Free Cerebus (1992) by Dave Sim & Gerhard
This book was published (in 60K copies, according to Sim, making it the Cerebus thing with the highest print run) to have something that shops could give to punters attending the Cerebus US Tour ’92. Makes sense to me.
But what do you put into an introductory pamphlet like this? I’d have guessed a couple shorter pieces to give people a feeling for the pacing and humour of reading a Cerebus comic…
… but Sim goes for a plot recap of 150 issues instead.
There are some sequences, but… And Sim gives away a whole bunch of plot points in a pretty offhand way. I mean, none of this means anything to somebody who doesn’t know about Cerebus at all, but for somebody who’s just started on, say, High Society, it had to be a bit eh?
Sim includes some favourites.
And teases characters beloved by all kids, like Mick’n’Keef and er Margaret Thatcher.
I’m not sure — did anybody read this and go “well, that all sounds really intriguing; let me start reading the 3K pages of Cerebus now”? I guess it’s possible… But the book feels cheap instead of free — like no work has gone into it.
But I dunno.
This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.