The DOOM comic

"Rip and tear your guts!  You are huge!  That means you have huge guts! Rip and tear!" - Doomguy

I'm tempted to simply provide a link to the scanned in images of this sixteen page comic based on the videogame Doom and leave it at that, as then you won't need me to tell you how mganificent it is.  But that would be cheating,and some of you might (somehow) be immune to it's considerable charms.  So discuss we shall.  It's a comic about a videogame.  And when I am not sitting about eating biscuits and reading comics, I am sitting about eating biscuits and playing videogames. I don't feel guilty about posting a link to the full issue though.  No creator will be losing money because of it, this was a freebie given away at a videogame convention in 1996, then in an anthology boxset collecting all the Doom games up until then that same year.  For the few of you who might lead more productive lives than I do (and eat fewer biscuits), the Doom games belong to a genre called First Person Shooters, where you view the action as if the screen were your eyes.

Still one of gaming's best shotguns!

You collect weapons, in Doom's case as many different ones as you like (screw you Halo and your much copied two gun limit!) and make your way through levels killing everything in sight.  The original Doom released in 1993 wasn't the first FPS, but it was a huge hit and influence on the fledgling genre, which is now one of the most popular gaming genres there is.  It spawned several sequels, and appeared on virtually every gaming system there was, though it's true home was on the PC.  So how to do a narrative comic about game in which your only interaction with anything is either collecting it, opening it or shooting it?

Doomguy: "Huh? Whuzzat? Whuzzat? I like what I see! An important looking door... knock knock. Who's there? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, ME!"

Alas spine removal is not an option in the series yet...

The answer to that is to have your protagonist be an musclebound lunatic with the soul of a poet who verbalises every thought no matter how ridiculous they sound. The protagonist isn't given a name, so everyone uses the nickname "Doomguy" when talking about the protagonist of the original games.  People have wondered if this comic was meant as a joke or was meant quite seriously.  But look at the credits behind the comic: Michael 'Splatter' Stewart, Steve 'Body Bag' Behling, Tom 'Gallows' Grindberg and Edd 'Dead' Fear. Those are not the credits of men who are expecting to be taken seriously.  I'd love to own a physical copy of this comic, I'd frame it and put it on the wall as the centrepiece of my comic collection.  Alas, eBay prices are ridiculous for it so I'll have to make do with the virtual copy for now.

Doomguy: "Ahhh! Chainsaw! The great communicator!  Allow me to communicate the desire to have your guns.  C'mere boys. I got somethin' to say!"

The chainsaw never gets old.

The games heirarchy of weapons is actually treated quite accurately here and forms the back bone of Doomguy's "quest".  In game you start with a puny pistol, and gradually move up through the weaponry ranks by hunting them down: Pistol, shotgun, railgun, and so on right up to the holy grail of the game, the BFG.  Which is supposed to stand for "Bio-Force Gun" but everyone calls it "The Big Fucking Gun".  There's also the chainsaw if you fancy getting down with the monsters into melee range.  One thing the original Doom game was noted for was it's extreme gore and violence which the comic has accurately caught the spirit of. Sadly this also meant the game came under fire when it was discovered that the perpertrators of the Columbine Massacre were keen players.  Doom is often still cited when "moral guardians" want to talk about the supposed perniciousness of videogame violence, even though there are far more gory and splattery games around now and the bitmap blood n'guts of the original game look incredibly dated and inoffensive now.

Doomguy:"At this particular moment in time I don't believe I have a healthier or more deeply held respect for any object in the universe than this here shotgun."

I'll say it again.  The shotty owns.

Now, in the original game the invasion from the Hell Dimension takes place on a human colony on Mars.  There is no story beyond you taking up arms to kill monsters ranging from the zombiefied remains of your fellow soldiers, right up to cacodemons and barons of hell, which are shown here as huge demonic, horned creatures.  Our protagonist here also starts out using his fists, which if you didn't know the game, you would think was suicidal, but the comic actually reflects the fact you can pick up something called a "Berserker" pack which makes you melee attacks super powerful for a short time.  So apart from changing the setting to Earth, the writers of the comic did their research on the game.

Doomguy: "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid imp!  You're stupid! And you're gonna be stupid and dead!  Dance! Dance bone daddy"
                                     

The Berserker powerup can be more trouble than it's worth

My own personal relationship with the Doom franchise started in 1997 when I got my first PC. It came bundled with a disc that had the first nine levels of the first Doom on it, and oh my did I play the hell out of those levels. I love those levels so much I even have the music for the first level in the game set as a ringtone on my phone. Probably my favourite iteration of Doom is the remastered version of Doom 3 which was released on the Xbox 360.  A fantastic update of the original game, and comes with Doom and Doom II as bonus features as well. Bargain.  I place Doom 3 (a "reimagining" of the first Doom) up there with Bulletstorm, Bioshock Infinite and Half Life 2 as examples of the First Person Shooter at it's best.  Although those games are much more story driven than Doom 3, which sticks to the model of the original game as outlined in this comic, which is - collect guns and murderise everything you come across.

Doomgoy: "Now I'm radioactive. That can't be good.Why can't we find a way to safely dispose of radioactive waste and protect the enviroment?  Even if I personally stop this alien invasion. What kind of planet will we be leaving to our children?  And our childrens children and... Oh the humanity!"

Pfft Doomguy is too manly to suffer from radiation poisoning

Now if there was any lingering doubt that this game wasn't made with it's tongue massively rammed in it's cheek, it must be this bit with Doomguy lamenting the evils of radioactivity, while somewhat ignoring the fact that an invasion by hell demons is probably going to screw around with Earth's ecology by a much larger magnitude!

Doomguy: "There! The most beautiful sight any soldier can behold.. the gun.  The big gun.. Death surrounds me. yet in my head I hear something that sounds like angels. Lo. I have found the Holy Grail of firepower!  Mine eyes can but weep as they bear witness to the majesty.. the BFG 9000!"

Yes, the BFG 9000 is the ultimate goal, of both this comic's protagonist and anyone playing the game.  It has barely any ammo, so you want to save it for the really tough monsters, and in a multi-player game it's a guaranteed one hit kill.  My one complaint about the comic would be that it does not accurately portray the sheer, monumental destructive power of the BFG.  Here it looks like a super shotgun blast when actually it fires a huge green blob of molten death that can take out several enemies at once.

Quest complete, the BFG will make short work of what's left

Doomguy: "Victory is mine! yet Earth remains beseiged by creatures unspeakably foul.  It will take a strong man to bring the light of freedom back to this planet.  A strong man with the biggest, baddest gun in the world!  Amen to that."

Damn right *insert manly grunt here*  Anyway, the comic is completely daft but has humour and charm.  The artwork is perfunctory, but more than made up for by the hilarious script.  If it was meant seriously, then that's even better because that would elevate it into high camp.  But either way, this comic is one of the better ones based on a videogame mainly because it sticks so closely to the games formula, the lack of storyline in the game itself forcing a simple but effective structure to the (hahaha) "narrative".  I'll be checking out some more comics based off videogame properties at some point in the future, and really none of them accurately portray the experience of playing the game they are based on as well as this Doom comic.  "Groovy".

They killed everyone you loved and your little dog too.

Alan Moore Obscurities: Captain Britain

"Poor doomed thing" - Roma

This will be a semi-regular feature concentrating on the lesser known works in the great man's canon. And yes, to me, he is a great man.  The best writer comics have ever had.  It makes me quite sad now that so many people seem to just know him as that grouchy British dude who keeps picking on DC. I've chosen the term obscurities to cover pretty much anything he wrote that isn't Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Killing Joke, From Hell, Lost Girls, Promethea, Swamp Thing and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen because those books loom so large in peoples opinion of his work that pretty much everything else he wrote feels like it's in relative obscurity by comparison. For example, Lance Parkin's otherwise excellent biography of him - Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life Of Alan Moore - devotes two chapters to Watchmen and it's aftermath, yet his work for Image and most of his ABC work merits little more than a passing mention.  So hopefully this feature will bring a little more attention to his wider body of work; Supreme, Judgement Day, Voodoo, The Violator, AARGH etc. While most of this stuff was printed in trade paperbacks, many are out-of-print now including this standalone trade of his Captain Britain strips.  Although I believe they are included in a set of more recent trades covering the Dave Thorpe and Jamie Delano ones as well.

The Captain Britain Alan Moore arrived to work on had a somewhat complicated publication history.  He didn't have a comic of his own by then, being reduced to eight page strips in other Marvel UK comics at the time, running from 1982-84 and drawn by the talented Alan Davis.  Alan Moore's run was spread across  Marvel Superheroes #377-388, The Daredevils #1-11 and The Mighty World of Marvel vol. 2, #7-13.  The trade paperback of these strips only arrived in 2002, fourteen years after the post-Moore strips had been published in trade.  This was due to a tit-for-tat rights withdrawal row over the publication of Marvel/Miracleman Moore was having with Marvel at the time (and it's still on-going, which is why the recent rerelease of Miracleman does not have a writers credit at Alan Moore's request). 

Fair Play OId Chap!

Captain Britain as a character was and to some extent still is, a hard character to pin down.  Unlike Captain America, who represents a very clear set of US ideals and patriotism, making a British clone of The Cap was never going to work.  Extreme patriotism tends to make a large percentage of the UK population uneasy and is problematic because Britain is actually four countries with their own specific identities (extreme UK patriots always self describe as "an English patriot" or a "patriotic Scot", rarely as a patriotic Brit) so that has always lent a kind of schizophrenic quality to Captain Britain and probably explains why it was decided to root his power in Athurian myth, rather than real British history and identities (I'm English by the way.  Pleased to meet you. Now get off my lawn).  His powers receieved by some "mystic, glowing, folderol amonst the menhirs" as Grant Morrison rather unkindly (but amusingly) points out in Supergods. Maybe Moore couldn't see a current British identity worth celebrating.  Be hard to root for a hero who embodies petit bourgeois small mindedness after all. Probably the most interesting thing about this version is that he's a loner who isn't completely psychologically stable and isn't a soldier like Captain America.  He often comes over as much more vulnerable and far less of a "now who's ass am I gonna kick next?" version of his US counterpart.
                                 

Captain Britains first death

The strip was already in the middle of an arc when Alan came aboard, one which he admits in the introduction to the 2002 trade he "neither inaugurated or completely understood", Alan Moore sets about making the story his own by doing what he'd later do in Swamp Thing when he became the writer on that series a couple of years later.  He ruthlessly culls characters he has no use for, removes other characters he'll find a use for later and finally kills the protagonist stone dead.  Captain Britain, trapped on a parallel world, distraught over the loss of his friend, stumbles to an open grave with the name Captain UK on it, the female equivalent of him who escaped Mad Jim Jaspers cull of superheroes on that world by slipping away into the main Marvel Universe.  The agent of Captain Britain's demise is The Fury, an artifical lifeform created by that worlds Mad Jim for the express purpose of killing superheroes.

The Fury is a tremendous enemy.  Blank faced and non-speaking, it can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. It is Thanatos, the Death Drive incarnate and in the end it's not Captain Britain who defeats it, but a vengeful Captain UK.  Tearing the creature apart in blind vengeance for her destroyed universe after The Fury exhausts itself fighting Mad Jim Jaspers.  Mad Jim is also an interesting character, a Tory MP (and so of course the obvious political enemy to a lefty like Alan Moore) with reality warping capabilities, later in the collection he manages to twist the main Marvel Universes history so that there have suddenly been concentration camps and anti-superhero purges, with only Captain Britain, his sister Betsy and a couple of other characters able to remember the real history.

Captain UKtakes revenge at the end of the story

What's fascinating about this collection is how quickly both Alan Moore and Alan Davis both improve their craft.  The early scripts are not good, although "A Rag, A Bone, A Hank Of Hair" shows promise, as Merlin, and his daughter Roma rebuild Captain  Britain body and soul, before transporting him back to his reality to take part in some cosmic chess game they are playing.  But then we get a somewhat unimspiring run of scripts as Captain Britain - Brian Braddock being his real name - returns home to find his mansion is not a bombed out wreck, fights the evil computer in the basement, goes to meet his sister Betsy in London (she later becomes the powerful X-man Psylocke, though at this point her only powers seem to be telepathy. She's currently recovering from the indignity of being drawn sans hips by Greg Land in Uncanny X-men) and has a fight with an antagonist called "The Slay Master" and it's all rather dull, and somewhat crudely drawn.  The suddenly, with the story "Executive Action", both art and script get really, really good and as if by magic, the real Alan Moore appears.  With a script that imparts complex ideas with a sense of fun and vivid, three-dimensional characters that you feel have genuine inner lives.  And the art steps up to match with Davis just at home drawing the quirky alien mercenaries The Special Executive as he is drawing the hefty, muscularity of Captain Britain.

The Special Executive

The main story of the book starts with the Special Executive (a merry band of aliens, first created by Moore when he was writing for Doctor Who Magazine) breaking into Captain Britains house to take him to an interdimensional court.  The court is trying Saturnyne, (the woman who abandoned him before his death on the alternate earth) for being an agent of that worlds destruction.  We get to meet alternate Captain Britains - Captain England and Captain Albion, and for the first time the main Marvelverse is given the label "616", although there is some disagreement as to whether this was Alan Moore, or the previous writer Dave Thorpe's idea (it being the "true number of the beast" reflecting Thorpe's unhappiness at writing superhero tales according to Alan Davies).  The universe Saturnyne was tasked with "jump starting" is being infected by the powers of "Jasper's Warp" and to stop it spreading the whole universe is destroyed at the press of a button.  Captain Britain is accused of having romantic feelings for Saturnyne and when he reacts in anger his testimony on her behalf is denied and she is sentenced to execution.   The good Captain starts a brawl with his alternate selves to save her and the Special Executive decide to pitch in and help, with them causing enough confusion to make their getaway back to Earth 616.

Captain England: " By 'eck lad.  I hope tha knows what tha's getting into."

Captain Britain: "What do you take me for? Of course I know what I'm getting into. I'm in a parallel universe fighting an alternate version of myself alongside a group of parahuman mercenaries who want me to help the wrongly accused Majestrix......... Do you ever get halfway through a sentence and find yourself unable to believe you're actually saying it?"

Captain England: "No" [clonks Captain Britain with a big stick]

Captain Britain, Saturnyne and the Special Executive all arrive back at Brian's house, where Betsy and her lover Tom are waiting. This leads to the wonderfully incongrous image of a bunch of aliens watching telly, and seeing the anti-superhero speech of this worlds Jim Jaspers.  A distressed woman, who was the now destroyed alternate earth's Captain UK arrives to warn Brian that what happened on her earth is starting again, while Merlin and his daughter Roma start playing chess with the various characters as pieces.  But Merlin hasn't accounted for The Fury which wasn't destroyed when it's universe was and it arrives and tries to kill Captain UK, who Merlin protects from the blast.  A battle between The Fury, Captain Britain and The Special Executive ensues.  They manage to defeat it for now, but at a cost.  One of the Special Executive is killed and another maimed, so they cut their losses and depart.

The Fury Pwns All

The next issue sees Jim Jasper's Warp has fully taken hold of the UK.  Reality and history have been changed. Betsy, Tom, Saturnyne, Captain UK and Captain Britain are hiding out somewhere planning their next move.  It's very stressful for a psychic like Betsy and every 80's lefty's worst nightmare of how Britain might end up under the Thatcherite junta.

Betsy: "Of course I'm not alright.  England's gone insane.  There's concentration camps, curfews and stormtroopers... and how long has it been like this?  Days? Or months?  How long have we been existing like this?  I don't remember anymore."

Captain Britain decides it's time to confront Mad Jim. "The sky is torn.  The landscape raped and raw.  The night is curdled with nightmares.  It's still his country."  Back with Merlin, Roma pleads with him to abandon the game, that his peice, which is Captain Britain can't win the battle alone.  But Merlin refuses. Meanwhile, Betsy is captured, while Tom is killed and Captain UK flees in terror closely followed by Saturnyne.  Merlin loses more pieces, but insists he sculpted Captain Britain to faces this very terror.  He'd sent Captain Britain to the alternate earth to practice against a less powerful version of Jim Jasper.  This time he cannot fail or the whole omniverse will fall into chaos.

Mad Jim's Reality Warping Power

Back with Saturnyne and Captain UK, Saturnyne tries to persuade her to go help Captain Britain, when she refuses, Saturnyne punches her repeatedly calling her a coward.  Finally Captain UK punches her back and Saturnyne smiles and says it's time get moving.  Captain Britain faces down a huge version of Jim, who assaults and confuses him with visions.  No matter how hard Captain Britain attacks him, Jim doesn't seem fazed.  Then The Fury arrives on the scene, first it attacks Captain Britain then when Jim attracts his attention, attacks him instead.  The Fury and Jim have an epic battle that ends with The Fury frying Jim's brain.  This also causes a backfire in the cosmic chess game, killing Merlin.

Jasper versus The Fury

The Fury goes back to fighting an exhausted Captain Britain, but it too is running out of energy and a vengeful Captain UK strikes the final blows against it, killing it utterly and ripping it into shreds - even after it has expired - in a tearful rage.  Captain Britain, Captain UK and Saturnyne are then transported to the "Otherworld" to attend Merlin's funeral alongside all the other alternate Captain Britains, and be thanked for preventing omniversal disaster.  Roma tells Captain Britain that his Earth has been healed, although bruises remain.  She also tells him that unlike her father she has no desire to interfere with his life and that he is free.  She transports him and Captain UK back to earth 616, and Captain UK bids Captain Britain farewell.  And that brings Alan Moore's run on Captain Britain to an end.

A multitude of Captain Britains

Alan Moore left the strip due to late payments for his work from Marvel UK and never worked for them again.  Apart from a couple of contributions to some charity comics, he never worked for US Marvel either.  It probably wouldn't have worked out even if he had wanted to, the "Marvel Method" of creating comics didn't fit his style, prefering as he did, the "Full Script" method that 2000AD and DC employed.  Still he did finish off his major plot arc, setting things up for Jamie Delano's excellent run.  And unusually for an Alan Moore book, no one got raped.  Which is nice.

Cerebus Book 16: The Last Day (#289-300)

"Thankyou God" - Cerebus

So, well, what do we have here?  I admit by the end of the travesty that was Latter Days, I actively resented having to stump up anymore cash for the series, but the urge to see the end and finish the set got the better of me.  And lawks a lordy, this actually has a lot to recommend it.  I won't go as far as saying it totally redeems the decision to make Cerebus the leader of a religion based on the real Christian faith but there is a desperation and melancholy about Cerebus's lonely plight here that feels really heartfelt and of course it (lolspoilers) finishes with Cerebus's demise, which despite how horrible he is and the atrocities carried out in his name, you can't help finding a little sad along with the more general sadness that accompanies the end of any long running work.  Of course the final chapter manages to piss away most of the goodwill the rest of the book has so skillfully built with a completely asinine plot twist but well that's the Cerebus project in a nutshell.

It doesn't get off to a promising start, first the intro gets somewhat petulant about the lack of interest in the wider media about the end of the Cerebus series.  Possibly no one was interested after the best part of a year was spent padding out the comic with the bible and drawings of Woody Allen.  Just a thought Dave. We also get Dave telling us that he's found the solution to Einsteins Grand Unification Theory in the Bible and that God gave this to him, but his amazing theory presented here wasn't spread around because of feminists (the whole intro is very odd, he seems obssessed with the fact that feminists want him to kill himself, which seems.. unlikely of them, but whatev's). Then the first chapter starts with some amazing artwork of the sun and OH SON OF A WHORE, The Book of Genesis and lots of teeny, tiny footnotes, which I am afraid I simply skimmed because fuck that shit.  A more detailed writer about Cerebus than I, Tim O'Neil of the excellent blog The Hurting has written about and presented talks on Cerebus and even he has some difficulty with late period Cerebus, this excerpt from his blog presents one interpretation of what's going on in the "Sun" chapter of The Last Day.

Tim O'Neil of The Hurting: "I will say, for anyone who may have read the stretch from around 270-300 more recently than I, I have a little trouble keeping straight whether or not any of Sim's theological ideas are ideas he actually entertains and which are presented within the context of satire - I think I recall, for instance, that he genuinely believes that microscopic demons live in the sun and are responsible for perturbations in the quantum foam, or whatever the hell. He takes shit like demons seriously, after all, and was genuinely disappointed when, following the release of Cerebus #289-290, he wasn't immediately acclaimed as a visionary for having permanently reconciled the differences between science and religion."

I think he means them quite genuinely Tim, quite genuinely indeed. If there were no appendices then it might be possible to pass it off as weird satire, but those appendices make all the difference in cementing Dave Sim's somewhat..interesting take on the Bible and cluelessness about science.  But how could he be proclaimed a visionary?  He's not a feminist, duh!  Ugh.  Anyway, it's actually a dream Cerebus is having, now a very old aardvark indeed having been alive for a couple of centuries.  He wakes and writes his dream down and hides it for future generations and we finally get to the good bit of the book, Cerebus and his mortality.
                            

I suffer from a rather bad back, and in the mornings it can take quite a while for me to be able to get up and straighten up, even with the powerful pain meds I am on.  So I feel a huge amount of empathy as the ancient Cerebus moves slowly round his room, bone cracking and grinding together, tendons and muscle stiff and unresponsive. He can't even fart when he needs to.  Most of the book is Cerebus hobbling about, mumbling to himself, which for me are the best bits, even if it's difficult to quote the ramblings as they are so lengthy and all of apeice. The actual plot bits are somewhat daft, but the depiction of extreme old age is portrayed with sympathy and with truth. Dave Sim isn't afraid to show the indignity that comes with old age either, with Cerebus's trousers constantly falling down to reveal his diapered behind.

Cerebus: "Ow Cerebus's back spasms.  Ow Cerebus's side spasms. Ow Cerebus's front spasms."

                              

The narrative plays out as a monologue by Cerebus, with an off-stage voice providing further converstation and a final character being introduced very close to the end.  Cerebus is completely alone now, the focus of the books since the end of Minds have been tightening and tightening around Cerebus until he is all that is left.  It's hard not to see this as maybe a reflection of Dave Sim's disengagement with the world, as in the appendices, he, after declaring everyone in the world a feminist finds himself completely alone.  He has walked out on his family (who are feminists) and even his co-artist Gerhard was no longer able to work in the same room as Dave Sim (being a feminist and all).  Gerhard even tried to drop out of drawing this final arc, so unpleasant was he finding the experience now.  Anyway,  whether or not that is a reason, Cerebus is alone, with just his thoughts, failing memory and his aching, decrepid old body to deal with.

[You know, because I am a fully paid up member of the aetheist-feminist-homosexualist axis, I've been giving Dave Sim a lot of crap for his writing, but his and Gerhard's artwork is still amazingly good even at this stage when they could have easily half-arsed it and not dropped readers.  The above full page image in its content and composition conveys Cerebus's loneliness and isolation in such an achingly sad way that words almost seem unecessary.  It bought me close to tears when I first looked at it and that's something only great art can do.]

Cerebus finds he has been locked in, because of emergency procedures.  Some kind of battle is taking place outside and it seems that by now Estarcion has reached 20th Century Earth's level of technological and social advances, to judge by the weapons being used and the punky kids lounging around outside Cerebus's sanctuary.  Apparently one section of the church, the Joannists are attacking ( and yes that is after Joanne from Guys and Rick's Story, she got included into the Book Of Rick and now has splinters from the main "Cerebite" Church named after her) and Cerebus has to be locked in for his own safety.

Cerebus starts talking to the guard about his son Shep-Shep who hasn't been seen in over ten years, Cerebus reminices about his (human) son growing up, and sends the guard off to see if their are any messages from him.  While the guard is away, Cerebus begs God to help him remember why Shep-Shep left him (the reason isn't entirely clear, but it seems Cerebus ruined a music festival thrown by his son, with a violent crackdown on pro-abortionists.  After some deaths he was forced to sanction abortion and Shep Shep and Cerebus's wife left).

Later the guard returns with good news. Shep-Shep is actually at the sanctuary and wants to see Cerebus.  One problem, lifting the lockdown to allow this requires a vote by all the churches and when this goes ahead, one branch of the church santuaries permanent members vetoes the visit - the "Le Sanctuarie Upper Felda des Rick et Joanne et Joanne Lesbiennes" (those damn lesbians! *shakes fist*).  The reason given is ridiculous - that Cerebus might want to have sex with his son - but this is a ploy to manuvre Cerebus into making the concessions they want.  As Cerebus rages about the lack of authority he wields in his own church he is given the piece of paper to sign with the recognition that part of the Church wants.

Ultimatum: "The representative further welcomes the Great Cerebus's implicit agreement that the androgyne, the tribade, the sexual invert, the transgendered, the dual-gendered and the multi-gendered is of central and paramount importance in and to our faith.  In and to our society. In and to our sanctuaries. In and to the seat of truth. In the name of the Blessed Mother, her Blessed Daughter and The Scary Tampon."

                             

After a long moment, Cerebus signs the agreement and retreats to bed to wait for Shep-Shep.

Cerebus's church institution has fractured into a myriad different ideologies, that he himself has no control over any more.  Perhaps now is time to revisit Suentus Po's words on Power in Flight:

Suentus Po: "My experience taught me, there is no benefit and little wisdom in attempting to influence the minds and wills of massess of people.  In both my lives I described to you I sought that kind of influence and effect. I was a Reformer. I have seen the long range effects that profound change always brings about.  Each great movement is sown with the seeds of its own destruction, it's corruption and decay as inevitable as Death itself."

And so it goes. Cerebus is blackmailed into giving up pretty much all that's left of his power, his influence now negligable, his effect neutered, his reforms working against him, his church at war with itself.

There is a little mild homophobia that is threaded through Cerebus's messages and to-and-fro from the wilder reaches of his religion, the fact that he is being held hostage and refused to be able to see his son by the lesbian and gay off-shoots of his church makes for uncomfortable reading, that you could just about dismiss as some warped sense of humour except for the fact that in the appendices Sim goes off on a tangent about "homosexualists" being paedophiles and also oppressing him by the mere fact they have the temerity to ask to be treated as more than objects of scorn and pity.  And I think "how sad", that a man who gave us such a sympathetic portrayal of Oscar Wilde, dedicating a years worth of comics to his final days and who back in the late 80's was bezzie mates with Alan Moore and contributed to his anti-government homophobia comic, dedicating his part to Moore's wife and their mutual girlfriend (yeah, Alan Moore was in a polyamorous relationship with two women in the 80's, the lucky so-and-so).  And now he's a homophobe.  That probably disappoints me more than all the misogyny in the series combined. Oh well.

Shep-Shep finally enters the room secretly, but there is no joyous reunion.  Shep-shep is drawn in a very sinister manner, cloaked in shadow and holding a mysterious box.  After talking about some matters of doctorine, things get more personal. Shep-shep and Cerebus seem to have differing opinions of the time they spent together as he grew up, with Shep-shep taking a decidely negative view of his father, crushing Cerebus's happy memories.  He also reveals that Cirin is still alive, though in worse shape than Cerebus and that they have been working together. The tension in this scene is very cleverly built up with the box and the strange noises coming from inside as Shep-shep talks about what he and Cirin have been up to somewhat obliquely and Cerebus keeps asking what is in it. Finally Shep-Shep decides to show Cerebus what's in the box and takes out....

Shep-shep:  "...look father, see.  It's a lion's cub, with a baby's head.  Isn't that amazing?"

...
......
............

I think I would have preferred it if Gwyneth Paltrow's head was in the box. Ok, lets run through this quickly.  Cirin has been doing gene splicing experiments using slices from Shep's brain to clone this hybrid from.  Once they get the giganticism gene sorted, they'll make a huge one of these baby/lion hybrids and then they'll all go to Egypt where he'll be worshipped as a God.  Well done Cerebus, your son is fucking nuts.  Of course Cerebus is horrified by this, and seemingly hurt by this response Shep goes to leave, but not before leaving Cerebus with this warning:

Shep-shep: "I hope... the scattered remnants of your followers enjoy the limited time that remains to you. Because there's a surprise on the way father. A very, very big surprise.  Tens of thousands of surprises in point of fact!  A new group of believers father called Muslims!  And from what I understand? They've taken a decidedly dim view of what you've done with their God.  Good bye father."

And with that ominous threat, he departs.  A rage filled Cerebus finds his dagger under his pillow and jumps from the bed, with murder in his heart.

But he misses his footing and slowly topples to the ground, where he breaks his neck (although he gets his fart in before he dies). 

As the life ebbs away from him, his life flashes before his eyes.  Before his spirit finally leaves his body.

There he sees a bright light and every character of significance who appeared in the series is waiting, with the trinity of Ham, Bear and Jaka holding her arms out in welcome.

He turns into his old comic book idol "Rabbi" and starts to run towards them, but there is a sting in this final couple of pages.  He suddenly takes fright and tries to turn away, imploring God to save him.

Cerebus: "Help God! The Light! The Light! Help God! The Light has got Cerebus! GOD! HEEELLPPP!"

And nothing is left but white.  And so ends Cerebus the Aardvark.  Dying as The Judge predicted, "alone, unmourned and unloved".  Oh sure as the nominal head of the Church there might be some official mourning if it survives the war that's going on outside.  But in the end, even his son didn't care about him and his old enemy Cirin outlived him, while his Church fell into schismatic ruin.

A downer huh?  Well we were warned.  Actually I did wonder if Dave Sim would have the balls to go with the "alone, unmourned and unloved" prediction and I am glad he did, because Cerebus didn't really deserve a happy ending. I thought maybe having Cerebus becoming a genuine leader of his faith, rather than one in it solely for the gold and power might have been a set up for a happier ending than what had been foretold for him. Caveats aside, especially the whole Shep sequence with the spinx baby (and I am almost willing to say, "screw what Dave Sim says, I think it was a nightmare Cerebus was having") and some of the homophobic subtext, this is a pretty good capstone to the series.  It evokes sympathy for a protagonist who doesn't really deserve it in a very skillful way and is almost heart rending in places showing that Dave Sims ability to write evocative prose hadn't totally left him. I still think the swerve into making Cerebus the leader of a real Christian religion wasn't really my cup of tea, and I wonder if this ending was planned all along or if another ending to the series had been plotted out before Sim's real life faith impacted onto the text.  I guess we'll never know what could have been.

In Summary Then....

It's been just over ten years now since the main Cerebus series ended.  Despite the way it finished up, it's still a monumental achievement by both Dave Sim and Gerhard.  What I find rather saddening is how forgotten the series has become when it was one of the biggest indie successes of the 80's and early 90's.  When I started up buying the trades again, I wandered into my nearest comic specialist shop, Forbidden Planet in Manchester (UK), and when I couldn't find them on the shelves asked the man on the counter if they had any in stock.  He had never heard of the series, which really took me aback.  Whatever you think about the mess it ended up becoming, there was way, way more that is good about Cerebus than is bad, and it deserves a place on the shop shelves next to Elfquest, Spawn and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all big indie hits themselves.  Maybe Dave Sim's lack of interest in exploiting the property at the time beyond pioneering the trade paperback collected edition has told against it, but the series lack of presence in comic book stores now make it unlikely that any new readers will come across a copy while idly browsing and take a chance on a densely packed storyline starring a talking aardvark and a host of parodies and pastiches that chart the pop culture and personalities of the time in a generally amusing way.  

I'm concluding the images with my favourite set of panels from my favourite issue "The Deciding Vote" which was part of High Society.  I love these three panels which I couldn't include in the High Society review as I didn't have a scanner then.

What's noticable about the saga as a whole is you don't have to read to the bitter end to get a satisfying story if you don't fancy braving the last couple of books.  The series comes with several jumping off points for those less committed to completionism than me.  Just here for the satire and comedy?  Leave after Church and State II.  Only interested in Cerebus versus Cirin versus Astoria?  Drop out after Minds.  Want Cerebus to get a happy ending (for some reason)?  Go no further than Rick's Story.  Only curious to see what happens to Cerebus and Jaka's relationship? Do not pass the end of Form and Void.  Despite the frustrations I felt writing up the last few books, I'm glad I committed to doing the full run, looking at the books in more detail did increase my enjoyment of most of them and I was pretty out of practice with writing, so starting with something obscure let me relearn and polish up my critical skills again without feeling too pressured by the material.  If this series of blog posts manages to inspire even one person to check out a Cerebus volume (make it High Society if you do, very funny and little baggage from the preceeding arc at that point), I'd be pretty pleased.  But I probably won't be committing to such a long series of books again until I decide to look at Garth Ennis's twelve volume series The Boys, although I'll be writing about some series with up to around seven volumes in them prior to that.  So stick around please as I tackle more traditional comic books and maybe cover something you've actually heard of.

Cerebus Book 15: Latter Days (#266-288)

 "So.  This is the book that's going to tell Cerebus everything" - Cerebus

Oh, very dear.  Having shed the final (apart from Cerebus) ongoing character from the series with the departure of Jaka we get this book,  where real Christianity and Judaism are introduced into the worlds of Estarcion as Dave Sim sacrifices all story integrity so he can lecture and badger the reader with his weird views made up of a strange brew of his interpretation of Christianity and anti-psychiatry ramblings.  Now I want to make one thing clear.  I was raised an atheist.  I still am mostly an atheist, with some of the teachings of Daoism and Buddhism incorporated into my own personal life philisophy.  I however have known and still know some wonderfully kind and tolerant Christians who I am proud to call friends of mine and whose faith in no way impedes my view of or makes me think less of them.  I will getting somewhat terse with Mr. Sim's rantings in this book, and I want to make it clear it's only with his twisted version of Christianity and not Christians in general.  If I overstep the mark and say things that could be construed as offensive to Christians in general I apologise in advance.  Also, although I said ignore the appendices in the previous two books, the odd, disjointed, supposedly allusive quality of the narrative in this book forces me to seek further enlightenment in the pages at the back of the book.  It's not pretty.  So, here we go with Latter Days, the very worst book in the whole series by some considerable margin.

It's supposed to be symbolic but I don't care by this point.

 The first part is uneventful.  Cerebus first spends years as a shepard, then more years as a Five Bar Gate player who always gets to the finals but throws them so he can rake in the cash from a bet, which he spends collecting a comic called "Rabbi" a parody of Garth Ennis's Preacher comic.  We get an idea of just how long lived Cerebus is going to be, when his long time opponent in the Five Bar Gate finals dies of old age.  Then Cerebus having lost all hope for his life, decides to travel to the heart of Cirinist territory and behave in as boorish a way possible, so they will kill him.  But as he carouses away he is discovered by three men  based on The Three Stooges.  I am unsure Dave Sim he did this, as they don't really act the way the Stooges did.  When Dave Sim introduced characters based on Groucho and Chico Marx he used it as a basis for lots of verbal humour and kept the characters loosely tied to their inspirations as well as giving them a character of their own.  Here we have a trio known mainly for slapstick which doesn't translate very well onto the page and they aren't really filled out as characters outside of any baggage the people they are based on had in real life.  Anyway they kidnap Cerebus, tie him up and begin the task of brainwashing him with the Book of Rick, Jaka's ex-husband's newish religion which unlike the broad strokes Christian parody of Tarimism is based very closely on real life Christianity and meant far more sincerely thanks to Dave Sim's own conversion to the faith.

The Three Wise Fellows

After reading the Book Of Rick over and over, to cleanse Cerebus of his sin.  Cerebus finally manages to give them an answer to one of the questions they had for him and they let him go.  He then decides to put into plan his idea for getting rid of the Cirinists.  For some inexplicable reason the Cirnists had allowed men to go shooting at hunting lodges and Cerebus's plan is to have all the local lodges join up and kill the local Cirnists.  Which they do under the command of a character based on Spawn writer and artist Todd MacFarlane, whom I talked more about in my review of the Spawn issue Dave Sim wrote.  Then Cerebus contructs a demon costume and thus disguised and calling himself "Spore" leads the men to victory over all the Cirnists, with Cerebus writing his own religious tract - "The Book Of Cerebus" which is about the war and it's aftermath

"Spore" In Action

And this just makes me tear my hair out.  Dave Sim it seems had a problem, that being he'd introduced the Cirnists as a powerful, conquering army that put down rebellions with ruthless efficiency, even if they'd been stupid enough to allow the men to arm themselves with guns, surely they would have armed themselves in return and be able to easily crush another rebellion.  So we get probably the lamest, weakest excuse for the mens victory as possible:

Cerebus: "Since even the best women shooter is barely going to be as good as a below average man, there is no way the Cirinists can get within range where they can hit us without first getting shot themselves."

Cerebus's Army

And so in a few pages and mostly off stage, a powerful ruling army who have held onto power for decades is wiped out by a bunch of men too stupid to have thought to use their guns before Cerebus told them too.  When pushed onto the back foot the Cirinists take off their robes and hide amongst the other women.  So Cerebus instigates a purge of any woman even slightly suspected of being a Cirinist or having Cirinist sympathies.  Mass murder basically.  Dave Sim says in the appendices that he meant it like "A Modest Proposal", but the difference here is that Swift's book was a coruscating satire aimed at shocking the ruling classes into giving a shit about the plight of the poor, and Dave Sim seems to be writing about how to solve the problem of um.. women, by killing any with even slight feminist leanings and it comes over more as wish fulfillment that satire.  Also one of the women killed is based on a real woman who was somewhat critical of him.  Classy, Sim, real classy.  She's also the last woman to get a speaking role in the rest of the series.  From now on women fade into the background as Dave Sim's engagement with Christianity takes centre stage.

With the rule of law placed in the hands of the mob, after they kill all the lawyers, a bucolic, facist "utopia" is established, which mostly seems to involve men building "little houses", while unruly women are confined to special camps.  There doesn't seem to be much in the way of art or culture produced and free speech is ruthlessly dealt with.  Making life under the "Cerebites" seem much less enticing than under the Cirinists even for men.  And with nothing to kick against, and no women left in his life, Cerebus becomes aimless in his existence.  Back when I covered Minds, he ended up trapped on the lonely planet Juno, and esteemed commenter Lucy McGough pointed out that Juno was the Goddess of wives and mothers.  So it was a warning in my opinion that a life without women, without love in fact would be a lonely one.  And for several books the prospect of being alone would have Cerebus see the rocky landscape of Juno in his minds eye.  So it's ironic that with women removed from his life entirely he's given up and idly embraced being stuck on the metaphorical Juno and crucially he doesn't seem happy about this or the society he has built but can't be bothered anymore to change his situation, taking solace in the beliefs that were brainwashed into him.

The main problem I have with what happens here is Dave Sim falling into the trap of telling and not showing.  I'm not interested in Cerebus raising sheep or playing Five Bar Gate for years, I want to see how Rick's religion spread, how Tarim worship became so easily deposed, I want to see the Cirinists catching, trying and crucifying Rick in the name of his religion not hear about it second hand.  Once again there is a tonne of talk and very little action and when it comes to something as important as explaining just how Cerebus was able to implant and nuture Rick's "Christian" religion so easily in the minds of the men he sends off to war, well I want to know see how come.  It's frustrating that's what it is.  There is a better, more interesting story going on here that we are only hearing about.  Something with the same scope as the "Mothers and Daughters" arc, but the extreme focus on Cerebus alone hurts the narrative and the wider plot has to be conveyed in a tonne of speech bubbles and captions rather than flowing via the use of  sequential art, you know, like a comic would.

After the last of The Three Wise Fellow's dies, Cerebus comes to a sad realisation about the lack of friendship in his life and how the last time he really remembered anyone's name was when he was back in the tavern shown in Guys.

Narration: "It's not that people didn't like Cerebus most of the time.  When Cerebus went to watch a house being built someone would come over and strike up a conversation.  And when they left they'd say "it was nice talking with you" in a way that Cerebus could tell they really meant it.  But the thing was:  Cerebus was never the one to strike up the conversation.. and for the life of him, Cerebus heh heh could never figure out exactly what had been so darned "nice" about talking with him.

Pictured: A Comics Fan, Apparently

So Cerebus tries to fill the void, first with going back to sheparding and when that fails he decides to go back to collecting the comic "Rabbi" and get a full mint set.  Thus follows some rather unpleasant implications about comic book collectors, not helped by the fact that Cerebus is rather fat by this time.  Indeed in the appendices Dave Sim calls the completionist urge a kind of psychosis, which is a rather nasty thing to say about people reading your comic especially ones who have followed you this far.  Then Cerebus finds a old comic book journal with an interview with the writer of Rabbi called "Garth Innocent" (Garth Ennis was the writer of the comic Preacher, which takes a somewhat jaundiced look at organised religion and it's not hard to see newly religious Dave Sim taking swipes at him even if he claims that he himself is meant to be Garth, tormenting Cerebus his own creation).  Anyway the jist of the interview is that "Garth" wanted to turn people off religion, his book was a gorefest designed for thirteen year old boys and that Cerebus was stupid and needy for becoming so attached to it and he hoped this interview would send Cerebus into a nervous breakdown.  Which it does.

The Young Konigsberg

Luckily Woody Allen comes to the rescue as the character Konigsberg who is from the obscure sect called the Jews (which back in Melmoth Dave Sim said they didn't exist in Estarcion but whatever) and he brings The Torah which he wants Cerebus to help him understand.  And so we get to the most infamous part of the whole Cerebus series, a third of the fucking book spent on Cerebus's annotations to the first five books of the Bible.  Interspersed with the memoirs of Konigsberg done in sixties psychoanalytic speak of which Woody Allen was famous for putting in his films and early stand-up.  The main jist of the annotations are that YHWH is a different deity from God whom Cerebus calls "Yoohwooh" and is also female because well, lets hear from Dave why:

Dave Sim: "Read Deuteronomy yourself.  It's just one YHWH blabfest pretty much from start to finish. Hysterical, grudging, paranoid, defeatist, threatening, dictatorial, beseeching, self-aggrandising, illogical, convoluted, cajoling and wheedling."

*sigh*

To be honest, I didn't read much of this portion of the book, because if I pluck a section at random you'll see just how deathly it is.

Torah:  "This twentie yeeres I with thee, thy ewes and thy she goates haue not cast their younge and the rammes of thy flocke haue I not eaten."

Cerebus: "A little reminder of Yoohwhoo's she-goat and he-ram covenant with Abraham [laughs] probably convinced Yoohwhoo that no, she didn't feel well enough to get and go look for her asprin".

Torah:  "That which was torne, I brought not vnto thee: I bare the losse of it"

Cerebus: "'That isn't really what I sound like?' Yoohwhoo wonders."

Torah: "of my hand didst thou require it, whether stollen by day, or stollen by night."

Cerebus: "[laughs] Cerebus pictures a tiny little "angel" of God appearing in front of Yoohwhoo with a copy of verse five, chapter nine."

And so on.  Bleedin' hilarious I don't think.  If you want Biblical comedy that is actually funny, try the LoLCat's Bible instead, always makes me laugh. Praise be to Ceiling Cat!  Ah, "But Varalys" you say.  "Dave Sim is being comedic about the Bible, how does that fit with his Christian conversion, eh?"  And I say "Good question, come with me to the appendices".  Now Dave Sim says a lot about reading and rereading the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) over and over, and reading a lot of Biblical scholarship and how so little of it agrees with each other, so why not do his own interpretation?

Dave Sim: "...My biggest concern was: what would God think of this?  Just how seriously was I putting my soul in jeopardy by deciding to go public with the fact that I thought I was right about what the Bible said and that everyone else was wrong?....what if I was right in what I was reading?  What if this had been planned by God all along? What of he had known exactly what I was going to write before I was born?  Omniscience is a much easier word to say than it is to even imagine."

O...Ok, back away slowly folks and when you are clear, run like the wind. Anyway, there we go.  A third of the book devoted to single page drawings and masses of tiny, tightly spaced unfunny text. Konigsberg grows old and dies as Cerebus secludes himself working on his notes to the Torah (quite what the random TRACED images from European cinema have to do with either the Bible or Psychoanalysis, even the appendices aren't very helpful in this case, but they sure do look purdy - if you like TRACED artwork that is).  Finally Cerebus comes out of seclusion and gets married.  The woman is considered so unimportant that we don't even see her real face, just Jaka's imposed over it.  Le sigh and end book.

Jaka's Actually Been Dead About 150 Years By This Point

In every conceivable way this book fails.  It fails at being funny.  It fails at being satirical.  It fails at being thought-provoking.  It fails at being profound.  It fails at being entertaining.  It fails at providing interesting characterisation. Dave. Sim. You. FAIL.

The bible commentary and psychoanalytical bibble went on for nearly a year if you were following the comics monthly.  And I imagine this was where the series shed it's most readers if they hadn't already pissed off after the mean spirited attack on them earlier in the arc.  I've probably made the book sound more eventful than it is, but it's an incredibly ennervating read, hence why it took me so long to write it up.  There are no characters to root for, Cerebus's character has been irrevocably changed, the whole book doesn't feel like it has any links to the previous fourteen and comes across more like a sequel series than something that stands as part of the run as a whole.  The whole book, including the appendices feels like being cornered at a party by a slightly peculiar evangelical Christian who wants to tell you all about how his interpretation of the bible is the correct and only one.  Latter Days is an actively bad book.  Monumental events happen which are barely covered or alluded too, the bible commentary is a shocking piece of padding that no amount of pretty artwork can render acceptable.  Everything that made the Cerebus story good and worthwile is flushed down the toilet or twisted to fit Dave Sim's "spiritual awakening". It's flat and worst of all it's boring. It sucks basically.  Only one book left then.  Dave Sim tells us not to expect a happy ending in it, but he misunderstands what's left of his readership if he thinks any of them think Cerebus deserves a happy ending, especially after this book.  Will the final book manage to make up for the mess that is Latter Days and end the series on a high note?  Find out soon folks (I promise it won't take as long this time).

[You know what was doubly insulting about this book?  There are far fewer copies in circulation than any other and it appears to be out of print too.  So I had to spend the best part for fifty quid for my secondhand copy.  Fifty quid!  That's as many as five tens.  And that's terrible].

Cerebus Book 14: Form And Void (#251-265)

"Please... tell Cerebus where his Mum and Dad are buried" - Cerebus

When I saw the title of this volume, my heart did sink a little as I thought it would be a rehashing of all the male light/female void stuff from Reads.  Actually though, despite the dribblingly insane appendices, this turned out to be quite an exciting page turner of a book with some stunning artwork and page layouts that ends on something of a series high note.  It's also another book which contains Sim's take on a famous author, this time it's Ernest Hemmingway and his wife.  Now Mr. Sim is no fan of Hemmingway and I'll cover why in a small section on the appendices at the end of the review of the actual comic pages.  Luckily there is no pastiche of Hemmingway's writing in the book, so my lack of knowledge of yet another classic author's work won't cramp my style.  The non-Dave Sim writings included in this book are from Mary Hemmigway's How It Was, an account of her and Ernest's time in Afria. The layout of this book takes us back to the masses of panels found in the early books, with pages regularly divided into twenty-five panel or more grids.  This slows the pace of the book down, but unlike the sparse Melmoth, there is a lot of text  being slowly doled out that you are gradually being walked through as events gather pace and momentum, building to a real heart breaker of a conclusion and where for me, the whole Cerebus saga reaches a natural end.  Shame there are two books after then really.

Right from the start we are introduced to writer Ham Earnestway and his wife Mary.  Cerebus and Jaka end up staying at the same hunting lodge as they do, and Cerebus is starstruck upon meeting Ham who is one of his heroes being as he is a paragon of masculinity to Cerebus.  Ham in return is tactiturn and depressed.  His wife does most of the talking and she and Jaka bond, while Mary tells Jaka about the best and the worst times during a marriage now Jaka has resigned herself to that as her future.  They are accompanied by two black African guides one of whom is Muslim, a worrying incursion of real world religion into the book and  also I was left uncomfortable that these are effectively the first black characters we have seen in the saga, and they are tribespeople.  Although they are portrayed as sympathetic, kind and intelligent it still made me realise just how whitebread Dave Sim's portrayal of Estarcion actually is.

Mary and "Ham"

Staying together in a winter home, Ham writes while Mary gives Jaka some advice about married life.

Mary: "None of my business, but you can't just give in all the time.  You've got to give as good as you get.  Comes time when you have to put you foot down.  No law says a woman can't build a house as good as a man."

Jaka: "I.....? I never thought of that".

Mary: "None of my business of course, but a good marriage is like a good partnership"

Once again Dave Sim puts reasonable arguments in favour of gender equality in a character he considers doomineering and pathetic in his appendices, yet in the text she comes over a strong woman, dealing with a profoundly depressed and useless man.  Cognitive dissonace ahoy!

Cerebus gets drunk and thinks of all the manly adventures he has had in the past and wants to tell Ham all about them, although he is badly starstruck by being in close proximity to Ham who is a big hero of his.

Cerebus: "Cerebus has a nervous breakdown because he is having dinner with THE Ham Ernestway"

Pissed again

Later Ham talks to another visitor and confides that he "can't finish the book.  This wonderful book and I can't finish it".  He then decides they will leave the winter home and go on a camping trip even though it is snowy and cold.  While Mary tells Jaka that Ham has been treated for depression in a Cirinist clinic, Cerebus comes outside and blurts out a tale of one of his adventures to a blank faced, unresponsive Ham.

They then all set off, with Jaka and Cerebus still heading for Sand Hill Creek to see his parents.  They are accompanied with Ham and Mary's black tribesmen guides.  Jaka becomes scared that they'll get stuck in the mountain pass over winter, but Cerebus is confident Ham won't steer them wrong.

During a fireside chat Ham asks Jaka if her can call her "daughter", but she demurs.  Mary tries to reassure her, explaning that's just his way and Ham yells at her to shut up and throws a drink in her face which she takes in her smiling stride.  Mary continues to advise Jaka about married life, while Cerebus tries to tell Ham some stories of his life, eliciting only a terse "shut up" in response.  Undeterred, later that night Jaka cuts Cerebus's hair to look like Ham's

Hair cu-ut, Hair cut-ut...

Next day Cerebus is introduced to a rifle, having never used firearms before he is completely delighted by it.

Mary:  "Must have led a sheltered life up there in Sand Hills Creek".

Cerebus: "Actually ma'am Cerebus hasn't been to Sand Hills Creek for a long time.  Cerebus spent the last few years running a tavern and before that Cerebus was...travelling.. alot."

Pew Pew Pew

When they return to camp, Mary shows the padlocks on the box where they keep the firearms to prevent Ham getting at them unsupervised as he is a suicide risk.  Cerebus then finds out Jaka slapped Ham because he grabbed at her.  This lead Cerebus to ask frostily:

Cerebus: "Would you ever slap Cerebus?"

Jaka: "If you gave me a good reason to certainly".

Dinner is held in silence after Ham tells them to "stop chewing so fucking loud".  Cerebus and Jaka make up in their tent afterwards.  Soon they arrive at a hunting lodge, but unmarried couples can't stay there.  Jaka says that if they both say they are lesbians, they can stay.  She is just about to reveal Cerebus's hermaphrodite status when Cerebus bellows at her to "Shut UP!" and throws a drink over her.

Don't Over Share Jaka!

Later they talk about it.

Jaka: "I don't see a vagina as something to be ashamed of, or being a lesbian for that matter...I thought you'd laugh.  I thought you'd treat it as a silly joke 'Cerebus and Jaka. The hunting lodge lesbians'.  Instead I feel as if I don't know you anymore."

Preach it sister, go us lesbians!  Funny how Dave Sim can put tolerant and reasonable dialogue in the mouths of his most sympathetic characters, yet can't seem to find it in his heart to think that way for real.  Hey ho.  Mary interjects at this point to tell them about her and Ham's trip to a continent in the shape of Africa.  It's here that Dave Sim bases his her reminisences on Mary Hemmingways own book.

I Hear The Rains Down In Africa

She talks about the animal hunts they went on in Africa (the first named actual real world place I can think of in a Cerebus book).  There are some gorgeous drawings of animals and the black Africans are rendered respectfully and without charicature.  Mary has dreams about the lion they are tracking.  Next day they find it and kill it, at first Mary thinks she did it, but later realises this wasn't so and gets upset, though not so upset that she doesn't eat her lion steak.

Beautiful Artwork.

She talks of an interview with Ham (who she creepily refers to as Papa) that a reporter did on them while they were on safari, and Ham says some eye opening things.

Mary: "Reporter 'What are your favourite sports sir?'
            Papa: 'Shooting, fishing, reading and sodomy.'
            'Does Mrs. Earnestway particpate in all these sports?'
            'She particpates in all of them.'"

This, along with Ham's confession that he likes to be the girl to Mary's boy freaks Cerebus out completely.  Mary continues her tale, about how happy they were on safari.  They hunt more animals.  Board an airship that crashes, get rescued by boat, get caught in another airship crash which leaves them both injured.  A doctor advises Ham to stop drinking and rest up but he continues partying.  He starts behaving strangely and violently.  He becomes abusive towards Mary which she smiles through.

Mary: "I refreshed myself by remembering the loving, friendly phrases Ham had been making throughout Africa, before the crashes and the fire."

They returned to an active social life in Iest.  A writer called Scott is digusted when he hears they ate lion, and after and argument with Mary, challenegs Ham to a duel.  Which Ham turns down as Scott is not a worthy opponent.  Mary's story concludes and she and Ham retire to their tent, leaving a rather shocked and bewildered Cerebus.  Again, in the appendices Dave Sim makes out that Mary is kinda lame and pathetic, but she comes over in the text as a woman with the patience of a saint, dealing with a big baby of a man-child.

Anyway, later that night Cerebus hears a gunshot and comes out to find Ham dead from a bullet to the brain and Mary standing sadly over him.  Cerebus looks at the key in the padlock and shivers out the words:

Mary: "I think no wife.. has the right.. to deprive her husband.. of his possessions".
                                          

Boom! Headshot!

A shocked Cerebus starts walking back to his tent as the clouds roll in and it starts to snow heavily.  The final section of the book finds Cerebus and Jaka alone and lost with only a box of biscuits between them to eat.  They are in dire straits and Cerebus is convinced they will die.  That night Cerebus has a dream in which Rick appears and shows them the way they should go.  He also shows Cerebus his stigmata and and tells him the following:

Dream Rick: "Someone will come to you with a book.  He will identify himself to you by the phrase you tried to remember earlier.  The book will tell you everything. Mungu. Mungu Mkona. God in the hand of..."

The Rick Mystery Continues....

Then a loud noise wakes both him and Jaka up.  Inspired by the dream, Cerebus hurries Jaka out of the tent with the bribe of allowing her to eat all the biscuits.  They make it over the nearby ridge and find a pathway.  Jaka eats all the biscuits.  They find an inn to stay in and Cerebus ponders Jaka's selfishness over the biscuits and his worries about how Jaka - a city person - will adapt to life in a village like Sand Hill's Creek.

Jaka: "If I can master twenty-five ways to say 'hello' based on rank and seniority, I should be able to get the hang of gender distictions in a northern logging and fishing community."

Cerebus and Jaka slip past the local Cirinists and find some underground tunnels to continue travelling through.  Next day they bicker constantly as they make the final leg of the journey.  Cerebus tells Jaka they must pretend they are married as the village is Orthodox Tarimite.  They crest the hill with the village in sight and happily Cerebus runs down to it, his joy turning to fear as he realises how empty the place is, with even the tavern all shut up.  They find one old man who speaks angrily to Cerebus, who with mounting horror asks where his parents are buried.  Jaka tries to talk to him and he turns on her.

Cerebus: "Go on.  Beat it. SCRAM!"
                       

And he turns his back on her and walks sadly away.  A Cirnist shows up in a coach and hands her Missy which they had left behind in the tent.  Our last image of Jaka is her weeping in the back of the coach, clutching Missy to her chest.
                          

Incoherent with rage and grief, Cerebus rends his clothes and rubs dirt into his face before howling in frustration and sadness across the very last panels of the book.  It's a fantastic, emotive ending and for me overall it's where Cerebus ends properly for me.  What's that you say?  Two more books, with none of the cast of characters we've come to know and love?  And full of Dave Sim's insane take on the bible and Christianity? And you want me to review them too?  You heartless demons.
                    

Form And Void, is the Cerebus saga's final gasp of glory.  Full of beautiful art and perfect pacing and characterisation.  Why did Cerebus get rid of Jaka?  I can think of a couple of reasons.  He's just lost his idol and his parents, we know how emotional fragile he is and I think he just snapped.  Plus having spent so much time with her, she was no longer on the pedstal he had placed her on, and getting to know her properly meant finding fault with her, her perfection was tarnished by reality.  She isn't a bad person by any manner of means, she puts up with a lot of shit from him, but she is flawed and in the end, I think those flaws added up and with the  bombshell of finding his parents had died he just wants to be left alone.  He no longer fears Juno it seems.  Anyway, excellent book, but what about those appendices.

Well, let me sum up.  Dave Sim doesn't like Hemmingway's writing (he keeps calling it "typing" a "hilarious" joke).  He doesn't like it that a flawed and suicidal man like Hemmingway was held up as a paragon of masculinity.  The people to blame for this are feminists, who deliberately praised and held him up as an ideal of manhood to be aspired to, so when he fell from grace all men would feel bad about themselves like the feminists planned all along.  I think there is a step involving underpants in there as well.  Completely ludicrous as you can see.  So if you ever decide to buy the books that have appendices in them, don't read them, they rarely shed any non biased light on what he's been writing about, just more murping on about bloody women. Rubbish. And it gets so much worse in the final two books....