Cerebus (2000) #251-265 by Dave Sim & Gerhard
My incredible math skills tells me that I’ve got 15 issues to read today — the longest “book” since, I guess, Jaka’s Story or something? And I’m not looking forward to this one, which is “Form & Void”, which is the third book of Going Home.
Amusingly, this starts off with Sim explaining to Gerhard what’s going on on page four.
Here’s two and three… yes, this book is all about Ham Ernestway, which I always going to say wasn’t as good a name as F. Stop Kennedy, but while I’m typing this, I’m blanking on what Ham’s real name is… er.. er… Ernest Hemingway! *phew* I got there! So I guess it’s a pretty good name if it manages to swap into my brain and push out the real name.
OK, here’s the page Sim was talking about. Get it? Mary Ernestway supplies Ham’s answers in her head, so they’re not actually there. Would you have gotten that without the explanation? Would anybody? Sim has this borderline insane tendency to read a lot into what he’s reading, and he’s hoping that people will be able to do the same with his own stuff, I think…
Sim hates Mary Ernestway (modelled after Hemingway’s fourth wife, er, Mary) sincerely and with all his heart.
In yet another “well, that doesn’t seem much like something Cerebus would do” twist, in this book, Cerebus is a rabid Ham Ernestway fan. This is apparently because Bear was a fan — it’s alluded to in one panel, but you really have to read the backmatter to get how any of this book makes sense. Because Cerebus suddenly being a rabid fan of any Reads author seems pretty weird.
This bit is pretty hilarious. Sim explains how he’s not really read much actual literature (No! We’re All Shocked, I Tells You!) because he was afraid that he’d like them so much that he’d binge-read them all (like with Dostoyevsky) and run out of good books to read. Sure, sure, Sim; sure.
His hatred for Hemingway seems to be immediate and deeply felt. He calls Hemingway a typist (or Typist) and not an author, just like Picasso isn’t an artist. And extra fun thing about all this is that the backmatter for the first few issues of this book is a lot more readable than Sim’s usual leaden and smarmy prose — and that’s because he’s trying to parody Hemingway’s style (which is just Typing and not Writing).
Sim then forgets what he was doing, and he’s back to his usual style (which should come with an “Severe Eye Roll Danger” warning).
Anyway, I’m no Hemingway fan myself — I read a couple of his books as a teenager, and I thought they were pretty mid. (Yes! It’s true! I came up with “mid” in the 1980s.) But I haven’t read him since, and I take my aesthetics as a teenager with a grain of salt — for all I know, he’s fantastic. (But I doubt it!)
From the first Cerebus issue, Sim has always been very interested in how to make a comic book with as little work as possible. He’s tried everything — having people in pitch black caves, snowed out on white pages, rained out with just vertical lines everywhere… and I guess here he’s mostly xeroxing (unless he got Gerhard to pitch in).
Ernestway doesn’t really appreciate Cerebus’ company. And! Sim introduces two Black characters! That actually speak! But in Swahili, so you have to read the backmatter to get the translations.
Eddie Campbell writes in to call Sim a Philistine, and Sim doubles down by calling Norman Rockwell a better artist than Picasso because Rockwell’s paintings are harder to copy.
Speaking of artwork… are these nature pages all done by Sim? I’m not at all sure, but the proportions on that pretty bird seem just a biiit off, don’t they? Too big eyes, too small beak…
The world-building in Estarcion is “eh whatevs”. Cerebus was out of circulation for a few years (but not more than ten years, surely), but he’s totally flabbergasted at seeing airships. I think Dave returned him to Estarcion five years later, and then he spent some years in a tavern — which was filled with nerds, so you’d think they’d mention of suddenly aircraft was a thing?
But that’s Cerebus for you — Estarcion doesn’t really make that much sense.
Heh heh.
*gasp* Africa! I guess this means that Estarcion is Europe? Bit with Italy missing for some reason? Has any of this ever been established?
Ah, yeah, here’s the explanation for Cerebus’ Ernestway obsession: Sim just couldn’t come up with anything better in the couple months he had to come up with the setup for Form & Void. Sim has a tendency when asked about how much he had planned of the 300 Cerebus issues to say something like “well everything! except some details!” and, well, some of the details aren’t that small, really. I think Sim fibs a bit, personally.
Oh, yeah, I remember this back from when I read the book back in 2000: Sim had read something so incredible, so fantastic, in Mary Hemingway’s autobiography that he went “Did I just read what I thought I just read?” So naturally, I wondered what incredible thing that was. This is how the backmatter ends in this issue, so we’ll have to wait a bit… (This is Sim’s go to move to create interest: Just withhold some information, promising that it’s going to be very interesting.)
I think those are Gerhard zebras? That’s my guess.
So this is what I assumed the Horribly Interesting Thing referred to: Ernest and Mary eating lion tartar, which apparently was taboo around those parts. And I have to say, I think that sounds really yucky, but then again, so would eating a house cat or a dog — it just really sounds yucky. But it’s clear that to Sim the fact that this is “taboo” is very, very important…
Mary is a very bad shot, and flubs several shots on the safari in Africa. This reads like a pretty sympathetic take on Mary, but the backmatter sets us straight right away: This is meant to illustrate how fucking annoying women are who don’t know their place (I’m paraphrasing Sim). It’s yet another case of Sim not actually managing to put what he intends on the actual page, so he has to spell it out later.
Wow, that is a horribly bad drawing of a lion. But nice touch that they only have four toes in this universe (Cerebus himself only has four fingers).
OK, here we continue the Saga of the Horribly Interesting Thing That Sim Found — he calls up the Presidential Library and has seven kilos of copies of Mary Hemingway’s papers sent over so that he can Figure Out The Mystery.
The first time I read Form & Void, I started skimming the backmatter around this time, so I never found out what The Mysterious Thing was — I remember asking on a Cerebus message board, even, and *radio silence*. But this time around I’m going to find out! Even if it kills me!
Sim says he’ll let us know when we get there. I hope he’ll add some sort of LOOK HERE! THIS IS WHAT YOU”RE LOOKING FOR! thing, so that it’ll be obvious.
Oh, could this be it? Mary tells Jaka and Cerebus (she’s reading from her diary, as one does) about how she and Ernest are kinda kinky. Sim is scandalised! Shocked! I mean, Cerebus and Jaka! They’re shocked!
The dirigible … er… crashes… because “hit the wire”? What wire? And why would a dirigible hitting a wire make it crash? I mean, if it tears it would fall, but… Again, the world building is razor thing — this happens here because the Hemingways suffered a plane crash, which makes more sense.
(Sim seems to allude to all Hemingway accidents that happen on the trip, and there’s a lot, is because they broke the taboo against eating lion meat, so I guess it’s a taboo instituted by god or something. Or — perhaps all taboos are from god? Sim isn’t really clear on the point…)
I still have no idea what Sim is trying to express with these sounds, and he uses them all the time when talking about Mary Hemingway.
OK, Sim thinks that Hemingway thought eating lion meat was some kind of magical thing, over interpreting as usual without any basis, as far as I can see.
Mary encounters a guy (based on Edward Scott) who gets really huffy about the lion meat thing.
And then Mary kills Ham all of a sudden, and Cerebus runs away, dragging Jaka into a snowstorm. And as usual with Sim, there’s not real reason for this to happen: Just Cerebus Being Cerebus. (Cerebus is all magic and stuff, remember?)
But Sim does insanely dramatic very well, eh?
Sim spends way, way, way too many pages speculating about Hemingway’s sex life, while tut tut-ing “gossip” and stuff.
HERE IT IS! THE INCREDIBLY MYSTERIOUS THING THAT SIM CALLED THE LIBRARY ABOUT! HERE:
He wondered what those two “–est” words were. It was all about two adjectives Mary had elided because they seemed like she was bragging (she’s quoting Ernest talking about herself). And what were they?
So it was all a big nothingburger — and this rather The Cerebus Reading Experience in a nutshell: Sim teases a lot of mysteries; important things; things connecting in unexpected ways. And then we get the solution and it’s all *fart noise*.
Well, once again Jaka seems pretty smart, eh? Don’t worry, it only lasts a couple pages.
Oh, women from where Cerebus came from wears veils and walks two steps behind the men? Are Cerebus’ people moslems?
Well, that’s a funny sequence, but would you take Cerebus on his word whether these walls have magnificent poetry or not? No? Thought so, so once again I don’t think Sim’s work quite conveys what Sim wants, because I think Sim wants to say (once again) how terribly annoying Jaka is (and therefore all women are).
The aforementioned Edward Scott challenges Hemingway to a duel. So not only does he get really huffy about the lion eating thing, he’s also obviously off his rocker? Shouldn’t that be a hint to Sim that perhaps Scott isn’t much of an authority on anything?
This all made me wonder whether eating lion meat is a thing… And:
Well, all you taco lovers, for $35 dollars you can try lion as in the king of the jungle.
There you go. It’s in Florida, so it must be normal.
And speaking of “off his rocker”… Sim disliked an interview with Jeff Smith in The Comics Journal #218, a couple years earlier, so he invites him to a duel.
The reactions are swift — longtime friend Diana Schutz withdraws from the proofreading job immediately. I wondered about the timeline, because there’s a couple months lead time… but of course, she proofread that duel challenge, right? Or resigned as soon as she saw it.
Anyway, this is the final issue of Form & Void, and Cerebus and Jaka finally makes it back home to Cerebus’ home village, and there are no people there! It’s a wonderful sequence, and Sim really milks all the tension he can out of it — even with the small lettering and verbiage to really keep the reader in suspense.
It turns out that Cerebus’ parents have just died…
… and they didn’t make it in time because Jaka dawdled, so Cerebus tells Jaka to fuck off. (And somehow there’s a carriage waiting there to take her back home, so presumably Lord Julius had her under surveillance the entire time?)
Of course, there’s no way she could have known that they were in a hurry — Cerebus himself didn’t know, I think? That is, I don’t think we’ve been told (in the book) that the story was anything but a whim of Cerebus’? I mean, the trip started when Jaka was the one to force Cerebus to leave the tavern, after all…
So once again, I’m not sure whether Sim is saying that Cerebus screwed up once again, or that this is supposed to show the readers for the final time what a horrible person Jaka is.
The issue ends with a 24 page treatise on how horrible women are, though, called “Tangent”.
But of note is that Carol West, Sim’s longtime administrative assistant, quit halfway through typing it in, because she’d just had enough.
I have to admit I didn’t even skim it, because there’s a limit to how far I’m willing to go for this blog series. But Sim has kindly placed it in the public domain (tee hee), so you can probably find it on the Women Haters’ Club pages.
Michael Dean and Staff writes in The Comics Journal #234, page 12:
It had been a number of years since Cerebus creator Dave
Sim’s last sociological outburst in Cerebus #186 (“Reads”), and
he had slipped back into being a mere struggling comics self-
publisher with a cult following, when a pair of new public
statements in Cerebus #264 and #265 reminded everyone that
he is much more than that. Exactly what is open to debate,
with theories ranging from gynophobic lunatic, to
Machiavellian manipulator of publicity to ingenious Swiftian
trickster to brave champion of manly virtues.This time, he
summoned the industrys
attention by challenging Bone
creator Jeff Smith to a fistfight
in Cerebus #264 — a strutting
macho gesture that drove his
longtime proofreader, Diana
Schutz to resign. He followed
that in #265 with “Tangents,”
an essay-length attack on fem-
inism, which continues some
of the themes of “Reads” and
branches out to such issues as
abortion, celibacy, the “femi-
nist-homosexualist axis,
spanking adult women, and
Elian Gonzalez. Midway
through typing this screed, the
last of Sim’s female employees,
administrative assistant Carol
West, abandoned him.
When the Journal called to
ask if he was crazy, Sim politely
commented on the response he
has provoked, as well as on his
betrayers, Smith and Schutz. We
also spoke with Smith, who felt it
was wiser to keep his mouth
shut, and with Schutz, who
explained why she resigned and
Why it took her so long.
Sim published his salvo to
Smith in March, With an editori-
al entitled “Dear Jeff Smith.” He
was responding to comments
made by Smith in an interview in
The Comics Journal #218
(December, 1999), in which
Smith disputed Sim’s characteri-
zation of a conversation between
the two men and Vijaya, Smith’s
Wife, that was part Of Sim’s
“[infamous] little ‘tract’ about
women sucking the life blood
out Of men, and how they
‘think’, they can only ‘feel’. ”
Smith said that after listening to
Sim (who was visiting the couple
over a weekend) expound on his
theories about women, “finally I
said, ‘Dave, if you don’t shut up
right now, I’m going to take you
outside and I’m going to deck
you.’ Well, he shut up. He
wrote about it in Cerebus #186.
But, in his version, instead of me
threatening to give him a fat lip,
he has me fawning and begging
him not to reveal the true secrets
Of women in front ”
This description set Sin*
masculine blood boiling — or at
least simmering, since it took
him more than a year to publicly
respond, due in part, he stated,
to his pledge not to write any-
thing in the back Of Cerebus
unrelated to an ongoing narrative
until the Story was completed.
Sim further explained (to Smith),
“Considering that it took you
nearly five years to ‘go public’
with your side of our disagree-
ment(s) I didn’t think that
time was Of the essence. ” Having
accounted for his slowness in
taking up the gauntlet of Smith’s
insult, Sim wrote, “You are lying.
.. I’m not sure what my reaction
would’ve been had you, indeed,
threatened to give me a fat lip..
[l suspect) I wouldWe taken you
up on your little ‘challenge’ once
I was sure that I wasn’t staying
under your roof any longer. But
Of course, there was no ‘chal-
leng& He then offered to fly
out to Smith’s hometown of
Columbus, Ohio, “on any date”
for three rounds of boxing
according to Smith’s specifica-
tions (“I’ll let you pick the venue
and the time keeper and the ref-
eree … If you prefer headgear,
just let me know”).
“Jeff, I am saying flat-out,
that you have lied,” concluded
Sim. “In lying, you have made a
— a non-masculine mess.
Let’s you and me, man-to-
man, clean up the mess that you
have made.”
The editorial in #264
prompted Dark Horse editor
Diana Schutz, who has sewed as
the proofreader on Cerebus for
seven years, to end her freelance
arrangement with Sim. simply
did not in any way wish to be
associated with the boxing chal-
lenge. I drew the line there,” she
told the Journal, adding that she
couldn’t continue proofing
Cerebus if she intended to ignore
an offensive portion. She sent
Sim a letter of resignation, which
he printed in #265.
“I’m sorry to say that after
seven years, current cucum-
stances make it impossible for me
to continue proofreading Cerebus
text pieces,” wrote Schutz in the
letter, dated Jan. 18. “Following
are six pages of proofs from
Cerebus #264. I am far too
uncomfortable with the remain-
ing pages to offer my proofread-
ing services on them. ”
In addition to printing
Schutis letter ofresignation, Sim
remarked in a prologue to
“Tangents” that Carol West, his
administrative assistant (“a very
fancy feminist name for a very
plain secretarial position”), had
quit her job in the midst of
inputting the “Tangents” essay.
“Her resignation, far from being
either a surprise or a dishearten-
ing event, to me, seemed just the
latest example of feminism
undermining its own 30-year-
long campaign to be taken seri-
ously…” he wrote. “Carol West
can get offended and leave, but
the hard questions remain. My
feminist readers can roll their
eyes theatrically, but the hard
questions remain…” Sim then
fell into a rhetorically rhythmic
groove in which one event after
another led back to the ominous
refrain ” but the hard ques-
tions remain.”
Would Sim have had more
respect for West if she had stayed
on and said nothing? “Yeah. Just
do your job,” he told the Journal.
“Accept the fact that there are
other points of view… the world
is more complicated than three
flavors of feminism.” He added
that West had phoned his collab-
orator Gerhard to announce her
resignation — “She didn’t want
to have a conversation With me.
In the essay that followed the
discussion of West, Sim proceed-
ed to attack what he proclaims as
feminism’s intellectual bankrupt-
q, and its pervasive and insidi-
ous influence on the Whole Of
society. “Tangents” is divided
into five sections that run 20
pages in total. The topics dis-
cussed include: what he sees as
the contradictory logic Of alimo-
ny and affirmative action; the
emotion-based nature of women;
the unfairness and irresponsibili-
ty of “Government-Funded
Daycare; ” the universal undesir-
ability of being a woman; why
women need a good spanking,
“given that reason cannnot pre-
vail in any argument with emo-
tion;” the “feminist” opinion
that children should be treated as
adults; and the inability of
women to distinguish themselves
from animals. Sim also com-
plained that women are only able
to communicate ideas by telling
allegorical stories, Often involv-
ing animals
apparently
unalarmed that he has made a
living doing exactly that for the
last 30 years. The last section
describes how Martin Luther
King Jr.’s hold on the civil rights
movement was overtaken by a
secular-humanist-feminist ethic
that transformed the noble aims
of the civil rights movement into
a contradictory morass of a coali-
tion that views blacks, women,
“homosexualists,” babies and
animals as interchangeable.
Because Sim has waived the
copyright considerations for
“Tangents,” the full essay can be
read online at www.tcj.corn.
In discussing the recent
events with the Journal, Schutz
stated that she was most cha-
grined about the “Dear Jeff
Smith” editorial and by the mis-
perception by some people that
she had quit over the Tangents”
essay. “Dave should have the
right to express an argument for
his position, no matter how
faulty that argument may be… I
probably would have had less ofa
problem with the “Tangents”
essay (than with “Dear Jeff
Smith”]. Maybe that’s just an
example of my fuzzy, emotion-
based logic.” She added that
Sim’s positions are “so ludicrous
that it’s difficult to take seriously.
Whereas a personal attack on a
friend, I do take seriously.”
Schurz, Who has known Sim
for several years and described
herself as having been “in love
With him for a year and a half,”
would seem to be in a good posi-
tion to judge whether Sim’s essay
is sincere or an elaborate hoax.
This is not a prank,” she told
the Journal without hesitation.
“Dave absolutely believes every
word that he wrote.”
Asked if Sim’s beliefs about
women made it difficult
for her to maintain a relationship
With him, she said, “As a proof-
reader, I really have much
contact with him. I haven’t had
much contact with him for a few
years. Dave’s attitudes on gender
were most provocative When we
were dating. But that was eight
years ago and his attitudes were
not really so narrow then as
theyve become Over time. Is he a
difficult personality? I don’t
know. He’s a creative personality,
and I deal With them every day.”
Additionally, Schutz said she
believed that Sim “purposely and
cleverly printed my letter of res-
ignation with the “Tangents”
issue, and not #264, in order to
lay me open to same kind of
ridicule” that Carol West
received in Sim’s prologue. After
receiving several e-mails from
people under the impression
that she had quit in response to
“Tangents,” she submitted a let-
ter to Sim which provided her
clarification of the events, but
the letter was returned to her
With no response.
Heh heh, this is good stuf.
When asked by the Journal,
Sim comfirmed that he returned
Schutz’s letter, but disputed
Schutz’s claim that he was delib-
erately attempting to mislead his
readers. “It’s an interesting idea.
[But) I think so, because
the [resignation] letter [specifi-
callyl talks about 264. There’s
nothing that any of us can do
about stupid people.” As for
returning Schurz’s letter, Sim
simply replied, “she quit.” But
doesn’t she still have the option
of writing a letter to be printed
in Cerebus? “She can always do
her own comic” and print the
letter in there, Sim stated.
In general, Sim said that he
had not gotten much feedback
from “Tangents, ” especially
compared to ” Reads” — “maybe
a half dozen letters, equally split
between feminists and people
Who can think for themselves.”
Christ what an asshole.
The Comics Journal #236, page 5:
Dave Sim
Ontario. CAN
A couple Of corrections to your cover—
age in the Journal #234: “In the Company
of I did not challenge Jeff Smith to a
fistfight as your correspondent alleges and
I did not challenge him to a boxing match
as my former proofreader alleges. What I
did was Offer him the chance to give me a
fat lip as he alleges he threatened to do in
his Journal interview. Three 3-minute
rounds seemed more than sufficient for the
task: i.e. not a fistfight, not a boxing
match, but the only way I could conceive
to maintain at least a veneer Of civilintion
While accommodating an uncivilized
threat. Would I or will I hit Jeff? Up until
the present article thought that unlikely. I
have never threatened anyone with physical
violence. It was Jeff who manufactured a
physical threat out of thin air. What I tried
to do was accommodate What was (Obvi-
ously) a desire on his part to do me physi-
cal harm while limiting the extent ofpoten-
tial physical harm to myself (insofar as it
was possible to do so) to a fat lip (thus, the
brevity Of the contest and the use of IO-
ounce gloves). I novice in his latest salvo he
has (retroactively) escalated that level of
violence from a fat lip to (quote) “Dave, if
you don’t shut up right now, going to
take you Outside and deck you” (Italics
mine). An altogether new realm ofviolence
has been entered upon solely on Jeff’s part. If
(and when) he fit to make good on this
latest piece of revisionism, I would assume
that — rather than just allowing him to
give me a fat lip — it will now be a case of
“Who Will ‘deck’ whom.” An unfortunate
escalation, but entirely Jefrs own doing.[…]
Michael Dean responds:
Therek a lesson to be learned here probably
about how easily information that passes
from person to person can be distorted into
misinformation. For example, your invita-
tion to Jeff Smith that the two Of you meet
for three rounds of hitting each other with
boxing gloves with the mutual goal of
achieving for yourself a fat lip was some-
how construed by myself and many other
inattentive people as an invitation to a box-
ing match. Thanks for clarifying whatever
distinction you have clarified, though you
still seem undecided as to whether you plan
to hit back or simply stand there With your
gloves on and your lip stuck out.
Heh heh. Now that’s snarky.
Sim writes a ten page letter in in The Comics Journal #258, page 21:
I’m not surprised that the
current Marxist-feminist spin is that
my calling his bluff on his big talk
is described as “boorish, pathetic
and frankly insane.”
Etc etc — read it yourself if you want to.
Bart Beaty writes in The Comics Journal #263, page 119:
Form & Void
If Sim had kept his mouth shut he’d
be respected a lot more, that’s for sure. By
the end only the hardest Of the hardcore
could read the actual issues any more,
because all that superfluous baggage beck-
oned to you, and if you didn’t turn away,
youd be horrified. In the last years Of the
comic, Sim over-analyzed his own work
with extensive notations on his research
into Hemingway and Fitzgerald, launched
outlandish screeds on “feminism” and
“homosexualism”, wrote at length about
his personal religion in the wake of
September I I , and lamented that sad State
Of the Canadian military (forgetting, one
supposes, that the last time this country
was invaded was in 1812 — and that was
by the Americans, Who are largely now on
our side). These essays are primarily built
on quotes from the National Post, a sort Of
Canadian print version Of the Fox News
Network. The image that it portrayed was
Of an isolated, bitter man — although Sim
denied this image in interviews. The long,
rambling essays — an example Of Which
was found recently in the letters pages Of
this magazine — seemed to mark a keen
mind in decline. Sim seems, in his writ-
ing, like a Street-corner religious zealot,
endlessly reiterating the same point. He
challenges his readers to engage with him,
but hc seems just sort Of scary, So no one
does. This, he thinks, is a sign Of weak-
ness.
always wanted to tell Dave some-
thing that I’m not sure he knows. When
he was doing the Fltzgerald
commen-
taries, I wanted to bring it up, drop him a
note, but I never did. Maybe heu have
found it interesting — maybe hed find it
irrelevant. But it seemed sort of relevant to
What hc was doing. so, since I’m guessing
that he’s reading this, I just wanted to say:
Zelda psychiatrist was Fredric
Wertham. In case you were wondering.
Form & Void seems to be one of the least liked books:
Sigh. Here’s where it all kind of comes to an end. Ernest Hemingway and his wife Mary are featured. I don’t want to go too far into the plot to avoid spoilers, but it’s really the last severing of the core Cerebus story. Now, you will only get Cerebus and his interior world, which is fighting against the evil Woman, and God.
Again, Jaka’s character is tweaked a little bit more, it seems, to more perfectly fit Sim’s idea of how women are bad.
[…]
The last 68 page of the book is text, in which Sim talks (as he did in the last book) about the cameo’d character he has researched. In this case it’s an all-out attack on Mary Hemingway and women in general. He doesn’t spare Papa himself (referring to him as a typist rather than a writer), but the majority of the vitriol is saved for Mary. He makes a LOT of guesses about reasons and intentions, and then bases other arguments on these guesses, which makes the whole thing shaky.
Yes, Sim included the entirety of the backmatter into the collected edition, which I think is a first? I guess he was just so proud of doing the research into “–est”, eh?
Form and Void did not offer me much to care about in the ideas department. I have zero interest in literary classics. There are very few I have read that I gave two shits about. I think prose fiction is a dead story-telling medium.
Okidoke.
Had I not read the notes I would not have gotten any of the metaphor out of the lion hunt that Sim puts into it.
[…]
It is possible that the whole volume was a purposeful exercise in enduring both disinterest and disdain.
Heh heh. I’m not actually sure it’s the worst book? I think if you read it without reading the backmatter, it might have been somewhat entertaining. But it’s certainly one of the worst.
You are correct that “It’s a blog called ‘A moment of Cerebus’.” A problem some people have (I’m looking at you, Jeff S.) is that they think it’s called “A Moment of Drooling Dave Sim Sychophancy” — which it is not.
Oh yeah, it gets worse, I guess:
When they get there, everything goes wrong for Cerebus, as usual. He loses everything, including driving Jaka away (and out of the story for good). The book ends with Cerebus alone and in despair. The fate that was foretold to him at the end of Church and State, that he would die within a few years, alone, unmourned and unloved, seems to be coming true.
This might not seem like a good place to end the story, but I almost wish I had just stopped here and never bought the last two books.
Wow:
Dave recently gave some sales figures on Form and Void. Apparently he only sold about 250 copies.
But it’s been remastered by Waverly PressIf you want to be amongst the 88 people who has a deluxe hardcover:
DELUXE HARDCOVER
$195
Get the Deluxe hardcover book package, hand signed and numbered by Dave Sim & Gerhard, along with all of the exclusive extras!
You’ll be out of $195. It’s up to you. The cheapest edition is $85, though, and apparently sold even less: 34 copies. But there’s holo foil stickers! Oh, there’s also a really cheap $70 direct market edition…
OK, now I only have two more posts to go. I know I’ve said this before, but this time I’ve actually counted. So in three day’s time, I’ll be free! Free! Uhm… except that the next book is 24 issues long, I think? Oh, I can’t face doing that — I may have to do it over several days. So the next post may be a couple days late.
This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.