Today we'll see Jaka's Story draw to a close, then some primo Lord Julius shenanigans, then we start MELMOTH, also known as Dave Sim getting really into Oscar Wilde for a bit and centering the whole comic around it. Let's go!
Thanks OP. Melmoth on it's own is enjoyable but it's a different story from Cerebus, more melancholic and slowly paced, and has little to do with anything else in the comic, which is why it feels like a slog. Jaka's story is also more slowly paced but at least gave more insight into Jaka herself, the higher echelons of Palnu, and the current going-ons of Iest.
Brody Price
Before this page he was doing the narrow panel thing to build suspense. Then on this page there’s just two weird curved panels and a ton of white space.
And here he manages to have panels without having any panels, which is pretty inpressive and dramatic. Almost looks like an old movie poster.
AW YEAH HERE WE GO
Julius is consistently comedy gold. Nice breather after all the stuff with Jaka too.
Hm. This comic doesnt really classify as a comedy anymore does it?
lol
lol again
There’s a certain balance to insulting your audience almost nobody can get right, but it’s done pretty well here and feels quite natural.
This part feels pretty relevant to today.
Thanks OP!
10/10 reaction image
Mason Sanchez
>Hm. This comic doesnt really classify as a comedy anymore does it? It's a lot of things. Cerebus changes themes and genres by the arc so it's hard to classify them, but it pretty much remains a satire throughout most of it.
Jaxson Ortiz
Yeah, we’ve already reached a point where it’s hard to class the overall work as any single genre. Satire seems the most consistent element but even then, that feels like it only works cause ‘satire’ is such a broad term. Parts of Jaka’s Story sort of satirize art, but that mostly comes from Oscar Wilde. It’s maybe critical of upper classes detaching themselves from their kids, but those flashbacks feel more dramatic than satirical. I guess there’s a certain voice to them that lends a weird sort of comedic bent.
The cirinists are legit scary and have clear political overtones, so there’s that.
I guess it’s in a weird spot where it sort of satirizes everything, which means if you try to say ‘What does Jaka’s Story satirize’ it’s easy to think it doesn’t satirize anything in particular?
I’m not gonna try too hard to fit it into a genre though, honestly I tend to like it when something defies easy classification. Means it’s just its own unique thing.
Jacob Reyes
Jaka's story is always a good one to go back and read. High Society and Church & State are the peak, but this one always gets to me.
I think the biggest problem is that Sim already introduced a character that was Oscar Wilde in all but his last name, so adding the real Oscar Wilde was just superfluous. Just make the story about that first character; that probably would have fixed everything.
Dominic Rivera
Are they the same Oscar or different Oscars?
It's "Ambiguous with a capital A" explains Dave Sim, which is coded speech for "I'm Pretentious with a capital P".
Ethan Hill
I think they're different; you see one reference the other at , and the other one shows up later in prison.
Lincoln Moore
>The cirinists are legit scary and have clear political overtones, so there’s that. If you think that's scary, just wait.
Bentley Anderson
I'm not here to analyze the comic, I'm here to analyze Dave. If he says that they're maybe the same person, then they're maybe the same person.
Jaxon Jenkins
Thanks OP. The first time I tried reading Cerebus I never got past High Society. I have been blasting through the archived threads over the past few days getting caught up.
>I'm not here to analyze the comic, I'm here to analyze Dave Don't. At least not for the first half of Cerebus. Last 50 issues you can't help but analyse Dave's beliefs but before that there's a fantastic comic in spite of what Dave Sim nowadays tells you how to interpret it.
Isaiah Hernandez
Anyone see a modern SJW element to the ending of Jakka's story?
>>Feminazis in Burkas controlling a town and banning anything remotely sexy.
>>Rick a hapless NEET and borderline cuck who will end up losing his hand because he realizes that Jakka's a baby killing tramp who never intended to let the couple have kids even though he wants one?
There are elements here and in later stories that indicate that Sims kind of saw where society was going with the feminazis/SJW menace and unlike Atwood, actually had the balls to also wrap it in Muslim/Islamic packaging with regards to calling out the unholy alliance between SJWs and Islam?
Liam Myers
Looking at the covers kind of reminded me of one of the biggest signs (and first of them all) of the book going downhill: the move to super vague as fuck covers, which often were generic stock photos/drawings that didn't have anything to do with the issues in question's plot.
Also Sims putting the story chapter number on each cover. Though I suppose he did that in part because he realized when he moved to generic covers, that people would potentially accidentally skip/miss issues if each one had a generic as hell cover on it.
Logan Barnes
Awesome
Elijah Lee
Rick is a good guy but he's also a fuck-up who drove Jakka to abort their kid, because he intended to subject the kid to super emotional trauma of raising him to be a "tough guy" and absurd tests of strength (IIRC wanting to force his kid to carry a small pony every freaking day) all because he was insecure as fuck over being scrawny and skinny.
As for Jakka; I see both of David's sides to the story and it's moral. On one hand, Jakka's clearly rebelling against a hatefully conservative dictatorship (which is actually conservative, complete with Sims using Margaret Thatcher as a stand-in for one of the bad guys at the end).
On the other hand, how the hell did Jakka think shit was going to end?
The cynic in me thinks that Jakka's story should have gone full downer ending: everyone but Cerebus dies and Cerebus finds both Jakka and Rick's heads on pikes.
Daniel Richardson
The numbers on the cover were not about helping fans keep track of new issues due to the change in cover design.
It was due to the fact that Sims started to get super pretentious about being a "novelist" and his works "novels" and writing explicitly for the trade paperback audience he found with the phonebooks. So each issue became a "Chapter" and you started getting shit with issues ending abruptly once he used up the number of pages he sat aside each issue for the actual comic part, versus the pages he saved for editorials and letter pages and previous of other indie books.
Jason Sanders
Honestly the cirinist outfit reminds me more of typical nun attire than muslim burkas, though I certainly see why they’d remind you of that too.
Thomas Powell
I just watched Duck Soup yesterday.
Owen Phillips
I'm probably the only person in the world who feels this, but I think Melmoth was a better book than any of the ones that came before it.
Jason Morris
Thanks OP. I know storytiming is hard work, but I want you to know that I appreciate the Cerberus Awareness you've been putting on Yea Forums. A step up from our usual capestuff and bait threads.
I've actually been trying to find a torrent for all the issues to read on the go but forgot about it. This will have to do.
Isaiah Gomez
Just buy the issues digitally from Cerebus downloads and give Dave your money so he can keep making them Remastered editions and pretending to work on Strange Death of Alex Raymond.
Grayson King
Anyone know if the updated image limit still does the +1 thing? Like 301?
Ayden Johnson
Why do you insist on misspelling Jaka's name?
Landon Gray
Oh come on Jaka's Story's great and Melmoth's underrated despite its problems (it's great on its own it just shouldn't be in Cerebus). The book doesn't go downhill until Mothers and Daughters and even then it's still pretty good until Dave's religious conversion starts taking over the book.
