago) link
DV, Cerebus TV is some new thing of Sim's, with a little involvement from Jim Steranko I believe. It's basically a rambling video fanzine -- segments include him talking about the development of a piece of art he donated to a charity auction (while he holds a camcorder on the art and bits of photo reference he used, trying to get it to focus), phone conversations between him and Todd Macfarlane about them agreeing to allow each other to reprint Spawn #10 (writting by Sim, featuring Cerebus), a phone conversation/interview with Russ Heath, a video love letter to a bookstore in his hometown, an announcement that he won't offer Cerebus Archives through Diamond Distribution because it didn't meet their minimum order numbers (even though they offered to bend the rules for him, because he's a man of principle etc etc). There are a couple of commercials for local comic shops in between segments; he seems to be hoping to at least break even selling ads, if not make huge profits.
― WmC, Wednesday, 18 November 2009 04:01 (fourteen years ago) link
Mmmm.
I wish I could somehow blend with Tuomas.
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 25 November 2009 13:37 (fourteen years ago) link
Man, this new comic he made of pinup girls with him rambling is just woof.
― ilx mooncup (forksclovetofu), Monday, 30 November 2009 01:10 (fourteen years ago) link
I think he made another one simultaneously that was pictures of Holocaust victims with him rambling.
― Communi-Bear Silo State (chap), Monday, 30 November 2009 01:27 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, both those are manic and difficult to even leaf through.
― ilx mooncup (forksclovetofu), Monday, 30 November 2009 17:12 (fourteen years ago) link
haha waht?!
― Gimme That Christian Side-hug, that Christian Side-hug (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 30 November 2009 20:54 (fourteen years ago) link
I like the comics-history portions of Glamourpuss, but the fashion-model parts are alternately creepy and boring.
― Bob Saget's "Night Moves": C or D (WmC), Monday, 30 November 2009 22:53 (fourteen years ago) link
even the comics history parts are a chore to read, as the greatest, most creative and artful hand-letterer of all time has been replaced by a clod-handed typist who fills square boxes with left-justified text.
― BACH STARKER (sic), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 01:01 (fourteen years ago) link
I find the comics-history parts very interesting in their crackpot sort of way. Those sections of the first three issues can be read at http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/uploads/glamourpuss/glamourpusshistoricalcommentary.pdf , by the way...
"Judenhass," on the other hand, really is a trainwreck--I laid into it at some length at http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/995/reality-check/ .
― Douglas, Tuesday, 1 December 2009 05:33 (fourteen years ago) link
thank you for linking to that glamourpuss material, which i'd not read before - the sequence where he analyses the photo of caniff and raymond is insane! i mean, im glad that ppl like raymond and williamson and prentice are still being talked abt, in any context, but because sim so plainly doesn't have the brush skills to match the ppl he's 'reproducing', if you have any kind of familiarity at all with the originals the glamourpuss stuff just comes across as a bad cover version, and it doesn't seem to playing to sim's strengths at all - humour, satire, caricature, etc.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 1 December 2009 15:45 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, I got about two pages into that before deciding it was a big waste of time. Like Ward says, he's an extremely talented artist, but his strengths are characterisation and action, not pretty pictures.
― Communi-Bear Silo State (chap), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 17:46 (fourteen years ago) link
Also the subject matter is just obtusely niche. I'm a comics fan, and I'm not particularly interested.
― Communi-Bear Silo State (chap), Tuesday, 1 December 2009 17:48 (fourteen years ago) link
christ what a complete waste of time and energy
― strange asses outside liquor stores (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 2 December 2009 17:40 (fourteen years ago) link
wow terrible
― Nhex, Wednesday, 2 December 2009 20:36 (fourteen years ago) link
Starting in the late '90s, Dave's writing increasingly assumes that the reader shares his particular political/religious views, which he claims are unique. For obvious reasons, this causes much of his later humor to fall flat.
Because the Internet is a worldwide medium, in the last few years he has found a handful of people to confirm even his most outrageous ideas.
I've learned that the work is best appreciated at a distance.
― stanleylieber, Friday, 18 December 2009 23:22 (fourteen years ago) link
Pretty much. There are still scattered moments of astounding perceptiveness and beauty even in his full-on batshit phase though, which is what is so frustrating.
― Communi-Bear Silo State (chap), Saturday, 19 December 2009 00:35 (fourteen years ago) link
Sure, agreed. As a whole, it's still my favorite work in the medium.
― stanleylieber, Saturday, 19 December 2009 17:11 (fourteen years ago) link
the other day I told my daughter she was going to learn an important lesson, that you could get what you want and still not be very happy. unfortunately, this turned out to be true.
― Wrinkles, I'll see you on the other side (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 12 February 2010 18:47 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2010/02/cerebus-58.jpg
Cerebus valentines
― blow it out your bad-taste hole (WmC), Tuesday, 16 February 2010 15:17 (fourteen years ago) link
wonderful!
― Nhex, Tuesday, 16 February 2010 15:59 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/18/comics-grow-up-graphic-novels-harvey-pekar
Is this the most mainstream press attention Cerebus has ever got?
― rhythm fixated member (chap), Monday, 19 July 2010 16:59 (thirteen years ago) link
pretty sure it's had a two-sentence mention 9 pars down on a blog before
― oh sh!t a ¯\⎝⏠___⏠⎠/¯ (sic), Monday, 19 July 2010 23:38 (thirteen years ago) link
Tom Spurgeon pretty nails it on the Comics Reporter:
These articles are dumb when comics bloggers who barely have two adjectives to rub together write them and they're dumb when writers for the Guardian with a full armory of verbiage at their disposal write them. Despite the fact that a number of examples in his own article repeatedly counter the notion that there's a narrowing of tone or theme in non-mainstream US comic books -- it made me smile to see Cerebus sneak in there -- there's all sorts of convenient examples out there of the range of alt-comics that get passed over that I think it's very fair for him to know about. While I wouldn't expect the writer to be familiar with publishing houses like PictureBox and AdHouse, it's worth noting that his primary examples come from cartoonists associated with Drawn and Quarterly and the big hit for D+Q before its big hit with Dan Clowes' Wilson was Lynda Barry's exuberant and entirely cheerful What It Is. Fantagraphics' big release of the moment is from Jim Woodring, whose work doesn't have much in common at all with Adrian Tomine. I personally think Seth's George Sprott exists in a land far, far away from what, say, Jordan Crane is doing in Uptight, but if you don't, that doesn't mean that in making your point you should get to drop the comics that provided a cleaner break with the "mopey" stereotype.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 20 July 2010 05:21 (thirteen years ago) link
The article was actually in the print copy of The Guardian.
― rhythm fixated member (chap), Tuesday, 20 July 2010 06:37 (thirteen years ago) link
I know for sure it's had a two-line mention in a major metro "Comics are for grown-ups?!" filler with up-page art pull before ;)
― oh sh!t a ¯\⎝⏠___⏠⎠/¯ (sic), Tuesday, 20 July 2010 07:49 (thirteen years ago) link
I think that's a decent enough bit of blog filler, and the Todd Solondz line is pretty good.
The argument is pretty old hat though. Apparently SL is a huge comic nerd (according to a friend who knows him), I'm sure he must have heard of Joann Sfar or Tezuka or whatever. They're quite easy to buy in the UK, too.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 21 July 2010 10:08 (thirteen years ago) link
Posting here to get rid of the phantom bookmark.
But i do have something to say about the article too: I kinda hate in when someone talks about "comics" in general, when he really means "American comics, maybe Canadian and British ones too". Even if the scope of "serious" American comics may see narrow, that isn't the case with comics worldwide, which should be obvious by just reading the non-Anglo stuff that's been translated to English.
― Tuomas, Monday, 26 July 2010 10:55 (thirteen years ago) link
which is kinda difficult in America tbh, depending on what yr talking about. sure we can get Tintin and Asterix or Milo Minara books, but try finding a copy of Arzach for example. tons of Manga never make it to English, etc.
― Moshy Star (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 26 July 2010 15:53 (thirteen years ago) link
The Guardian is not in America tbh
― Has admitted to being awesome in order to have sex (sic), Monday, 26 July 2010 23:31 (thirteen years ago) link
hey Tuomas brought up the America angle, not me
― Moshy Star (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 26 July 2010 23:54 (thirteen years ago) link
he was talking about a writer in England who discussed American comics
― Has admitted to being awesome in order to have sex (sic), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 04:57 (thirteen years ago) link
Maybe he's British, but the article falls into the long tradition of texts where the word "comics" is equated with "comics made in the English-speaking countries". If he'd bother to go beyond that (and lot of this stuff is available in English translations, though obviously a lot of it isn't), he'd notice that there's plenty of non-genre and art comics that have little to do with mopey navel-gazing. Just to take the example of French comics, the recent translations of works by various l'Association artists and the stuff released in English by Cinebooks should provide him with a wide array of "serious" comics that are not in the Harvey Pekar tradition.
― Tuomas, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 10:48 (thirteen years ago) link
Mega interview with Gerhard: part 1, part 2, part 3, and a follow-up from the interviewer.
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 1 March 2011 19:23 (thirteen years ago) link
Fantastic interview, thanks for the links. When they were talking (part 2, page 1) about the 2-page spread of the foundry for the golden sphere, I remembered that I had the chance to buy the original art for that for $150 and passed. I could just stab my brain out with a screwdriver when I think about it.
― WmC, Tuesday, 1 March 2011 20:59 (thirteen years ago) link
Like.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Thursday, 3 March 2011 16:15 (thirteen years ago) link
I obviously meant his visual skills, which seem pretty strong yet.
― “Cheeky cheeky!” she trills, nearly demolishing a roadside post (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 01:32 (one year ago) link
Got to the end of Dave's art life and it's losing its way a bit, meandering around the Margaret Mitchell revelation it promised earlier without actually getting anywhere near revealing.
Scott and Zelda turn up about now so I can see Dave folding himself into the metaphysics soon.
And in other cosmic alignment, a GoFundMe was launched while I've been reading to put online the TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY pages Dave has done outlines for since he stopped interacting with Carson Grubaugh (obviously including the Dave versions of the blue pages in SDOAR).
I am resisting, even at the $5 entry level, and looks like I'm not alone as two weeks in there are only 34 donations.
― Hello I'm shitty gatsworth (aldo), Saturday, 14 January 2023 16:26 (one year ago) link
I obviously meant his visual skills, which seem pretty strong yet.The work he is prolifically publishing is three older existing drawings of cerebus, cut-and-pasted by other people onto a 140-year-dead guy’s drawings! He’s only just started doing some variant covers again in the last year, after …seven years? of not drawing for publication, and mostly copying photos for about as many before that. It’s possible that the SDOAR 3.0 which aldo is resisting gofunding show that he still has a facility for original composition, page structure and visual storytelling, but it’s also possible it shows a significant deterioration — and I dunno that sketching layouts for one patron’s commission can be judged as prolific without seeing any of them.
― more crankable (sic), Saturday, 14 January 2023 17:20 (one year ago) link
ie yes one might argue his drawing has not deteriorated to the same degree as his comedy, dialogue, pacing, design and lettering; however, he is prolifically publishing all of those, and his drawings are published a couple of times a year, usually via POD to an audience of …dozens?
― more crankable (sic), Sunday, 15 January 2023 00:13 (one year ago) link
I am referring to what I have seen of strange death, which seems cleanly and well executed. Glamorpuss, the Dore stuff and Judenhass are varying levels of embarrassing, yes
― “Cheeky cheeky!” she trills, nearly demolishing a roadside post (forksclovetofu), Sunday, 15 January 2023 00:48 (one year ago) link
With only 34 in for SDOAR3.0 dozens feels accurate at this point.
It's hard to tell just how far Dave's drawing has deteriorated from the limited stuff I've seen because once he moved to the tracing paper technique the 'good' is introduced at the inking stage and the trace drawing is quite literally a bit sketchy. So because all we see now is really the pencil we should be comparing it to something that looks unfinished - and if we do that then it looks fairly sustained. But the point is kind of moot because imo there's no way Dave will ever produce finished art again (not least because that would mean not falling out with a collaborator).
It's also fair to say though that going down the SDOAR route and reproducing other people's work, plus the reproducing photos stuff, has ruined his creative art abilities.
Based on SDOAR2.0 layouts are the only real strength he has at Cerebus levels but I haven't seen any of the SDOAR3.0 stuff and the SDOAR2.1 layouts are a drop off from the rest of the book.
CiH is absolutely dreadful.
― Hello I'm shitty gatsworth (aldo), Sunday, 15 January 2023 10:09 (one year ago) link
Had a dig through the cereblog:
This is the sole image used to advertise the SDOAR 3.0 GoFundMe, that you can subscribe to see more of - I couldn't figure out how much more or for how much.
This is a recent actual drawing, which I couldn't figure out whether it's a cover printed like this or drawn on a "blank" cover.
These are the only art he is publishing regularly at the moment, and afaict the only time he has published art serially in about eight years?
― more crankable (sic), Monday, 23 January 2023 00:50 (one year ago) link
Someone should tell him about the “cool S”
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Monday, 23 January 2023 00:52 (one year ago) link
all the actual car crash stuff i've seen from sdoar is quite nice imo but it seems i am not keeping pace with his output and that's because i don't have much interest in him anymore
― POLIZISTEN VERSINKEN IM SCHLAMM (forksclovetofu), Monday, 23 January 2023 03:41 (one year ago) link
Kickstarter for Remastered TMNT #8, with 24 variant covers* at $20-$100 each, a behind-the-scenes book (collecting material from two previous BTS books promoting this Kickstarter, plus new material - presumably the two complete BTS books will also be offered as stretch goals) for $30, a comic book of TMNT/Cerebus convention sketches by unnamed artists, a collection of the 75 promo sketches by Sim^ for $30, a trading card set of the promo sketches for $95 and a trading card set of the variant covers for $20, an enamel pin of Cerebus' face, another enamel pin of Cerebus'face wearing a TMNT mask ($15 each or $25 for two), three variant cover versions of a November ashcan promoting this project (regular cover $100, green foil cover $150, platinum foil $300), and new editions of previously-kickstartered remasters of Cerebus #1 and #2 at $15 each, and a Dave Sim cover variant of a previously-kickstartered remaster of Spawn #10 for $50.
$45k raised from 308 backers so far, five days in. I think the cheapest you can get everything (via bundles) for is $1230
*(artists range from Simon Bisley and Brandon Graham to original Mirage artists Michael Dooney and Jim Lawson, to one of the guys that writes & photoshops Cerebus In Hell.)
― least said, sergio mendes (sic), Monday, 6 March 2023 00:57 (one year ago) link
Man, the Eastman/Sim combo is an unpleasant moneygrubbing two-headed monster.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Monday, 6 March 2023 03:37 (one year ago) link
Tom Ewing's deep Cerebus dive, started on Feb 1st and a post per phone book, is really really good. https://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2024/02/there-are-three-aardvarks starts it off, and there are links at the bottom of that post to each subsequent post. He's up to Rick's Story, posted today.
― Ippei's on a bummer now (WmC), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 18:57 (two days ago) link
Thanks, this is great stuff.
― Kim Kimberly, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 19:35 (two days ago) link