Customer Reviews

Cerebus: The Last Day

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This is the last volume in the series of paperbacks collecting the entire run of Cerebus. This is a very complex series, so you really need to read the previous 15 volumes to understand what is going on here. A lot of people gave up on this series long before it got to this volume, due to Dave Sim's controversial viewpoints and some often infuriating plot developments. But I'm not going to go into what happened in previous volumes. This particular volume consists entirely of Cerebus' last day of life. It starts off with a dream Cerebus has, which is really Dave Sim's explanation for the Origin of Everything (this is the sort of thing that has alienated so many Cerebus readers). Then Cerebus wakes up, and we witness the rest of his day, until he dies. I won't give away too much, but Cerebus is a decrepit old man at this point. Anyway, if you read the previous 15 volumes of Cerebus, I'm sure you'll want to find out how it ends. If you haven't read Cerebus before, this isn't the place to start.

From Wikipedia:
"Following his reading of the Bible and the Qur'an beginning in December 1996, Sim underwent a religious conversion from atheist secular humanism to his own mixture of the Abrahamic religions. He lives a lifestyle of fasting, celibacy, prayer, and alms-giving, and considers scriptures from the Jewish (the Torah, and Nevi'im), Christian (the Gospels, Acts and the Book of Revelation), and Islamic (the Qur'an) religions to be equally valid as the Word of God. He explored theological themes heavily in the later issues of Cerebus."

This current description does not remotely fit the brilliant man who wrote and co-drew what I feel is the best comic of the 'Eighties. Cerebus #1-113 was both hysterically funny and tragic, laced appropriately with some of the heaviest scenes ever committed to newsprint. During Astoria's trial before the Church the gravity is palpable. Cerebus himself during these issues bears close resemblance to Richard Nixon in personality. There has never been a comic book character written before or since that approaches the quality and depth of what Sim accomplished, perhaps precious few literary characters, as well.

But, by the time Jaka's Story was done it was painfully clear that the series was over. Sim went off on his literary tangent and only just barely returned at any point thereafter to anything resembling story telling. I myself quit the book for a time until #150 and then only stayed with it for a year or so. I'd read Cerebus for the entertaining qualities that Sim's nearly empirical observations on life, religion, politics and relationships offered. Later, when he began his plainly subjective preaching and patronising through his interpretation of literary figures Wilde and Fitzgerald, the comic was through being fun or even interesting. I read Cerebus for Sim, not for second hand interpretations of anyone else.

My advice is stick with Cerebus, High Society, and Church and State volumes 1 & 2. It never gets any better, and the story afterward quickly goes nowhere. Sim's later explanations of mysterious events that take place in the first four story arcs are uninspired and disappointing. He drags the magic out of his own book like the magic must have left his life. And like many who have suffered divorce and become a pariah to their friends, he embraced the only rock that offered unconditional support: monotheistic Bible based religion, religion that ensures the unquestioned superiority in manhood of it's adherents.

Sim probably considers his POV to be novel. It isn't. It's merely the sound of a soul in pain - the pain of separation by a trusting spirit that feels repeatedly betrayed. Sim, over the course of the center-run of Cerebus placed all his guilt on his creation - Cerebus was an @$$h0!e who deserved to lose everything and die alone, unmourned and unloved. Clearly, over time, Dave forgave himself and let the Aardark pay for his mistakes. Oddly, the Aardvark's shortcomings in the areas of relationships were meant to mirror Dave's own. How he failed to assimilate his own self-criticism via his comic book is astonishing. The undeniable break with reality where Sim is concerned is encompassed in Cerebus's placing the blame for his losses on Jaka in the penultimate storyline, perhaps a strange attempt at vindication for Sim's actual sufferings.

In the final analysis, Cerebus the comic #114-up is impossible to understand without knowledge of Dave Sim's own most personal experiences with wives and girlfriends. Since Dave is not a close friend and his experiences completely subjective in the absolute, who needs or wants to know this stuff? Who wants to share his pain as he abuses his creation?

Cerebus #1-113 thrived on being gleefully cynical, yet reached dramatic heights even Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman have yet to accomplish. Unfortunately for Sim's readers, his soul seems to have died long before the series was cancelled, and it shows.

The strengh of this book is with the exception of the opening section which is mainly text invovling a reinterpetation of various religous texts stemming from the prior books ,the rest of this is actually comics. The weakness is the pacing as Sim goes over and over Cerebus's various alilments in a redundent fashion. Cerebus in this book is essentially an aging powerful religous/political figure trapped in his own home. A sad ending to the series - tyhe final section involving his death however is beautifully drawn

The black & white artwork in this book is so detailed & insightful, that It serves other comic book artists an insurmountable task to (at the very least) aspire to. If you're objective enough (as most devoted Cerebus readers seem to be) - you'll understand that this book isn't meant to 'entertain' you with subject matter akin to television. This book is a detailed observation on the personal intricacies of a VERY old man (or aardvark). Sim's black & white 'method' of depicting this is marvelous.

This book is a great endcap to the Cerebus stroyline.

Bobby.N

...i was first introduced to Cerebus back in 1987 (when i was still in high school) from a friend who let me read a few of his back issues. I quickly became quite the "Cerebus fanatic" buying up all the issues i could find. Eventually i bought a couple of the phone books "church and state" "high society" and was blown away by the creative genius of Sim in both his storytelling and his almost "animation cell" like artwork (thanks to his background artist Gerhard)...
...as the story progressed and the pacing slloooowed down...somewhere around Jakas Story... i figured i would stop buying the individual issues and just wait for all of the phone books.... and 18 years later here they are!!!!!! One of the greatest tales (in 16 volumes) ever to appear in graphic form!!!!

If you've read vols. 1-15, why oh why would you stop now? I became aware of Cerebus as this arc was being published monthly. It was a curiosity in that a comic book had never been seen that was a biblical commentary with footnotes, end notes to those foot notes and claiming that unified theory had been discovered by a comic book author. Sim claims the opening commentary is what the entire series has been leading to. If you've put in the effort to try to understand Latter Days, this is a much more stream lined (albeit archaically written) version of the creation story. If anything at this point you probably want to know how the aardvark meets his end which Sim delivers as promised. Looking back over the 16 volumes and 6,000 pages the only advice I can give is if you've started it, stick with it, it's worth it. If you haven't started it, don't it's not worth it.

I will not comment on the opening text, only to say that I DID read all of it.

For the "comic" portion, we see the consequences of Cerebus' decision to fall in love with a woman who looks astonishingly like Jaka and is only referred to as "New Joanne." There is both humor and sadness in this final chapter, and, as the other reviewers have said, Cerebus dies. But what happens after death? We get to see that as well. This may not be the end; there's always the chance that Cerebus could (metaphorically) become a neutrino and escape, but I said I wasn't going to comment on the text portion.