PX80: Ralph Records no. 5

Ralph Records no. 5 by Ralph Records (41x91mm)

What? Wasn’t this supposed to be a blog series about comics? What’s this then? A record catalogue?

Indeed, because it has this:

The Rozz-Tox Manifesto.

This may or may not be the first place Gary Panter’s manifesto was published. This page, for instance, says that it was published in New West Magazine, and the snap there is identical to the one here in the Ralph catalogue. So Panter may have sent it around to various publications?

Panter explains:

The Rozz Tox manifesto was written in 1979 and run, item by item, in the LA Reader’s free personals, week by week, for free.

Back then getting something set in type cost money. By running it in the Reader, it got set in type for free. Plus people could begin to see it. After all the items ran, I pasted the collected bits of paper onto a sheet of paper, well, actually I used wax. That’s what you did in the 20th century. You had an electric waxer. You waxed it down right after you cut yourself with the Exacto knife.

[…]

Once I introduced myself to the owner of one of the most interesting galleries in LA, in those days, and she said that the manifesto was seen as an affront and that galleries thought I didn’t want to show in them. I can see how they could easily get that idea, and shouldn’t be surprised, I guess; yet I thought the tone of the writing, the voice, was so shrill and silly that no one would take it seriously.

Heh heh.

This person has tried to establish the publication history, but hasn’t been able to verify what Panter’s saying.

Anyway, the reason I’m starting this blog series (looking at punk/art comics of the early 80s) with this post isn’t because this manifesto is something that unifies (or even informs) the artists I’m going to be reading. But reading interviews at the time, it seems that quite a few people were aware of the manifesto, and some were indeed inspired by it.

Or, perhaps, felt like it offered a new way of thinking about the avant garde:

:

It is unfortunate and unacceptable what vile and lazy do-nothings are given unwarranted credence for mouthing such foul and mean clichis as “rip-off” and “sell-out.” They have no understanding of our economy and the time it takes society to go. Confess and shut up! Capitalism good or ill is the river in which we sink or swim. Inspiration has always been born of recombination.

It’s a license to infiltrate the media instead of opposing it:

Law: If you want better media, go make it.

And this is pretty apposite in these NFT times:

In boom times art may be supported by wildcat speculation or my excess funds in form of grants from the state or patronship as a tax write-off.

I’ve never understood why some people see artists participating in the NFT hoax thing as a moral compromise? These crypto morons are letting money rain on artists! Don’t put your umbrella up; get some buckets and start collecting. Yes, it’s all a scam, but why shouldn’t the money go to the good people instead of the swindlers for once? Extracting crypto people’s money into the real world is a moral imperative.

It’s probably not a coincidence that many artists/editors in the sphere of Rozz-Tox influence have had such an impact on (popular) culture that they’ve had. Panter himself messed up a generation of kids with his designs for the Pee-Wee Herman show; there’s probably never been an animated TV show that’s as influential as Matt Groening’s Simpsons; Art Spiegelman single-handedly convinced a portion of the general public that comics were a serious art form with Maus; and Françoise Mouly has been a cartoon editor at The New Yorker for quite a while now.

Gary Groth interviews Groening in The Comics Journal #141, page 82:

GRTH: I read somewhere that you said your intent
to entertain and subvert.
GROENING: I think you have to entertain people before
you can subvert them. Although, as I’ve gotten older,
the subversion has become questionable. I don’t know if
you change anybody’s mind these days with this kind of
stuff. I think you give comfort to the people you already
agree with.
GROTH: I guess that nus what I wus going to ask you: uåo
or what do yu think you ‘re subverting, or who would you
like to subvert in your cartooning?
GROENING: My goal is just to offer an alternative to the
audience and show them there’s something else out there
than the mainstream trash that they are presented as the
only thing. It’s an egotistical assumption that what I have
to say is of value, but I like to make myself part of the
marketplace.
There is an assumption in the alternative world that
the mainstream world is completely hopeless. When I
moved to Los Angeles in 1977 and hooked up with Gary
mnter, we used to sit in Astroburger on Melrose late at
night and split hamburgers and scheme about invading the
media. Our idea was, rather than considering ourselves
too good or refined or esoteric, to just go ahead and see
what we could do to get our ideas across. This was back
when both of us were lingering in obscurity, me more than
Gary. Gary had had a taste of acclaim. But this was long
before he went on to co-design and win Emmys for Pee
Wée ‘s Playhouse.
I understand that Gary and maybe a few other
artists created an artistic manifesto Of sorts. It sounded
similar to what you were just saying, invading the media.
Do you know anything about that?
GROENING: Exactly. It’s called the Rozz Tox Manifesto.
Gary wrote that by himself in the late ’70s.
GROTH: When you guys were discussing this at the Astro-
burger, did you take into consideration the possibility of
being co-opted by the media? Was that a conéern?
GROENING: We considered it a false obstacle. Any time
you’re involved in a commercial enterprise you’re co-
opted on some level, but ideally you gain something
different on another level. We thought we’d just try and
see how far we could take it. You can always retreat back
to Xeroxed, self-published comic books if it doesn’t
work Out.
I sense that you have a real reluctance to even have
the appearance of being co-opted by a large, faceless
organization.
Yeah, I’ve done everything I could TO avoid it.
GROENING: I think it’s great if you can make your way
in the world that way. But it’s also important not to allow
yourself to be co-opted from the other direction by not
getting the work Out there.
If you’re an avant-garde, independent, obscuge genius
and not one sees your work, you can remain smué in your
bitter superiority because you’re never judged. I can make
that kind of statement because there’s definitely a part of
me which is exactly that. There’s a part of me, every time
I do something else for public consumption, which is
screaming, “No, no, no, don’t do it.”
Invading the media, that means dealing with scary peo-
ple who wear expensive suits and smoke cigars. When
you finally meet them, they’re not that scary. And you
know, the cigars are pretty good, too. [laughs.]

Groening saying he was inspired by the manifesto isn’t surprising… but what about Steve Bissette? Steven Bissette writes in The Comics Journal #137, page 73:

After reading the tran-
script of the Interview, Rick Veitch
reminded me of the “Rozz-Tox Manifesto,”
a document drawn up by Gary panter In
1979 that was publlshød In a Ralph
Records catalog. It was an artlstlc manl—
festo I was fascinated by: a Xerox Of It WAS
tacked up over my drawing board for
years. In a nutshell, the manifesto was a
rallying Cry for artists to Infiltrate and
resurrect the media, at any and all costs.
Whatever the sacrifice, it was necessary
to work through the media or pop
culture In order to awaken, enliven,
and/or subvert the creative Inertia that
to dominate the Of the
1970s. For one who found comic books,
the local drive-ins, midnight and
the “new muslc•• more Invigorating than
the sanctioned cultural void, the ROZZ-TOX
Manifesto was definitely compelling.

But while we’re here, we might as well take a look at the rest of the catalogue… Oh, right — Ralph Records was run by The Residents.

Scarily enough, I’ve got about half of the stuff in this catalogue. It was a great label — not just the Residents, but also Tuxedomoon, Art Bears, Snakefinger… OK, it was a kinda small label.

But I don’t have that Subterranean Modern album! OK, I just made a pit stop at Discogs and scored me a copy.

Now I’ll never die!!!

(Artwork by Gary Panter.)

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Punk Comix

I grew up on a steady diet of Franco-Belgian comics, Carl Barks and various sundries. But perhaps it was reading my first issue of Raw Magazine that made me a comics fanatic, and I’ve been fascinated with that particular time and place in comics history ever since.

Raw, to me, represents something qualitatively different from what preceded it (and what came later). It definitely had its roots in underground comics, but there was a different approach to storytelling and to artwork in the artists that Raw championed. It’s an approach that’s sympathetic to modern art instead of being antagonistic towards it: Most underground artists looked askew on the modern art world.

So I thought it’d be fun to re-read the comics from this… scene… and write a bit about them, too.

Now, I’ve done blog series about comics from various publishers, but this one is a bit different, because I’m not going to be doing a single publisher (although Raw Books is going to feature heavily here). Instead I’m going to cover comics that I think were in some way tied to… the Rozz Tox Manifesto by Gary Panter, really.

This means Panter himself, of course, but also Mark Beyer, Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman (all very New York), and also artists that I feel were on a similar tip elsewhere, like Lynda Barry and (yes) Matt Groening. But I’m not covering artists like Krystine Kryttre or Dori Seda, who I feel were doing work that sprang more clearly from the undergrounds. And I’m limiting the scope to late 70s/early 80s, so no later artists like Brian Chippendale or CF, who work in this tradition, kinda? And… North American artists only?

SO MANY RULES! But I’ve gotta limit the scope somehow.

This will be a somewhat nebulous blog series: I don’t think anybody ever gave this scene (and it wasn’t really a scene, anyway) a name, other than “Raw artists” or “the people who didn’t do much work for Weirdo”.

I guess you could call this “new wave comics”, but since any name is as misleading as any other, I’ll just refer to these comics as “punk comix”.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Here’s a link to the posts in this blog series as they appear.

Comics Daze

It’s a grey, rainy Sunday… perhaps today is a good day to spend reading comics?

It is?

Great!

Zonal: Wrecked

12:29: In Pictopia by Alan Moore, Donald Simpson and others (Fantagraphics)

This is that story from Anything Goes, the Fantagraphics benefit series, right? (Somebody had sued The Comics Journal because they were mad about something somebody said about them in an interview.)

It is indeed! But without Alan Moore’s name on the cover.

Looks great in this edition, too!

The story is just a dozenish pages, but there’s lot of padding at the end. And… it turns out that Moore took his name off this book because he was mad about somebody saying something about him in an Comics Journal interview.

And the circle is complete.

Oh, yeah… Groth sent me an email asking me for hi-res scans of the covers of Anything Goes (since they couldn’t find their copies), so that may be a scan of my copy! I’m so honoured!

Or something.

Scorn: Cafe Mor

13:09: Heaven No Hell by Michael Deforge (Drawn & Quarterly)

Deforge is, of course, the most influential cartoonist of his generation, and he’s made a bunch of really strong comics. This is a collection of shorter works?

And… er… how do I put this politely… this book sucks? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

These stories feel like doodles he’s making while watching Netflix and while typing his phone with his other hand. So many of the stories read like they’re recaps of longer works that he could be doing, and there’s nothing I loathe more than plot recaps.

And then he adds a “poignant” last page so that you feel bad about hating the story so much. Are these works that were originally published on Instagram or something? Probably went viral.

I do like the variety of art styles, though, but several of these pieces were sheer torture to get through.

And not in a good way, like his older, more depressing work.

d’Eon: LP

13:58: Stig & Tilde: The Loser Squad by Max de Radiguès (Nobrow)

The printing on this is kinda… odd? I mean, the paper is of the very absorbent, non-shiny kind — but more than usual, so it looks like it swallowed all the ink, and everything is so washed out…

And the story is kinda swallowed up by the subtext (i.e., “Lord of the Flies-ish fascist rule sucks!”)… but it’s pretty entertaining nevertheless.

14:14: Lucky Luke: Un cow-boy dans le coton by Achdé & Jul (Cinebook)

Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten that I’d started buying these new-style Lucky Luke things (Cinebook edition)…

This is classic Lucky Luke — the artwork’s pitch perfect mid-era Morris, and it’s a dense, rollicking adventure. And as we often did in the olden days, we get a historical figure as the guest star, and this time it’s Bass Reeves.

The story is about Luke inheriting a plantation in Louisiana (after the Civil War), and the villains are, well, all the white, racist people there. But don’t worry, it has a happy ending: All these Southern white people are killed.

OOPS SPOILERS.

Satomimagae: awa

14:41: The Silver Coin by Chip Zdarsky & Michael Walsh (Image)

I’ve been picking up these series by Zdarsky because I really liked that first series he did for Marvel… whatever that was; I’ve forgotten.

But I haven’t really been that impressed with his stuff lately? If this sucks, too, I’m gonna stop buying these series.

So this one is about a cursed coin that makes a sucky rock band (in the fabulous disco era) suck less.

It turns out that it’s a Red Shoes situation! Whodathunk!

OK, it didn’t suck, really, but I think that’s the end of my Zdarsky thing.

Mochipet: Girls Love Breakcore

14:52: Girl Genius Volume 19: Sparks and Monsters by Kaja and Phil Foglio (Airship)

Ah! Girl Genius! How long have I been reading this thing? It feels like decades… Oh, only since 2001. That’s practically yesterday.

This thing has so many characters it makes your head swoon. Well, my head. And I’ve never re-read Girl Genius — ever — so it’s always a bit vague to me what’s going on…

But that’s a strength this series has — it’s all witty repartee and chaos, so it doesn’t really matter that much if you can’t remember which character is plotting what. I mean, it does matter, but even if you can’t remember, it’s still a really fun, engrossing read.

Foglio’s artwork has gone more computerey now than it used to be? It’s still very attractive, but it’s got a glossiness to it now that’s … not as appealing as it used to be?

On the other hand, there’s panels like this. You can’t argue with panels like this.

Mochipet: Girls Love Breakcore

16:26: Bolette Hansen by Paul Arne Kring (Fabel)

This is a Danish comic from the mid-to-late 80s, which was mostly serialised in some newspaper supplement, and had remained uncollected until now. Not being Danish myself, I’ve never heard of this thing, and it certainly looks striking: The inking is incredibly detailed and accomplished… but the faces look all kinds of odd: The chins grown and shrink between panels, and… as Kring points out in the introduction, he’d forgotten to draw ears on the Louise Brooksalike main character.

Three stories are collected here, and I ditched the first one after a dozen pages, because it wasn’t really very interesting. I skipped to the third story, and it’s not bad, really: The artwork’s kinda fascinating: The exteriors and interiors are kinda gorgeous? The characters are still pretty odd, but better than before.

And it’s a pretty amusing story. But…

Boris: Kanau Re-master + Live

17:11: A Journal of My Father by Jiro Taniguchi (Ponent Mon)

I really like Taniguchi’s comics. He’s got his own thing going — there’s a stillness, a calmness that’s incredibly appealing.

It’s a bit disturbing that the main character of so many of his comics look the same, though. It’s that not-very-expressive male one up there. But I guess that goes with the semi-autobiographical feeling these comics have.

Heh heh. The dog is named Jiro.

Anyway, this is about a man returning home for the funeral of his father, and it’s set at the wake where the guy learns a lot about his parents, and remembers his childhood.

I rate this comic two hankies.

Crash Course In Science: Situational Awareness

18:57: La vie exagérée de l’Homme Nylon by Hans-Michael Kirstein & Hermann (Tegneseriekompagniet)

Huh. This doesn’t look much like Hermann’s normal rendering style… it’s more sketch-like? And I’ve never heard of Kirstein.

Well, OK, this is supposed to be funny, but… it’s… beyond tedious. It’s so charmless and dull that I’m almost fascinated, but I ditched it after reading about half the album, because I just have to google what this monstrosity is.

So it’s from 2007, and it’s got this rating by the people at Bedetheque:

So it’s not just me.

This is apparently the only other thing Kirstein has written other than a Japanese paedophile-looking porn comics.

Various: Anthology of American Folk Music Volume 1: Ballads

19:23: The Eternaut 1969 by Héctor Germán Oesterheld & Alberto Breccia (Fantagraphics)

So — this is a remake of Oesterheld’s 50s strip of the same name. Which is pretty odd, but the original strip was a big success, so I guess it makes sense.

This is pretty spiffy? Breccia’s artworks is totally original, and it’s got so much mood… it’s a shame that it was prematurely cancelled, but they managed to fit the last half of the story into five pages. The last half of the original story was the weakest bit, really, so it’s not that much of a tragedy. It’s eminently readable in its current state.

Stephen Mallinder: Pow Wow

20:08: Save It For Later by Nate Powell (Abrams)

Powell’s got amazing cartooning chops.

21:03: Food

I wondered what the idea was with drawing his children with animal heads… but perhaps it’s a way to protect their privacy?

Anyway, this is a really good book. I think the personal bits (the first half and the last chapter) are stronger than the political overview things (if only because those things are things we already know perfectly well), but it’s an enjoyable book.

And infuriating, of course.

Coil: First Dark Ride

21:38: Š! #40 (Kuš)

Hey! Keiler Roberts! Didn’t she have a book out recently? Did I forget to buy it? Oh. It hasn’t been published yet…

Comics get promoted so many months ahead of time these days…

Anyway, this is yet another pretty strong issue of this Baltic international anthology.

A huge variety of approaches to one subject, as usual, and this time it’s “The End”.

Microtub: Sonic Drift

21:58: Les cités obscure: La Frontiere Invisible tome 1 & 2 by Schuiten & Peeters (Faraos)

Heh, there’s a print in here, signed by… er… “Pee______”. I think.

Anyway, this is yet another entry in the “Obscure Cities” series — this is from 2004. And as usual, it’s drawn in a different style than the other entries in the series.

This isn’t my favourite style of theirs, but… it’s still pretty nice, eh? They always push the architectural designs — into a sort of dream-like logic.

The story itself is a kind of shaggy dog story, and the twist is SPOILERS that the protagonist is kinda a moron.

Which is refreshing! It’s a good read.

Looks like the final tome was published in 2008.

Sam Amidon: The Following Mountain

22:56: I Feel Love edited by Krent Able and Julian Hanshaw (Selfmadehero)

This is a quite strong anthology. The funniest piece is this one by Benjamin Marra…

… and the best one is this by Anya Davidson. It’s amazing how she manages to make her characters come alive over these few pages, which makes the ending absolutely shattering. Marvellous.

Espen Reinertsen: Nattsyntese

23:26: Ginseng Roots #8 by Craig Thompson (Uncivilized)

This series has mostly been about Thompson’s childhood (working the ginseng fields), but now he’s branching out, and he’s hardly in this one at all.

So it feels a bit… digressive? But not in a bad way?

Moor Mother & billy woods: BRASS

23:43: The End

I think it’s time to go to bed, perhaps.

That was quite a varied batch of comics… and just one out-and-out clunker?

Comics comics comics buzz buzz goes my head.

Renegades & Aardvarks Redux

Let’s start off with a list of all the comics, and then there’s a summary after that.

There! That’s the lot.

I started this blog series in early February, and here we are now in May, so it took me about three months to cover Aardvark-Vanaheim and Renegade Press. The bulk of the reading required for this series was taken up by a single title: Cerebus. The 300 hundred Cerebus issues, alone, are more than the 278 non-Cerebus issues published by these two intertwined companies. (But then again, I bailed after 150 Cerebus issues.)

To recap briefly: Aardvark-Vanaheim was started by Dave Sim and Deni Loubert in 1977. They got divorced, and Loubert started Renegade Press, taking all the non-Cerebus series with her in 1985. Renegade Press ceased publishing in 1988, and Cerebus continued until the early noughties. (Isn’t that what we agreed to call that decade? No?)

Unusual for a comics company that went under, Renegade apparently didn’t owe anybody any money — not even the printer. Loubert managed to pay everybody (even if sometimes later than some of them wanted), and wound down Renegade in a somewhat orderly fashion, instead of going bankrupt.

There had been rumours of Renegade shutting down for half a year before it happened — which in itself was detrimental, because it means that distributors are more likely to decide not to pay you if they can get away with it, creators being more skittish about committing to doing a book with the company, and comics buyers perhaps avoiding your books, since they’re just going to get cancelled anyway.

Reading interviews with people from around this time, it seems like some people thought that being published by Renegade was a kiss of death: If that logo was on the cover, shops were less likely to carry your book.

I thought this was pretty strange at first blush: Renegade had some series that were pretty well liked, and had a somewhat high profile (as these things go). There’s Flaming Carrot, Wordsmith, Ms. Tree, The Silent Invasion, Cases of Sherlock Holmes… Books that would continue (at least for a while) after Renegade shut down.

But then there’s the rest, and you can kind of go “oh yeah” — if you’ve been landed with these books, perhaps that would make you sceptical. Because some of the books Renegade published were pretty bad? Some of them have charm and are unassuming, so you can’t really … work up much of an ire towards them, but amateurish junk is amateurish junk, even if it has charm.

And it engenders distrust if you publish a lot of that.

Which Renegade did.

Comics buyers are also notorious cheapskates. Renegade published (mostly) 24 page comics, printed on the worst newsprint on the stands, for $2. This was at a time where Marvel published comics at 75c, and other alternative publishers tried to at least give some semblance of “higher class” by using better paper or getting a club-house feel going, and there’s nothing of that from Renegade: You just get the floppiest of floppies.

And did I mention the ads? No? Here’s one that announces all the publications from January 1986:

It’s certainly an… aesthetic? But this sort of thing certainly isn’t classing up your $2 24-page newsprint floppy.

But the thing is: As a teenager, I overlooked all of this, and I bought almost everything Renegade published, because Renegade would publish oddities that nobody else would have taken a chance on. I’m not sure you can say that Friends, Love Fantasy or Kafka were actually… good… but they were weird as fuck. At least they tried to do something different. And that was enough for me.

I’ve enjoyed re-reading these books — even the horrible ones.

OK, let’s round off this with an index, vaguely separating the books into vague groups:

Cerebus

Reprints

Misc

Humour

Action/Adventure/Mysteries

Anthologies

Autobio

Romance

Sci-Fi

The biggest groups here are “Reprints” and “Humour” and “Action” and “Adventure”, I guess?

A&R1990: Cerebus #139-150

Cerebus (1990) #139-150 by Dave Sim and Gerhard

So, Renegade Press is now a thing of the past, so all I have to do in this blog series is about 150 issues of Cerebus, and then Cerebus Archives and Glamourpuss, and…

Let’s get to it.

Sim starts off with a jibe at people who didn’t think there was enough Cerebus in Jaka’s Story…

The first issue in the Melmoth sequence sets the scene quite nicely: We’re in a bar/hotel on the way up to Upper Iest, but almost down in the lower city. (Cerebus is often kinda vague on where it’s set, so that’s nice.) But… doesn’t the mountain look taller than it used to? I remember it at being squatter…

The first issue is Normalroach getting used to Cirinists running the show.

So Normalroach can’t even kill the Most Horrendous Waitron Ever. It’s not really the most auspicious start … it’s just not that funny?

All of the issues in this batch are 40 pages and up (I think), with the longest counting in at 56 pages. There’s just 20 pages of Cerebus material, though, so it’s due to Sim printing a buttload of letters, as well as printing various bits as back-ups. Here we have a Stephen Bissette 24 hour comic, which was a craze at the time. People are still doing them, I think? It’s Scott McCloud’s invention.

Then we start the story: It’s all about Oscar Wilde’s last days.

Remember that Oscar guy from Jaka’s Story? That’s a different Oscar. Here we have Oscar Wilde complimenting his writing, saying how ingenious the storytelling was… or, to put it another way, Dave Sim complimenting himself on his storytelling.

(The prose bits in Jaka’s Story were pretty bad.)

Sim isn’t really experimenting that much with the art as in his earlier days… and when he does, it’s not as successful as his earlier days. This just looks awkward.

Finally! A page of Connie Lingus and her favourite book.

Jaka’s Story ended with Cerebus returning to the tavern Jaka danced at… and she had been taken by the Cirinists. He spends most of Melmoth in this semi-catatonic state… which I’m not sure makes sense. So — is he assuming that Jaka is dead? Is that a natural assumption to make? He knows that Jaka is Lord Julius’ niece — does it make sense to jump to the conclusion that the Cirinists would kill her for dancing in a tavern? He found Missy (the doll) — but surely Cerebus doesn’t know how important that doll is to Jaka?

I know, we’re talking about Cerebus here, and 90% of questions people have about characters doing stuff is “well, they’re kinda stupid”, and that goes double for Cerebus himself. Still, here it just seems egregious: Sim needs Cerebus to just keep still for 12 issues, so … this is what he came up with, I guess: He’s catatonic because it’s convenient for the story.

It makes some emotional sense, though. But as readers we’ve just read that Jaka is fine and well (sort of), so it doesn’t make all that much dramatic sense.

And I’m not sure the bit about gold does, either: Cerebus has given the tavern owner a gold coin as payment (apparently one of seventeen in circulation in Iest), which makes the tavern owner very rich indeed, because Cerebus had basically had all gold coins removed from circulation.

But… no city is an island (except island states) — gold is plentiful outside of Iest. If gold was this valuable, then surely people from outside would come in, buy up all the property, and make gold plentiful again. And… the Cirinists have all of Cerebus’ gold, so why aren’t they letting it rain, building all the stuff they find useful (they’re big on social reform).

It’s… it’s as if Cerebus is written by somebody with little sense of how economics work.

(Is that a *gasp* I’m hearing?)

This is the best letter that arrives.

An excerpt from a 24 hour comic by Scott McCloud. I like this style — he should have done more in it.

Gerhard build a model of the tavern to better draw it.

Heh heh. Prince Mick (Jagger) had to get a haircut.

As usual, Sim’s only way to make the plot progress is by having things happen by accident, so he just has all these people from the past happen to walk by the tavern Cerebus is sitting outside. At least this time there’s some semblance of logic to this: Anybody walking from/to Upper Iest will pass by this tavern, since it’s on the winding road up the mountain. (I’m not sure that bit actually makes that much sense, either — it seems awfully narrow if it has to carry all the goods needed up there…)

Sim does his own 24 hour comic, and it’s about what a bitch this woman is. (She may or may not stand in for all women who goes to bars.)

Sim doesn’t answer any of the letters, and I’ve only skimmed them, but there seems to be an awful lot of these… er… people who have… er… problems… with women.

At the start, the previews/extras are all by pretty big names, but that sort of dissipates — instead we get a bunch of people that are up and coming, like Daryl Cunningham here. Sim was big on self publishing those days, and I think most (all?) of them are self-publishers.

Sim weighs in on what word best describes women.

Finally! Something happens! It’s a mystical vision of Sim/Astoria being the same or something. It’s nice, and I was really excited for a couple of pages.

Oh, yeah, I haven’t mentioned that about half (or more?) of the pages are taken up by scenes of Oscar Wilde dying in bed while his friends are caring for him. And writing letters. The friends are kinda under-developed as characters? I’m guessing the text bits are actual excerpts from their letters, but it’s hard to tell the friends apart.

I’m not sure these bits are totally successful.

Sim introduces a new character — a waitress who does uptalk? So she talks like this? You know?

I wasn’t quite sure what Sim was going for here… but it turns out that she’s really nice person — she takes care of Cerebus, and slowly brings him back to life. It’s therapy? But unconscious? You know?

The back-up things turn even stranger. Was Sim just printing whatever at this point? (Constantine Markopoulos.)

Sim also prints a Corben excerpt from Corben’s unfortunate 3D computer modelling phase.

Michael Moorcock apparently writes in with a graceful note to tell Sim that he doesn’t want to receive any further complimentary copies of Cerebus.

And Neil Gaiman (!) does a 24 hour comic about emperor Heliogabolus, who sounds like a party dude. But does he exist?

Apparently!

Elagabalus[a] or Heliogabalus[b] (c. 204 – 11 March 222), officially known as Antoninus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222, while he was still a teenager. His short reign was conspicuous for sex scandals and religious controversy.

Sim comes to the conclusion that being gay (as abhorrent as he finds it) is just like being a comics nerd (as abhorrent as we find that).

Wilde dies. It’s kinda moving.

Oops! It turns out that the Moorcock letter was fake. Oops!

Did I mention Sim’s reliance on coinkidink as the driving force in the “plot”? Yes, indeed — here where the two Cirinist guards just happen to be chatting about torturing Jaka, the love of Cerebus’ life, a couple meters away from where Cerebus is sitting.

Now that’s Grade A worldbuilding!

Cerebus then kills the guard, making everybody go “boo yah!”, and then…

… we helpfully get a flashback to somebody infodumping facts about Cirinists to Cerebus.

It kinda feels like Sim has just given up on giving any structure to the story (as it is), and is just winging it. I mean, he’s still relying, endlessly, on all the story elements he did in the first dozen issues, but seeding mysteries/information for future events has pretty much stopped, and he has to resort to convenient infodumps instead.

Ivan Brunetti! Does a fumetti! It’s vaguely amusing.

Ng Suat Tong writes in The Comics Journal #154, page 37:

DAVE SIM IS A CONSUMMATE and, at
times, very subtle satirist. He is the epitome of
the opinionated asshole, and his Cerebus re-
mains one of the few truly profound works
available in comics. Melmorh is the fifth book
in Dave Sim’s Cerebus epic. It is a milestone
of sorts for Sim, because no other artist has been
obstinate or crazy enough to devote himself
solely to the production of more than 150 issues
of a comic. As a result, Cerebus reflects the
growth and changing concerns of its creator.

[…]

Would a dedicated artist like Sim insert ir-
relevant comedy at the beginning of such a
serious drama? The possibility exist, as he
has a tendency to soften the brooding intensity
of his scenes by juxtaposing gag sequences. On
the other hand, his intentions might be the exact
opposite of this — that is, to intensify the mood
of the serious segments of the story. An example
is in Melmodl #7, when archbishop Posey gets
frightened by his own reflection. This seven-
pagecomic sequence follows a “painful” scene
in ‘which Oscar attempts to get Out Of bed.
However, by the seventh page. when Posey is
sentenced to five years of hard labor by the
Cirinists, the reader is trying to stifle a yawn.
Sim’s’ technique is faultless. but the sequence
is too familiar, especially to a generation brought
up on Saturday morning cartoons. Weighty
drama like Melmoth is diluted by such juxtaposi-
tions. and the overall story suffers as a result.

[…]

The Oscar Of Melmoth is a mere shadow Of
the witty intellectual portrayed so vibrantly in
Jaka ‘s Story. Wilde suffered from a bacterial in-
fection of the middle ear (otitis media as a symp-
tom of tertiary syphilis) and died Of an acute
inflamation of the brain (meningitis). Oscar is
thus shown with a bandaged ear and in a severe
febrile state. With each issue, he grows increas-
ingly emaciated and confused. In an age before
the advent of penicillin, Wilde’s condition was
largely untreatable. Sim effectively depicts the
confusion, dementia and suffering which would
have been evident in Wilde’s gradually deter-
iorating condition. A minor slip-up is seen in
Melmoth #9 when Ross returns to lest at Turn-
er’s behest. Ellmann states that Wilde “had a
fortnight’s beard” at this point in time, but Sim
omits this in his illustrations.
The near-verbatim transcriptions Of Ross and
Turner’s letters, together with Sim’s keen inter-
pretation of them may not, however, be suffi-
cient to produce any significant emotional im-
pact upon the reader. The portrayal of Oscar in
Jaka ‘s Story may help to elicit some sympathy
from readers, but the fact is that real life has
dictated that Wilde’s death would be neither
remarkable nor exceptionally moving. The
tragedy of Wilde’s story lies in his eloquent
defence, conviction, imprisonment and rapid
decline in the space of three years. These events
are not found in either Jaka ‘s Story or Melmoth.

[…]

There is a significant subplot which runs
through Melmoth that concerns Cerebus. At the
start of Melmoth, he is seen clinging tightly to
his sword and Jaka’s doll, Missy, totally deva-
stated by the sudden loss of his loved one. (A
recent interview with Steve Bissette [Comics
Interview #1071 reveals that Sim had remained
similarly unapproachable and contemplative
after breaking up with his girlfriend.) One can-
not help but notice that even as Oscar sinks
deeper into the arms of death, Cerebus acquires
increased confidence and vitriol. For example,
Melmorh #7 begins with Cerebus engaging in
some acrobatic nut-eating and exchanging some
icy words with a neighbor, an improvement over
his usual blank stare in the previous issues. Im-
mediately following this, a transcription of Reg-
inald Turner’s letter to Robert Ross states, “I’m
afraid it’s all over with Oscar.” Cerebus’ gradual
return to normalcy culminates in an act of vio-
lence that closes the novel. It is a watershed of
sorts. Sim has never depicted violence quite so
graphically before. The reader experiences a
sense of exhilaration and release which is almost
cathartic. This feeling is heightened by the fact
that the previous 38 issues had moved along at
a deliberately leisurely pace.

[…]

Melmorh addresses many things, but it is first
and foremost an artist’s tribute to a great literary
figure. When did Sim’s interest in Wilde begin?
Was the desire to do a biography of Wilde a sud-
den whim which would have been better served
in a mini-series? •How much sophistication
should we allow a work like Cerebus? Only Sim
has the answers to these questions. The reader
can either trust that Melmoth fits into the
thematic whole Of Sim’s epic Or debase this
particular segment as being and
pretentious. Sim has stated that to avante-garde
cartoonists, Cerebus is little better than a Marvel
comic, but in an artform where works of erudi-
tion and pathos are sorely lacking, Cerebus is
a stream in the desert.

Jason Sacks writes in Amazing Heroes #197, page 68:

Sometimes it’s harder to write a
positive review than to write a nega-
tive one. With a negative review, one
can ate least pick out (and pick on)
those aspects of a comic that are
poorly executed. But what can you
say when a comic is very nearly
perfect?
Cerebus #150 is the halfway point
of what arguably may be called the
greatest comic series of all time. Dave
Sinis art is as brilliant as usual, the
plotline is fascinating, the cover is
subtly striking and even the lettering
is head and shoulders abcwe any comic
on the market either yesterday or
today. All of this almost goes without
saying.

Oh, so Cerebus did assume that Jaka was dead?

Also it’s super unclear that the reason Cerebus is so shell-shocked is because he thinks Jaka is dead. I had to read that elsewhere to understand. Why does he think Jaka is dead?

*:

Melmoth is a tragic book superbly executed. The shorter length (a mere 250 pages) suits the subject perfectly – a breath of fresh air after the literal weight of earlier volumes. This is a thoughtful, literary book, with intertwining plots, that is nothing less than a pleasure to read.

And another review:

I always really liked this storyline because it was such a departure from Cerebus‘ story, and it was a good example of Dave’s storytelling skill even when he wasn’t working with his own characters. I know for a lot of people, it was a bit frustrating having Cerebus as a supporting character for 45 issues, but it obviously makes the conclusion of this book exceptionally intense. I think, too, that we all maybe needed a bit of a break from the aardvark after finding out just how terrible he really is. However, it was a harbinger of things to come—Dave would come to see Cerebus as a bit of a public forum for his own opinions, eventually to the detriment of a large portion of his reader base.

I think Melmoth is fine — Cerebus’ apathy and stirring from that apathy is well rendered — it’s just… not that interesting?

Or perhaps my problem is that I just don’t have anything to say about it. Writing this blog post has brought home to me that I don’t really enjoy writing about Cerebus: There’s too much that annoys me about it. And plenty of other people have nattered on about Cerebus endlessly, so it seems pointless.

I don’t think these blogs about Cerebus is much fun to read, either, so I’m just going to bail. Besides, I think it’s pretty much downhill from here? If I remember Mothers & Daughters correctly, the only thing of importance that happens is that Astoria shows up and says that all the plots and mysteries that had happened in the first 100 issues of Cerebus were just piffle? I may be misremembering, and now I’ll never find out!

Yes! I FAILED! My Aardvark Vanaheim / Renegade Press Total Re-Reading project is an abject failure! I’m going to stop here, with 150 (well, 149) issues to go.

*phew*

That’s a load off my mind.

So everybody (heh heh) waiting for my oh-so-insightful comments on, say, Going Home — sorry. Ain’t gonna happen.

The End.

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.