So can someone explain Cerebus for me?

So can someone explain Cerebus for me?

Where should I start?

When does it go completely off the rails?

What kind of politics does the series promote before Sims went batshit MRA on everyone?

As usual for creator-owned work, you start from #1. As usual for everything, you get off when you stop enjoying it.

There's an argument for starting at 26, as the first 25 issues are more of a parody than the later ones

>So can someone explain Cerebus for me?
Excellent comic. One of the best even if you do have to sit through Sim's mental breakdown to make it to the end.

>Where should I start?
At the beginning so you know the situation and the characters, there are many recurring characters that come and go and things that tie back to earlier events. But really, it's straightforward fantasy parody to begin with and doesn't really git gud and become its own thing until Church & State. See it through at least until the end of that book to know whether it's for you.

>When does it go completely off the rails?
Pic related.

>What kind of politics does the series promote before Sims went batshit MRA on everyone?
It doesn't really "promote" any kind of politics until Sim starts writing his opinion pieces. The actions of the characters are not really shown in the kind of light where you're encouraged to sympathise with or to demonise them - Cerebus is often a dick but he often pays for that as well. It's a pretty major theme of the comic.

The first volume of Cerebus is little more than a bunch of spoof-stories on Conan, Elric and Sword and Sorcery in general. Clever and witty, but nothing super special.

High Society/Volume #2 is the best of the books, showcasing the absurdity inherent in politics, but it doesn't exactly take sides. It ends on a bittersweet and sad note.

#3 and #4 are where things get dicier and take the treatment of politics from HS and apply them to religion. The books darker and at times pretty violent, rape is involved but they still stick to their guns at showing how absurd people can be with religion (my favorite moment is when two characters argue fervently over both the gender of the Almighty and *how their name is pronounced*.) The feminist army (no, LITERALLY, an entire army of feminists, show up at the end of the book and this is where things start going awry.

The next book is a character's backstory and beyond that things get trippy and insane. Stream of thought insane where the next book is about Oscar Wilde and the misogyny swings into full gear over the next few books and by then it's not just off the rails, you're not even sure you're on a train anymore.


Before all of this... it's been a while since I read them, but Simms even early on seemed to have a little disdain for women, and certainly wasn;t afraid to parody Red Sonja with a fucking moron imitation of the character, but really he seemed intent on poking fun and pointing out the absurdities of the world without a huge leaning one way or the other.

>Where should I start?
At Issue 1? What the fuck kind of question is this
>When does it go completely off the rails?
Around issue 250, aroudn 220 it becomes a little worse in quality. However 260ish-270 and 290-300 are also good, so there are about 240 great issues, 40 mediocre and 20 what the fuck issues
>What kind of politics does the series promote before Sims went batshit MRA on everyone?
Nothing really, it's not that political of a work until it goes off the rails, it just shits on a lot of political/celebrity figures and makes commentary on Marvel and DC. When people say it's satire, it's satire of comics and authors, not politics.

Honestly most of the MRA shit comes from his letters and column not the comic itself.

Start from the beginning.

The first dozen issues are rough as far as being a bad furry webcomic parody of Conan, but around #13, when Lord Julius (a blatant Groucho Marx stand-in) shows up and Cerebus starts getting involved in politics and you start getting introduced to Weisshaupt (evil George Washington by way of the Illuminati) and Astoria (Julius' ex-wife and Cerebus's political patron, who for modern context, is a parallel to moderate feminist/Progressive/muslim who is engaged in a shadow war with her feminazi/SJW/ISIS rival Cirin).

High Society is the first great arc. Church and State is also great but has a huge amount of filler and the first 1/5th of it is basically a retred of High Society with added filler of Cerebus dealing with a murderous mother-in-law.

Church and State and High Society have the running subplot of Cerebus basically running Iest to the ground and basically fucking shit up badly and allowing the Cirinists to slowly but surely conquer the region.

The Cirinists basically are the unholy devil baby of SJWs, Feminists, and ISIS-Al Quada. Imagine Islam if Islam was a female centric death cult that was actively engaging in male genocide and forcing everyone they conquer to live under Shariah law.

Jaka's Story is basically a red pill story about living under Shariah. Jaka (a stripper who Cerebus has a crush on) basically is stuck with a worthless NEET husband who wants a son so he can train him into being a Chad Thundercock, to make up for his own inability to be a Chad. He's so worthless, that Jaka basically had an abortion because he couldn't provide for the family and eventually gets a job as a stripper. The Cirinists end up finding out and bust Jaka and kill everyone at the bar save a "screw realism" Oscar fucking Wilde (who survives due to the fact that he just wrote a best selling novel based upon Jaka's childhood based off of stories her husband told him and as such, can't be killed off without creating a scandal).

Conan parody turned political satire turned domestic drama turned spiritual-political-thriller-dark-comedy. Starring an aardvark.

Issue 2. Issue 1 is the only issue that has no effect on the rest of the story.

It gradually goes off the rails around issue 111. That's when the line between Cerebus's fantasy world and Dave Sim's real world started to blur. It gets bad around 186.

Secular but mediated democracy with touches of anti-militarism, anti-traditionalism and anti-feminism. Around issue 190, there's bits of pro-socialism.
There's a theme about power corrupting and how human nature (greed, malice or stupidity) can ruin an otherwise perfect political system.

Pic kind of related. She's a parable on how power corrupts and also she's my waifu

reminder that murder is worse than rape

Takes a few books to get good, during Reads Simm's schizophrenia supposedly manifested and it becomes kind of cuckoo for cocoa puffs, the MRA stuff doesn't grow organically from the plot and actually derails key characters and themes, it's really just very thinly veiled ramblings about Simm's bitter divorce. The comic is still interesting even when crazy (though the prose is awful) but is tragic and depressing for many reasons.

There is absolutely no argument for starting at 26. You need to get an understanding the characters, and it's a good parody (and often not even a parody) of Sword and Sorcery. You'd also miss this gem of an issue. Only continuity fags (which I do not know how you could be one of a contained universe, probably a psychosis from cape comic reading) would even entertain skipping any of Cerebus

>probably a psychosis from cape comic reading
the furry superiority complex strikes again

>certainly wasn;t afraid to parody Red Sonja with a fucking moron imitation of the character
Lol what she still kick ass and regularly outsmarted Cerebus (who is a bit of a fucking idiot)

>getting bad before 200
No, I can see someone not liking Guys but 1-200 are fantastic, and at worse as insane as a Morrison comic

>High Society is the first great arc
Actually shit, I now realize I meant High Society as being the first really good arc rather than Church & State when I wrote . Sorry OP.

I love cape comics but to suggest that any of Cerebus should be skipped for any reason is retarded.

I assumed by going "off the rails", he meant when it started getting crazy.
It didn't get objectively bad, in my opinion, until at least Reads (I'd argue Form & Void is the only bad book). However, the crazy blurring of the comic book symbolism and Sim's real-life interpretation of humanity (with spirituality and gender roles) started with Church & State.

>>Continued

Melmoth is basically Oscar Wilde fan fiction with his final days as Wilde and Cerebus think Jaka is dead after her arrest.

Mothers and Daughters (which is split into four volumes) is when shit hits the fan. Reads (the third installment) has #186, the issue that broke the fan base as far as Sims outing himself as an MRA with the notion that women are soul sucking voids.

(Ironically, the issue of void and light and which is what gender is a huge sort of controversy within the actual series in terms of the running religious storyline)

M&D basically wraps up all of the major storylines, the bulk of which were put on pause for about five years while Jaka's Story and Melmoth ran.

In C&S, Astoria was outed as being from a rival Cirinist group that basically is the equivalent of normal assimilated Muslims/feminists who don't drink the SJW kool aid. Her entire relationship with Cerebus was based upon manipulating him to get her into position for "The Ascension": basically a religious ceremony done every couple of decades using a golden orb that basically sends you to the moon where God waits for the person who arrives in order to impart wisdom and answer questions. Astoria desperately wants to ascend so she can get proof from God that her way is the right form of Feminism/Islam to her people.

Opposing her, is Cirin, a female ardvark who is a seven foot tall giant in a burka, who ironically usurped the identity of the original Cirin, because she was too moderate for the evil female ardvark.

"Mothers and Daughters" refers to the generational struggle between mothers and their daughters, with the subtext that the daughters of blue pill feminist crazies will always be the preferred "devil you know" due to them seeing their mothers insanity and doing their best to avoid the ISIS/Nazi behavior of their mothers.

What was the issue where he threatened to beat up the creator of Bone in his basement and started ranting about/shit talking Alan Moore's family for no reason

I thought that's when he became alienated from all human contact but Gehrheart (spelling that wrong, the background artist I mean, I thought he was the only one to have any contact with Simm for years)

Also why didn't Simm's family get him help?

>Imagine Islam if Islam was a female centric death cult that was actively engaging in male genocide and forcing everyone they conquer to live under Shariah law

I can hear Tumblr schlicking.

It's not a pleasant sound.

>>Continued

At the very end of M&D, Cirin and Cerebus fight and meet God (Dave Sims) and Cerebus loses an eye from Cirin.

I forget what happens to Cirin (I think she ends up getting away with everything evil she does) but Astoria basically realizes that she's become just like her mom's generation/Cirin (per the generation gap war Sims implies) and goes "fuck this shit, I've wasted my life and I'm going to start over without constantly having to worry about getting killed/feuding over which version of my faith is the correct version!" and doesn't appear again in the series.

God/Sims drops Cerebus off at a bar at the end of #200, which is considered by many to be the preferred end point of the series (even by Sims, who considers #201-300 to be postscript).

Guys deals with bar culture as the Cirinists are being driven from Iest slowly but surely and you have the local government basically, as a form of apology for the Cirinist white male genocide, creating a new welfare state where women have to work to support men, by taxing them out the ass to provide money for bars to provide white men free room and liquor as reperations/stealth way to spoil men rotten to the point that they either get jaded with lad culture life and get a wife/job/become a productive member of society or die from drinking themselves to death.

Cerebus reunites with Rick, who had a hand amputated by Margaret Thatcher (who like Oscar Wilde, exists outside of her normal place in the timeline as a Cirinist collaborator) and has gone insane from being tortured by feminists in feminist prison. He starts a religion based upon Cerebus before being written off.

This leads to "Going Home" as Cerebus and Jaka finally get together and start the journey to visit cross country to visit Cerebus's dying parents. This is when the series once again breaks fandom (and by this point, the internet).

If Sim hadn't gone quite so batshit I think he'd have gone down as being pretty prescient.

Sim disowned his mom when she and his ex put him in the loony bin after he went cray-cray doing LSD....

To be fair, it's probably to his credit that #186 and #265 overshadowed a lot of the red pill dropping her did (though I really disagree with his revisionist view on Jaka's Story, since his red pill revisionist view on it misses entirely what is red pill about the arc).

The Cirinists alone would have destroyed his standing in the comic community had Heidi and her ilk actually bothered to read all of M&D as opposed to just #186

Considering that Dave sees himself as a Muslim, it's pretty odd to compare Cirinists and Kevillists to Islam.

Dave said that the religion of Cerebus is based on schism-era Christianity. I think describing Cirinism and its offshoot as Gnosticism would make more sense. It's a radical reinterpretation of the traditional religion which is spurred by the religion's churches and institutions but seem to posses some divine truths (the relationship between the light/Terim and the void/Tarim, the Ascension, "echoes" and so forth).

My interpretation of Cirinism and Kevillism is that Kevillism is the more mystical, spiritual-focused of the two which preaches total equality (for all women) rather than mothers having power over daughters.

I think Dave made that comment sometime in 1999 which would have been during Going Home.
He started alienating himself earlier than that though he apparently chilled-out a bit once he was done with Cerebus.
Dave was apparently not very close to his family, even when he was more functional.

>the notion that women are soul sucking voids

It's kinda funny how I read something similar to this in Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia. I wonder if Sims read it as well.

>>Continued


Cerebus keeps getting side tracked by Jaka meeting famous writers (F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemmingway) and wanting to hang out with them. They get to the town just after the burial of Cerebus's parents and basically the entire town goes inside and refuses to come out until Cerebus is gone, as far as him being made a pariah for missing his dad's death.

Cerebus decides to blame EVERYTHING on Jaka and they finally break up for good. All in well, except the break up issue ALSO has the internet breaking text piece (published at the height of George W Bush's first term) where Sims decides to let his right wing, MRA flag firmly fly as he blames all of the troubles of the world on an axis of evil consisting of gay men and feminists.

The controversy basically overshadowed the last 35 issues: Cerebus rebounds with a Jaka lookalike reporter and with help from Woody Allen (again, time displaced and bragging about how he fucked Frank Sinatra's sloppy seconds) stage the final assault on the Cirinists, driving them from Iest, leading to Cerebus being king again. Until "Last Days", which reveals that Cerebus was quickly marginalized by his new Jaka lookalike wife, who is WORSE than the Cirinists in that she uses her position as Queen to push a pro-gay/tranny/feminist SJW agenda and Cerebus is basically a prisoner of his own castle. The climax is the proper introduction of Islam to Cerebus, as Cerebus's son (conceived with the Jaka lookalike) basically reveals that Islam is going to murder everyone and there is nothing Cerebus can do to stop it, or his son's desire to mock God via genetically modifying new life, the first of which is the Sphinx.

Cerebus breaks his neck trying to get out of bed, dying and going into the light, only to find everyone BUT Rick, waiting for him, which causes Cerebus to suspect he's going to hell as the series ends.

>Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia.
Now I agree with her,
but reminder that Camille Paglia thinks that the finale of Revenge of The Sith is one of the greatest works of art of our time.

>suspect he's going to hell as the series ends

Friendly reminder that the series is continuing from that point.

Nobody's perfect.

But she's right.

So 200 is the generally agreed upon drop-off point for casual readers?

>M&D basically wraps up all of the major storylines, the bulk of which were put on pause for about five years while Jaka's Story and Melmoth ran.

I wonder what it was like for a Cerebus fan to deal with that shit. I assume fandom revolted at being forced to read a dramaedy about a collapsing marriage and Oscar Wilde as the main character of the series?

What revisionist view?

Yeah; even Sims himself says that #201-300 can be skipped if you want to.....

Jaka's story was actually well received by fans, since Jaka was a fan favorite character and after the never ending marathon that was Church and State (50 fucking issues), it was a nice change of pace.

Melmoth on the other hand, was widely reviled. Cerebus just sits around in a BSOD paralyzed state thinking Jaka died and Oscar Wilde became the star of the comic, a move that underestimated fan tolerance for Sims dropping real life characters (or thinly veiled rip-offs) into his work and letting them hijack or derail the plot.

This comic is the reason I misspelled "Cerberus" for almost a decade.

Rather than seeing Jaka as a victim of the feminazis, Sims started saying Jaka was the "real villain" for dancing in the first place, causing the deaths of several characters and her husband's maiming to be her fault and not the Cirinists fault (or even Cerebus for fucking things up and letting the Cirinists take over in the first place).

He has also claims these days, that Jaka was always a villain character and that Jaka's Story was "an experiment in writing a story with a villain lead".

Bump because this is a nice, helpful introduction to Cerebus free of the usual political crap these threads attract. More Anons should check this series out.

The last third is the best.

You either don't read Cerebus, or you read all of it.

If you only read parts of it, you haven't really read it.

Rick had his thumb broken for hitting Jaka, and the bar thing was social engineeing, it had nothing to do with cirinists feeling guilty for killing men

How come? Is it when he goes full schizo?

>What kind of politics does the series promote before Sims went batshit MRA on everyone?
If it bothers you that much that a book might present a viewpoint that differs from your own you should really just kys.

The problem is when the viewpoint doesn't extend naturally from the story, but rather co-opts it as a platform.

why wouldn't you start at 1
that's crazy

Yeah basically. I read and collected the entire thing as it was happening and there's no built in theme progression he just...well, geniunely loses his mind, has a bad divorce, suddenly instead of it being about the actual narrative it is literally page after page of crazy soapbox rambling, just Simm directly angrily ranting at the readers.

"Bad" doesn't seem quite the right world for it, but if you didn't sign on for a rambling manifesto that gets pretty psychosis laden at times, it's odd. Like reading the Unibomber's manifesto and towards the end it suddenly becomes a comic about an Ardvark for no reason.

Probably it's good for him he kept doing it as therapy because he doesn't seem to have been getting any pther help and apparently things were really bad. The U.S. does an awful job with mental health party because of some probably well intended civil rights shit but what it's amounted to is people go totally off the deep end with no recourse. Now Simm wasn't dangerous and financially lucky but I have seen the same thing happen to people in more precarious situations and it's damn ugly.

He's Canadian

So... what do you guys think about Cerebus Goes To Hell?

I definitely WANT it to be good, and I've heard Dave has mellowed out a lot... but I'm still worried.

I'm just hoping Dave will actually be able to draw again in time for the series next year. Whatever people think of him he doesn't deserve that shitty luck. The idea of making a new issue by essentially cut-and-pasting existing drawings doesn't exactly inspire me.

>Yeah basically. I read and collected the entire thing as it was happening and there's no built in theme progression he just...well, geniunely loses his mind, has a bad divorce, suddenly instead of it being about the actual narrative it is literally page after page of crazy soapbox rambling, just Simm directly angrily ranting at the readers.
Sounds like Sinfest.

I don't think Sinfest ever got as incoherent or as... virulent as Simms got with Cerebus.

>or as... virulent

I dunno, the Sinfest guy seems like he's filled with quite a bit of self loathing.