From: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Grade Report: "Cerebus: Mothers And Daughters"
Date: 21 Nov 92 05:41:52 GMT
Reply-To: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Dept., Madison, WI

Spoilers for the comic book Cerebus...

While I thought that _Jaka's_Story_ was a brilliant piece of storytelling
(graphic or otherwise) and that _High_Society_ was a very funny piece of
satire, I must admit that I found _Church_And_State_ to be long and basically
pointless, and _Melmoth_ to be tedious in the extreme.  Unfortunately,
_Mothers_And_Daughters_, the current story, smacks more of _Church_And_State_
to me than of any other Cerebus story.

It moves to and fro, it has a large cast of characters doing widely varied
things without seemingly any connection between them.  While the exploits (or
whatever) of Cerebus have been somewhat interesting (though I must admit that
the drawn-out exposition of Suenteus Po got quite tiresome after a while), and
while a lot of the "bits" have been amusing, on the whole I don't really think
that as a cohesive story this piece has hung together at all well.

Creator Dave Sim's main concern seems to be to give us close looks at life
under the Cirinists, which in itself is not a problem.  Unfortunately, what I
think is lacking here is a character we can be sympathetic to and relate to
through whose eyes we can see this society.  (To some extent, this is the
function Jaka played in the last third of _Jaka's_Story_, though the focus was
more on her than on the Cirinists.)  No, I do *not* consider the Roach to be
someone I can relate to, nor Cirin.  While some of the tidbits are
interesting, my ultimate reaction is, "Yeah, so?  What does all of this matter
to the larger story?"

So how about Cerebus?  Well, Sim seems to be dealing with the ostensible
protagonist of the story only a piece at a time since _Church_And_State_
ended, which is really a shame since he has really been through some
interesting experiences (from HIS point of view) since then (for instance, his
gradual "awakening" during _Melmoth_ was the high point of that story, I felt.
He clearly is gaining some humility and perspective in the aftermath of being
Pope, which of course opens a whole can of worms as to whether he will, in the
end, die "alone and unloved" or if he can still somehow redeem himself).
Cerebus is not, as far as his exposure in the series lately goes, the
protagonist, but, really, since Jaka vanished back to Palmu, no character has
really stood forward with the strength to fill such a role.

Cerebus is basically a good comic book, and worth reading just to see what
hilarity Sim is going to come up with next, but I have trouble understanding
why the creator of the brilliant, tightly-plotted, paced and characterized
_Jaka's_Story_ has turned around and completely lost his focus.  It's very
frustrating.  Sigh.

Grade: B-  (though it's a close call between this and C+)

-- 
Michael Rawdon				 rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI

"All the thing I haven't seen once the final curtain has been raised.
 The act we act is wearing thin, the act we act we under my skin.
 The words the words we said goodbye, the words left choking in my mind.
 The act we act is wearing thin, I think we wear it out again."
						- Sugar, "The Act We Act"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc