CEREBUS - Forum

[Theoretiker]

Da es leider kein eigenes Forum für den besten Comic der Welt gibt, sollte es wenigstens einen eigenen Thread zu diesem Thema geben. Also bitte meldet Euch liebe Cerebus-Fans. Ich weiß, daß ich hier nicht allein bin.
Dave Sim rules

[L.N. Muhr]

hm... da wären noch truealice, kups, ich... wer noch? (davon abgesehen, daß die außer kups eigentlich alle zur familie gehören.... )

[Theoretiker]

Na da wäre zum Beispiel noch Schwarwel, dem ich schließlich mein erstes Phonebook und meinen Einstieg in die Serie überhaupt verdanke und dann natürlich der Webmaster von www.cerebus.de (falls er sich auch im Forum rumtreibt).

[Theoretiker]

@L.N.
oder wir machen hier einfach mit truealice unser en eigenen privattread auf.
Ich hab übrigens vom Wahren Alice zwei Artikel zum Antifrauenessay Sims im Aprilheft bekommen.

hiya,

hier nur ein dave sim schmaehender artikel aus dem web, vielleicht's
interessiert's ja.

dabei fand ich gerade das letzte heft (latter days #1) absolut
genial, und was das duel-angebot an jeff smith (wem wuerdest du denn
als fan beider herren die daumen druecken?) und sein tangent-piece
angeht -- keine ahnung, ob und wie ernst er das alles meint, die
idee, dass er dabei ist, seine person in ein kunstwerk zu verwandeln
(s.u.) hat was, aber wie auch immer: sim versteht vergnueglich zu
argumentieren, niemand anderes wuerde mich dazubrringen, mitten in
der nacht 20 engbedruckte seiten gelaber zu lesen, wo ich doch
eigentlich tausend deadlines im nacken hab.

kurz und gut: dave sim ist einfach nicht mit normalen masstaeben zu
messen

greetings,

frankS

------------------------------

Sim City: Population 1

Regular columnist Paul O'Brien reflects on Dave Sim's latest
outbursts, and asks; why, man, why? 14 May 2001


Dave Sim is a mad, mad bastard.

Now, let me reassure you right from the outset. This column is not
going to be a point-by-point rebuttal of Sim's increasingly bizarre
public statements. That could be a complete waste of my time and
yours. I am not interested in Sim's ramblings. Not in that way,
anyway.

But what interests me is the number of people who still are
interested. Sim has been cultivating a reputation as a seriously
warped mind for a few years now, but in recent months he's excelled
himself. Nobody much seems to care about the stories he publishes in
CEREBUS any more. Attention on that book focuses almost exclusively on
Sim's lengthy and perverse text pieces in the back. In recent months,
readers watched with amazement as Sim publicly challenged loveable
Jeff Smith to a boxing match on the grounds that this was how real Men
resolved their differences.

This was impressively demented, but nothing compared to the now
notorious issue #265. That issue opens with Sim reprinting a letter of
resignation from his proofreader Diana Schutz, who was declining to
continue working for him on the basis that she was uncomfortable with
the material. There follows a twenty page Cerebus story, which nobody
has paid any attention to at all.

There then follows a dissertation on Sim's views on gender, entitled
"On gender: Tangent", and clocking in at twenty pages. Much of the
content is already familiar to regular readers of CEREBUS. Sim
identifies men with reason, logic and creativity, and women with
emotion, stupidity and emptiness. He then goes on to bemoan the
feminisation of western culture. Recent elaborations on this include a
distinction between males and Men (so as to explain why it is that
Sim's definition of maleness bears no resemblance to the real world),
and the expansion of his attack to include "homosexualists."

Spreading himself widely, Sim goes on to attack the concepts of
alimony, Gay Pride, animal rights and child poverty (Sim insists that
no such thing exists) before building to a climax with a five page
history of the career of Martin Luther King. The issue ends with a
disclaimer waiving copyright to the Tangent article and allowing it to
be reproduced in its entirety by anyone who feels the urge.

Now, you might think that not many people would feel the urge to
reproduce such an obvious pile of nonsense. Borderline maniacs are
rarely taken up on this kind of offer, unless they've written the
Unabomber Manifesto. But you would be wrong. "Tangent" has spawned
lengthy discussions on comics forums across the Internet. The Comics
Journal immediately put the entire thing up on their website, and
announced their intention to reprint it in their next issue.

And this is the bit that interests me. Why is a journal of serious
comics criticism bothering to reprint this junk? It's not even about
comics. For that matter, why are reasonable people bothering to
discuss it at all?

'It reads like the rambling screeds that paranoids scrawl with
crayons.'


It's certainly not because anyone takes "Tangent" seriously as a
subject for discussion. Opinion has basically divided into two camps.
The majority maintains that "Tangent" is the product of a diseased
mind. That's certainly my view. It reads exactly like the sort of
rambling screeds that paranoids scrawl in capitals with crayons,
accusing the CIA of planting radio transmitters in their heads. Sim
has a history of mental illness, into which "Tangent" fits rather
neatly. The minority view is that "Tangent" is some kind of
situationist stunt and that he doesn't really mean it. This theory
would be nice to believe, but Sim's public behaviour seems to be
along the same lines. It's just no longer credible that he's taking
the piss, unless he's trying to turn his entire life into some kind
of artistic statement. Which wouldn't exactly be the sign of a stable
mind either, come to think of it.

The point is, though: nobody takes this nonsense seriously. So why do
we care what nonsense Dave Sim runs in his own comic? Of course,
there's a certain element of "let's gawp at the loony", but that
doesn't feel like the whole story. Plenty of loonies out there if you
like that sort of thing.

A part of it, undoubtedly, is that Sim's viewed as an important
creator. But really, it's been a while since CEREBUS was considered
essential reading for all comics fans. The stories that tend to be
recommended to newcomers cover the span from 'High Society' to 'Jaka's
Story' or, at a push, 'Melmoth'.

Sim is still an extremely imaginative storyteller, and his books
contain a wealth of unusual storytelling techniques you won't often
see elsewhere. On that technical level, CEREBUS remains a highly
impressive book that is well worth looking into. But the soul of the
stories has drifted further and further away into Sim's curious
obsessions, leaving the series increasingly as a technical masterclass
devoted to highly esoteric subject matter of limited interest to
anyone that isn't Dave Sim. 'Guys' bordered on unreadable, and the
recent Hemingway storyline devoted a painfully extended period of
months to regaling us in mind-numbing detail with an anecdote about
lion-hunting that Sim had read in a book he didn't even like. The
relative success of "Going Home" probably has a lot to do with Sim
focusing again on his two central characters and getting on with the
breakdown of their relationship, which is at least of some interest to
his readers.

'Is Sim still a particularly important creator?'


But creatively, is Sim still a particularly important creator?
Certainly not as much as he was; the contribution that CEREBUS was
going to make has probably been made by now. It remains an
interesting book for those who want to see what you can do with the
medium, but for a wider audience it's nothing to write home about.

I think a large part of the reason why people still care is that Sim
spent years as the most prominent voice promoting self-publishing.
He's a lot quieter about it now, but in the eyes of the comics
community, Sim's still strongly associated with the self-publishing
movement and the whole field of creators' rights. These are deeply
fashionable causes, for a variety of extremely good reasons. And Sim
was a leading figure in that movement.

This, after all, is the man who could always be held up as a towering
example of what you could do if you put your mind to it. A
self-publisher, with only Gerhard to assist him. Total creative
control. A wildly ambitious project that looks like commercial suicide
- three hundred monthly issues following the life of a pseudo-medieval
aardvark. Twenty-five years of glacially paced biography. Nobody in
their right mind would try to make a living at that.

But Sim has tried and succeeded. He has kept his back catalogue in
print through trade paperbacks (another deeply fashionable idea right
now). He has kept his financial independence. He has somehow managed
to make a living at a project that all common sense tells us should be
economically disastrous. He appears to live in some kind of pocket
dimension where the normal laws of business have been suspended.

All of this is genuinely impressive, and by rights Sim ought now to be
coasting through the last few years of CEREBUS as a respected elder
statesman of comics. We want him to be the hero. We want him to be the
man who defeated overwhelming commercial adversity to realise his
artistic vision. Sim's business model represents everything that we're
meant to be in favour of. He's meant to be the good guy.

'Sim ought to be a respected elder statesman of comics.'


But Sim, damn him, is refusing to play along. He's crossing the line
from charmingly eccentric to socially unacceptable. This is deeply
inconvenient. It sits very uneasily with the myth of the artist as
somebody who has dazzling insights into the big issues. It needs
explaining. When all conventional wisdom says he's meant to be the
conquering hero, Sim has reinvented himself as a maniac who you'd
cross the street to avoid. It wasn't meant to happen like this.

So far, even though it's passed its creative peak, the quality of the
actual stories hasn't suffered too badly. I genuinely hope it stays
that way, because it would be tragic if Sim got this close to
completing his life's work, twenty-five years of effort, and then blew
it at the last moment. Even if we're not really reading CEREBUS any
more, we'd all like Sim to make it to the end. But when you read Sim's
ravings, you get the sinking feeling that it's all going to go
horribly wrong.

And what have we had recently? A crashingly dull, extended story about
Mary Hemingway eating lions, apparently to illustrate the failings of
womankind. Then, 'Going Home', which focussed on the relationship
between Cerebus and Jaka. The depiction of Jaka has wavered from the
reasonable to the downright odd. The spoilt princess character seen
here isn't impossible to reconcile with the barroom dancer from
'Jaka's Story', but it seems a curiously negative shift in her
depiction.

Still, thirty-five issues to go. Three years. All he has to do is keep
this kind of thing to a minimum, ride it out to a competent ending,
complete what's now doomed to be a badly flawed work, but at least get
the recognition for having made it to the end. He deserves to make it.

But I've got a sinking feeling he won't.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

[Theoretiker]

Okay etwas lang zu lesen, aber hier noch der zweite Artikel:

hier noch ein netter link:

(http://www.brenster.com/)


dave hilft unter anderem diesem leidgeplagten spitzohr:

Mr. Sim, I find women to be completely illogical and beguiling, yet I
also find myself irrationally attracted to them. Is this a problem,
and is there a solution?
--William Spock, Vulcan ND

I understand your problem as I have had the same one myself and I'm
sure it's the same for many, many men out there. The insidiousness
with which women often use their voids to force men into submission
wheterh subtle or not. It's very difficult to rid yourself of the
unbearable attraction to the voids. However, I found that celibacy
comes much easier when you become completely and utterly without
feelings of, or for, *** . My suggestion is to cut off your sexual
organs. Life will become much easier than.

Leider alles auf english, alos hab ich es noch nicht alles gelesen.
Bis demnächst

[L.N. Muhr]

hallo theoniel,

hast leider den artikel vergessen und den link falsch gesetzt. sowas aber auch.

(ich beschwer mich auch nur, weils außer uns beiden eh keiner liest... oder, alice?)

[Theoretiker]

Nein hab ich nicht! Ich hab nur die beiden Mails exakt so gepostet, wie ich sie von Alice zugeschickt bekam.
Wann willst Du eigentlich Church & State I?

[MrSinister]

Bevor das hier zu einem Dialog wird, werd ich mich auch mal einmischen... meine Cerebus Kenntnisse beschränken sich auf Ausgaben 36-40, also kann ich mich nur schwer als Fan bezeichnen, ich blick's nämlich nicht... Elrod? Erinnert mich irgendwie an Elric... Cerebus der Politiker? Wie warum weshalb? Wer ist Jaka? Was soll das mit dem Schwert? Cerebus the Barbarian?

Vielleicht sollt ich versuchen, 1-35 auch aufzutreiben, das könnte mein Verständnis der Story etwas verbessern...

[Theoretiker]

Wahnisinn, da kenn ich ja nun schon 2 Österreicher, die Cerebus lesen (oder zumindest 5 Hefte). Die Hefte 1-25 sowie 26-50 kannst Du für jeweils 25 $ bei jedem Comicshop bestellen (bzw. in Wien liegen sie bereits in den Läden).

[MrSinister]

Mal sehen... wenn's mein Budget mal zulässt, werd ich mir das erste Telefonbuch wohl zu Gemüte führen (bin aber Grazer, und dort liegen die Dinger nicht in der Auslage eines der zwei Comicshops, die wir hier besitzen...)

[Theoretiker]

Das zweite (und alle folgenden) Phonebooks sind leider besser als das erste, aber Du brauchst es wirklich um alles zu verstehen, da hier sämtliche Charaktäre und Handlungsbögen eingeführt werden. Und spätestens ab Heft #14 ist es sowieso genial. Obwohl eigentlich von den Storys von Anfang an, aber die Zeichnungen sind zu Beginn noch etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig.

@L.N.
Ich hab gesehen, daß du (absichtlich kleingeschrieben) im Forum warst und hier nicht gepostet hast! Böseböseböse!

[L.N. Muhr]

*pro-forma-posting*

(wenn du so weiter machst, kriegst du nächsten samstag kein fleisch auf meiner grill-party!)

[Theoretiker]

Hab heute endlich "This aardvark this sheepard" in der Combo bekommen. Ein endlich mal wieder sehr witziges Heft, nach der herzzereißenden letzten Nummer.

Leider kann ich am Wochenende nicht. Bis ab morgen bis Pfingstmittwoch in Wien und das Wochenende drauf in Münster.

Warum meldet sich True Alice nicht hier?
Und was ist mit Kupsi?

[L.N. Muhr]

na, dann kümmer dich halt um deine wiener würstchen... und verzichte auf das gute sterni, das ich dir sonst kredenzt hätte... jo, ich frag mal nach dem shepherd (gab übrigens mal nen perry-rhodan-autor, der sich so nannte... wurde nach drei heften wieder aus der herde entlassen...)

ps: bring mir dann ruhig mal c&s #1 mit!

[Theoretiker]

Bin wieder da!!!
Also nachdem ich mal ein wenig in #265 gelesen habe muß ich sagen, ich hab ja nichts gegen die ständigen Frauenfeindlichkeiten von Dave, aber was hat er jetzt denn auf einmal auch noch gegen Schafe, das geht nun wirklich zu weit!

[Amazing Dirk]

Was ist ein Cerberus ???

[L.N. Muhr]

Original erstellt von Amazing Dirk:
Was ist ein Cerberus ???

in diesem fall: ein rechtschreibfehler.

theo, an die front!

[Theoretiker]

Immer bereit!
Ein Cerberus ist ein dreiköpfiger Höllenhund der griechischen Mythologie.
Ein Cerebus hingegen ist ein Aardvark (ein Erdferkel) und Hauptfigur im gleichnamigen besten Comic der Welt.

[Amazing Dirk]

Ich mag Erdferkel ,am besten mit fiel Karetoffelklösse dabei
Hab ich schonmal gesehen, sehs mir mal genauer an wenn ich nochmal treffe.

[L.N. Muhr]

Original erstellt von Amazing Dirk:
[B]Ich mag Erdferkel ,am besten mit fiel Karetoffelklösse dabei
B]

du hast ganz schön fiele einvälle!

[Theoretiker]

Hey Muhry, ich hoffe wir haben jetzt nicht den einzigen Besucher, den wir hier mal hatten, wieder vergrault. Nach den Hobbys in seinem Profil hätte er nämlich ziemlich gut zu Cerebus und uns gepaßt.

[L.N. Muhr]

hey - wer cerebus mag, sollte einer frau treu sein können, bevorzugt eine blonde tänzerin aus einer drittklassigen kneipe, die sich als superintelligente frau hochrangiger abstammung heausstellt und die einen kurz vorm schluß verläßt.

ist gott eigentlich ein blonder oben-ohne-tänzer?

[Amazing Dirk]

Bin noch da, keine Angst

[Theoretiker]

Meinst Du nicht, daß sich Jaka und Cerebus innerhalb der nexten 34 Hefte nochmal kriegen werden? Und wenn schon nicht Jaka, dann wenigstens Red Sophia wegen ihres tollen Outfits (ching-ching). Ich glaube schon, daß Dave im letzten Kapitel nochmal alle wichtigen Charaktere der Serie auftreten läßt. Außerdem fehlt noch die große Konfrontation Jaka vs. Julius.

[GOTT, der ALLMÄCHTIGE]

NANANA; NICHT SOLCHE FRECHEN BEMERKUNGEN ÜBER MICH! SONST LASSE ICH WIEDER DEINEN COMPUTER ABSTÜRZEN ODER LEGE DIE MAGDEBURGER NEUSTADT IN SCHUTT UND ASCHE (FALLS DAS JEMANDEM AUFFÄLLT)!
KOH AMAR JAHWE