A review by fulminataxii
Cerebus by Dave Sim

2.0

I used to love these comics, but now find them mildly entertaining at best. I’m willing to admit that part of that possibly stems from what I know about the author today, but even taking that into account I feel that the only bits which really held up for me come after the introduction of Lord Julius. As an homage to Groucho Marx, he features in the only parts I still find truly funny. There’s also some interesting experimental artistic storytelling in the form of the first “Mind Game” story.

Spoiler

I can recall photocopying all the pages of that story to see the image that the gray portions make. They make a life-size picture of Cerebus, with only one or two spots that don’t quite match up.

I had completely forgotten about the “funny accents” bits which stray into racist caricature.

It is still interesting to watch the development of Sim’s art style from issues #1 to #25. It’s also interesting to see how this all connects to his later stories in the series, especially when you remember that most of these stories were written before Sim decided he was writing a 300 issue epic story. Largely throwaway characters coming to play major roles later in that story.

I can’t recommend this work to anyone, but it was important to me when I was younger, and isn’t quite as bad as I feared it would be.