Cerebus #136
Suspended Animation Classic #76
Originally published June 10, 1990 (#23)
Cerebus #136
By Michael Vance
Dave Sim has become a master of visual padding. In fact, if he’d written the preceding sentence, it would have read: Dave Sim, the creator, writer, penciller and publisher of “Cerebus”, a black and white comic book from Canada, has become a critically acclaimed and financially successful master at the art of visually extending a story, particularly through the use of repeated images, to the extent that he has earned a cult following of fans who are loyal to his work beyond the limits of critical discernment of the artform itself.
You get the idea. It occasionally takes Sim ten pages to show someone sneeze. Once.
He isn’t alone in this silliness. Japanese comics are rife with melodramatic poses that run into dozens of pages in length and accomplish nothing so much as reader boredom.
In the current issue, a girl named Jaka is being interrogated and humiliated by a thinly veiled caricature of Margaret Thatcher. In the process, Jaka’s husband learns she secretly carried and aborted his child. Jaka’s world, which has been carefully constructed in intricate detail, begins to crumble. And herein lays a reviewers dilemma with “Cerebus”.
For every abuse of the comics form, Sim has mastered at least two other aspects of comic books. He’s unbeaten at rich, believable and intricate characterization. Dave is excellent at dialogue. His plots are interesting, logical, consistent, and peppered with fresh twists. Sim’s art is beautiful, stylized and appropriate for his subject, and his visual storytelling is marred only by…well, you know.
A final word of advice given in the same structure Sim uses with rubber stamped, redundant panels of art:
Get on with the story, Dave. Get on with the story, Dave. Get on with the story, Dave.
Get on with the story, Dave. Get on with the story, Dave.
“Cerebus” #136: Jaka’s Story #23/Dave Sim, writer, penciller; Gerhard, inker/published by Aardvark-Vanaheim, 20 pages, $2/available in comics shops.
Cerebus #136
Suspended Animation Classic #76
Originally published June 10, 1990 (#23)
Cerebus #136
By Michael Vance
Dave Sim has become a master of visual padding. In fact, if he’d written the preceding sentence, it would have read: Dave Sim, the creator, writer, penciller and publisher of “Cerebus”, a black and white comic book from Canada, has become a critically acclaimed and financially successful master at the art of visually extending a story, particularly through the use of repeated images, to the extent that he has earned a cult following of fans who are loyal to his work beyond the limits of critical discernment of the artform itself.
You get the idea. It occasionally takes Sim ten pages to show someone sneeze. Once.
He isn’t alone in this silliness. Japanese comics are rife with melodramatic poses that run into dozens of pages in length and accomplish nothing so much as reader boredom.
In the current issue, a girl named Jaka is being interrogated and humiliated by a thinly veiled caricature of Margaret Thatcher. In the process, Jaka’s husband learns she secretly carried and aborted his child. Jaka’s world, which has been carefully constructed in intricate detail, begins to crumble. And herein lays a reviewers dilemma with “Cerebus”.
For every abuse of the comics form, Sim has mastered at least two other aspects of comic books. He’s unbeaten at rich, believable and intricate characterization. Dave is excellent at dialogue. His plots are interesting, logical, consistent, and peppered with fresh twists. Sim’s art is beautiful, stylized and appropriate for his subject, and his visual storytelling is marred only by…well, you know.
A final word of advice given in the same structure Sim uses with rubber stamped, redundant panels of art:
Get on with the story, Dave. Get on with the story, Dave. Get on with the story, Dave.
Get on with the story, Dave. Get on with the story, Dave.
“Cerebus” #136: Jaka’s Story #23/Dave Sim, writer, penciller; Gerhard, inker/published by Aardvark-Vanaheim, 20 pages, $2/available in comics shops.