CEREBUS THE AARDVARK

by Dave Sim & Gerhard (Aardvark-Vanaheim)


It seems just to begin with as brief a peek as possible, at the increasingly involved phenomenon lorded over by Dave Sim's defiant, porcine protagonist and the bristling world of satire surrounding CEREBUS's often hilarious, hirsute pursuits. How to define CEREBUS in terms of genre? Not with any great ease. Sim's original intention was to dutifully record the unfolding life of his central character over twenty six years and three hundred monthly issues. The work began back in December of 1977 and is due to conclude in March 2004, with the much talked about death of the errant Aardvark himself. As readers of THE SANDMAN will be all too aware, the following of a genuinely on-going plot is not only extremely engaging, but gives the reader an enticing, open-ended feel that in traditional literature exists only in the form of the familiar sequel. You have the knowledge that whilst the future of the narrative has been somewhat loosely defined, the years ahead should almost certainly throw the creative team themselves, a good deal of unexpected twists and turns in their own lives and naturally, so too those of their creations. Sim has diligently developed this into an expansive artform. Charting CEREBUS's life as barbarian, diplomat, Prime Minister, Pope, refugee, revolutionary and somewhat reluctant house guest, he handles his own often controversial worldview with equal doses of slapstick humour and acerbic wit, through the decidedly petulant medium of his selfish, power-hungry, drunken and generally degenerate charge. CEREBUS proves himself time and again to be a genuinely difficult bastard and increasingly, it would seem as in Sim's life, so in CEREBUS's.

Sim has on occasion been attacked for somewhat misogynistic tendencies (and I'm not talking about anything as simple as the traditionally offensive comic book depictions of buxom bimbo heroines). This has from time to time provoked a little lofty discussion (Sim: Man or Monster?), to which his often heated letter pages stand as testament. I think that without wishing to overstep the mark and add undue opinion to something I don't personally percieve as a problem, I'd have to agree with those who choose to mark Dave Sim down as simply and unfashionably honest.

So not unlike his inky alter-ego, Sim himself has garnered an equally hard-nosed reputation, albeit as the original, staunch self-publisher, outspoken comic book freedom-fighter and fatherly, self-made comics magnate. His creative baby has set a relative standard by which newly emerging self-published works tend to be judged by (perhaps even the success of THE SANDMAN owes something to the trail-blazing, self-contained storyline format of CEREBUS?) and Sim, not unaware of his now much vaunted position, has started giving a little something back to the kind of folk responsible for helping put him there in the first place, by running lengthy excerpts from upcoming and fledgling titles in the CEREBUS PREVIEW section at the back of his own monthly issues.

Whilst Sim maintains plot and characterisation, #1 draughtsman Gerhard indisputably provides some of the finest background illustrations in the industry. These are flawlessly executed and consistently cinematic in the extreme to rival even the obsessive eye for detail of Manga supremo Katsuhiro Otomo. Truly lavish backdrops which provide epic settings for the bizzare lives, loves and losses of a regular Cecil B De Mille cast of thousands. Some of which (the down-trodden figure of gentle Jaka or the Bubbles-like, ditzy Regency Elf) are extremely lovable. Others perhaps, are deserving of a little more cautious respect (the calculating political mind of Astoria or the mighty Cirin with his violent, religious fervours) and some... well, SOME you might say, are just about as mad as balloons (the moronic, multiple personality that is The Roach, that eternally bumbling, asinine albino Elrod, or the damning fact that Lord Julius, ruler of Palnu, is the absolute spit of Groucho Marx).
CEREBUS is now well over two-thirds complete and yet continues to embroil the reader wholesale in an astonishing trip through an incredibly epic life journey. For me an unforgettable highlight of both Sim's wit and Ger's artistic invention begins as the "karmic", sci-fi odyssey of the "MINDS" storyline commences.

We are shocked (but also strangely pleased beyond all reason) to discover our dishevelled hero cast adrift on a rapidly diminishing block of finest Regency marble, torn from the crumbling plinth of a battle-worn throne room, and tossed like so much unoticed chaff into the uncharted and plainly unforgiving depths of a starry void. Somewhat ignominously granted this sudden and altogether inescapable period of karmic incarceration and with the delightful prospect of only himself for company, CEREBUS wrestles long and hard with his infamously under-developed Earth-pig conscience and before long, begins to accept that 'tis a little more than the cruel workings of a fickle fate that have finally dragged his now considerably sorry ass hither, so that he might, before the belittling immensity of various celestial bodies and a judicious dose of fantastically fierce flashbacks, learn to come to terms with the equally considerable sum of his shamelessly irascible actions to date, culminating in a timely and hilarious run-in with his pretty much unimpressed and (ahem!) joyously unmerciful maker (Tarim, er... Sim, be praised!)

...And You know for a short while, the arrogant little shit actually meets his match.

So if you're able to let slide much of the adorational wanking-over that CEREBUS recieves from the self-styled comics cognoscenti and feel financially stable enough to take a chance on the (approx) 4,000 pages published to date, you might just happen to discover a major fictional achievement in (not so) humble, comic book form.

Of course the first two thirds of the chronicles are to date all still in print and available in several gargantuan "telephone-book" compendiums (most of which run to several hundred pages plus). Personally I'd recommend skipping the first of these (detailing Cerebus's parodic CONAN-like origins) and heading straight for the later volumes, such as HIGH SOCIETY, CHURCH & STATE 1 & 2 or JAKA'S STORY.

CEREBUS (issues 1-25)
HIGH SOCIETY (26-50)
CHURCH & STATE Vol.1 (52-80)
CHURCH & STATE Vol.2 (81-111)
JAKA'S STORY (114-136)
MELMOTH (139-150)
FLIGHT (151-162)
WOMEN (163-174)
READS (175-186)
MINDS (187-200)
GUYS (201-219)
RICK'S STORY (220- ) Due October 1998

CEREBUS NUMBER ZERO (reprinting the "in-between" stories from CEREBUS 51, 112/113 and 137-138)

Aardvark Vanaheim Inc., P.O. Box 1674, Station C, Kitchener, Ontario N2G 4R2 Canada


Back to the introduction
To the next section (Bacchus)

akiko home