Cerebus is one of a kind in the comics industry. Started in 1977 as a kind of parody of Barry Windsor Smith’s Conan The Barbarian by writer, artist and puiblisher Dave Sim, Cerebus the Aardvark features a cartoony aardvark in an otherwise realistic world in a style often likened to Howard the Duck but more accurately comparable with the Japanese Manga style. Sim quickly realised that you can’t parody one thing forever (after writing and drawing the "giant snake" issue) and began to parody other areas of the comics medium including just about every superhero genre with his Cockroach character who would hang around for most of the series periodically mutating into whatever is the latest big thing in comics.

Around issue 20 Sim had a reasonably well documented "epiphany" apparently during a come down from a week of acid trips. The story goes that his new found insight led him to think that he should write an extremely long book about it and he promptly announced that Cerebus would be a 300 issue monthly series with the death of the lead character in the final issue. Everyone said that he wouldn’t make it and they were still saying it a few years ago. Now with only four years to go there’s slightly fewer people questioning his extraordinary resolve.

After the "epiphany" the book started to be structured into longer novels the first of which is High Society where Cerebus, being posessed of unusual charisma becomes Prime Minister, the story simultaneously ridicules politics and the comics industry whilst introducing two rival political womens groups; the Cirinists and the Kevillists whose disagreements are to overshadow the book at least until issue 200.

After Prime Minister the story becomes explicitly about power and Cerebus’ lusting after it as he strives to become Pope in the 1000+ page epic Church and State, the longest single story ever told in comics form, a long drawn out battle for all the gold in the world, with a deeply affecting middle passage where Cerebus oversees the trial of Astoria, the leader of the Kevillists and an ending that the Comics Journal described as "just too cosmic" with Cerebus visiting the moon to have the secrets of creation laid bare by the male godhead (or so it seems.)

Returning to Earth Cerebus abandons center stage and becomes a bit player as Sim broadens his range again in Jaka’s Story. A minor character introduced close to the start of the series, Jaka visits Cerebus once during High Society and once during Church and State, each time forshadowing her emergence as a key character here. The book switches between ilustrated prose about her childhood and comic book presentation of the present day story of her life. Included in the present is "Oscar" an unmistakable Oscar Wilde parody who is writing the prose pages as we read them, as he is fed the information by Jaka’s husband Rick. Cerebus becomes Jaka and Rick’s house guest but to a degree must stay in hiding as no one seems sure whether he is still the Pope! The explosive situation comes to a head when Oscar reads from his new novel Jaka’s Story to Cerebus, Rick and Jaka.

Cerebus, in shock, thinking Jaka dead takes another step back from the front of the stage and sits still outside a bar for a year during the short story Melmoth which simultaneously tells the story of the death of the real Oscar Wilde conveniently introducing the fact that for some reason there are an inexplicable number of Oscar Wilde clones running around Cerebus’ world.

Melmoth is the calm before the storm, when Cerebus learns that Jaka is alive he leaps into action to confront Cirin and her fearsome army – a confrontation that will last more or less throughout the 1000 pages of Mothers and Daughters, the strangest, most controversial, second longest and possibly the most accomplished of the Cerebus novels. Split into four volumes each an analog of one quarter of the storyline to date and ending up with Cerebus heading into space again, past the moon, a higher ascension and a confrontation with the highest "God" in his world, Sim himself; but not before the reader has had his showdown with Sim in part three, the highly controversial Reads, legend has it that Sim’s readership dropped by 50% after the infamous issue #186 as he blurred the lines between fact and fiction with his extended text pieces featuring "Victor Reid", a thinly veiled mouthpiece for some of his more controversial views, widely held to be misogynistic if not openly dangerous and offensive. Sim for his part has been unapologetic, stating repeatedly that the work is the thing and that all the attempts to separate him from it are futile. He has pointed out several times in interviews and in the story itself that he spends twelve hours a day doing Cerebus so his work, not his views are what we should be concerning ourselves with. Either way it’s a fascinating, exhausting stimulating piece and without doubt a high water mark for the industry in a number of different ways.

After the storm is another calm – many secrets of how and why Cerebus and his world operate the way they do are revealed to us and to Cerebus during Mothers and Daughters and to recover Cerebus installs himself in a bar for the next two years in Guys where he gets to spend some serious downtime catching up with old friends and with himself. Sim switches his parodying of comics to a more tributary style introducing guest appearances from a number of self published characters that have apperaed in his wake. True to Sim style the idyll is upset by women as Bear, his companion from the mercenary days of before the start of the Cerebus series leaves with his partner and Cerebus has to decide to marry or dump his new girlfriend Joanne.

After the inevitable split, Cerebus runs into another old aquaintance, a very much different Rick (of Jaka and Rick fame) who is writing his own story in Rick’s Story and comes to stay at the bar where he dishes out the wisdom he is aquired in the time since they last saw each other and drinks a lot of stout in the process.

At the end of Rick’s Story Jaka turns up and convinces Cerebus to take her with him to his childhod home Sand Hills Creek which bodes particularly badly as we were all, reader and lead character alike, instructed by Dave that this path was fraught with danger during part four of Mothers and Daughters. Going Home is the current Cerebus storyline and so far has featured a journey through a series of bars parodying different aspects of the chaotic comics industry happenings of the last few years, a long boat ride in the company of F. Stop Kennedy, an F. Scott Fitzgerald-alike and an extended stay at the home of Ham Earnestway an Earnest Hemmingway-alike. Sim, in the shadow of Alan Moore’s From Hell has taken to providing extensive footnotes to the work and the creative process itself, notes which are to be included in the collected volumes.

Throughout the series the writing is of an exceptionally high standard and since approx issue #88 the art style has been a striking juxtaposition of Sim’s cartoony characters and award winning lettering and Gerhard’s amazingly detailed backgrounds. According to Sim, Gerhard was something of a freak at architect’s school, having no interest in drawing plans (or comics) but being obsessed with just drawing buildings. Sim took him on full time to draw the backgrounds and in another dramatic break with tradition signed over a clean half of all profits and equal rights over the created work and the character.

Sim has blazed his trail for over twenty years continually refusing to licence his "product" and doing very few cross overs or guest appearances. He was instrumental in the self publishing revolution that almost happened ten years ago and when it didn’t he magnanimously "retired" as "head" of the "movement". He has mercilessly attacked the principle of work for hire, the big publishers and just about everything about mainstream comics publishing, continually reiterating his central belief that you don’t need anyone else to help you achieve anything. That creators are everything, that art is everything, that publishers are scum, that commerce is art’s deadly enemy – that is his lasting message. A message that has caused a number of interesting and entertaining exchanges between him and key industry figures, specifically Fantagraphics supremo Gary Groth.

Occasionally the back of Cerebus is as interesting as the front, for some time I got all my ideas about what to buy from the Cerebus preview where Sim would run ten pages or so of whatever he was reading that was new out at the time. I wuld get all my industry news from his "Note from the President" editorials and various essays such as his anti-TV "Comics and the Mass Medium" and the best ever interview with Alan Moore which ran for four issues around the cross over from Guys to Rick’s Story.

Look back here in the future for coverage of various Cerebus "back of issue" supporting features.

Free Cerbus#0 with any collection.

When the books where originally collected certain issues from inbetween the books were omitted. The five issues in question were later collected into Cerebus Number Zero – please ask for a free copy when you buy any Cerebus volume from GCP.