Magnifier Effect

The "**Magnifier Effect**" is a property of aardvarks whereby they magnify various aspects of the people near them.

## Instances

* Cerebus was used by a good magician to help summon a tank.
* Cerebus used "telepathy" to make a demonic looking representation of himself that lashed out at the Regency Elf.
* While Cerebus had a cold, bubbles started to form over his head and then he sneezed fire.
* Cerebus told Astoria to "Go Away" and she disappeared. She reappeared in the Western Church's Papal Throne Room.
* Cerebus found gold coins forming into a sphere.
* Cerebus shared a vision of a past trial with Astoria and saw himself as an Astoria echo and she as a Suenteus Po echo.
* Cerebus started to fade as he thought about Dave's bosses having Cerebus killed off and replaced with Rick Nash and his adventures with Elrod or the Roach.
* Cerebus saw a castle that reminded him of a place where he once killed a guy. At the same time, F. Stop Kennedy saw the same castle and took on Weisshaupt's role from when he was standing on top of the building near a canon yelling at Cerebus. F. Stop experienced pains in his chest in an echo of Weisshaupt's heart attack.

## Quotes about the Magnifier Effect

* "We aardvarks . . .We are all different apart from similarities in our appearance. We have. . .Powers. Although the term is really inadequate as descriptions go. . .Power implies control or rather that is the common inference drawn. When I was fourteen my fur turned purple for several seconds one day. For two days when I was twenty, my hands were detachable. I could remove them and affix them to any joint on my body. Cirin has had a small head that resembles you growing in her left arm-pit for several months. You sneezed fire, once. These could be described as "powers" only in the very loosest connotation of the word. As I'm sure you will agree.

"Since things and people have a tendency to change in proximity to us, we are drawn to those fields where this is an asset. Politics, religion, the arts, the military. We are an allegory of power in our way. What leader, what would-be messiah, what military "genius" has not gazed in horror, at the results of his "good works"?
"It is as if they changed colour. . .or sneezed fire. . .and in response the world they sought to influence went mad and changed itself into a form they deplore. Reality mocks all attempts to control it. And mocks, as well, the would be controller.", Suenteus Po
* "Serna is an aardvark. Like you, see . . . magnifies traits in other people. She magnified Cirin's own nature and made the motherhood possible.", Dave

## Dave on the Magnifier Effect

* *DAVE*: The idea of Cerebus as a "magnifying force" came pretty early on, the idea that conventional fantasy cliche "magic" was lying dormant in Estarcion and that Cerebus was a kind of "magic jumper cable." . . .In my mind, Cerebus was completely unsuited to any kind of leadership role or position but the "magnifying force" housed inside of him made such roles and positions almost inevitable."

* **Q1**: Finally, why did the sphere Cerebus held turn back into coins (and why did it turn into a sphere in the first place when Cerebus touched it)?

**DAVE**: Another esoteric point having to do with Cerebus’ magnifier nature and the uncertainty of how far back it goes, how efficacious it is, the extent which it incarnates things on its own depending on its own level of gullibility. You saw Cerebus’ reaction to the coin when Bran told him that it had been minted by Tarim. My best guess would be that that was an identical reaction on the part of the magnifier effect which inhabited him on the “next level up”. You just don’t muck around with anything having to do with the earthly Tarim, in the same way that even an atheist is going to be subdued around the Shroud of Turin. My best further guess would be that there was a magnifier nature of which the magnifier nature itself was unaware on the next level up from it as it was from Cerebus. And who knows what powers there were “up there”. Or, viewed perversely, what sense of humour. The higher nature would regard the degree to which the lower nature had been spooked and basically pull a practical joke by having the coin minted by Tarim attract all of the gold coins and form itself into a sphere. Why? Because BOO is very funny. Ask any brother who scares crap out of his sister by doing it. It’s hilarious. Or, it could have been an actual effect that was predestined because the human incarnation Tarim was actually an aardvark or part aardvark, so when Cerebus picked up the coin, it initiated the same launch sequence that it had originally been designed to initiate. Since all of that was taking place on upper levels of reality, I never settled the question for myself anymore than I could give you a definitive answer as to whether guardian angels exist or if I have one.
* **Q1a:** You have suggested that Cerebus' "magnifier" trait may have been something that he "picked up" while living with Magnus Doran, however, wouldn't Cerebus' dad's comment on page 80 lead one to believe the magnifier trait was something Cerebus was born with, or at least got BEFORE encountering Magnus Doran (e.g. "...tellin' everybody he's the chosen one-- the son of Tarim 'imself. Denouncin' them as sinners sayin' Vicar Grame is a drunkard and an adulterer")?

**DAVE:** Magus Doran. No “n”. You’re thinking maybe of Doc Magnus of the Metal Men? It was very difficult to convey, but what I was trying to convey was that by the time Cerebus left his apprenticeship to Magus Doran he really wasn’t very clear on how much of what happened actually happened and how much of it was a dream or something in between reality and a dream which I suspect would be part and parcel of any participation in the magical end of things particularly as an apprentice. I’ve often wondered if the line “But you know I know when it’s a dream” in “Strawberry Fields Forever” was John Lennon trying to convince himself that that was the case in a life that must’ve seemed decidedly dream-like 24/7 between the drugs, the unprecedented fame and, later on, having to actually listen to Yoko Ono. It was one of the reasons that I made “Add One Mummified Bat” one of The Animated Cerebus portfolio stories. Because it was done in brilliant colours and in an animation style, I hoped it would convey the quality of Cerebus’ memory of his experiences as a magician’s apprentice. How could you believe that something that differed that much from your actual reality—the difference between the texture of the Cerebus storyline and the Animated Portfolio—actually took place? And yet, given that that was how you remembered it, how could you not believe that it actually took place? The closest I came to getting across that quality was right at the beginning of Latter Days where Cerebus is trying hard to remember if Magus Doran had actually said the thing that when his father was dying, Cerebus would know and he would come back. Cerebus would have had the same question about the above-cited “Chosen one of Tarim” dialogue and everything that he remembered or thought he remembered as part of his apprenticeship. Did he actually hear that or was it suggested to him later on that he heard that and who suggested it? The entire time passed in a near dream state both for Cerebus and for the magnifier quality that he possessed. On the one hand, it would be hard to picture Young Cerebus daring to denounce Vicar Grame as a drunkard and an adulterer when you see his reaction to Vicar Game’s fire-and-brimstone sermon in Minds, but at the same time most magicians tend to be Jesus wannabe’s (“I’m God and I get all the chicks”)and presumably that would have conveyed itself to Cerebus through however long a period he was an apprentice. It would have been worth Magus Doran’s while to have implanted the notion that Cerebus had already claimed to be the Chosen One of Tarim depending on what his own plans for Cerebus were. The only thing that I had established in my own mind about the apprenticeship period was that Cerebus’ dad brought him to Magus Doran, everything started getting weird and Cerebus got left there under the circumstances depicted in Minds, similar circumstances or unrelated circumstances. Everything stayed weird throughout the period of the apprenticeship. Then the apprenticeship was at an end although how, when and why it ended Cerebus had no real conscious recollection about—and he wasn’t comfortable remembering to the extent that he did remember. Because the circumstances of missing his parents’ respective deaths hinged on or possibly hinged on or possibly didn’t hinge on the remembered or implanted false memory of Magus Doran’s assertion, he forced himself in the aftermath of the trauma to try to remember and got the same result he always got with trying to remember any part of the apprenticeship. Everything was a vivid memory and an implanted false memory and he just oscillated between the two perceptions for however long he tried to remember, which—for obvious reasons—just became a pointlessly disturbing exercise which was why he usually didn’t engage in it. All he really knew for a fact was that one minute he was Magus Doran’s apprentice, and the next minute he wasn’t and he had long before learned to just accept that that was the extent of what he could say definitively about having been his apprentice.
## References

 1. ↑ "Magiking"
2. ↑ *Cerebus No. 32*
3. ↑ *Cerebus No. 60* / *Church & State*, page 368
4. ↑ *Cerebus No. 88* / *Church & State II*, page 743
5. ↑ *Cerebus No. 89* / *Church & State II*, page 773
6. ↑ *Cerebus No. 99* / *Church & State II*, page 967
7. ↑ *Cerebus No. 229* / *Rick's Story*, page 203
8. ↑ *Cerebus No. 69*
9. ↑ *Cerebus No. 247*
10. ↑ *Cerebus No. 178*
11. ↑ *Cerebus No. 195*
12. ↑ *Feature Magazine No. 4, Volume 3* (1997)
13. ↑ *Church & State II*, Q&A Session
14. ↑ *Minds* Q&A Session (June/July 2005)