Is Cerebus worth reading entirely?

Is Cerebus worth reading entirely?

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cerebusdownloads.com/freecerebus/getBOOKs.html
m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9877692
youtube.com/watch?v=NOLpwzAFsXE
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Very yes.

yeah I think the ending is worth reading through the worst parts of it

Yes.

Cerebus is to Sup Forums as Infinite Jest is to /lit/. Everyone here pretends they've read it.

this

I quit reading around issue 50

I'm still trying to find a torrent of it.

(w/ apologies to Dave Sim, I'm disabled and cannot afford it.)

Readcomiconline has every issue

>but I'm definitely entitled to it
Maybe you're disabled because karma decided to show externally how shitty you are internally

Yeah, probably.

I just struggle to get to and from the library. It's a bit far and I have mobility issues.

I think you would be surprised at how little money you get for being severely disabled, though. It's not like I choose between going out with the boyz and buying books. Internet is literally the only frivolity I can afford.

Thanks.

Yes. It may be tempting to skip parts (like the initial parody parts or the later "force feeding ideology" issues) but the whole thing builds on itself to create some of the best comic scenes in the medium.

Also, check the desu, because most of the links from previous story times still work.

You can get the first two books for free directly from Dave Sim's site:
cerebusdownloads.com/freecerebus/getBOOKs.html

Well you made me feel bad for ribbing you, if that's any consolation

Don't feel bad, man.

I understand where you're coming from.

Hey man if you can work a computer there's some jobs youd be fine at
Youd be a good diversity hire

Cerebus starts out straight GOOD as a fantasy satire right out of the era of dead serious silly fantasy which is priceless. Then it gets kind of preachy in a way, but not in any way that is controversial in hindsight. In fact, almost boring and typical for indie comics at the time and would be kinda shit without the hilarious Groucho Marx guy. THEN it takes this very personal turn where Sim expresses some quite misogynistic views on women and relationships that were almost too much even in the 80s, were straight up blackball material in the 90s and 00s and now fits right in to some /r9k/ /mgtow/ shit. It actually comes back around in the comic and it's interesting how revealing it is about Sim's life experiences but it dug him into a hole there was little escape from. In fact, I'm pretty confident that Bone stepped right into the vacuum that Cerebus's dark turn created.

If you read all the amazing parts (probably 70%), you'll have read enough that you'll feel compelled to finish it, even though Latter Days will blow your mind with what a joyless slog it is.

No, the early chapters are crap.

There are themes I totally disagree with, and it's somewhat inconsistent, but totally. It deserves the praise it receives

Sims doesn't care actually.

I've read both, and each was one of the most intense artistic experiences of my life. But both are the kind of thing you can't really recommend to someone- stuff that huge and challenging you've gotta come to on your own when you're ready.

>gets free government money
>still complaining

I would gladly trade being a wageslave for a nice social security meriting disability any day.

I really don't understand ow anyone can think it's seriously misogynistic until he marries Jaka. Cerebus' misogyny consistently fucks him over

It's good, but pretty fucked up how he ends up dying and going to Hell in the end.

Latter Days is good until you hit his retranslation of Genesis. You can skip the text of it and read a summary if you want. Just do not skip what comes after.

Yes. It's an amazing work, though not entirely for the reasons the author intended.

I've read both. I'm the saddest human being alive.

It's massively frustrating, because I couldn't write it off. Even in the latter issues, there would still be these flashes. Some scene, some layout, some joke where you get a real sense of the talent that you could see developing in the first half of the series.

Not really, Bone was huge at the same time as Cerebus. IIRC they toured cons together with two other alt creators under the title "Beans, Bones, Hepcats and an Aardvark".

That's the other thing about Dave Sim. He would regularly devote back pages of his comics to showing work from other independent creators. So it wasn't like he was always this isolated figure. He was hugely well connected, and he knew and had done favors for a LOT of people. You've got this guy who is amazingly generous and well liked, suddenly picking a nasty, high profile fight with more or less the entire comics industry.

It's not mysogyny if she's /fucking nuts/.

He doesn't go to Hell, he goes to Equestria.

Didn't Sims and Smith like get in a physical fight eventually?

>challenging
user...

That'd be even worse

But then theres the shit with thrle hemmingway expy that is definitely misogyny, and Sim is clearly applying it to the concept of marraige in wake of his divorce

Sim challenged him to a boxing match but I don't know if anything came of it

He saw SJWism twenty years before it blossomed. He saw how nuts it was because he saw how nuts he was because of it.

truly ahead of his time

I can't just read comics all day. I have to balance my comic-reading time along with my time for work, studies, family, friends, etc.

Working out my schedule is a challenge.

Don't know. I think he challenged Jeff Smith to a fight. And honestly being punched in the face a few times might have done Sim a world of good.

The irony being that the present day parts of Jaka's Story are about a strong female protagonist trying to navigate and care for 4 weak and treacherous men who want her to be a part of their own fantasy worlds. You could make a strong argument that Jaka's Story as a an important feminist work in the comic medium.

Basically there's no "middle" with Dave Sim.

...and he saw it blossoming in the indie comics industry. He was the prophet of redpill before anyone else could see the pattern.

It's a true work of literature.

Smith was obviously too much of a pussy, as Sim knew damn well. Basically Sim is a very opinionated person with a huge amount of self confidence and was perfectly willing to stand against the entire world to say "most women are shit and too many men are putting up with it, which is making everything shittier" and he said it all along it's just that the whole world turned against him for it in the mid 90s.

Or he's an un-diagnosed schizophrenic who created his own syncretic version of the three major Abrhamaic religions and his views on women are as cloaked in his own bizarre and esoteric hermeneutics. Both possibilities should be considered.

I can't read Cerebus with the voice of George C. Scott
I just can't

So when Sim dies and Cerebus becomes public domain, what's the first thing that'll happen to the character?

There's already a gay furry porn comic featuring Cerebus. Again, IIRC, Sim has said he doesn't care who uses the character and for what.

Feminists make an issue where he apologizes for Sim

Regardless of how venomous his opinion of women became you can't deny the Cirinists are prescient

Holy fuck I could actually see that happening

I hated pretty much all of it- ESPECIALLY the Todd McFarlane satire stuff. The details are hazy, and I know I didn't like Going Home or Form & Void much either, but my memories of Latter Days are just 99% loathing.

Not really, no. Nobody can shoot me with a crossbow because I like to dance. Meme it up all you want, but we don't live in that world.

Yes. The psychic heavily armed matriarchal fascists who worship the role of motherhood and wear full face hoods and long skirts are becoming a real problem.

I kid, but if anything the SJWs are the Kevilists.

Are you mind-shaming a gifted disabled man, you cis-minded ah ha haha hahaha haha haha I can't keep a straight face.

FYI, I'm an autistic man who syncretised Ayn Rand's Objectivism and Dave Sims' dualism (the part before he went all Abrahamic/Gnostic) into a modernist philosophy that can eat postmodernism for lunch.

Ideally? Someone writes another "cycle" of the Po/Cerebus/Astoria/'Cirin' power struggle a few thousand years in the future.

He's already public domain. The hypercrisis is real. He's running against Hillary "Astoria" Clinton. The Cirinists have already taken South Korea.

>if anything the SJWs are the Kevilists

I'm not a fan of the "His worldview isn't one of the 15 religions I acknowledge as existing; this is evidence of mental illness," argument that seems to always come up with Sim.

It's parody you fucking dolt, of course it's extreme
When mainstream leftist news sites publish articles like this, he was on to something
m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9877692

>When mainstream leftist news sites publish articles like this, he was on to something
Oh no, they're writing articles! Writing articles makes them JUST LIKE CIRINISTS!!! Our very lives are in danger!!!!!

HEAD FOR THE HILLS BEFORE THEY KILL US ALL

I agree with this except I think the 3 "blackout" issues are contenders for best in the series

I'd say watchmen fills that role

Most people hink Sim is insane because he was literally diagnosed and denied that diagnosis, then when he got divorced he went completely bonkers towards women

Remeber the Cirinists first took control by taking over media

>and denied that diagnosis
Actually, he fully acknowledges that his diagnosis is quite possibly fully valid.

It's seeking treatment that he has no interest in doing.
>Assuming (for the sake of argument) that I’m crazy and everyone else is sane, what genuine, verifiable, objectively real foundation is your sanity based on? What, objectively speaking (or subjectively, if we’re being honest here), lends that foundation validity? The thing which lends validity to my schizophrenia (I was diagnosed as a “borderline schizophrenic” in 1979 and I think it is reasonable to assume that the condition has “worsened” in the interim) is the fact that I can make a living from it. In a capitalistic society founded upon “choice” as an absolute, that gives me a certain “real” world impunity.

What media, the reads? No, they took over with swords. And telepathy. Remember, women read minds, guys.

But on a scale of 1 to 10, how triggered should I be by the fact that (O M G) people are writing articles?

It's kind of interesting you should say that. I'm fascinated by Sim because he's my best possible example of the danger of symbols and reasoning. Ultimately you can trap and destroy yourself with your own symbols. At the same time, I know the response to this would be that I'm seeing imprisonment where he's experiencing communion with God because (as the Qu'ran put it):

>As to those who reject Faith, it is the same to them whether thou warn them or do not warn them; they will not believe.

>Allah hath set a seal on their hearts and on their hearing, and on their eyes is a veil; great is the penalty they incur.

Not only is it a great example of god being kind of a dick; but I'm someone who's usually describe as very analytical in nature, and I have to admit: Accept the premise that there's a monotheistic God who has attempted to communicate with us through middle-eastern humans, and creating your own heretical Islamic sect is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Put more simply: Sim reminds me that all reasoning and philosophy are built on our perception of the world. There is no way to analyze your way out of your own mind, and there is no way to truly justify your perception. Therefore do not trust reason too far, lest it lead you off a hidden cliff.

He was diagnosed as he was coming down from a weeks-long LSD binge in like 79 or 80. I think anyone would register as slightly disassociated in that situation.

You do realize there aren't talking aardvarks either right? Or a Judge living on the moon?

>Until they take up crossbows, the Cirinism/Kevilism system explored in Cerebus has nothing to say about modern feminism
You're being stubborn. Cirinism/Kevilism doesn't map directly on to real world ideologies and politicians. "The Mother" and "The Daughter" are symbols of what Sim sees as the two primary female world views.

If you'll stop trying to "win" the conversation, you'll realize there are elements of Cirinism and Kevilism all over the modern conversation about "women's issues." The uneasy mix of "choice above all" and "mother knows best."

I don't think you should be triggered at all. I'm just saying the ideology Sim wrote about is here.

Yes, but playing with the logical extremes of Jungian Archetypes in a story is far from the original claim that Sim was prescient for perceiving them. I'd also argue that the uneasy tension you describe between two the strands of feminist thought you describe was also apparent before Sim ever picked up a pen.

That's why my philosophy (previously mentioned) relies on both reason and perception, seeking ultimate truths without going beyond the edges of human ability, and defining moral perfection while insisting on balance as one of the prime virtues.

It's also secular yet completely compatible with Christianity.

>Allah made them not religious
>but they'll be punished lol
This is why people don't take the Abrahamic relgions seriously

I don't feel threatened by the feminist movement and I can only feel sorry for people who do.

I'm not trying to win anything, but someone is telling me that Cirinism is prescient because PEOPLE ARE WRITING ARTICLES? Forget feeling sorry, I can only laugh at that poster.

What ideology? The Cirinist ideology of removing men from all aspects of public life other than menial labor or forced NEETdom? No, I don't see that at all in the modern world.

>Or he's an un-diagnosed schizophrenic

I thought he was diagnosed was such. Wasn't there a period where he spent some time in a psych ward?

>SJWs are Kevellists
>Hillary is Cirin
>Bernie is Rick
>Trump is Bear

This is why I'm a Jesus-ist.

I appreciate the distinction you're making.

>someone is telling me that Cirinism is prescient because PEOPLE ARE WRITING ARTICLES
I'm not speaking for that original poster, and in a sense I'm having to correct for his mistake in terminology.

The radical "choice above all" feminists are more closely related to Kevilists anyway, and the Kevilists aren't the ones with the hoods and crossbows.

>What ideology? The Cirinist ideology of removing men from all aspects of public life other than menial labor or forced NEETdom? No, I don't see that at all in the modern world.
Are you trying to make my argument for me? I'm confused now. It's definitely not prescient because dancing isn't illegal? Or it definitely is because the situation your described with modern young men is absolutely real?

this thread is reminding me i should probably read the rest of cerebus before Cerebus in Hell comes out. I stopped at like issue 20 or so? the one where all the pages combine into a pic of Cerebus

>Or it definitely is because the situation your described with modern young men is absolutely real?
Do you really feel too scared to leave your house, go to school, get a job, be a productive member of society?

That's your own anxiety at work, not the nasty feminists oppressing you.

What's his feminist agenda, Sup Forums?

Separate but equal. No interaction beyond procreation. And end women's suffering by ending women's suffrage.

Once again you feel the need to screech and ALLCAPSIMRIGHTLOL and insult your way out of actually engaging the argument
Things presented about the Cirinists that are popular in the current zeitgeist
>anti sex feminism
>cult of female superiority ie: the "men bad women good" logic that dominates most feminist conversations surrounding gender politics, "every woman is special" narratives, making every possible issue from murder to wages about women
>domination of comic books by SJWs (see current Marvel)

Once again just because reality doesn't line up with a parody comic doesn't mean it's automatically wrong. Also this has nothing to do with feeling threatened, it's just observation.

>it's just observation

Stop noticing things. Just Listen and Believe.

More bullshit ad homenim
Remember that most men were content under cirinist rule

How long did it take you to finish Cerebus?

He thought "the summer of LSD" would be a good idea. a week or so in to it his wife had him institutionalized. he was diagnosed schizophrenic then.

Whether or not he was still suffering from LSD induced disassociation 15 years later is up for debate. The "I'm actually crazy and I talk to these characters in my head" could very well be smoke and mirrors.

I'm not discussing individuals and their individual feelings. I'm talking about the fact that men are being left behind by society as a group. This isn't "I'm afraid to ask Stacy out." This is "serious changes in the workplace, the sexual/dating marketplace and cultural attitudes about masculinity are negatively affecting generations of young men."

about a year.

Dave has stated pretty clearly that Cirinism is based on first wave feminism while Kevillism (which evolved out of Cirinism) is based on second wave feminism.
Third wave/current feminism has traits of the two previous movements which means it has similarities to both Cirinism and Kevillism.

I guess the best in-comic allegory would be the branch of goddess-worship that New Joanne lead in The Last Day.

>What ideology?
Big picture: subverting the current "patriarchal" system with an alternative "pro-woman" agenda.
Cirinism/Kevillism/New Joanne-ism is a caricature of this real-life theme of subverting culture.

I'm not trying to say that there's a real-life feminazi regime that's taking over the world. I'm just saying that this type of counter-culture exists in some form.

About 6 months I think. Maybe 8 or 9 it's hard to remember

>engaging the argument
The very first argument that you presented to me was: Sim was right because HuffPost publishes articles that you don't like. No, you deserve to be laughed at.

>anti sex feminism
Cirinists are pro-sex. In Cirinist society, you cannot be a citizen until after you've had sex.

>cult of female superiority ie: the "men bad women good" logic that dominates most feminist conversations surrounding gender politics, "every woman is special" narratives, making every possible issue from murder to wages about women
This isn't Cirinist philosophy either, since Cirinist philosophy has nobody as special, and women hold no worth at all until they become mothers.

>domination of comic books by SJWs (see current Marvel)
This doesn't exist in real life, and it didn't exist in Cirinism either. The Cirinists let reads continue to do their own thing. Look at Rabbi as an example.

So, you can fear those SJW boogieman all you want, but what you fear in real life has no connection to what Dave was doing in his comic.

Believe it or not, I use to read the whole thing each year. I'd guess that my shortest read-through would probably be at about 18 hours over the course of about 5 days.

Also, Astoria is best girl

Hey you actually engaged the argument
Good for you kiddo

A month for issues 1-25.
A week for issues 26-200.
Several months of hiatus.
A week for issues 201-300.

youtube.com/watch?v=NOLpwzAFsXE

This may be interesting to people in the thread.

>Cirinists are pro sex
No they're pro children and mothers, sex is just a means to an end. Theyre very specifically against sexualization.

>this isn't Cirinist philosophy
It's the basis of their philosophy, since women can have choldren they are inherently superior. All women are special.

>look at Rabbi
This is unclear, if I remember correctly Oscar was punished for what he wrote. Also rabbi is just a joke about Ennis anyway. On top of that where Cerebus was reading Rabbi seemed to be out of Cirinist control considering he leaves that place to go back to the Cirinists to commit suicide. So no, Rabbi is not a valid example

Really what I think is most prescient about The Cirinists is how they canabalize those they disagree with slightly

I'm currently on issue 120. I've thoroughly enjoyed it so far. Will probably finish it within a month. The art is great and most of the characters are vibrant and entertaining. I see some people in this thread comparing it to Infinite Jest and there may be some truth to that in how the story as a whole is treated. However, I find it to be much less pretentious than Infinite Jest.

>I'm not discussing individuals and their individual feelings. I'm talking about the fact that men are being left behind by society as a group. This isn't "I'm afraid to ask Stacy out." This is "serious changes in the workplace, the sexual/dating marketplace and cultural attitudes about masculinity are negatively affecting generations of young men."

I wonder if Sim ever came across the book" The War Against Boys".

I read maybe a dozen issues of Cerebus. It wasn't bad, but I didn't find it overall entertaining. I don't understand the mass appeal of it.

The first 25 issues are pretty boring. Then the author overdoses on LSD and gets hospitalized for a little while. Then the comic gets revamped, and that's when it captured our hearts.

> "Did you see the look on her face when I suggested that the whole Cirinist/Kevillist agenda is to smother the light of reason in the dark of emotion? She had absolutely no answer!"

>"Dave, that's the last time I introduce you to my mother."

>A difficult man to speak of reasonably, his identity so inextricably entwined with his work in the public eye, his life shuffled in amongst the pages of the chronicle to which he has devoted the larger part of it. (A chronicle which remains famously unfinished until we're already too far into the next millennium to go back: only two thirds of Cerebus, only two thirds of Dave Sim has so far revealed itself above the water line. Leviathan rises in excruciating slomo.)

>This of course is the whole problem and most of the solution in one. Dave Sim the human being is not Cerebus the publication, nor is he Cerebus the character. He and his work must obviously be considered separately. And yet...

>...And yet this is to ignore the creator's obvious urge to fuse, face-first, with his creation. Stacked up in one twenty-year-deep pile, the back issues reveal a sex life as geology: the bedpost strata yielding fossil seams of editorial and letters page: others, significant or otherwise, embedded in the woodpulp shale, footnote autobiography. The book becomes a sweethearts oak. The valentines obliterate each other, carved in palimpsest. Megaphone confidences shared, an intimacy twenty thousand strong. He doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve so much as wear a zoot suit made of hearts.

>It doesn't end there. How can we distinguish the cartoon from the cartoonist when the sheer duration of the work, its clockwork frequency, makes it screamingly evident that this is, and canonly be, the whole of a man's life we see before us? Let's be very clear on this. If he's not writing, drawing, publishing, promoting or out someplace signing it, he's thinking of it. Even if he thinks of something else that is not it, the thing he thinks of will inevitably end up as part of it. Damn it. This is the product of his body, mind and soul, his chromosomes, his parents' chromosomes. Here's what he saves his white light for, jealously guards his precious fluids for. He means this. This is all of him transformed by alchemy to ink and off-white paper, with the central figure in unvarying moral zip-a-tone between the two. In the gray area. The twilight Carl Barks demimonde between the human and the animal. The full-drag no-man's land between the woman and man straddled revealingly by this hermaphrodite protagonist. We can't speak of Dave Sim unless we speak of Cerebus. Likewise, to write a negative review of Cerebus is to sneer loudly at Sim's choice of tie while in a public place. He and his work dissolve and merge in inextricable suspension. And, as pointed out above, as yet we only know two-thirds of either. Loneliness of the long-distance runner.

>With the life and story both unfinished it's not safe, not yet, to talk about the themes, the shapes. Best wait until the last third hauls itself out of the water, see exactly how the contours of those narratives (the life, the work) resolve themselves before we say a word. All we can talk of, safely is the style. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I have always found his personal style refreshing, even charming. Then again, if he enters your living room, even the female houseplants wilfully and slowly turn their heads away; defy the basic laws of photosynthesis. When he's in France, feminine nouns avoid his lips.

>Artistically, his style is less ambiguous: very few people have the chops of comic narrative down in the way Dave has them down. The almost musical arrangement of the panels, stave-like on the double-spread. Pitch-perfect grasp of character conveyed in line, whether from sable brush or typewriter. Near-atrophied genre conventions like the sound effect or word balloon transmuted in his hands become seamless components in the flowing, plastic medium of his narrative. The conjured soundscape. Verbose silences. In sum, a staggering display of heavily-considered craft, of innovation almost as a reflex. He is a master, and a monster (from the Latin monstro; or "Great Googly-Moogly Lor' Lookit That!").